Category: #HWGA

Another early(ish) rise – 23 November 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Off to get some paint, not watercolour and not for me.

Shona is getting her living room painted and needed transport to get the half a dozen tins of paint from B&Q. I didn’t think it would be open, because away back in March it was closed for the first few weeks of Lockdown. It was open today but there was no queue. Found the paint after a hunt round the shelves. Organisation is not the watchword in this B&Q by the look of things. Drove back to her flat and carried the tins up the stair, dumped them and headed back to coffee in our house, our good deed done for the day.

<Technospeak>
I waited a while before I started interrogating the NAS drive again, but I was fairly sure it would work this time. It didn’t. I couldn’t get in through the control panel (called a Dashboard). I couldn’t get in through my homemade access app that’s worked for the last three years. I couldn’t get in through the low-level Network app in Utilities. I eventually succumbed to the inevitable and sourced a video that showed how to get into the case without the use of a claw hammer. That worked quite neatly. The upshot was the drive is undamaged, but it’s formatted to Linux and the partitions are Linux too. One person suggested booting into a Linux distro and using that to access the files. It works, but I can’t work out how to download them from there. More research needed.
</Tecnospeak>

By the time I’d gone through all these hoops, it was too late to get any photos, so after dinner I took the NAS hard drive and set up the tabletop you see here. If in doubt, use minifigs to set up something to laugh at. This one brightened my night. Well, that and the remains of yesterday’s wine.

Today’s sketch is brought to you by the letter ‘C’.  It could have been Citrus, Coconut or Camera, but I finally settled for two carrots.  Pencil sketch with a splash of watercolour.  I was fairly happy with the final result.  Managed to post it to Instagram from the computer, using Developer Tools in Chrome.  Nice little workaround.

That was about it for a really dull, depressing day. I’m sure my Italian Pal who understands Linux will have a solution to my problem. I’ll email him tomorrow. A wee challenge for him.

Tomorrow we have no plans. There may be dry spells in the rainstorms that are blowing in from the Atlantic. We might manage to catch one of those dry spells for a walk.

Rain showers and sun – 22 November 2020

Posted on by Zogman

You have to be quick to get a walk in the dry bits.

We sat watching the rain pelt down and then dry up again. Both of us ready to go, but neither of us wanting to say to the other that it looked dry. Eventually we went for a walk down and round Broadwood Loch. Although I took the kit lens on the camera, I really wanted to try out the old Sigma ultra-wide 10 – 20mm lens with the new adapter. It worked almost perfectly. It focused, it recorded the aperture and shutter speed and I could change them. The only problem I discovered later when I was processing them in LR.

For the most part it was a pleasant walk. Thermometer said 7.4ºc and in when we were in the windy parts of the walk it certainly felt like that. In the shelter of the trees it was a lot warmer. Today’s PoD was taken with the new camera and the old glass. The images were a bit dark, but I can forgive that for the quality of the finished product.

The problem with the adapter is that it makes a blind stab at the maker of the lens. The focal range too is wildly wrong. It’s a pain to change, but I’m sure I can come up with a fix. The main thing is I don’t have to rely on manual focusing which is difficult to remember to do when you’re used to having the camera do it for you. Best of all, I get to keep my good old Nikon glass and use it easily.

We just managed to get back to the house before the rain came on. Just as we were passing the shops we could feel a drizzle, but it didn’t really pelt down until we were safely inside. Of course I had to try out the Hive while we were out by setting a 30min ‘boost’ in temperature to warm the house for us getting back. Just showing off really.

Spoke to JIC tonight and he explained in a rational way how the vaccine works without the hyperbole that the news people seem to want to attach to it. So now we know that those freezers that are needed to keep the vaccine at -80ºc are not as uncommon as (again) the news broadcasts tell us.

I think my NAS drive is dead. I wasted about three hours on it today and apart from one time it appeared to work, the rest of the time it was just an ornament. I think it’s had one kick in the head too many!

Today’s sketch is “B” for bottle. Just an old empty gin bottle that, like the NAS drive is just an ornament. We did drink some Harris Gin and it was very nice.

Tomorrow we’re taking Shona to collect paint form B&Q, six tins of it. Other than that, nothing planned.

In better tid today – 21 November 2020

Posted on by Zogman

I learned the word ‘Tid’ when we were down in Newton Stewart. It sort of mean ‘state’ and I’ve only heard it in a positive setting.

So, today my head was in a better place, that’s what I was saying. Number one, I had a good sleep and a long one too. Woke fairly refreshed. Secondly, the problem with the NAS drive had resolved itself. Yesterday after the electrician plugged in the hub for the Hive, my NAS changed its IP address and nothing I did would get it back again. Today, I think, the OS had taken a long hard look and consulted its DNS spreadsheet and discovered the new address for the NAS (I apologise if that’s too many UPPER case abbreviations, JIC). Whatever happened, the NAS was online again.

A possible third reason was that our Hive controlled lightbulb arrived and we could play with it. Scamp was the first one to get it installed on her phone, but couldn’t quite remember how she did it. Then my phone registered it too. We had some fun switching it on and off, brightening it and dulling it, and then it was lunch time. Simple things and simple minds!

After lunch I chose to go out for a walk and a rainstorm was just waiting for me to walk about half a mile before dumping on me. I walked to the butchers and waited in the queue which went down quite quickly until some dimwit wanted a whole lamb rack French dressed, and then said she wanted them cut into individual chops. All the while she was chatting up the butcher. Eventually the women who work in the shop could see their wet customers considering leaving and decided they could allow two people in the shop as long as they were socially distant. When the dimwit entered the shop there were two of us waiting outside, when I left there were about nine wet, disgruntled shoppers. Some people just don’t care about others.

Came back home via St Mo’s and as the weather had brightened up considerably, I got some photos in the sunshine for a change. My favourite, and PoD was the tree.

I wasn’t long home when my parcel arrived from Amazon with its autofocus adapter to allow some of my old Nikon lenses to work seamlessly with the Sony A7. I was pleasantly surprised to find that two out of three worked completely. One didn’t quite cover all the bases, but enough to make it a worthwhile investment.

Nick the Chick (no, I wouldn’t risk calling her that to her face!) put a large swathe of Scotland into Level 4 on Friday, yesterday. Unluckily for me, I’m in Level 4 of the Scottish Covid prevention scheme. It’s not total lockdown, but it’s fairly close to it. With that in mind I decided I’d start sketching again. Initially it will be alphabetical subjects.
Today it starts with ‘A’ is for Apple.

Tomorrow may be a case of sunshine and showers, but we can survive that. We may go for a walk.