A.C. Flory's Blog, page 124

New skills and toothache

One of the few things to go right this last week has been my foray into concreting:

Apologies, I couldn’t quite manage to keep my feet out of the photo. The reason for the concrete is this metal arch/trellis:

Once the trellis is solidly in place, I’ll be planting out a male kiwi fruit to keep my female kiwi fruit happy. In the meantime, I’m trying not to feel too unhappy myself as I face the prospect of a root canal treatment [amongst other necessary horrors].

I wish I could say that this was all a surprise, but it’s not. I’m terrified of going to the dentist so always leave things until I’m in pain. I’m now in pain and the treatment will be worse than any ordinary filling would have been.

Look after your teeth and do as I say, not as I do.

#Brexit first, then #Trump in the Whitehouse?

As an Australian, I’m not that concerned with Brexit and the economic upheaval it may cause. It won’t have a huge impact here so selfishly, I can afford to sit back and just watch history in the making. As a student of human nature, however, I’m worried by the implications. You see, half the shock generated by Brexit seems to be because most people did not believe it could happen. And then it did.

Since the results of the referendum were made public, the one question on most lips is ‘why?’ and the answer seems to be ‘dissatisfaction’. But dissatisfaction with what, exactly?

I’m wading out into uncharted waters here, but my personal opinion is that Brexit was a kind of protest vote about conditions [in GB] in general and the perceived inadequacies of the EU in particular. I think the tsunami of Refugees has also given rise to a kind of low grade, xenophobia that is not restricted to Great Britain alone. But again, I think the underlying malaise is about dissatisfaction with life in the era of European Union. And when enough people become dissatisfied, leaders will always rise up offering both a scapegoat and a ‘way out’.

And so the unthinkable happened. Brexit happened. Now let’s take a quick flight over the Atlantic to the US.

Most people, myself included, still see Donald Trump as a buffoon who could not possibly win. But what if the malaise that led to Brexit is the same as the malaise gripping the US? What if Donald Trump has honed in on a level of dissatisfaction that is ready to explode like the US version of Brexit?

I still believe that Donald Trump as President is unthinkable, but post Brexit I’m no longer sure that it is. And that is a worry.

Meeks

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Brexit, dissatisfaction, Donald-Trump, EU, Great-Britain, U.S., Whitehouse, why

#SFX, cars and ‘The Blackbird’

I’m not a petrol head, but I do like cars so I could not resist a Gizmag article about how cars are filmed for commercials and movies. This is the ‘Blackbird’ and it is the most amazing car you will never see.

Gotta love CGI [computer generated imagery].[image error]

Happy weekend,

Meeks

Filed under: technology Tagged: Blackbird, cars, CGI, movies, technology, The Mill, video-clip

Paypal email #scam

I received this ‘phishing’ scam in my inbox this morning. It’s supposed to be from Paypal, and the ‘hook’ is that my account has been limited or suspended. When I looked at the email more closely, however, I noticed that:

the sender was NOT from Paypal
the email did NOT address me by name
and the whole email was funneling me towards the big, blue link you can see below

 

 

Seems pretty obvious, right?

Actually, despite having seens hundreds of these scam emails in my time, I still felt a moment of fright when I read this one. Why? Because I use Paypal for most of my online purchases, so the threat of having that service removed hit me where I live.

Unfortunately, that moment of fright is exactly what makes phishing email scams work. The scammers send out millions of these emails at random in the hope that a few will reach people who actually use the service [like me]. Then there is a chance that some of those people will be fooled into clicking the link in the email.

But what happens next?

I haven’t done this personally, but from my research it appears that the link takes you to a website that is made to look exactly like the real thing. Once on the website, you are asked to login with your account ID and password. The fake login will fail, of course, but by then the scammers will have exactly what they want – the account information of another victim.

So never EVER follow a link from an email to a financial account, even if the email looks 100% genuine. Always navigate to the website manually – i.e. by typing in the address in the address bar of your browser or by clicking a ‘Favorite’ that you have set up for yourself. Do not give in to the kneejerk reaction triggered by fright.

I know I harp on about these email scams like a cracked gramophone record [anyone remember them?]

but there are new people coming online every day, and they are at risk from these scammers. Please spread the word when you can.

cheers

Meeks

Filed under: SCAMS! Tagged: account, email, how-to-spot, information, Paypal, phishing, psychology, scam

Adorable #jigsaw #kitten

I just completed this jigsaw coz the kitten was so gorgeous.

As a jigsaw almost complete:

As the smoothed out, completed picture:

night night

Meeks

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: jigsaw, Jigsaw-Planet, kitten, playing-with-wool, sleeping

Orlando changed nothing: The Senate just voted down four gun control measures — Quartz

It’s been eight days since the Orlando massacre. Has it changed the gun control debate in the US? Not according to the Senate, which just voted down four measures to improve background checks and restrict weapon sales to people on terrorist watch lists. Two of the measures were sponsored by Democrats, and two by Republicans,…

via Orlando changed nothing: The Senate just voted down four gun control measures — Quartz

Filed under: Uncategorized

Even more cute animals? No way!!!

Oh! This little guy is THE best way to start a Monday [and the other gorgeous animal pics are pretty good too]. I love foxes and the name ‘vokhtah’ morphed from the Hungarian name ‘Vuk’ which was the name of a very cute cartoon charater of…you guessed it, a fox.

#Email bills – Christmas for #scammers?

