November 27th, 2014 |
Tech
Google Chrome is not the only application struggling with OS X Yosemite’s file dialog. When saving files in Coda, the dialog will continually fall off the bottom of the screen.
Currently the only known workaround for the issue is to switch to the simple view by clicking the up arrow next to the file name box, and then click it again to re-expand the dialog and then it will be probably sized again. However, you need to do this every time you save a file.
Huffington Post recently commission Survation to conduct a survey on religion in Britain. The results were quite promising for the humanist community. Here are the highlights:
- 60% of people described themselves as non-religious
- Over half believe that religion does more harm than good
- 13% of people said atheists were likely to be more moral, compared with 8% who said atheists were likely to be less moral
Read more in the Huffington Post article and the BHA press release.
November 25th, 2014 |
Sport
The Abbey Dash is 10km race that takes place in Leeds each year. It is in aid of Age UK and you literally run out to Kirkstall Abbey and back. It is also older than I am – just. This was the 19th annual dash.
I decided it would be less depressing to start right at the back this time and found it easier than the Run For All. I had enough energy to pick up the base for the last kilometre or two, rather than wondering whether I would live to see tomorrow.
That said, I came in at a slightly slower time of 01:07:36, which put me 8,459 out of a field of 10,000. Mostly retired women in my speed category. I don’t know how everyone else does it…
On October 20th I had an appointment with a specialist. He prescribed me a new medication and told me to hand the form in at my GPs (Colton Mill). I duly did this.
Unfortunately, having a job and all, I had to be at work the entire time the surgery was open, and so asked them to send the prescription to their sister surgery, The Grange, who had a 7am start on a Monday.
Having BT turning up at my house on the next Monday, meant that I couldn’t actually get there that Monday, so I had to go the Monday after, which was then the 10 November. When I got there, they said it had been sent to the wrong place, and I had to come back a different day.
This meant that I had to wait until 17 November to go back. At which point they said they had sent it to the wrong place again. This time I put my foot down and told them they had to sort it out. After a lot of messing about, they eventually got a doctor to write out a new one.
Finally I had my prescription 28 days after I was actually prescribed it.
Of course you could argue that had it been more urgent I could have taken emergency time off work and gone there every day. And you’r right, I could, and this would have got me it faster.
But is this the healthcare system we deserve? A healthcare system where you have to choose between being healthy and being unemployed? Such a system would be damaging to society because it would mean you would have to choose between being unhealthy (high costs further down the line for the NHS) or being unemployed (high costs for society paying out in unemployment benefits).
We had a Halloween party (as usual) this year due to popular demand (two people asked for it). Good effort with the fancy dress team.

November 22nd, 2014 |
Books
Monstrous Regiment is the 31st Discworld novel and is set in Borogravia. It was brilliant. I normally find the Discworld books funny, but it is rare that I actually laugh out loud while reading. Monstrous Regiment achieved that several times.
Plus it has added Sam Vimes and William de Worde.

November 14th, 2014 |
Tech
There is a bug in Apple’s OS X Yosemite in which the file dialog boxes grow larger than the screen. However, it does not seem Apple are in a rush to fix this.
The workaround is different for each application but for Google Chrome you can temporary solve it by running the following commands.
defaults delete com.google.Chrome NSNavPanelExpandedSizeForSaveMode
defaults delete com.google.Chrome NSNavPanelExpandedSizeForOpenMode
The box will continue to grow each time you use it, so you will have to run these commands again every time the box gets too big again.
November 13th, 2014 |
Books
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon is a 2006 book by Daniel Dennett.
In the book he argues that we need to break the spell of using scientific enquiry to consider religion. He has no problem with religion in itself, but wants it to be given the same treatment as any other discourse – that of evidence rational scientific enquiry.
He writes in his somewhat slow and lumbering style that can take a while to get going but certainly puts forward some thought-provoking ideas. It has not been my favourite recent read but did nor did I get overly bored either.
I was really enjoyed some of the little, almost throw-away sentences, that made some quite profound points. The rotting caracas of an elephant for example. It smells horrible. But it does not objectively smell horrible. It smells horrible to us as humans, but to a vulture the smell is a pleasant one.

November 6th, 2014 |
Tech
After years of waiting, after every single tiny village around Leeds getting fibre, the city centre finally has fibre! What a glorious time we live in. Top marks to BT Openreach, they turned up when they said they would and got it sorted within a hour.
This was us before:

And then this was us after:

And now:

If it keeps increasing like this, I will have all the world’s bandwidth by Christmas!