The Old Man

Recently I got chance to watch the rather brilliant US-based series that is The Leftovers, which is currently available on Sky's Box Sets, here in the UK. I saw the pilot a few years back but for some reason I didn't see any more. This was such an original show in many aspects, I got absolutely hooked after a few episodes and ended up 'binge watching' a few episodes a night. I saw all three seasons in about 2.5 weeks and was surprised not to find a topic about the series here. Based on a book, the series is produced by Damon Lindelof, who I'm fairly sure was one of the creative chaps behind Lost. It's not really Millenniumistic as such, but there were a lot of moments that caused me to recall scenes, thoughts and events from Millennium. There was even an episode called Ten Thirteen! Sometimes I was reminded of the brilliance and best aspects of The Stand. There is also as much dark humour at times in the artistic choice of music as there is the story. The show, if you've not yet seen it, basically picks up a few years after millions of people worldwide of all ages, gender, class, race, backgrounds and walks of life bizarrely and suddenly disappeared all at the same time in a mysterious, world changing event, which many believed to be The Rapture, or start of End Times. Others interpret the event with scientific and even alien abduction overtones and perspectives. Some believe it may be reoccurr, and so the government are trying to discover possible links between the disappearances to explain and find out answers whilst hoping to avoid a reoccurrence. The Leftovers asks a lot of questions and makes you think about our existence, purpose, our interpretation of what's next, cause and effect etc whilst focusing on the effects of the 'Sudden Departure' on those left behind. The characters and acting are all excellent, Christopher Eccleston (former Dr Who) in particular, is brilliantly cast in his finest acting role yet. The concept of the watching, silent, chain-smoking mysterious people in white are intriguing. The journey the main characters face can be violent, dark, funny and filled with humanity and emotion, whilst showing both the good and evil in all of us. At times the series is thought provoking, at other times almost too painful to watch as you have such empathy with the characters, then there are the emotions, the questions, the artistic and sometimes literal interpretations, the answers, the implications and the wonder of possibilities. It may not be for you, but I personally loved the style, the darkness and the light of the interpretation, the music, the atmosphere darkness. I urge you to check it out and open your mind to the possibilities.

I love the Blacklist, it just keeps getting better and better. Coming to the end of S5 here in the UK. I'm sure there was no mid-season break this time.

I liked Mr Robot at first, a lot of promise but I got a bit bored and frustrated with the drug abuse and self loathing towards the end of S1, if I'm honest. I watched the premiere of S2, but it seemed to be a bit boring. I need to revisit S2, as I really want to enjoy this show.

I watched the first few episodes of season one, so I really should try again and catch up! Never saw the movie or read the book either.

Happy Birthday @ENGINECOMICS

Whatever the awesome Lance Henriksen is up to this weekend, here's wishing him a very happy, 78th birthday! #ThankYouForFrankBlack

You're Awesome Joe, we miss you so thanks for popping in! Sending you all the thoughts, prayers and love we can. #inspiration

That's fantastic news, so pleased for Joe and his family. The man is a true inspiration.

Thanks for the support, Darlene! I don't think it was an intentional attack, probably someone trying their luck at random or an automated bot thing. According to the logs, we get a lot of bots all the time relentlessly probing our Wordpress log-in page, it would be a concern if we had one but we don't use Wordpress! Same with our server, attempted hacks 24/7, after a couple of attempts they get automatically blocked by the firewalls.

Hope Joe's surgery went according to plan and he's now home and resting..

Thanks for the support! I don't think it's for a specific reason, but yes we're now on Cloudflare which is going well. Need to finishing some more settings etc. Twerking again! Sorry tweaking!

Sending Joe more thoughts and prayers. One brave man.

