Fingers to the Keyboard: 2015 - 2016

By Ben Bennetts

In 2014, I published a series of essay on a variety of topics—politics, religion, book and film reviews, English grammar, sport, general moans and groans, and so on—titled 'Fingers to the Keyboard: 2000 – 2014'. The essays were originally meant for a small select audience and encouraged by some of the members of this group, I decided to go public and start a blog website. By the end of 2016, the website contained exactly one hundred blogs, again on a wide range of topics and this book, 'Fingers to the Keyboard: 2015 – 2016', is a collection of these blogs. Please enjoy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ben Bennetts
• Release date: Jan 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370749805

Ben Bennetts

After retiring in December 2007 from a busy career as a consultant electronics engineer, I took up walking long-distance trails both in my home country (UK) and in other places such the Himalaya in Nepal, the Sierra Nevada in Spain, and the levadas in Madeira. These activities kept me physically fit. To stay mentally fit, I started a blog (https://ben-bennetts.com) and began writing books. To date (February 2021), I’ve published twenty-one books on topics as diverse as religion, winemaking, an erotic novel (using the pseudonym, J C Pascoe), two storybooks for children, various autobiographies, idiosyncrasies of the English language, long-distance walking, keeping fit as we age, how to create and self-publish either an ebook or a paperback book, a book of cartoons, and a series of blog collections. You can read more about the books on my website, ben-bennetts.com/books. The books are available as e-books on www.smashwords.com and in Amazon’s Kindle Store.Contact me at [e-mail]

Book preview

Fingers to the Keyboard: 2015 – 2016

Ben Bennetts

Summary

In 2014, I published a series of essay on a variety of topics—politics, religion, book and film reviews, English grammar, sport, general moans and groans, and so on— under the heading Fingers to the Keyboard: 2000 – 2014. The essays were originally meant for a small select audience and encouraged by some of the members of this group, I decided to go more public and start a blog website. By the end of 2016, the website contained exactly one hundred blogs, again on a wide range of topics and this book, Fingers to the Keyboard: 2015 – 2016, is a collection of these blogs. Please enjoy.

Copyright © 2017, Ben Bennetts

Published by Atheos Books at Smashwords

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment. The e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please buy an extra copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not buy it, or it was not bought for your use only, then please return to the retailer and buy your own copy. Thank you for respecting my hard work.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders of material, textual and graphic, quoted or otherwise used in this book. Any omissions will be acknowledged and included in future editions if application is made in writing or by e-mail to the author.

ISBN 9781370749805

Front cover: author’s fingers on the keyboard, photographed by Mark Bennetts.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge those who added comments to my blogs thus tempering my opinions and curbing my arrogance. I am suitably humbled! Thank you for allowing me to include them in the book.

Table of Contents

Computer Topics

Current Affairs

Humour

Language Topics

Mathematics

New Book Announcements

Observations on Life

Opinion Pieces

Politics

Religion

Reviews (Books, Films, TV Series)

Royalty

Sport

The Buzludzha Monument

Walking Long-Distance Paths

About the Author

Atheos Books

Computer Topics

I’ve lived with computers all my life—well, since the late ‘60s when I started programming computers as part of my PhD study. The development of the personal computer added a major new dimension to my ability to write technical papers and books and also create graphical presentations based initially on CorelDraw and subsequently PowerPoint. I revelled in the fun of massaging words and graphics and I became a master at using Microsoft Office programs such as Word and PowerPoint. In so doing, I had to fight against the programs and operating system when things went wrong and I became adept at figuring out what had happened and, in most cases, finding a fix. These days, I am sometimes called upon to help others understand what’s gone wrong with their laptop or tablet and the essays in this section reflect recent experiences with those who’ve called upon my help.

(^_^)

Files and Folders on Computers: One of Life's Great Mysteries

Posted 16 Jan, 2015

During the course of many interactions with family and friends, I have come across great confusion about what constitutes a file and what constitutes a folder on a home computer’s hard drive or other storage mechanism such as a CD-ROM or memory stick. When I send someone a file attached to an e-mail and then enquire about the attachment later, I sometimes get a response along the lines of ‘I don’t know what happened to it’ or ‘How do I save this file in a folder?’ or ‘I thought I saved the file in a folder but now I can’t find it!’. And, dare I say it, most of my confused acquaintances are female and ‘of a certain age’. These are females who in their earlier lives may well have been secretaries or similar and were well used to filing paperwork in a metal multi-drawer filing cabinet. In those days, ask them for a particular file and they would go straight to the right filing cabinet, open the right drawer, extract the right folder, and proffer the right file. Bazinga! Similarly, if asked to file a new file or folder in an existing filing system. Another bazinga!

