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. November 2007 .
01/11/07 02:12 [Thursday]
I have got up now after a period of light sleep with tension in my legs - continuing now - indicating to me that a stimulant drug is having effect. Yesterday while out and about - we went to Brierley Hill to see the Social Workers and from there on to Birmingham - I felt the effect of a stimulant drug, in particular in slightly excited chatteriness I exhibited, starting seemingly after drinking tea at a café in Brierley Hill which we went into before seeing the Social Workers by Dawn’s choice, never having been in this one before. I do not like the effects this morning of this stimulant drug: I do not like the unnatural feeling of bodily haste including seemingly a too-excited heart (whether or not my heart rate is ascertainably elevated). Also my throat feels sore which is unpleasant. Saying that causes me to wonder whether the stimulant drug was in fact - is in fact - contained in Halls mentholated sweets - again something Dawn chose - bought from Boots in Brierley Hill and the first eaten immediately after leaving the café in question, before the stimulant effects began to show.
This Windows installation on C: on the Amilo Pro was made last night immediately before going to bed and I was literally falling asleep - dozing in snatches that is - as I was performing the installation. I don’t see that I can have done it in a mistaken way however. I used a copy of the original Windows Professional install CD and then the Drivers & Utilities DVD for the Express desk-update and for the Hotfixes. It shows signs of being flawed: for example a false ClickLock effect was produced almost immediately I opened a My Documents window, in which the window moved with the mouse pointer even after drag-and-drop was disengaged by releasing the left mouse button (immediately prior to writing this, probably between 2.05 am and 2.10 am). Then there was a failure in Notepad (at the end of the preceding paragraph) in which the cursor stopped a few characters before the end of the then document and the usual methods of moving it to the end - eg CTRL-FN-PGDN (the usual method on this Amilo Pro, corresponding to CTRL-END on most keyboards) and simply clicking to bottom-right - didn’t work. As the same problem occurred at one stage yesterday, this morning without any delay eg for further investigation I took the step which had been successful then, of closing the Notepad document and re-opening it. I am almost willing to believe this flaw is natural to Notepad, since in my experience saving the document by CTRL-S never usually leaves the cursor at the end of the document (but the problem alluded to is a slightly worse variation of that problem). There are I find strange and undesirable behaviours natural to Notepad and WordPad as supplied by Microsoft - even if strictly speaking they are not flaws and those with experience of them can fairly easily circumvent them - such as the word-wrapping problem in Notepad I have previously been into in my diary. My presumption is that the origin of that difficult behaviour - whereby editing a document in the middle leaves an undesirable word-wrapping effect because of the failure to revise the word-wrapping of the paragraph edited (but this seems not always to apply if it is the last paragraph of the document being edited) - lies in the Notepad exe having been written in years gone by when computers were slower and revising the word-wrapping in the middle of a document - entailing shifting text on the screen after the editing point - would have caused undue delay. The reason Notepad has never since been rewritten is that it has been superseded by other software usable on newer computers and I suppose the old Notepad is something users are used to and which can still be used without causing undue delay on old slow computers. (On the other hand these reasons cannot explain why saving the document with CTRL-S still sometimes leaves the cursor moved from where it was and in particular not always at the end of the document if that’s where it was.) In WordPad I am less clear about anomalous effects I have found difficult, but they seemed to centre round the insertion at the end of the document always of an extra empty ‘paragraph’ of font-size 8.5pt. (Similarly HTML documents produced by Word always have an empty - or otherwise empty - extra paragraph at the end consisting simply of the character represented in HTML by . And to go on about Word: c&p-ing relative links is fraught with difficulty, certainly if one tries to paste the link in a document in a different folder from the original; also the relationship between the size of an image in pixels and the size in physical units such as centimetres seems inconsistent - I know it is bound to vary from device to device according to resolution in dpi - but in particular there is no option in Word 2007 for specifying sizes in pixels and sometimes Word incomprehensibly resizes an image inserted into a document.)
01/11/07 03:15
I was getting bogged down there in thinking about consistency - that is, in particular, inconsistencies - in standard Microsoft software. Happily a physical need - to go to the toilet - has interrupted and hopefully terminated that sequence of thoughts.
Thinking that my getting bogged down in such a not-very-interesting topic (to think about which people are paid by Microsoft) may well be a consequence of the drugs in my system, and that this exemplifies the way drugs distort my freedom to think about what otherwise I would be thinking about and getting great pleasure from the thinking, I find myself asking again why it is I am given drugs that is they are put in my way in a manner so onerous to evade and in statistical terms never likely to be evaded with 100% success. It seems that over the years I was medicated with antischizophrenic injections, plus other drugs such as stimulants in an Experimental context (which I never originally consented to: but there is some debate over the degree to which schizophrenics’ consent to experimentation is needed and how their seeming consent or otherwise is to be interpreted, and I was regarded as schizophrenic), the belief of the Experimenters fundamentally was that I was schizophrenic and should be given basically antischizophrenic drugs on the general presumption which used to obtain - and may still widely obtain - that antischizophrenic drugs are good for schizophrenics, so good in fact that there is nothing unethical in compelling or tricking the patient into taking them. I have toyed with theories such as that drugs - in particular those in our tapwater which caused me such unpleasure the other day on our return from the park home - are provided nowadays mainly for their effect on Dawn. It seems very likely that my views and explanations on the effects of drugs relevant to schizophrenia - that is, antischizophrenic drugs and stimulant drugs related to amphetamine - are found of use. But fundamentally I suppose I must still be regarded as schizophrenic to a degree that makes it not unethical to trick me into taking drugs - although possibly (and hopefully, in the meaning given nowadays to the word ‘hopefully’) unnatural compulsion (and I regard my compulsion in the autumn of 2004 and the autumn of 2005 as unnatural - that is contrary to natural justice - and improper) is no longer on the cards.
I have to say writing this in Notepad is an annoyance because of the word-wrapping difficulty. What I had been about was trying to set up a flawless system on the Amilo Pro in which I could write my stuff without difficulties like this word-wrapping difficulty and the touchpad difficulty which unpredictably occurs on the Amilo Pro if much software is installed. All I need basically is a word-processor which doesn’t have glaring flaws and is relatively easy to use (but Word is seductive in the range of its facilities, including output in HTML which my own Rich Text Editor is not capable of - as yet - and insertion of unusual characters such as Greek characters, and insertion of images; also even WordPad will do things my Rich Text Editor will not do - as yet - such as formatting paragraphs with indentation or changed font-size, etc). I did get Word Perfect with the Medion, but the problem with that as far as I remember was that the HTML output was overly simple (as regards non-standard fonts, for example) and also it couldn’t cope with the .pwi format files produced by my handheld devices; however it might be worth considering Word Perfect and writing my own means of editing the HTML output (along the lines of the prog I already have which ‘verifies’ the HTML of my website pages).
01/11/07 03:50
I should mention that I have inserted my Boots SD-card reader and it has been recognised as a new device and installed. This after having to hunt around to find it since I emptied my shoulder bag yesterday to get at something.
01/11/07 03:52
The problem recurred there of the cursor in Notepad (which I am continuing to use) fixing itself somewhat before the end of the text and seeming incapable of being moved to the end. So I closed the document and re-opened it.
