Category: Technology

Design Obsolescence – 22 November 2016

Posted on by Zogman

22-nov

My car is just coming up for eight years old.  Its had a few bits and pieces replaced since new.  The usual consumables like the oil filter and the air filter every year at servicing time.  Every couple or so years it also has needed new tyres when they run a bit thin on tread.  More expensive items like brake disks, wheel bearings and CV joints have also been replaced when necessary.  Sometimes I use good quality third party replacements, but manufacturers parts are always available at an extra cost.  Occasionally I use them when it seems prudent to do so.  All based on the trusted advice from my local garage.  It’s a good car and runs perfectly well.

My Macbook Pro is also coming up for its eighth birthday.  It’s also had a few ‘improvements’ over the years.  It’s had a memory upgrade and a new hard drive installed, then last year I added a super fast Solid State Drive.  Some from Apple and some from third party alternatives.  Now its battery is failing, so I went to the Apple store in Buchanan Street to find out how much it would cost for an Apple fitted new battery.  I was shocked to hear them claim not to have replacement batteries for “such an old computer”!  Really?  A company the size of Apple can’t source the parts to repair its own computers?  I was told by a ‘Tech’ that I would have to phone technical support to see if they still had any in stock, and if they did the repair would cost around £160.  I don’t think so.  Amazon are advertising a replacement battery for £40 and I’m not so ham fisted I can’t fit it myself.
Since I’ve had the Macbook I’ve become a great fan of Apple, but my allegiance is fading after this example of Designed Obsolescence.

Right, now that I’ve got that out of my system, here’s a synopsis of the day:

Had an entertaining phone call with Hazy in the morning (yes, I did look up the Hive – impressive structure, H), then out to visit the dentist and no fillings, no scale and polish, just a cap replacement and no charge.  What a nice man.

After lunch Scamp and I drove in to Glasgow for some pre-Christmas shopping.  Better to go mid-week when the crowds are at work earning the pennies to spend at the weekend when we head for the hills, literally.  Parked in the Buchanan Galleries carpark with its wonderful panoramic walkway to the galleries proper.  Such a great view of Glasgow (and carpark is cheaper than Concert Hall!)  I headed off to the book shop for a couple of books I’d my eye on, but which turned out to be less than enthralling.  Scamp went looking for girlie stuff.  Met up later and had my introduction to the wonders of Designed Obsolescence – Apple style.  How to kill of a potential sale in one easy lesson.

Coffee and then trudged back homeward, but not before Scamp noticed that Jacques Vert had a sale on.  I’ll give her that, she always makes it look as if it’s a great surprise to see the sale posters in the window.  More girlie stuff bought.  Walked back across the bridge to the carpark and the light was just marvellous, so I had to stop to take some photos.  Such a beautiful sunset and one you knew just couldn’t last, so I made the most of it.  If I’d hurried past I’d have saved myself £1.50 in parking money, but I’d have missed today’s PoD (I’d also have brought the price of an Apple replaced battery down to £158.50, but I’m not bitter!)

Back home I found out that the books weren’t as interesting as I’d thought and have decided to return them (in pristine condition) tomorrow.  After a lovely stirfry cooked by Scamp I made some scones that turned out the best yet!  No eggs Hazy!

Was posting a condensed version of my rant on the Buchanan Street Apple shop page on Facebook when my eye was drawn down the page to a bloke complaining about exactly the same thing.  So, I am not the only grumpy old man then.

Travel clinic tomorrow to book our jags for foreign climes and maybe take that book back.  Unless Apple phone in the morning and offer me a brand new Macbook Pro – top of the range and an iPhone 7 to go with it to make up for their shocking customer service today.  But then I’d wake up and it would all be a dream  😉

What a grey day – 19 November 2016

Posted on by Zogman

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After such a lovely bright, cheerful day yesterday, today dawned dull and uninspiring.  After we dropped JIC and Sim off to meet their old friends, we headed into Glasgow.  J&S were heading there too, but by train, luckily.  When we got on to the M80 the CITRAC lit up with the joyful news that there was congestion after Junction 4.  At 1.30 on a Saturday afternoon, congestion on the M80 can only mean football traffic.  We never did find out what had caused the holdup because we cut our journey short and left at the Robroyston turnoff just after the queue had started.  After a wander around the limited variety of shops and a coffee, we headed back.  By this time the football fanatics were all safely ensconced in their seats in the rain watching 22 men chasing a ball while one man, dressed in black, tries to control them.  What fun.

