General Election 2015

If you don't know who to vote for, use a website to help you decide (iSideWith, Vote For Policies, Vote Match - Google will help you). Don't choose a party or personality because of what your friend or the media say. Make your own informed opinion, don't join a bandwagon.

If you are still undecided, or believe none of the MPs are fit to run the country, write 'none' or 'no confidence' diagonally over the selection side of the ballot (don't leave it blank).

If you are missing your ballot, don't worry, as long as you are registered, you can still vote, just take ID.

If you don't have the time, remember you can vote between 7am and 10pm (last time for queue entry).

If you are unsure if you are registered, check using Noodle.co.uk to see if you are (and get a free credit report).

If you don't have the effort or are apathetic, remember that many countries don't have the freedom of choice, and our country historically hasn't always been equal for voting rights. It is a privilege.

Make your vote and make it count. As a qualified citizen and member of the UK, this is one easy step to making a difference to the future of your country, and ultimately, your life too.

Representative Government

Unfortunately as we have a representative government, there can be no silver bullet party, therefore defending such parties with such passion is an overhead. 

We should be debating policies and not  deciding which party is better, because none of them are inherently fit to decide for an entire country. It’s like trying to put a jigsaw together, but it’s missing all the edge pieces. 

Working in government is like group projects at university. None of you want to be there, someone always gets lumbered with the bulk of the crappy work, and the others just sit around doing nothing or making excuses and arguing.

No small group of people will ever get it right all of the time, when there is an entire subculture of its own providing such a high layer of abstraction, over-simplifying important decisions into paint-by-numbers parties reduced to symbolicism of primary colours. It is the weakest example of a simulacra I know. There are many comedians out there that I would agree, understand the people of this country much better than many politicians. 

However, all of the parties hold merit, including the Green Party. For example, their environment, austerity and transport policies seem highly reasonable to me, e.g. introducing a nationalised Oyster-card-like system, and investing in renewable energy, will really bring our country up to date and in true competition with the rest of the world, than just with Europe. We shouldn’t be a country that scrabbles for the cheapest solution, we need to pioneer a future for our children and adapt. 

I personally believe we are already in a dystopia. Regurgitating continued abuse without qualifying one’s claims is no better than the Daily Mail headlines and does cause me dissatisfaction and concern. 

Insert boot device

I would either use a Windows installation/recovery disc or USB to try and repair the MBR.

An easy way to determine if BIOS still sees your disk is to go into it (usually press F2, F10, F12 or Delete when the computer turns on) and go to the boot order/priority section. If a hard drive is listed with a model or serial number, then your hard drive is correctly installed and that means the issues is your MBR, which can be fixed easily with a Windows installation disc.

I will highly recommend an additional diagnosis, cleanup, defrag, update, and getting a Windows repair USB stick for safety against it happening again.

Windows To Go & First SSD Experience

My experience mostly covers external SSD drives with Windows To Go (8.1) installed.

Patriot Supersonic Magnum (Manufacturer) (Amazon)

Good points:

• Speedy with large files e.g. backup images
• Convenient size

Bad points:

• Very poor speed for small files - so not good for Windows To Go at all
• Quite bulky on the width, so may not be able to plug in things to ports next to it

Imation Ironkey W300 (Manufacturer) (Amazon)

Good points:

• Very small SSD - size of a normal USB stick
• Excellent speeds (400MB/s read and write even with BitLocker enabled)
• Excellent speed even when connected to USB 2.0 (nearly unnoticeable difference)

Bad points:

• Does lag/freeze temporarily sometimes (not enough to write to Event Viewer, so possibly caused by antivirus software)
• Very expensive for the storage sizes (£300 for a 128GB drive)
• Can get very hot
• Cap does not fit onto the end of the stick

Transcend ESD400K SuperSpeed USB 3 (Manufacturer) (Amazon)

Good points:

• Cheapest SSD for a decent performance
• Very small size (wallet card sized)
• 3 year warranty

Bad points:

• I had major problems with this device and timeout errors after 2 weeks of use .This was apparent under both Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.10
• Transcend customer support was not helpful

Freecom Mobile Drive Mg USB 3 (Manufacturer) (Amazon)

Good points:

• Very thin and stylish design akin to Apple Mac
• Excellent performance speeds
• Stylish casing
• No regular lagging issues that I have seen

Bad points:

• Cable that comes with it is not as stylish
• More expensive than other SSDs available
• Comes formatted for Mac (but of course can easily be reformatted by Disk Manager)

Useful notes for Windows To Go users - see this blog

For a detailed breakdown of SSD speeds and prices I could find on Amazon at the time, see here:

Why is there no more space on my computer?

Possibly system restore is creating more restore points, or you haven't emptied your recycle bin in a while?
Get C-Cleaner to clean up temporary files.
Get TreeSize Free to determine where all the space in your computer is being used.
Go to DownloadMoreRAM to get more memory for your computer for free.

