Category: Technospeak

Today was a bright shiny day for a while – 7 October 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was out for coffee with Isabel, but I had far too much to do to go waltzing over to Costa.

Today I’d set my target on getting the 2026 September photos sorted out. I wanted to make sure that each of the photos had a Yellow or Red or Grey Tag:

A Yellow tag (Yellow means OK, but not great.)
A Red Tag (Red means excellent.)
A Grey Tag (Grey means rejected.)

Some had, some hadn’t, but most had a tag of some colour.

Then I noticed that the 2026 August photos hadn’t been tagged, so I started from them and worked up to the September photos. Some of the August photos were a bit mixed up, but most of the September ones were in the correct place.

With that done, I could delete all the rejected photos and concentrate on getting the August and September lot into some form of order on my external SSD.

Big, Deep, Breath for the next stage which was to chuck out the 2025 photos which were languishing in a very large Cache on the SSD. I’d read a bit about it and it seemed that I could remove most of these old redundant files. Heart in mouth, I deleted one year’s photos … and nothing went bang!

It all worked. I thought it worked too simply, but after leaving it for a while and coming back to it. Everything I’d planned worked. I don’t know how that happened, but it did.

Success!

That probably means nothing to you, but it meant my SSD experiment worked.

I tried to explain what I’d done, when Scamp returned, but I did see the MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) effect on her face.

For the remainder of the day, we went shopping and I went for a walk in St Mo’s. That’s where I saw a yellow leaf trying to hide behind a tree and that fitted the PoD prompt right away.

I might go to bed early tonight. I’ve got a sore back, partly due to the stress of working my way through about 600 photos.

Spiders – 29 September 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Actually yesterday’s photo, but it deserved to be today’s.

Scamp was out today to meet Shona for a blether and to give her back her washing that had been languishing in our house while we were off in Jersey. I know, it’s a bit complicated, but that’s the way things panned out. I’m not going to bore you with the reasons for the exchange, let’s just say it worked for both parties.

While she was out, I completed the emptying of the clumsy big cupboard that has been taking up space in the living room for years. It’s amazing the amount of stuff that was in that space. It took me about two hours to decide what was staying and what was going. For once there was more going into the black bag than was staying in the living room. It was sad to see some things going into the black bag, but that’s what we’d planned and we stuck to it.

When Scamp returned, I filled the Blue car with as much stuff as it would hold and drove it over to the Council tip. At first I thought I wouldn’t get in, there were so many cars queued up outside, but the crowd gradually filtered down to my turn. I passed the test of the guard at the gate and told the truth for once. One black bag of refuse and three or four sheets of cardboard. I got a space and did as I was told, dumping things in their allocated spaces, then drove back home before I was told I’d put something in the wrong skip.

The next thing to do was to put some of that expensive petrol in the car. My, how the numbers in the petrol pump whizzed past until I had about three quarters of a tank. I almost closed my eyes when I saw just how big the numbers were!!! But we needed the petrol to get the car home. Also, we are hoping to drive to Glenburn this week for the tea dance and we’d need petrol for that too.

The final task for today was to carefully demolish that old cupboard. Carefully, because there were sheets of mirror glass on the back of it and I didn’t want any of it to shatter and leave shards of glass all over the living room. My little used DeWalt drill made short work of the multitude of screws that were holding the cupboard together

Scamp made a brilliant Saag Paneer Kedgeree for dinner. Absolutely wonderful!

PoD was, as I said, yesterday’s photo of a little spider hanging upside down on its web. Delicate little thing.

I think I may have to speak to the Namecheap experts tomorrow to get them to show me how to Reissue my SSL Certificate. You’ll understand that Hazy. I can never remember the exact method. Hopefully I’ll get a patient expert. Wish me luck!

Mowgli – 7 June 2026

Posted on by Zogman

On Sunday we all drove to Croy to get the train to Glasgow.

Arrived in town in a fairly busy train and went for a walk to see the damage to Union Corner that is still not completely cleared. Really high scaffolding and also barricades blocked the view of this memorable set of buildings.

We walked back to Mowgli which seemed to fit the bill for today. Great dinner with far too many and varied food options to share. Just as good as the last time Scamp and I had been there. Unfortunately nobody’s birthday today, so no Brownies with a dollop of ice cream and a candle on top!

In the last few days Scamp and I had been discussing how to get our old home movie films from DVDs into a more usable format. Jamie came to the rescue and showed us how to let the computer do the hard work. He spent most of the evening rebuilding the clumsy DVD disks into a format that could be sent to anyone who has One Drive. I’m still not completely clear on the details, but I understand the method. By the end of the night, we had four DVDs converted. Amazing.

We watched the Monaco GP between the technospeak and lost count of the number of penalties and broken cars in a few hours of mad driving.

