RiffRaff

Ol' Lampard could do with a new job - his better half is expecting again!

Think you've had the answers to these from a post earlier, but there's something that many people seem to be turning a blind eye to...and it was confirmed by Sir Patrick Vallance a few days ago. The virus is here to stay. We might control it in the future, but all the original (mainly political) rhetoric about "defeating/killing" covid was just that - rhetoric. Covid-19 is with us, and we'll have to live with it.

Tactics : small, hard mint sweets favoured by David Beckham. Tic Tacs : a style of football favoured by David Beckham. Baron99 : Ice cream cornet favoured by landed gentry and select few.

I took the dog out when we went 1-0 down. Missed half-time, and by the time I got back it was 3. Watched from then on, and commented to my wife that it resembled a game of 'walking football' for old 'uns! I'd get shut of Brown before Bannan. Slow to react, absolutely rubbish when he did. The whole team were outclassed.

Apparently one of the reasons is insurance : the hotels can't get cover. Another is staff. I wouldn't fancy working in one if all the residents had proved positive....

I thought you were working on another Uxbridge dictionary job! Indeed so. (That would be the Torah, then!)

Fleed? Tsk, tsk, Baron!

Well, the no-type-in search-bar problem was easy enough to solve - the windows search facility had become 'disabled'. But how? When? Why?! I'm reading that it's a fairly common fault after a Win10 update.... Anyway, success with Midori! I avoided BoJo about lockdown (!), and instead picked the same tutorial video I'd been trying for a few days - ran perfectly, without having to alter the (Vimeo) resolution! So thank you! I did think about trying Brave earlier today, but got sidetracked... Going to try again now, and check the performance figures for interest's sake. EDIT : How interesting. Video running fine, performance varies between 96 and 99%, memory spot on 50%.

Yes, the same thought occurred to me - I think I mentioned it in my opening post. Coincidence, maybe....dunno. As far as I can be, I've stripped all references to Adobe/Macromedia flash, but I do remember there was always something 'weird' about uninstalling/updating. Sometimes an update/new version would work, sometimes it wouldn't, and when it didn't a user was potentially in for hours of fun! (I'm going back some years, though - 10+? - to when I used to mess with SwishMax, which was a cheaper way of producing fla and swf files.) What I've done since my post #8 is "refresh" Firefox, which supposedly is akin to uninstalling and reinstalling. It's not made a jot of difference, needless to say! Edit : Oh, this is new! I can still type, but not in the desktop search box! Just tried to access device manager and found out! What the hell is going on now!!

Bigger age gap than I thought, then. Take your point, but this has only started happening in the last fortnight or so, and no hardware has been changed. Just back to the Tosh for a minute, here's something that may have a bearing on things? I've Task Manager 'open', and I've the Firefox desktop open as well, but not doing anything. The Processes screen keeps altering of course, flitting between TM itself, System interrupts and occasionally W Explorer using x% of CPU. Down the list appears Firefox, but followed by (5). If I click on Firefox (5), it does actually drop down to show 5 different items. If I now type an address featuring a video in Firefox, and try to play it, TM Processes now show Firefox (7). "Performance" still bangs up to 99%. If I pause the video, it plummets and rolls along around 8-12%.... That give any more clues?!

Gone, but certainly not forgotten, as they say. God speed. One of my Owl heroes from the 60's. Thanks, Peter.

Newer than the Tosh, but not by a deal. Intel CPU (4415U) and also Intel graphics HD610. Strangely, lower memory - only 4GB. Out of interest, I've just opened the BBC News site with it, and clicked on the Biden speech video, and checked the performance info. (Not his, the laptop!) The CPU ran at about 30%, with the memory almost to 'the top', using about 3.5GB. Faultless.

Hadn't thought of that. CPU 'utilisation' is varying between 55 and 99%. When at 99, video is stopped. Memory is hovering around the 50% mark.

Had to smile at your comment! When I was a Sheffield resident, I used to use the Parkway/M1/M18/A1 to get to work at Clifton Moor in York every day. The A1 was definitely not the road to daydream on, although there were certain days when I got to work but then thought "God! I don't remember passing the pub with the elephant models outside this morning!" Even that pales to when I didn't have a car, and had to get a really early train from Sheff to Doncaster, and then catch the connection to Peterborough every day! I know the earliest I could get to work was about 9.30, but even that meant setting off at a ridiculous hour..... If only I'd been on £50 an hour! I think my salary was about 6 grand a year!

