Category: Computers

Snow, Sleet and Hail – 5 April 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Oh, what a day.

It was one of those days when you just knew you were going to stay in all day. Yesterday’s wild wind from named storm Dave had swung away to the north east, thank goodness and good riddance to it. We had a a couple of rolls of thunder, but it was the snow that was the strangest thing. I’ve heard my mum talking about snow in May. This was snow in April which was almost as bad.

I had set myself the task of Reissuing my Positive SSL, but Hazel, my trusty Webmonkey, had already reminded me that I’d sorted it out myself the last time this had happened, about a year ago and with that thought in mind I girded my loins (or is that Lions?) and asked for help from the Namecheap gurus. Just incase you’re wondering what a Positive SSL is and why it needs Reissuing I can tell you that it would take too long to explain. In other words, I haven’t a clue what it means.

However, thankfully I found Bohdan V who was a guru who seemed to know what was going wrong on my computer. After answering quite a few questions they said they could see part of the problem and an hour or so later the SSL was Reissued, it had been checked and everything in the garden was, once again, rosy. Just like the last time, a year or so ago, I didn’t have to do anything, just answer the questions when they came up and hope that the answers I was giving were the right ones. Bohdan seemed satisfied that they were and when I ran the check text they sent me, I got confirmation that “All is well”. That was good enough for me. I signed off with a lighter heart than when I started. My SSL was good for another six months or thereabouts before I’ll need to do it all over again. I hope Bohdan V doesn’t have a sore head tonight.

It was still snowing and hailing and raining when I returned for the mysteries of Positive SSLs and even better, it was dinner time.

My dinner was my Cannon of Hogget and it was just short of delicious. I think I over cooked it, but I’d have it again. Scamp was having roasted and spiced cauliflower with Hasselback potatoes which she also shared with me. They were very, very nice. I may even try to cook them some day soon.

We spoke to Jamie in the evening and heard about the wildlife that are attacking his veg patch and the problems of running out of calor gas just when you need it.

Tomorrow I may rest my clogged up brain and live a normal life for a change.

Walking in Sunshine – 1 April 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Not fooling!

Just a quick shot taken yesterday walking back from St Mo’s.It was a mixed up day for me, with a lot going on. Still not sorted it out properly, but at least you have a photo to look at.

There is usually a problem on the 1st of the month when I have to save off the previous month’s photos and create a space for the new month’s shots. This year I’ve had problems because the catalog is getting too big. I need to reduce its size and complexity. If I get it right, all will be fine and the computer should run a lot faster. If I do it wrong the whole thing goes BANG! and takes all the hard work I’ve put in to Lightroom with it. Aren’t computers wonderful things … when they are working!

For just now I’ve posted the photo and I should be able to do the same for today’s PoD too.

Fingers crossed!

Busy day – 12 January 2026

Posted on by Zogman

The morning was the relaxing part of the day. The rest was kind of busy.

I had a couple of very belated Christmas cards to write, just a catch-up with people I used to work with and cards that I’d put on the back burner too many times for my conscience. They were a bit of a scribble, but both were different and to totally different people, so both where written as opposed to battered out on a computer keyboard. With that done, I felt a lot better.

We drove to the Town Centre Tesco for Scamp to collect some messages for tomorrow’s dinner with Crawford and Nancy at our house. Another tick in another box. The third thing for today was my annual retinopathy check which seemed to pass without too many questions. Then we were free to drive home on a cold afternoon. The occasional splashes of rain driven by a cold wind that seemed to continually change direction.

Walked over to St Mo’s more for the walk than for any photos, but the rain kindly stayed away for the half hour I was there. I got a couple of shots. PoD went to desiccated hawthorn berries on almost bare branches.

A spot of lunch and then we were getting ready to go to the first weekday dance class of the year. Today’s class was Tango. Slightly different from our Saturday class, but well worth going to. Little things to pick up on, like crossing my foot behind, not in front of the other.

Back home we watched our usual Monday trio of puzzles and games. Then as I was trimming and twiddling with today’s photos I discovered there was a problem with a couple of day’s photos. Two hours the dulling of the first of our automatic lights announced that it was 11pm. Bed time was coming up fast.

That’s when I started writing the blog. The tangled wires and stuff in Lightroom will have to wait until tomorrow to be fixed. It’s a busy life us retired folk lead!

Tomorrow I’m going to be baker of bread. I’ll also be a helper for Scamp when she needs it. Another busy day then Crawford and Nancy are coming for dinner. More high jinks!

 

It worked – 2 January 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Sometimes you have to rely on someone else telling you how to get things done.

The two people whose explanations about rebuilding the catalog in Lightroom I was reading last night were exactly what I needed. I made the changes they suggested and then imported the first two sets of photos from 2026 and they appeared exactly where they should, in the Lightroom catalog.

After the first run through and after checking it was working. I closed the computer down and counted to ten and powered the Mac on again. A suggestion from Val from many years ago. Count to ten before you do anything else. That allows the capacitors in the computer time to discharge. Actually a half hour wait is better, but I didn’t have the time.

