Category: PCs

Testing Again – 4 June 2016

Posted on by Zogman

4 JuneThe new lens was due to arrive between 3pm and 4pm so we had time to kill today.  The day had started with heavy cloud, bit without the rain that had been predicted.  However as the day wore on, the clouds lifted and the sun shone, but there was a cool breeze, so rather than sit in the garden as we’ve been doing recently, we did our phase one packing.  Just to see how much we could lob into these canvas bags.  How more efficient they are than the big heavy rectangular boxes my mum and dad had to drag on holiday with them.  No rolling wheels for them, no, they had to carry them.  Going on holiday was a tough business in the old days.

<Technospeak>
The lens arrived on time and I took a two or three shots.  They looked as good as the reviews had predicted.  This lens is a 12 – 32mm zoom and this equates to a 24 – 64mm in 35mm terms.  On a 35mm camera, a standard lens is anything between 35mm and 60mm, so this lens covers this with a little more on the short end.  In other words, it’s a wide standard lens, a kit lens.  It doesn’t do anything very special, but it does it very, very well.  Those two or three shots showed that it was really sharp.  It provided the sharpness of a prime lens with the versatility of a zoom.  It looks like it’s going to be locked on to one of the Olys for some time to come.
</Technospeak>

All of the photos in the matrix were taken with it today.

JIC and Hazy: The one top right is all that’s left of the Adventure Playground on the path to Condorrat.  They’ve taken out all the old stuff.  Now we wait to see what will replace it with.

Spent the rest of the afternoon coaxing, first the Mac and then the new Linx tablet, to work properly.  The Mac problem is iTunes.  My least favourite Mac prog.  I applied an update this morning, something I rarely do.  After that I kept getting a popup telling me that something to do with the dock had crashed.  After checking on the net, it turns out that everyone else who has the problem links it to the same iTunes update.  Apple, I don’t expect this of you.
The Linx problem was that some of the apps wouldn’t load any more.  When Control Panel failed to load with an error that looked like the progeny of half the alphabet and an international telephone number, I knew it was time to restore it.  Unfortunately the restore got to 95% and got stuck.  I restarted it and it worked a bit better.  The apps loaded, but Control Panel still failed.  I’ve downloaded  the restore from the Linx site.  If I have time tomorrow, I’ll install it and see if that helps.  Microsoft, I do expect this of you!

Looking for warm sun tomorrow.

Keep taking the tablets – 30 May 2016

Posted on by Zogman

30 MayWe went in to Glasgow with the stated intention of getting a tablet/laptop.  Apparently what I was looking for was a “2 in 1”, which I suppose describes it quite well.

Note to JIC.  
Please feel free to ignore this part as it’s almost all technospeak.
First stop was Staples where I saw the cheapo looking Linx 10.1″ tablet with a clamshell keyboard/lid.  Cheapo maybe, but it had 2 x USB3 ports and 1 x micro USB for power and doubling as a port if you have an OTG (On The Go) cable.  Even better, it was at a bargain price of £149.99.  Ok, one possible.
Ok, JIC, Technospeak over.

Next stop was John Lewis who on paper had a load of these 2 in 1s.  Unfortunately, if we ignore the very expensive Mickysoft offerings, there were only two.  One was an Acer with no price on it and no power in the battery, the other was an HP at £80 more than the cheapo Linx.  The spec appeared to be almost the same, in fact it only had 1 x USB port and 1 x micro USB.  So it looks like it’s back to Staples.

Before that, Scamp decided that lunch at Patisserie Valerie was in order.  Since she prefers to eat inside, we got a table no bother because everyone wanted to sit outside in the sun.  Had our order taken: Crayfish Salad for both of us and Apple Pie for after for Scamp, Pecan Pie for me.  Tea for both.
The tea arrived, and so did the manager to apologise, but there was no Pecan Pie.  No problem, I’d just have the Apple Pie.  A little later he arrived back to say that sorry, there was no Crayfish Salad.  He did offer alternatives.  Scamp went for Chicken Caesar and I chose Chicken Brochette.  We’d been sitting for 20 minutes by this time.  Half an hour later and still nothing had arrived although the manager had floated past about 15 minutes before to say that my chicken was just going on the grill.  I’d had enough.  We offered to pay for the two teas, but the girl on the till would have nothing of it and told us the manager “should have been dealing with it.”  If I’d had to speak to the manager himself, Begbie would have come out of the box again.

Back at Staples, I bought the Linx.  Unfortunately, when I got it home, I found that it looked nothing like what I’d seen in the shop.  Quick phone call and was told to bring it back and they’d exchange it for the correct one.  I did, they did and this time I checked it before I left the shop.  So far, it’s doing everything I expected it to do.  Pity the same can’t be said for Patisserie Valerie.

More sun promised for tomorrow.  Bring it on!

Bread, Windoze10 and a short walk – 20 August 2015

Posted on by Zogman

There you are, my day summed up in a short sentence, although some would argue that it isn’t a sentence as it doesn’t have a verb in it, but that’s just being pedantic.

DSC_3395- blog--232I got up early, just after 7.00, made breakfast and, after reading my emails, decided to make some bread. Usually I make the stuff in the mixer, but this morning I decided to go back to the plain old hand method and it worked out quite nicely too. I don’t know why I decided to manhandle some flour, yeast, water, salt and butter. It couldn’t be because of ‘Bakeoff’ last night could it? Heaven forbid that’s why it came into my mind. Bakeoff would be a good programme if it wasn’t for those awful women ‘comedians’ or Mary Berry (Good Cop) or grumpy Paul Hollywood (Bad Cop). Most of the contestants could go too. “Ooh, this is the first time I’ve made this”. Get a life dear. If this is the first time you’ve made this when you knew it was coming up, you’re thicker than you look, and that would be DSC_3409- blog--232-1difficult. NO! It was a conscious decision on my part (you are still with me, aren’t you?) to bake a loaf today. Mine and nobody else’s. Bread making is a long process with little bits of effort and a lot of waiting around for the yeast to do its stuff, so to fill in the time I started to install Windows 10 on my old netbook. According to Val it was easy to upgrade the slow, curmudgeonly old HP relic to run like greased lightning on the newest Mickysoft OS. He lied. It took over three hours to get the thing downloaded and installed. I was so tired of waiting for the installation to actually get to the final screen, I almost set it to ‘automatic’ install. That would have been a big mistake. Now I see why so many people are having problems with this spyware OS. I went for the detailed install. Did you know that there are three whole pages where you give Mickysoft the right to check every time you touch a key on the DSC_3399- blog--232keyboard, every time you click the Start button.  You give them permission to sell your email address to their commercial customers.  You give them the right to look into your files too. Almost nothing is sacred. You even allow them to watch you when you go to the toilet. No, I made that bit up, but you do have to tell them you want to go, ask for permission, sign out and sign back in again. After all that was done, the new desktop was revealed. It’s much like the old Windows 7 desktop and in that, it is a great improvement over the Windows 8 style tiles, but it’s no longer Windows, it’s now truly Windoze. It’s as slow as treacle. The netbook was slow before, now a blackboard and chalk would be quicker. Luckily, I’ve got a month in which to play test the slug and then I can revert it to Windows 7 again. Possibly the best OS there has been for a PC, although Win XP is almost as good. Thank goodness for a Mac. The Windows computers are ok for taking with me on holiday as file repositories, but they aren’t for everyday use. The bread, by the way turned out fine.

Went for a walk later in the day to St Mo’s and got a few foties. Nothing startling, but they look ok.