I stumbled across one of the best reviews/essays for a TV series collection on DVD that I have ever read. It’s a DVDtalk.com review of the complete Danger Man a/k/a Secret Agent series. If you like spy films, if you like vintage British Cult TV, if you like noirish films I urge you to watch Danger Man, which is one of my favorite TV shows.

Don’t take my word for it, read the review (above), which is long but well worth it.

Starting Your Own Webring on Webringo.com

You need a ring host. I have used Webringo.com recently and everything there is in working order, with no spam from Webringo and no ads being inserted into rings. Honest and clean.

1. Register an account at Webringo.
   
2. Read through Webringo’s Help and FAQ section. This helped me a lot.
3. You are registered and logged in. Now you want to find the link to “Create a Ring” from the left menu.
4. Fill in all the spaces on the Create a Ring page. After you hit create you should get to a section where you can customize the colors, style, type, logo design of the default ring code that will be given to anyone that registers to join your ring. Save your edits.
5. My memory is a little rusty here so bare with me. At this point you may need to add the ring code to your own webpage. You may have to sign your own site up as the first member to do that. You will get your choice of the default ring codes and you add that code to the page you have designated.

This is about where my memory ends. It was pretty straight forward. It’s free so you can play around with it and learn. Feel free to create a demo ring first to learn on, you can always delete it.

Tips:

• Be specific about who can join the ring.
• If you already have a community of people interested in your topic that qualify for ring membership, contact them individually before to step #3 above and see if they are interested in joining the webring. It’s hard to get people to join a webring that only has one or two sites.
• Joining an existing ring is easier than creating one.
• Make the ring code easy to find. Preferably it should be on the same page people entered on.
• As Ring Master, you must preserve the integrity of the ring. This means 1. sites should be qualified to be a member, 2. Ring codes must be working, 3. ring codes must be easily findable. Suspend members that don’t display the ring code. Visitors will not use a ring that is broken or too hard to navigate.
• The ring code is there not only for navigation but is also there to recruit new ring members and/or new readers.
• Webringo has it’s own Private Messenger system called “Ring Mail”. As Ring Master you should check this regularly to see notifications of new applicants or messages from members.

The, “It’s Interesting to Me File”: I’m surrouded by train tracks here but the line closest to were I live seems to have less traffic on it these days. I’m not sure if that is true for other lines.

Does train traffic seem lighter to anyone else?

I have not synced my iPhone with my car yet. I know it works but I generally don’t answer phone calls while driving so I thought I’d skip it. But I did try plugging in the iPhone unsynced and Apple Music came up. I couldn’t get it to play. Maybe I should download some songs to see if that would work?

PinePhone $149 Linux smartphone could support Ubuntu, Sailfish, Maemo, LuneOS and more - Liliputing liliputing.com/2019/06/p…

On the evening of D-Day, 6 June 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addresed the American nation with this prayer:

“My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

“And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

“Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavour, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilisation, and to set free a suffering humanity.

“Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

“They will need thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

“They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

“For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

“Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into thy kingdom.”

June 6th 2019 will be the 75th Anniversary of the D-Day Landings. Here is a HeritageCalling.com post about D-Day.

heritagecalling.com/2019/06/0…

The cost in courage, blood and treasure was enormous, but fighting Evil is never cheap.

Just for the record, I’m pro Bakelite.

Singer Leon Redbone, has died. Bob Dylan was a fan. www.npr.org/2019/05/3…

RIP.

On a trip to Iowa, well off the Interstates. All two lane highways here. Here in the Heartland, it’s a mixed bag, some small towns are dying and some seem to be doing better than they were 30 years ago.

I brought only the iPhone and the iPad but that is working out well. Also, this older motel has decent WiFi so I can stream a show on the tablet in the evenings. Basic cable is kinda bad.

Google reportedly pulls Huawei’s Android license - The Verge www.theverge.com/2019/5/19…

No matter who gets elected President in 2020, we are in for Big Government.

Creepy.

Google is using Your Gmail Account to Track Your Purchases www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/goog…

If you have trouble remembering what you ate for supper last night, it wasn’t epic.

Democratic Presidential Candidates:

I think we’re up to a gaggle of 20 at last count. I’m going to seperate out the 3 that I think have potential. (All subject change.)

• Berine Sanders - he’s farther Left than I’m comfortable with, but he’s the only one that has truely new ideas. This is the guy we should have run against Trump the first time. I like his ideas on health care. He would offer a kinder, and more reasoned Populist alternative to Trump.

• Elizabeth Warren - perhaps a little too intellectual for prime time but I generally agree with her. I’m not sure she can capture the public imagination, she’s about as exciting as watching cement set. So far she has not done well in her skirmishes with Trump. Still, she would be way better than Trump.

• Joe Biden - I consider him the “safe candidate” I think Joe, flawed as he is, has the moxie to take on Trump without leaving “The Establishment” wing of elites in the Democratic Party. Which means he won’t step too far out of the status quo and there is a danger to that because we need some bold reforms and I’m afraid Joe isn’t up for that. Still I like Joe.

