Departing this Community

I don’t wish to alarm you, but …

OK, I’m not dead yet, but I want to make provisions!

For quite a number of years there has been on my HD a file titled “Wishes” to record what I want to happen when I die.

It prescribes some music tracks I would like played if there were a funeral “service”, and what I would like done with my remains. All sentimental tosh, of course!

I had investigated memory sticks for those who wanted/attended, but it’s all a bit more than I want to invest in just now.

Then, tonight, I had the revelation!

The Dead Man’s Handle!

What if I set a “time-bomb” on the internet to go off if my activity ceases for a significant time! This will, with careful management, mean I’m dead!

My e-mail contacts list should provide a suitable, if over the top, e-mail notification (John who?).

The tracks list could turn into a download – who’s going to prosecute a dead guy even if they find out?

I have web sites with FTP and PHP.

A simple script could, if required, trigger such a notification if not inhibited by a regular intervention!

Any observations?

Of course, an “Andrex” (as I like to call it) element might need to be considered.

Thoughts?

Further thoughts:

Perhaps the first message should be “I may be ….” and work gradually towards probabilities!

I’m not depressed, I’m just looking forward to the eventual inevitable!

Assuming my wife survives me, perhaps all correspondence should be directed to her?

Morbid, not at all!

Should I die… I think the funerals around here are pretty much of a muchness.

However, some observations on my part:

• Burial – I don’t care. I’ll be dead. I’d prefer not to be cremated because it isn’t ecological. But, did I mention I’ll be dead?

• Service – if you want. I don’t believe, so it isn’t important to me.

• Music – two and a half requests:
  • Apocalyptica – Dead Man’s Eyes
  • L’âme Immortelle – Hold Me
  • For the love of <Deity$Name>, don’t play Ava Maria, I hate it.

• Nobody will survive me. No idea what will happen to all my hazarai. I’ll be dead, it won’t be my problem any more.

I suppose I should arrange something with my source codes. Problem is, the only RISC OS person in this country that I have any contact with (hi David!) is the other side of the country. I know one other person locally and she was originally a friend of mom and not computer literate. Hmm…

I won’t need a timed script. You’ll know if I’m dead, no blog updates and no inane messages here. ;-)

I suppose I should arrange something with my source codes. Problem is, the only RISC OS person in this country that I have any contact with (hi David!) is the other side of the country.

That’s one of the reasons why people keep on going on about things like GitHub¹. If you’re working Open Source, you don’t need to do anything about your sources as they remain available for others to work from.

¹ Alternative services using Git are available.

I won’t need a timed script. You’ll know if I’m dead, no blog updates and no inane messages here. ;-)

As my recent experience with, thankfully temporary, sightlessness demonstrates you can be quite alive but unable to do the computer stuff.
So, perhaps a few more “clues” are required.

I was wondering about your absence at the time, especially with you being on the inside of the NHS. I was thinking about asking on here if anyone had heard from you, but decided not to for your privacy.

I was wondering about your absence at the time, especially with you being on the inside of the NHS

Incubation time guesstimation puts the source as in work for the Covid 19 element (the place is full of sick people), the infection was probably an opportunistic infection using CV19 as cover, the rapid onset cataract was strange and the bad knee is a 43-year-old injury that flared up as “joint of the day”¹ and is lingering. 3+ months…
I did do the walk back from Lidl and B&Q this morning though² so things are improving. Add that to having had the cataract in the right eye sorted³ and I’m almost normal.⁴
Much better off than a lot of people around the globe.

¹ The wife speaks of different joints aching on some sort of rota and post Covid it felt like each was taking its turn with the knee as a constant.

So, perhaps a few more “clues” are required.

I’m a very visually oriented person (to the point where tastes have “colours”). To be alive and unable to see, that would likely be a good description of a fate worse than death.

but decided not to for your privacy.

I think there’s a reasonable chance that we all may get it eventually. A hard lockdown is terrible on the economy, but ease the lockdown and discover how many stupid selfish people there are.
And it isn’t just local, it’s the holidays and some air travel has resumed, so it’s all sorts of people mixing with all sorts of others. It’s no surprise that the infection rate is rising.

As for what’s going on leftpondian way. Oh. My. God. It isn’t just a complete failure of leadership at the top, there’s stories like this to leave you aghast… https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-south-dakota-biker-rally-sturgis-covid-a9661086.html

This unforgiving plague isn’t going anywhere. The best we can do right now is take precautions, try to keep away from others, and – basically – hope.