Climate Change

Neil deGrasse Tyson's Cosmos episode on climate change was really compelling. The planet Venus is a great example of what could happen and the importance of balance.

Brian Cox believes that nuclear fusion research would be the best source of energy right now, whereas Neil believes either artificial photosynthesis or solar farms would be able to power our civilization millions of times over.

Algae is the best producer of oxygen purely because of the surface area - trees only account for 20-30% of all oxygen.

Why should we use 7-zip, instead of Windows' in-built zip compression?

• Free (open source) (as opposed to WinZip and WinRAR) and still in development
• Excellent compression ratios and a customisable level of compression for many formats
• Support for opening ISO, WIM, RAR and many more formats
• 64-bit support
• Very small installer (only 1MB)
• Windows' in-built compression format does not warn you if the folder you're trying to extract the folders to is too deep - instead it gives you a red herring password prompt
• Opening ZIPS with Windows in-built can take a long time - 7-zip is near instantaneous for regular sets of files

There are a couple of points against:

• 7-zip isn't the most user friendly - WinZip is better, but it's certainly a lot less cluttered
• When creating multipart files, the 'DVD' option is set to 4480MB - if you try an burn a file this size with Windows's burning tool, it won't tell you that the file will actually get slightly trimmed. So I would recommend using CDburnerXP, or InfraRecorder instead, or if you reduce it to 4400MB then it will work fine.

AirDroid: Alternatives

Instead of AirDroid, I use:

• Texting - MightyText
• Whatsapp - Whatsapp Web
• AirMirror - not yet compatible with Android Lollipop 5.0.1 (requires root)
• Notifications - Pushbullet
• File transfer - up to 10MB - Pushbullet; greater than 10MB - AirDroid :D
• Contacts - Gmail Contacts

Human Universe - Final Quote

BBC - Human Universe

"Science is unreasonably effective. It's generated knowledge beyond all expectation. It's also delivered perspective. Yes, we are an insignificant speck, in an infinite universe, but we're also rare. And because we're rare, we're valuable.

So what are we to do to secure our future? Well, we must learn to value to the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake. And not just because it grows our economy or allows to us to build better bombs.

We must also learn to value the human race, and take responsibility for our own survival. Why? Because there's nobody else out there to value us or to look after us.

And finally - most important of all, we must educate the next generation in the great discoveries of science. And we must teach them to use the light of reason to banish the darkness of superstition. If we do that, then at least there's a chance this universe will remain a human one."

Professor Brian Cox - Human Universe (episode 5)

Doctor Who - Death In Heaven unanswered questions

- How was Danny able to get over the Cyberman programming after switching his emotions on? Is it due to the power of love again?
- What was the point of being the President of the World? He didn't even use it to do anything. Is it because he didn't want it anyway?
- Why was Osgood so easily convinced to hear Missy whisper? Is she just that convincing? Either way she would have died anyway, Missy still got out of the handcuffs.
- Did Osgood etc. go to the Nethersphere after being killed by Missy's red death ray? Seems unlikely as she killed Seb.
- How does a full cyber conversion happen just by it raining? Proper machines were needed before.
- Why convert the dead and not the living? Is it because with the dead and the Nethersphere, people's personalities could be erased, resolving the problem of converted humans fighting against their programming? Which didn't work in Danny's case?
- Was that really Missy's plan all along, just to give the doctor an army and see if he turns to evil? What does she get out of it?
- How did the Master escape the Gallifrey in the pocket universe (here it is described another dimension instead) - Missy does hint at this
- The Doctor went to the Gallifrey coordinates, but surely he was looking at the real world, not the other dimension/pocket universe?
- How did Danny get converted even though he was on a table under a sheet? Did the water drip onto the sheet, drip up, or go into the air?
- How long has the Nethersphere been around? (It was hinted it's been around since humanity started believing in the afterlife) - so who set up the hard drive in the first place?
- Who setup the other Cybermen tanks in the world? How did they remain hidden? (TARDIS has the same ability?) Were there more of the Gallifreyan hard drives or was the only one in St Paul's? (Latter seems likely due to its size inside)
- Why did Missy have control over the Cybermen? (using the wrist device) Technology stolen from the Timelords?
- Why did the kid that Danny killed have a body, does he not need his original? This is a similar way to how Missy was able to fully enter and exit the Nethersphere however - maybe until she was apparently killed, she was the only person allowed to transfer in/out? (Assuming the hard drive records metal self image or physical properties of the person)
- Is 3w entirely responsible for the creation of the small handful of Cybermen in each city (the elite afterlife), the administration regarding being cremated or not)
- Why was the internal of the Nethersphere with the Cyberman logo in mind? Can it be redesigned as necessary against whatever Timelord defaults there are?