Tag Archives: privacy

New Year’s resolutions 2024

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I haven’t posted any New Year’s resolutions on here for a while, mainly because I’ve been very bad at keeping them – or not set myself any at all – for the last few years. (No prizes for guessing why!)

However, the point of resolutions is to set yourself some ambitious goals which spur you on to achieve improvements to your life which you wouldn’t otherwise have made – even if you don’t manage to complete or stick to them all.

So, in that spirit, I’m going to make an absurdly over-ambitious list for 2024:

1. Read 30 books, including the complete works of John Wyndham

I used to typically read 30+ books a year; there have been a few years when I’ve read 50+. Since 2018, I’ve struggled to read 20 a year – in 2023 I only managed 18. Combining this with an author reading challenge should help, since Wyndham’s books are generally quite short.

2. Get into Talking Heads

Talking Heads is the band that it’s most anomalous that I’m not already into. They’re exactly the sort of band that I would love. I like the few songs I’ve heard – the big hit singles – but I’m not familiar with their work beyond those. I get why their fans are typically intensely zealous about them. I’ve just never put enough time into listening to them myself. So this year, I’m going to make a concerted effort to really listen to their back catalogue – at least up to Little Creatures – and also watch Stop Making Sense.

3. Do two 10k races and reach 60 parkruns

I did one 10k in 2023 (and it nearly killed me); I want to build on that and do two more this year.

I wanted to reach 50 parkruns in 2023 (from a start of 33). Unfortunately I only reached 42. So I’m setting myself the even more ambitious (by 1) target of reaching 50 by the end of 2024.

4. Complete and submit 10 Private Eye crosswords

I’ve been a Private Eye subscriber since the early 2000s, and I occasionally complete the crossword – on average, it seems, about twice a year. If I start it, I usually finish it – it’s just a matter of making the effort to start it. So this year, I’ll make the effort more often.

5. Watch 10 specific films

Setting myself a specific list of films to watch in the year (typically, classics or cult hits that I hadn’t seen, or DVDs that had been sitting unwatched on my shelf for some time) worked quite well in 2017 and 2018. My 2019 list is still unfinished (by one film). But I’m going to set myself another list to work through:

Dracula (1931)
Frankenstein (1931)
The Mummy (1932)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
National Velvet (1944)
Godzilla (1954)
Stand By Me (1986)
My Cousin Vinny (1992)
Donnie Brasco (1997)
Children of Men (2006)

I also need to watch Paths of Glory (1957) to finish the 2019 list.

6. Publish a Hate List and a Love List

The last Hate List (Vol 20) was published in 2016. I have the material for another one; I just need to get my act together, edit it and get it out there. Similarly for the Love List, the last one of which (Vol 2) was published in 2007.

7. Complete Braid

I’d been meaning to play this for some time. I bought it in a Steam sale in January 2021, played for a couple of hours, got stuck, and haven’t been back since. Another one where I just need to set aside some time for myself to have a crack at it.

8. Learn how to pronounce Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch

Self-explanatory.

New Year’s resolutions 2018: end of year review

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You can probably guess, from the fact that I’ve only posted one article since the last end of year review, that I haven’t had a lot of free time in 2018. I offer the same reason for my pitiful performance below.

1. Complete The Lords of Midnight.

Status: failed.

2. Switch to a non-free private email provider.

Status: failed.

3. Switch to safety razors, shaving soap and brush.

Status: failed.

4. Watch 13 specific films (see list).

Status: passed (barely – I finished watching the last one on 5 Jan 2019).

1, 2 and 3 are still ambitions, but I’m not going to make any resolutions to complete them in 2019, as I’d obviously just fail again.

New Year’s resolutions 2018

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2017 was a bit of a wash out on resolutions. Buying a house and starting to renovate it took up too much time. In 2018, the house work continues, plus we’re getting a puppy in a couple of weeks. So I don’t hold out much hope for these:

1. Complete The Lords of Midnight.

2. Switch to a non-free private email provider.

3. Switch to safety razors, shaving soap and brush.

4. Watch 13 specific films:

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Ben-Hur (1959)
Cleopatra (1963)
Zardoz (1974)
Sholay (1975)
Network (1976)
Logan’s Run (1976)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Tron (1982)
Apollo 13 (1995)
Contact (1997)

New Year’s resolutions 2017: end of year review

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It’s time to see how I did with my 2017 New Year’s resolutions. And the answer is: very poorly.

