Swamp creatures and canals

click photo to enlarge

Yesterday I was hijacked! Or, to be more specific, my browser was hijacked. Some swamp creature had devised a piece of software that was able to by-pass three firewalls and an up-to-date anti-virus program. The effect was that every time I selected a website from my bookmarks list, I was re-directed to a "search" site of the hijacker's choosing. Now you have to possess a certain intelligence to devise such a piece of code. But you display a woeful lack of understanding of the human-kind if you believe that, after you have installed this on a machine against someone's wishes, they are then going to use your search site!

Consequently, after spending a couple of hours doing all the obvious things, I ran a Linux Live CD, searched the web for any reference to this particular hijack software, and got a couple of pointers to potential answers. It turned out that it was a fairly simple routine that directed the browser at specific DNS addresses. All I had to do was over-ride the settings and ask the browser to set the DNS automatically. Now, if you're yawning at the mind-numbing dullness and complexity of all this, and yearning for the simplicities of life, you have my sympathies. So do I. In fact, whenever I walk by the Lancaster Canal I wonder what it might be like to live on a narrow-boat, slowly moving through the country, mooring for the night where I fancy, without the encumbrances of house, garden car, etc. Then the limitations of that ostensibly simple lifestyle force themselves to the forefront of my mind, and I recognise that for me, walking the canal is quite enough!

This photograph was taken near the end of a day at Garstang, Lancashire. I framed a mooring bathed in the yellow light early evening of by shooting from below a bridge with a medium zoom at 36mm (35mm equivalent), the camera set to Aperture Priority (f6.3 at 1/125 sec), and the EV at -1.7.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen