Category Archives: new computer

Saturday 21st March 2026 — I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone from last night. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that’s something that fills me full of dismay. So boring is my life these days, compared to how it used to be, that the only excitement that I seem to have is whatever goes on during the night. And so a night with nowhere to go is really depressing.

Not that it was particularly early. As usual, things seemed to drag on and on, and it was about 23:15 when I was ready to crawl into my stinking pit, having moved all of the rubbish off the bed.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly and there I stayed until a mega-coughing fit awoke me. I’ve no idea what time it was because I was too depressed to check. But there I lay, in that kind of no-man’s land between sleeping, being awake, and dozing off, all the way through until the alarm went off at 06:29.

And once again, I had a real battle with myself to leave the bed at that moment. It’s becoming harder and harder to force myself right out of bed these days.

In the bathroom, I had a wash, and then I washed my undies ready for next time. In the kitchen, I made my hot lemon, ginger and honey drink and took my medication, and then I came back in here.

With no dictaphone notes to transcribe, I had a look at the highlights from last night’s football. Llanelli went down to Cardiff Metro, as expected, but the TNS v Colwyn Bay game had a very unexpected result.

Colwyn Bay have NEVER beaten TNS, and as the match was bing played at TNS’s ground, no-one expected any difference. Colwyn Bay did, however, take the lead, but we all expected it to be just delaying the inevitable.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day, I mentioned TNS’s rather … errr … pedestrian defence and how a quick ball over the top and a couple of rapid wingers rushing on could create havoc. Sure enough, a long clearance out of Colwyn Bay’s defence, right over the top of the TNS defence, saw the ex-Greenock Morton striker Jordan Davies rush on after it.

A panic-stricken TNS ‘keeper rushed right off his line to try to clear, but missed the ball and scythed down Davies. Result — a red card and a free kick.

Later on, Colwyn Bay scored a second, and although TNS hit the woodwork twice, the score finished 0-2 in favour of Colwyn Bay. You can SEE THE HIGHLIGHTS HERE

Isabelle the Nurse turned up, full of good humour as usual. This time, she managed to avoid hurting my foot, which was good news, and she soon left. I reminded her before she went that she might probably find me in bed tomorrow when she calls;

After she had gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Having told us yesterday about how well the Greeks were being treated by the Ottomans, he goes on today to tell us about some of the atrocities that they committed. It should be said, however, that most of them were committed after a rebellion or something like that.

There was however the terrible tax on children. Every year, the Ottomans would come to each Greek town or island to select a number of children, and carry them back to their cities. The boys, they would train them as Janissaries, the elite formations of the Ottoman army. The fate of the girls needs no description.

On another subject, he tells us that a convent was opened in Athens by a nun called Philothee Benizelou. Our author informs us that "she has left a most uncomplimentary description of the Athenians of her day, with whom she had some pecuniary difficulties and upon whom she showers a string of abusive epithets in the best classical style"

A woman after my own heart. My next task will be to find a copy of her writings.

Back in here, I had thing to do, and then I made a start on trying to make the new computer work.

First thing was to further dismantle the old computer. I removed the graphics card (complete with HDMI port) and then went to install it in the new one. That was not as easy as it might have been either — it needed some adjustment to the case to make it fit because the face of the graphics card covers two whole bays.

Having done that, I was still no further on, so I carried on my unplugging one by one everything that I’d plugged in yesterday. And it was after I’d removed one bar of additional RAM that the machine suddenly sprung into life. So there’s a short-circuit in one of the bars of RAM then.

So once, the computer was up and running, it now became necessary to install my suite of preferred programs, and as usual, that takes a very long time.

While it was doing its stuff, I was busy tidying up all of the bits and pieces and putting them away. Then, I had endless hours of fun trying to put the box and packaging up onto the top shelf of the unit by the door. And that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either, at least, for me.

Round about 16:00, I knocked off … "for the moment" – ed … and went into the kitchen.

A few weeks ago, I’d talked about making a trifle for a pudding. I’d found a recipe for making vegan jelly, involving agar-agar and fruit juice, so armed with a carton of grape juice, some agar-agar, some sugar, and a pear, I set to work.

And do you know what? It’s set to perfection!

Tomorrow, I’m going to make some really thick custard to pour all over it, and when it’s all cooled, I’ll whip up some vegan topping to pour all over it. It should be wonderful.

