And the net you rode in on

I have said several times lately that I love the internet. And I do. If Tolkien had known about the net, he would have portrayed the Palantirs square with little screens and keyboards.

But I have to reiterate that this technology is the wisdom and magic of the ancients: far far beyond my ken. I have no idea how it works. I am a Borneo Cargo Cult tribesman using a dishwasher as totem.

I've also had a note from a reader who says that when you're looking at O's P on Internet Explorer, the commbox and links don't work. I haven't used IE for some time and didn't notice. (Or care, actually).

But as I said the other day, I've been having a problem running videos, esp. Youtube vids. They download fine, but only play two seconds and then stop. No sound either. I checked around and learned that there are lots of people who are having the same problem. Apparently, you have to do some absurdly complex thing involving downloading this and de-installing that, and waving a black chicken over the keyboard on the first Tuesday after a full moon while the Sex Pistols are playing Land of Hope and Glory.

And I don't want to. So I'm going to work around the problem. I'm going to do what everyone does who finds that their modern stuff only works most of the time. Youtube vids play just fine in IE. (Except that when the kami are feeling cranky or I haven't replenished the votive tea offering to them recently, YouTube vids also crash IE and freeze everything else...but never mind.) I'm going to play Youtube vids on IE, and do my blogging here.

What I recommend is that anyone who can't open the links or the commbox, download the Firefox incantations and use those instead. I hear that the great wizard Gates is secretly in league with Sauron, so we don't want to play with him anymore anyways.

If that doesn't work, why not to something really countercultural and read a book, or have a conversation, using your vocal apparatus, with a loved one.