I got home yesterday after watching the eclipse, put the kettle on and opened up my laptop. No internet. Well that's annoying, I thought. My BT Hub was displaying the dreaded red ring of doom, a bit like an eclipse in itself, and rebooting it didn't help. OK that's more annoying, I thought. I hoped it would sort itself out because it usually does on the rare occasions it ever happens. I gave it an hour but no, the red ring remained. Annoying! I gave BT a call to see what was up and they sent me a text message which led to a website, because that beats employing people. We're aware of a fault, they said, which was annoying. We're working on fixing it, they added, which was somewhat reassuring. But then I saw the "estimated fix time" and clocked that it was Tuesday evening. Annoying doesn't even cover it. Not Saturday evening or Sunday evening or Monday evening but Tuesday evening! It might be an overestimate of course, but they were suggesting I faced three whole days without the internet, so you can imagine my annoyance. My laptop was suddenly an isolated computer like it was 1995 or something. Also I could no longer do any streaming, so my TV options were live only or anything I'd recorded, ditto 1995. I turned the radio on and read the paper again, somewhat annoyed. I could of course take my laptop to a cafe and use their wi-fi, but that's not especially realistic on a Saturday evening. Usually I try piggybacking on a neighbour's wi-fi but those are all secure connections these days so annoyingly that no longer works. They switched my landline to 'Digital Voice' a while ago so that's gone down too. I do at least have a smartphone which'll keep me connected and online and everything, but it's not the same as a laptop, it's annoyingly inefficient. In particular a smartphone may be good for accessing written content but it's hopeless for generating 1000 words of thoughtful comment with links and photos. You would not believe how long it's taken me just to write this much - it's been frustratingly annoying. So you're not getting a proper blogpost today, nor probably tomorrow, nor likely again until BT fix whatever's wrong. Sorry, I had today's post all planned but it'd be far too complicated to actually write so all you're getting is this annoying apology. I hope normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. I'll probably come back later and fill this gap in with the missing post, hopefully. In the meantime I'm rediscovering all the things I can still do without the internet, and you can go away and do something else too. Don't be annoyed. You all lost an hour overnight what with the clocks going forward, so if nothing else I've just saved you five minutes.

A couple of years ago, I published a post on how I thought AI would disrupt writing, editing, and marketing. I wrote, “The notion that people won’t get replaced with A.I., but people who work with A.I., rings true in each of these fields.” One reason this happens is because AI simply makes an individual […] The post AI and living tutorials appeared first on Herbert Lui.

45 45 Squared 11) BALGORES SQUARE, RM2 Borough of Havering, 110m×30m Romford Garden Suburb was the brainchild of Liberal politician Herbert Raphael who in 1909 offered up his estate at Gidea Hall "to provide families with a well-built, modern home regardless of class or status". To encourage interest he established a competition to create 140 fully-furnished houses in the Arts and Crafts style, then invited the public to walk the streets as part of a domestic outdoor exhibition. A new station called Squirrels Heath & Gidea Park was opened to service visitors in 1910, and if you walk out of that station today and cross the car park you find yourself in Balgores Square. It's long, thin and conveniently located, with a short parade of shops in one corner and a rim of large desirable homes. The first unit is occupied by a pleasingly retro dry cleaners, then a luxury dog groomers and a filler-friendly salon, as befits the denizens of pseudo-Essex. The original plan was that Balgores Square would be the estate's retail heart, entirely surrounded by arcaded shops with flats above by, but demand never quite materialised. A couple more commercial blocks were added on the north side, one with a splendid hare motif dated 1912, but the gap between them had to be filled by flats in the 1930s. this rather lovely postcard of Balgores Square circa 1925, but eventually a few municipal tennis courts were added instead. More recently the council has shoehorned in a narrow car park instead and surrounded it with a hedge so neighbours can pretend it's not there. The majority of spaces are reserved for season ticket holders, and if you manage to grab one of the four others you've got 30 mins before charges kick in and rise steeply. orange three-piece suite on the crazy paving outside number 8 was for sunbathing purposes or about to be chucked. Architecturally the only duff note is the postwar office block at the southern end, occupied by a longstanding firm of Romford solicitors. But outside is an excellent double-sided map board provided by the Gidea Park and District Civic Society, which was erected to commemorate the centenary of Romford Garden Suburb. None of the Exhibition Houses are in Balgores Square but several lie along Balgores Lane, Squirrels Heath Avenue and Crossways which head north, and with the aid of these maps you can pick them out. Those maps are also on the excellent GPDCS website along with a full back history and two suggested walks and heavens look, here's the original 180 page exhibition brochure. If you like walking characterful suburban streets Gidea Park will not disappoint, perhaps all the way up to the 1930s Modernist houses and back, especially at this time of year when spring is at its most colourful. You're only one purple train away from Balgores Square.

There’s a possibility that Apple is losing over $1 billion per year on Apple TV. The so-called “loss” is plausible, it’s also a rather ordinarily-sized expense considering Apple’s relatively high scale other marketing expenses. Consider this: Another report suggests that Apple spent $775 million per year on ads in 2023, with $512 million of that […] The post Contentions: Apple TV’s billion dollar loss appeared first on Herbert Lui.