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Living in a Tupperware box – 7 January 2016

Posted on by Zogman

IMG_2993-Edit-Edit- flickr--7-1This will be a short entry.  It rained from early morning today and it’s still raining.  Almost all day it’s been a milky white sky.  Yesterday I was listening to Guy Garvey and in “ Harder Edges” one line is “… Burgeoning sky all day grey, Like living in a Tupperware box …”.  I know what he means.

I’d half intended to go in to Edinburgh today to see an exhibition in the National Gallery.  It’s been on since mid October and now, at the start of January, I’m finally getting round to going to see it.  I decided last night that I was unlikely to get parked at the train station on a Thursday, but had more of a chance on a Friday.  I am also the grand master of procrastination, so tomorrow it is … until tomorrow.

I made a pizza for lunch, a really good pizza made from the excess dough from yesterday’s flatbread.  Rarely has the frying pan pizza failed me, but this time again it worked.  We waited for that meal to slide down then both agreed the only thing to do today was to go to the gym and pool.  I did the gym first then had a quick swim.  Scamp went for the swim without the gym.  Both of us agreed that it was one of the best things to do on such a dull day.  A quick trip up “The Toonie” afterwards.  I took the opportunity of trying out a new camera app for the iPhone.  You can see the result above.  It’s absolutely awful.  It needs a lot more practise I think.

A little splash of sunshine – 6 January 2016

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combo bAlthough the day started with the usual dull, dull, dull, by midday it was beginning to brighten up a bit. Since Scamp had burned out the shredder yesterday, ripping up almost half a ream of out of date receipts, we had to consign the old shredder to the council tip and then go buy a new one. One out, one in. A good rule to start the new year with.

Went to Robroyston to check out the variety of shredders available. Available was the key word in the last sentence. Argos had the cheapest price for the one she wanted but, as with so many stores these days, they didn’t have any in stock. It appears that the only way some stores can survive the cheap prices of online shops is to advertise cheap deals on their website and expect you to buy online and then pick up at the shop. The shop then doesn’t need a great warehouse in-house so to speak, but to have a warehouse near at hand from which they can quickly have the goods delivered. Curry’s did have the physical shredder in stock and in the shop, so although it was more expensive, we bought it there.

While Scamp was shredding away happily this afternoon, I grabbed a chance to walk in the sunshine in St Mo’s. Got a few snaps of Mr Grey before I got too close and he flew off to his favourite hiding place among the bulrushes. Not long after that, the light levels started to fall off and we were back to four figure ISO values, but I did walk in the sunshine for a short while.

The morning after – 5 January 2016

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Last night after all the surgery, the diagnostics and the wee half I had to act as a nightcap, there was still one problem outstanding. One prog that wouldn’t settle down in the new ‘puter and it was iTunes. If there was one program I expected to screw up, it would have been iTunes. The worst program in Apple’s arsenal. So bad, I think it must have been written by Microsoft. iTunes simply refused to allow me in. It kept telling me I had insufficient privileges and I kept telling it I had. I slept on it.

This morning I was up at 7.00 still wondering how to fix iTunes or how to beat it into submission. This really is a dog of a prog. It needs put to sleep. I searched the internet for someone who had the same problem, but all the ‘solutions’ I read about were ridiculous (like format the disk and reinstall the system and all your apps from scratch – a typical Apple fanboy solution to everything on a Mac). Or else, I’d tried the ‘solutions’ already with no noticeable success. Then I hit on one really stupid ridiculous solution that everyone said actually worked. The page was full of ‘thank you’ messages. Here is what it said. Look for the empty ‘Users’ folder on the SSD and you’ll find it has no ‘read-write’ privileges set. Set them to read-write. It seemed a stupid thing to do. Why would you need to set a folder to read-write when it’s empty and hasn’t even been opened? I did it, and it worked. Just another of iTunes little foibles. I added my “thank you” to the long list.

It was a really, really dull and dismal day today, so after my last problem solving escapade I needed to unwind, but a walk through St Mo’s was out of the question. Scamp and I decided to go to the gym and then have a swim. The rest of Cumbernauld had decided the same thing. The New Year Resolutions (NYR) were there in force. At one point, all the training bikes were taken. I’ve never seen it so busy. That said, we still managed to get some exercise in and also got a swim.

