Category: Technology

Reunited with an old friend – 25 April 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Start of the prep for tomorrow and the rains came.

Out fairly early this morning, certainly before 10am to get some meat for tomorrow’s Lamb Tagine. Of course, when I was there I also got some sausages and the beef short ribs looked very nice, so I got a couple of them too. The carnivore then drove home.

After that, we got in the Juke and went to Falkirk, stopping on the way to get a couple of bedding plants for Scamp. Not the ones she wanted, but one bee attracter with bright orange flowers and some highly scented sweet peas. Next stop was Falkirk itself and the ring. It had caused the lady some problems soldering in the gold extension piece, and when I tried it on it was just a little bit too big. That didn’t seem to be a problem, because she could take it down just a half size and that fitted perfectly. It was a beautifully shiny, but as Scamp said, I would soon get it looking worn again. It’s already beginning to look better and it doesn’t squeeze my finger like it did before the fall. It became PoD.

Stopped at Morrison’s on the way home for even more food then lunch. Roll ’n’ Sausage for me and a plate of Chips for Scamp. Morrison’s do good cheap no-frills lunches and the coffee is quite drinkable too. When we came out it was raining and it rained on and off all day after that. The garden needs the rain, the first for about three weeks.

Back home I realised I hadn’t picked up my pills, so went for them and also Scamp added more things to the shopping list. I wanted to get another removable hard drive to back up the oldest of my digital photos. These ones date from 2000 up to 2009. In total those nine years of photos take up a measly 160GB. The photos from last year, 2018, used up 226GB! Moore’s Law is a computing term which originated around 1970. The simplified version of this law states that overall processing power for computers will double every two years. It looks like the storage for photos follows that same rule. I drove to Currys in Bishopbriggs to get the one I wanted which has a cable to utilise the USB-C port in the back of the iMac.

When I got home from my visit to Currys Technology Toy Shop, I noticed what looked like a flower head on the path. It wasn’t just the head, it was not one, but two tiny little violas growing in the mossy soil round a manhole cover at the front door. I carefully dug them up and we replanted them in a pot and its soaking up some rain on the back step as I write. I presume the plants came from a self seeding viola in the garden.

It appears that my website is stable and working as anticipated. With that in mind, today I took the decisive step of deleting everything on the old server and after that I cancelled my contract with A Small Orange. It was good fun when it started, but after the previous annual increase of 70% in the bill for my webspace, I felt it was time to look for somewhere new. Basically that’s the reason I gave them for moving on. The deed is done. ASO is no more.

While I was out, Scamp was busy with prep for tomorrow. Tomorrow it’s my turn. Lamb Tagine in the morning and pakora in the afternoon with a break somewhere for some foties, hopefully.

A well filled day – 23 April 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Driving to Falkirk, and back, lunch out (for some), coffee (for some), broken website – now repaired. Just your usual Tuesday.

Very warm during the night, but the temperature was dropping all morning and, when we got out of the car in Falkirk, I was glad I had worn my fleece. Dropped my ring off in the jeweller’s to have it repaired after having it cut from my finger back in March. We will be reunited on Thursday, hopefully. Went to Morrison’s while we were there to buy muesli, hand wash and milk. That, with a few other things, came to just over £70. That’s the way the money goes.

When we came home, Scamp just had time to change before she went out for lunch with her pal Mags. I had an hour to rearrange the mess in the art room before I too went out. No lunch for me just coffee and setting the world to rights with Fred and Val.

By the time I got home, Scamp was too and there was just enough of the day left to wander over to St Mo’s to get some photos. PoD went to a branch with what looks like Wild Cherry blossom. The competitor for the PoD was this shot of a new memorial seat in St Mo’s park. The name on it is Deone, who I think is Deone MacRae who died of cancer in 2013 aged 15. The family put a memorial bench beside Broadwood Loch, but some people didn’t like it and burned it to ashes. You really wonder about the mentality of some people. The new butterfly seat is cut and welded from 6mm steel. I don’t think that will be quite so easy to burn.

After dinner which was a joint effort at a paella, I noticed all the email from the new server was offline, and so was my site. Try as I might, I couldn’t get it to clear itself. I tried a website checker and it showed the site as open. Asked Hazy to check and she got access. Eventually used the chat facility on the new server’s webpage and after some checking on their side I was told that my IP address had been blocked after too many attempts to log in to an email address using different passwords. Actually it was me who was attempting to log in and get Mac Mail to accept the new password. Good to know they are on the ball, but will have to be more careful in future when changing passwords.

