Odds and ends

Following my notice at reference 1 in the middle of last year, I have noticed a slow increase in the allotment activity mentioned there, albeit from a very low base. Now culminating in a proposal to spend £20,000 on a deer proof fence, with, I think, the idea being that the £20,000 and the ongoing maintenance are recovered from the residents of Noble Park, the people for whom the allotments were provided in the first place.

A rival proposal is to plant a hawthorn hedge - although I suspect it would take a good deal of barbed wire to make such a thing deer proof. And a good deal more maintenance than the sort of agricultural style fence illustrated above.

We await developments - with the thought that you can buy an awful lot of cabbages from Sainsbury's for £20,000 - cabbages which come without the earth or livestock usual with allotment efforts. My own deer fencing efforts, back in 2007, are documented at reference 2.

While on the more domestic front we had a magpie incident this afternoon. Two magpies, presumably male, were having a fight in the plum tree outside the study window, while a third magpie, presumably female, was strolling about on the lawn below, all nonchalant, affecting not to have a care in the world. Or perhaps I was, in the jargon of shrinks, projecting.

On a completely different tack, the advertisements popping up on my computers - presumably the work of google - have changed tone recently. On the strength of an enquiry to Couchbase about their database for the mobile millennium, advertisements for their products are popping up all over the place. At least they were until I made a rather more serious enquiry about a product called Matlab - which has resulted in the Couchbase advertisements being replaced by Matlab advertisements. See reference 3.

I ought to say that I have loaded Matlab on a trial basis - and very interesting it is too. Completely different from the sort of packages which I have used in the past. Perhaps the idea of the advertisements is to propel me, sometime before the trial expires in 28 days time (and counting) to credit card action.

Interestingly, I seem to be able to buy the product for personal use for around a twentieth of what it would cost an employer or an institution. I suppose the idea is that all us personals more or less free load in the expectation that we will turn up at work at some point and demand proper copies there. I don't think that Microsoft prices work like this - at least not to this extent.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/chamonix.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=chicken+wire+deer.

Reference 3: http://uk.mathworks.com/.