We had football on the internet later – Y Bala v Hwlffordd. Y Bala are next-to-bottom and ripe for relegation whilst Hwlffordd are seventh and pushing for the European play-offs. But Hwlffordd were absolutely awful today, the worst that I have ever seen them play. And while Y Bala were very … errr … agricultural, they played with a fire and an enthusiasm that I haven’t seen for ages, and their 1-0 victory, their first home win in 142 days, was well-earned.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with a baked potato and veg in butter, followed by vegan cheesecake. And it was a lovely tea. I enjoyed every mouthful of it. It will set me up nicely for my lie-in tomorrow, I hope.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about writing in the best classical style … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of a family who sent their son to one of the best European schools in Brussels so that he could have a good multicultural and classical education.
One of the family’s neighbours asked them "and how is his education going?"
"It’s wonderful" said the boy’s mother. "In no time at all, he could write home asking for money in seventeen different languages."

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Friday 20th March 2026 – WHAT A MESS …

… my bedroom/office is in this evening.

You can’t move in here for computer bits, boxes, packaging, cables and all of that. It’s going to take hours to sort out all of it and make the place tidy enough that I can even crawl into bed.

Consequently, it won’t be anything like as early a night as last night was.

And “early” is certainly the word. Having abandoned tea at some ridiculously early time last night, I came back in here and dashed all the way through what needed to be done, with hardly a pause. That’s why I was in bed at 21:48, and I wish that it was as early as that every night.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happens when I try to have an early night, without me having to explain it in anything like any detail.

Searing pains in the foot, intense fits of coughing – they would be guaranteed to awaken me at any moment without the extra assurance of an early night. And so, from about 04:00 onwards, I was going through phases of sleeping, dozing and awakening all the way through to the alarm going off at 06:29.

And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there have been very, very few times when I have felt less like leaving my stinking pit than this morning.

Eventually, though, I was in the bathroom for a good wash and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication, all the time wondering how long it will be before I’m back in bed. Totally ridiculous, seeing how early I was in bed last night.

Back in here, I managed to avoid the bed and instead, had a listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

There were Royals under attack again last night. This time, it was the turn of Prince Michael to face the music when he asked someone in the crowd what they knew about a certain organisation. They replied that they were the people who sponsored the prize given by the Prince for some kind of good social activity. That took the Prince quite by surprise, as it was as well-known as it seemed to be. But with a lot of attention on the Royal Family in these recent times, it’s hardly surprising that a lot of these little facts are creeping out into the open when they were hidden before.

The Royal Family is still making the headlines these days, even if the Press has moved on from AFKAP – The Andrew Formerly Known As Prince. They now seem to be concentrating on others, and I really do wonder when someone else is suckered into the Epstein web. Not that it’s likely to be Prince Michael, of course. He keeps himself well out of the limelight and out of controversial situations.

I’d joined some kind of club on the internet about something or other, and although there was a list of about seven or eight people who were supposed to be officiating this site, I had my suspicions that it was being done by artificial intelligence, so what I proposed to do was to sit down and draw some 3D models of people that would represent this mysterious committee. I began to draw one, and I was giving some people a few lessons on the anatomical arrangements, the clothing, etc., but it was coming close to midday. I had some cheese with me, but I wanted some bread or something like that to go on it. Seeing as we were at the seaside, I went to a few of the stalls to see if they would sell me a bap or something, but they would only sell me a bap if it had something on it. In the end, I had to settle for a really basic kind of salad bap with just lettuce and tomato on it. It cost me thirty shillings, which I thought was enormously expensive, but I thought then that at least I’d have something to eat with my cheese at the moment.

Yesterday, I had a posting removed from a British newspaper comments section. My comment contained a word that is completely innocuous in British English but means something completely different in American English. It seems that their comments “moderator” is an artificial intelligence program from the USA because it was zapped almost immediately.

And it’s been an age since I’ve done anything with my 3D program, but the story that no-one would sell me an “empty” bread roll is one that occurred on several occasions in the distant past.