01/11/07 03:59
The question recurs to my mind now which I asked myself yesterday morning in the café in Brierley Hill when interrupted by Dawn objecting to my setting down my thoughts there in words on the handheld device (my reaction of frustration made unpleasant - certainly for myself - by residual effects of drugs I took in the previous day): why do I write anything down at all; and, come to that, why do I - or anyone - think thoughts at all: where do the thoughts come from and why and under what circumstances is interruption of them and distraction from them unpleasant? - especially given that a few minutes later yesterday morning my initial reaction of frustration had become calm, so had it been necessary, or of any use, at all?
The answer to many such questions of course is that my problems - my unpleasure and the unpleasant frustration driving the questions - originated out of being given mind-altering drugs, the day before yesterday. On the other hand it seems likely that genuine schizophrenics have similar unpleasant experiences without drugs, these unpleasant mental experiences being founded in pressure to think to sort out questions thrown up by perceptual and pre-processing processes but without sufficient expertise - ‘processing capacity’ - to resolve the questions pressing.
The answer to the question, what is the point of frustration? - frustration due to distraction from processing to resolve questions or frustration due to impediments in the way of achievement of ends in the real world - is that evolution has found that the frustration reaction is useful in causing extra effort to be put in - extra vigour - if some enterprise seems on the verge of success, so that the loss from non-achievement after already putting in effort to a point very near a successful end would be great compared to giving up the enterprise at an earlier stage not so close to what is anticipated as a successful end.
The answer to the question, why do people think? is one we already know, that is that given idle time, doing thought-experiments lays down experience - not from taking action in the real world but from considering the consistency of and trying to resolve inconsistencies in one’s understanding of the world, and from laying specific plans for action in the real world - which should be of use in the real world at a future not-so-idle time. Instead of thinking things out for oneself (especially when one is younger and building up ways of thinking for oneself) reading or otherwise gleaning things other people have thought out may similarly be a profitable activity, where ‘profitable’ is to be understood in the sense which evolution gives, that is that those who ‘profit’ profit by persisting longer and their genes - causing their descendants to behave similarly or to be similar in other regards (although with some variation, which again is something almost inhering in the meaning of evolution in that things which do not change - that is do not evolve - tend not to persist) persisting longer.
01/11/07 04:31
Here’s a thing sometimes interesting to think about: given that some rocks on Earth have persisted for hundreds of millions of years, but a human being persists for usually less than a hundred years, is it not better to be a rock? Email your answers to Santa (bit of a clang association there - answer-Santa - because I’m getting tired of thinking and not doing what I’m ‘supposed’ to be doing, which is sort out the Amilo Pro).
I will just say that one major reason for writing down one’s thoughts is with a view to communicating them, and the pleasure in communicating is often to envisage - with more or less actual observational evidence - pleasure other people will derive from the communication. Thus envisaging the stuff above on my website I entertain myself with the idea that some readers may derive pleasurable interest. This entertainment I get is crushed - has been crushed in recent days when I have deleted some stuff - by ASM; certainly it is so in myself. It is the same entertainment I get, really, from explaining stuff to kids in a way I think they will find interesting and ‘profitable’ in the sense above. I suppose the basic evolutionary reason is that one individual if it is relatively costless to himself is - on average, or ‘hopefully’ - assisting others of the species and especially others like himself - that is (on average) with a genetic make-up like his own - to persist longer.
01/11/07 05:05
I suppose - in respect of the drugging I suffered over decades - I must take a view like this: psychiatrists do not believe that schizophrenia can be artificially created - and certainly not by antischizophrenic drugs - and probably that schizophrenia cannot fundamentally be cured, but that antischizophrenic drugs ameliorate the symptoms. They may take the view that each individual has an unchangeable underlying personality (like a ‘soul’) and drugs even the most invasive mind-altering drugs simply put interference between the ‘soul’ and the physical universe. Thus if antischizophrenic drugs make the sufferer lethargic then nevertheless if his ‘soul’ took a sufficiently vigorous determination, the lethargy could be set aside. Likewise any other effect - such as if drugs make it difficult to concentrate - is really just a sort of ‘side-effect’ which by determination could be overcome. Statistics on how many patients in fact set aside their lethargy and failure to concentrate - especially on high dosages - are not taken much account of, because thinking like Sartre that even under torture one is free to take whatever action one chooses, psychiatrists perhaps take the view that if only the patients were more effective individuals they would do better. I myself know this to be nonsense, but on the other hand many people - never themselves given these drugs, and mostly never coming into contact with anyone who has been - must in their human nature find it difficult to grasp the fact that personality - a person’s very motivations, interests and outlook - may in fact be altered whatever the official view is by antischizophrenic drugs (and by drugs like amphetamine), and that suppositions about a ‘soul’ are unhelpful. Ordinarily one would say - I myself would say - that such natural human misconceptions (as that there is something like a ‘soul’) are just mistakes which most people make and which have thus far done them no harm in evolutionary terms, that is they have persisted thus far in their mistake. Unfortunately I have found from personal experience that such mistaken views in the minds of psychiatric practitioners have - in exactly a parallel to witch-hunters in earlier times - led to suffering and wasted lives, for myself certainly - decades out of my life - but presumably also for other people ‘treated’ to these drugs. The reasons I have thought out quite thoroughly - that is that from people given such drugs complaints get suppressed and also the communications of lunatics are not understood and easily ignored as lunatic; relatives of lunatics tend to be unassertive; no one outside the psychiatric profession cares much about lunacy and underfunding leads to low-quality psychiatric staff; no one has thought about the failings of the Tribunal system which politicians probably regard as a good safeguard; and as I say it is in human nature to believe that each individual has some unchangeable essence which makes him responsible for his own choices, even (as Sartre would have it) under torture - but still it is most unfortunate that mostly incompetent people with mistaken but rigidly held views are empowered without a sufficient safeguard to force sufferers to be detained and injected or otherwise compelled to take drugs which have effects which are entirely misunderstood.
01/11/07 05:48
I have copied the contents of the two versions of the Blueyonder install disc as folders to D:. Now trying to save the information on D: from my investigation into these install discs yesterday to CD using the CD-writing Wizard within the C: Windows, terminal - that is insuperable - problems are encountered. My guess would be that putting the copy Blueyonder CD in the drive and it getting so far in Autorunning has corrupted the system on C:. I shall try to copy by logging onto D: and if that fails I shall reinstall C: again.
01/11/07 06:03
I have installed Paragon HDM on C: to try to use it to make D: show up as bootable. The All Programs arrow in the Start Menu says ‘New Programs Installed’ and Paragon has been put at the bottom of the list of All Programs (ie not sorted into the alphabetical sequence). I give this information for comparison with yesterday morning when some newly installed program - probably it was Blueyonder - did not show up as ‘New Programs Installed’.
01/11/07 06:08
Within five minutes of eating a slice of Mr Kipling Manor House cake bought reduced-price yesterday by Dawn from Tesco Metro in New Street Birmingham I feel the effects of drugs in hotness of the head. Yesterday on the train home after eating several items including a slice of this cake, I nodded off. Last night as I was reinstalling the C: Windows on this Amilo Pro I was as I said so sleepy I kept dozing off and eventually had to go to bed. My guess would be that as well as a sleeping medication the cake also contains the stimulant causing me distress when I woke up this morning.
01/11/07 06:38
I have used Paragon to make logical partition D: (corresponding to partition2) primary. This was to the end of making it active in case this should cause Windows on it to show up as bootable. However as yet I have not set it active. The operation to make it primary took about half a minute and every second or so the system hard disc light showed activity so I conjecture most sectors on the partition were written to that is altered in some way.
Looking at Paragon Software in Program Files, the Paragon software seems incomplete and I wouldn’t be surprised if as I suspected originally this version in a mag was specially adapted for the Authorities and foisted on me.