That was my busy day. Tomorrow will be equally busy, I’m sure. Hoping to go dancing in the afternoon and maybe in the evening too. The weather fairies say it’s going to get colder and wetter. Oh what fun. Summer’s over for another year perhaps.

Walking with dinosaurs – 18 April 2019

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Went to Glasgow to see what Leonardo had been up to.

We decided to go on the bus, because I’d been driving quite a lot and also, so we could have a drink before we came home. We had a coffee in the toon and then we got the subway out to Kelvin Hall and walked along to Kelvingrove Art Gallery. Walked around the Dippy the Diplodocus exhibit, and although it was large, I’d imagined it was much bigger. Nicely balanced though, with a long neck and a long tail keeping Dippy in equilibrium.

Found the Leonardo exhibit and we were amazed with the condition of the drawings. True Mrs McQueen has been looking after them and she’s been doing a good job, but the detail in the drawings was so clear and the paper was so clean I was impressed. Beautiful detail in the drawings, especially the studies of grasses and plants. The only thing I was disappointed in was the lack of mention of his tutor, Jim Belkevitz. Any child who was in my drawing class knows that Leonardo was a genius because he could draw a circle freehand, and the man who taught him that was Mr B.

Scamp wanted to listen to the organ recital and I wanted to go and see the Glasgow Boys paintings.  I saw the painting of Anna Pavlova which Fred gave JIC and Sim for a wedding present.  Theirs is a print of course, but the real thing is very impressive.  Also saw the Dali picture that poor Neil went to see, only to find out that it was on load to a New York gallery.

Got the bus back in to town and had lunch in Paesano with a glass of wine each to compensate for travelling by public transport. Then Scamp went to look in M&S and I went to wander through CassArt. Both of us came away empty handed.

Back home, I noticed that the overflow from the central heating boiler was dripping water. Checked the boiler and found that the pressure gauge was well into the high pressure red area. Phoned the gas board and after chatting on-line with someone somewhere in the world, but I guess India, I was told that a technician visit was booked for Saturday. Until then I was told best not to use the boiler. I couldn’t remember how to decrease the pressure in the system, because there isn’t a stopcock like there was in the old boiler, but then I found articles online that said to drain one of the highest radiators with the system switched off. I did that and the pointer came down into the middle green area, so we got some heat tonight after all, but that still doesn’t explain why the pressure was so high when we got home, so it still need expert help.

PoD was a picture of a man with his granddaughter (?) photographing Dippy. I think he was more interested in the dinosaur than she was.

Tomorrow my coffee is being delivered, so one of us will have to stay at home for that.

Up and Running – 12 April 2019

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Well, it wasn’t quite so clever this morning, but by this evening it was indeed Up and Running.

This morning was marred by some swearing because the website still wasn’t behaving properly. Then I got the idea of getting Hazy to check it out from her end. Just before we left to go and see what Leonardo had been up to since he left Mr Belkevitz art class in Cumby High, I got a message from Hazy to say she could access the new website from her end down in Londinium. This was a relief because it meant that I could tick those damned nameservers off as DONE! It was also a pain because it meant the problem was at my end. Never mind, we’d drive in to Kelvingrove, see Dippy the diplodocus and also catch Leonardo’s exhibition of drawings. I didn’t actually expect to see him there, because he’s quite a famous artist now, but it would be good to see what JB had taught him.

When we got there, everyone else in Glasgow and the surroundings was there too. We drove round for a while, but the only place we could find wanted 40p to park for 30 mins. We were so far away it would take us a good 20 mins to reach the Art Galleries. That would leave us in deficit of 10 mins just to get back to the car if we just turned on our heels and walked back. What in the name of the wee man is in the heads of the people who make up these ridiculous parking charges. It’s not as if the parking places were in the middle of shops, just bays at the side of a road through playing fields. “Sorry, it can only be five a side today. That’s five MINUTES a side. Now off you go and play, your time starts now!”

Gave up. Did try to park within the Art Gallery carpark, but judging by the number of people cruising round, there weren’t many places to be had. It looked like musical chairs. When the music stops, try to find an empty chair. Drove home. Stopped at Costa for a coffee and a roll ’n’ sausage or a tuna wrap for Scamp.

