The War Between the Land and the Sea — Episode 3 “The Deep” — A Review

*Spoilers* 

13th December, 2025: “The Deep”.

An Introduction.

It’s not often I duplicate posts: at least, not often I use the opening of one post as the opening of another.

Except it’s something I did, last week: when writing my introduction to my reviews of the first two episodes.

It’s not often I complain about Apple, either.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m something of a Mac fan: and writing this on a 2024 Mac mini, using macOS Tahoe 26.2, using Safari 26.2 to write this post.

I had problems, after updating to those versions, Thursday: when, after the update, my browser would not stay logged into my usual websites after a restart.

You can read more details, here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256210549

But, after contacting Apple’s Support line?

It seems all I had to do to correct the issue, was to make a small change to Safari’s preferences: turning off the cross-site tracking option in Safari>Settings>Privacy.

That seems to have solved the problem, for now: although I don’t know what long term problems may happen, as a result.

I can only hope those are minimal.

~≈🧜🏼‍♂️≈~

Me complaining isn’t why you’re here!

No.

So if you’re a newcomer to Nik Nak’s Old Peculiar, I’ll have to repeat what I’ve said in earlier posts.

Tell you I write the Daily Teaser quiz, about films I’ve seen and TV shows I’m watching.

Whether you’re an old timer, or new to this blog?

I started watching the Dr Who spin-off, The War Between the Land and the Sea, starting with the first episodes, “Homo Aqua”, and “Plastic Apocalypse”, last week.

I’ll be doing the same thing, for episodes three and four, this week: and something very similar for the last episode!

Yes: I’m starting this post early.

But?

It’s Christmas.

And I wanted to have a good bitch!

Let’s get on with the review, shall we … ?

~≈🧜🏼‍♂️≈~

Nik Nak’s Daily Teaser — 18-9-2024 — The Referendum

18th September, 2024: the Referendum.

Well, that’s an annoyance!

I’ve updated my Mac, yesterday: to macOS 15 Sequoia, and — as part of the process — the web browser to Safari 18.

The new OS seems sign: and includes a new Background feature in Quicktime, one I used to make the introduction video.

And a funky new screen saver or two*.

Unfortunately?

The updated version of Safari seems to have issues keeping me signed in to Blogger … whilst uploading videos and photos to a given post.

I had to use Google’s Chrome browser to upload those.

That’s an annoyance.

Especially when you consider uploading these things was no problem … before the update.

Oh … and I’ve JUST been sent a message in Facebook Messenger: only to be told ‘end to end encryption isn’t supported in this browser’.

It was yesterday!

Frankly?

I think Apple needs to put some work in.

~≈🍎≈~

A few days ago, I found out that someone had been been murdered: at the council accommodation I’d lived in, in Ingrave Road.

I was shocked, and saddened: but not necessarily surprised.

But I now know the name of the man who was killed: 63 year old Francis ‘Frankie’ Reilly.

I never knew the man.

But I’m sorry to see him go.

~≈⚰≈~

Nik Nak’s Daily Teaser — 5-6-2018

5th June, 2018.

I’ve a definite confession to make … I like some of Radio Four’s Monday night comedies.

One of the classics?

One of their classics, of course, is the ever listenable Just a Minute: fronted since 1967 by presenter, Nicolas Parsons.

He’s 94: which is one hell of a good innings

But … ?

For the first time in his fifty years presenting the show, he missed an episode: last night’s.

Which was a sombre affair, as a result.

I think I can understand that.

Nicolas being off is understandable: is is 94, after all.

But it’s mildly worrying to see.

~≈§≈~

There’s something else I’ve seen, that struck me.

The news from Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference: that Apple will be re-designing Safari, their browser, so that it will be able to block the various tracking tools used by — very specifically — Facebook.

With the recent row over Cambridge’s Analytica’s use of data from FB?

And with ongoing tracking by various advertisers?

That’s possibly a good move: in the original iPhone update, Apple refused to build in an ability to use the battery draining Flash.

And encouraging the uptake HTML5, with it’s more efficient use of power in doing the same job.

Personally?

I can’t help but think that — and the various upcoming parental controls — are a good thing.

~≈§≈~

Nik Nak’s Daily Teaser — 28-11-2016

Hmmm … 

What on earth has happened, there … ?

A couple of days ago, Google managed to do some upgrading to Blogger: the site I use to publish this blog.

It made it difficult — indeed impossible — to use with Safari: my default, preferred browser.

I got with using Google Chrome, for the duration.

