Sometimes you want to run your browser without some protections that are enabled by default in it. One of these is the cross-origins protection when running a local filesystem script. For Chrome, the solution is to run the browser with the command line switch --allow-file-access-from-files. Seems straight forward enough, but if your browser is already open (usually I have at least 10 active tabs, ranging from documentation pages, email to the music I listen to), the command line switches will be ignored and your script will be run as just another window in the same instance of Chrome. In order to fix this, you need to use another switch called --user-data-dir. Just make sure this folder exists and it can be deleted (because it will be filled with a zillion useless files).

So, how do I run a test.html file that can access files and is located in C:\SomePath ? Like this:
start "Chrome with access to files" chrome --allow-file-access-from-files "file:///C:\SomePath\test.html" --user-data-dir="C:\SomePath\UserDir"

In your path a UserDir folder will be created which you can delete after you finish your work.

Of course, this issue applies to any other flags that you want to use ad-hoc while Chrome is already open.

As you know, I have been watching a lot of TV series, some of them good, some of them bad, most of them complete waste of time. As a New Year resolution (yeah, I know, lame) I have decided to create a slot system for TV series. Thus, from now on soon I will switch to a 7/3 method, meaning that I will watch only seven TV shows regularly and reserve three slots for new series, just in order to determine if they are more worth watching than the current ones. If I find a series that needs to go into the magical seven, I have to bump out another. Thus, this is the last post about TV series in this format.



So here is what I have been watching lately:

• The Legend of Korra - The fourth and final season ended recently. It was a nice ending of an otherwise boring or annoying series. I maintain my opinion that The Last Airbender series was levels of magnitude better.
• The Good Wife - The story of the legal troubles of Cary Agos is in the foreground, while Alicia's juggling of family, politics and job reaches ridiculous levels. Some interesting moral conundrums are created, but for me this season is kind of unfulfilling.
• Homeland - The fourth season is focusing on an Afghani terrorist who, with the help of Pakistani intelligence, is wreaking havoc for the Americans. Some interesting dynamics, but far away from the edge of the seat feeling you got from sergeant Brody's story arch.
• Gotham - I really expected this show to suck. Instead we get solid performances and more or less believable plots. It is acceptably dark for events happening in Gotham, as well. The girlfriend part is really annoying me, but the rest is good.
• The Honourable Woman - The show is really dark and depressing. So much, in fact, that I couldn't watch it as much as I probably should. I always have issues with stories that show indomitable and incorruptible heroes, but the alternative extreme, where everything is gloomy and hopeless, is not much better. Just as too much fantasy, if you can't affect reality, then it is just as unengaging.
• The Witches of East End - The series was cancelled before a third season, leaving everything in limbo, with no closure. I think this kind of behavior should be made illegal. No matter how small, the investment of the viewer in a story needs to be repaid. What would you do if you went at the cinema, watched a movie, and it suddenly stopped before the ending, saying that the producers didn't have the money to finish it? Wouldn't you ask for your money back?
• Tyrant - Weird story, kind of hard to swallow, but interesting in many respects. The show has been renewed for a second season.
• Extant - The series will get a second season, but I will not watch it. The show is a clumsy cocktail of sci-fi cliches, all thrown together while expecting Halle Berry to hold them together.
• The Bridge - The series has been cancelled after the second season, while I am still waiting to watch it. I love Diane Kruger, so I probably will watch it someday.
• Ghost in the Shell - Arise - Solid reboot. Too bad it has only four episodes which pretty much retell the same story. Meanwhile, a GiTS movie is in the works, starring Scarlet Johansson
• The Strain - the show is pretty good. I kind of dislike the main character, while I totally love Kevin Durand. The series has been renewed for a second season.
• Longmire - Loved the first seasons, the last was kind of over the top and it showed. The show was cancelled.
• The Lottery - I've decided, more or less by not feeling like watching it at any time, to stop watching it. I haven't really watched enough of it to make a rational impression, but the pilot totally threw me off. Besides, this show was also cancelled.
• Manhattan - The show has been renewed for a second season. I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I like the story, but at the same time I am a bit put off by the fact that is complete fabrication.
• Legends - The show's concept is a lot cooler than it's implementation. I like Sean Bean's interpretation, but the story is very similar to a zillion cop/government agency shows. They need to focus more on his character, rather than on pointless villains. The show has been renewed for a second season.
• Outlander - They cancelled it! Good actors, wonderful scenery, an interesting story. A great shame.
• The Divide - I've stopped watching it after a while, but I can't tell you why, exactly. I will remove it from my watch list. It had been cancelled, anyway.
• The Knick - Renewed for a second season, this show is great. Good acting, nice depiction of the times, unapologetic critique of pharmaceutical companies and human nature in general. I love it!
• Doctor Who - What are you doing, Capaldi?! I think this season of Doctor Who was the most boring and pointless of them all. Even the Christmas Special was bad. Something has to be done, if it goes like this, Doctor Who will take another decadal hiatus.
• Forever - It is difficult to reject this series outright, because I really like the actors. However the story itself is completely boring. Other than this quirk of the main character that he cannot die, the show is a standard cop thing. You know who else cannot die? Deadpool! Isn't that slightly more interesting? Also the show is likely to get cancelled.
• Hysteria and Hand of God - I love Ron Perlman, but that doesn't mean I liked the Hand of God pilot more than the one from Hysteria. Unfortunately Hand of God will probably get picked up for a series, while Hysteria does not.
• Haven - It becomes increasingly difficult to give up series as you watch them for more and more time. Unfortunately for Haven, which was never good to begin with, the time has come for the "mother of Audrey/Mara" to appear. When family members appear in a story, it usually means they've run out of ideas. The fifth season will get some extra episodes in order to give viewers closure, afterwards it will probably get cancelled. See? This is how you do it when you know you are cancelling a show!
• Z Nation - This SyFy clone of The Walking Dead should have sucked ass. Instead, it is a low budget yet fun show, with a lot of tongue in cheek and also original ideas. Who would have thought SyFy could do something entertaining? If you divide entertainment value to the show budget, Z Nation clearly wins over The Walking Dead.
• Madam Secretary - Oh, the level of obnoxious American propaganda and overall stupidity of this show is off the charts. I refuse to watch this filth. And it appears it will get renewed as well. Ugh!
• Sleepy Hollow - The second season has just started. This show will never be good, just admit it. Its value is purely guilty pleasure.
• The Driver - A BBC One miniseries about a cab driver recruited by the mob, starring David Morrissey and Colm Meaney. The story is not new, the acting is good, but the show... just doesn't do it for me. Sorry.
• Arrow - Oh, Marvel is doing something interesting. Their "phase 3" operation involves spamming the big and small screens with series and films about Marvel superheroes. Now, Arrow is not a great show, and everybody knows it, however they started doing crossover episodes with another new show, The Flash, and probably some of the story ideas will be found or hinted about in the films. Already some things that happened in Captain America movies are found and expanded upon in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Marvel's Agent Carter series. Standalone, Arrow went in the "friends and family" direction, which I despise and personally think it means they lack any original ideas. I know that there are some comics that need to be taken into consideration when creating the scripts, but still.
• South Park - South Park sputtered lately, going from meh! to really funny from episode to episode. The Fremium episode, for example, was really cool. I remain a fan.
• Stalker - Another police procedural with a twist. I kind of like it, but I wouldn't recommend it, if you know what I mean. The show focuses on stalkers, with the small twist that the main character (and member of the task force that fights them) seems to be one himself. Too bad that they broke the tension on that one. I think I like it because of the lead actors.
• Marvel's Agents of Shield - Yes, I know it's an acronym, but I am tired of typing S.H.I.E.L.D. all the time. The show is pretty good! It does go into the whole "dad and mom" territory, but not too much. I will continue watching it.
• Marvel's Agent Carter - Another Marvel TV show, this time about agent Carter, the girlfriend of Captain America. Set in the 1940's, it also has to deal with the sexism of the period. Sexy actress, some interesting characters, this shows promise.
• Our Girl - This is an interesting series, concerning a young girl that joins the British army. She has to deal with a stupid and petty but well meaning family, fighting in the Middle East and also a love triangle (what else when a woman is concerned?). No, seriously, it's better than Twilight.
• Tim and Eric's Bedtime Stories - In an era where big budget horror TV series abound, here is this minimalist standalone episode show. And it is fucking scary! The episodes are very short and involve usually similar worlds to ours. No special effects, monsters or whatever, but the subjects are really unsettling and powerful. A must see!
• Black Dynamite - The second season doesn't seem as funny as the first, but still a lot of fun and makes me learn many things about the American 70's
• The 100 - I couldn't make myself watch the second season. That probably means that I feel it sucks. However I still might watch it...
• Constantine - A series based on the Constantine comics and film. Keanu Reeves has been replaced by a skinny British wanker with illusions of grandeur. Actually, the character is a bit more layered than that, but not by much. I had high hopes for the show, but I have to admit that it is subpar and I don't like it.
• Star Wars Rebels - At first I really hated this animated series. I thought it was too childish. Then I realized that the entire Star Wars franchise is made for little children. Really, this settles the Star Wars/Trek debate for me: the intended audience ages are slightly different, in the sense that Star Trek contains elements that have meaning for adults, as well >:-D.
• Ripper Street - Ripper Street got cancelled, then got revived by Amazon Prime, and it is now at season 3. I have to admit that the direction of the show feels strained right now. I hope it picks up pace, because I really loved the first two seasons
• State of Affairs - Another series that tries to be apologetical to the US foreign policy, it portrays romantic comedy star Katherine Heigl as a CIA executive, married to the son of the US president, who is a black woman, and that has dark secrets threatening to get revealed. I couldn't watch more than two episodes. It is just as surreal as her romantic films: all nice and pink, unless it's about non-Americans. They are bad!
• The Shadow Line - Dark British police/political thriller, it is a miniseries, meaning it ends without having "seasons" and it is pretty amazing. Good acting, interesting story. It came highly recommended and it didn't disappoint.
• Babylon - The series had an interesting pilot a while ago. I liked it, now it got picked up as a series. I want to watch it, but I haven't started yet.
• Marco Polo - a series about the explorer Marco Polo, left by his father at the court of Kublai Khan. I like the actors and the show. The story is also interesting, showing the Mongols as more than invading horseriding barbarians, instead a nation covering half of China and with expansion intentions covering the entire known world.
• The Newsroom - The third season was short and it was meant to give some sort of closure to the ending of the show. However is was so horribly weak, especially the last episode which was made out of fragments of the first two seasons episodes, that I ended up hating it more than I was already hating it. Good riddance!
• The Librarians - Horrible show, trying to serialize an obscure film that wasn't that good to begin with. Don't watch it!
• Scorpion - Leaving aside the alleged basis in reality that the show has, it is another cop show, with "geniuses" helping the FBI. Unlike Numb3rs, which had the same idea, this show is not very good at all. Characters are difficult to empathize with and the whole "normal mom helping the helpers" thing is just... offensive.
• The Musketeers - You will close your browser window in anger for wasting you the time to read so far, but... I like this show. It is silly, has little to do with Dumas' creation, but I enjoy watching it. It probably has to do with the generously endowed beauties that seem all to like D'Artagnan
• Elementary - I really like both Lucy Liu and Johhny Lee Miller, but this show has gone to shit. Having nothing to do with deductive skills now, it turned into yet another police procedural, with brilliant people helping the police.
• Broadchurch - Haven't yet started watching the second season - yes! there is a second season. One that is not the Gracepoint American redo starring David Tennant. I believe Tennant has to feel a bit Doctor Whoish when he is starring in both the American remake and the second season of the original... BTW, Gracepoint got cancelled!
• Ascension - A SyFy miniseries, in the sense that it has only three episodes per season, it involves a ship that was clandestinely sent to another solar system by Kennedy! At first I was all "what?! How can anyone even think of it?", but then the reason for it all got revealed. It also features a *really annoying* little girl that has mental superpowers and, what else?, a government conspiracy. Once you get the hang of it, it is pretty nice and the human branching from a 1950's United States is a nice twist. I am awaiting the second season. Tricia Helfer is almost as cool as in BSG
• Banshee - The third season started and it is just as satisfying as the first two. I don't know what sort of human button this show pushes, but I love it and have absolutely no idea why.

Now all I have to do is choose 7 series out of this list and implement my resolution. This list alone contains 50 series and I haven't been including new series that I haven't started watching and shows that continue in the summer season. It will be difficult, but necessary. If we consider an average of 10 episodes per season, one hour each, that means I use up around 10 hours of my time each season per series. If I remove 40 from my list, that means a staggering 400 hours of time freed per year, more than an hour per day. Of course, I will use this time to watch movies, which don't have an upper bound :) Let's see how it goes.

Dan Ariely is a professor of behavioral economics, the field that is trying to analyse economics via human behavior studies. In his book, Predictable Irrational - The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions, he is arguing that the simple model of market forces constraining people to behave rationally to maximize gain is false, as people are not rational and will never be rational. He then goes to explain various mental fallacies that we are subject to, complete with experiments testing and proving them.