Keep well away from Americans and Brazilians (and people from Brazil too) ;-)

that I can get glasses for close work.

I’ve noticed in recent years my close sight has suffered. I don’t imagine I’d cope with varifocal lenses (plus, shockingly expensive) so when I’m using the phone or tablet I just take them off.

It’s annoying using a computer though, it’s at that sweet spot where either way is currently blurry, though I find the “chunkiness” of RISC OS and the “heaviness” of FontManager and ZapRedraw to be a lot more visible than XP, where the text all too often fades into the background.

The monitors are a 17" 1280×1024 for RISC OS and a 21" 1440×900 for the PC. Just looking at the numbers, I feel that the pixels on the RISC OS monitor ought to be smaller, but the design of the GUI just helps to make things easier to see. Now that my close vision is degrading, Windows (XP) just doesn’t feel like a well designed GUI to me. It’s not the FisherPrice theme, it’s the basics. Button text is too fine, backgrounds are too dark. It’s trying too hard to get away from the stark contrasts of the 16 bit era, which ironically everybody is embracing all over again, only this time removing the helpful skuomorphisms that help indicate that a button is, in fact, a button.

My distance vision, on the other hand, has barely changed. It’s still naff, as it always has been.

The upsetting thing is that I used to be able to hold a circuit board up close to my face and read numbers off of tiny surface mount chips. I can’t do that any more. Thankfully the quality of cameras in mobile phones these days means that I can take a photo instead. ;-)

I do quite a bit of hardware work – repairs, re-installations, etc., and I find the use of the mobile’s camera to be indispensable when trying to read activation codes, part numbers, MAC addresses and other fine print, especially where the colour contrast of text and background is low. It’s so much easier to read when you can zoom into the image.

It’s annoying using a computer though, it’s at that sweet spot where either way is currently blurry

I use glasses for reading but I seldom use my ‘reading’ glasses. I had another pair made up with a longer focal distance – around arms length – for reading computer screens they have the added advantage that the depth of field is larger so exact head positioning isn’t a problem.

I am blind in one eye – been so since birth. But about 2 years ago I started getting a cataract in my only eye. Although I was referred by my senior optician as a priority case, The hospital did not want to do the operation because I was high risk of going blind. I ended up having to retire two years early, because they decided to advise to avoid driving becuase my sight was getting steady worse. It got to the point where to see a lot of text on screen I was almost touching the screen to read the text or zoom it up a lot. I also ended up stopping reading magazines because the text became difficult to read.

I ended up complaining after 18 months waiting and they agreed to do the operation but with 1 in 500 chance it would go wrong. They agree the consultant should preform the operation. I got the operation just before lockdown came into force. I was apparently the last eye operation they did before lockdown. If I had not had it done then they reckon I would be blind now.

It was successful thankfully, the difference it made was amazing, colours were clearer, and everything was bright and wonderful. I was lucky and got my post op check done a week after the operation and they were very happy with the result, and said i should be able to drive again. That same day they announced full lockdown was starting. Not been able to get to the optician yet to get any new glasses – they do say your eye sight re-adjust after you have the operation.

So hopefully Steve’s eyes will be OK as well.

I’ve noticed in recent years my close sight has suffered.

Close sight, or central vision?
i.e. Are you OK looking at something until it becomes the central focus?
There are more (potentially serious) conditions than the focal length of your lens not matching the distance to your retina.

It’s not the FisherPrice theme, it’s the basics.

I think I mentioned before NET STOP THEMES does a really good job of assassinating the Fisher Price look (speeds things up too) and takes it back to that Win95 look that’s rather similar to RO.

I do quite a bit of hardware work – repairs, re-installations, etc., and I find the use of the mobile’s camera to be indispensable when trying to read activation codes, part numbers, MAC addresses and other fine print, especially where the colour contrast of text and background is low. It’s so much easier to read when you can zoom into the image.

Every infrastructure outlet (RJ45 socket, could be phone or data) is labelled in a specific fashion:
Acute 1
G/0123

on a label approximately 10-12mm wide. That makes the text small. In network closets with bad light and at the user end frequently under or behind desks.

The label info gives the source network closet, the floor of the outlet and the specific identifier of that port so ALL the info is essential.
Phone cameras are a godsend.

I tried varifocals for a while, but having to read labels on racked equipment was fine if the server was slightly above eye-level or lower, but almost impossible if it was above head height so that I couldn’t tilt my head back enough. I gave up and went back to separate pairs of glasses.

