Tom Womack

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~twomack/visualise-spherebox.html

(needs Javascript and a browser new enough to speak WebGL)

It should look a bit like this, but moving



I am guessing that a set of metal or plastic spheres with ±0.05mm diameter tolerances on the diameters is not something that can be manufactured at reasonable price, though Google has swiftly pointed me at the Precision Plastic Ball Company of 70 Main Street, Addingham, West Yorkshire

I have spent a few hours over the last two days trying to remove SearchBaron malware from Kirsten's Mac.

The final step, and one that I had to figure out rather than following Web tutorials, was to note that SearchBaron contrives, for each page you visit after searching with it, to add a custom Chrome search engine with that page's URL as the keyword. Which means that, if you click in the search bar from such a page, you end up at SearchBaron rather than Google.

'Reset settings' in Chrome does not delete the custom search engines, nor is there obviously a UI element for deleting them all at once.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the (obviously very long if the machine has been infected for any length of time) list you can click delete repeatedly rather than having to reposition the mouse after deleting each one manually.

There is a Chrome extension that prevents pages from setting custom search engines, which I've installed on that Mac.

Can anyone reading this think of a better (more google-juice) place I could put this writeup; I tried adding a comment on the macsecurity.net post about SearchBaron but their comment engine isn't working.

Mac malware removal has an especially bad case of malicious search-engine optimisation around it, which would be challenging to compete with.

Still not sure I've got over the cold that I had at my last post three months ago - I tried a couple of 5km runs on consecutive days near the start of lockdown and my lungs complained for a fortnight. I'm managing hour-long cycle rides aiming for every other day, I was sad how wobbly and breathless I got after two hours weeding in the midday sun on Tuesday but Kirsten made an insightful comment about mad dogs and Englishmen.

I got my group-project for the MSc finished and submitted, am slowly reading through the tables of contents of various relevant-seeming journals for the individual project … it's almost tempting to write about the sociology of people who have clearly been doing similar-shaped projects to mine for the last 25 years without very much progress.

Slightly fretfulness-inducing weekend: uncle Philip is very ill in Inverness (at least there's a diagnosis, it's dilated cardiomyopathy), and my pregnant sister-in-law Marian has just gone into the Rosie to be induced (at full term).

Twice in a week!

202 cal 2km 15:07 run
27.5kg x15x3 row RAISE
35kg x15x3 pull down STAY
25kg x15x2 chest press RAISE
12.5kg x15x3 shoulder press STAY
100 cal 830m 6:36 run
120 cal 910m 8:00 brisk walk
80 cal 600m 6:01 xcski
200m breast stroke

Also I discovered that the running and cross-country-skiing machines had a mode where they showed you walking up a hill in New Zealand or around a zoo in Costa Rica as you proceeded, and it turns out that having an interesting view perceptibly increases my endurance.

This is the second time in a week that I've gone to the gym at roughly-supper-time and left it not feeling like supper at all - not even like a mug of hot chocolate before bed.

400 metres breast stroke
400 metres front crawl
50 metres just kicking

The just-kicking was incredibly slow (I think Kirsten was doing three laps to my one); I'm sure I remember swimmers saying that most of the power came from your legs if you were doing it right, from which I deduce that I'm not doing it right.

This morning was my first parkrun for six months, and my worst parkrun time ever. My calves ache, which I expected, and the back of my neck aches which I didn’t really expect. But I made it all the way round.

250 cal elliptical machine
20kg x12 shoulder press
52 cal (5 min) cycle
35kg x12 chest press
45kg x12 lats
30kg x12 row
135 cal 1km run
35kg x12 row
6kg overhead x25
22.5kg x6 shoulder press (aiming for x12 but ran out of arms)
200m front crawl

The weights are about the limit of what I can do 12 reps of, I should probably go down 5kg on each machine and see if I can do three circuits of 12 reps.

I’m in Dublin. It’s quite a well-attended con in not a terribly large set of venues (commendably central in a fairly compact city, but not the sort of city-block-sized shed I associate with Worldcons), so there is an awful lot of queuing and not enough space for everyone who wants to sit down to do so at once. You have to stand in line twenty minutes before the panel starts, apparently even if you’re a panellist!

Saw a good panel on food in fantasy (which pointed me at an absolutely delightful ‘Anthony Bourdain films in Narnia’ fanfic) and a wonderfully enthusiastic Chris Garcia presentation on personalities from the earlier history of computing; lunch with Jo Walton and Ada Palmer, supper of pulled pork inna bun in the corner of the bar. Conked out very early; four more full days to go.

I've been thinking about the trip quite a lot, but I think I'd decided not to talk about it much so as not to bore people, and as a result I realised at the beginning of this week that a lot of my friends didn't know, for example, that I was going off to travel round the world for seven weeks starting on Thursday.

I don't have everything down precisely yet (I may, depending how easy it is to edit Dreamwidth posts from a tablet on hotel wifi ten time zones away, update this as I go); all the hotels and transport in Australia are booked.

But I have bought all the flights in advance, so there are some fixed points; all times are local.

23/8 leave Heathrow 1045, change in Kuala Lumpur, arrive in Perth 25/8 1450

28/8 leave Perth 1750 arrive Adelaide 2210

31/8 leave Adelaide 1025 arrive Melbourne 1210

4/9 2200 Greyhound service Melbourne to Canberra arriving 0600

9/9 1150 scenic train Canberra to Sydney arriving 1615

13/9 leave Sydney 0955 arrive Auckland 1500
(booked one day at Auckland YHA because customs tend to prefer you to know where you're sleeping that night)

{ I am expecting during this period to spend some time in Hamilton where my housemate Dan now works, and to visit Hobbiton and the most famous New Zealand glow-worm cave; perhaps also Rotorua because that looks to be how the coach services fit together, perhaps Taupo because that's on the way }

22/9 leave Wellington 0835 arrive Queenstown 0955

{ there is some wiggling here where I plan to go to the Franz Josef glacier and then across to Christchurch on the TranzAlpine scenic train }

27/9 leave Christchurch 2000 arrive Auckland 2120

28/9 leave Auckland 2005 arrive Vancouver 1405 (yes, six hours before I left - International Date Line)

3/10 leave Vancouver 0900 arrive Montreal 1648

9/10 leave Montreal 1950 change in Keflavik,Iceland and get to Stansted 1615 10/10

I have a self-image as the kind of person who always has a book on the go and who reads at a ridiculous rate - I told Goodreads '52 a year' and thought that wouldn't be difficult.

I just finished number 19, which was Aliette de Bodard's _House of Binding Thorns_, featuring the cold shabby struggle between a Paris of fallen angels and a Seine of displaced Vietnamese dragons; this was one where I would read a chapter at the end of the day and drift off to sleep. It's the first book I finished in July. It's good, if you read _House of Shattered Wings_ you'll like it, it may be the only fantasy I've read with one of the protagonists pregnant.

It may simply be that I'm not on as many trains by myself; I don't think the lack of novel-reading coincides with having an Economist subscription, though that has meant my Sunday afternoons include two hours of sitting in a comfy chair with an ever-refilled mug of hot water reading quite dense reporting.

Trying some non-fiction (_The Box_, on Kindle, about how container shipping changed the world, _Sabres of Paradise_, in a physical hardback, about the Russian conquest of the Caucasus) next. It is sad that I am wary of reading _Sabres of Paradise_ on public transport because it is a thick black book with Arabic letters in gold on the front.