The book is rather short and easy to read, split into 15 chapters and some annexes. Here is a summary:

• Chapter 1: The Truth About Relativity - People assess the value of something relative to something else that is known. Thus people can be "primed" by being exposed to items that are priced in a certain way, influencing the value they give to something else. Think supermarkets and the three category of items: cheap stuff, expensive stuff and one item that is insanely expensive. Relativity will make people to buy the expensive stuff.
• Chapter 2: The Fallacy of Supply and Demand - Again, value is not really an objective thing, coming from supply and demand, but by comparing to other things. The example given is that of black pearls, at first no one would buy them, but the importer chose the most beautiful and best, created a line of insanely expensive jewels and advertised them everywhere. Soon black pearls were in demand and at a much higher price than normal pearls.
• Chapter 3: The Cost of Zero Cost - Ariely argues that zero is a price in a category of its own. He makes an experiment where people have to choose between average and good candy and they are asked to pay 2 cents and 14 cents, respectively. People overwhelmingly choose the good candy, since the price is not that high. However, when the price of the average candy drops to nothing and that of the good candy to 12 cents (so the financial gain is the same for the same quantity) people switch sides and take the average candies.
• Chapter 4: The Cost of Social Norms - One of the most interesting for me, this chapter discusses how people function on social norms until someone introduces the market norms (tit for tat), in which case the social norms go out the window and the situation may even become really embarrassing socially. Imagine Thanksgiving dinner at the house of mother in law, nice roasted turkey, good wine, the wife's recipe was used for the delicious desert, everybody is happy. What happens if the man thanks the hosts and attempts to give them money to cover the expense? A lot of interesting experiments expand on the concept.
• Chapter 5: The Power of a Free Cookie - A reverse of Chapter 4, it considers what happens when you get something for free as opposed to having to pay for it. When a colleague comes to the office and brings cookies, people take one or two, taking into consideration that other people in the office need to get a cookie. However, if people are asked to pay a cent on the cookies, they usually take more, again market rules trumping social norms when money is involved.
• Chapter 6: The Influence of Arousal - Rather funny chapter, but really interesting. It shows that people, when sexually aroused, change their behavior significantly. That is not a surprise, but that change is so large that those people themselves cannot predict what they will actually do. Consider this when you rationally "plan" on how you are going to behave when exposed to temptation or strong emotions.
• Chapter 7: The Problem of Procrastination and Self Control - People tend to value the present much more than the future. People plan to save money or lose weight, but are deflected by present moment temptations. Can something be done about it?
• Chapter 8: The High Price of Ownership - People tend to overvalue the things they already possess. In an experiment, Ariely proves that people would not buy the things that they are trying to sell at the price that they would themselves ask. This is used in economics when people are offered the option of "trying out" something and only when they actually "have" the item, decide if they want to give it back.
• Chapter 9: Keeping Doors Open - One AI researcher came with the idea that intelligent behavior arises spontaneously when trying to maximize the available options. Ariely argues that this kind of behavior is not intelligent at all. He does clever experiments with doors that disappear if not opened in an interval of time and observes people periodically open them just in order to keep them there, even if they gain less by not visiting more lucrative rooms.
• Chapter 10: The Effect of Expectations - This chapter seems to be incomplete. It is argued that if expecting to enjoy or not enjoy something, the enjoyment will be proportional to the expectations. Personally I feel that this only happens in cases where people can't really tell the difference between good and bad. I often face the opposite effect when watching a movie that I expect to be good and hate it when it is merely average.
• Chapter 11: The Power of Price - Similar to Chapter 10, this shows how we feel we get more from something that is priced higher. The placebo effect is also discussed here. Interesting, indeed.
• Chapter 12: The Cycle of Distrust - Economics says that there can be no hundred dollar bills on the ground because someone would have picked them up already. Making fun of this view on things, Ariely discusses dishonest offers that look like great deals, but instead are taking advantage of your gullibility. He argues that originally trustful people quickly lose that trust when cheated and it is hard to get it back. He gives an interesting example where they installed a stall offering free money. Only about one in five people even approached it.
• Chapter 13: The Context of Our Character part 1 - Both chapters discuss the level of human dishonesty, but show that circumstances change the amount considerably. In an experiment he gives people the chance to cheat after doing some word memory tests, but people almost don't cheat at all if the words were related to honesty or moral codes.
• Chapter 14: The Context of Our Character part 2 - In this it is shown that people are more likely to cheat if they can rationalize the value of the thing they steal. A concrete example is that they are less likely to steal money than something one step apart from money, like a worthless token. The difference is quite significant.
• Chapter 15: Beer and Free Lunches - A kind of good bye chapter, this shows how people are influenced in their choices by what other people in their group chose. He makes a clever experiment where people order from several types of beer, either publicly or on a piece of paper. Depending on the culture, they choose differently or similarly to what people before them chose.

Overall I found the book informative. If one can integrate the teachings of the book, the benefit for one's life would be great. Unfortunately, Ariely shows that this kind of rational illusions are predictable, and that people need to make great efforts to dispel them. I leave you with a video presentation from Dan Ariely on TED, just to give you a taste of what he is like and what he does.

[youtube:9X68dm92HVI]

The Martian is a short and easy to read book about a guy being abandoned on Mars by mistake. Andy Weir writes most of the book as the astronaut's log entries, but in a colloquial and funny way. I started reading the book since there are a lot of people that praised it and there is also a Ridley Scott movie being made from the book. I hope it won't suck (*cough*Interstellar*cough*).

What I found really appealing is not only the subject matter and all the science and engineering involved, but also the positive attitude of the main character in the face of adversity. All that science and engineering was cool too, though :) and presented in an easy to digest way (there are no equations anywhere :-P). After a while it becomes difficult to suspend disbelief since there are accidents after accidents and Mars really is being painted as the bad guy, trying to kill the protagonist, yet he always finds a way out of the problem at hand. I mean, if they make the movie follow the book, they need Matt Damon in it just because he has all that Bourne training and he needs it to survive the set. Yet one cannot help rooting for Mark Watney, anyway. There are some politics involved as well, but not that much; basically NASA is presented as an organization of scientists that want to get the job done, even if some are more cautious than others.

In summary, I think this is a book that any space geek should read. I finished it in two days, so it's not really a waste of anyone's time.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, all!

I thought I would write this post as a Christmas present and let you know about this very cool book. I've read the Harry Potter books and so I could appreciate this book more, as it is fan fiction, however it can be read separately; my recommendation, though, is to know at least something (like having watched the movies) about the Harry Potter universe.

That being said, imagine that Harry Potter would have been a slightly different person, a combination between Sherlock Holmes and Richard Feynman, maybe. Highly intelligent, having read a lot of really serious books and having understood and integrated them into his own philosophy, this Harry Potter goes to the Hogwarts school of magic for two reasons: to apply the scientific method to magic and, having discovered its mysteries, take over the world and stave off death.

