Technospeak – Page 12 – My Photo Blog

Super Moon, Ordinary Day – 14 November 2016

Posted on November 14, 2016November 14, 2016 by Zogman

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

Posted on November 13, 2016November 14, 2016 by Zogman

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

Posted on October 13, 2016October 13, 2016 by Zogman

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.

Today’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.

Befouled with dung. Merriam-Webster ↩

Too much time on my hands – 13 September 2016

Posted on September 13, 2016September 15, 2016 by Zogman

It was a wet morning and it didn’t clear up until about 5pm, for an hour, then the dry spell was over and the rain came back. That’s my excuse for making it an indoor day today.

For a long time I’ve been following the exploits of one of my Flickr contacts, Jiffy Cat, presumably not their real name. For years now, Jiffy Cat has been experimenting with pinhole camera photography, and has recently been producing some interesting images. I believe the method JC uses is analog, ie. film, paper, developer and fixer with all the smelly mess that accompanies this process. I’ve had my time doing developing and fixing and I don’t want to go back to the mess or the stained fingers which made me look like a 20-a-day smoker. No, technology has moved on. I decided to make use of one of my older M43 cameras and make a real body cap lens for it. I cannibalised an equally old body cap, drilled an 1/8” hole in the centre, covered the hole with thick aluminium foil and punched a hole in it with a needle. That was it as far as the construction went. The only difficulty was estimating an exposure. It was all trial and error, but at least I could see immediately how successful or otherwise each shot had been and make corrections accordingly. The best shot I got was with ISO 100 and ‘shutter speed’ of 60 seconds. The top one took the bottom picture and vice versa.

While this was going on, I made a live backup of El Cap on to an external HDD using the excellent Carbon Copier. It took a little over 4 hours to complete the copy which is a long time, but that was both of the internal HDDs and the hidden recovery sectors too. Hopefully this will allow me to boot from the external HDD and reinstall El Cap if the need arises. I’ve used this method before when I added the SSD to the Mac and it was faultless, so I’m fairly confident about using it again. Sorry JIC, that was just gobbledegook to you, wasn’t it? 😉

Dull, but drier day forecast for tomorrow. Don’t know if it will be worthwhile going anywhere, but we live in hope.

Autumn – 1 September 2016

Posted on September 1, 2016 by Zogman

This is the meteorological first day of autumn, so the weather fairies say. Just thought you deserved that information. It was a bit cooler today, but not inordinately so.

On Saturday we had intended going to Tea Jenny’s for lunch, but for a variety of reasons, we didn’t manage it. Today, I suggested we remedy that and off we went to play the 500metre traffic light game and have our lunch in TJ’s. Luckily the traffic was a lot better today and we managed to pass the traffic light test quite quickly. Tea Jenny’s is simply a tea room in Falkirk, an old fashioned tea room with odd (as in random) china cups and teapots with hand knitted tea cosies. Although you can get a full lunch there, the main attractions are the soups and sandwiches, oh yes, and the gigantic meringues. None of these really hit it off for me. For me it has to be Stovies. If you don’t know what stovies are, then you almost certainly aren’t Scottish and will need to Google the word, because I’m not going to describe stovies. Everyone has their own version. Today’s stovies had potatoes, onion and sausage in it. It’s not as good as my mum made, nothing would be, but it ‘filled a wee space’ today. One of the attractions for us is the variety of tea cosies. Today’s candidates are shown above. The photo was taken by the best camera in the world, the one you have with you. In this case, my iPhone.

With my fingers firmly crossed, I’m going to say that I think I’ve solved the gallery problem. It looks like the problem was caused by a rogue plugin messing things up. The plugin has now been severely spoken to and has been banished to the ‘Deactivated’ box. It has also been grounded for the rest of the week.

Coffee, Dragons and Vitamin D – 25 August 2016

Posted on August 25, 2016August 26, 2016 by Zogman

On a cloudy day, I went for a coffee with Fred in the morning and we set the world to rights again.

Met Scamp afterwards and sorted out our winter, week-long Vitamin D supplement, sometimes known as a week-in-the-sun. For once the process of booking was much easier than it could have been, and has been in the past.