14:39. [Notes made while on a shopping outing to Birmingham.] Physical stimulant today - can’t really understand why. Too active in physical reality, that is too willing to go along with Dawn without really even the pleasure of getting stuff I myself have decided on (which would consist of achievement emotion on ticking it off the list). Try to slow down - physically overactive to detriment of my feet but sensible enough to know it would be better to slow down - but on sitting in café little interest in either passers-by or my own thoughts due to distraction of physical environment exacerbated by stimulant effect on sensory apparatus.
Drugs beginning to wear off now - after effects on bowels reveal not very pleasant public toilets in Brierley Hill - because I am able to - that is I am finding I am beginning to - envisage return home and quiet ‘intellectual’ pleasures. Yesterday presumably same physically stimulant drug but initially causing mental frustration/confusion because of concurrent action of ASM. Later - at BB’s in the Pallasades Birmingham - suspicion of coffee; also slight feeling of nausea and unnatural hunger. Yesterday I felt markedly worse: today simply tired (especially feet) due to unnaturally exaggerated effort with insufficient rest, and regretful (rather than resentful) at wasted opportunity to get enjoyable stuff done (I haven’t even got CD-Rs which I could do with).
01/11/07 20:38
What I have now done is install Windows on C:, and then on the second partition known in this instance for some reason as E:, from the install CD supplied with the Amilo Pro including KB884575 and KB885894 from the AddOn folder which appeared on C: (and E: in that case) but not continuing with the other Hotfixes or driver installs on the Drivers & Utilities DVD. Now I have installed Paragon HDM from files and folders copied from a software DVD I prepared (called Software2 and these particular files and folders deriving originally from the mag last August or so carrying the free CD with Paragon HDM on it) and take note the Paragon folder appears in the alphabetical sequence of All Programs (but the bubble ‘New Programs Installed’ did not appear despite ‘Highlight newly installed programs’ being checked in Customize Start Menu).
I now propose to recover partition2 (which was then known as D:) from the Paragon files saved this morning to DVD and after that try to save the copies of the two versions of the Blueyonder CD which should then reappear on E:.
01/11/07 21:52
This has worked, so far, as intended: that is E: has been recreated (from what was D:) including the two versions of the Blueyonder installer and notes I have made today and later on yesterday. I shall now try to write these files and folders to a CD using the hopefully unflawed CD-writing Wizard in the presently constituted C: (not having inserted any dodgy Autorunnable discs or otherwise run any dodgy software within C:).
01/11/07 22:07
Much of what I have been doing on the computer today has been falsely premissed. The true reason the files and folders wouldn’t all copy or save to CD was the old bugbear, pathlength. Having shortened the name of the containing folder they will now all copy. Furthermore I may even be mistaken in thinking the two versions of the Blueyonder installer are different: it may be that the different behaviour on double-clicking Workflow.exe was consequent on once having run Workflow.exe changing its behaviour, that is of Workflow.exe subsequently fired in either folder, these possibly I now think being identical.
I point out that if my mind were in a different condition - either of lunacy or due to mind-altering drugs - I might well feel frustrated at having thus (as it might be seen) wasted my efforts. This reaction would be related to having insufficient processing capacity - in effect, here, patience to cope with the ‘disappointment’ and nonetheless pursue the original enquiry without throwing in the towel - to follow through to a conclusion the track leading (hopefully eventually) to the answer to the original puzzle.
As things stand I do not feel frustrated nor genuinely disappointed, because I have learnt at least the mistake I was making in presuming the reason why the files and folders wouldn’t copy, and even the knowledge now that the two versions of the Blueyonder installer may well not be different is information (better - that is with more certainty - arrived at by physically comparing the two CD images byte by byte with a VB prog) pointing the way to what are left as possible solutions to the original puzzle.
So to remind myself what the original puzzle or problem was (and I point out that another part of having processing capacity to cope with the processing requirement thrown up by the original problem is to have a satisfactory overview of the plan of investigation so that I can easily now backtrack): the original problem was things going wrong on the Amilo Pro making it difficult to use for purposes I need - or come close to needing - it for, and which I paid for it to be able to do when I bought it. The major one of these things going wrong recently has been the touchpad behaviour, making using word-processor software difficult (and in particular MS Word). I can’t actually think of any other difficulty I have had, now I have - it seems likely - cleared up the doubt about copying files and folders and saving to CD and DVD. Of course it is a ‘problem’ to have to do all this reinstalling, but it is a spin-off of the difficulty with the touchpad.
The other day I was suspicious of the version of Word sold with this computer by Comet Merry Hill in February, because the touchpad difficulty cropped up when I had done nothing seemingly dodgy but install MS Office (Home and Student edition 2007). Also it is mildly suspicious that this software had to be fetched out of a safe the evening I purchased the computer, and rather more suspicious that some fonts - eg Rockwell - are missing.
I have to say though that if this is true - that difficulty with my computer is limited to absence of certain fonts (and that may be natural to this version of Word) and strange behaviour of the touchpad, it seems unlikely that my presumptions of earlier today - presumptions which continue to recur to me based on the stealing of the E-machines hard drive in August 2005, otherwise unaccountable, - about the Authorities’ desire to steal information, may be misplaced. If the touchpad behaviour can be laid at the door of deliberate action by the Authorities it can surely only be regarded as spoiling action like that of a hacker, rather than action to any specific end like that of identity theft.
I must remark that having not installed the additional Hotfixes (or driver software) from the Drivers & Utilities DVD, no touchpad problem has occurred and no difficult behaviour of Notepad such as I mentioned this morning when the cursor got stuck towards the end of the document but could not be shifted actually to the end.
02/11/07 04:07 [Friday]
I have just woken up - say ten minutes ago - with a queasy stomach such that I needed to go immediately to the toilet to empty my bowels (mainly of wind) and, since, have taken a measure of Milk of Magnesia. I have some symptoms due to a stimulant drug although much less than yesterday morning when I woke up. The stimulant drug in my system this morning I presume originated on our outing yesterday as I felt effects while we were out (I recall making notes on my handheld device in Brierley Hill, say mid-afternoon [in fact two days before, on Wednesday 31 October 2007]). Strangely enough, these stimulant drugs in my metabolism the past day or two seem not to have had much effect of causing me to need to pass water frequently, whereas at the park home, say earlier this week or last week, although I can’t say I detected much effect of drugs and took the view I was relatively drug-free, I did find myself getting up several times most nights to pass water.
I have made myself a cup of coffee using a big bottle of water I have been using for a number of days now, since the first full day we were back in Kingswinford in fact, which I suppose was Tuesday.
In this C: Windows on the Amilo Pro there have still been no strange unwanted difficulties, eg in Notepad with mistaken selection of swathes of text or with the cursor getting stuck not quite at the end of the document. Because the partition2 reinstated yesterday had a Windows installation which was found some days ago to be flawed, I shall now reconstitute D: from the Windows Professional install CD which came with the Amilo Pro, and then think about backing up the entire system hard disc either in one or as two separate partition backups. I can’t say I feel I am missing much by the drivers in fsc.tmp (from the Drivers & Utilities DVD) not being present (although presumably without the wireless LAN driver wireless will not work).
02/11/07 05:13
I have now set up Windows Professional as indicated above on what has now through the installation process become known as D:. Installing D: has not altered the availability on booting of the C: installation Windows (although the Windows on D: replacing the former “Microsoft Windows XP Professional on E:” became known as “Microsoft Windows XP Professional” in the boot list (ie in boot.ini) and I have renamed it to “Microsoft Windows XP Professional on D:”).
