status

There are 40 posts filed in status (this is page 4 of 4).

monster film

A movie about monsters with super-sensitive-hearing sounded timely and relevant, so I watched some of it.

Reclaiming unused insurance

I took out overseas travel health insurance for one month, but this is one loss that can be reimbursed. You call the insurer and they give you reimbursement from the day you returned to the country. How to determine that you are in the country? There’s a slip of paper that passport control give you on entry. I rummaged through my bags and found the previous two of these. Alas, I’d thrown the last one away – I think I tossed it in a waste paper bin in the arrivals hall. But no fear! You can go to a government website and ask for a report of your current whereabouts. I’ve filled out a form, and they’ll send it to me within a few days. I just need to email it to the insurance company, and they’ll give me my $100 back. There are also some positive benefits of the panopticon.

Had a little fun playing with a jumping spider that was exploring my computer screen; they will actively try to pounce on the cursor. After a few tries this one gave up in disgust and went off to look for a new hunting ground.

Children of Dune mini-series

Watching the Dune and Children of Dune mini-series from the early 2000s, I was struck how much films have changed in the years since. There are almost no black or brown skinned actors, certainly none in leading roles. In Frank Herbert’s book, the leading Atreides family are said to have olive-brown skin, but on screen they are all very white. A few years of film history seems to have done more for human diversity or fusion of the gene pool than ten thousand years in the Dune films. Of course there were always some films and TV series, like Star Trek, that did diversity better, but nowadays I’m not sure it would even be possible to do a film in this genre that is so blatantly white.

Tor has grown easier

For the last couple of days I’ve been using Tor for general browsing again. It seems to have gotten a little easier. My work email is on Google Apps, and it was previously almost impractical to use Tor with Gmail. I think some people object that it defeats the purpose of Tor to use it for sites like Gmail, but I’m not aiming for total anonymity, just better privacy than I ordinarily have.  Now the Gmail issue has gone away, it’s no longer necessary to divide my time between it and another browser.

While updating a website today the exit node I was connecting through was blacklisted, but it was enough to change the Tor circuit in order to overcome that.

Tor has also proved to be fast enough for my needs. Something about it may eventually iritate me; but for now good.