PoD went to Queen Street Station’s new architectural ceiling.

Tomorrow Jamie and Simonne are intending to do an overnight with friends in Aylth, near Blairgowrie.

It worked – 2 January 2026

Posted on by Zogman

Sometimes you have to rely on someone else telling you how to get things done.

The two people whose explanations about rebuilding the catalog in Lightroom I was reading last night were exactly what I needed. I made the changes they suggested and then imported the first two sets of photos from 2026 and they appeared exactly where they should, in the Lightroom catalog.

After the first run through and after checking it was working. I closed the computer down and counted to ten and powered the Mac on again. A suggestion from Val from many years ago. Count to ten before you do anything else. That allows the capacitors in the computer time to discharge. Actually a half hour wait is better, but I didn’t have the time.

Immediately after I turned it on chaos reigned. Lightroom started by itself and began loading all the images on the computer. I paused it and turned it off again. Another ten second count and I turned it on again for a second time. This time everything was normal. I’d changed a lot of things the night before and all that chaos was it arranging things. Another bit of reading clarified that. It’s amazing the number of folk on the net who help you. The others are usually the ones who shout at you and who play music then shout at you again. They are no help at all.

So long story short, everything is working so far. I described it to Scamp as walking on egg shells.

I should be able to get images into the correct places now and start taking photos again.

That’s enough nonsense for today. Sorry Jamie, I should have prefaced this with the traditional <Technospeak> warning.

PoD is a frozen St Mo’s pond.  Most of the white stuff is frost, but with just a scraping of fine snow on top.

Hopefully tomorrow we will return to normal, fingers crossed.

Connections – 15 August 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was out at FitSteps in the morning as is usual on a Friday.

After her exertions in the exercise class she went to meet Isabel for coffee. I can’t believe we’ve been calling her “Isobel” for years and nobody told us we were wrong, but as Scamp says, it’s not a thing we really think about. Anyway, apologies to Isabel.

Isabel was joined in the coffee shop by Shona and I was so glad to hear that. Two women blethering would have been bad, but three would just too much. Guys, just think of all that cross-talk going on for an hour or so!

<Technospeak>
While the ladies were blethering over coffee, I was worrying over the new iMac. I keep my Lightroom catalogs on an SSD, and I wanted to try making the catalog more versatile, so that it could be used on two computers at a time. I was worried that if I was swapping catalogs between computers, the data would get corrupted, especially if the two computer were running different OS versions. Eventually I decided to bite the bullet and try it. Surprisingly it worked perfectly. Another problem solved.
</Technospeak>

Eventually the ladies broke up. Isabel was going shopping and Scamp and Shona were heading to Broadwood Farm for lunch. Thankfully Scamp phoned me just as I was finish the test on the SSD catalog and I agreed to meet them at the restaurant. Restaurant is maybe too fancy a word for Broadwood Farm. It used to be pretty poor, but recently after a fair bit of upgrading, it had some better menus and decent food. Also, because I was not driving today, I could have a pint of Tennents!

Scamp had Fish ’n’ Chips and Shona had Mac ’n’ Cheese. I was the odd one out, not having a ’n’ meal. Instead I had a Traditional Carvery, which was a couple of slices of turkey, a Yorkshire Pudding, with a couple of chunks of ham. It was fine for what it was. The cauliflower cheese was a bit lumpy and the stuffing was made from cardboard, I think, but it filled a space.

Shona wanted some drinks to take to Ben and I wanted a box of mini ice lollies. Scamp drove Shona home and I walked back home. It was another warm day again. I’m getting used to this heat now, just as long as it doesn’t go mad and climb up into the mid 30s Centigrade.

PoD was another photo of a Red Admiral on what’s left of the white Buddleia bush. I think that might be the last of those flowers until next year DV.

Tomorrow we’re not going dancing in the morning, but may go to the evening dance.

Out early to speak to a Genius – 22 July 2025

Posted on by Zogman

I’d a 10.35am meeting with a genius. Not an everyday occurrence, but this was a problem solving mission and only an Apple Genius would do. Scamp, meanwhile went for a coffee in the Benugo cafe in JL.

After lugging my big heavy iMac to the Apple Store, I met a big friendly giant Genius who was going to sort out all my problems. He didn’t actually solve all the problems, but by watching carefully what he was doing I managed to remember the sequence he worked through to get the Desktop back and other stuff too. The rigamarole below took him about 10 seconds, but undid a lot of the damage last week’s outage had created. He seemed quite impressed that I was running the system on a couple of SSD drives and told me to connect the master drive to the new Mac if I was getting one and use it to enter all the complicated stuff for me. I didn’t want to tell him I’d done that about four or five times already over the years.