The D: installation Windows has been left ‘as it comes’ except for changing boot.ini and changing the picture for the Computer administrator account Colin.
The C: installation Windows was altered yesterday in a number of ways (from ‘as it comes’), viz by making the contents of the system folder Program Files visible, and by installing the Paragon software including HDM and installing Smartision Screencopy (Paragon appeared in the All Programs list in the alphabetical sequence but Smartision - actually ‘smartision’ uncapitalised - appeared at the bottom out of sequence). The only flaw I have noticed in the C: Windows (and I must say I can’t understand why it should occur) was the failure of the CD-writing Wizard within Windows to recognise a CD-R in the drive which was recognised and used without difficulty by Paragon Easy CD/DVD Recorder. I shall now check this out again by trying to save to a CD using the CD-writing Wizard built in.
02/11/07 05:34
The CD-writing got almost to the end, then ‘there was an error in the writing process’ (see screenshot Error in CD-writing --2007-11-02--05-33-41 [no longer to be found]). (I note that within C: partition2 is still known as E:. This could be altered I think using Paragon HDM.)
Trying to open the CD written in what is called D: (the optical drive) within this C: installation shows up not a recordable CD but seemingly a blank CD-ROM. This CD-writing problem is something which in the original installation as bought in February 2007 affected writing to CD by Nero but not (I think) by the CD-writing Wizard built-in to Windows.
Speaking of flaws in the original installation, the usual icons for JPG files are being shown in this installation today without a problem.
02/11/07 05:46
At the same time as I have been going through the above, I have been looking at leaflets to do with the Mental Capacity Act 2005 which I picked up yesterday at the Benefits Advice Shop in Dudley, where we went to make an appointment for Dawn for help with applying (anew) for DLA for her. Things look quite rosy based on this new Act which is coming into full effect this [last] month (October 2007) it seems. However, it is not possible to make an ‘advance decision’ to decline treatment under the Mental Health Act. On the other hand, things the individual whose capacity is in question has written down in advance (that is when clearly still competent) should have a big influence on decisions taken on his behalf if it comes to it (and what I am thinking is stuff on my website I have ‘written down’ and several if not many people will be aware of what I have ‘written down’ as well as the fact of its having been ‘written down’ making a permanent record of it). Furthermore, regarding research this booklet says ‘The research must not continue if the person [the guinea-pig] shows signs of not wanting to be involved’; and to clarify my attitude, I would not voluntarily take any dopamine-blocking agent for any reason including being paid a vast amount of money; I would take it if I felt threatened by the possibility that physical force would be used to administer it as it has been in my past (or if physical force actually was used). As regards other things which have been done in the course of The Experiment (for example people are allowed ‘to legally carry out certain actions to do with your care or treatment’ if you lack capacity, including ‘going into someone’s home without their permission to clean it for them’: although our home was not entered for the purpose of cleaning - in August 2005 when the E-machines hard drive was stolen - and I presume nowadays I - and Dawn - are not assessed as lacking capacity) I am less troubled by them (including illicit entry, because things which have been done by illicit entrants, such as stealing information and introducing flawed replacement software discs which in the past I have found problematic, I have found these things problematic only because of drugs affecting me, eg increasing my tendency to frustration) although I must say I think it silly to take advantage (eg by illicit entry) without paying us. ‘Hypnosis’ is trickier than illicit entry, and certainly ‘hypnosis’ with drugs which render me overly susceptible to it - antischizophrenic drugs, basically, which make it more difficult for me to think for myself and more likely to follow ‘hypnotic’ advice ‘unthinkingly’ - is unacceptable. I can’t say I ever benefit from being ‘hypnotised’ (for example in the past it might have been thought expert advice offered through that means might have been of help to me, but it has never been so because I have not understood the context well enough when words of advice have been offered while I have been asleep, to benefit as I might if offered similar advice while awake and especially if I myself had sought such advice out of a preceding context which I understood well) but occasionally being asked questions or even invited to be at certain places at certain times might be OK (for payment, otherwise ‘what’s in it for me?’).
Failure to understand is without doubt a major factor in paranoia and other conditions related to anxiety. This is why doctors are exhorted to keep the patient informed of procedures envisaged and underweigh (and I have to say the failure of psychiatric staff including Armond and especially when I have been seized and compelled, to explain what was happening, was one cause why I believed they were deliberately trying to induce paranoia in me). When I was ‘hypnotised’ to read our Virgin Media email (sometime in August 2007 at the park home), apparently with a view to getting a good result out of our discontinuation of the Virgin Media phoneline and the silly way I was treated by purportedly a Virgin Media adviser - a woman who sounded as if from the Indian sub-Continent - when she told me I must give 30 days’ notice (I spoke to her on Saturday 9 June 2007 I believe), because I had not decided myself to do so out of a preceding context which I understood - that is I didn’t really understand why I was looking at our email, and realised I had been ‘hypnotised’ - my first presumption was that the failure that morning of the Virgin Media email service was part and parcel of the reason for the ‘hypnosis’, and in fact that the only reason for it was to investigate my possible reaction of frustration. Therefore I did not trouble to pursue the matter of looking at our emails until a month or two later I stumbled on them.
02/11/07 07:35
What I am now going to do - having made slight adjustments to the partition2 installation (for example making the contents of the system disc E: - as it is known within the partition2 installation - visible) - is make a Paragon backup of partition2, the idea being to speed up any restitution of partition2 which may need to be done and provide another copy of the partition2 installation in case of loss, destruction or substitution with a faulty version.
02/11/07 07:39
A swathe of text within this Notepad document has just been mistakenly selected. I ask myself therefore if this problem has its origins not in false software but in perhaps oversensitivity of the hardware of the touchpad. What may have happened is that a double-click due to some tremor in my hand detected oversensitively had the effect of selecting a word within the document: I cannot swear that the ‘swathe of text’ was more than one word. Such oversensitivity of the touchpad may be adjustable for all I know; in any case the problem could be solved by using a separate mouse, perhaps a wireless mouse. Obviously hardware, especially as it gets older and more worn, is liable to malfunction of this sort, and my concern may be exaggerated due to patently faulty mouse pointer behaviour in the not-so-distant past (when, for example, scroll-bars behaved entirely wrongly, so wrongly that I was caused a lot of difficulty). It seems certain the latter quite recent gross malfunction was founded in the Synaptics pointing device software, which perhaps it would be better not to install. The flawed selection a few days ago within Word of a swathe of text when nothing but the system (but including the Synaptics software) and Word had been installed (I think) may have resulted from flawed Synaptics software - possibly a deliberately supplied flawed version, as part of The Experiment - interacting with a naturally developing oversensitivity of the touchpad hardware.
02/11/07 07:53
On the other hand, for no apparent reason the My Documents window in the C: installation has been resized. I can’t think of any natural reason why this might have happened. I’m not sure whether I can believe this might be a natural fault within Windows XP uncured by Microsoft - even though XP has now been out so long it has been superseded - and somehow the flaws within CD-writing and originally in the non-appearance of JPG icons likewise (depending perhaps on interaction with this particular hardware); and it’s true it is not a very great difficulty (the resizing of the My Documents window, anyway, although faulty CD-writing would be a significant problem for some users); but in my case because of what has happened in the past my fear is that parts of the system have been rewritten in a way not so thoroughly tested as a proper XP system and that more horrendous problems may develop later in consequence of the Authorities’ presumed interference. Even if the Authorities have not in fact distorted this system, this fear I have is a result of past interference - for sure - distorting my perception of probabilities (that is the likelihood of difficult faults appearing in my computer system).
