Radio France's excellent openness

I am not the kind of computer user who does everything in a web browser. Indeed, on my personal computers I often do not have one open at all. It was a sad day when my local library dropped their telnet interface to the online catalog. I also get quite irritated with suppliers of content who insist on controlling the experience by hiding it all within their own interface and branding (BBC, I'm looking at you). Also, more of my electronic billing seems to be turning into that they no longer e-mail a PDF, I must instead log into their website to get each bill, thus giving me a reminder each month that perhaps I would like to switch supplier.

Therefore, kudos to Radio France who have anticipated that I may wish to use mon player favori: if vous préférez utiliser votre logiciel d'écoute préféré then they helpfully link to a handy PDF that lists many URLs like http://direct.franceinter.fr/live/franceinter-midfi.mp3, les adresses des flux. How nice not to have to dig each one out of a forest of JavaScript. When I found that the links work, I actually smiled, glad to receive the content so simply and directly.

My headaches

I find headaches a little puzzling and a little annoyingly distracting. I do not suffer too badly: most days I am fine. This evening I have enough of a headache that I have felt disinclined to do much. Perhaps I should have just got on with things but instead I have mostly relaxed and drunk green and black tea. I also took a painkiller that includes codeine which I am glad is available here without a prescription; for me it seems to work well without causing any problem.

I hardly know what causes my headaches: they do not obviously correlate with anything I notice, like use of a specific computer. I am also poor at predicting what might treat them, though of late naproxen fairly reliably makes no impact. I develop different theories, for example that perhaps I have sinus congestion and taking a decongestant may help, but overall I have developed very little visibility into what might be going on with me and how to manage it. It would be nice to be able to do something, in prevention or treatment, for my headaches; perhaps I should try harder to simply ignore them.

I also suffer migraine-related issues, especially scintillating scotoma; that is another matter, though no more understood by me than normal headaches.