When I opened the Macbook Pro this morning it just sat there.  As far as I could remember, when I’d closed the lid last night there was about 40% in the tank.  Where had it gone, or had it gone and was it just joshing me?  When it finally loaded, it proudly displayed 0%.  So where had it gone?  I looked all round the table where the MBP sits and I couldn’t find any juice lying around.  Then I checked Coconut Battery 3, my go-to app for the truth about the battery.  First thing to notice that the design capacity bar was red, not good.  It read 25.6%.  Not good at all.  I tried charging it up to 100% and completely discharging it, before charging it up to 100% again and discharging it again.  Nope, it sticks resolutely to 25.6% capacity.  I’ll overcharge it now and see what it’s like after that.  If it doesn’t work, then it’s time to call in the Weemen (Should that be WeeXY now?  Naw, it’s Weemen) Repair Team to fit a new battery.  That’s why I gave them the opportunity to hone their skill before I need to call them in for the big job.

Meanwhile I’m filling up the new external HDD.  It looks like it’ll take more time than I expected, but hopefully it will mean the photos will be more secure for a while longer.

Rough looking weather forecast for our visitors to fly into tomorrow, but it looks like the worst will be past long before they land.

Scraping the car – 18 November 2016

Posted on by Zogman

18-nov

Yes, it’s that time of year again when you need to scrape the car in the morning.  No heated screen or heated seats luxury here JIC!

Scamp was going to the dentist this morning, so I helped her defrost her car while I ran the engine on mine and turned the heater up full speed, full heat and air-con on.  Mine was soon defrosting nicely while we scraped away at Scamp’s.  That’s where the pic of the frozen leaf came from that.  When Scamp left to get her filling done, I headed back in to have porridge for breakfast.  First time for ages, and it worked its warm magic again.

With Scamp’s tooth fixed, we all headed off to Loch Leven to have a walk in the cold, fresh air under a clear blue sky.  Perfect conditions to test the F707’s infra-red capabilities. Well, the F707 and a furry monkey. The furry monkey which usually sticks to our fridge has magnets in his/her hands and feet.  The magnets are fairly strong and are the only ones that have been able to overpower the spring in the solenoid.  For that reason, the furry monkey came with us today to Loch Leven.  He/she … Let’s fix this ridiculous he/she thing now.

In a book I’m reading (and eking out the pages to make it last) his/her references are solved by making it ‘XYr’.  The ‘XY‘ stands for the unknown chromosome balance so ‘XYr’ can be male, female or indeterminate gender.  That seems an elegant solution, especially these days with LGBTIQ.  Life used to be simpler with just  LGBT and it made sense.  I think the ‘I’ is for ‘Isnae Sure’.  I have no idea what ‘Q’ stands for.  It could be ‘Questioning the Magic Donkey’ for all I know.  Anyway, thank you Becky Chambers for solving that problem.  I hope I got that right Hazy!

Soooo, getting back to the monkey, remember the monkey?  XY seemed to enjoy the trip and is now happily back in place in XYr place on the fridge.

The selection at the top came from the 70 odd photos from the day, plus the one from the frozen car.  The IR images took a fair bit of post-processing to get the effect I was looking for and although the quality isn’t great, the effect is.  I’m not sure if I prefer the false colour version or the monochrome.  Mono looks cleaner, but the false colour is more interesting and alien.  Further experimentation is required if the furry monkey is up for it.

Lunch was excellent as usual in Loch Leven’s Larder although the shop seems to get posher and more twee every time we go there, which is a pity, but I suppose is inevitable.  After that we drove back home via the Forth Road Bridge to get an updated view of the new cable-stay bridge.  Dinner was a carry-out from Bombay Dreams.

A good day, most enjoyable.  Cold tonight.  Temperature just touching zero.  Hoping for another sunny day tomorrow.

A Full House – 17 November 2016

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Tonight we would have a busier house as JIC and Sim were coming up for a flying visit.

Scamp was out this morning meeting one of her in-laws for coffee and I was charged with clearing up the painting room ready for JIC and Sim.  Of course, I didn’t do that, there were more interesting things to do like format one of the borked drives and test copy files to it to make sure it was working properly.  It was.  I also worked out how to get my Sony F707 camera working in IR mode again, more of which later.  Eventually I did get round to clearing up the room at least so that it looked like a room again.