Imagine what such a character would do with the stern and moralizing lectures of Dark Ages tutors and you can see why this book is really really funny. But don't take it all as a satire. The references, both serious and in jest, are real. The teachings and methods applied are real. All in all, from every book about children and young adult heroes that I've read so far, this one presents the best role model yet! And I include Ender's Game here (which is also referenced in the book when Harry's adoptive father is comparing the two - hillarious).

I would have to say that I've finished the book, but I didn't actually do that. And that is because the book is not something put on paper and sold by a publisher, instead it is an ongoing story that is offered freely on a blog-like site. Yes, you can read it online. And I have read all that was written yet and, if you consider the parallel universe of the original Harry Potter books, we are about a book and a half in.
Update: I have actually finished the book. :( The writer actually finished writing it after 122 chapters. The ending was pretty cool, too, but I really wanted more. He writes "This is the end of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I will write no sequel myself; I have said what I set out to say, and it is done. You have my enthusiastic consent to write within this universe yourself, if you wish.".

So, the bottom line is that I love this book, even if a little inconsistent in the sense that the style and the ideas do not keep the same sort of rhythm throughout. You can read it at its completely free site: HPMOR. Its author, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky is a scholar of human rationality and artificial intelligence. I don't know much about him, but let me tell you that, after reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, I am eager to familiarize myself with his work. I highly recommend this epic undertaking, which probably started as a satire, until its characters gained enough consistency to define their own solid and inspiring story.

Right now there is a battle raging on that few of us are aware of. It is for one thing only, and that is control over the Internet, control over communications between people, whether it is a discussion about a two tiered Internet, one free and one paid, or a ban instituted by a government or another on sites that are considered bad for you. It started as it usually does, with governments and corporations trying to get as much of the pie as possible. Only something was different: the Internet is so basic, so flexible, that the companies regulating its use and owning the hardware it runs on cannot control its flow or its direction. And as great strides have been made by intelligence and commercial entities alike to control the content and to track the use, equally great strides have been made by individuals to conceal the use and escape monitoring and censorship. The biggest and most touted mechanism that allows anonymity on the Internet is called TOR, The Onion Router, and its concept is simple: encrypt all communications and randomly route requests through the TOR nodes so that the origin of the access is next to impossible to find. There are other, less known methods of doing this, but TOR is the most used and the most known. It is mostly used as a proxy to anonymize normal Internet access, though, and very few people are actually using TOR to access TOR services only.

I am here to tell you that, first, TOR is not enough and, second, that no other software will ever be enough for this kind of use. You see, the TOR nodes I was talking about are people using TOR on their computers and allowing other people to access the "normal" Internet through them. A lot of the TOR exit nodes that are the border of the anonymous TOR world and the transparent Internet, are actually heavily monitored by everyone interested, if not actually ran by them from the beginning. Like in an old example where the FBI was running an IP anonymizing proxy, those exit points are the weak spot of the TOR network. Another flaw is the fact that it works as a proxy for normal IP protocols. Some software (Bittorrent, for example) is openly sending the originating IP in their data, so it doesn't matter if you go through TOR to download stuff, your IP is still there for the world to see. Since you cannot trust all software than runs on your computer, you cannot completely trust using TOR as a proxy for anonymous Internet access.

The solution, I believe, is to implement the anonymizing and encryption features in the Internet itself. Make it so that there is no address for any of its users, or if it is, it is something temporary that you assigned for a connection or another and can be easily recreated and changed. Do it in such a manner that no one will be able to control the DNS servers and the naming schemes, so that you can call your web site whatever you want and not have to pay for it and be able to host it without broadcasting to the world where you are. The problems in implementing this are major, but not insurmountable. One of them is that encryption and complicated routing are significantly decreasing access time. However, given the speed of Internet today, that is not really a big problem anymore.

My thesis is that if freedom of speech, true freedom of speech, is implemented in a technical way, unbiased by any other rule than that you are free to communicate without fear, then no amount of intimidation will be able to break it. As always when human politics have encroached in the territory of personal freedom, the only solution is usually technical, at least since Gutenberg made his printing press and probably way before that.

I am myself not skilled enough to think of all the aspects of such a new protocol for the Internet. Also I am pretty sure that opposition will be huge against any attempt to do it. But what about if we, technical people, get together and make this work? Borrowing parts from the enormously successful TOR, Bittorrent, Bitcoin, we can architect freedom rather than just talk about it in the context of some war or another. Think about it the next time when, in your free country, you get arrested for saying what you believe in or sharing what you know or trying to access a site and finding that it is not there anymore, not for you at least.

Last year there were three very good US political shows: Homeland, of course, then The Americans, which presents two KBG agents pretending to be US citizens as the main protagonists, as well as The Assets, which was not that good, but was about Aldrich Ames, the infamous American CIA agent who sold secrets to the Russians. All of these shows were presenting various intelligence services doing their best, and in good conscience, to further the interests of their countries. Motivated people, some you might love, some you might hate, but all doing things for the right reasons. Unfortunately, this year seems to be plagued by disgustingly propagandistic shows like Madam Secretary and State of Affairs, bent on showing the US as the spotless white knights and their enemies as faceless evil villains.

Both seemingly wanting to put forward strong female characters with real power and responsibility, they do it in a sledgehammer way that makes me want to cringe. Madam Secretary is about an ex-CIA, now political university intellectual, woman who gets to become the US Foreign Secretary after an unforeseen accident to the real secretary. Interpreted by the beautiful Téa Leoni, it presents the entire US administration as a bunch of do-gooders, plagued by the moral consequences of using their power and having to often sidestep their conscience in order to save the world from the boogie man. Not only a powerful woman at work, she is also a mother, having to take care of her daughter and solve family problems together with her teacher husband. The entire image portrayed by the series is so artificial that you actually see all the pink dripping from where it was forcefully painted over all the black bits.

State of Affairs just started. The lead of the series is Grey's Anatomy star Katherine Heigl, also a CIA woman with a direct professional and personal connection with the US president, who is a black woman. Her fiance was killed right in front of her by terrorists. He was none other than the president's son. In the first three episodes she has to make decisions to thwart the efforts of: Arab terrorists abducting American doctors and threatening them with decapitation, Russian submarines that steal American secrets by tapping undersea fiber optics and Boko Haram terrorists kidnapping school girls. Meanwhile she is being torn by the fact that the guy who killed her fiance was a former asset of hers. She doesn't tell the president because... she would break her oaths to the CIA. The show has some darkness in it, but it also artificial, as some hidden entity has some proof that would incriminate her and a shady character who might be good or bad or both is circling like a vulture. Soon enough we'll discover her father is somehow involved and her fiance is not dead and he is actually her brother or something.