1. Complete The Lords of Midnight.

Status: failed.

2. Use DuckDuckGo at all times.

Status: largely passed.

DuckDuckGo is a search engine which doesn’t track you. You should use it.

3. Switch to a non-free private email provider.

Status: failed.

4. Switch to safety razors, shaving soap and brush.

Status: failed.

5. Switch to a better solution than takeaway coffee cups.

Status: mostly passed.

I was gifted a Keep Cup which helped me to achieve this one.

6. Watch 13 specific films.

Status: passed, barely.

I say barely because I watched the last one, Gandahar, on 1st January 2018. But I achieved the higher goal: knocking a good chunk out of the “films I want to watch” list.

What next?

I’m going to carry 1, 3 and 4 forward to 2018. A bit shamefully, this is 1’s fourth year as a resolution. I’ll carry forward 6 as well, with a new list of films.

New Year’s resolutions 2017

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Here are my resolutions for 2017:

1. Complete The Lords of Midnight.

God damn it, I’m going to do this.

2. Use DuckDuckGo at all times.

I’ve already switched from using Google search to DuckDuckGo, the privacy-oriented search engine which doesn’t track your searches. But DuckDuckGo is still developing, and its search results often aren’t as good, so I find myself drifting back to Google.

Everything is a trade-off. If I value privacy, if I don’t want to be monitored, tracked and analysed, then I have to put in the extra effort – which isn’t even very much – to spend more time looking through search results to find what I want.

And perhaps the serendipity of scrolling through more results, and finding things I wasn’t looking for or didn’t expect, will be a reward in itself.

3. Switch to a non-free private email provider.

If I’m avoiding Google for search, why the hell am I still letting them handle – and thereby read, monitor and analyse – all of my most private communications?

2017 is the year in which I put a value on my own privacy, by switching to a non-free email provider. One which, because I’m the paying customer, doesn’t treat me as the product.

4. Switch to safety razors, shaving soap and brush.

This continues the theme of switching to a superior tool despite the initial effort/cost hurdle. I’m going to abandon the ongoing scam of expensive disposable razors with ever more numerous blades, and switch to traditional safety razors. Out too goes the foam in a can, to be replaced by shaving cream, applied with a badger-hair brush.

5. Switch to a better solution than takeaway coffee cups.

Maybe I’ll buy a reusable cup. I’m not committing to the detail of the solution yet.

A modern etiquette dilemma

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If someone lets you use their computer, and it needs some updates installing – assuming the owner isn’t there to ask – should you do it?

On the one hand, it’s none of your business. It’s their computer, their responsibility to update it. Just say “no” to the pop-ups and continue checking your email. Maybe they know what they’re doing, and have actively chosen not to run the updates: they prefer the version of the program they’re currently running, for example, and are holding off from upgrading to the latest one.

On the other hand, perhaps like most computer users they’re just hopelessly technologically illiterate and don’t realise they’re supposed to say “OK” to all some of the pop-ups that appear every time they boot up. And what if some of the updates are urgent security patches? Without them, the machine could be hacked, infected, recruited into a botnet and used to attack other systems. Like a child without a measles vaccination, increasing the risk of epidemic in the wider population, every second this computer isn’t updated puts every other computer in the world at greater risk. It’s not just acceptable, it’s your duty to update.

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The lie at the heart of “loyalty” cards

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I’ve always been opposed to brand “loyalty” card schemes, like Nectar and Tesco’s Clubcard, and I’ve never signed up for any. We all know that they’re used to track customer shopping behaviour, and I don’t want to be tracked in that way. But it was only recently that I was struck by the fundamental dishonesty involved.

The story promoted by companies running the schemes is something like this: each time you shop with us, we’ll give you a tiny discount, but it’s only redeemable in discreet chunks, and we think this will give you an incentive to continue shopping with us instead of our competitors. In other words: we’ll trade you a non-binding increase in the probability that you’ll choose us for future shopping, which we think is worth two or three pence in every pound, in exchange for rewards equivalent to, say, one pence per pound.

The flaw in this story is that carrying a “loyalty” card doesn’t increase a customer’s chance of using the same shop on any future occasion. As far as I can tell, there are two types of people: those who don’t use any “loyalty” schemes (like me), and those who use every “loyalty” scheme going, and carry around a purse stuffed with cards so that they can get points and discounts wherever they happen to shop.

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