kinuta

Although not an acronym it means a droll, humorous person. That was the meaning I grew up learning.

Me too. Thanks for the heads up.

Thanks everyone.

42C (107.6F) on our balcony at 9.45 am. That's the hottest I've ever known in Tokyo and as hot as Delhi pre monsoon !

38.5 today.

Very hot and jungle humidity. 33 indoors with all the windows and doors open plus fans . I don't usually use the AC before evening but I might today.

Burton & Taylor - BBC4 Dominic West gives a workmanlike performance as Richard Burton but the real star is Helena Bonham Carter, who is pretty amazing as Elizabeth Taylor. Very well done and recommended.

Belated best wishes for a happy birthday.

All the best, Lon. Take care of yourself.

Aspirin or similar medication and plenty of water. To help reduce the craving I found that cleaning my teeth several times a day helped. I'd also recommend her to cut out all sweets and booze, the sugary taste that lingers in your mouth just increases your craving. I also got as much sleep as possible. I found that helped me but realistically she just has to ride out the initial misery.

Basically couldn't give a rat's arse but my guess is that he will be named James, George or Edward, with an outside chance of Richard. I would say there's not much chance of the royals breaking the pattern of traditional king's names.

We've had a violent, window shaking thunderstorm and monsoon type downpour. The sky was black and the power went out for five minutes.

He was a very charismatic and entertaining actor. He will be missed. http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2013/jul/22/dennis-farina-actor-dies-chicago-policeman

Cooled off a bit, the temperatures for the last few days have been in the low thirties. Humidity is high but it's preferable to the burning sun. Have even managed to sleep without AC.

Also watched the remake of The Bridge. There is no way to avoid comparing it to the original and the cross border US-Mexican scenario just didn't grab me at all. The lead lady cop and her Asperger's are directly copied from the original but seemed over acted and unconvincing . More than both these points, the general feel of the show was unfocused and uninvolving, for me at least. If the producers wanted to emulate the successful and interesting remake of The Killing they have misjudged imo. I'd suggest watching the remake and then watching the original.

I was ready to say go to the casualty department immediately, then I opened the thread.

H 36 L26. Hot !

An excellent account of the Russians in Afghanistan. I'd suspected we only knew part of the story, I was right. Recommended.

Many happy returns, Barak.

Summer's started. It's about 35C, middle of the nights lows around 26C.

Star Trek Voyager Season 4 Working my way through the season in fits and starts. Some episodes are good quality SF, others are, shall we say, same old same old. I like the concept of Voyager, the epic voyage home, although I sometimes have doubts that I'll ever finish the whole series !

How did you come to the conclusion that the HDD is incompatible? Did you check with the HDD manufacturer? Did you use Disk Management in Windows 8 to locate the HDD? It might show up there, but not be assigned a letter. Also, when you run Avast!, you have the option of running a "removable volume scan". Does your HDD show up there? A Google search reveals problems similar to yours with every new OS. It appears that often the issues can be resolved by downloading updated software/drivers. I checked with I.O. Data, the drives are noncompatible with Windows 8.

I now understand the cause of the problem, my external HDD is not compatible with Windows 8, only XP, Vista & 7. Very bad news for anyone with lots of files stored on HDD who switches to 8. It would mean either writing it off as unusable or buying new 8 compatible HDD and transfering all the data. My brief encounter with 8 just confirms all the tales of woe I'd heard about it's dreadful reputation.

A good friend recently bought a Toshiba laptop, and, being an even bigger PC dummy than myself asked for help downloading and installing Avast! He also asked if I'd bring one of my I.O. Data HDD and load some tv programmes onto his hard disk. Thinking this was a very simple task I arrived to find to my great dismay that his pc was running Windows 8. Avast! was no real problem but neither my Buffalo USB flash drive nor the external HDD would work. With Windows7, when I plug in either one a menu appears, which , when opened allows me to drag files to desktop. With Windows 8 none of this happened and I was clueless as to whether the problem was my not understanding how to perform such a simple task on Windows 8 or that the HDD is not compatible with Windows 8. I've tried to find a solution on line but have come up with nothing. Could any kind soul explain what the problem might be ?

Nearing the end of the so called rainy season. Cloudy and a mild 25 but quite humid in the night. As soon as the rainy season ends the temperature will jump overnight to 33-35 with nights a wilting 25. That's when the air conditioner goes to work