Category: Technospeak

Another day, another surgery – 11 November 2022

Posted on by Zogman

This time it was the doctor’s surgery for my annual check-up.

That wasn’t until the afternoon. It was a dull, depressing morning, but at least it wasn’t raining. Scamp went off to her FitSteps class and I started hacking into my SSD drives. Not literally, but I wanted to see if there was any advantage to using a new method of forcing Big Sur into a partition of one of the SSDs and that meant finding some space to put the truncated version of the operating system in. Following the instructions by the author, Andrew Tsai, to the letter (for once), after a couple of hours I had the OS in place but there was no appreciable improvement to the boot speed. At least I know that now and I hadn’t spent any money finding it out. That experiment took up most of the morning.

Soup for lunch and then it was time to steel myself for what might be bad news at the doc’s. I needn’t have worried. I’d lost four pounds (lb pounds not £) since last year, my cholesterol was down my glucose levels were also down and my BP was just where it should have been. I got a gold star from the sister for being a good boy. Feeling better, I went to get the makings of tonight’s dinner which was to be Baked Haddock and Cabbage Risotto, which at least a couple of my readers have had before.

Driving back home I realised that the light had gone. It was just after 3pm and I was driving with the auto headlights on! That’s Scotland. The wind was still gust and almost gale-force. The bins that were emptied yesterday were lying where they’d fallen last night. There was no point in lifting them, because they’re top heavy when empty and would just fall down again. Worst of all, there was no point in taking a camera out. It was just too dark. Today would be an indoor photo, and probably Flooers!

The risotto is one of the easiest ones to make, because the oven does most of the work. I’d bought some tomatoes in Tesco and I thought that as the oven was going to be on anyway, I’d use it to roast the tomatoes for making soup tomorrow. In these straitened times you have to do a bit of lateral thinking at times.

One of Scamp’s Pelargonium plants became the PoD. Not the best photo in the world, but it was better that than nothing at all.

We practised the Cameron Quickstep tonight and I discovered how to make a slow-mo video on my phone, because you really need to see the steps at half speed. Also it’s quite funny to listen to the teachers’ instructions at half speed. Cleverly the app can reduce the speed while keeping the pitch of music or speech at the normal level. It just sounds a bit slurred.

Tomorrow we are booked for our normal dance class at Brookfield. It hardly seems like a week since we were at Perth!

Coffee – 7 November 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Well, not really coffee because this was a Costa hot milk drink to paraphrase an american lady I heard once in Dubrovnik.

I joked three weeks ago about Crunchy Nut Cornflakes breaking my tooth. That’s exactly what happened this morning.  A crunch and the filling came out in two pieces. It was due to be replaced this week anyway. It will have to be now and I will have to apologise to the dentist for breaking a second filling.  Having said that, it couldn’t have bonded properly to the tooth in the first place, so not all My or the Crunch Nut’s fault!

Scamp was meeting Isobel and I was meeting Val at Costa. I’d forgotten that Val was using two walking sticks now. We talked for a long time about his plans for their new bathroom and possible remodelling of their kitchen. Of course we talked about tech too. Val’s Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of memory, but after that he lost me in the tech. Also, Val is an experimenter who loves making things that look like a box of wires, but act just like a desktop computer does. I like the idea of that, but will it run Lightroom? Will it turn on every time I want it to? Great fun to play with, but it’s not a fully fledged computer yet, at least not for me, besides, it runs on Linux which is like black magic to me. But the Raspberry Pi  is very, very clever and so is he!

We discussed my experimentation with running MacOS 11.7 from an SSD and the next stage I want to take it to once I get the actual process settled in my head. We even talked about changing the washer inside our kitchen mixer tap. Sometimes you just have to come down to the basics! When we were done talking Val left to meet his wife and I went to find mine. We’d agreed that we’d try to get everyone together for a coffee before Christmas.

Scamp and I drove to Tesco and bought a trolley full of messages, plus a couple of bottles of wine. After lunch I took a camera out to St Mo’s. Just one camera and one lens. Not a lot of light and I’d no idea what I was going to photograph. In the middle of winter I like to rest a camera on the ice and photograph the weeds poking through the ice with a macro lens. I tried the same thing today but without actually resting the camera on the surface of the water! I got a similar effect and after running it through noise reduction software it looked perfectly clean and tidy. That was PoD.

