British Programmer living in Andorra

I'm still reading Never Despair Winston S. Churchill  1945-1965 by Martin Gilbert.  It is a bible-sized book, albeit the print is slightly bigger, and it will take me a while yet. Recently I've come across an interesting chapter.   This section of interesting stuff starts on Page 619. Interesting to me, and those Brits and others on the EU side of the Brexit-argument, I've found more compelling evidence to answer the question:  " Would Winston Churchill have been in favour of Britain being in the EU?" .   Of course, I believe the answer (certainly after the War) was that he would have been in favour. Ike Eisenhower made a speech at the English Speaking Union Dinner on July 3, 1951.  Churchill was there.  Churchill didn't actually hear the speech well enough at the time, but read it's transcript the following day.  He was ecstatic when he did. Eisenhower and Churchill The relevant text, of the above mentioned book, is as follows;  " ...So pleased wa

My brain wave just now while sitting at the pool:  Hotel Floor Plans, Room Numbers, Views & Interconnecting Doors. Fact one Facebook is promoting it's "Groups" functionality heavily at the moment It's basically "special interest groups" that it does by matching your profile (it's an AI based match) with groups that are made by anyone - in an effort to get engagement.  Having a lot of success with this for B&B.co.uk and also using it as a User - I joined the Corfu group to get information about Ferry tickets. So Facebook doing the marketing basically for you if you have a Facebook Group, because it increases engagement with the site. Fact two We doing this big tour now; France, Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece.  Then we will take a ferry back up the Adriatic, loop into Slovenia (see Bella & Kirst), and the back via James' villa in Antibes, and then back home.  One problem we have with the kids is I want to see the la

There you have it:  Brexit has stopped "freedom of movement".  Yup - YOUR freedom of movement. Incredibly, incredulously, incompetently thousands of Brits who live in the EU actually voted FOR this: Anyway this article is not for you.  Please stop reading now. Barry and Diane :  Coming back to the UK to vote OUT, even though they live in Benidorm.  I wonder how they getting on? How to get around it?   The fact is you have 90 days in any 180 days in the Schengen zone.  That is from Portugal all the way to Finland.  This is a little confusing; some of us are used to "visa-run" from places like Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore or Hong Kong: you just leave for a day, and come back and get another 6 months or whatever.  This is NOT the case with Schengen.   You have a rolling 90 days in 180 .  Yup that right... no more go out in September, come back in April stuff for you. A better way to calculate might be "How many days have I spent in Schengen in the last 90?" 

I read Austin Meyer's account of his fight against a patent troll .   It does seem unfair, and likely to stifle innovation. Is it not quite easy to fix?  Surely in order to get a patent infringement case settled the patent holder must have to show  active development? If there is active development this compensation payment can based on relative investment to the patent "infringer?"  OMG:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4 So it appears to be some sort of scam being perpetrated in the Eastern District of Texas with families who Should Know Better being involved.  Judge Father and Son Lawyers - this a joke? Whole buildings setup with fake companies.  Wow. Making the US of A look more like a banana republic everyday.

The UK still uses the archaic "first past the post" voting system.  This needs to change.   Back in 2011 there was a referendum on changing this to the Alternative Vote .  We were already living in Spain then, but I followed it closely - the campaigns and the themes . At the end of the day people said.... "It's all too complicated ... we stick with the status quo". What a shame.   Fast forward to 2019 and Boris was able to lie through his teeth campaign with a clear message and get a thumping 80 seat majority - by getting a few more racist old people in the North to vote for him  than would normally do. Ultimately there was a majority of vote for Remain-parties but the way the cookie crumbled down the constituency-lines meant Boris and his team of ultra-right wingers got in. What can be done about this? I been looking at all the plethora of different voting system.  Boy are they complicated!!   I'm a programmer used to reading detailed manuals; reading th

Wouldn't it be great to work together and create a "distributed search engine" with the index spread across thousands of peer nodes - a Google beating thing of beauty and love and money. Sadly the latency, speed, algorithmic and storage requirements make this a non-starter .  Try the state-of-the-art example like  yacy  and you'll see what I mean. It's just occurred to me - something that might be as least as lucrative ( 1 , 2 , 3 ) is a "link database" - and several factors easier to code and manage..... ....Who fancies giving it a go?