Category: Computers

So this must be Sunday – 29 December 2019

Posted on by Zogman

All day yesterday I though it was Sunday, but it turned out to be Saturday, so hopefully today will be Sunday. Oh for some structure to the week again!

Scamp was feeling better today, but still not back to her usual self. Another day’s rest wouldn’t hurt and would probably be a great help.

In the afternoon I laced up my boots and took the camera for a walk in St Mo’s. There wasn’t much to see and nobody wanted to walk there, which was a shame because it was blue skies all round with a few clouds to make it interesting. Walking up through the trees a deer crossed the path in front of me and didn’t even notice me. They really should obey the Green Cross Code and look left, look right and look right again before crossing. It didn’t, but there were no cars coming, because there wasn’t a road.

Most of today’s shots were of lichen and fungi on trees. Bracket fungi mainly. Must look them up on the Interweb and find out more about them. Lovely detail on the underside of the brackets, looking like little 3D mazes. PoD was a tangle of leaves and grasses caught in a tree. Don’t ask me why, but I liked it right away.

Walked on down to the shops and got the makings of tonight’s dinner. Roast Chicken with Jacket Potatoes.

Struggled for the rest of the afternoon trying to install a clean version of El Capitan into the MacBook Pro. For some reason it didn’t want to install. Finally gave up and cloned in the one I’d backed up about a week ago. Now I’ve found that you can put almost any version in, not Apple legal of course, but it can be done. May try it today. It’s hand grenade time again!

“What does this little pin do? What will happen if I pull this ring?????”

Tonight Scamp was looking and feeling a lot better. Tmorrow we must go for real messages. Planning a raid on Tesco.

Another cold day – 18 December 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Going out to lunch today with Isobel, so trying to be a bit more careful than usual with my food intake in the morning.

It was cold and it was frosty and the bloke next door was scraping his windscreen when I looked out. All three of these indicators told me that it was definitely a breakfast in bed day. Most days in winter are now that we are free to do so.

When I did eventually rise I checked the MBP and it was still working fine. Thank you Carbon Copier – a lifesaver. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for the Verbatim drive . The 500GB drive which should have had four partitions was showing one of about 65GB. It also seemed that there was an unformatted area of just over 100GB. Something was wrong with the maths there. After a lot of messing around, I copied the 65GB onto another drive and formatted the blank space which magically reappeared as 350GB. That still leaves nearly 100GB of space unaccounted for. It’s always been a flaky drive, I think this is one flake too many. A quick tap with a claw hammer will repair it in a way that will make sure the data is gone for good and then it will go in a skip at the dump.

Got a phone call from Isobel, just before midday to say she was locked inside her house and would pass us her key through the window. Couldn’t understand how you could be locked INSIDE, but all became clear. She has no keyhole on the inside. Instead she has a turn button. The turn button had come loose and she couldn’t get a screwdriver small enough to loosen the grubscrew that should hold it in place. I had a look and it wouldn’t have mattered if she had a small screwdriver or not, because it was an Allen key fitting. I guarantee the repair man who came to fix it took less that three minutes to change over the lock and test the thing. I reckon he must be on loan from the Ferrari team. Either that or he’s on piece work!

We drove down to the Black Bull for lunch in The Coorie In. The food was ok, but no better than that. Service was very slow, but we were warned that there was a party of 18 before us. It would have been good to have had some heating in the room, considering it was around 5º outside. Isobel and I were freezing, Scamp doesn’t feel the cold. I was really glad to get back to Isobel’s for a cup of coffee. Can’t complain though because it was her treat.

On the walk back to the car I spotted the Morris Minor. I knew I’d found my PoD. Pity I hadn’t taken more time to get a sharper shot.

Maybe going in to Glasgow tomorrow for some last minute prezzies. Scamp has a high tea booked with the Witches.

A day in the toon – 17 December 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Today we and a couple of million others went in to town to do some last minute shopping.

We decided that we’d drive in rather than freeze to death on a cold bus. It was probably the right decision, but it looked like half of Scotland thought the same way. We had to drive up to nose bleed altitude in the Buchanan Galleries car park to get a space. People were queueing everywhere on level 6 to squeeze into a space between a gigantic Land Rover Discovery and something that looked like a well polished Chieftan tank with alloy wheels. Meanwhile on level 7 we got to choose which of the hundred odd spaces we would grace with our presence. We both agreed on a “divide and conquer” approach and went on our separate and secret ways confirming that we would phone when we were finished or fed up, whichever came first.

I can’t remember who cracked first, but I do remember I was on my way to make my only purchase of the day when Scamp asked if I wanted to go to Paesano for lunch. Oh yes, that brightened the day. Actually the weather was quite bright, it was just the crowds of people everywhere that took some of the shine off it. When we got to the restaurant, it was crowded out the door. My face fell as I stood there wondering how long I was willing to wait. Ten minutes? Twenty minutes? Thirty minutes top. Nope, we got taken right away. It seemed that most of those waiting had booked full tables or were waiting for carry-outs. The place was jumping. We had to wait ages for our pizzas, but a bowl of balsamic onions helped stave off the hunger. The pizzas when they came were beautifully well done, mine to the point of charcoal in places. I cannot fault this place. My pizza had a bit too much garlic, but nothing I’d complain about. Scamp got the wrong pizza, but it turned out better than what she had ordered, so she was happy with the extra roast courgettes with her extra rocket and no cheese.

Coffee afterwards in Costa and it was good coffee too. Just goes to show that it’s Cumbernauld Costa that’s at fault. Too little coffee in their coffee I suspect. Scamp had some extra thing to buy, so I went for a walk, taking some photos. Didn’t really like anything I’d done, but I went up to load my single purchase in the car and took some photos from level 7. They were later turned into the PoD by some clever effects in On1.

Back home I struggled to find a way of removing the old HDD from the MacBook Pro and still get it loading. After about five hours of this, I’m back where I started. Tomorrow I’ve a different plan. It might work. All to be able to take it in to get a new battery.

Tomorrow we’ve been invited to lunch in the Village by Isobel. Sounds like a good meal too.

Dull, Dull, Dull – 7 November 2019

Posted on by Zogman

That sort of sums up the day. Dull with the chance of Brexit.

I’m getting fed up with the amount electioneering we are getting on the (supposed) news. The first thing they talk about is the election or Brexit. No news there. We know there’s going to be an election. We’ve been saddled with Brexit since 2016. Why is the important stuff always playing second fiddle to this nonsense.

Then it’s Labour slagging off the Conservatives. Conservatives slagging off Labour. Lib Dems labouring under a delusion that they’re going to oust both of them and the SNP slavering for another referendum. Then there’s some poor reporter who’s sent to some god-forsaken town to try to drum up some interest in the whole shebang. Haven’t you heard yet? Nobody’s interested, and apart from the party faithful, nobody has found any party in the whole mess worth voting for. For what must be the first time in my life I don’t want to vote. Scamp even suggested that I should spoil my ballot paper and I might just do that and write “NONE OF THE ABOVE” at the bottom. There, I’ve got that out of my system.

Today was a dull day, but it brightened up in the afternoon and the rain dried up too. I managed out for a walk in St Mo’s and came back with the monochrome offering at the top of the page. Walked on down to the new shops and got a nice wee bottle of wine to go with the dinner. I’d made some soup and Scamp made Chicken and Mushrooms. The wine washed it down beautifully.

After talking to Val in the morning I gave Linux on the Linx another go, but I’m getting tied in knots with it now and beginning to think that it’s more trouble than its worth. I’ll just put Windows back in, reset it to factory settings and sell the big black slab. It’s always been ok, but not great. Windows 10 kills it. Might get a few quid for it and put that to getting a replacement for my dust ridden Teazer.

