Menoshunable; Some Mind Munching

Pondering what to place here today, I recognised a need to just have a bit of a round-up, a bit of this and a touch of that. A clearing out of small ideas lurking in the thought larder and not quite manifesting as worthy of full posts, but still needing to be put on display. You can decide whether it was worth bothering you with!

You'll recall that last weekend, there was a bit of hiss and spit about shenanigans from Google - specifically on the Blogger platform. It turned out that quite a few folk were hit with it, but not all in the same way. I am left with the annoyance of not finding any official reference to it. Generally, the bulletin boards and forums are ablaze on such matters. Perhaps we are all just getting adapted to the fact that it was just another symptom of tinkerings beneath the hood. There is a major update on Google's Android platform imminent (currently in beta format), and there is to be the removal of some functionality in the thing called Feedburner in a couple of months; I never got wrapped up in it, but if any of you use RSS and seek to have folk subscribe to your blogs via email rather than just the 'follow' button, then you may find it breaks communications until you set up something in place of it. Read more here if you want to follow up and act ahead of the game. (As an aside, I am intrigued by Project Starline - and am a bit excited by the prospect. I make no apology. Once a geek, always a geek!)

This year, in a few updates, not everything has been obvious. A few things have, though. In Gmail, the sidebar with various tools (to which you can add if you wish), I have found to be pretty helpful - I use the contacts button a lot and also the 'keep' box - very handy for important login info and suchlike. The notepad has proven worth its presence on occasion too. Now, on the Chrome interface, there have been these recent additions (the red highlights are mine);

The 'sort tabs' button up top seems to me to be a bit of overdressing. Tinkering for the sake of it. I often have as many as a dozen tabs open, but I never lose track of them, so I really can't see any major benefit coming from that little adjustment. The 'video/audio playing' tool I have used quite a bit. For example, in recent snooker tournaments, opening up the broadcast player and then selecting to 'sub-window' the play meant I could go around reading and working with the action still on display on the lower right corner of my screen. I am using it again now for the World Curling Doubles (being held in Aberdeen - and NOT shown on BBC - this week's hiss and spit menoloopal... Scotland is the home of curling, for crying out loud...)

Then there is the 'reading list' tool, the most recent addition. How is this different from 'bookmarking' on the top bar? Not everything you want to go back to view in greater depth is necessarily something you want to keep longer than for the research or passing interest purpose, so the reading list is proving itself very useful for tabbing items in the sort term. I love the bookmarks bar and have no less than nine main folders with sub-folders and randoms under each one, plus one or two short-termers but still longer than reading list strength mounted straight to the bookmarks bar. 

Do you use any of these tools? If so, how often? I like it. Previously I'd have had to download everything - this way, I'm not using up valuable disk space. 

Now, apropos absolutely not a lot, I had a gander oot the windie the other night - in the tiniest of hours - to discover it cloud-free and sparkling—a somewhat scant occurrence over the Hutch. I was immediately struck by a very bright 'star' before realising it was moving at speed - and being followed by a phalanx of many other bright points of light at a similar speed. The binoculars showed them to be grouped in twos and threes and some singles but all tightly patterned in the front 'car', then a few spread out, then a second 'car' of tightly grouped lights. I was pretty sure it was above the stratosphere and not aeroplanes. Of course, the initial (when seeing the lead light) thought was 'satellite'... but an entire pearl necklace??? I stood mesmerised as it traversed from over Kilmartin hill, across the Clyde down over Renfrewshire... this Trekker had all sorts of scenarios presenting themselves to her. 

Then the geek took hold, and research ensued. It didn't take long to discover that the frenetic geek of geeks, Elon Musk, might be responsible. He has been developing multiplatform satellites, and the project is called... wait for it... Starlink. (Not to be confused with project Starline, above.)

I simply could not get a photograph, never mind a video, hence the hand-drawn effort you see here - but some did, thanks to too-clever-by-halfones.  A little bit of excitement and imagination sparklers for the week.

Here's to the weekend - if you are out and about, play safe and remember, even now, hands-face-space!!!