Immediately after I turned it on chaos reigned. Lightroom started by itself and began loading all the images on the computer. I paused it and turned it off again. Another ten second count and I turned it on again for a second time. This time everything was normal. I’d changed a lot of things the night before and all that chaos was it arranging things. Another bit of reading clarified that. It’s amazing the number of folk on the net who help you. The others are usually the ones who shout at you and who play music then shout at you again. They are no help at all.

So long story short, everything is working so far. I described it to Scamp as walking on egg shells.

I should be able to get images into the correct places now and start taking photos again.

That’s enough nonsense for today. Sorry Jamie, I should have prefaced this with the traditional <Technospeak> warning.

PoD is a frozen St Mo’s pond.  Most of the white stuff is frost, but with just a scraping of fine snow on top.

Hopefully tomorrow we will return to normal, fingers crossed.

Just tidying up – 3 September 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Or at least, my version of tidying up, which just means doing it on the computer, not in real life.

After we’d worked out the twisted games of Wordle, Spelling Bee and all the other assorted puzzles we play in the morning, Scamp was off to meet the rest of the witches and I was going to Tesco to get the messages. I’d a little list already made up under Scamp’s careful instructions. It was one of those days that looked as if it was just about to rain, but never did. At least, it didn’t do it until later. I’d some computer stuff to get my head round first.

<Technospeak>
Last week I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best when I removed one of my the old iMacs from the safety of the Adobe corral. Adobe allows you to have three Macs open at the same time. However, you can only use two of those three at the same time. The other one can not use Adobe software until you choose to remove one of the other two first. Confused? Yes, so was I, but them’s the rules apparently. I wanted to check to see if it was the old computer I’d removed and it was. That meant that the new iMac and my MacBook were now able to work together. I’ve more or less stopped using the old iMac now. It is getting slower than frozen treacle and crashes if you look at it the wrong way.
</Technospeak>

By the time I’d struggled through all that, Scamp was back from her meeting with the witches and just as I was heading into the garden to take some photos, the rain started. I managed to get four shots before I gave up. Out of those four shots, I kept two. The PoD was a couple of white Cosmos flowers. Not great, but done and posted.

I made dinner tonight which was Cod & Prawns with Fennel & White Wine. It’s an old recipe we’ve used a fair amount, but not for a long time. It still works, though.

I got an email from one of the Flickr managers asking if I was going to run Inktober again this year. I’d already decided that I wasn’t going to do it this year. I’d too many thing to do this October, so had to bow out. I may participate for some of the time, but not for the whole month. Pity.

Tomorrow I’m intending to meet Alex. We may go for a walk around Paisley.

Moving up – 24 August 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Today I took a deep breath and moved my catalog on to the new iMac. It caused a bit of an upheaval, but it seemed to work, or most of it worked. Still some things to iron out, but the main work is now done. The old iMac had been taking a fair bit of a pounding and every time I touched one of the SSD cables it seemed to lose another chunk of its memory.

It was a very dull day today until early evening when the skies lightened and the sun actually shone for a while. In the morning Scamp and I took it in turns to lug watering cans of that life-giving fluid round the front and back garden. Since the expected hosepipe ban isn’t in force yet, we decided to be good citizens and carry the water to the plants. They seemed to perk up after a quick drink. We’re hoping it will be enough until the promised rain comes later in the week.

Dinner for Scamp was Cauliflower Steak and for me was a ‘real’ steak. The Cauliflower one tasted good with two flavourings, but mine was tough and chewy. It might have been my cooking or it might have been an old tough bit of beef. It may be the last time I buy one of M&S’s fancy named steaks. I’ll stick to tried and tested sources, like the local butcher’s.

Spoke to Jamie and heard about Vixen’s new swimming pool in a smaller venue from her last one. Then, almost immediately, Simonne replied with a couple of photos. One of Vixen swimming and another of her just standing staring at the camera as if saying “Is that all you pair have to do with your time?”

PoD was a close up of a bunch of Antirrhinums that are having their second flowering of the year. Pretty colours in them. We always called them “Map Maps” when I was wee, for no apparent reason.

I’m going to leave it there because this new ‘puter will need a rest after a couple of weeks of inactivity and probably needs a wee rest now.

The only down side I can see for the new system is that I’ve lost access to older blog posts. Maybe I’ll find them some day in a hidden corner of the blog.

Tomorrow I might speak to a man about giving the Blue car a bit of TLC.

The Rose – 2 August 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp loves roses and this is one of the best.

The rose is the Comte de Chambord, a beautiful pink rose with a lovely scent, but watch out for those thorns. It made PoD.

Another day of fighting against the new iMac. I know you’re probably fed up with it and so am I. Eventually I took Scamp’s suggestion and spoke to somebody, somewhere, I have no idea where, but he, it was a man, has found me a slot in the Apple Store in Glasgow tomorrow afternoon. I’m taking a notebook with me which I hope will be filled with suggestions for solving the problems I’ve had, when I get home.