Went to Tesco of the way home and posted Hazel’s calendar. Drove home through the rain.

Today’s photo was taken at the back door. Plants flowering in January.

Tomorrow will be better. We’re hoping to go looking for a shredder if we can hire a boat. We’ve burned out the last one. De-junking, another NYR.

Open Heart Surgery – 4 January 2016

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAScamp was out with her sister this morning which gave me the opportunity to complete the first and most difficult part of the procedure to replace the hard disk in my MacBook Pro with a solid state drive. Sounds so simple, but like all these things, it gets more and more complicated the deeper you research it. Over the last few months I’ve read many and varied descriptions of how to achieve it. I’ve watched many videos too, some very good and some downright terrible. I’ve added memory to the MBP and upgraded the hard disk too over the years, but this was much more difficult and invasive. So, this morning I was removing the DVD drive and the HDD. I’d already bought the caddy that would hold the HDD and fit into the space left when the DVD drive was removed. There is just so little space in the MBP, no room for a second HDD, so something had to go. I don’t use the DVD very much so I won’t miss it much.
Technophobes can ignore the next page and a bit as it will only give you nightmares.  Just scroll down and read the bottom bit.

I chose to do the minimum amount of disconnecting of mylar connectors as these are so fragile. Ok, deep breath, cup of strong coffee and in we go:

  1. I disconnected the battery and two SATA connectors from the motherboard, unscrewed the three black screws holding the DVD drive and gently slid it out.
  2. Next I disconnected the L shaped clip and the SATA cable and connected them to the caddy.
  3. Next disconnected the old HDD and removed it. Also removed the four buffer screws from the HDD.
  4. Fitted the HDD into the caddy. Screwed it in place and, very tentatively, slid the caddy into the space previously taken up by the DVD drive.
  5. Screwed down the caddy with the three black screws, reconnected the SATA cable and replaced the battery connector.
  6. Test number 1. Replaced the base and fixed it temporarily with two screws. Switched on.
  7. It was slow, but it booted. That’s what I expected as the DVD SATA is a slower connector than the HDD one. BINGO!
  8. Scamp arrived home, so we had a quick cup of tea – Water in Scamp’s case then headed out to the shambles that is Currys – PC World. Let’s call this the interval:

Went to Currys – PC World at Bishopbriggs where, according to their website they had the drive in stock. When we got there, there were loads of Currys personnel walking around looking busy, and all carrying bits of paper. I asked one of them if they had Sandisk SSDs and he took me to the stand for SDs. No, SSDs Solid State Drives. Oh yes, they’re down here, but they didn’t have them. I told him the web site said they had them in stock. Oh, we keep them in the warehouse. You have to order them online and pick them up here. No, sorry, I’ll go elsewhere. I didn’t go far, I just went to the checkout. Have you got a Sandisk SSD? What size? 240Gb I replied. Yes, just a minute. Just about a minute later, he arrived with the SSD. He must have run down to the warehouse got the drive and ran all the way back. He wasn’t even out of breath!  A cup of watery Costa coffee, then back to attempt part 2.

  1. I plugged the Sandisk into an old enclosure I had and proceeded to clone the OS from the HDD using Carbon Copier.
  2. Remember the four buffer screws from step 3? I screwed them into the fixing holes in the Sandisk Ultra II SSD and mounted it in the cradle, locking it down with the fixing screws.
  3. Test number 2. I screwed the base on again with two screws and switched on again. Again it booted, but again, it was simply booting from the same drive. Changed the booting drive in system preferences and rebooted. This time it booted much quicker. Much, much quicker. It was booting from the SSD!
  4. That was the beginning of the end of the installation. Or it may have been the end of the beginning. Just another four or five hours moving stuff around between the two drives and it was done.

Well, that’s the story. Really what I did was based on a book Hazy encouraged me to read, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet. In it they have tiny little droids that they inject into the system in the spaceship where they autonomously repair and upgrade the system. That’s what I did here. I just let the Weemen read the webpage. Showed The Professor the instruction sheet from the SSD. I even asked Dennis to record the whole thing so I could pass it off as my own work They they did the rest. Simple!