Dear TIWWA members and visitors, Nothing to be alarmed about, but I would like to extend apologies for any inconvenience you may have experienced with slow responses or speed with the website in the last few days. Unfortunately we have intermittently been receiving a high amount of illegitimate web traffic, effectively hammering away at the server in what appears to be a crude attempt to knock our server or website offline. As you may know such is the nature of DDoS or 'Distributed Denial of Service' attacks, the hackers (possibly someone who has watched too many episode of Mr Robot) often use a one or more, sometimes a whole network of compromised computers or devices to try and take random or specific servers down by bombarding their firewall and server software with traffic or hits. Initially it was coming from Italy, then the US, then South America. We can manually kill off the Apache server process each time and restart it, but after a while it starts up again, sometimes soon or after a few hours. Eventually they will get bored with door rattling and move on, especially since we're not a big company website, power station etc. Our web-hosting company has elevated the issue to a more senior tier of support staff who have been working hard to resolve the issues, however we may start using Cloudflare and routing through their network behind the scenes for extra protection, as they provide a network service to assist with this sort of issue. If so, the website may be inaccessible for a short while. We may also have to enable additional firewall rules, which potentially could cause you to receive a blocked or forbidden error messages in your browser if your use or visit to the site triggers a false positive. Such advanced rules are very sensitive, and require a lot of fine tuning and extra time to configure, so are best avoided if possible. I want to reassure you that we have no reason to believe the website or server has been compromised or hacked in any way, or personal information taken. We take security seriously. We also have automatic backups available, and all non-public user account related personal information such as e-mail addresses, passwords etc are fully encrypted, as you would rightly expect. This is one reason why we licence use of professional community software with regular updates rather than use free software, and we also automatically encrypt all traffic between our server and your browser when you visit our site. We also use another company to probe our server infrastructure, encryption levels and website each week for potential security issues. Thank you bearing with us. Handy to know tips from Roedecker Contrary to first impressions, he actually knows what he's doing... Remember in general to always use ideally single use, strong passwords on your websites and devices, in particular your Google or other email accounts which if compromised could be used to change or hack your social media and website accounts. Password managers are well recommended, in particular LastPass and 1Pass are recommended. http://uk.pcmag.com/password-managers-products/4296/guide/the-best-password-managers-of-2018 https://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/the-best-password-manager-1325845 https://www.cnet.com/news/the-best-password-managers-directory/ Always use a good, up to date Antivirus software, ideally combined with separate anti-malware software such as Malwarebytes. These days, on Windows 10, Microsoft's built-in antivirus is regarded as very good. Avast is excellent for free software, I used it for over 10 years, but tends to nag with somewhat, scaremongering pop ups to buy the full version. Kapaskey, Mcaffee and Symantec are probably best avoided. Should you have any concerns about account security in general, you may be unaware but we also support so-called 'two factor' account protection. Did you know we support Google Authenticator! If would like to make use of the popular Google Authenticator service which you can configure in your user account settings, it is free and optional for non-staff members. Very handy if you don't use a password manager service or tend to read-use the same password for multiple sites. Once activated, it allows you to require anyone accessing your account from a new device or browser for the first time or after you sign out, to enter a one time code sent to your phone or mobile device by Google, either by text message or via the Google Authenticator app (if you have it installed on your mobile devices). If the code is not correctly entered before it expires, access is denied, so without access to your device, nobody can in theory access your account. I can't stress this enough to everyone with a Google Account these days, I very strongly recommended activating Google 2FA/Google Authenticator to access your Google Account, but you can also use it here if you want and on many other websites and apps too. Adding an extra layer... We also have the optional 3 Security Question/Answers option if you prefer, or you can use both. You can set up questions and answers that hopefully only you would know the correct answers to (don't share too much info on social media!), Either of these options are are available in your Account Security settings and are useful if you feel you would like to add an extra layer of protection to your account. You may also have noticed a new section after our last big update that provides device and browser usage history (Recently Used Devices). If you also use a VPN service however, the info will obviously be incorrect. The Old Man

Welcome to This Is Who We Are, @Darbydim and @donatien ! Thanks both for taking the time to sign up, look forward to hopefully chatting with you around the forums!

Welcome to This Is Who We Are, @Devil ! Thanks for signing up, and look forward to hopefully chatting with you around the forums!