When Scamp came back I drove in to Glasgow to see if Staples had a decent price for the 3TB backup drive I’d picked on the net.  They didn’t, but it looked like Argos in Cumbernauld of all places did have it, so it was back in the car then back to Cumbersheugh in the driving rain, only to find that the drive I’d earmarked had been sold.  Blast – well, I did actually say a different word which also started with ‘B’ but finished with a ‘D’ and had the letters ‘A,S,T,A,R’ and ‘D’ in the middle.  You’ve probably heard it, and maybe even used it before.  Not you Scamp, not you.  Anyway, I settled for the slightly cheaper 2TB version and payment made, new toy collected, headed back to the car through the rain.  That’s when I saw today’s PoD.  Cumbersheugh isn’t a pretty town, but it does a really good gloomy.  I instantly liked the shot with the little silhouette of an out of focus ‘wee wummin’ (remember ‘wee wummin’ from a couple of weeks ago?) in the middle distance.  It looked good in colour, but I guessed it would look even better in mono.

Right, this Sony F707 IR thing needs a bit of explanation.  If you look here, you’ll understand what it’s all about, maybe.  I’d forgotten all about it and the magnet trick, but today, again in the seridipity of the Internet, I chanced upon a more up to date post about exactly the same thing.  That got me started again, sticking an Infra-red filter on the F707.  A 720nm filter is virtually black to the naked eye, but  allows a narrow band of Infra-red light through and virtually none of the visible spectrum.  The Sony just pretended it wasn’t there, except for making everything have a red tint.  I think I prefer the results from the crossed pola filters.  There’s a bit better range of colour to them.  I’m intending to try it out tomorrow with some hoped for sunshine.

Popped in to the airport to pick up the travellers and then back past CITRAC signs warning of ice tomorrow.  Ice in Scotland in November?  Surely not.

Hoping for sun tomorrow.  Always!

Just an ordinary Scottish day – 16 November 2016

Posted on by Zogman

16-nov

Windy, wet, sun and cold.  Four seasons, sort of Scottish.

Today was Scamp’s turn to have needles stuck in her and lasers fired into her too.  She had to go to the physio to get some treatment for her ankle.  Something to do with her Achilles Tendon, or Archimedes Tendon as I got it wrong.  Like me she wasn’t really all that bothered with the acupuncture needles or the laser and she’s got exercises to do to.  Only five reps, three times a day not ten, three times a day like I had.  That’s a bit unfair, I think.  Sexist or ageist or shoulderist or something.

When we got back, I went for a walk over to St Mo’s in the sun, but ten minutes later the sun disappeared.  I managed a couple of shots before the gloom and rain arrived again.

Spent some more time consolidating my photo collection and being side tracked just looking at the photos.  Attempted to use File Juggler which is supposed to be a filing assistant on the PC.  The best one apparently.  Filing on a computer pivots on the use of folders, as anyone who has work with Windows, OS X or Linux will know only too well.  Unfortunately after trying unsuccessfully for half an hour to move folders using File Juggler, I discovered this on the company website :

Question – Can File Juggler manage folders?

Answer – No, unfortunately not. File Juggler handles only files.
I plan to add this feature later.

This was followed by a link to a page that had nothing at all to do with File Juggler or the author’s apparent abortive attempt to implement this feature, which he seems to feel is not really all that important.  I’m guessing he’s never worked with Hazel on a Mac.  I got all my folders nested exactly as I wanted them in ten minutes flat using a script I’d written in Hazel.  Sometime you just have to leave the PC to do what it does and get the work done on a Mac.

Salsa tonight.  Helping in a beginner’s class at 6.30 then an advanced class at 7.30.  Great fun as always.

Weather to get colder tomorrow.  Pack wooly jumpers, wooly hats, warm gloves and snowshoes JIC and Sim!

A Day of Surprises – 15 November 2016

Posted on by Zogman

15-nov

Surprise No 1

When I woke this morning, just after 8am, the sun was shining.  It stayed that way too.  Now after the last two days we’ve had, that was a big surprise.  I checked all five of my photo backup drives and with a combination of them all, I can account for all the photos from 2000 to November 2016.  Not bad going.  However, one of the big old Western Digital MyBook drives looks like it’s a goner.  That is a great shame.  I’ve always thought WD were a really good make, but I suppose the ten or twelve years I’ve had it, it’s worked hard and sometimes there has been the occasional accident, so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.  Soon it was time to leave the photos and go get my flu jag.  That’s jab to some people, but jag if you’re Scottish.

Surprise No 2

When I got to the surgery they were just calling my name.  That was lucky.  When I went to see the sister, I recognised her right away as an FP (Former Pupil) of Cumby High.  I couldn’t think of her name, but I remembered the face, because last night when I was browsing the photos in the oldest collection, I came upon the poster I’d made for Bugsy Malone, one I was really proud of, and here was the female lead from the show wearing a nursing sister’s uniform.  We got talking and she asked if I had any photos of the show, because nobody in her family had thought to bring a camera to the show.  I told her that I probably had, but it would take me some time to find them.  I couldn’t believe that was away back in 2003!  Anyway, she said she’d just give me a gentle wee jag.  She lied.  It was gentle at the time, but it’s aching now!