After that, the sun came out, and I took a walk as usual around St Mo’s. Still a few dragons flying around. None of them breathed fire, but I managed to get a shot of one, despite having completely the wrong settings on the camera. I don’t know what I did, but I was using ISO 100 with an aperture setting of f10 which produced a shutter speed of 1/40th. Luckily I set the camera down on the boardwalk to take a low level shot and this meant I had a really steady support, otherwise the shot would have been as shaky as the other 7 I took today. That’s what happens when you assume you have the normal settings and don’t check the info on the screen. Numpty. Still, it’s a good shot.

Physio to look forward to tomorrow :-/ Then maybe lunch out would be good. We’ll see tomorrow.

Cake Today! – 15 August 2016

Posted on August 15, 2016August 15, 2016 by Zogman

Well, we did have cake today! Woke to sunshine that didn’t really go away all day.

The sun enticed us out and into the wide world. We couldn’t agree on a destination until Scamp suggested that we go a walk along the canal. Now I go there quite often, but it’s a while since she’s walked along it, so it was decided that we’d drive to Auchinstarry and walk along to Twechar and back.

Today was the day the teachers went back to work after the summer hols and as we were walking along the railway, I was thinking about all the times I’ve sat in the assembly hall at school listening to head teachers and deputes droning on about grade averages, STACs, child protection procedures and other dry, boring paper-pushing nonsense. They always started with a jolly “Well I hope you’ve enjoyed your holidays and are feeling refreshed. Here’s the bad news …….. “. Drone, drone, drone. It was essential to get there early, not to show you were interested, although there were some that did. No, it was to grab the seats at the back where you could doodle unseen on the hundred page handout you’d been given with charts and tables and mind numbing statistics that meant nothing to anyone but the bean-counter who had created them. “Can you see this Powerpoint alright at the back?” some depute would ask. “Yes, we’re just not interested.” we’d mumble in reply.

Ah, but while all my former colleagues were enjoying this annual festival of figures and meaningless jargon, we were out in the sunshine, admiring the flowers and the light through the leaves and counting the wee fishes and talking to the ducks. It was when we were walking back along the canal towpath I heard what I thought at first was a motorbike before I realised that although the pitch of the engine was rising, it wasn’t changing gear and it seemed to he coming from Barr Hill which has a roman fort, but no roads. I knew what it was then, it was a Piaggio. It’s an Italian plane type called a canard. Which is a plane with a wing towards the rear and two little winglets just rear of the nose which makes it look as if it’s flying backwards. Some people think it looks like a duck, hence the name ‘canard’. Some have actual tail fins and tail planes like a normal aircraft and some have jet engines, but most have pusher props. That is, the propellers stick out the back of the plane and push it through the air rather than pull it like a conventional plane. (I like planes, in case you hadn’t guessed.) I’d seen one last year at almost exactly the same place, but hadn’t got a photo of it. I started taking my camera out of the bag and tried explaining to Scamp what it was I was so excited about. She didn’t share my enthusiasm and said “Oh, so it’s a plane?” I managed two shots of the Piaggio before it disappeared into a cloud. Neither of them very good. I’ve never managed to get a good clean shot of this plane. You can see today’s effort above. Maybe one day …

After we drove home and had lunch, Scamp wanted to work in the garden. I dumped my photos into Lightroom and let it get to work on them. Then we sat in the garden and read until it was time to make the dinner and then get ready for salsa class. I had done my exercises from the physio this morning under a hot shower and they paid off while I was in the class, allowing much more movement than I’d had last week. We were able to complete almost all the moves tonight which is proof that we are moving in the right direction.

Beautiful sunset tonight which augers well for tomorrow’s weather. We’ll see what the day brings. If it’s as good as today it will be very welcome.

Looking for the Capitan – 31 July 2016

Posted on July 31, 2016July 31, 2016 by Zogman

<Technospeak>
The Capitan in question was operating system OSX 10.11 for the Mac. Apparently, it will be the last Mac operating system named OSX. The next one will be ‘macOS’. For me it lacks a little something. I presume it will be operating system eleven and OSXI didn’t look as good as OSX. Even worse, the next operating system, codename Sierra will not work in my 2009 Mac Book Pro. My old HP netbook of 2004 vintage will (un)happily run Windows 10, the latest Mickysoft offering. It works on it, very slowly granted, but it does work. Apple are far too sneaky to allow that on their ‘puters and phones. I’m not sure whether it’s a good idea or not. Certainly it exemplifies all that’s bad in Built-In Obsolescence, but what’s the point of installing an OS that will be up to date, but will make your computer run like a slug. Also, at least Apple allow you to download and install each new OS free of charge until you reach the limit of your hardware, something that Mickysoft has only just cottoned on to.