No plans for tomorrow other than hopefully going to Milano Express for lunch.

Dancing day four of four – 18 September 2019

Posted on by Zogman

But before we go dancing, some blood must be donated.

Drove up to the health centre for my 9.10am appointment with the blood taker. Not the cleanest or most painless donation ever, leaving me with a fairly large bruise. However maybe it was her first blood letting of the day. Nobody is perfect.

On to the rest of the day and more importantly, the ongoing saga of the NAS drive. Today I managed to get into the control page of the WD MyCloud and it told me after a fair amount of time wasting that my firmware was up to date. This I find hard to believe when I’ve had warning after warning that the firmware needs to be updated. In fact I have had Fourteen such warnings now, the last one being this morning! I downloaded the most up to date version and tried connecting the MBP to the drive directly using a cable but when I tried to install the new update I got the message that there wasn’t enough space on the device to install. There is only about 700GB of space on the drive, but I’d have thought that would have been enough. I checked to see if I was misreading the instructions, but no, for once, I’d done everything I was asked. After this last attempt, the drive seemed to go on a go-slow and wouldn’t do anything without a ten minute wait. I gave up and got ready for today’s dancing.

Today we were back in Blackfriars and I was in a Black Mood. However, my mood brighten when I heard the music. That’s one of the reasons I keep going. The music is bright and cheerful. Not so bright and cheerful were the other couple who had returned to the class after about a six month lay-off, apparently because of illness, as yet undisclosed. A new start today when all us beginners were partnered with an advanced dancer. Quite a revelation to me. It was good to be guided by an expert. Not that Scamp isn’t a great guide, but these ladies have many years of dancing experience over us. Really good idea, Michael.

Today we were going over what we’ve been taught for the last three or four weeks and trying to clean it up and get out of bad habits, so no new moves in Jive, Waltz or Quickstep. A good chance to consolidate.

On the way to Blackfriars I grabbed today’s PoD. One of the protesters who have now become a fixture outside the City Chambers on George Square. Every day, one of them is sitting with a loud hailer spouting their demands to anyone who will listen. Come rain or shine they are there. It wasn’t rain today, nor was it really shiny, but this bloke was sitting there playing his pre-recorded spiel.

Back home I got fed up and performed a restart on the NAS and left it to get on with it.

After dinner we went to Salsa. We knew that the 6.30pm class was closing and that Jamie G was giving up teaching on Wednesdays. Personally, I think this is the thin end of the wedge and the next announcement will be that he’s giving up teaching salsa completely for perhaps a year, to devote more time to his ‘day job’, but we’ll have to wait and see. What we didn’t know was that the STUC building is to be demolished to build houses. Where will we go on a Monday night now? Didn’t learn anything new here either but went over some old favourites.

Came home to find the drive running like new. For how long, I’m not willing to say. It works, for now.

Tomorrow I may get my hair cut.

Big Dancefloor & Hill Walking – 17 September 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Easily achieved my 10,000 steps and my 8 active hours today!

Out to Milton of Campsie to a fairly new church hall for an extra dance class today. Big hall, but only three couples again. We went through our paces with Quickstep and Waltz, then had a go at the Over the Rainbow set for Jive. I think we were slightly further ahead than the other two, but not by much and the size of the hall was a bit off-putting to start with. We still managed to get in folks way when dancing, but not as much as at Blackfriars. I think we’ll go back again.

Back home, Scamp was gardening as usual, but the sun was shining, so why not. I grabbed my wee camera bag and took it for a walk up Croy Hill. I’ve been meaning to climb it for a few weeks now and, as the weather was kind today, that seemed like the ideal opportunity. I made the mistake of parking at Auchinstarry which meant I had to walk up the path to the start of the real assault on the hill, but I will remember that I can park nearer to the interesting part of the hill and forego the slog up from the car park.