Toshiba laptop, Win 10 Home Display Adapter = AMD E2-1800 APU with Radeon HD Graphics 1.70 GHz Ram = 6GB Realtek network adapter Defaults to Firefox, but Edge also installed. Both have hardware acceleration disabled. No plugins on either. Videos are stuttering, to say the least! Split second of video, then freezes, but the audio continues. Maybe 10 seconds later, video "catches up" with the audio, but again only lasts a split second before freezing. Even the news videos on https://www.bbc.co.uk/news site do the same : audio continues, video freezes after just a split second. This has only happened recently. No problems at all prior to Christmas-ish. I've googled the problem, essentially asking for solutions/advice re Firefox, but I've since discovered the problem's the same using Edge. There are various suggestions on a few forums, and I've messed with certain "true/false" ideas in Firefox's settings - none have worked. Apart from the hardware acceleration business - which seems to be a very common solution to most video errors - I think Firefox is actually back to default settings now. I checked the AMD driver for updates - none better found, although it's not particularly recent. 2015, without looking. Also checked the network adapter - again, none better found. To confuse me completely, I set my wife's HP laptop up next to the Toshiba. Both wireless, same router, same latest version of Firefox. The same video links play perfectly on the HP, so - to me, anyway - that must mean the problem is on my laptop - yes? Have run Bitdefender and Malwarebytes just in case - clear. For a while I convinced myself it must be something to do with the discontinued Flash, but I've stripped it all out as far as I can tell. Open to any suggestions, please!

I know 3 people who are registered at the same surgery - 2 in their early 70s, and 1 who's 93. They are related, and bear the same surname. None of the 3 have underlying health conditions. This particular surgery is using a different surgery as a "hub" for vaccinations. If they're innoculating alphabetically - all other things being equal - they should appear next to each other on the database, you'd think. The 70 year olds had their jab last week. The 93 year old is still waiting to be notifiied about his. Is that what your rather cryptic post is meaning?

Yes, That's nice. Thank you. I like that. It's going to be a strange service, as it will be for each of the poor covid (and others, of course) souls who have died in the last few months. All masked, all distancing. No singing, although (to me) that's no bad thing. Maximum 25 mourners, maximum 30 minutes overall. Outside afterwards, distancing, avoid hugging/shaking hands/back slapping etc. Yes, I like your idea a lot. I will definitely suggest it to "Head Office"!

Chesworth Cues....

Think that was my wife's original idea.

That's an idea - thank you! The last "event" (?) I attended, they were placed on another relative's grave in Hutcliffe Wood. Cost about £60 for permission, if my memory's right.

Yes, that was my first suggestion as well, Thirsty. However, you and I are both 'wrong', I'm ...er....told by my better 'alf (whose relation it is) The reasons given were that things are unlikely to change this year, so we'd be perhaps looking at 2022... then there'd a few who couldn't make it, but could the week after....then there might be a few who couldn't make the week after, and didn't see why we had to alter it anyway because the first few hadn't sent a Christmas card in years, so why are the arrangements being amended just for them .....and so on. Normal good-natured, so-called 'close family' stuff! It's the usual case, I'm afraid. Only meet at weddings and funerals. I spend most of my time wandering around, wondering who most of the people are! But thanks for your suggestion anyway.

Funeral sometime in the next fortnight, and of course there can be no wake. Seems a bit "final" to bid everyone farewell outside the crematorium, so my wife thought of arranging something to be sent/delivered to each of the mourners. The "something" is like a cream tea? (That's my description, by the way!) Where she's got the idea from, I don't know - maybe a magazine article? Anyway, before the arrangements are made, have you any other ideas?

The other half of the definition's just come to me - "...but younger than the hair". 🙂

I'm there ahead of you, never fear! I've even surrendered my driving licence because of attaining the biblical three score and ten!

Yes, thank you - enntee dropped me a PM earlier about the source of the design. Love the 'tall, thin, elegant and carrying a large axe' image! A Lizzie Borden in the making!