I got on with it, it has to be said.   Although Chrome works differently enough to make using it a (minor) annoyance.

Last night?   Last night, I opened Safari, and pressed the ‘New Post’ button.

Just on the off-chance.

It loaded up the page: with not a sign of a problem.

So, this morning … ?

We’re back to normal: thanking you for the fix, Google.

Hey ho … !

~≈Á≈~

The Daily Teaser — 8-5-2014: VE Day

Hmmm … 

Is anyone ELSE having an issue with YouTube … ?

Let me clarify: is anyone else out there having issues using or accessing YouTube, using Safari 5.x, under Snow Leopard … ?

I know I am, as are others: going by what I can see of the YouTube forums.

I’ve tried my usual range of stuff: from clearing my copy of Safari’s caches and history, to system wide cache clearing, to dumping the relevant .plist files.

With no good result.

And, wouldn’t you know it … ?

Wouldn’t you know it, interacting with YouTube’s forum — trying to post questions myself — is ALSO affected by whatever’s causing the problem.

Grrrr … !

Hmmm … Let’s get a move, shall we?

~≈Â≈~

Safari 5.1.2 Update

Hmm …

Well, now, that’s a thing.

I’ve got to admit, I cam home after taking a stroll into town to do some shopping, and to put a post up.

And got home to find out two things.

Firstly … ?

Well, firstly, I found I’d left Bruce on.

And secondly … ?

While I’d been out, the Software Update system had updates for me.

One minor one to Keynote, the software I use to make the Teaser videos.

And another to Safaricode>, to bring it from Safari 5.1.1 to Safari 5.1.2.




According to the release notes that Apple have released with it, it “Address issues that could cause hangs and excessive memory usage” and “Address issues that could cause webpages to flash white”.




Like in the second screen-shot, I should add, which was taken AFTER I installed the update.




I’ll let you know if it helps, AFTER I’ve used it …

MAC Defender: A Follow On

Hmmm …

Do you remember me, a few days ago, telling you about Mac Defender, the scare-ware aimed at OS X … ?

Now, I know that — almost within hours — was that steps were available on practically every Mac site going.

With one noticeable exception …

That of Apple, itself …

»»•««

Odd …

Not from what I’ve picked up, over the years.

After all, the Cupertino-based company is famed for being very closed mouthed, until it’s damn good and ready to speak its piece.

And about this subject … ?

It has: you can read Apple’s official solution, here.

»»•««

Actually, while we’re at … ?

I’ve got to admit to doing a bit of touch of asking around.

Strangely enough … !

You see, while I’m not a fan of Windows — I know a lot of people who are, but not all of us have managed to get Mac — I ALSO know a few people with iPods.

And iPhones.

Both of which hook up to a PC or Mac, through iTunes.

Obviously.

So the one thing I felt I should do is try and find out where the Preferences are, in the Windows version.

Curiosity, for the most part.

For the most part … !

But I’m also very aware that … well … Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

If Apple had made the Windows version of Safari pull off the same routine of opening apparently safe files, as soon as they were download … ?

That had me thinking … !

My solution … ?

Was, frankly, to ask a question on the Apple Safari Forums.

You can read the answer I got, here, but to summarise … ?

Simply all you need to do is is press ‘ctrl’ and the ‘,’.

And in the resultant Preferences, go into the General Tab …

And then tick the ‘Always Prompt Before Downloading’ button.

Hope that lot helps … !

Oh … Firefox is Out …

Hmmm …

I’ll be frank, this is a bit of a weird experience, right at the moment …

You’ve probably realised, over the past few year’s, that I’m something of a Mac fan, haven’t you … ?

More fool you, if you haven’t.

And generally speaking, I tend to stick with OS X’s default browser,Safari.

Mostly … ?

Mostly because I happen to prefer the way it handles text. And how one can use the cursor keys — ▲, ▶, ◀ and ▼ — in conjuntion with Shift(⇧), Option(⌥) and Command(⌘) to both navigate, highlight and even delete both words and phrase. Indeed, whole lines and paragraphs as needed.

⇧, ⌥ and the Up or Down cursor will highlight a line, for example.

Not the case in Firefox, I know that much.

I’m using it, now, to write this post.

Mostly because todaysaw the release of Firefox 4.0.

The thing that caught my eye … ?

Was the simple little fact that Mozilla, the open-source project behind both Firefox and Thunderbird, the email client you can get as part of the Mozilla suite, have seemingly mae Fire look a touch more like the Mac version of Chrome, from Google.