Surprise No 3

After I got back and found the said photos, hundreds of them as it turned out, I got dressed for the weather which was still bright, but cold and headed to Auchinstarry.  Walked along the railway to Twechar and got some photos in the sunshine.  I’ve still to process them, but by the time you’re reading this, they will be done with a bit of luck.  Walked back and took a long cut – the opposite of a shortcut  and walked the last half of the path along the canal.  Almost reached Smithston when a kingfisher flew out from my side of the canal bank, across the canal and down towards the marina.  I was too surprised to grab my camera which was switched off in my bag.  Walked along to where I thought it had landed but couldn’t see it.  Then to my amazement, it shot out of the far bank and continued down the canal and away.  It’s years since I’ve seen a kingfisher on the canal and I was beginning to think they had gone.  Since this one is at least a mile and a half away from my last sighting, I’m hoping there are at least two of them now.  I’ll be ready next time with the Nikon and the 300mm lens.

Weather forecast for tomorrow is wintry with rain, hail and snow predicted.  We’ll just have to wait and see, it’ll be a surprise!

Super Moon, Ordinary Day – 14 November 2016

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Not such a bad day today compared to yesterday. Thankfully, Scamp is feeling a lot better and I think a phone call this morning from Hazy helped too, that and looking forward to a visit from JIC and Sim has lifted her spirits. Still a bit cloudy with the occasional rain shower, but we had that in Lanzarote last week too. Having said that, the temperature differential is significant, nearly 20ºc .

Last night’s attempt to resurrect the damaged partition on the external hard disk ended in failure, as I expected it would. However PhotoRec which comes as part of the free TestDisk partition recovery suite managed to find all the photos in the damaged partition and, using it I also managed to download some of the photos to check that they were intact. It looks like most if not all of the photos are recoverable. The problem now is where to put them while I sort them back into their proper folders. Sorting them into the folders won’t be a big problem as the Hazel app on the Mac and File Juggler on the PC will manage that task with relative ease. The problem is that I now need (yet) another external hard drive to use as temporary storage while I do the filing. I might just bite the bullet and buy another external HDD and be done with it. Then I’ll format the old one and use both as a photo repository. It does make you think though, that a free program downloaded from the ‘net can search your hard disk and recover deleted photos even from a formatted drive. If a free prog can do that, what can dedicated forensic software used by police and other agencies do?

For the rest of the day, I went to the gym and then for a swim. Really quite enjoyed it. Salsa and Kizomba tonight was demanding, but also enjoyable.

Today’s photo is of the ‘Supermoon’. Did look slightly bigger than normal, but nothing to get excited about.

Looking for sunshine tomorrow. Always looking!

Dreicher – 13 November 2016

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It’s a new word, dreicher.  It’s not in the dictionary yet, but with a few more days like today it will be. It suits the circumstances today.  It’s been dull and rainy all day.  I think we had the the house lights on all afternoon.

I was hardly out of the hose today.  Today’s shot of Mr Squirrel was taken through the kitchen window.  I spent most of the day trying to rebuild the partition table of an external hard drive that I broke a few weeks ago.  One of the old PCs is still struggling with the task as I write this.  I’ve not got a great deal of hope in it working, but it was my fault that broke it.  Luckily it was a drive that contained a backup of a backup of my photos.  It’s all about belts and braces.  I just checked today and it looks like I have about 15 years of photos in a variety of hard disks scattered around the house.  Maybe I should take the time to build just one more backup …  Or maybe not.

Scamp wasn’t feeling very well after lunch.  I think it’s down to too much light breakfasts.  What she needs is another week of fresh fruit followed by a fried breakfast …  Or maybe not!

Hoping for just a little light tomorrow with ISO speeds in three digits.

The Sound of Silence – 13 October 2016

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He came!  He actually came and within twenty minutes the aerial was down and dismantled.  The aerial man gave us back the sound of silence.  To paraphrase Stuart MacBride’s heroine Detective Chief Inspector Steel, “Seventy five quid plus VAT? My sharny 1 arse!”  This guy did the job and we thank him very much … we did pay him too.