I was back in the Auvergne at Cécile’s place. I’d put an advert in the local paper about wanting to form a group. I had a couple of replies, and the first person to turn up was a female keyboard player. The second was a guy with a guitar. We began to talk about what we wanted to do and what we intended to do, and it seemed to gel a little. We didn’t have a drummer, but that can come later, I suppose. The guy explained that he was something of a novice, but that didn’t matter because we’d improve as we went on. When it came to late at night, these other two people decided that they would have to go, but they said that they would be back in the morning. They actually left together, so I thought that at least, those two were going to get on really well. Then, it must have been Cécile who mentioned something about tea. We hadn’t eaten, so she was going to make a great big bean salad, and she wondered if I’d help too. The way that she was giving out the instructions, it looked as if I would be going to be making all of it. Then I remembered that I’d bought some bean salad dressing from Canada and I couldn’t remember where I’d left it, so I thought that I’d run down to the shop on the seafront and see if they had any. But I’d forgotten how late it was, and, of course, all the shops along the seafront were closed, so I had to come back empty-handed. As I was passing the police station, I noticed that there was a woman standing outside with a baby in a pushchair. The woman was smoking a Turkish cigarette right in front of the baby. There were a couple of people remonstrating with her about this, but she didn’t seem to care at all.

Cécile used to play the guitar, and so when we were together, I did actually put an advert in one of these ecological papers to see if there were any drummers about. We did actually have a response too, but Cécile had to go off to the Ile d’Yeu to look after her mother, and so that put an end to that project before it had even started.

All of the shops being closed is another recurring story from the past, but I’m not sure where the cigarette episode fits in all of this.

And back at the seaside again? Hmmmm.

I was trying to organise a football team, so I’d sent out an open invitation for players to come to trials. One guy, who played in the centre of defence, had brought along his wife, who also played in central defence, and asked if she could have a trial too. I put her on the field alongside her husband at the start of the game. Although, like most trial games, it was very bitty and disjointed, she had a really good game and, in fact, performed better than her husband. Anyway, I kept them both on for the next round of trials.

When FC Pionsat St Hilaire was due to play against another team one Saturday night, the opposition turned up with only ten players. There was a girl with their supporters, and she offered to play for them. We couldn’t see why she shouldn’t, so she ended up on the field with them. And she was quite a useful player too.

But the third and fourth dreams recurred all the way through the night, coming back on several occasions. It’s been a good while since I’ve had a dream like that.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and was disappointed that I hadn’t found a doctor whom I could berate. And she made a bad move with her hand, right on the base of my foot exactly where the worst pain can be found. I was in agony after that.

After she left, I went to make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’ve finished the Latin occupation of Greece, and we’re now dealing with the Ottomans. Surprisingly, life for the Greeks under the Ottomans is in some respects easier than under the Latins, so our author tells us. They are allowed freedom of religion, the power to appoint their own governors and all kinds of things like that, things that they were never allowed to do under the Latins.

And surprisingly, there is very little repression of the population.

Back in here, I revised for my Welsh and then went for the lesson. And for a change, it was one of the best lessons that I’ve had, and I wish that they would all go like this one.

After the lesson, my faithful cleaner turned up to do her stuff. She sat me down at the kitchen table, took all of the boxes off the shelf unit by the door and told me to sort them out.

It took an age, as you might expect because tidying up is not my forte, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. However, it’s almost all done now. There’s just one box of stuff that I wouldn’t know how to sort, and there’s a box that I brought in here, full of stuff that should, by rights, belong in the bedroom.

Surprisingly, even though I used more boxes than were there before, not only is the unit much tidier, there seems to be much less stuff on it. I’m not sure how that happened.

After she left, I came back in here and unwrapped my late birthday present.

As you might have guessed, it’s a new computer – or, at least, a reconditioned one.

The first thing that I did was to take the case off and installed the hard drives from the old one and uprated the RAM, but to my surprise, there’s no HDMI socket for the screen.

On the graphics card, there are four ports that look as if they might be USB ports but they are about twice the size. Some kind of HDMI adapter came with the computer and it plugs into the ports on the graphics card, but when I plug in the HDMI cable, there’s no screen display.

The screen is working fine because when I plug it back into the laptop, it works fine. So I’ll have to find a solution, and if not, I shall hope that the graphics card from the old computer will fit into this motherboard.

However, as you might expect, I have boxes, cables and computers all over the place and I can’t go to bed until I tidy them away somehow.