Pasta Carbonara looked and tasted more like scrambled eggs tonight.  Over cooked the sauce, not for the first time.  Must try harder.

No plans, and no meetings set for tomorrow. We’ll see what transpires.

 

Going for the messages – 19 October 2022

Posted on by Zogman

It was a bit dull this morning. In fact it was a lot dull this morning, so we postponed our visit to the Far East again and went shopping instead.

We went to Waitrose in Stirling. Not quite so glamorous or as interesting as our intended destination, but a more practical one. As usual we parked in the Waitrose car park and walked up to the town. I wanted to have a look in Waterstones for a book. The one I’m reading feels like it was written by a twelve year old. Scamp wanted to exchange a top she’d bought in M&S in Inverness. We went our separate ways and I didn’t find any books that interested me, or that I was willing to part with £18 for. £18 for a book? And that was after four quid off. That would make it £22 for a book I’d probably read in just over a week. No thank you. I’ll buy it in Tesco for £10 and get more enjoyment out of it because I got it cheap. Scamp met me at the book shop, quite happy because she’d exchanged her top for a cardigan with stars on it. We went to Costa for coffee and shared a pastry, then went back to get the messages.

On the way to the town I had taken some photos of wild flowers growing unkempt and uncared for in two planters behind the multi-storey car park. They had been planted there some time ago and then forgotten about. There were red poppies, blue cornflowers and a yellow flower I didn’t recognise. Red, Blue and Yellow the three primaries! I wasn’t totally happy with my photos, so on the way back to Waitrose I took some more, being a bit careful this time with the focus and composition. The second lot were definitely better.

We bought loads more stuff that we’d intended, but that’s often the way, especially if it’s a shop you don’t visit every day. Tesco is an expedition every day or two and definitely at least once a week. We both get to know were everything is, so we don’t look too hard at other things. Anyway, loaded the car and drove home for lunch.

The dull morning had turned into a dull afternoon. I was processing the morning’s photos when I noticed a message from Adobe to the effect that there were new versions of all my software, BUT they were not compatible with the version of my operating system. I knew this was coming, but didn’t realise it was coming so soon. A check with Apple confirmed that support for Catalina (my OS) would terminate in November 2022. That would mean I’d have to upgrade both laptop and desktop to continue getting updates. That’s a big job.

<Technospeak>
Tonight I installed the upgrade onto a bootable SSD backup of my system and about half an hour later I had a shiny new machine. It’s always a good idea to test a new OS by installing it in an external drive, preferably a fast one like and SSD. That way you can play test it and see if there are any problems. So far it seems to work, but it will need some further investigations before I do the full upgrade.
</Technospeak>

The prompt for today was a fairly simple “Ponytail”.  Rather than overthink it, I took it at face value and drew a ponytail.  Nothing clever, just a line drawing in ink of a picture I found on Google Images.  NOTE: No ponies or their tails were injured in the making  of this sketch.

That was about it for today. No dance class in Cumbersheugh this week because Kirsty, the teacher, was ill. Hoping to go to a tea dance (a REAL tea dance with tea and cake) tomorrow.

A day of mixed weather – 24 July 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Sometimes sunny, sometimes cloudy, but always with rain of some description.

Heavy rain, light rain, sometimes just drizzle or a Scottish smirr, but there was always water of some description falling from the sky today.

We voted with our feet in the morning and our feet were up on the coffee table, although I did clear the junk off my IKEA Poang chair and had a relaxing half hour or so on it. It’s a great chair for reading in, but not so good for using with a laptop. I suppose it was designed before laptops were a thing. Allegedly it was designed around 1978.

Eventually had to get up to help prepare lunch and then the laptop came out of hiding and I was lost in Flickr for an hour at least. It did seem to stop raining for a while after that, but it was only a ruse by the rainclouds. As soon as we went outside the rain started again.

<Technospeak>
It was about 4 o’ clock before I decided to put on my new Columbia trainers and take an unusual combination of Sony A7iii + adapter + Sigma 10-20mm lens out for a walk in St Mo’s. I restricted myself to one circuit of the pond and had to get all my photos in that time and only with my Heath Robinson contraption. It’s really a very capable lens. It originally fitted my old Nikon D70, but when I upgraded to a D7000 the lens wouldn’t work with the more demanding electronic connections, so it was relegated to a cupboard. When I was selling all my Nikon gear to fund my move to full frame Sony hardware, I couldn’t bear to part with the old 10-20mm and found an adapter that would allow its use on the A7 series. It still takes great pictures, but is now manual focus only. The other problem is that it’s an APS-C lens which doesn’t quite cover the sensor of a full frame camera, so some cropping is inevitable. I could allow the camera to do it for itself, but where’s the fun in that when you can spend an hour doing it yourself!
</Technospeak>

The old lens took today’s PoD which is a view of St Mo’s pond with its duckweed carpet, viewed from the pond outfall. I just liked all the different green hues in the picture.