The rest of the day was a dull Saturday that turned into a comfortably warm one. Scamp and I took turns at watering the garden. First she watered the back garden flowers and veg, then I did the same for the front garden. I’m sure the flowers will appreciate the refreshing water and ‘The Compte’ will be one of them.

Lunch was going to be at Wagamama in The Fort, but we didn’t quite make it there and resorted to Fish Fingers, Egg and Spaghetti for dinner instead. If you have nothing else to eat, you won’t go wrong with FFE&S. Unless you are Hazy!

We watched the qualifying for the Hungarian which turned out to be a less than exciting way of passing an hour or so in the early evening. Hopefully the race will be better, tomorrow.

The new iMac is now all wrapped up ready to go to Glasgow tomorrow. Scamp may go to a utilities sale, also in Glasgow, looking for a good deal on a freezer, a fridge or a combination of the two while I speak to a ‘Genius’.

It’s a busy week coming up with Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday all spoken for in one way or another.

Sunday looks wet and Monday looks very windy. Let’s hope the flowers survive the week.

More flowers – 1 August 2025

Posted on by Zogman

More work struggling against the problems of being a new iMac owner. Who knew something as simple as taking photos and writing about it could be so stressful.

Today’s target was to trim down and cut out some of the clutter that seems to have insinuated itself into the old iMac, meanwhile hoping that once I’d filled up and emptied the bin, it would have the sense to leave the rubbish there and not bring it back again using iCloud Drive. Why can’t it just be simple, like a ZX 81 was, back in the old days of ‘real’ computing? Ah, but I digress.

Both Scamp and I overslept slightly this morning and I won’t say she was late for FitSteps, but she could have been. Me? I made myself some coffee and started the machines, yes, both of them were on the table at the same time. I hadn’t realised that you could sit the old and the new side by side and control them to a certain extent using only one mouse. A lot of swearing was involved, but I did manage to, as Roger Waters said in ‘The Wall’, “Cut out the Deadwood”. Or some of it at least. There are another few Gigabytes still waiting to be chopped out, but when “Scamp returned and mentioned going out for lunch”, I put away my keyboard and shut down both the monitors. Food comes first.

I opted for Borden’s of lunch. It used to be The Masonic (AKA the Chib Inn). It was almost empty when we arrived and we feared that they might have been bought out or was under new management, but a pint of Guinness for me, and a glass of Red for Scamp proved that it was just a passing phase. This was confirmed by a Mac ’n’ Cheese for Scamp and a Steak Pie for me. Both went down well. They also prevented me from driving later, which also suited.

What I did do was book an MOT for Monday, just so I wouldn’t forget and be left without a car this month. I couldn’t be bothered going anywhere to get a PoD, so the close up of the Rudbeckia became PoD. Cropped to a square it fitted perfectly for the first photo of August.

Tomorrow we may go somewhere on the bus or the train, but probably not driving. I quite enjoy these lazy days.

Waiting, waiting, waiting – 30 July 2025

Posted on by Zogman

The new iMac was due to arrive today, so I spent the morning waiting for the big van from UPS to deliver the goods.

Scamp went out to meet with the Witches just after midday and I waited at home. It was a really nice day and I took a chair out and sat in the front garden, reading. I had lunch and although a message said the delivery would be between 12:00 and 14:00, no big brown van arrived. An hour later I got a message to say that the delivery had been rescheduled to 15:00 and finally, it arrived just after 15:15pm.

Since Scamp had been so good at telling me that everything would work out fine, despite my grumpy face, I thought it only right and proper that she should have the pleasure of opening the big cardboard box. Of course, that meant there was another big white cardboard box inside, so she got to open that too. Inside it, everything was packed neatly in more cardboard boxes and Scamp came up with a great idea of filming the unboxing and although we’re still a bit unsure about the exact placement of the internals of the big white box, I’m sure we’ll find a way of repackaging it if needs must.

PoD went to a Fuchsia in the garden. It looked just like a little fairy ballet dancer, or it could just have been my imagination running riot!

Just now, the new iMac is uploading the data from the old one and has been at it since about 5pm. It’s now nearly 9pm and the upload still needs to run for another four hours by my estimation.

Update: It took just over eight hours to complete the entire upload, better than I’d hoped.

Tomorrow probably another deep dive into the mysteries of the iMacs.

A bit of a computer disaster – 15 July 2025

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I’m having a bit of a problem withe the iMac and with MacBook Pro.

What should have been a simple clearing out of the iCloud Drive went a bit awry on the iMax and I ended up losing my ‘diary’ – Day One. I also lost some data from the MBP, but for some reason Day One on the MBP wasn’t affected. Hopefully I’ll get is sorted out in a few days. Until then I’m going to be jumping between my Macs. That’s what I get for not making backups!!

As you can see, I can even get the PoD displayed, so it’s not so desperate. It’s a wild Cranesbill flower

Possibly going out for a photowalk with Alex tomorrow. That might clear my head.