To their benefit, after exhausting the original material, Homeland is not necessarily worst. Also there is another show which I cannot yet say if I like or not, called The Honourable Woman. Great cast: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Stephen Rea (who is not a werewolf in this one... yet :D ) and others. It is an US/UK coproduction, really atmospheric, really dark, but also a bit slow and obtuse. I may have had my brain affected by the previous shows so I can't yet appreciate the value of this one. It seems to mix real politics with some really heavy stuff like assassinations, the economic battlefront between Israel and Palestine, arms smuggling, etc.

The reason why I wrote this post is because sometimes I feel like the media shows are following too closely the politics of the moment, so close in fact that many a time they seem to be slightly ahead of it. The bad guys are entities that are not yet enemies of the US or that behave in worst ways than their real life counterparts, the people in charge often have to bend the rules in order to remain the good guys, even if officially in reality those people have not (yet) bent those rules, etc. Unlike war movies that try to erase or at least erode the moral debt of nations and people involved in past wars, I feel now there are films and series that inject the apology before the act has even been committed. In a period when the US intelligence apparatus is being attacked from all sides by news reports of their activities, here they are, all these stories about the good ole CIA, ran by intellectual and beautiful women of power who maintain their morality like the good mothers of the nation that they are. Am I paranoid here?

It was inevitable, both Naruto and Sasuke were getting ridiculously strong. In the end they fought the mother of all chakra and... of course they won, then they fought each other, but it was kind of underwhelming, since their power prevented any subtlety and they just went cowboy punching each other. The last color chapter is about how they leave it all to the next generation, although it is hard to think of anything more they could do to top their parents. I loved the entire series and it is easy to understand why: simple concept, positive feelings like friendship and camaraderie and weird magical ninja fights. I was a teen when I started watching the anime and now I am freakishly old. Well, life happens. After I got kind of tired of watching the anime, even if it was really well done and followed the manga faithfully, I went with reading the manga. I like to use Mangastream for my reading purposes, so you can read the entire thing here: Naruto Shippuden. Even if it appears they are writing some Naruto side stories, I am not sure I will ever read them. I am still looking for a manga that can grab me like Naruto has.

I was watching a video from GM Niclas Huschenbeth where he played lytura in an online game. Amazingly he lost, but that is what happens when you underestimate your opponent, which I think was what actually went wrong. At the end of the video it was difficult to see exactly what White could have done after a point, so I analysed the game with the computer and found some amazing moves. First I will show you the original game. I urge you to think it through and see what moves you would have done differently, like a chess puzzle, before you watch the game as the computer suggested it. You can also watch the video online at the end of the post and, if you like chess, I really recommend Huschenbeth's channel. Not only is he a great player, but also a decent and nice guy and young, too. His Blitz & Talk GM Special videos are especially cool, since he plays with other world class grand masters.

But enough of that. Here is the game, up to a point where it didn't really matter what happened: 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 g5 4. Nc3 g4 5. Ne5 Qh4+ 6. g3 fxg3 7. Qxg4 g2+ 8. Qxh4 gxh1=Q 9. Qh5 Nh6 10. d3 d6 11. Bxh6 Be6 12. Bxf8 Rxf8 13. Nf3 Nd7 14. O-O-O c6 15. Bh3 Nf6 16. Rxh1 Nxh5 17. Bf1 Rg8 18. Ne2 Kd7 19. Kd2 Rg7 20. Ke3 Rag8 21. a3 Nf6 22. h3 b6 23. d4 a5 24. Nf4 Rg3 25. Ne2

Here is the video of the game, to give you the time to think it through:


And finally, here are two lines that the computer recommended. This is considering that the fateful 10. d3 was played already: 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 g5 4. Nc3 g4 5. Ne5 Qh4+ 6. g3 fxg3 7. Qxg4 g2+ 8. Qxh4 gxh1=Q 9. Qh5 Nh6 10. d3 d6 11. Bxh6 Be6 12. Bxf8 Rxf8 13. Nf3 Nd7 14. O-O-O c6 15. Nb5 Nf6 (15. .. cxb5 16. Bh3 Qxd1+ 17. Kxd1 O-O-O 18. Bxe6 fxe6 19. Nd4 {White +1.2}) 16. Nxd6+ Kd7 17. Qh3 Bxh3 18. Bxh3+ Kxd6 19. Rxh1 {Black +0.3}

Did you see those Nb5 and Qh3 moves?! Who does that? :)

You may have heard of the recent scandal about Internet leaks of nude or personal photos of female celebrities. Dubbed "The Fappening", a word play on the (horribly bad - my opinion) movie The Happening and the term "fap", which refers to masturbation, it is a huge collection of pictures that seem to have been taken by the celebs themselves or by close acquaintances in private surroundings. You know... selfies. They were obviously obtained through some underhanded methods and published in several waves, three at the moment. I am not here to give you torrent links to the leaked material, even if they are fairly easy to find, instead I am going to talk about the general reaction, as proven by seed/leech ratios of torrent downloads: after an initial boom in interest, the updates have been less and less interesting to people. Why is that?

At first I hypothesized that the vehement reaction of the media was part joining in the fray, like sharks smelling blood, and in their own way pointing people to search the net for the photos (yeah, I don't really believe in the difference between mentioning something that is easy to find and a link), but also because this affair was an obvious attack on the brands that the celebrities are standing for. Nobody really cares about how some of the actresses in this situation are actually acting if they look hot enough and also, very important, how unattainable they are. The reaction of the agencies that invested a lot in these brands was expectedly violent. However, there is another factor, one that I think makes it all meaningful to discuss: people expected something completely different from what was provided. No matter how much we understand the media processes involved in creating a celebrity personality, we don't really (emotionally) believe that it is happening or we don't understand the extent of the effort. Indeed, when people downloaded the pictures and guiltily and excitedly started to look at the images, they found out... real women. Without the expertise of professional photographers and without the extensive post processing and media censorship that occurs after the pictures are taken, the celebrity females that we collectively idolatrized appeared as less than goddesses and as just normal people, with zits and saggy tits and all that. Even if they look fabulous, like some of them do, the amateurish manner of the way the pictures were taken give little pleasure. Indeed, the only pleasure that can be extracted from this is akin to rape: they wanted to cheat, to show us just the Photoshopped images of themselves, but we showed them! We took what we wanted.

Look at the torrent statistics though. The October collection of pictures is at the top, over Fappening 2 that has more seeds than Fappening 3. People lost interest: they were curious, downloaded the stuff, then they didn't follow through with the rest. All because they were getting something other than they had bargained for. Instead of pictures showing more of the beautiful women we yearn for, they showed enough to make those women feel terribly human. The breasts, the asses and all the other hidden skin was hidden not because they were something amazing to hide, but because the myth was more beautiful and sexy, perfect in its imperfect sharing. It raises important questions that I believe to be worth exploring: what are we really falling for? What is beauty: just a branded illusion? Why do girls appearing fully clothed and smiling in a music video or a movie seem more desirable than the fully naked and active girls in porn films? Are we really interested in the "reality show" of someone's intimacy, or do we, really, secretly, want these people to show us only the beautiful parts, to make us believe that perfect people exist? Are we all victims of a global romcom? And who is it that is laughing at the comedy aspect of all this?