Not that much, I grant: the Mac version of Chrome is still a touch more Mac-like, something I know is appreciated by Mac users.

The one thing that HAS caught my attention is that Firefox 4 now has any tabs one has open above the URL bar: unlike Safari, which has kept them below.

Another is a small point, again relating to tabs.

I’m not sure if you can make it out on the picture, but each of the little ‘x’ shaped buttons used to close each tab — in Safari — is on the right hand side: deliberatly, I believe, to make moving a mouse easy for the majority of us: the 90% or so of the planet’s population who are right handed: it’s why I think the Red, yellow and green buttons — the Mac OS X equivalent to Windoze and Linux’s Close, Minimise and Resize buttons — are on the left hand side of a given window in OS X.

Windoze and Linux, of course, have those buttons on the rightof a given window.

However … ?

For whatever reason, the little ‘x’ button’s I’m on about — in Chrome and Firefox — are on the right hand side of individual tabs.

Handy for a southpaw like me.

Safari And YouTube: Problem Solvéd!

You know, there are times I could kick meself.

And I know perfectly well I’m going to get comments, there … !

But I’ve just been floating around YouTube’s help pages, to see if I couldn’t find something relevant.

I don’t know if you remember, but I mentioned, a few days ago, that I was having trouble accessing YouTube video on YouTube, itself … ?

And only on YouTube.

YouTube videos embedded elsewhere — like the teaser movies I have here, or anything on Facebook, for example — showed up with no problem.

The same content on YouTube, itself, would show up as soundless black boxes: just in Safari, I should add, I had no such trouble in Firefox, or in Chrome, with the YouTube extension added.

And the content still wouldn’t show up in Safari, when I recently updated to Safari 5.0.4, and updated my Flash player.

Frustrating.

Especially, when you consider I’d be to’ing and fro’ing between two different browsers, to make show I’d be accessing the correct video … !

So the fact I had some free time, today … ?

Got me thinking I should look up the relevant pages, to see what I could find.

BINGO.

I found this little hardware test, which didn’t help.

And a workaround that did.

Lord know’s why opening Safari in 32-bit mode seems to help.

But it does.

Happy days!

MP’s and Rich Media Content: How to Oggle HTML5 and write to Your MP

Which I know is a bit of a gobful of a post-title.

But I think it sums up what I’m trying to say …

Possibly …

At any rate, one thing I know I managed to find in my letter box, today, was a very polite letter — about wheel-clamping — from Brentwood and Ongar MP, Eric Pickles.

At last …

But just to keep you abreast, I’d written to him, recently: mostly to ask him his stance on the Freedom Bill, due before the House of Commons.

I got a reply from him.

And I think we can say he’ll be voting for the Bill.

Double click on the scan of the letter, that SHOULD show you what I mean …

At any rate, I’ve fired off …

A reply … !

You’d guessed, hadn’t you … ?

Here’s what I asked him …

Dear Mr Pickles,

Firstly, let me thank you for answering my email with your letter of the 26th August of this year, in regards to wheel-clamping.

However, I also believe I have not had my questions answered to my personal satisfaction.

I’ll happily agree that there are some companies in the wheel-clamping industry that are as unscrupulous as you say.

However, I live in Rollason Way, near Brentwood Station.

And the wheel clamping company that my landlords — South Anglia — use have been, bar the usual teething problems one expects with type of scheme, fine.

In fact, they have been so successful in keeping commuters and non-residents out of our street, that residents had recently voted to retain the scheme.

So the government announcement about the Freedom Bill … ?

Caused a lot of heated discussion at the subsequent residents meeting, as I’m sure your colleague, Councillor Joan Holmes — the one Conservative councillor for Brentwood West — will be able to tell you. She was there, as was Councillor Karen Chilvers of the Brentwood and Ongar Liberal Democrats.

So I would like to reiterate my initial question, and — if possible — add another to the list.

Firstly, I would like to know if the government had — or is — considering making the current voluntary code of practise. As I stated in a recent letter to the Brentwood Gazette, I feel that better regulation, rather than an outright ban, would be a preferable course of action.

Secondly, I’d like to reiterate that I’d like to know which you — personally — intend to vote on the Freedom Bill, when it comes before the House in November. I believe that I — and many of my neighbours — would be comforted knowing our MP is voting against this bill: one that makes our lives more complicated, and one I think that goes against David Cameron’s much-talked-about ‘Big Society’.

Yours,

There’s hoping I get a reply to that: I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed, but let’s wait and see, shall we … ?

‹‹‹◊›››

The other part of the title … ?