When we got home I struggled for another hour or so with words and symbols I’d never seen before while Scamp went to Condorrat, partly to get out of the road, I think. Finally I too had had enough and I walked over to get dinner. Tonight’s dinner would be a large fish supper between us. On the way over I got the picture of the cherry blossom. As I saw it fluttering in the breeze I realised the first time I took a photo of that tree was around the year 2000 when the world was young, Brexit was a word that would be disallowed as not in the dictionary, in Scrabble and a 2 megapixel camera with an f2 lens was the marvel of the age. It was an Olympus DC-2000 Z. A beautiful camera that I sold to a colleague at school and which he still owns I think. Anyway this shot took PoD on a dull day using an Olympus E-PL5 with a 12-32mm lens and a much bigger 16 megapixel sensor. Sorry JIC just a little technospeak.

After the fish ’n’ chips we had a pineapple cake each, which actually had pineapple in it, but I don’t think the ‘cream’ had ever seen a cow. Then we watched another recorded episode of Portrait Artist of the Year, before I opened up my Linx 12 and got the surprise of the day when the website opened up in the new server. I won’t bore you with the details of how and why I knew it was the new server, JIC would just moan about no Technospeak warnings. It was working. Checked on the iMac and, yes, it was actually on the new server settings. In these days of instant results, you have to remember that Virgin Media takes at least 30 hours to realise that some settings have changed and refresh its lists or something. ‘Slow’ and ‘Treacle’ in the same sentence as ‘Virgin Media’ seems to be the name of the game.

Tomorrow, no computers until at least 12 noon. Maybe a trip to the countryside somewhere.

Moving Day – 10 April 2019

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Somewhere in America a big removal van turned up at A Small Orange and the man with the van started loading my website on to it.

At least, that’s how I imagine it worked. I got an email telling me that the migration had started. I hope the man-with-a-van packs everything neatly and doesn’t drop anything valuable. I know I should have insured the contents, but sometimes you have to trust the person doing the removal.

Drove in to Glasgow to go to ballroom dance class. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. The two pairs of dancers were starting their usual blame game. This time it was worse than normal and we got hardly anything done, thanks to their childish antics. I really don’t know why they go to the class. They go to twice as many classes as we do, they don’t practise, they seem to retain nothing. All they do is bitch with each other or giggle like schoolgirls. Once upon a time I had a boy in my Tech Studies class who, we swore, had his brain formatted every weekend, because when he turned up on a Monday for class, he had no knowledge of what he’d learned the previous week. This is the same scenario, except these are supposed adults.

After what felt like a lost hour, I got myself a new pair of Chinos from Debenhams. The girl who sold them asked if I wanted a Debenhams card! Eh no, I don’t know what benefits that would bring me.

Drove to Salsa and everyone in the Intermediate class listened to Jamie’s instructions and did exactly what they’d been told. Maybe not the first time, but after a few run throughs, they had it. I bet Michael wishes he had a class like that. Even the Beginners class that came after that had obviously practised and were better than they were last week.

When we got home an email was waiting for me from my new web host to say that the man had delivered the website and had plugged it in. I checked it with the link provided and it looked like it had been last night. It appears I’ve now moved into bigger and cheaper premises. Just a few tweaks and we’re good to go (fingers crossed).

PoD was a wee man standing outside the GOMA.

Tomorrow we’re going to Stirling to buy Waitrose.

Happy Birthday to Me – 8 April 2019

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Sixty nine years ago Mr and Mrs Campbell had a wee boy. Today he’s much older, but not a lot wiser.

I had a lovely day. Breakfast in bed then opened all my parcels. Lots of imaginative things and funny cards. Lots of sweeties too. You can never have too many sweeties. Went out to lunch at The Battlefield Rest. I had Bruschetta Verdura followed by Chicken and Salsiccia Cacciatore. Scamp had Fish Crêpe followed by Haddock Risotto. Neither of us had a space for pudding. Drove back home and ordered my new slice of webspace at a much lower price than my last one. Now I just have to get the virtual removal van to take the website over to its new home, or most likely, get some clever bots to do the job for me. With the help of my favourite daughter, of course who coincidentally I spoke to on the phone just as I was wiping the sweat from my forehead.