The main hill was fine, although it was hard going when you haven’t done this sort of thing for a few years. Great view from the top, all the way along the valley and across to Glasgow too. The light was lovely on the Campsie. Took a couple of groups of shots for an extended panorama, but Lightroom baulked at it, so I had to use Autopano Giga which apparently has been bought out and discontinued by another company. Such a pity as it was an expensive, but really useful panorama maker. It was based on a free program, but the company who developed it added lots of bits and pieces that made it far more user friendly. That’s the way of things these days. After all that, I wasn’t that impressed with my pano, much preferring the view across to Bar Hill, the next Roman fort on the line of the Antonine Wall. That’s the one that got PoD.

Tonight I tried to update the firmware on our NAS drive, but it was a complete disaster from start to finish. It’s a Western Digital MyCloud and it’s as slow as treacle on a Mac. On a PC it’s no problem. I thought the ‘automatic updater’ had ‘bricked’ it, but it came back on line again after a cold restart. Might have a go at a manual install tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to give some blood for my PSA test and for a diabetic check. Best to get them both done at the same time.

When a plan goes awry and Mickysoft get it right – 16 September 2019

Posted on by Zogman

It was one of those days where I’d planned what I wanted to do and how to do it.

It was one of those days when the planning went to pot right from the start. I had an idea that I could install an old version of AutoCad that I got, legally, years ago in the Linx. The installation went well after a shaky start when Windows 10 kept interrupting to tell me it was time to “Get back on track”. This happens occasionally and if I tell it to go ahead, it just clears the screen and displays the annoying message again, and again, ad nauseam. I finally clicked “Update and Restart”. It didn’t update, just restarted, but when I looked the “Update and Restart” message had gone, so for once, Win 10 was satisfied that I was back on track. Now I could settle down to installing AutoCad. The installation went well and then when I clicked the icon the spinning wheel spun for a while, stopped spinning and so did AutoCad. Tried again with even less success. Not even a spinning wheel to infer that something was happening. I closed the laptop and went upstairs to avoid Gems.

I had been intending posting a parcel to Hazy and driving in to Glasgow in the morning. It was now early afternoon, there was no point in going in to Glasgow now and a black cloud had descended on me, but I did get the parcel posted Hazy! Outside the sun was shining, but I couldn’t be bothered to take any of the cameras with me for a walk, so I just went for a drive instead.

It was a good idea to take the laptop upstairs, because when I was out, I remembered that if you right click on a recalcitrant app on Win 10, you can sometimes encourage it to work by coaxing it into believing it’s running on an older OS. That’s what I did and after some number crunching it decided that the old AutoCad would work better in Windows XP, probably the most resilient and trustworthy OS Mickysoft has made. Tried it and it worked. How amazing. Everyone said that AutoCad 6 wouldn’t run on anything newer than Windows XP, even Microsoft said so. Then they make it believe it’s running on Windows XP and it works!! Sometimes Mickysoft do get it right. After that I struggled for a good hour trying to remember the commands and tweaks to draw in AutoCad. Just in case you’re wondering what I’m drawing, it’s a portable, One Size Fits All, foldable lens hood for the Oly and Panasonic lenses. Yes, I could have drawn it old-style on paper, on a drawing board, with instruments, but where’s the fun in that?!

By the time I’d managed to draw circles and straight lines properly it was time for Salsa, the black cloud had gone. In the last night of the intermediate class we covered an old move, Elliem which I should know, but couldn’t get right tonight. Also a new move which was much more complicated, but I got right every time. Don’t know how that happened. In our advanced class we did three new moves called New Move 1, New Move 2 and New Move 3. How we’re going to remember which one is 1 and which one is 3 next week I do not know. Also found out that Jamie G is not going to be teaching on Wednesdays after the end of September, due to pressure of work. That’s a pity. A vacuum that will need to be filled.

It may be partly filled by a new ballroom class we’re hopefully testing out tomorrow in Milton of Campsie, which is a bit of a trek for us. We’ll have to see what it’s like.