Dinner tonight was yesterday’s pakora and curries reheated and with some flatbreads for good measure. It’s now making itself known to me again, so some Gaviscon may be necessary tonight!

Watched the French GP with more than its fair share of thrills and spills. Good to see Hamilton making it to the podium. Not so happy to see George Russell sneaking 3rd place from Perez.

Spoke to Jamie in the evening and heard how they survived the heatwave on Monday and Tuesday. Heard too about the tomatoes in the garden ripening while Scamp’s are still green.

I think it may still be raining outside and we’re forecast for more tomorrow. Maybe the garden still needs a little more.

Boots – 23 May 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Today we climbed Quiraing. Not mountain climbed it, in the car, of course! Are you mad!

We drove up to see then fantastic new car park and it really was a totally different place from the one we used to know. No big boulders poking out of the hard packed earth. No mad foreigners (that includes english) parking anywhere they felt like it, which sometimes meant actually on the road. No, there is now a purpose built car park with plenty of room for everyone from normal folk to those who drive camper vans. There is a down side, of course. It’s no longer free. That didn’t seem to bother the folk who were filling up all those spaces. We didn’t stop. I’ve photographed the view from the top of Quiraing more times than I care to remember and it in all sorts of weather. No, today we were just being nosey!

We drove on to Uig and stopped at a viewpoint at the top. Just hard packed earth, but free. The whole of Uig bay was laid out below us. I took a few shots that I’d later merge into a panorama or two, then we faced the drop down into Uig proper and the tortuous hairpin in the middle of the drive. Came through unscathed and continued on to Portree. There’s nothing much to see in Uig apart from the ferry terminal to Lewis, or is it Harris? I can never remember.

We were heading to Elgol and its strange eroded rock face at the north end of what is laughingly called a beach. It’s really just a jumble of boulders from ones the size of your fist to massive ones the size of a small car. On a good day there are great views of the Cuillins. But not today. The weather was fine, in fact it was nearly perfect with white clouds in a blue sky, but unfortunately, just before we reached Sligachan, I discovered I’d not brought my walking boots. The thought of climbing over those boulders in my shoes didn’t inspire me, so we stopped and I took a few shots of the Cuillins from the almost diametrically opposite direction. Mountins continuously being covered and uncovered with cloud and with rain showers washing across them. It wasn’t Elgol, but it would do. We turned and drove back to Portree, bought some expensive petrol (£1.71 per litre) and went to Jans Vans for lunch, a hard brush for Scamp and a chilli plant for me.

From there we drove up to Staffin and went down to the beach with its grey/black sand. That’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s a time exposure looking towards Flodigarry, using a 10 stop ND filter. I just knew you wanted to know that Jamie. Scamp hung around for a while, but then went back to sit in the car.

With a few shots in the bag and one I was sure would be PoD, I drove back to the house and we got ready for tonight’s family meal in Columba. There were eight of us being fed on Chicken or Pork or Veggie Haggis with potatoes and broccoli as side dishes. Lots of talk at the table and Scamp was interrogating Allan about the correct way to cook Jackfruit. I was impressed how much information he passed on, explaining the good and bad points of this strange vegetable that we’ve only recently discovered. A good night, even if Mairi wasn’t feeling like joining us.

We drove back to the house because June and Ian had some more preparations before they leave for home tomorrow.

It was a well filled day. Tomorrow we’re hoping to get to Elgol with boots!

Paisley – 22 April 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Met Alex at the bus station in Glasgow and we walked down to Central station where we got the train to Paisley Gilmour Street station.

Ollie got home yesterday and I think the entire family is delighted with his progress. Alex, of course, had photos.

We got out at Paisley and walked through the town, had a bite to eat in Subway then got lost walking the wrong direction but found an old church at the end of a cobbled street at the top of a hill that looked interesting, so photos were taken. Further on another big sandstone church caught our eye and we spent some time there.