The autumn season for TV shows is beginning, so I am here again to discuss the ones that I have been watching lately.

• The Legend of Korra - This third season was better than others, but we still have to contend with Korra's helplessness. Also I have this nagging feeling that her not being able to do anything and having to be saved by her friends repeatedly has less to do with what people can accomplish together and more with the fact that she is female and therefore must be perceived as in distress. And before you ask me when did I become a feminist, just read on and see what are the shows with female lead characters and what happens to them. The magnificent four villains also were ridiculously strong for people living in solitary confinement for years.
• The Good Wife - Interesting new dynamic of the show. I am quite fascinated by how they achieve this dynamic equilibrium: giving people what they want, but always changing things one way or another, moving characters around, keeping things interesting. If nothing else, this is a brilliantly constructed TV show.
• Homeland - Homeland will have a fourth season, which is to begin soon. They released a sort of recap of what happened so far, but I believe you should skip it as I think it contains spoilers for the upcoming season. Also it conveys nothing of the quality of the first three seasons. This is a good show, you should watch it, even if the lead female character is bipolar and prone to do crazy things in the name of love. See what I mean?
• Gotham - A new superhero series will being shortly. Hurray! This time is about Gotham where every supervillain and superhero is young, at the beginning of their "careers". Why are you throwing an adolescent tantrum, Bruce? Because I'm Batman!
• Ressurection - I've decided not to watch it anymore. It is a pale copy of the original.
• Vikings - I love this show, however it is beginning to change. It started with eager actors doing a cool project, so they all gave their best and the focus was on the way of the Viking. But now, after a while, the actors are acting more like themselves and the focus of the story shifted towards feudal intrigue.
• Suits - The fourth season just ended with Mike back at the law firm and the comic relief guy, Louis Litt, leaving the company. I thought the actor got tired of playing a ridiculous man that doesn't seem to do anything right, but the ending of the season goes a different direction.
• Black Box - As expected, the show was cancelled.
• Halt and Catch Fire - A lot of emotion, a lot of tension, a lot of drama. Of course it got renewed for the second season, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
• Under the Dome - I kept watching and watching and watching until I realized this is the new Lost! Every episode something happens that is completely implausible and unrelated to anything in the previous episodes. I will not watch it anymore.
• Crossbones - This is a well done show, with good acting and high production values. However it relates to pirates and not even the fun ones. Imagine watching a TV show about drug lords and instead of high powered automatic rifle fights you would see the accountants doing the job of inventorying the proceeds. Black Sails is like that and then they insert some artificial personal drama to spice it up.
• The Honourable Woman - Described as "The daughter of an assassinated Zionist arms dealer seeks to legitimise the family business while righting the wrongs done to them in the past.", it is a strange little show. I started watching it, but then I stopped. It is heavy, well acted, good production values. I wasn't in the mood for it for a long time, though. The premise is nothing if not brave.
• The Leftovers - I just couldn't watch it anymore. The entire show was about people feeling depressed and/or suicidal because they were not among the 2% of people who magically vanished. Depressing and pointless.
• The Witches of East End - I guess it's like The Originals with witches instead of vampires. I keep watching it, though, even if I don't know why. Probably someone placed a spell on me.
• Tyrant - Speaking of brave TV show premises, this is a show about an Arab-American, who left his birth country because his father was an ass - and the country's tyrannical ruler - who returns there after his father dies. I like the acting and the premise. What I don't like is the condescending viewpoint of the script: the smart educated moral good looking American comes and teaches his older brother how to rule the country based on American principles. But the ending of the first season implies that this is not what it is going to happen at all. Could it be that it will be the series to show Americans that all tyrants are manufactured, more or less, by circumstances? Check out this quote: "CIA guy: The US is not in the business of regime change. Al Fayed: Say that again with a straight face"
• Taxi Brooklyn - A weird premise for a show that doesn't know what it wants to be: a comedy, a car thing or a police procedural. The idea is that a police detective (female and hot, but with daddy issues, of course) loses her right to drive. Instead, she coopts a French immigrant taxi driver to move her around. He serves as the comic relief most of the time, but also, probably, as the male reason why anything gets done. Decided not to watch it anymore for several reason: the premise, the scripting and the acting being at least three of them.
• Extant - Female astronaut returns after a solo mission of more than nine months. And she is pregnant. Wonderful premise, however it has several things that are not going for the show: the main actress is Halle Berry, who I completely dislike. Then there is the electronic boy story arch (her husband and she have an artificial son that the husband created) which is either a good subject for another series or completely out of place here. And finally, the "corporate conspiracy" arch, where the guy from Helix is the bad guy. I don't know, imagine Gothica in space, with a little of AI sprinkled over for fun. Ugh!
• The Bridge - Haven't watched any of the second season episodes, waiting for the wife to see it with me. I will wait for a long time more, I believe.
• Tokyo Ghoul - I usually make separate blog posts with anime, but this one was nothing that deserves too much attention. Hybrid man and ghoul (something like a vampire that also likes to eat the flesh), the main character is a whinny boy who gets stepped on by just about everybody. In the end he is captured and tortured a lot, which makes him more aggressive and less whinny. But still it's nothing too interesting.
• Ghost in the Shell - Arise - the modern reboot of GITS, it is not bad. Unfortunately there are only four OVA episodes, each one released months from the previous one. Still waiting for the fourth one. I like the show a lot, but then I am biased, since I love anything related to the Ghost in the Shell universe.
• The Strain - Guillermo del Toro wrote a horror book with vampires and now he is creating the TV show based on the book. So far I like the series, although I've already read the book and a lot of the surprise is gone. It's brutal, with vampires that are neither sexy nor romantic, but just want to drink all your blood and answer unconditionally to their Master. The Master is even scarier. It is not brilliant, but certainly beats The Living Dead.
• Blood Lad - Horribly stupid anime. This guy who is a prince in the magical world of demons accidentally meets a human girl who then gets killed. He pledges his support to help her ghost find a body again. Just boring.
• Longmire - The second season is a lot darker, but for all the wrong reasons, if you ask me. The things I liked in Longmire were to see him being uncompromisingly moral, even if he appears lonely and withdrawn to everybody around him. This season everybody connected to him has to face a metaphorical demon or ten, including Longmire himself. It felt pushed too far, I think.
• The Lottery - Just like Extant, The Lottery is a sci-fi series centered around a woman. Naturally, the only things she can possibly do is worry about children. You see, for some reason no one is able to sire children anymore. A scientist manages to impregnate 100 embryos and there will be a lottery to give the children to 100 couples. Lots of government conspiracies and child protecting going around. I may watch the rest of the episodes, but the pilot didn't convince me at all.
• Manhattan - A show about the development of the first atomic bomb. Its take is interesting, focusing on the personal quirks, on the politically incorrect, on the compromises and mistakes, on scientists, military and their spouses alike. What I found fascinating is showing how the obnoxious arrogance of someone truly driven and brilliant is almost forced, as a defense mechanism against getting pulled down by the mediocre. Don't get me wrong, it is not another show about brilliant assholes a la Dr House and does not apologize gratuitous arrogance. Instead it shows how vital it is in the way to success. Given that, the character of Winter is so bloody annoying that I wonder why anyone would put up with such a guy and not kick his ass or just shoot him directly. Perhaps that is another strength of the show: describing how close to failure for some many different reasons the Manhattan Project truly was. It was a government project after all.
• The Assets - The series ended with episode 8. In that sense, it is actually a miniseries, as the entire premise of the show comes to an end with the final episode. I wrote before that it got cancelled really soon and I believe that the reason is that all characters are really unlikable. Also, since it is based on a book that describes a real event that a lot of Americans know how it went down, the interest was probably small. Also, at the end of the show you realise something: spies are really boring.
• Legends - A TV series for the sole purpose of keeping Sean Bean alive! :) Sean Bean is this deep undercover agent with a lot of prefabricated "legends", or fake lives, that he uses to infiltrate criminal or terrorist organizations. This leads him to have identity crises, even questioning if any of his lives, including the real one, are actually real. Sexy Ali Larter is his "handler", which can't hurt.
• Outlander - Is this an attempt at a romantic Yankee in King Arthur's Court? A 1945 nurse is thrown back in time in 1743 Scotland. Her healing skills are helping her join this band of rebellious Scots and experience the life there. The synopsis of the show didn't give me much hope for it, but after watching all the episodes so far it got me hooked. The acting is good and the script is well written. I hope it doesn't deteriorate on the way. It is also intriguing that she has 200 years of extra knowledge, but she doesn't suddenly share antibiotics with the world or try to improve muskets or whatever. Being a woman in a sort of prisoner situation serves to explain that, but how long can it go on like that?
• The Divide - About a woman that works for an organization that tries to help the wrongly accused in the US justice system. There is a coverup, a conspiracy, White men wrongly accused of killing a Black family, politics, etc. It started as intriguing, but outside the twist that is probably looming, I don't think there is anything really interesting to me in the show. Too political, I guess.
• The Knick - This is one of the good ones. A look at the professional and personal lives of the staff at New York's Knickerbocker Hospital during the early part of the twentieth century, it is directed by Soderbergh, starring Clive Owen and it is both brutal and truthful. A must see for all the new age assholes that like to think medicine was better at that time.
• Doctor Who - Season 8 with Capaldi is both interesting and dull. It was supposed to be darker, more intense, but it isn't really. What it is is confusing, though. I didn't like the pilot, but I enjoyed the second and third episodes. I don't know, let's see.
• Forever - Another "special" person helping the police. Why?! Oh, why?!! This time it's about a guy who cannot die. Every time he dies, he appears somewhere in water, naked. A single, sexy, female police detective partners with him in order to solve crime. I like the actor, though, even if the script is eerily similar to any of the shows in the genre out there. Let's see how it goes.
• Intruders - "Jack Whelan is a former LAPD officer who is asked to investigate some strange occurrences. He tries to find answers, but he's stonewalled at every turn. Baffled, he continues until he starts to concentrate his search around a secret society that chases immortality by seeking refuge in the bodies of others." The cast seems good. I still have to actually watch it, though.
• Hysteria - It concerns the idea that people can get afflictions from social media. A perfect reason for Internet control! :) Anyway, the title is perfect as it seems the cause of the problem is hysteria, while the reaction of the people is mass hysteria. The Hannibal Lecter beginning, though, may either be the sign of bad writing or of some ingenious plot device. Wait and see.
• Hand of God - Ron Perlman? Sign me up! I've seen the pilot though and it's kind of weird. You get this judge who's son just killed himself. He did it because someone raped his wife and made him watch. And so the judge gets born again in a shady church by a preacher who is an ex actor and a con artist. Then the judge starts hearing the voice of God. Some things clearly get lost in translation, because He is always putting Ron Perlman in the situation to be a total ass who everybody thinks is insane. Oh, except the insane people, who think he is the new Solomon. But is he? Weird, huh?