But, on a computer, chaos, confusion and perplexity reign supreme!

I’ve never figured out the reason for this. When I sense the perplexity coming to the surface, I test the understanding with four basic questions related to files and folders on a computer:

- Can you put a file in a file?

- Can you put a file in a folder?

- Can you put a folder in a file?

- Can you put a folder in a folder?

If you know the correct answers to these four questions then you need read no further. If you don’t, you’re hosed! (Scroll to the end of this blog for the correct answers.)

Part of the problem, I suspect, is caused by Microsoft’s preordained and already named standard folders such as Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, and so on. We can think of these as individual drawers in a metal filing cabinet but the fact that they exist makes us lazy. We don’t know or we forget that we can create sub-folders in these top-level folders and thus these sub-folders called, for example, Letters, Addresses, Holidays, Bank and so on in the Documents folder are not created. Everything that Microsoft automatically files, or you file, in a top-level folder just stays there in one big jumble.

An associated problem I’ve seen is that people don’t understand the meaning of a file name extension (the bit after the dot): .doc and .docx, .jpg, .mp4, .pdf, .ppt and .pptx, .mobi, .epub, and so on. These extensions are a mystery to many and, I guess, if you are not involved in creating original .xxx files, why would you cultivate an understanding of their meaning?

My advice, for what it’s worth, is that if you are mystified by the answers to my four questions above and by the significance of a file name’s extension, find someone who knows about these things and seek their friendly but learned tuition. It will make your computer life so much easier!

And for the record, I do not use Microsoft’s standard top-level folders. I have created my own Ben’s Stuff folder/sub-folder filing system and it suits me fine. This doesn’t mean I can always find the file I’m looking for straight away but, hey, there’s always the Search facility! That works.

One final point. I would make it a rule to place a shortcut to Microsoft’s File Explorer (formerly Windows Explorer) on the desktop. File Explorer allows you to see the folder/sub-folder structure and file contents of every folder on your hard drive, or elsewhere. It is the most essential tool for figuring out where to save something and from where to retrieve it. File Explorer is the equivalent of the pretty young secretary who used to do your filing. File Explorer is your filing friend. Use it.

Answers to the four questions, in order: no, yes, no, yes.

(^_^)

Welcome to the IoT

Posted 20 Sept, 2015

You’ve all seen it. Three days ago, you searched for something on Amazon – a pair of shoes, a book, a new electric toothbrush – and yesterday when you re-entered Amazon looking for something else, up popped an advertisement for the shoes. Ah, Amazon has remembered what I was searching for, you mutter. I should clean out my cookies. But then, today, while on a website unrelated to Amazon or shoes, up pops an ad for the same shoes but from a different supplier. Whoa, you say. What’s happening here?

Welcome to the Internet of Things, IoT.

The Internet of Things

Google defines the IoT as follows:

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an environment in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

Basically, the IoT is a connection of all things that can connect together via the internet. When you pay by credit card for your groceries in the supermarket, the details of every item you have bought go to many different databases for analysis. The supermarket wants to know what you’ve bought so as to study buying trends and restock warehouses. The credit card company is logging your purchase to make sure you are not exceeding your limit but also to track a number of other things: how much you are spending in supermarkets, petrol stations, cinemas, newsagents, and so on. Wine merchants want to know what wines you bought, and thus did not buy, and how much you are drinking between consecutive purchases. The pharmaceutical companies are logging your purchase of pain killers and anti-histamines. The instore bakery is monitoring purchase of baked-in-store bread and adjusting their output accordingly. And so it goes on but it doesn’t stop there. Vast databases now exist that can be analysed right down to the individual level to determine who we are and how we live our lives. Anything that is connected to the internet is a data gatherer and data exchanger.