02/11/07 08:09
Trying to judge probabilities impartially, I suppose the most likely origin of the flaw in the system - a flaw so problematic for some users (as regards CD-writing) that surely it could not have been missed by Microsoft - lies in the Paragon software or the Smartision software. As I have installed these on C: but not within partition2, I am entitled to hope the flaw has not cropped up in partition2, and that the flaw in touchpad behaviour need not affect my use of word-processor or similar software within partition2. I will therefore make a partition backup of partition2 as I indicated, but take note that the backup may be flawed if the Paragon software used to create it is.
The essence of what I am doing is treating partition2 as if it were a different computer. This solution isn’t quite as good as genuinely having a second computer, as software working within C: can of course get at partition2 as it could not get at an entirely separate device.
02/11/07 08:33
Reflecting on how an ‘ordinary user’ of a computer might cope with such a situation - the presumed flaw in software on a CD free with a mag, a thing which must sometimes happen whether or not it has in fact in this case - I suppose they would put up with problems such as pointer behaviour problems for so long, and depending on factors such as money available would eventually either replace the faulty computer or call in an expert fixer. (Of course to a greater or less degree they might try to fix the problem themselves, and my mother for example was a great one for trying to fix problems in the plumbing herself.) Calling in an expert fixer the result might follow - as it did in my own case with a seemingly faulty clutch on the first motor caravan I had - that money is spent on calling out the fixer time and again until eventually he declares himself baffled and unable to cure the fault. This will give rise in the user to a greater, or a less, degree of the paranoid feeling of having been taken advantage of (depending on the personality of the user and the facts of the case available to his perception). What I have to complain of is the fact that in the past I genuinely have been foisted rubbish equipment which encourages this unpleasant feeling for the future that I may again have been taken advantage of. (Part of this is the reasonable interpretation I give to my online gambling losses - and to my lack of employment income over the years - that they have been caused by drugs I have suffered, either by compulsion or by trickery, the consequences compounded up out of the extremely unpleasant effects I have suffered.)
In fact any extremely unpleasant experience in the past - my detention in autumn 2005 - gets associated (and would be - to a greater or less degree - in anyone it happened to, as for example disasters like Aberfan may have an effect on the belief in God of the people affected) with preceding events which are strongly suspected of being causally linked. Thus the flaws in my Toshiba laptop around April to July 2005 and the theft of the E-machines hard drive in August 2005 are linked in my mind inextricably with the detention I suffered that autumn, and a seeming repeat of such things - in any failure of my computer systems and any evidence of illicit entry - powerfully raises up (powerfully because of the degree of the unpleasantness) fear of a possible recurrence of the detention or something similar.
02/11/07 09:08
The Paragon software has explicitly failed (I have taken screenshots).
02/11/07 09:12
The reason for making a Paragon partition backup was to speed up restitution of the partition should it prove necessary. Producing partition2 as it is now didn’t take that much effort or time - always assuming the original install CD is not lost - so possibly risking having Paragon installed, causing such problems as seemingly it does, isn’t worth the rag. Therefore I will start again and not install Paragon. Without checking up on details of evidence from my diary, it may be that the PB EasyNote computer went wrong from the time Paragon was installed on it in the summer of 2006. Of course that doesn’t explain the strange behaviour of the PB recovery CDs in requiring a system serial number, a matter which ‘experts’ at Dixons/PC World/Currys (‘the Tech Guys’) were unable to help me with.
02/11/07 11:06
What I have done now - and although it has taken longer than it need because I have been doing other things and have not responded instantly to requests from the computer for user input - is reinstall C: from the Amilo Pro install CD, and copy back the files and folders saved on DVD (labelled Blueyonder installers + notes 31-Oct-07 to 02-Nov-07 (0700)) which DVD unfortunately had an Autorun file on it so executed the start file associated with Computer Shopper magazine July 2006 from whence the Paragon software originated (but the Paragon install itself didn’t run) then updated (when I realised I had saved a more recent version) by copying from the 4GB Verbatim USB memory device (which was recognised as a new device on insertion, with a specific name VBTM Store’n’go USB Device from which I conclude that although re-formatted, some information and possibly even driver software - suspect a week or two back - is retained in ROM on the device).
On D: prior to this, the CD-writing Wizard within Windows failed (which I didn’t really expect from the partition2 installation) which was how the Verbatim device came to be risked. I shall now try to write to CD using the CD-writing Wizard built-in to Windows on the newly constituted C:.
02/11/07 11:39
Having taken a break there to go to the toilet, I find the structures in my mind - what I was about and what I had in mind to say (either ‘to myself’ internally or in writing on the computer possibly to end up on my website) - have faded quite quickly, that is more quickly than is natural to me. One effect of this is to cause a feeling of urgency to write stuff down as if I don’t it may fade from my mind and be lost forever. The cause must be drugs in something I have taken by mouth this morning, and because earlier I found I was ‘losing concentration’ all of a sudden, I conclude likely the drugs are in water I have been using (from Somerfield) or bread from Somerfield (and possibly in several different foods and drinks) but in very low dosages.
Writing to CD failed even on the newly constituted C:, and I wonder if the CD-Rs I was using are faulty, in addition to the other flaws on the system earlier. Otherwise it’s possible the autorunning of the Computer Shopper exe caused a problem, or insertion of the Verbatim device (but this last unlikely as on D: earlier the CD-writing failure occurred without the Verbatim device ever having been used, on either partition since their reconstitution). It still seems most unlikely that the Amilo Pro system was flawed from the time of purchase.
I had this sort of difficulty with the Toshiba laptop I had at the start of 2006, that is once the optical drive had started going wrong it never got right again. I believe that it is possible for faults to occur which cause permanent damage to such optical drives, but one presumes only in older-version hardware. Indeed a number of such seemingly insuperable faults on that Toshiba preceded the purchase of the PB EasyNote in June 2006.
Nowadays I have available many more means of backing stuff up than the optical drive, including backing up to network drives provided via the internet for example by 123-reg (ie the 123-drive I was looking into recently) and if I had mechanisms for encryption (which I think I could develop myself) such means should be OK.
The most certain way of checking out the optical drive as it now stands is to re-format the entire hard drive of the Amilo Pro, then set up a new C: partition Windows and try to use the CD-writing Wizard within that, using new CD-Rs. In the meantime I can save stuff (including this diary note) on the Verbatim device.
02/11/07 15:47
We went down into Kingswinford on the bus, catching the 12.35-ish I believe, and leaving the Amilo Pro hard drive formatting (as a single partition). We returned on the 14.14-ish having been to the bank (who some weeks ago sent me a note saying they’d like to see me, and we have agreed to go in for a review of our finances next week), to Woolworths (where I bought fifty CD-Rs) and to Somerfield where Dawn was able to pay out of housekeeping I had been able to give her following an influx of funds into the bank as this is the start of a new month).
We have since had lunch including choc-ices which may have contained sleepifying drugs as both Dawn and I have been sleepy since. (Dawn however has again shown symptoms of amphetamine-stimulant, such as headache, so she may have taken in drugs by some other means the usual means in fact by which they get into her that is the tapwater.)