You thought I’d done all that myself? Aye Right!

“Ur ye dancin’?” – 3 January 2016

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combo bScamp had an upset night with sickness and diarrhoea. We’re not sure exactly what caused it, but the new Indian restaurant is a prime suspect. Strangely, I wasn’t affected at all and we shared the food, as we always do. It’s a strange one indeed and will need further investigation, maybe even a return visit with a packet of Diocalm with us. Once she was up, Scamp was as right as rain again, but sensibly didn’t want to travel far from the house, so I took myself off for a solo walk along to Dumbreck Marshes to see what the new year had brought in the way of photo opportunities. Not a lot was the answer and with the ISO up in four figures at least, grain was going to be a problem again. Oh, I wish we had one day of sunshine, just one.

Scamp declared herself fit enough to go dancin’ and we set off for The Garage around 4.30. Place was nicely busy. Not too crowded and not looking abandoned either. I’d expected it to be a bit emptier than it was with all the events and venues that Shannon was punting recently on FB. Had an enjoyable couple of hours of energetic salsa and realised how much exercise we’d been missing in the last two weeks. It’s amazing how you get lazy with the short days. Hoping to get out in daylight tomorrow – bank holiday, so no salsa class, but may go to the gym for a swim at least. I’m expecting all the New Year Resolutions will be crowding out the gym for the first two weeks in January. After that, things will get back to normal.

The days are getting longer aren’t they?

A new year, a new curry shop – 2 January 2016

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combo bAnother late rise today.  This is becoming a habit.  I’d say we were missing the best part of the day, but that wouldn’t be correct.  The light level this morning when we woke was a definite ISO 10000 and that would have been with f1.8 @ 1/30th (that means really, really dull to non-photogs).  Tonight’s big film was The Dark Knight.  We can beat that.  We have The Dark Day … every day.  Enough of this repartee.

Just to get out of the house, we decided on a trip to Stirling … for a curry.  Rather than go to what had been out favourite curry shop, Mr Singh’s, I thought it would be a good idea to try out a new one, well, new to us.  I didn’t know what it was called, but I knew where it was.  It turned out to be the ‘Spice Garden’ and it was good, very good.  The only let down was that their Irn Bru came from a bar nozzle with not nearly enough gas.  I can forgive that if the food is good, and it was.  We’ll be back.

On the way back, I wanted to get a POD.  I intended it to be Stirling Castle, but from the standard tourist viewpoint, the view was not as commanding as I hoped it would be.  Well, what do you expect from the Council created parking place.  I turned 180º and liked the view up the carse.  A ‘carse’, which my spellchecker thinks is a the plural of ‘car’ is “low-lying land beside a river” and the Carse of Stirling can be beautiful on a good day.  Today wasn’t beautiful, but the carse was doing it’s level best, so I took its photo.  Then I grabbed my tripod and walked across to see if Stirling Castle looked any better from the other side of the road.  It didn’t, but the mound at the old cemetery did look good and there were lots of people happily standing on it to make it look quite dramatic.  I imagine they thought they looked dramatic too.  I took a few shots just to make them think they were dramatic and important.

When I got home, the carse photo was easy to process.  The dramatic rock took a little longer.  Because the shots were taken with the same focal length, aperture and shutter settings, it was easy to sandwich two of them in Potatoshop with the empty rock on top and the dramatic person beneath.  Then all I did was change the opacity of the top shot to allow the ‘ghost’ underneath to show through.  Simple!  I’ll do the Stirling Castle shot another day.  I’ve just remembered where to take it from and it’s’ not the Council approved tourist place either.  Well, it wouldn’t be, would it?

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day – 1 January 2016

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combo bA late start after a late night yesterday.  Typical of New Year’s Day.

Kippers for lunch that kept reminding me of their presence all day after that, despite a couple of cups of peppermint tea.

Went for a walk round St Mo’s with Scamp. Tried to feed the ducks, but it was the gulls and the swans that got most of it. I’m not sure Scamp enjoyed the walk, but she didn’t complain too much.