If you wear a Fitbit activity tracker, every time you walk by your laptop a Bluetooth connection is established and the data gathered by the tracker is uploaded to your Fitbit account – number of paces, average heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and now, what food you’ve eaten, your weight, how much sleep you’ve had and there’s more to come with these types of wearable health monitors. All this information can and is forwarded to large databases that analyse the health features of a population – individual, local, regional, by country, by continent, world-wide. Personal information about you can be passed to your local surgery and hence down to your medical doctor. In fact, your medical doctor could also indirectly access your supermarket purchases of alcohol and tobacco and cross-correlate to spot a connection between your drinking or smoking habits and a recent rise in blood pressure, say.

If you are driving a car fitted with a satnav system, the unit knows where you are (down to a few metres), how fast you are driving, whether you are driving recklessly in a crowded city, how often you take a break during a long journey. If a data analyser discovers that you routinely break the speed limit or push through rush-hour congestion above the average speed of other cars in the neighbourhood, you may well find your insurance premium goes up next time your car insurance comes up for renewal. Your insurance company has figured out you are a high risk driver.

Anything that is connected to the internet (technically, has an IP address) is a source of data and software engineers have already figured out how to slice and dice the data. Your smart home, your connected car, your activity tracker, your browsing habits, your Apple watch, your smartphone, your webcam, your credit card swipe, … anything that connects.

This is the age of the Internet of Things, folks. Welcome and beware!  This used to be the stuff of science fiction authors.  Not any more.

Comment from Mary

So my paranoia is well founded after all! The order for my Fitbit will be cancelled and my cookie jar is empty – the one in the kitchen that is.

Thanks for the information Ben. Now you know why we don’t comment on your more controversial posts.

Comment from Kirsty

Not only is Big Brother watching; he’s employed his entire family to help out too!

(^_^)

E-mail Management

Posted 22 June, 2016

In the days when I worked for a living, I used to receive a lot of e-mails.  Someone once asked me how I managed my e-mails.  Here are ten rules to get you started.

1. Get up early (5 am-ish) while others are not at their keyboards and spend at least an hour reading and replying to e-mails.  That'll teach them not to send you e-mails late at night.

2. Don’t reply to any e-mail that does not contain a question, unless you want to.

3. Don't reply to any e-mail where you are just a Cc or even a Bcc, unless you want to.

4. Don’t use ten words when five will do, unless you want to.

5. If a reply can be written in less than two minutes, reply instantly.

6. Minimise the use of fancy fonts, coloured backgrounds, smileys and emojis, and anything else that unnecessarily tarts up your reply.

7. Check all replies for typographical and grammatical errors before hitting the SEND button.

8. Flag e-mails that require more than two minutes to answer and then set aside a time later in the day to compose the reply—that is, make it a To Do item. Be religious about this.

9. Every week, back off all your received and sent e-mails into an archive folder and thus empty your Inbox and Outbox. You’ll feel good looking at empty Inbox and Outbox folders, at least until they start to fill up again.

10. And last, don’t send e-mails to anyone. Then you won’t get replies that require a reply!

Don’t be a slave to technology.  Make it be a slave to you.

Comment from Jean

5 a.m. What?

(^_^)

Web Browsers and Search Engines

Posted 15 December, 2016

Recently, I got into an e-mail exchange with someone nearly as old as me—I’ll call her Beamer—in which it turned out that Beamer did not understand the difference between a web browser and a search engine. In fact, when asked What web browser do you use? Beamer replied, Don’t know, and, apparently, Beamer’s daughter replied Google! Here’s a simple explanation but first let us consider the Book of Knowledge.

(^_^)

There exists a vast collection of Essays on many different topics written by many different people. These Essays have been assembled into a collection called the Book Of Knowledge, more usually just called the Book. The creators of the Book decided it would be useless if you could not find a particular Essay within the Book and so they gave each Essay a unique identity called the Start Page Number. If you knew the Start Page Number you could go directly to the Essay you were looking for and start looking at the content. To do this, you would first need to open the Book, of course, and then start flipping through the Essays until you reached the Essay you were looking for. This process is called Book Open and Flip-Through and uses a tool that is called … wait for it … a Book Opener and Flip-Througher!

