The latest revision to the forecast seems to have got things wrong compared to the early forecast in the screenshot above. The latest revision says that 9 and 10am would feature fog. As far as I am aware there wasn't even any mist, and like the original forecast says, it was overcast and gloomy. The latest revision says light cloud for 11am, and full sunshine for midday. That will be followed by a few hours of sunny spells. At the moment it feel like the whole day will be gloomy, but we live in hope. Once again it is going to be a very cold day, although the latest revision does give hope that by 6pm the temperature may have risen to 5° C ! Once again there could be some rain late tonight. Tomorrow might see 6° C. There could be a shower in the morning, but 11am to 3pm may feature some sunshine, or sunny spells.
   Yesterday was a busy day, but not very productive. As described yesterday morning, I went shopping in Aldi, and stocked the fridge with useful stuff like food. A little later in the morning I washed two t-shirts. One was a white t-shirt, and the other was light blue. It seemed sensible to wash them together, and not wash them with black t-shirts - most of my t-shirts are black, and I had to wait until I had at least these two non-black t-shirts to make a washing worthwhile.

  Having to dry those t-shirts indoors was a great excuse to turn up the heat in the dining room, and once it was nice and warm in there I did a lot more work on what should be my web server in the not too distant future. I took out the hard drive that had an almost working system on it, and put in a spare I had knocking around. I decided to try and install the same version of Linux Mint that it is currently serving these web pages. It is version 17.2. I was not sure if it is still supported, but it is still getting an occasional update.

  More importantly, all the program repositories are still accessible. That meant I could install all the software I wanted to with a click of a button. An hour or two later it was all up and running. I copied all the web page files from the current server to the new, and it was serving web pages nicely. Even my customised 400 error - web page not found - was working after adding an extra line to the configuration file.

  The next thing was to try out the FTP server that I would use to upload newly edited web pages composed on my main PC. The server itself was working, but needed configuration. It can be done by hand by using a lot of command line stuff, but I wanted the easy way, and that was using a separate admin program. On all more modern versions of the operating system, versions contaminated with the almost universally hated "systemd", the admin program always crashes with a segmentation error. In simple terms it means it was trying to write to something that wasn't there (because systemd had stolen it [in my uneducated opinion]).

  Yesterday, on Linux Mint 17.2, the admin program worked OK....or sort of OK. I was able to set up a user to have access to the file server, and all looked OK. The problem was that on trying to connect to the server it would always fail with authorisation failed. It would seem that the password had not been stored correctly for some unknown reason. I seem to remember having this problem years ago, but I cannot remember the solution to it.

  I think I have a simpler, although ultimately unsatisfactory solution to the problem. Now the new server is running the same version as the old server, I think I can copy all the configuration files from the old to the new, and in theory it should just work. If it does I just hope I never need to add another user ! One other thing I did yesterday was to read up on how to configure that ftp server manually. I might try that on the installation on the other hard disk.

  My dinner was almost the same as the day before, but with two differences. I had green beans instead of sprouts, and the luxury of real butter added to the mashed potato. The seasoned chicken thighs were the other half of the pack that I seasoned and cooked the day before. They just needed blasting in the microwave for a few minutes to warm them up. I have to say that adding butter to the mashed potato made it ever so much nicer.

  I didn't rush to bed last night, and stayed reading until I had finished the book I had been reading. I think I might still have got to sleep around, or not much after 10pm. I don't really remember much about the night, and I assume that means I slept well. I do remember dreaming, and there was even a dream I intended to remember, but I seem to have forgotten all about it now. Another hint that I slept well is that once again I woke up, and couldn't get to sleep again, earlier than I thought I should have.

  Being awake, and like yesterday, washed and dressed early, meant I could carry out an idea I had been thinking about. It was to go shopping in Aldi for a second time. It seems wise to stock up on some things before the shops get too busy with the Xmas stampede. I particularly wanted to get another three big bottles of Diet Coke (three bottles being the most that will fit into my rucksack - which makes carrying them so much easier).



  I also bought yet more beers. Considering there are only a possible two people, and possibly just one, who might visit to drink the beers with me, I have enough beers here to last well into the new year. The problem with the beers I bought today (two of each can in the picture to the left) is that I feel sure that Jodie will turn her nose up at them because they are not exotic enough, or she has had them before. Like some sort of addict, she needs to have beers she has never had before so she can write about them on the Untapped web site that she is addicted to. I know that Michael would be happy to drink my beers, but his medical problem means he can't drink beer at the moment (or not much beer). I hope he is able to get at least one session in before Xmas.




  This morning there was further proof that I don't understand what I am eating (or drinking). Yesterday I bought a few tempting things, but I really only gave in to some cottage cheese. Apart from that, oh, and some grilled bacon, I feel sure that what I ate yesterday was not that different to what I ate the day before. Yesterday morning my blood glucose level was a most satisfactory 7.0mmol/l. This morning it had shot up to 9.5mmol/l. That is very high and nudging the danger zone, if not actually in it.

  The curious thing is that I decided to check my blood glucose again half an hour later, and this time the reading had dropped to 9.2mmol/l. I am wondering if the beer I drank yesterday left me dehydrated this morning (after several visits to the toilet to pee during the night). Dehydration does cause the blood glucose to get more concentrated, and that does give a higher reading. I have seen this after a long walk in the hot sun. Maybe one of my aims today is to make sure I keep myself well hydrated.

  Other aims for today are to continue to play with my new server to see if I can sort out this ftp server problem. If the sun comes out at midday (which currently looks unlikely) I may try and force myself to go for a walk in the cold air. It would not make for an enjoyable walk, but there could be things to see in the Linear Park that would make a walk a bit interesting. I still haven't seem the new picnic table, and I am curious to see how the pond in the Vineries might have changed after plans to clean it up, and use some of the water plants in it for the new berm that The Friends Of The River Pool have built (also to see how near completion that berm is).