That left just enough time to get changed into salsa clothes to go out to class. First class was a bit frantic and really quite big now. Second class had also grown in numbers and I was getting a bit worried that I’d have to dance a Birthday Rueda. That’s when the the person who’s birthday it is, in this case me, has to stand in the centre of the rueda and dance with all the girls, one after the other while everyone else shouts and claps. It didn’t happen. Oh dear, what a shame!! Maybe it was because it was my birthday, but I managed to remember the new move, not its name, of course, but I did remember the sequence of moves.

On the way home I tried to grab a shot of the lights of the football stadium shining across to the Broadwood Loch. I took the shot from the car park at the loch. My apologies to all the people sitting in the cars who felt the sudden need to be elsewhere when they saw someone walking about with a camera!

When we came back I spoke to JIC on the phone and he explained how he uses his fancy coffee filter. Tomorrow I will try again with his information in my head.

To all those at Burnside in Skye, JIC and Sim, Hazy and Neil and of course Scamp, thank you for all the prezzies and cards. You all helped me have a brilliant day. Thank you.

Tomorrow I may go to the butchers to get some nice meaty protein. Scamp is going out with Isobel to tell tall tales of our holiday.

Another teacher breaks out – 29 March 2019

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Didn’t do very much today.

Some days are like that. Scamp went out shopping for essentials at Tesco. I stayed in and re-lived the holiday through the medium of blog writing.

My Fitbit is not at all well. The date was stuck at 27th March and nothing I could do would shift it. I tried doing a few resets with no success, and last night I let it die completely. I tried again to plug it in and reset it from zero, but all I got was a mangled display on the screen. I fear it may be dead, well, that’s not entirely correct. It still works internally, it just doesn’t have any way of displaying that work. It still vibrates to tell me to move and it still syncs to the iPhone. It just displays scrambled egg on the screen. Apparently it’s a common fault and is well documented on the InterWeb.

I went out at night to a retiral evening for Morag Pearson the ex-PT Art at Cumby High. Met Duncan and John for a beer in the Wetherspoon’s in Sausage Roll Street and had a pint of the excellent Punk IPA. The meal was a curry in Kama Sutra, just along the road. Lots of old faces from the old guard. Lots of young fresh looking faces of the youngsters, some of whom would eventually become the old guard in about forty years time. Talked to lots of folk I knew and liked and a few whom I disliked or detested. Thankfully I could walk away from the latter to find more of the former to compare stories with. It was a good night.

Walked down Sausage Roll Street with John before we went our separate ways him for the train home, me for the bus. Unfortunately, as I got to the bus station I just saw the X3 disappear round the corner. As I’d have to wait in the rain for another hour for the next one I phoned a taxi instead and had a pleasant run home talking to the driver.

Nice to see another teacher get out of the Cumbernauld Academy hell hole and into the light. Shame to see that some are still stuck in this nepotistic environment. Not conducive to good learning and no good for teachers or pupils. Glad I’m out.

Today’s PoD is of the leaves on the Poinsettia Scamp’s been tending since before Christmas.

Tomorrow, maybe a curry in Hamilton. Another curry!

White Rabbits (x3) – 1 February 2019

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Traditional welcome to the first day of the month. Today it wasn’t just the rabbits that were white. Everything was.

It all started out so nicely with frost on the cars and therefore no great incentive to go out, so we just read for a while and then had a coffee. After that we simply had to drag ourselves out to buy Tesco.

After lunch I decided to try my luck in the bogs again and this time I found the dry path and still got some photos! Impressed with the ability of the ice to hold the weight of the Oly 10, if not me! Also impressed with the Oly app on the iPhone that allows me to control the camera through a private WiFi connection. That’s how you get these low down shots like today’s PoD.

It was when I was walking back that the snow came on and it didn’t go off for about four hours. Now we don’t just have frost, we have snow too. Maybe the snow has done its work because the temperature is no 0.7ºc. Positive 0.7ºc!

That’s about it for today. I’m off now to get a sketch done for 28 Drawings Later on Facebook. If I have time I’ll even add it to the blog.

As Promised!

Tomorrow it all depends on the weather. I looks like the sky will be clear, but we’ll see!

The dug’s away tae Hamilton – 12 January 2019

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Tae buy the wean a bell.

It was a dull morning, but it didn’t matter.  We were off to Hamilton.  Not “Tae buy the wean a bell”, but to have a curry in the Bombay Cottage.  We hadn’t been there for years and then my brother mentioned that he and his wife were going there and we decided we’d try it again to see if it still retained its former high place in our memory.  It did, and it still does.  Surprisingly, even after twenty odd years some of the original staff are still there!