Earlier in the day, Scamp met her aunt and managed to establish the identity of a great many people in a sixty year old wedding photo.  It made me think that in today’s world where so many of our photos, even wedding photos are not printed, how will we perform a similar task in the future.  Will we still be able to view those videos on their lovely shiny DVDs engraved with the movie highlights of today’s wedding groups?  Will the photos that are printed using ink on ‘archival’ paper last for sixty years?  Will the resolution of the full frame CCD be as good as the old fashioned 6×6 TLR?  Not a chance.  The other thing we need is to record the names and fit them to the faces of the people in those photos.  I realised too late, after my father died, that I’d lost touch with all those people whose faces I saw in the old photos.  They were also dead, but they had also taken their identities with them.  What I urge you to do is to record, preferably in ink and on paper, the names of the faces in your old photos, and if you don’t have physical photos, print them out on the best quality paper you can afford.  It’s not for you, it’s for the ones who come after you.  They are the ones who will be left scratching their heads after you can’t be relied upon to enlighten them.

Today’s PoD was taken on the east of Fannyside Moor looking towards Slamannan.  It’s a great place for Big Skies and this certainly was a big sky.  I like it because it’s a place where you can just watch the clouds rolling past without cars constantly zipping past.  The only traffic today was a lady on a bike who was riding a tail-wind.  I hope she had already cycled the head-wind part of the route and was on her way home.

img_3440-edit-flickrToday’s Inktober drawing was of the church in Cumbernauld Village and is a building I’ve been meaning to draw for some time.  It really is the most awkward shape with bits apparently added on at different times in its history.  The windows, especially seem to have been placed wherever the builder found a space for them.  Only the tops of the upper windows line up properly and some have lots of small panes of glass while others have fewer, larger panes.  In all, I was pleased with the finished sketch, probably even more so because I sketched it in the open air.  I’m not French, so why should I call it en plein air.  That’s just being a poser, or should that be poseur?

Tomorrow is unplanned as yet, but it will not include listening to the crows landing on that aerial or dreading the screech of it rotating in its rusty bracket.  The bracket is gone, the pole that held the aerial has been recycled and the aerial itself is in a skip.  I love the sound of silence.

  1. Befouled with dung.  Merriam-Webster ↩

Autumn – 5 October 2016

Posted on by Zogman

Earlier in the week there was mist in the morning and today I noticed that the leaves were turning, but I stuck to my pledge not to photograph the sugar colours and I stuck to my self imposed ban. As you can see, it was flowers that took the brunt of my photography today. It was a nice bright day with good directional light in the afternoon.

Those photos accounted for an hour in the late afternoon the rest of the time was spent farting about on computers. There’s probably a perfectly good verb for wasting your precious time trying to get the electronics inside the CPU and its various siblings to to do your bidding, but ‘farting about’ is an adequate substitute in my opinion. The less said about the detail, the better.

<Rant1>
Drove through horrendous traffic in to Glasgow tonight to get to the STUC building in reasonable time. Nearly knocked a bloke off his bike.

  • Doesn’t he realise that I own the road?
  • Doesn’t he know that I’ve got right of way simply because I could knock him down and kill him with my tonne of pretty coloured steel?
  • Doesn’t he know that the person on the roundabout has right-of-way?
  • Does he want to have “But I’m a cyclist, give me room” chiseled on his tombstone?
    </Rant1>

 

<Rant2>

After losing my temper with the world, the cyclist and Scamp we made it in to the STUC building for salsa class in time, only to find almost the whole building was taken over by an LGBTI group. What the hell does the ‘I’ mean? Isnae sure? It looks like it’s like Countdown:
Consonant, consonant, consonant, consonant, oh, better have a vowel. Rearrange them into a well known phrase or saying. Failing that, decide on a use for the acronym.

</Rant2>

Now mentally knackered after navigating through the traffic and physically knackered after two hours of salsa I’m writing the blog at 11.15pm because the person who runs the salsa class decided undemocratically to make all the classes start half an hour later. Some people are great at business, but are just not people-people, if that makes sense. After you ask folk if a change is ok with them and they tell you that “No, it isn’t”, then that’s the time to have a rethink, not just carry on regardless. That was probably rant 3.

img_3426-flickrI did manage to get a quick sketch done for Inktober 2016. It was a bit of a crash at the last minute, but it was completed. A partly blind drawing, that is you don’t look at the paper when you’re drawing, you just concentrate on the subject. I did correct myself once or twice, but for the most part it was blind drawing. It probably looks like that, but Inktober is not about skill and ability, it’s about putting pen to paper, daily.

Looking for a relaxing day tomorrow. May let the train take the strain. Hoping for even more late sunshine.