Tea tonight was chips, sausage and beans with cheese, followed by vegan cheesecake. Only a small tea tonight as I’m still off my food. It looks as if it’s going to be another period of semi-starvation right now.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. I’m going to tidy up and at some point, if I’m lucky, I might even be able to find some room on the bed for me.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the pain in my foot … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once told one of the doctors at dialysis about it.
"It hurts so much in several places, doctor" I said."What do you advise?"
"Well" he replied. "My advice is to stop going to those places."

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Wednesday 18th March 2026 – GUESS WHO …

… has been a busy boy today? I don’t know where I found all of this energy, but I wish that I could find it more often. A good supply of it would do me some good.

And guess who is going to be a late boy too? Once more, making tea seemed to take forever tonight and it’s set me back quite a long way.

Not like last night, when, although it was after 22:30, my preferred curfew time, it wasn’t far after it … "22:40 in fact" – ed … when I finally crawled into bed, in the hope of having a good, painless sleep to make up for the sleep on which I missed out last night.

Unfortunately, it seemed to take an age for me to go off to sleep, and that’s something quite rare these days, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Once asleep, though, I stayed asleep until all of … errr … 05:00, and that’s good for neither man nor beast. Round about 05:30, I decided that I ought to take advantage of the early start and go to do some work, but while I was debating the issue with myself, I must have fallen asleep again because the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29.

As usual, it took me a good while to summon up the energy and motivation to go into the bathroom, and then I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There were some headlines in some paper somewhere about how the navy and the army had missed a glorious opportunity to catch a German submarine. It seemed that the German submarine, in need of a refit, put into a neutral harbour somewhere and moored itself between two ships that were there so it couldn’t be seen. The refit actually took place on the surface between the two ships, with the submarine between these two ships. And then the submarine was able to sneak out of the harbour again without too many people being aware of what had happened. This was seen as an embarrassment to the US Navy and the US Army.

There were a few stories similar to this during World War II when German submarines would put into ports on small, obscure islands, destroy the island’s radio communication network and then have a rest and a refit before sailing back out again, ready for more action.

If it had been me in charge, though, I would have fitted out a few ships from a friendly neutral fleet, such as the Spanish fleet, and loaded them with torpedoes, fuel, spare parts and fuel and sent them to these obscure islands to repair and refit the submarines so that they could stay out at sea almost indefinitely.

This was another one of these games played by Cymru against some foreign opposition. This time, it was Iran in the Middle East. We were in Deauville talking about this particular game, but unfortunately I can’t remember exactly how the conversation went after that, but I know that there was some kind of discussion about my right foot and leg and my inability to walk correctly these days.

There are a lot of current events in this dream, even the casino at Deauville, which relates to a radio programme that I prepared earlier in the week.

While I was at work, I was reading the file of a trainee stockbroker who had an enormous amount to say on the structure of non-league football, of its faults, and on how it could be improved. As it was a lovely day, I went and took this file outside and stood in the sunlight, in the shade of the trees and read it there. After I’d finished, I thought that I’d go for a little walk to clear my head and digest what I’d read, but I noticed that the time was 06:20 and the alarm would be going off soon, so I turned to head back to the office, which was in a huge, Gothic type of building like the Houses of Parliament. There were several ways to go into my office – a choice of several doors – but one door involved taking a lift so high and then climbing up and walking through the dead space in the false ceiling and climbing out again back down into my office. As I turned to set off back to the office, I found myself carrying a bottle of wine that was half-empty. I thought “what was I doing with this bottle of wine? I don’t drink alcohol”. Just in front of me was one of my colleagues, a one-legged guy who had lost his leg in the war and had an artificial leg fitted. He was walking back to the office, and for some reason, I decided to follow him but to keep a discreet distance and not let him know that I was there. He walked in through the door where it was necessary to take the lift. I’d be intrigued to find out how he managed to climb up into the roofspace, so again, I followed at a discreet distance. When he took one lift, I noticed that he went to floor three instead of floor four, so I took the next lift and came out at floor three. A couple of people loitering around there looked at me and said “oh, another one”. But then I wondered “where do I go next? I couldn’t see my colleague – he’s disappeared”. I didn’t know that there was a way through from floor three into my office. I thought that we still had to go to floor four and climb through the roof. So I was standing there, wondering how on earth he’d managed to disappear from me just like that.