<Technospeak>

Find ‘System Settings’ from the Apple menu

Click on my name

Choose iCloud

Choose iCloud Drive and then ensure that the top two buttons are set to ON.

Done

I later found that I could also mess about with the bottom buttons too, but didn’t.

</Technospeak>

Packed up the big heavy iMac again and took it back to dump in the car, then I went to have a coffee with Scamp in the cafe and told her whole story.

We went down to the JL basement to look at fridges and freezers and fridge / freezers. Scamp found a few she liked and we made a shopping list of them, but we bumped into a very helpful salesperson who told us that JL have a cutprice sale of goods on the first Sunday of every month. I think we might be going there to see what they have. Just to finish off the morning, we bought a DIY fan, because it’s still quite warm and this big old fashioned fan will help to keep us cool.

PoD turned out to be a couple of Red Clover flowers. I found them during a walk round St Mo’s.

I was a bit disappointed with the amount of cleaning out I’ll need to do before the iMac is ready to give up it’s place at the table and meet the new challenger, but nothing is perfect in this life, as Scamp always reminds me.

Dinner was an M&S stir-fry. Not the best one I’ve ever had. Too sweet for me and Scamp didn’t like the Singapore noodles. I don’t think we’ll get that again.

Watched Bakeoff the Professionals tonight and wondered where they get the ideas for the challenges.

Tomorrow Scamp is intending to meet Shona for lunch. I think I may be ironing out more of the ‘puter problems.

 

 

Rail cards and Butterflies – 9 April 2025

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was trying unsuccessful to solve a rail card problem on a dull Wednesday morning. Dull? Is this the end of the good weather?

She had purchased mine, and thought she’d cleared the hurdles put in place by Railcard.co.uk, but they didn’t like the way she’d done it. Allegedly she could fix the problem at any rail station, but that would only get her a one year, paper card (is that an oxymoron?), not the two year one she’s always had. The person in the ticket office suggested she phone Customer Services. So not the easy fix she was promised. We drove over to Tesco and got bread and milk and some odds and ends.

Back home Scamp phoned Customer Services and had to answer all the questions she’d answered yesterday. Name, Date of Birth, Address, Size of big toe (LEFT FOOT). You know what it’s like, we’ve all been there. Then the person she was speaking to, possibly in a different country, had to go and check with “Her Team” (she didn’t say if they wore Green shirts or Blue ones). Five minutes later she returned to say she had to complete the questionnaire again to pass on to the “Team” and someone would contact her within the usual ‘Ten Working Days’. It was all a bit of a faff. Why is life never easy?

With all that done, it was lunch time and that meant half a Ginsters for me and a piece ’n’ egg for Scamp, and the sun had returned to a blue sky. Later Scamp decided the sun was warm enough in the corner of the garden to sit outside and read. I put on my boots and went over to St Mo’s looking for Flora, Fauna, Animal or Insect life. I found no fauna, a very few flowers, but there were animal tracks and there was a Peacock butterfly, sunning itself on a log. So that was one insect in the bag (digitally). I took that as a sign to head for home.

Quick and easy dinner was Giovanni Rana pasta with olive oil and grated Parmesan.

The following description is for my reference, but feel free to read it if you’re interested.

I needed to transfer some of my photo files from the iMac to hard disk (NTFS). My iMac won’t read or write NTFS drives now – don’t know why. The MBP can read and write to NTFS. Here’s how I managed to ‘easily’ copy the files from iMac to the NTFS drive.

  1. Power up the iMac the NTFS drive and the MBP
  2. Ensure that the MBP can ’see’ the iMac
  3. Connect the NTFS drive to the MBP.
  4. Search the iMac for the NTFS drive on the MBP.
  5. Drag the files that I’m looking for from the MBP to the NTFS drive

If all is well, the MBP becomes the conduit between the iMac and the NTFS drive. Today it worked perfectly. About 15GB of data copied in just over 9 minutes. Happy Bunny!

PoD was the Peacock butterfly.

Tomorrow, I’m informed that we may need some ‘Messages’!

 

 

Oops I did it again – 3 December 2024

Posted on by Zogman

I blew up the computer again today. This time, knowingly.

First things first. Hazy got her belated birthday box today, delivered by Royal Mail a day late. That may be the last time we use this overprices but untrustworthy delivery company. Some poor bloke is intending to buy the Royal Mail. Good luck with that mate. Anyway, Hazy enjoyed her extended birthday! We had a good talk to her in the late afternoon.

It was a bright day for a change, but it looked cold outside in the morning so we just stayed inside looking out at it until lunch time when we were entertained by the local grey squirrel who was checking out all the local gardens, looking of anything it could eat.