Well, a la prossima!

Update: If you are behind a proxy, here is some additional code to add right after creating the update session:

'updateSession.WebProxy.AutoDetect = true 'try this first. It doesn't work so well in some environments if no authentication windows appears (*cough* Windows 8 *cough*)

strProxy = "proxy name or address:proxy port"  'ex: 1234:999
strProxyUser = "your username"
strProxyPass = "your password" 

updateSession.WebProxy.Address=strProxy
updateSession.WebProxy.UserName=strProxyUser
updateSession.WebProxy.SetPassword(strProxyPass)

I am working behind a "secured" web proxy that sometimes skips a beat. As a result there are days in which I cannot install Window Updates, the normal Windows update application just fails (with Error Code: 0x80246002) and I am left angry and powerless. Well, there are options. First of all, none of the "solutions" offered by Microsoft seem to work. The most promising one (which may apply to you, but it did not apply to me) was that you may have corrupted files in the Download folder for Windows updates. As a result you need to:

• Stop the Windows Update service issuing the command line command: net stop wuauserv or by going to Control Panel, Services and manually stopping it.
• Go to the download folder parent found at %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution (cd %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution) and rename the Download folder (ren Download Download.old)
• Start the Windows Update service issuing the command line command: net start wuauserv or by going to Control Panel, Services and manually starting it.

