How to get rid of icons you hate in Opera

One thing that was useful when I used Firefox was a plugin that would let you rightclick on any object and kill it. On the plus side it was a quick gesture that could fix the problem whenever someone posted something that messed up your friendspage, but on the minus it went away every time you reloaded. If the problem was a usericon that made me gnash my teeth every time I saw it (and that often is the problem. I'm sensitive, okay), the problem came up again with every reload and every new page.

No more! Copy the url of the userpic that makes you grimace every time it shows up, go to Opera's Tools menu and select Advanced, then Blocked content. Click the add button, paste the url, close the window. On reload, the picture will vanish! It requires blocking on a url-by-url basis, but that suits my needs exactly, as it happens. I am pleased.

sherlock holmes in the sign of four

I'd forgotten several things about The Sign of Four. I've read about, and noticed independently, how Conan Doyle's style changed a great deal midway through his career, and not just the style but the characterisation of Holmes and Watson as well. Early Holmes is less sympathetic to the reader, as well as less warm to Watson; their relationship is a bit impersonal, though friendly. And the whole thing both starts and ends with him injecting himself with cocaine.

The statistics I read about it really stuck with me. Besides the incidence of cocaine decreasing drastically as the series moves on, I wrote sometime in 2003 when I started intensively researching Holmes canon chronology (short answer: it doesn't make any sense because ACD didn't give a shit. Put it wherever you want),

In the early stories, he insults Watson three times for each endearment or compliment (something like that, numbers possibly a little fucked up), and[...] after The Return, it's like seven or eight endearments per insult.

After rereading the entire thing, I'll have to rewatch and post a commentary and screencaps. But though Holmes is still interesting and likeable, and maintains his semi-humourous role of weirdo which is so entertaining throughout the series, his inhuman ciphery characteristics are exaggerated. The sentimentality is a tad thick, but the quick-moving romance between Watson and Mary Morstan is actually better written than I had remembered.