Sooo, last week I downloaded the latest OS for my 2009 MBP, El Capitan. For those without an interest in geography, El Capitan is a mountain in Yosemite National Park. Yosemite was also a recent Mac OS. Sierra, the next OS probably refers to the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Are we sensing the thread of a theme here? The names may sound tacky, but don’t they sound much more interesting than Windows 8.1 (codename “Lemon”) or Windows 10 (codename “A slight improvement”). But I digress.
Like I said earlier, last week I downloaded my installer for OSX10.11 and today after struggling with bootable USB drives, re-partitioned external hard drives and a whole lot of other jargon, about four hours later, I had a working, easily removable installation of the eponymous El Capitan. It was OK. That’s about it. No great flaws, no great improvements over the OSX10.8 I’ve been running for the last couple of years. I’ve tried it now. If the time comes when I have to run it, I’ll not be too fussed about installing it properly, but for now 10.8 does everything I need, and more. The best thing about it is that I know a lot of tweaks and ‘John Wayne Dance Steps‘ to quote Tom Paxton. I have no need to upgrade to the latest and greatest. Thanks for the free upgrade Apple, but not for me at the present time.
</Technospeak>

Didn’t do much else today, well, four hours of the day had gone and I hadn’t even been past the door. I did go for a walk round St Mo’s to get some beastie photos – that may sound rude and a bit dodgy, but basically they are photos of insects, macros, close-ups. Like the wasp in the mosaic above (click it to link to the photos in Flickr). While I was walking I was watching the light glancing off the Campsie Fells. That little spot of light really lit up the hills that can look great one minute and quite foreboding the next.

Dinner for me tonight was a home made burger, made from scratch. Minced the beef myself and made the burger from that. It wasn’t the best. It needs some tweaking. More chillies and more egg to bind it. A pinch more salt and maybe, just maybe, a drop or two of Trinny Pepper Sauce. That will give it a bite. It’s a work in progress, but the basics are there.

No plans for tomorrow. If it’s sunny I’ll maybe cycle. If it’s not, I’ll maybe paint.

Dug wi’ a burst ba’ – 24 July 2016

Posted on July 24, 2016July 25, 2016 by Zogman

It was raining when we got up and it never stopped. Last week it was too much sun, this week it’s too little.

We sat and watched a boring Hungarian F1 GP. Most of the race was yawn-friendly, only becoming interesting in the closing stages. Best part was the after-race comment by Jenson Button about his team being ‘unfriendly’ towards him. I can’t blame him for this throw away comment after the ridiculous rule change that prevents the teams telling drivers about safety issues. F1 is becoming more regulated than the EU. Maybe Britain should opt out of it too.

I spent the rest of the afternoon ‘fiddling’ with a neat little program called Elementary OS. As the name implies, it’s not so much a program, more an Operating System. It’s based on Linux and like most Linux programs it’s free. Unlike most Linux operating systems it looks very neat an clean and almost Mac-like. After a few unsuccessful attempts to install it on my ancient HP netbook, I found that the laptop wouldn’t boot back into Windows. After dinner, I spent the rest of the evening trying to coax it back into life, unsuccessfully. It seemed like the hard disk was empty!! Oh dear.

Eventually I gave up and went out to get a PoD of raindrops on the nasturtiums at the front of the house. I did a bit of focus stacking to get the front and the back beads in focus and with the aid of Photoshop, it all came together as a whole.

After we went to bed, I couldn’t sleep. My mind was still worrying away at the netbook problem, like a “dug wi’ a burst ba’” (That’s a Scottish way of saying “a dog with a bone“). After another hour’s work using the excellent, free and dubiously sourced Hiren’s Boot Disk 15, I managed to get it going again with no loss of data. Now I could go back to sleep.

Looking for some dry weather (sun would be nice, but dry would do) tomorrow.

Testing Again – 4 June 2016

Posted on June 4, 2016 by Zogman

The 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.