So my solution was to use a script that downloads and installs the Windows updates from the command line and I found this link: Searching, Downloading, and Installing Updates that pretty much provided the solution I was looking for. There are two issues with the script. The first is that it prompts you to accept any EULA that the updates may present. The second is that it downloads all updates, regardless of severity. So I am publishing here the script that I am using who fixes these two problems: EULA is automatically accepted and only Important and Critical updates are downloaded and installed:

Set updateSession = CreateObject("Microsoft.Update.Session")
updateSession.ClientApplicationID = "Siderite :) Sample Script"

Set updateSearcher = updateSession.CreateUpdateSearcher()

WScript.Echo "Searching for updates..." & vbCRLF

Set searchResult = _
updateSearcher.Search("IsInstalled=0 and Type='Software' and IsHidden=0")

WScript.Echo "List of applicable items on the machine:"

For I = 0 To searchResult.Updates.Count-1
    Set update = searchResult.Updates.Item(I)
    WScript.Echo I + 1 & "> " & update.Title
Next

If searchResult.Updates.Count = 0 Then
    WScript.Echo "There are no applicable updates."
    WScript.Quit
End If

WScript.Echo vbCRLF & "Creating collection of updates to download:"

Set updatesToDownload = CreateObject("Microsoft.Update.UpdateColl")

For I = 0 to searchResult.Updates.Count-1
    Set update = searchResult.Updates.Item(I)

    addThisUpdate = false
    If update.InstallationBehavior.CanRequestUserInput = true Then
        WScript.Echo I + 1 & "> skipping: " & update.Title & _
        " because it requires user input"
    Else
        If update.EulaAccepted = false Then
            update.AcceptEula()
            WScript.Echo I + 1 & ">     Accept EULA " & update.Title 
            addThisUpdate = true
            'WScript.Echo I + 1 & "> note: " & update.Title & " has a license agreement that must be accepted:"
            'WScript.Echo update.EulaText
            'WScript.Echo "Do you accept this license agreement? (Y/N)"
            'strInput = WScript.StdIn.Readline
            'WScript.Echo 
            'If (strInput = "Y" or strInput = "y") Then
            '    update.AcceptEula()
            '    addThisUpdate = true
            'Else
            '    WScript.Echo I + 1 & "> skipping: " & update.Title & _
            '    " because the license agreement was declined"
            'End If
        Else
            addThisUpdate = true
        End If
    End If

    If addThisUpdate AND (update.MsrcSeverity = "Important" OR update.MsrcSeverity = "Critical") Then
        'wscript.echo ("This item is " & update.MsrcSeverity & " and will be processed!")
    Else
        'comment these lines to make it download everything
        wscript.echo (update.Title & " has severity [" & update.MsrcSeverity & "] and will NOT be processed!")
        addThisUpdate=false
    End If

    If addThisUpdate = true Then
        wscript.echo(I + 1 & "> adding: (" & update.MsrcSeverity & ") " & update.Title)
        updatesToDownload.Add(update)
    End If
Next

If updatesToDownload.Count = 0 Then
    WScript.Echo "All applicable updates were skipped."
    WScript.Quit
End If
    
WScript.Echo vbCRLF & "Downloading updates..."

Set downloader = updateSession.CreateUpdateDownloader() 
downloader.Updates = updatesToDownload
downloader.Download()

Set updatesToInstall = CreateObject("Microsoft.Update.UpdateColl")

rebootMayBeRequired = false

WScript.Echo vbCRLF & "Successfully downloaded updates:"

For I = 0 To searchResult.Updates.Count-1
    set update = searchResult.Updates.Item(I)
    If update.IsDownloaded = true Then
        WScript.Echo I + 1 & "> " & update.Title 
        updatesToInstall.Add(update) 
        If update.InstallationBehavior.RebootBehavior > 0 Then
            rebootMayBeRequired = true
        End If
    End If
Next

If updatesToInstall.Count = 0 Then
    WScript.Echo "No updates were successfully downloaded."
    WScript.Quit
End If

If rebootMayBeRequired = true Then
    WScript.Echo vbCRLF & "These updates may require a reboot."
End If

WScript.Echo  vbCRLF & "Would you like to install updates now? (Y/N)"
strInput = WScript.StdIn.Readline
WScript.Echo 

If (strInput = "Y" or strInput = "y") Then
    WScript.Echo "Installing updates..."
    Set installer = updateSession.CreateUpdateInstaller()
    installer.Updates = updatesToInstall
    Set installationResult = installer.Install()
 
    'Output results of install
    WScript.Echo "Installation Result: " & _
    installationResult.ResultCode 
    WScript.Echo "Reboot Required: " & _ 
    installationResult.RebootRequired & vbCRLF 
    WScript.Echo "Listing of updates installed " & _
    "and individual installation results:" 
 
    For I = 0 to updatesToInstall.Count - 1
        WScript.Echo I + 1 & "> " & _
        updatesToInstall.Item(i).Title & _
        ": " & installationResult.GetUpdateResult(i).ResultCode   
    Next
End If
WScript.StdIn.Readline()

Save the code above in a file called Update.vbs and then creating a batch file that looks like this:

@ECHO OFF
start "Command line Windows update" cscript Update.vbs

Run the script and you will get the .vbs executed in a command line window that will also wait for pressing Enter at the end of execution so you can see the result.

For other solutions that are more system admin oriented, follow this link which provides you with a lot of possibilities, some in PowerShell, for example.

Also, I didn't find a way to install the updates without the Windows annoyance that asks me to reboot the computer popping up. If you know how to do that, I would be grateful.

I have been watching this weekly space show made by a husband and wife couple working for SpaceX. Initially called Spacevidcast, now it is called TMRO (pronounced Tomorrow). It is a great show, great quality, nice humor and, more than anything, a comprehensive video report on weekly events in space exploration, commercial or otherwise. If you are even remotely interested in space, you should subscribe. And they have been doing it all from their own resources and crowdfunding for seven years! You gotta love that.

But the selfish reason I am blogging about them is that I got mentioned in the TMRO show! Click here to see how they are trying and even succeeding to pronounce my Internet nom de guerre. The effort is appreciated.

Because of idiotic firewall rules at my workplace I am forced to use Hangouts rather than Yahoo Messenger as an instant messenger. I am not going to rant here about which one is best, enough to say that most of my friends are on YM and being on Hangouts doesn't help. Hangouts has many annoyances for me, like its propensity to freeze when you lose Internet connection often or the lack of features that YM had. In fact I was so annoyed that I planned to do my own professional messenger to rule them all. But that's another story.

I am writing this post because of a behaviour of the Google Hangouts instant messenger (which, to be fair, is only a Chrome extension), mainly that after a while, the green traybar icon of the messenger goes in the "hidden icons" group. I have to customize it every day, sometimes twice, as it seems to reset this behavior after a period of use, not just on restarts. There is a Google product forum that discusses this here: System tray icon resets every time Chrome is started where you also see a few comments from your truly.

I immediately wanted to create a script or a C# program to fix this, but at first I just searched for a solution on the web and I found TrayManager, a C# app that does what the "Customize..." tray link does and more. One of the best features is a command line! So here is what you do after downloading the software and installing it somewhere: TrayManager.exe -t "Hangouts" 2. Now, probably that doesn't solve the problem long term. It is just as you would go into the Customize... link, but it's faster. Also, it has no side effects if run multiple times, so you can use Task Scheduler to run it periodically. Yatta!