Refers to the fact I found a rather nice website, earlier tonight, that’s all done in HTML5.

Which was rather fun, something I’d not knowingly come across, and was amazing — to me, at least — to experience.

Go have a look at it: I think you’ll be impressed!

Mac OS X: Extensions and AdBlocking …

Oh …

HANDY … !

I’ve got to admit, it’s been a while since I’ve gone anywhere near writing about OS X.

Quite simply, that’s a lack of money: mostly, I’ve not got the dosh to spend on new bits of kit.

But one thing I do know is that I’ve given something a try, tonight.

And that both the computer industry — and computer design — has led to a bewildering variety of terms that add up to the same thing.

Or maybe I should say add-ons … ?

You see, I’ve actually managed to make of use the Safari Extensions Gallery that Apple have included with the update to Safari 5.0.

Now, software extensions — or plug-ins, add-on, themes, what-ever you want to call them* — have been around for for a very long time.

In fact Apple had included them with most versions of Mac OS. The vintage Performa 6400/200 that I’ve got runs Mac OS 7.5, complete with dozens that launch on start-upº.

And Firefox has included extensions — of one sort or another — for some time.

Which, incidentally, is possibly what prompted Apple to include them Safari. Or that’s what I believe, anyway.

We can’t let the open-source crowd get ALL the credit, now CAN we … ?

At any rate, the simple fact that the Safari Extension gallery was there prompted to have a look.

Which was …

Well …

For me, personally, a little unimpressive.

There’s not much in there — yet — that caught my eye. Although I may tinker with some of the search engine and picture grabbing ones.

The two that did catch my eye, though, were the Twitter bar — which I may just swap for one of the URI shortening extensions — and a Safari version of the AdBlocker for Chrome.

Which has left me with a lot of naked — but advert-free — web pages.

And, my LORD, doesn’t Facebook look different … !

‹‹‹•›››

* Although I’m told there’s a variety of very subtle — possibly too subtle for a layman, like me — technical differences between each term.

º Actually, the geekiest suggestion for a set of tattoos that I ever saw was from a writer in MacWorld magazine, ages ago. He suggested designing your own versions of the little jigsaw piece extension logos — one for being born, getting a new job, getting married, what have you — and have them tattooed on whatever body part you felt appropriate, as and when. And get a little red line tattooed through the relevant one, when you changed jobs, got divorced or died. Although you’d probably need a bloody quick tattooist for that last one …

Following On …

Hmmm …

This is literally going to be fairly quick: but do you remember, a few days ago, I told you about the ‘critical security flaw’ that Adobe had discovered in their Flash Player software … ?

It was definitely something to be aware of, as — according to both Adobe and the BBC report — this flaw was something that could affect machines running Mac OS X, Linux based PC’s, and — obviously — the various Windoze machines, out there.

I know I’ve told most of my friends to be a) bloody careful and b) follow the security advice on the relevant page of the Adobe site.

Thankfully, they have.

And if they haven’t, they’ve been care to not visit YouTube, or play too many flash-based games for a few days.

But I know I thought to check on the BBC’s Technology News pages, just now: where I found that Adobe have released their Flash Player 10.1 update.

Now I know that I, as a Mac owner, am going to have less chance of being hit by any malicious software out there, purely because there’s less aimed at both Mac OS X and the various Linux and Unix distributions out there.

But, given that Flash is so ubiquitous, I’d hate to leave myself open to any that are around: the more likely possibility is that I, or my Linux using friends, could easily pass on something to my Windoze using friends.

Politer not too, wouldn’t you say … ?

And — on top of that — I’d hate to be the first person to get a Flash-based OS X virus, just because I’ve not kept up-to-date …

•••••

Actually, though …

That Flash-borne problems may — or may not — be an problems for long. For a given value of ‘for long’, of course.

Because one thing I know I’ve been seeing on assorted tech news sights is references to HTML5.

Which Apple have now issued support for, in the new versio of their browser, Safari 5.

As you may or may not know, HTML is the basic computer language that defines the text in websites, how that text looks, and where it links to.

Well …

From what I’m given to understand, HTML5 is the (still under development) version which is projected to include support for ‘ rich internet application’ stuff: interactive games and multi-media streams from the likes of YouTube and Popcap Games.

And hopefully reduce the need for vulnerable, third party plug-ins.

Personally … ?

I’m just glad Apple have introduced the ability to scroll through tabs with the Ctrl (^) and tab (⇥) keys.

Given the amount of tabs I have open at any one time, that’s handy!

⌘⌘⌘