It’s really early days so my lineup might change. Just thinking out loud.

Brinkmanship with Iran is a dangerous policy. One would think we have had enough of getting entangled in Middle East conflicts as it is, let alone seek out yet another one. I’m sure Iran is a bad actor, but our side ie. Saudi Arabia dosen’t fill me warm fuzzies either.

Underlying all the national and oil rivalry in the region is a sectarian Sunni vs. Shia Islam conflict, which we Westerners would be well advised to stay out of. This Islamic sectarian conflict is something that only the Islamic world can deal with and it will probably be bloody just like The Reformation in Europe was bloody. It’s sad, but lasting peace cannot be imposed from outside the Islamic world.

What the US should be doing is working hard to decrease our dependancy on Middle East oil so we have little cause to get involved. Instead we build bigger pickup trucks and more roads and more fuel guzzling airports. It’s time for a rethink both in the US and Europe too.

A lot of people have become disillusioned with the traditional political elites and parties of both the Right and Left in the Western World. And 2 party systems don’t offer enough of a difference to matter since both end up supporting the status quo.

Supreme Court says Apple will have to face App Store monopoly lawsuit - The Verge www.theverge.com/2019/5/13…

EU will get these first.

e Foundation announced last week that they would be releasing refurbished phones with eOS pre installed in early June.

Now, it appears, that these are only for EU residents. e Foundation did not make this clear in their announcement because they probably wanted to see where the demand was coming from. The Foundation is set up in the EU, plus I think worries about privacy are deeper in the EU, so it makes sense for the EU to get first release.

Still it’s disappointing.

I just hope the US doesn’t get abandoned or frozen out in this.

Anyway, it was nice to see a good line-up of phones for the EU.

Disgruntlement File: McDonald’s seems to have discontinued the Triple Stack McMuffins. They had disappeared from the McD’s cash register this morning. Also the classical music has disappeared. Bummer. Triple Stack McBummer.

Fixing the turn signals on my 2010 Ford Transit Connect is going to cost US $1200.00 because Ford does not make sub-parts for the entire headlight turn signal assembly must be replaced. Good enginnering Ford.

Watching: The Undertaker Mystery series, Swiss in German with English subtitles. Approx. 60 min. Quirky series about an ex-cop who has become an undertaker but still solves mysteries. I’ve watched the first 3 episodes of season 1 and this is pretty good. Has a quirky dry wit about it but it can be dark without a lot of gore. There are 5 seasons available on Mhz and it’s good so far.

Acquired: Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro

As part of the Indieweb Book Club for Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro I just acquired a paperback copy of this book.

Just did a fast skim page through: I expect I’ll agree with some of Monteiro’s basic premises about design, I also noticed that the author paints with a pretty broad brush. (That’s not always bad, since I do the same thing.) As part of that he makes some assertions like religions are designed to hate each other and that “cultural appropriation” is universally accepted as being a Bad Thing. I understand that these are not the main thrust of his arguments but his misuse of them undermines his argument and his authority - at least with this reader. The first rule of debate is to examine the other person’s “givens”. If the “givens” are faulty then that weakens their whole argument.

I won’t get into nit picking on these, because that would take me off topic.

This was also posted to /en/bookclub.

My 2010 Ford Transit Connect had to be towed into the dealer this morning. Low miles on it, but I can see time is taking it’s toll. With the hood up I noticed a lot of vaccum hoses are cracking on it and will need to be replaced the next time it goes into the shop.

Two things about fast food, single use plastics: 1. I think the corporate world is sufficiantly on notice that they need to phase these out, 2. I’m pretty confident we can come up with acceptable alternatives from natural sources.

The problem is one of scale. Take plastic straws and think about how many straws just McDonald’s goes through just in the US. I’m willing to bet that all the American paper straw plants in the US right now can’t supply enough paper straws if they tried producing flat out. And of course there is the supply chain: are the paper straw producers suppliers ready to provide enough material for the demand? And the merials also need to be sustainably sourced. Now add all the other US fast food chains: DQ, Burger King, Wendy’s, Hardees all switching over to paper straws. Now add in the mom and pop food joints. In the US alone the demand is going to be tremendous. On top of this, we really have not been making paper straws in the US since the 1960’s - we’ve almost forgotten how.

Plus I’m sure there are other materials we can make disposable drinking straws from besides paper. Equally, I’m pretty sure these are being, frantically, developed.

That’s just straws.

Now add in serving containers, things your condiments come in, disposable eating utensils and changing away from plastics become huge.

And we have not even added in the EU and the rest of the developed and semi-developed world yet. The scale is immense. The opportunity is immense and it boggles the mind.

All this is to say that the problem won’t be solved overnight. It’s going to take a few years, but we need to keep the pressure on lest the food industry will continue using plastics.