PoD was a grab shot of a cactus that’s been growing happily in the downstairs toilet for about 30 years. It’s a fair size now, but the original plant is still there, growing in an ice cream tub that came from Netherburn! I really should replant it.

Tomorrow hopefully dancing in a new venue and more AutoCad tutorials to read.

The Plan – 7 September 2019

Posted on by Zogman

We had decided that if the weather was good we’d go for a walk somewhere nice and if not, then we’d do lunch instead, and if we could combine the two, so much the better.

Thankfully the weather fairies were good to us and the sun shone. With that in mind and with my new sunglasses in the car, we drove to Loch Leven for a walk. Walked for about a couple of miles to a viewpoint, and once we’d viewed from the point we turned and came back. There’s not a lot to see for most of the walk because you are a fair distance from the loch and then you are walking along the outskirts of a golf course. However, there were always the airies to watch. Lots of gliders, both powered and those being towed up.

Drove on to Loch Leven’s Larder for lunch. We had to wait about half an hour for a table, but when we got one, the food made it worthwhile. We both had a misnamed Fish Finger Sandwich which was in reality a haddock fillet cut down the middle, coated in batter and sandwiched between two thick slices of bread, lettuce and tomato. Fish fingers indeed. It took us all our time to eat them, then Scamp had to have the Gin & Tonic Cheesecake. I don’t know if I’m being more careful or not, but I abstained.

Drove home the long way, across the new Forth Road Bridge just to check that the new sat nav card was indeed up to date. It was. A glorious late summer, or early autumn day.

The iMac was playing up tonight.  It has seemed slow to load for about a week now, plus I got a memory error tonight.  Later it refused to start, just a grey screen.  I forced a restart, but the same thing happened.  Finally I did a ‘Repair Restart’ (CMD + R as you power up) and it fixed some catalog settings which seemed to sort the problem.  Hopefully.  Fingers crossed.

PoD was a rusted scroll on an old gate from our walk.

Tomorrow I may go looking for brambles.

Getting ready for the show – 29 August 2019

Posted on by Zogman

I thought all I had to do was stick a couple of photos in frames, but for the artist there’s always more things to do.

After talking to Hazy on the phone for half an hour or so and catching up with all the Wimbledon gossip, I was fairly sure I was ready to start the picture framing.
I was reusing old picture frames for my submissions to the flower show. The painting was all framed up yesterday, so today was the photos. Didn’t like the photos bare in the frames, so decided to cut a couple of mats to clean up the presentation. Those looking at the photos wouldn’t notice, but I would. Couldn’t find my mat cutter, couldn’t find a ruler, the Stanley knife was blunt. I just wasn’t prepared properly, sooo.

  • Clear a space.
  • Find the tools and get them organised.
  • Agree with myself on mat colours and then off we go.

Didn’t actually take that long once I was sorted. Happy with the results, it was time for lunch.

After lunch and under supervision by Scamp, I pressed the waistcoat using her fancy super-zoomer steam iron with the separate steam generator. Now I see why she bought it. It simply does an excellent job, and if I could get almost all the creases out of the fabric, then it must be good. Thanks Scamp!

After that it was off to Colin’s in torrential rain to get the photos, painting and handicraft (because there isn’t a separate category for Waistcoats made by a Man in the show), so I’ll be up against all the macrame, crochet and knitwear. Not that I’m competitive, like! Got some of Colin’s home grown tomatoes while I was there, then it was off to Tesco for some provisions.

Back home and Scamp was looking and sounding better. Maybe it’s the painkillers starting to work or maybe it’s the actual pain easing. It’s hard to tell after just a couple of days, but I’m happy it’s an improvement on yesterday.