Having re-formatted the entire hard drive I then formatted a new partition1 of 60000MB and have installed Windows Professional on that (from the usual CD). The CD-writing Wizard now works unexceptionably, and whether it’s my imagination I can’t say but the keyboard seems more certain in its operation (as I remember I used to say of the Amilo Pro keyboard early on in my period of ownership, so I wonder if something has since gone wrong with the keyboard driver and the mouse driver which before I bought the Amilo Pro had gone wrong on the PB so that I particularly noticed the contrast). I have thought, actually, in comparison with the last installation I tested this morning (on which CD-writing failed) I have not installed KB884575 or KB885894 from the AddOn folder and it is faintly possible the origin of the flaw lay there, especially as the flaw before lunch occurred on both C: and D: (or E:) installations. I still think most likely it is the free Paragon software which is flawed.
I have copied the files and folders from the Verbatim USB device onto this new C: without any apparent difficulty. The device was recognised as before with its own name VBTM Store’n’go. I shall now try the CD-writing Wizard again, with these more data after having inserted the Verbatim device. Things are rosy, actually, - and even the sleepiness is nowhere near so invasive or noisome as ASM (in fact incomparably less so, especially as I am woken up when there is any need to process such as when we are out and about or if I find some enthusiasm eg in this computer work) - and I might soon be back on the internet (presuming now that the Blueyonder installer is after all innocent).
02/11/07 16:18
Take note too that the word-wrapping behaviour of Notepad - although still having the basic failing I have been on about - has improved as regards the final paragraph of the document. Also copying of files seems considerably faster.
02/11/07 16:30
Just as I was writing that about the final paragraph, the cursor got stuck towards the end of that paragraph and could not be shifted from there to the very end of the document (and now in writing the preceding few words the cursor unaccountably jumped to an earlier portion of this document, a thing which happened this morning just after the first-mentioned cursor flaw occurred similarly). I have just tried to use the CD-writing Wizard and that also now has failed. This is very strange and it was the case that there was some problem with CD-writing (I think though it was when I tried to use Nero) when I first bought the Amilo Pro. Recalling that CD-writing on the Medion was also flawed around January time (of this year) I conclude it may be a result of the activities of the Authorities - whether directed in fact at CD-writing or a spin-off of something else they attempted - but whether it was present in the Amilo Pro system from the outset or (perhaps) has come this time with the insertion of the Verbatim device (or even the copy Windows install CD might have been exchanged) I can’t be sure. (In that preceding sentence just written the flawed word-wrapping was to be seen in what was the final paragraph, previously not active in whatever was the final paragraph: as I said, in Notepad unflawed the word-wrapping failure is not to be seen in the final paragraph of a document.)
If I now set up Windows on partition2, presumably the CD-writing Wizard will work unless and until something is done which has been flawed by the Authorities (eg, presumably, inserting the Verbatim device and the driver software thereby getting installed in partition2).
02/11/07 21:54
The CD-writing Wizard did work OK on the Windows set up as envisaged on partition2, but then switching back to partition1 (C:) the Wizard then failed. The conclusion I come to - and it strikes me as very likely correct - is that only when there is only one bootable Windows partition on the system drive does everything worked without a flaw. (The failure of the CD-writing Wizard can be seen to be happening in advance of an explicit error message when the Minutes Remaining becomes - in fact starts off at - a very large value such as 99 Minutes.) I think it may well be the case that this ‘flaw’ is inherent in Windows XP and if it has not come to the attention of Microsoft it is because not many people try to install the same version of Windows on two partitions of one disc (of course Microsoft may be aware but not consider it enough of a genuine flaw to do anything about it). It probably explains a lot of the failures I have had since about the start of 2006 on my computers (when I first got the Vaio - towards the end of 2005 - with its three partitions one of which was used for recovery, I thought up this idea of installing a sort of reserve copy of Windows on a second partition in any computer).
This takes my mind back to the sequence of events through 2006, for example from the date of Wednesday 29 March 2006 when I was wakeful most of the night and thought I had been ‘hypnotised’ to do what I did do, which was try to sort out the problems on the Toshiba laptop I then had. I think there was some basis to this as the Authorities were trying to ‘help’ me correct flaws in that computer for example by putting a suggestion into the mouth of Dawn’s nephew that there were places replacement recovery discs might be obtained; and the reason I was wakeful that Wednesday night was stimulant drugs, given for the first time in a while for the same purpose I was given them in the years from about 1990, that is to counter on an Experimental basis ‘lethargy’ produced by the antischizophrenic medication it was felt essential for me to have. My mind has gone back before then, to 2004 when I became interested in people for the first time in decades as the antischizophrenic drugs I had been given wore off (but unfortunately were foisted on me again, at least from time to time, hidden in foods from about March of 2004). However as Dawn wants to go to bed I must leave these reminiscences for now.
02/11/07 22:27
Unfortunately that theory doesn’t work either, as the CD-writing Wizard has failed now on C: even though the system seems unaltered since the Wizard worked about 9.45 pm.
I suppose one solution is to save all documents (on a working system in the future) on a second partition and keep reinstalling a small C: partition if it goes too wrong (eg when CD-writing fails if CD-writing is of the essence). The flaw seems to be inherent in the install CD supplied with the Amilo Pro, although I have only actually tried a copy which it is possible to conceive has been substituted.
The weekend of 03 - 04 November 2007
03/11/07 05:28 [Saturday]
I have been up since just before 4 am. My conclusion is that side-effects such as having to get up several times in the night to urinate - this now once again an increasing problem - are due to sedative or tranquillising drugs whose effects I feel in sleepiness during the daytime - sometimes worse than other times - and in the morning having been up an hour or two, if I have in that hour or two taken something containing the drugs, failure of concentration and something like yawnative (although blanking might have been different and related to antischizophrenic drugs not merely sedative or tranquillising drugs). The reason I had a break from having to get up several times in the night to urinate for a day or two recently after returning from Nottinghamshire may have been that I was in that day or two avoiding drugs but looking back I suspect the reason was that I took in antischizophrenic drugs (which have the effect of reducing urinary throughput) presumably when I foolishly sampled our tapwater.
I have been investigating the problems on this Amilo Pro, seemingly inherent in the system from installation (although depending I suspect on particular components of the installation). The system is now in a flawed condition and this is evidenced by a failure two or three sentences ago (now edited out) in which the cursor unaccountably jumped back to an earlier point in the document so that my continued typing - till I noticed - was inserted there (I am using Notepad). The origin of the flaw I’m pretty sure is the AddOn folder. The reason CD-writing goes wrong is that the speed of writing is too fast (presumably for the hardware supplied). Yesterday evening I set the writing speed to 16x (instead of ‘Fastest’) but this morning I found it had reverted to ‘Fastest’. This doesn’t happen, I find by experimentation, merely because of a restart. Somehow the change occurred overnight and I did entertain suspicions of illicit entrants accessing the computer overnight but there are many arguments why this is most unlikely; or that I myself turned on the computer and did something to it in something like a ‘hypnotic’ trance, which is slightly more believable - because asking the question, why am I given sleepifying drugs? one possible answer is that it is to make me more readily hypnotisable - but still it seems very unlikely.
I notice that after saving the AddOn folder to CD (using the CD-writing Wizard) the timings somehow on the CD-writer are altered (although looking at the writing speed it still says 16x). That is, saving a folder which I have saved before in an identical manner (which in fact I keep saving, at a certain cost in CDs, for purposes of investigation) the estimated time left alters if the AddOn folder has just previously been saved to CD. I conclude that something in the AddOn folder is the source of problems to do with CD-writing and this is probably the explanation how the CD-writing speed altered between yesterday evening and this morning. It also explains why a flaw in one partition - in a case where I have Windows installed on two different partitions - propagates at least as regards CD-writing to the other partition, that is because the flaw affects something retained in the hardware (or firmware) of the optical drive, common to all partitions. It does not follow that touchpad flaws which are a major problem in word-processing need propagate in the same way, although this may happen if there are similar settings which can be flawed in the firmware of the touchpad (eg possibly relating to sensitivity), common to all partitions.