Are you OK looking at something until it becomes the central focus?

How do you mean? Pretty much everything I look at is what my eyes focus on (or try to).

With my glasses on, it’s like it has always been. Apart from a small (0.25) difference in my left eye, I can switch between my new glasses and my two year old pair without problem – which is good as I think I’ll keep my older glasses for work.

For closer…

Hold your arm out in front of you. Bend your fingers to a right angle. That’s about the closest the tablet must be in order to be used while I’m wearing glasses. Further away is okay, closer isn’t.

Now keep your arm out. Go up to your wrist. That’s about the farthest the tablet can be in order to be used when I have my glasses off (as I do right now). Closer is better, further isn’t.

Now poke yourself in the nose with your thumb, and extend your little finger as far away as it will go. That’s about the closest it can be when I am not wearing glasses. It used to be able to come closer (to the point where I could see the individual pixel array if the screen was rubbish).

That’s my close vision.

Far away, as I said, is always blurry. Glasses fix that.

of assassinating the Fisher Price look

I prefer it. I find the NT theming looks worse. It also makes the window furniture smaller.
That said, it isn’t so much the window borders as the buttons and clickable things.

Sounds like your lens is doing the frequently observed age thing – neither near nor far are quite right.
Just to cheer you up that’s what my eyes went through.
If you start noting lack of pinpoint sharpness when looking at stars at night and then little starburst effects round each light source then you’re replicating the early symptoms I saw for my cataract (right eye – the left was through from good vision to light and shade only in the course of about 3 weeks, mostly the first week)

So whilst I’m very pleased to learn more about Steven’s recent problems – my wife had a remarkably quick and “painless” cataract op, I picked her up an hour after dropping her off, and RISC OS was very useful for scheduling the “drops”, and, yes Graham, I couldn’t get on with varifocals either at all as the field of view petered out too quickly to left and right.

I couldn’t read a line of text without physically moving my head from left to right! Not good!

I have bifocals, and ask each time for the reading distance to be increased, as I read more often from a screen than conventional print!

However, to get back to my original idea of a “dead man’s handle” (a locomotive concept, I believe, M’lud), what sort of thing might my script, securely lodged on t’internet, access to follow my continued mortality?

There is my computer-based pill reminder, which could also launch a message to a web script.

This would suggest, if I missed it for a few days, that I was either dead or away from my (RO) machine!

Then it could, say, e-mail me via webmail to check if I was receiving messages. Note to self: Can Gmail notify Read acks?

It’s a pity we don’t yet have a WhatsApp message-sending interface, as that could help if away and using the tablet (Android Huawei!).

Actioning a link with a POST message is easy enough, but is there a Chron program for Android – there must be, surely? There’s alarms, but how easy would it be to get it to do something useful, I wonder?

Any other ideas on channels that could check if I were still active to some extent?

This is the sort of discussion I was hoping  to stimulate!

I suppose the final arbiter would be a message sent to my wife or another survivor, the result of which, if confirmed, would be to launch the “I’m dead” scenario, releasing my final thoughts and playlist to the (chosen subset of) the world at large!

But it doesn’t really matter, as I’ll be dead.

An interesting intellectual exercise, though?

But it doesn’t really matter, as I’ll be dead.

Ah, you’re catching on to my way of thinking.

releasing my final thoughts

I’m pretty sure my final thought will be something along the lines of “well, f***”.

I’ve already given two songs, enjoy. ;-)

but is there a Chron program for Android – there must be, surely?

The problem with that is that it doesn’t mean you are alive and functional, it means that your phone is alive and functional.

It’s better to have a manual dead man’s handle, that you must consciously perform, though the problem here would be remembering to do it. ;-)

Just a thought… You have NetSurf set to go to a specific page when it is loaded? If so, have NetSurf go to your dead man’s handle (doesn’t need to be a POST, just fetching it ought to suffice). That will then reply with a 301 redirection, giving a link to the page you would normally start with.
That way, every time you start the browser, the “I’m not dead yet” thing is updated quietly in the background.

Maybe?

Maybe?

At least you’re addressing the problem!

I suppose I should arrange something with my source codes. Problem is, the only RISC OS person in this country that I have any contact with (hi David!)

My car is faster than yours, so it’s not really a problem :)

I was thinking an IoT device with a big red button mounted to something. It plays a tone for success at resetting the dead man’s whatever-you-want-to-call-it.