As it happens, I did have, at one place where I worked, a colleague such as I described. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that quite a long time ago, there was a dream when we were clambering through the roof of another building such as this one.

But there is a story that relates to this. Where my office was when I was chauffeuring in Brussels, to go to another part of the office, I had to pass through two security doors. It wasn’t until I’d been there for six months that someone explained to me that if I were to have gone up one floor by the stairs or lift, I could have walked down a corridor and then down another set of stairs at the far end and avoided the security doors completely.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, in a happy, joyful mood as she desperately tried to cheer my up and raise my morale, but without much success.

After she left, I made my breakfast, remembering to put the coffee into the percolator today, which was more than Bane of Britain did yesterday, and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’re still discussing the island of Lesbos and also the island of Tenedos and the colony of Aenos. And once again, we’re seeing different Christian groups and kingdoms arguing amongst themselves as the Ottomans are massing on their frontiers, and some disaffected and disappointed Christian groups are even calling on the Sultan to help them.

There’s no doubt that all the way through the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth century, these various Christian groups and kingdoms were writing out their own death warrants.

Back in here, there was plenty to do, but first, there were the highlights of the Cardiff Metropolitan – Llansawel game from the other night. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day, we discussed this awful new development of “playing it out from the back”. By pure coincidence, we had a lovely example of that during this game, with the oh-so-predictable result.

After I’d sorted out quite a few other things, I began to work on the radio programme that I’d started yesterday. And by the time that I’d knocked off, I’d not only finished that one (bar a little piece that is holding me up for the moment) but also organised and almost completely sorted out and chosen the music for one of the ones that is due to be written next week. I’m really getting ahead of myself at the moment.

There was an interruption too. My late birthday present to me turned up this afternoon. And so for Friday afternoon and all of the weekend, I’ll be a very busy boy organising all of this. And that will at least give me a return to sanity.

Tea tonight was a vegetable curry with rice, followed by a slice of vegan cheesecake. And it really was delicious yet again. And I managed to eat a fair-sized helping of curry, which is good news after the vicissitudes of the last few months.

But now, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my one-legged colleague … "well, one of us has" – ed … he once told me a story about how he went into a barber’s for a shave.
The barber wasn’t, however, very good at shaving, and he nicked him a couple of times.
To try to lighten the situation, the barber began to chat with my coleague.
"I don’t think that I’ve seen you before" he said. "Is this your first time in here?"
"That’s right" replied my colleague. "I lost my leg during the war."

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Saturday 24th August 2013 – I DID SOMETHING LAST NIGHT …

… that I haven’t done for years and years and years – and that was to crash out on the side of the road for a couple of hours durig a journey between Brussels and Pooh Corner. It wasn’t as if it was late either – not even 02:00 and I was only 2 hours away from home as well.

I know that I had a bad night’s sleep last night but that has never bothered me before either so I must be getting old, I reckon. It’s a depressing thought.

Anyway after saying goodbye to Esi I set off for home and straight into an enormous traffic jam in the Bois de la Cambre. There’s a show of some kind there this weekend – we saw them setting it up the other day – and it’s blocked all of the roads. In the end I gave up, did a U-turn and came out of the city on the other side by La Hulpe. But in the queue I was stopped alongside a couple of British builder-type guys and we had a chat – and one of the things they mentioned was that they wanted to buy Caliburn. “Buy Caliburn? You can’t do that – he’s part of the family” I told them.

Once on the motorway the journey was quite uneventful except at the péage. With it being the height of the tourist season and all kinds of foreigners on the road they are manned …“personned” – ed and the girl, having had a good look at Caliburn, charged me half the price of what the automatic system charges me. I shall have to look into this. THen off for fuel at Melun ad out on the other side until I fell asleep.

But no issues this morning and I was back here for 07:30. I’m not overgrown – Liz’s Agent Orange stuff has done the trick and there’s thick luxuriant grass now – and I’ve had a slow day of unpacking, repacking, crashing out and configuring my new computer. But here’s a thing – the ew one is more-or less the same as the old one but of the 500GB hard drive only 418GB is available as opposed to 451GB of the older hard drive. THat means the secret file space for recording all of your keystrokes has ow goe up to over 80GB – one sixth of the drive’s capacity. THis Government paranoia thing is getting completely out of hand.

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