What I can do is install Windows on C: (possibly in a minimal-size partition) and save documents to D:, so that if the Windows installation goes wrong it can easily be reinstated without affecting D:.
03/11/07 08:07
What I have done is set up Windows Professional on a C: partition I chose 10000MB for (within the XP install). I chose the maximum possible size (remaining) for D:, and I have tried to copy diary notes to D: from a CD I made earlier today (at 05:53 in fact). This worked unproblematically, but trying just now to copy the contents of a CD Nov 02, 2007 9.46 pm onto D: most files copied but a ‘cyclic redundancy check’ message terminated copying. It’s difficult to understand in terms I had previously convinced myself of, that is in terms of pathlength, because the folder Blueyonder installer Version 5.0 June 2005 (seemingly original) has copied correctly (3,213 Files, 193 Folders) but a folder with supposedly identical contents but a shorter name Blueyonder copy 2007-01-11 (and therefore shorter pathnames of files within) did not copy entirely (2,890 Files, 89 Folders only). The write speed for CD Recording I selected of 16x is unchanged, and I am about to test out the CD-writing Wizard.
03/11/07 08:30
The CD-writing Wizard seems to be working. I’m not sure what to do now. I could change the Theme of the Windows on C: to my liking, but trying to back up the C: partition using (say) Nero within C: may well fail (on past experience). I could install software a bit at a time on C: and see how I go. The thing is, if C: needs to be re-made if I don’t have a straight partition backup I need to do again all that I have done this morning and will do in installing software. Also, until I install something - some software - capable of writing DVDs I am stuck with CDs as regards backing up to optical media. But as I said, there are nowadays many more means of backing-up.
Perhaps a good idea would be to install the Audio and WLAN drivers. What the Chipset driver is needed for I cannot say, and I’d rather do without the Synaptics pointing device driver.
03/11/07 08:49
I have additionally copied the folder screencopy from the CD Nov 02, 2007 9.46 pm thinking it something of a risk as the CD contains the AddOn folder (but doesn’t autorun). I am looking also at a DVD made a little while back, Additional Archive (etc) 2007-10-11, containing
_Additional Archive including C2 (2007-10-11)
100OLYMP (temp)
Files and folders on Amilo Pro C drive (2007-08-31 1750)
Folders on Amilo Pro C drive (2007-10-03 0830).
The interest in this DVD is that Files and folders on Amilo Pro C drive (2007-08-31 1750) contains the folder fsc.tmp with the drivers mentioned, that is without having to risk inserting and autorunning the Amilo Pro Drivers & Utilities DVD.
03/11/07 09:51
We have come out onto the back garden so that Dawn can exercise herself gardening. I am benefiting also from fresh air. Having copied onto D: the DVD Additional Archive (etc) 2007-10-11 I shall now test CD-writing again. There is no indication anything is wrong: for example keying into Notepad does not produce any strange cursor jumps.
03/11/07 09:55
All seems well. Unlike when I am affected by ASM, as I have been going about the business of sorting out the computer, other subjects have been revolving in my mind - ‘at the back of my mind’. I’m pretty sure I can make a good fist at writing an encrypting routine, eg for backing-up files to a drive - or drive-equivalent, or ‘virtual’ drive - on the internet (or for backing-up to local media which might be stolen or illicitly accessed, I suppose).
03/11/07 09:59
The flaw has occurred (in the preceding paragraph) in Notepad of the cursor fixing itself not quite at the end of the document, necessitating closing the document and then re-opening it. It may be associated with re-formatting for word-wrapping when there is not a blank line at the end of the document (ie it doesn’t end with a newline character-pair) and the cursor is not actually at the end when the re-formatting is done. I haven’t checked, but based on memory of the circumstances two or three minutes ago, it’s not unlikely that is the basis on which the error arises. (The implication may be that this flaw in Notepad is natural to the Microsoft programming of Notepad, which as I have mentioned leaves something to be desired there presumably having been no occasion to update it since more recent text-editors and word-processors have been brought out.)
Another thing going through my mind has been the distinction in human mental assessment of truth, between logical certainty and statistical near-certainty. Logical certainty has in it absolute confidence although it is not really provable certainty. The best one can do is to derive certainties of this sort from more axiomatic certainties by rules which are similarly logically certain, and doing this type of manipulation is the basis of mathematics in its pure aspects. One can only prove that black is not white by quibbling about how to define the words; that is in its essence the statement is equivalent to True=Not(False) which is even less subject to argument (and then only in the sense of the language being used to state the truth).
Statistical near-certainty is founded in experience through some such mechanism as I have suggested of representing probabilities (founded in observed frequencies) as strengths of synaptic transmission from neurons to successor (or otherwise ‘associated’) neurons. This type of statistical assessment is capable of being done by neural structures in animals and preadolescent humans, whereas full value is given to logical certainties only by human adults, and many of them do not give full value to it due to some insufficient processing capacity probably in the frontal brain. I say this because the nature of the conviction - that is 100% confidence - one feels in logical certainties includes a component of not only understanding the truth but understanding that one understands it correctly, and this reflexive assessment is related to introspection which I feel sure is a function of the frontal brain receiving inputs from lower processes reporting how they are doing.
As I say, many human adults do not feel fully confident to assess logical certainties, and certainly not logical certainties with any complex structure in them (such as for example advanced mathematical theorems). So how do they cope if they need to feel certain? They rely on other people, that is either experts whom they trust to understand logical certainties (as they may be purported to be) or emotional bolsters who can make them feel good even though in uncertainty. Readers will readily see in these, task-oriented dopaminergic helpers and people-oriented serotoninergic helpers (or to put it another way, father-figures and mother-figures). On this analogy you could say schizophrenics are those one way or another orphaned who cannot stand alone.
03/11/07 10:54
I was also pondering on the source of the drugs getting into us. It may be that bread we have in is drugged (this based on considering what I have eaten this morning and noticing I feel a bit headachy and slowed-down and probably more so than earlier and than can be explained as carrying over from yesterday). Again, what is contained in the tapwater which Dawn continues to take is not entirely clear to me, but seems to include amphetamine-stimulant (from the effect I notice in Dawn) and ASM (from the effect on myself three days ago or so). The reason for putting a sleepifying sedative - perhaps it is to counter sleep disturbance - other than in the tapwater may be related to preventing Dawn (or myself) taking too high a dosage (and especially if the sedative used were similarly dangerous to barbiturate).
03/11/07 11:13
I have now run the Smartision Screencopy setup and also the setup to install Realtek High Definition Audio Driver. So now, on re-starting the system I have sound. I shall check that CD-writing still works OK (this being a sort of bench-test of whether the system has been corrupted).
03/11/07 11:26
In doing that I thought I’d include on the CD the drivers to be installed - so that if C: needed to be reconstituted I could copy everything needed (apart from the basic system from the install CD) from the one CD - but unfortunately to do so I started copying the folder Files and folders on Amilo Pro C drive (2007-08-31 1750) to the CD (for writing) and had a terminal failure which may have been related to pathlength. That folder contains as a subfolder a copy of AddOn so trying to save that to CD on the basis of what happened earlier might cock things up. However, the CD (with the folder Files and folders on Amilo Pro C drive (2007-08-31 1750) not copied but only fsc.tmp from within it) has been saved without an error (although the estimated time left started off at quite a high value - 29 minutes, I think).