I think I may be saying ‘Goodbye’ to the Linx laptops. Windows 10 is just taking all the joy out of them. Last night I was trying, and managing to download a large file from my NAS drive. When I checked on the progress I found the cheery message

”Lets get you back on track”

Windows 10 had halted the download to display this big blue message box informing me that it was about to re-install the update I’d removed before we went on holiday. It’s not meant to do that. It’s meant to return the OS to the previous (working) version, not the bloatware it had just installed. I give up. Because of the weird bootsector on the Linx, I can’t install Linux and be done with it, which would be the sensible solution in this situation. I’m stuck with this half-arsed, laughingly poor operating system. I’ll wipe the drive. Remove the micro SD card and sell the lump of plastic to someone who appreciates an OS that interrupts you every month or so to do what it pleases, not what you want.

PoD is a wee wet flower in St Mo’s this afternoon. Just missing the rain.

Tomorrow we may drive through the rain to Larky to visit Crawford & Nancy – in the morning.

A day in the toon in the sunshine – 12 July 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Today we’d decided to travel in to Glasgow on the bus and go to the Transport Museum on Riverside.

Got off the subway at Partick and walked along past the reconstruction that was going on by the Clyde until we came to the strange building that, from the air looks as if it’s been squeezed out of a toothpaste tube.  It looked very impressive with its glass frontage.  In the middle of July, it’s the middle of the Glasgow Beach.  Loads of weans building sand castles with pails and spaded on an area at the front of the building done up to look like a beach with tons of sand.  Everyone seemed to be having a great time, but we were itching to get in to see this wonderful new 21st century museum.

What a let down.  Yes, there were steam engines and tram cars, loads of tram cars and trolley buses too, but most of them were sealed off from the public by large perspex sheets.  This was a “Look, but don’t touch museum”.  One of the biggest selling points of the place, the revoloutionary Wall of Cars was the worst let-down.  Yes, there were a load of cars on shelves along a wall, like full size Dinky or Matchbox toys, but the problem was you couldn’t see into them.  They were too high up or too far away to see any of the detail.  The same was true for the Wall of Motorbikes.  Yes, they were there, but you could only see about two of the five layers of them. The rest were way up too high and you’d get a crick in your neck trying to see the details.  The bikes, especially seemed to be in a bit of a state.  Torn saddles and seats, suspensions not bolted to the frames.  It looked as if they’d just been placed there without any thought of restoration.  Worst of all were the cycles.  There they were, either sitting on or hanging upside down from a great circular wheel, hanging from the ceiling.  No description of what they were or why they were there.  Strangest exhibit was a Sinclair Cambridge Programmable Calculator.  I had one of those, away back in the 1980s.  At the time it was truly state of the art.  I bought it fully built and tested, but it was possible to buy it as a PCB with the components and build it yourself.  A friend of mine bought a Sinclair radio kit which was supposed to fit into a matchbox.  He got it built, but by the time he was finished it barely fitted into a suitcase.  But back to the Calculator.  Interesting though it was, what had it to do with Transport?

The building itself is striking, but there is a design theory that “Form Follow Function”.  In the case of this museum it’s more like “Function Follows Form”.  You get the feeling that they designed and built the building, then just stuffed everything they had into it.  Not impressed and wouldn’t go back.  Typical Council waste of money.

What I did get there was today’s PoD.  Probably the best, certainly the most detailed Oor Wullie I’ve seen so far.  You can get a better view on Flickr because by some miracle it managed to get into the site.  I personally think Flickr is now dead.  Today after half an hour of attempting to install the three images I’d uploaded, I got  the message that they had failed to upload.  Only to find out later that they had actually loaded successfully.  Since May, the site has been almost unusable.  Literally hundreds of complaints on the “official” help page and nothing being done about it.  I refuse to throw more money at such a failed excuse of a photo site.

Anyway, back home we got an hour in the sun in the back garden before I phoned Golden Bowl and uplifted a collection of Chicken Chop Suey & Fried Rice for Scamp and Special Chow Mein for me.  A good way to end a day in  the sun.

Tomorrow, strangely enough, we may go back to Partick again to go to a Farmers Market.