Rick's b.log - entry 2024/06/17

The end of an era 1

While on break, I watched on the security camera the post person (not the same one, the lazy one retired about a decade ago) deliver the paper. And I thought, since I put the deadline of 4th July, I have actually come home and flicked through one. I would like to read the paper, sure, but I don't have time and coming home from speaking and interacting in French, pretty much the only thing I want to do is put on some symphonic metal and write rubbish like this. Oh, and lots of tea, but you knew that part already. ☺

So I decided, enough was enough. €35 a month is a lot of money to be essentially throwing away. So I logged in and called up the account management and went through the process of unsubscribing. It'll take a week or two to be processed and then... no daily post van.

The end of an era 2

http://heyrick.eu/* did not automatically redirect to https://heyrick.eu/*. The blog code handled this by redirecting itself unless you gave a specific blog article link. This was done in order to keep the non-SSL version of the site accessible for times when one comes across a public WiFi access point that tries to man-in-the-middle the user with a fake certificate.
However, it's been a few years since then. Hopefully such things are few and far between these days.

So, then, I have made the change that as of now, accessing HeyRick via http will quietly redirect to https, with a 301 redirect. There will be no more http:// here.

If you have any links or bookmarks to this site, please update them. But if you can't be bothered it will silently work anyway. Like how it's s'posed to.

Conundrum

Yes, bloody cat eats better than I do, doesn't she? Tonight she's having cod and I'm brewing up some farfalle (bow tie pasta).

But, hang on... why the hell are we feeding cats trout (4%) with spinach (0.3% dried equal to 4%)?
Why don't we have cat food containing mouse? Cat food containing wall lizard? Cat food containing chicken (as a substitute for sparrows, wrens, swallows, etc)?

Some philosphical existential sci-fi questions

• If you had the means to invent a time machine, but it could only be used once (for a round trip, you come back), would you go to the past or to the future?
  • Is there a specific event you would go to see?
  • If it was a one-way trip (no coming back), would this change your destination?
  • What if the past was fixed and you couldn't actually affect it?

• If an alien spaceship landed in your back garden and said that they were here to claim the earth as theirs, would you side with them or with humanity?
  • What if the entire spaceship was about the size of a cucumber?

• If you had a machine that could extract your soul/spirit from your body in order to make you a ghost for a short period of time, would you use it?
  • What if it was a one-way process?
  • What if you could go back into your body, but so could any other ghost that gets there first?

• Would you want to know the day and time of your death?
  • If so, would you want to know the method?
  • Even if it was immutable?

• Why are you reading this now?

Your comments:

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Gavin Wraith, 17th June 2024, 23:36

Good questions. Google "Flirgleflip" for the first.

A tree-dwelling mammal, 20th June 2024, 13:18

Surely redirecting HTTP to HTTPS should be the server's job? Not your PHP script?    For Apache, inside the <VirtualHost> container for the non-SSL version of the site, insert the following:    RewriteEngine On  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/.well-known/(.*)  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off  RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}    On my setup this goes just before the closing </VirtualHost> tag.    The second line ensures you don't redirect any requests to the .well-known directory - if you forget this one everything will go titsup.com when the SSL certificate tries to auto-renew!

SteveP, 20th June 2024, 20:14

Hmmm.  Why don't we have cat food containing mouse? Cat food containing wall lizard? Cat food containing chicken (as a substitute for sparrows, wrens, swallows, etc)?     Ignore the idea of "baby bird flavour" at your peril.    Local consumption suggests that 'rabbit flavour' does not cut it, rabbit needs to be 100% content, fresh and uncooked.

Rick, 20th June 2024, 20:41

Nou was like that. He'd come home looking a bit battered and be carrying a large piece of rabbit leg in his mouth. Looked like a small "leg of lamb".    Anna? Well, she likes torturing but otherwise she's too lazy. A few days ago I saw her expertly catch a big fat wall lizard, punch it on the head several times, and when it "played dead" she got bored and walked away. Ummm...

C Ferris, 21st June 2024, 18:31

Did see a old cat tapped on the head by a chicken - and driven of it's food - the chicken seemed to some force.

Rick, 21st June 2024, 19:04

Smart cats, and humans, avoid chickens. Their beaks are a remarkably effective weapon and they know it. They'd be worse than a Canadian goose if they were larger.

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