[peter]

just another tory tax on the sick…..it’s free in scotland btw;-)

@blurty more likely to thank Blair & Brown. It’s probably part of the pfi contract and the hospital nor the local council will even own the land.

[peter]

I have had this in the past and you have my full sympathy!

Things that worked for me:

-Rolling a cold can of Coke with my foot helped in the mornings.
-Going barefoot (well minimalist footwear) was revolutionary for me and has worked for a few others (I too had trialled insoles etc).
-Wearing a night splint whilst sleeping stops from hurting in the morning.

[peter]

Personally, I would reconsider Plex. I use it a lot and find that it turns the kind of fiddly nightmare that you’re currently experiencing into a foolproof and convenient experience. It does depend how often you want to use it, I guess. Because we use it constantly, the server is always running and we have the client installed everywhere it could be needed. If you’re only going to use it very occasionally, I can see that the initial set up process and then having to start up the server each time you use it could be less worthwhile.

I don’t think you’d have to pay for it at all. The free version is massively capable and the “Plex Pass” that you have to pay for is only necessary for some quite niche features.

As for security, I don’t see any reason to be too paranoid. What exactly concerns you? It does have the option of setting up external streaming but that’s easy to disable in the settings so that it only runs on your local network behind your router’s firewall. You could also, if you wanted to, stop it gathering media data from websites.

[peter]

Newtonian mechanics make way for relativity. Gravity waves are a natural phenomenon which are not subject to Newtonian rules. The second definition works, as far as it goes. Ultimately, all biological processes can be taken down to the first subatomic level, including memory and religious rapture, recently brain-mapped. Neither of which preclude the possibility of a SUPERnatural overseer or two, which by definition are outside the scope of science, which only studies natural phenomena. The a priori argument for the existance of God is independent of mechanistic theory.

[peter]

I have lots of addictions. A big boost for my recovery came when somebody brought to my attention the prevalence of “combat language” that I used when I talked about my addiction. I was always fighting this or that – frequently myself, it turns out – always doing battle and waging war against my urges. I would don my armor and go in swinging… unfortunately, my armor looked suspiciously like many of my worst character defects – defensiveness and righteousness, and “should” and “must” language.

Then and now it’s the same for me: splitting myself into two parts, labelling them as addict/non-addict, and then duking it out armored to the hilt, only ends up making me feel just as incomplete, battle-weary, spiritually seperate, and exhausted as my addiction ever has. A recovery text I like to use tells me that my addiction is a part of me, not a seperate diseased entity that I can simply single out and remove with a scalpel, like a bad spleen. I suppose I’m saying that I’ll always have the demons around – need them around, in fact – to be a complete person. Recovery simply shows me that I don’t need to give them the time of day. Not today, at least.

Instead, I can look to the spiritual solution for a daily reprieve from any misguided self-conquest I might feel like dutifily embarking on.