Here in Australia, Origin Energy [one of the big utilities companies] recently introduced gas and electricity accounts sent via email. Good idea? Not so, and here’s a picture of why:

The screenshot above is a picture of my new, email electricity bill. Notice all the red? Each one of those circles denotes a link to some address on the internet. Click on that link and you are automatically taken to that address.

So what’s wrong with that, you ask? We all use the internet a million times a day.

What’s wrong is that each link is a potential opening for scammers to steal your information, especially that big, orange ‘Pay now’ button. You see, these days, the really good scammers can reproduce the Origin Energy logo, its fonts, the colours, even the text…PERFECTLY. If you were to receive one of these reproductions, you would need to look very, very carefully to pick the fake from the original. And let’s face it, how many of us scrutinise each email we receive, especially when we are expecting to receive it?

Expectation lowers our defences.

I already expect to receive a mobile phone account [via email], and now I will also expect to receive gas and electricity bills, via email. I may scrutinise the first five, ten, 25 emails but after that? I’ll get complacent.

One day, I’ll be in a hurry and I’ll forget to check all the tell tale signs of a forgery. I’ll click on that big orange ‘Pay now‘ button in the email, and it’ll take me…somewhere. That somewhere will look like the  real deal as well so, still in a hurry, I’ll enter my banking details, pay the ‘bill’ and get on with my life. But one day in the not too distant future I’ll realise my bank account has been hacked. And in that moment of disbelief and horror, I’ll remember the day convenience, and a busy life style, made me follow a link in an email.

And what do you think the big corporations are going to do about the theft of all my money? Will they pull their hair out by the roots and cry ‘mea culpa, mea culpa’? Not on your life. They’ll say that the fault was all mine. They’ll say that they warn customers about ‘scammers’ so it’s a case of ‘buyer beware’.

But the truth is that the big corporations will NOT warn you about this particular type of scam because they do not want to put you off their new, much-cheaper-to-run email billing service. Origin intends to charge $2 for each paper bill from now on. I’m pretty sure the real cost of sending out a paper bill is nowhere near that much, so they won’t be saving $2 for every bill to every customer, but they will be saving something. Multiply ‘something’ by hundreds of thousands of customers and the bottom line starts to look a whole lot better.

So what’s the solution?

The solution is to print the bills off and pay them as you would a paper bill – by going directly to your internet banking and using BPay to pay the bills from there.

As a caveat, I have to say that I can’t guarantee that internet banking is 100% safe. I believe it is, but I can’t guarantee it. However…if the banks mess up with your money, they have to pay you back. If you mess up with your money, that’s it, it’s gone. You might try a class action suit against the corporation in question, perhaps citing negligence, but going through the courts could take years and may still not succeed.

Why not? Because no one held a gun to your head and made you click that ‘Pay now’ button.

This is the reason I keep bleating on about not clicking on links in emails. That little bit of extra convenience is just not worth it. And yes, it could happen to you.

Take care and stay safe,

Meeks

 

 

 

Filed under: Community Service Tagged: BPay, electricity, email, email-bills, gas, internet-banking, links, Origin-Energy, scam, utility-bills

Mirror, Mirror: The Cakes That Broke the Internet

-picks jaw off floor – These amazing cakes make my lemon biscuits look like playdoh. Edible artistry.

My OBT

Olga Noskova

View original post 90 more words

Filed under: Uncategorized

From disaster to a delicious biscuit

Okay, for my US friends, our biscuits are your cookies so this is a cross between a sweet lemon cakelet and a ‘cookie’. Ta dah….:

The outside is lovely and crisp, but despite being so thin, the inside remains just a tiny bit soft and chewy:

Before I write up the recipe I should explain that this started out as a kind of lemon tart cake that went very wrong. Cakes are not my forte, but I suspect the original recipe was at fault as it called for a tart base made from self-raising flour. Into this uncooked tart base went a very nice, cooked lemon filling and the whole lot was supposed to bake in the oven until it turned into a tart.

I don’t have a picture, but my lovely lemon tart turned into something resembling a soufle. It overflowed the baking dish like Vesuvius and made a sweet-smelling mess of my oven. What little I could salvage tasted like lemon toffee cake. I was not happy.

To cut a long story short, I had just enough unsalted butter left over to try the cake part of the recipe as a biscuit, and at last something worked! Here it is.

Ingredients

60 gm unsalted butter

1 cup self-raising flour

1/2 cup caster sugar

the rind of one lemon, finely grated

1 whole egg

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 160 C [if using fan-bake] or 180 C if just using the ordinary oven setting [this is a moderate oven].

Line baking trays with baking paper. [You will need more than one tray as the biscuit mix spreads out quite a lot as it bakes so the biscuits have to be spaced fairly wide apart].

Toss the flour, sugar and grated lemon rind together [to spread the lemon flavour evenly]. Add the butter and cut it into small chunks with a knife, mixing into the flour as you go. Once the chunks are small enough, rub the flour mix and butter between your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.

Lightly beat the egg and add it to the butter mix until you get a fairly smooth ‘paste’.

Spoon heaped teaspoons of the paste onto the trays, leaving at least 2 inches between each one, and place in the oven. Baking time is approx. 10 minutes or until the biscuits are firm in the middle and slightly golden around the edges. Allow to cool on the tray if you can wait that long…-rolls eyes-…we didn’t.

The quantity given should make approximately 24 biscuits which sounds like quite a lot, but they are very moorish. If anyone manages to keep some for more than a few minutes I’d love to know how long they last.[image error]

Happy Sunday,

Meeks

 

Filed under: Food glorious food, recipes Tagged: biscuit, butter, cookie, egg, lemon-rind, recipe, self-raising-flour, sugar, sweet