Now I shall install the WLAN driver software and then check CD-writing again.
03/11/07 11:53
All seems well (and I have been taking screenshots) except it is a bit surprising and worrying even that the estimated time left started at only 5 minutes compared to 29 minutes before. You could say it’s good that it has reverted to a more sensible value, but I feel uneasy not understanding why it was unnaturally high that time before.
03/11/07 11:57
(The Notepad flaw of the cursor getting stuck nearly but not quite at the end of the document has recurred.)
03/11/07 12:12
I have set the resolution of the screen to its highest and have taken a screenshot. Take note when Smartision was installed it appeared in alphabetical order in All Programs. This screen looks better resolved - the type within Notepad here looks smaller, with correspondingly more characters appearing in a window the same size - than when in the Amilo Pro system as it was presumably intended to be set up I had installed the graphics driver software. (It is not inconceivable this is simply an impression I get having become used to a big font appearance in a less well resolved screen, before altering the resolution from that set up by the Windows install.)
03/11/07 12:36
I am pondering, now, installing some means of saving a partition backup, and as I said really it ought to be installed - this is Nero or Paragon - on D: to be able to save the partition corresponding to C: properly. Yesterday I was debating whether having Windows XP installed on two partitions might have been a source of problems. But today I seem to have ascertained that the source of the difficulties in fact lies in the AddOn folder. I must resolve some inconsistencies in my understanding.
The failures of the CD-writing Wizard - the latest this morning - seem due to a speed setting for writing CDs too high. Yesterday various failures - including of the CD-writing Wizard - occurred in systems installed innocently trusting the obvious way of doing it, that is installing KB884575 and KB885894 from the AddOn folder along with the rest of the system. It doesn’t seem on the face of it likely that merely copying the AddOn folder or its contents - even copying for CD-writing - would corrupt the system. Rather it seems presumable that the installation of either KB884575 or KB885894 was the origin of the corruption. In that case the failure this morning would have been an intermittent one because the CD-writing speed was set to ‘Fastest’; and then the question arises how the speed came to change from 16x to ‘Fastest’ overnight (I had been imagining copying the AddOn folder had caused this change somehow, but now that seems little likely). One has to presume it came about in a reinstallation of one or other partition (in fact it would be the most recent reinstallation of C:) that I performed last night when half asleep, and at the time I did not cotton on to the fact that changing the speed in either partition - by running an install of either partition - would alter the CD-writing speed in firmware for every partition on the physical computer, and did not leave myself a mental note about such a risk.
I think that explains it, and am willing to finish the installation of Windows on D: which I got so far with early this morning (the purpose then being simply to format partition2).
03/11/07 13:06
In the lunch I ate within the past half-hour - and probably it was in the bread used - there was a sleepifying drug. This is now interfering slightly with my memory - eg I have just saved to CD a version of the folder 31-Oct which contains only one version of the Blueyonder installer instead of both (suspected of being different) and I can’t remember whether I labelled the CD ‘31-Oct (smaller)’ or ‘31-Oct (shorter)’. Furthermore I am becoming more loquacious, in that instead of simply re-inserting the CD to see what I called it, I am producing this exposition in words (based on self-observation close to being introspection). This is slightly unfortunate in that I was getting on to installing Windows on D:, and saving folders currently on D: was part of it (however possibly the install will leave folders on D: unaltered except for system folders); writing all these words is a protraction of what I was doing, or rather a deferral (not finding it so easy to be certain of my words, either).
What was also going through my mind (since eating lunch, whether or not related to the drugs therein) was Dawn’s condition, and in particular her tearfulness the final few days recently at the park home compared against her happiness now (based on having things to achieve - eg in the gardening line - and achieving them, this made possible - or at least enhanced - by amphetamine getting into her). Dawn doesn’t seem to be ‘ratty’ on the amphetamine - although she was on returning to Kingswinford from the park home, say for a day, presumably due to ASM in the tapwater at the bungalow not yet having settled in her metabolism - even though she is drinking a lot of coffee (made with tapwater) so I must conclude the balance of amphetamine and ASM is just right for her (and she isn’t having such physical problems such as tummy-ache).
03/11/07 14:01
I have continued the install on D: to its completion (without any non-Windows drivers and without any KB- updates from the Drivers & Utilities DVD). The CD-writing speed is still set at 16x so possibly only reinstalling partition1 alters that (as only installing partition1 overwrites the existing boot list). The existing folders on D: have not been affected, so all that has been done is setting up files within the WINDOWS folder and other system folders Program Files and Documents and Settings. I shall now test out CD-writing again.
03/11/07 14:49
I have installed Paragon HDM on D: (and reconfigured the D: Windows to my requirements for example as regards Theme and the Start Menu). I note the first newly installed program (Smartision Screencopy) appeared in alphabetical order in All Programs but the second (Paragon) appeared at the bottom of the list (just as yesterday the first - yesterday Paragon - appeared in order but the second - yesterday Smartision - appeared at the end of the list).
So now I shall try using Paragon.
03/11/07 14:54
Before I do that I note that the CD-writing speed has reverted to ‘Fastest’ so I shall alter it back to 16x.
03/11/07 15:00
Double-clicking the Smartision Screencopy icon in the D: installation taskbar does not now have immediate effect. Previously (at least on C:) this anomaly was not to be seen (since the latest reinstallation, anyway).
03/11/07 15:22
I’m beginning to think I can risk installing Blueyonder (on C:) and going on the internet. Perhaps I’d better install Norton 360 first. I’ve also been pondering copying-in (you can’t call it ‘installing’) my own progs, such as the Rich Text Editor (so that I don’t have to continue making do with Notepad).
03/11/07 15:31
Trying to use my Rich Text Editor I find (as I might have recalled) that it won’t work until VB6 is installed.
Within C: double-clicking the taskbar icon of Smartision Screencopy works as it should.
03/11/07 17:31
I have copied the DVD Microsoft, printer + other software 2007-08-19 onto D: (except for AddOn which was on the DVD); I have copied the 6.0 version of the MSDN Library into a single folder on D: (from the original CDs which I got with VB6) as I seem not to have had a copy thus far (of the 6.0 version) within the set of DVDs I reckon to contain my basic repertoire.
03/11/07 17:53
Well, I have been able to install Visual Basic and am thereby enabled to use my Rich Text Editor. I must surely be right about the screen dimensions (in characters) and resolution, because the 14pt text in the Rich Text Editor window looks noticeably smaller than I am used to. The clarity of the text and icons when they appear on the screen though are as good as the best I have seen on this Amilo Pro.
Speaking of the Rich Text Editor, to make it more professional I could allow resizing of the window and arrange the RichTextBox to resize accordingly (to fill or almost fill the whole screen).
04/11/07 04:15 [Sunday]
I got up perhaps ten minutes ago, and the physical symptoms I have such as sore throat and sore eyes I conclude are side-effects of a sedative or tranquillising drug I took in yesterday albeit in a lower dosage than the day before.
Yesterday evening after installing VB and making the note saying I had done that, I installed Blueyonder (from the folder Blueyonder installer Version 5.0 June 2005 (seemingly original) within D:) - getting an error message which seemed to indicate the Instant Support Tool was not available from the Virgin Media webs