After the walk, I made Carrot and Cardamom soup from my new Nigel Slater book, thanks Hazy and ND’A. Then made bread for dinner tonight. Both of them were very tasty. Steak for dinner with brussels, cauliflower and roast potatoes. For Scamp’s dinner, substitute salmon for the steak. Coffee afterwards was the Christmas coffee blend Jic and Sim brought me. Very nice, better in my opinion than the Guatemalan, although I will of course have to compare them again in the next few days. Thanks to you two too. So, it was a family New Year’s meal, with everyone represented. Just as it should be.

Another year over – 31 December 2015

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combo bJust another one of the many grey days we’ve had recently. Didn’t want to stay in though, so we took the train to Glasgow. Not looking for anything in particular and everything in general. Ended up walking down Bucky Street, along Argyle Street, coffee in Nero at St Enoch’s and back up Bucky street for the train home. I tell a lie, we nipped in to Waterstones where I got the last ever Terry Pratchett book, a book of Soup recipes (I kid you not) and Scamp, because she was so taken with some of the recipes in the Nigel Slater book Hazy and ND’A gave me for Christmas, got herself another Nigel Slater book! More food books – you can never have enough cook books. By the way, Hazy, your calendar is printed and as we were passing a Ryman, I got the A4 envelopes to post it in. It will be despatched as soon as the post office recovers from New Year.

While we were at Nero’s, I took the opportunity to photograph the futuristic subway entrances there. I must say I really am impressed with the use of steel and glass in the construction. Also impressive is the way Glasgow Council had managed to bung up the drains in front of one of them to create a little shallow pond that reflects their shape perfectly. Artistic but not so practical. Well done again GC.

So, here we are again watching crap TV in the hopes that there will be something worthwhile to pass the time until “The Bells”. It’s unlikely, as it’s never been good before, but there’s a first time for everything.

Until next year, Good Night All.

Rain – 30 December 2015

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combo bUp at 6.00am to see Jic and Sim on their way back down south through the wind and rain that was with us all night last night. After they left, we went back to bed for another snooze for an hour or three before heading off to Falkirk to fight our way through the supermarket to get enough food to see us through the next two days.

On the drive home I stopped at Underwood Lock on the Forth and Clyde Canal to get some photos. Thankfully the rain had eased a bit and I got two of the shots I had planned. Then I saw a couple walking their dog and grabbed that shot too. I imagine there are a lot of possible shots in the old burned out restaurant, but as the roof has fallen in and the entire site is enclosed behind heavy duty fencing. The fencing doesn’t really bother me, but the thought of the roof falling in on me does, so I think I’ll take more shots, but from the outside only.

That was it for the day. The light had gone, and so had we. We went home.

A walk down the Green – 29 December 2015

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combo bThe day was bright and clear, but as Jic and Sim were meeting up with friends in the afternoon, we had to choose somewhere close at hand for a walk. Scamp picked Glasgow Green as our destination and off we went. Had a walk around our usual circuit of the Green, then extended it hoping to take in Richmond Park, only to find that they were reinforcing the bridge over the river. Don’t know who the mysterious “They” were, but I’m hoping it’s not Glasgow Cooncil or it may be closed for the foreseeable future.

Anyway, we turned back and headed for the People’s Palace, intending to have a low fat skinny Roll ‘n’ Sausage and a cup of coffee. First downer, due to lack of grocery deliveries, there were no rolls ‘n’ sausage, in fact there were no rolls ‘n’ anything because there were no rolls. Ok, change of plan. A healthier ham sandwich would do on this occasion. Second downer, due to lack of grocery deliveries, there was no milk for tea or coffee either. Ok, change of plan number two. Let’s leave and head for Costa at Robroyston. Hopefully they will have had their groceries delivered. They did and we got our lunch then headed home after initiating Sim into the joys of wandering around Watt Brothers.

After the youngsters had left to go in to Glasgow, I managed to get their calendar finished. Just got it printed when I noticed that January had two January 1st days, on a Thursday and a Friday. Luckily it was just the one copy printed. Got that sorted sharpish then combed it together and stuck it in a poly bag ready for them when they returned. This calendar has been on going since the start of November and I hadn’t seen the glaring error. Numpty!

It’s been a grand day weather wise, with blue skies but the usual accompanying cooler than usual temperatures, however the wind is beginning to get up now and heavy rain is predicted for tomorrow. Oh well, at least we all got out for a walk today.