Merry Christmas or whichever winter light festival you and your loved ones choose to celebrate, and a Very Happy New Year, dear Hypothetical Audience, see you all in 2019 to continue our adventures!
—Ndro
Category / Life and Times
On Continuing
Excuse me a second as I blow the dust off my blogging engine will you? Ahem. There we go.
Hello, hypothetical audience, it has been such a long time hasn’t it? I figured, since this fully armed and operational… I mean URL’d up blog is actually getting some intermittent content from me once again I might as well hammer keys to circuit board and actually blog again, but more on that later. First, since it’s been such a long time since I did this outside of fiction, how are you all?
Continue reading →
On Encryption and Privacy
Dear Mr. Cameron,
Please allow me to congratulate you on your recent declaration of intent to destroy the menace to our modern society that is private encrypted communications. For too long, in my opinion, has our nation been blighted by privacy, banking, digital security and all the other terrors visited upon us by not allowing the government, and indeed anyone else, to access any and all information we possess and send digitally. A masterstroke, I say, and seeing such a high profile politician as our Dear Leader throw his weight behind the glorious Crusade against privacy and technology. And as if to add to the genius of it all, by making this announcement mere days after a terrible atrocity committed with the aim of stifling an alleged freedom (albeit in an entirely different, devious foreign country) it showed how utterly dedicated you are to the cause! Compared to those other johnny-come-lately alleged right-wing parties currently trying to challenge your dominance, you certainly are a shining example of what the conservative right is truly about! However, for all this outpouring of adoration for this new scheme, allow me to make one or two modest proposals on where to go from here.
Bah Humbug Day 2k14
Merry Christmas-Or-Whatever-Winter-Solstice-Festival-You-Celebrate, dear Hypothetical Audience, and a Happy New Year to All Y’All!
–Ndro
On That Blackest of Fridays
This Friday just gone the forces of the great crass-consumerism monoculture struck yet another blow against common sense and caused chaos on the streets of Great Britain. I am, dear hypothetical audience, of course talking about the inexplicable export and subsequent rise in popularity of that peculiar American tradition of The-Friday-After-Thanksgiving-Sales-Chaos, or, as it’s known to its friends, Black Friday. And when I say chaos, I really do mean it, in stores up and down the country masses of people who’d for some reason bought into the whole crazy mess descended in their droves. Incidents involved police being called to various branches of Tescos, shoppers fighting over allegedly cheap televisions, people causing affray and so on. All in the name of great deals. By which I mean consuming.
On Being Inordinately Busy This Week
I’ve had something of a busy week this last 8 or so days, so going to have to take one off. Sorry guys, but normal service should resume shortly and I’ll be in orbit again next monday.
Until next time, folks
–Ndro
–Genuinely surprised I managed to last 10 weeks before resorting to this
On Rail Travel
Recently I’ve been spending some time planning various excursions around the country across the coming months, mostly to use up what holiday time I had left at work. Due to neither owning, being able to afford or wanting a car right now I am pretty much at the mercy of public transport, which around here means inevitably the railway when long distances are involved. While I’m not really averse to rail travel, the state of the railways in the mainland UK are, to be blunt, not brilliant these days. So in an effort to generate some catharsis on recent rail based experiences I’ve decided to put typeface to word processor and write about the whole thing and bring you, my loyal hypothetical audience, along for the ride. You Lucky, Lucky People.
On The Controversy Gate
Ever notice, dear hypothetical reader, that while you’re out and about on these here interwebs that there seems to be an awful lot of controversies going on that seem to have been instigated by gates. Once trusted guardians of area security seem to have their hands in a lot of dodgy dealings I can tell you, and I don’t think I’ll ever trust them again, or their shady consorts railings. Ok, in case you haven’t guessed yet I’m being facetious for comedic effect, but in all honesty, the phrase “-gate” tends to get added to pretty much every controversy big or small these days. Sometimes it’s by the media, other times it’s by normal folk, but always with a weary sense of inevitability.
On the Past’s Future
Ever notice how the future never quite ends up how we thought it would? No matter how lofty our predictions, or how optimistic we think, things always fall short and we end up stuck in a boring era totally bereft of jetpacks and flying cars. Not that that stops us from trying to dream up such improbable futures, oh no. Every generation has their fair share of fiction taking wildly different ideas on how the future will turn out with varying degrees of seriousness, and the whole thing fascinates me deeply, often not because of what they get right but what they get wrong.
On Fandom
Currently we live in an age where communication with one another is easier than ever, so long as you have the right equipment any one person on the planet can, theoretically, contact any other near instantaneously. This has assisted many facets of society, not least of all shared interest groups, or what I’m going to continue to refer to as “Fandoms.” Now fandoms existed before the coming of the Internet certainly, but far in less expansive and interconnected ways. What the internet gave these groups was a way to grow and interact in a much more fluid manner than before. As soon as they became connected, groups that had existed in isolation developed discussion forums, fan sites, constant growth and so on to the point many stopped being niche and gained almost, but not quite, main stream appeal. Many certainly became more well known than they would have done previously. The march of technology brought people with similar interests together the face of shared interests were changed forever.
Ndro's Adventures in Reality 