After lunch I took the A7 out for a walk in St Mo’s and deliberately walked the long way round the house first to chase away the rat with the fluffy tail. I think also frightened the man at the corner of our block who was measuring up a neighbour’s garden for a new fence.

The good light had gone by the time I got to St Mo’s, but I did a walk round the pond to keep my step count up and took a few photos. I really need to get up and out early(ish) if I’m going to get any good light at all.

Scamp made a really delicious Fish Pie for dinner. Unlike Jackie’s fish pie with mashed potatoes on top, this one had sliced potatoes on top and a lighter sauce.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The PoD was intended to be Mr or Mrs Squirrel, but I blew up the computer again and it’s still struggling to get everything back into the big silver box, so the photos might not arrive until tomorrow. A bit like the Royal Mail.

I had decided to have one last try at installing the Paragon software, but for some reason the iMac wouldn’t restart after the installation. I’m guessing it’s because I’m running the show on an SSD and the software was designed to run on a ‘real’ computer. But because the internal hard drive of the iMac is junk, the SSD is a better choice.

The long term solution is a new iMac and although the prices can be eye watering, it’s my hobby, and I’m willing to pay for it. What I don’t want it to be is the constant struggle I’m having just now. At this moment the iMac is reinstalling the data from (yet) another SSD and will hopefully be finished in about an hour. Then I will let the whole thing cool down until we start the battle again tomorrow.

Hopefully we’ll get out tomorrow to get some potting compost and some pots for Scamp to take winter cuttings.

Happy Birthday Hazy (and the solution)

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp often complains about the amount of SSDs (Solid State Drives) that congregate round the iMac. Today the would prove a life saver.

<Tecnnospeak>
My solution was to format the drive that wouldn’t start yesterday and install a new clean operating system in it after downloading the OS from somewhere in California. Then I could copy a backup (Scamp complains about the number of backups I do too, but this is why I do it) into the once dead, but now cleaned out drive. The computer would then do all the surgical cutting and sewing together of the backup to the operating system.
</Tecnnospeak>

Long story short, it worked again. This is either the fourth or fifth time I’ve had to use this method. It took about four hours in total to fix things, but it worked. Thank you Andrew Tsai who was the first person who could explain in simple English who to do this incredibly difficult task.

As I said, the operation takes about four hours to complete, and since, once you’ve started, there is very little you can do except watch a white line crossing a black screen, I thought I’d make myself useful, since Scamp was off shopping in Tesco, and tidy up some of my room. It’s a work in progress, but I know I have to start somewhere. I can now find the carpet!

After Scamp returned and we’d had lunch we spoke to Hazy whose parcel hadn’t arrived in time for her birthday, today (Happy Birthday Hazy). We got to hear all the gory tales of picking bits of tooth out of her gums and the useful, but disgusting tasting salt water mouth washes she’s had to endure.

With just enough daylight left, I took my camera and a long lens and went for a walk in St Mo’s to concentrate on photography for a while. Today’’s PoD is a view across St Mo’s pond. I’ve taken that photo umpteen times, all for different reasons. Today’s reason was the colour in the sky and the reflections on the pond.
Yesterday’s PoD was a dried up weed looking as if it was struggling against the driving rain. One of those occasional showers we get driven along by a north wind, also taken in St Mo’s.

Tomorrow I’m looking forward to a less stressful day, if that’s possible.

Dull! – 29 November 2024

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Scamp was out to the last FitSteps of the year. Stayed home and read more of The Black Loch.

When she returned from her exertions we filled a box with some of those plasticky things that look like white Cheesy Wotsits then put some bits of wood in and also some bolts and nuts to make the box look like it had something interesting inside before wrapping it up, taking it up to Tesco and posting it to someone as a little surprise. Probably not the surprise they were expecting. Just a little bit of fun!

In two weeks we’re hoping to last tea dance of the year and while we were in Tesco, Scamp tried to find me a Xmas jersey to wear at it. Most of them were awful, but I did find one I might pay money for. Only maybe though. I’ll see if the price will come down in the next few weeks.

With just enough light to see my way round St Mo’s, I took the A6500 and one lens for a walk. There wasn’t much of interest, except for a strange yellow glow in the sky from a very low sun. I clambered down a banking that led me down to the pond and got some shots from there of what looked like a bonfire being built in the pond. Surely not. After climbing back up, I was taking some photos of the reflections at the outfall from the pond when a gang of rowdy Mallards flew in and the shattered the peace. So I went home.

We watched another episode of Shetland and just when everything was looking a bit clearer, there was another twist in the story. I know we should have expected it, but there’s always a cliff hanger in these stories.

That was about it for today. Not a lot to report, really.

We might need an earlier rise tomorrow because the politburo at Brookfield need time to set up a Xmas Fayre.