Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, March 08, 2017

Pontevedra Pensées: 8.3.17

Changing Spain?: Over 4,000 residents gathered in Murcia on Sunday, calling for the region's president to resign in light of his being investigated for corruption. More here.

Spanish language traps: Another list from The Local, on false friends.

Spanish Spelling: Reader Maria has put forward the nice theory that filling the exam with recherché words tells me the future cops had already been chosen, and the rest were supposed to fail. ROFL, as we kids say. But quite possibly true, of course. You get to believe anything in an arbitrary place like Spain.


I went on ITV Hub to see if The Nightly Show was as bad as I'd read. Some way into it, I was advised that Amazon was about to select ads for me. These were:-
Yorkshire Tea - I don't drink tea
Box Office - I don't download films
Springboard Mortgage for first time buyers - Need I comment?
Workplace pensions for employers - Ditto
Beats - WTF are they?
Pantyliners - I ask you.
Amazon might have some work to do on this service. Which was downright annoying, especially as I couldn't advance to the program. Not that I really wanted to. To quote a critic: There is a world of difference between plonking [celebrities] on a sofa and watching the banter flow and the more structured comedy at which the Americans excel – and which The Nightly Show has clearly, and disastrously, set out to emulate.

Reader Eamon has given me this worrying insight into the smart meters mentioned yesterday and I feel obliged to share it: The display changes every few seconds to show different readings. The first display is date, then normal electricity use,and lastly the cheap rate for overnight use. You don't get much time to read the meter should you want to query anything as it keeps jumping through the different displays. You may want to know why they are called smart meters. Well at present they are only charging you for your normal use. However, the meters are recording your daily use. So for example when you switch on your electric cooker it knows that a heavy use appliance is on. It keeps a record of how long it stays on. Next when your fridge switches on it does the same. Your washing machine is another heavy user. So, over time, the data stored will show which appliance is working if only one is used at a time. A washing machine won't be used as much as a cooker so the data will show this because each day the data will vary. From this information in the future we will be charged at a different rate for each appliance regardless of what time you switch it on. So your toaster might cost you more to run than your kettle.


Nutters' Corner: US Televangelist, Rick Joyner, has said that he can tell who’s a Christian just by looking at them.

Finally . . . . A cartoon which inevitably had a certain appeal for me . . .

Ironically, I've read that FB are bowing to pressure and will soon introduce a Dislike button. Anyone who thinks this will stop them sending totally inappropriate Suggestions and ads must be out of their mind.

I've been off FB for a few days now and can't say I've missed it much. Maybe only the Tiger Lillies and Thinking Atheist pages.

Footnote: When Google had their RSS Reader, they told me more than 200 people accessed my blog through it. In contrast, Google+ has only 60. I waited all last year for it to shoot up to, say, 65. No such luck; it was still 60 at the end of the year. But, having stopped putting my posts on FB every day and advising that I'd still do this on Google+, I was sure the total would rapidly increase. I just checked and, sure enough, it's still at 60 . . . Which is a tad humbling.

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