But there’s a problem with Book Open and Flip-Through. What if you don’t know the Start Page Number? How would you find it? Flip through every Essay starting at the beginning of the Book until you finally discover what you’re looking for? This could take a very long time and may not produce a result if the topic has not been mentioned within the multitude of Essays that make up the Book. This problem stimulated a clever group of people in a company named Clever Clogs. They decided that what the Book needed was an index containing the Essay titles and all the major topics mentioned within each Essay along with the corresponding Start Page Numbers. Having created the Book index, Clever Clogs first added the index to the Book as yet another Essay and then offered all users of the Book a topic hunting tool called an Index Inspector. Clever Clogs even had a very special name for their Index Inspector: they called it Clever Clogs! Clever, eh? The idea was to use Book Open and Flip-Through to open the Book. Then open Clever Clog’s own index Essay and use their Index Inspector called Clever Clogs to find the Start Page Number of the Essay you are looking for.

This was a neat idea and caused some other groups of clever people to create their own indexes and Index Inspectors with various imaginative names: Yippee-I’ve-Found-It, Bingo!, Ask-Me-Anything and so on. In addition, yet more clever people realised that there was money to be made from basic Book Open and Flip-Through tools and they created a range of alternative Book Open and Flip-Through tools called Book Adventurer, Book Frontier, Shiny Metal, Shoot-At-The-Fox, Let’s-Go-Hunting, Silky Searcher, and so on.

And life was wonderful for those seeking knowledge within the abundance of Essays that make up the Book of Knowledge.

(^_^)

Makes sense, doesn’t it? This is the standard way we structure and use a large reference book such as an encyclopaedia or a book on a technical subject. First we open the book so that we can browse its contents. Then we turn to the index and search for the topic we’re interested in. If we find the topic, we turn to the correct page number and start reading. Now let’s use the magical powers of Microsoft Word’s Find and Replace tool to change a few words here and there to see how we do this on the Web using, first, a web browser to ‘open’ the Web followed by a search engine to locate the website we’re interested in.

Hey presto, let’s wave the wand!

There exists a vast collection of Websites on many different topics written by many different people. These Websites have been assembled into a collection called the World Wide Web, more usually just called the Web. The creators of the Web decided it would be useless if you could not find a particular Website within the Web and so they gave each Website a unique identity called the Website Address. If you knew the Website Address you could go directly to the Website you were looking for and start looking at the content. To do this, you would first need to open the Web, of course, and then start flipping through the Websites until you reached the Website you were looking for. This process is called Web Browsing and uses a tool that is called … wait for it … a Web Browser!

But there’s a problem with Web Browsing. What if you don’t know the Website Address? How would you find it? Flip through every Website starting at the ‘beginning’ of the Web until you finally discover what you’re looking for? This could take a very long time and may not produce a result if the topic has not been mentioned within the multitude of Websites that make up the Web. This problem stimulated a clever group of people in a company named Google. They decided that what the Web needed was an index containing the Website titles and all the major topics mentioned within each Website along with the corresponding Website Addresses. Having created the Web index, Google first added the index to the Web as yet another Website and then offered all users of the Web a topic hunting tool called a Search Engine. Google even had a very special name for their Search Engine: they called it Google! Clever, eh? The idea was to use the Web Browser to open the Web. Then open Google’s own index Website and use their Search Engine called Google to find the Website Address of the Website you are looking for.

This was a neat idea and caused some other groups of clever people to create their own indexes and Search Engines with various imaginative names: Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com, and so on. In addition, yet more clever people realised that there was money to be made from basic Web Browsing tools and they created a range of browsing tools called Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Silk, and so on.

And life was wonderful for those seeking knowledge within the abundance of Websites that make up the World Wide Web.

Geddit?

(^_^)

In summary:

A browser is an application program (nowadays shortened to ‘app’) that is used to browse the many websites that make up the World Wide Web (the ‘Web’) and which are connected together by a complex system of networks called the Internet (short for ‘interconnected network’). Thus, you don’t browse the Internet. You use the Internet to browse the Web. Examples of popular browsers are: Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Silk, and so on.

A search engine is an app that enables a search to be made for one or more Websites that have been tagged with a series of key indexing terms. For example, if you were searching for my blogging website (this website), you would enter indexing terms (tags) such as Ben Bennetts, long-distance walker, ace writer, superhero … into Google’s search window. Examples of popular search engines are: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com, and so on.

And don’t forget—you need to open a web browser before you can search for a website, just like you need to open a book before you can search for a given page or topic.

One final comment.  Web browsers come with a default, usually embedded, search engine.  For example, Windows 10’s Internet Explorer includes Microsoft’s own Bing search engine.  If you prefer to use an alternative search engine such as Google, you can go into Settings and change the default to Google.  You can also set Google to be your Home Page.  If you do this, Internet Explorer will open showing the familiar Google interface, as above, thus creating the illusion that Google is your browser.  It ain’t, but I can see where the confusion can arise.