After that, we were driving home when I suggested we go for a coffee at Robroyston, and that’s what we did.  Two flat whites and two pieces of sweet stuff, because it was the weekend.  When we were driving home from there I could see the light on the hills starting to shape up nicely, but knew that if I chased it, I’d be too late.  Sometimes it’s better just to watch it than try to capture something that doesn’t represent it at all.

Back home, Scamp started to tidy out the “Towel Cupboard”,  although it holds more electronic bits and pieces now than towels.  That’s where we found the film canister with some processed slide film.  Three short 12 exposure strips which I’ve now scanned and stored in Lightroom.  Lots of memories.  Some of places that are no longer there.  Some of people who are no longer there.  Some of people who’ve grown up.  All of them interesting to us.  Glad I found them.  One of the images found its way into today’s PoD, along with the film strips and an old Zenit 12 SLR.  Quite a lot of work creating the finished image, but I won’t bore you with the details.

I used the small Manfrotto tripod to shoot the basic shot.  I had to make myself a new tripod screw because I lost the last one during the week down the Luggie Water.  Tonight’s was made from a 1/4″ Whitworth bolt and a small piece of a brush handle.  Quite proud of my work!

Tonight’s entertainment was “Sing” from Netflix, because there was nothing else worth watching on terrestrial TV.  What a find it was.  Just a bit of fluff, really but the animation was quite excellent, much better than some of  the crap that was on over Christmas.  Really enjoyed the music too.  It’s not often we both laugh out loud at something on TV, but we did tonight!

Tomorrow if the weather is bad (and it’s forecast to be) we are booked to tidy out the entire “Towel Cupboard”.  That will be a difficult one.

 

New hair, Old friends

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We drove in to Glasgow today, just to get out of Cumbersheugh, but we came back.

My hair badly needed cut. If I did it myself it would just be cut badly. If we went to Glasgow, it would be cut properly. No contest. For a change we parked up at Cowcaddens and for the umpteenth time, we didn’t see even one cow. Why do they insist in giving places these confusing names. While Scamp wandered round the shops, I walked down to West Nile Street (which, it turned out, is not even near the Nile), sat down and had my locks cropped by a nice Polish lady. She did a very good job and I was happy to give her a tip. I told her not to visit Cowcaddens if she was at all interested in dairy farming.

Met Scamp back on Sauchiehall Street and we decided that lunch time was approaching so we headed down to Charcoals where I had Chicken Bhuna and Scamp had Aloo Saag. Mine was fine, but Scamp’s Aloo (potatoes) were nearly black. We didn’t pay that much for the lunch, so we couldn’t really complain. £20 for two starters, two mains, rice, a naan bread and two drinks is a very small price to pay.

Walked back up to Sauchiehall Street for Scamp to visit some more shops while I wandered round Waterstones. After that we went for a coffee in Costa where we met an old salsa friend. We sat and talked for an hour or so, just catching up. It was really good to see her again, I think it must be about three years since we’d last spoken to Elsie. We both felt she seemed quite lonely, having finally broken up with her once boyfriend George, and I think we both felt quite sorry for her.

Drove home and I built a new boot disk for the old Raspberry Pi that Val gave me more than four years ago. Booted it up and it ran just the same as ever! Not got a lot of use for it because it doesn’t have built-in WiFi or Bluetooth. It was just a wee challenge.

Watched the start of the new dance program on BBC. About ten minutes in, we both decided it was too dire to be bothered with and removed it from our recording schedule. Afterwards, we watched an episode of Marie Kondo’s series on Netflix (yes Hazy, I did watch it.) Interesting, but “Oh my God” <sic> that repetitive and superfluous phrase from the american woman became really annoying. I might watch another episode, but maybe with the sound turned down or preferably off.

PoD was from Sauchiehall Street. The woman was singing Tracy Chapman songs while accompanying herself on guitar and drum. Very entertaining and it brought a bit of sunshine into a very dull day.

Broke a cap on one of my front teeth tonight.  That’s what happens when you eat too many sticky caramels.  Luckily(?) I have an appointment with the dentist booked for a week on Monday.  Oh what fun!

Tomorrow? No plans as yet. Maybe taking Marie Kondo’s advice and tackling another cupboard.