Enjoy your browsing and searching and y’all have a nice day now!

Comment from Mary

Son of a biscuit Ben (as our friend Sheldon would say) you call this a simple explanation. I say it’s bordering on ‘Nerdvana’. Are you saying that the book is the search engine e.g. Internet Explorer/Chrome and the chapters are the browsers e.g. Google? If ‘yes’ then I’ve got it. If ‘no’ I haven’t.

In reply to Mary

No, you didn’t get it! The World Wide Web (Web) is the Book. A Website is an Essay inside the Book. A Website Address is the Start Page Number of an Essay inside the Book. A Web Browser is a Book-Opener and Flip-Througher (something that allows you to inspect the contents of the Book). A Search Engine is an Index Inspector, a way to find out where something is located on the Web/in the Book.

Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Silk are all examples of Web Browsers.

Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.com are all examples of Search Engines.

And God is a mythical being invented by man in an attempt to manipulate people’s minds and control their lives. It only works if you believe in God. Those who don’t are free to live their lives as normal human beings, not shackled by fear and superstition nor dominated by zealots wearing strange garb, conducting unnatural ceremonies and speaking in ancient tongues.

God, Allah, Brahma, Jehovah, Akal Purakh, and Ahura Mazda are all examples of such mythical beings.

Ben

Comment from Beamer

I was certainly confused before but your Book of Knowledge with its essays, start page numbers and even the flip-throughs etc. left me totally discombobulated with the need to lie down in a darkened room in the Home for the Bewildered!!

However, once the magic wand was waved, all became very clear. Brilliantly explained Ben – thanks for that!

I then opened my Search Engine and entered Superhero into the Search Window. There are 27 pages of superheroes but alas, no Ben Bennetts!!

BTW – I am not nearly as old as you … yet!

"Beamer"

In reply to Beamer

I’m glad you got there in the end. Web Browsers and Search Engines can be a confusing subject for some and require careful explanation plus there’s a difference between definition and teaching. I could have just defined the terms and left it at that but I chose the teaching route. The blog was a hard one to write because I used a self-taught teaching technique I call analogy by direct substitution — that is, you write about something that everyone is familiar with (opening a book and then using the index to find what you are looking for) and then you use the exact same description with word substitution to present an unfamiliar topic (opening a web browser and then using a search engine to find what you are looking for). The trick is to get the initial description exactly right to allow a meaningful word substitution.

Ben

PS. I’m working on my superhero status and I consider a 2.6% difference in ages to be ‘nearly as old as me’!

(^_^)

Current Affairs

Occasionally, a current-affairs news item will catch my attention and I react with muttered comments such as How stupid, What a useless statement or Jeez, it’s time to blast off an e-mail to these people/organisation. Over-paid footballers, senior dignitaries in the church, inept politicians, and members of the British Royal Family usually get me going. You’ll find comment about all these types of people in this section.

(^_^)

Eden Hazard and Justin Welby in the News

Posted 16 Feb, 2015

Two items in the news caught my attention last week: the £57M signing contract of a footballer named Eden Hazard to continue playing football for the UK Premier League Chelsea team for a further five-and-a-half years (12 February 2015), and Archbishop Justin Welby’s alleged apology for the Allies’ bombing of Dresden in February 1945 during World War 2 (15 February 2015).  First Hazard’s contract.

Eden Hazard, Wikimedia Commons Image

Eden Hazard is a Belgian who has been playing football for Chelsea following a transfer from Lille in 2012.  According to various sources [1], [2], [3], Hazard has just signed a contract worth £57M ($88M) to continue playing for the team for a further five-and-a-half years starting with the 2016 season.  £57M!   That equates to a tad under £200,000 a week.  That is an enormous sum of money for, well, just playing football, a game I contend that is as much about luck as it is about talent.  Even after both Hazard’s agent and the taxman have taken their cuts, it is still a very large amount of take-home pay for someone who is only 24 years old.  None of the reports go into the detail of the contract. What if Hazard breaks a leg or is otherwise unable to play during the five-and-a-half year period?  Does he go on half pay until he returns to the pitch?    Does Hazard have to score a minimum number of goals throughout the season?  What if he fails to do this?