My phone was playing silly buggers and wouldn’t connect to the internet, but after a lot of swearing and a restart it was back in business and told me we were heading in exactly the wrong direction. We walked back through the town and passed a trio of blokes who were busking in the street. One of them looked familiar and the name “Rab Noakes” sprung into my head. I checked later and found I was right. I’m guessing he was just doing it for fun.

We manage half an hour in the Abbey and I got a few interesting photos of the stained glass windows, than we walked around and checked out the gargoyles, including the one that looks like the Alien from the movie.

I wanted some photos of Anchor Mill. Scamp and I have passed it many times driving through the town to go to the Paisley tea dance, but never had the time to stop and take some photos. Today was different. Not only had I the time and the company, I also had my ND filters and the attachments they needed to reduce the light getting in to the camera and allow me to use a slow shutter speed. Too much techy nonsense there, but basically I wanted to make the moving water look smooth and smoky. For once it worked a treat.

With that done, we were finished with our stated intentions and headed back to Glasgow on the train.

At St Enoch’s we bumped into Ross Malley and thankfully just missed his sister’s entourage as today was her hen party. I introduced him to Alex, we talked for a while, and then we went our separate ways. Alex and I walked up Bucky Street watched a street entertainer trying to whip up the Glasgow crowd to a frenzy and failing to encourage them to part with their cash for watching him jump through hoops of fire and knives.

We headed for our buses on opposite sides of the bus station and vowed we’d go back to Paisley again soon.

A shared Special fish supper bought on the way back home made a decent Friday night dinner for us. Scamp had been working in the garden and sowing some of the seeds she’d bought in the English garden centre.

The picture of Anchor Mill was PoD.

Tomorrow we’re dancing so we had a quick practise tonight.

A long lie-in – 12 December 2021

Posted on by Zogman

At last a lazy lie-in. I did enjoy that.

We had booked an engineer’s call today and he arrived just as the final F1 GP of the year was starting. Poor guy, Simon was his name and we think he was Polish. He looked a bit out of his depth. He did all the things that I’d already done. He reset the modem to factory settings and he tried connecting using what we thought was his phone and he got through to all the sites we couldn’t reach. However, neither Scamp nor I could. We were still getting the error message. After a few phone calls back to base he tried using what was his personal phone and hit our problem. His previous connection had been done with his Virgin PDA which he admitted had a lot more software on it that allowed it to shortcut the normal wireless routes.

In the midst of all this I asked him about all the corruption we were getting on the TV and asked if it was just cables needing cleaned. He agreed that it was the usual cause. However once he’d checked the connections, he said that wasn’t the case here, it was the hard drive in the TiVo box that was giving the problem. He went to his van and returned with what looked like a new modem, but it was a new set top box, not a TiVo this time. He fitted the new box, and set it up while still struggling with the modem problem. Eventually he gave up, gave me his phone number and told me he’s go and discuss it with his manager and get back to me.

We sat there in amazement. We’d been trying for years to get Virgin to admit that the corruption was due to a dodgy hard drive, but they insisted it was just the cables that needed cleaned. All we needed to do was book a service engineer and Bingo, a new set top box appears. It’s about a quarter the size of the old one and much, much faster. All this time I’ve been blaming the TV for taking so long to connect to iPlayer and it was the TiVo box all the time.

He did phone back and said that it looks as if some of the sites have blocked our IP address. We need to phone Customer Services and ask to be put through to the Faults Team who should be able to change the default IP address. I realise this is just gobbledegook to you Jamie, but maybe your sister will understand it a bit better.

The story doesn’t end there. The window cleaner came to get his money tonight and he said “I think you’ve left a brief case out in the rain” pointing at a very wet black shape that did in fact look like a brief case sitting on one of our bins. As I reached for it, I realised it was our old TiVo box. Poor Simon, he was so bamboozled by our problem that he left the box sitting there while he went looking for the external connection box to make sure the problem wasn’t there. It’s lying in the kitchen now drying out gradually, but I don’t think it will ever dance with the Bolshoi again!

Watched a confusing F1 GP on and off while the repair was going happening. It was more ‘Off’ than ‘On’ as the new box was taking ages to boot up. Great to see Verstappen win, but to be honest, neither of them covered themselves in glory. It was also good to see that smug smile wiped from Toto Wolf’s face when he realised what was happening. So much hype, so much macho posturing from the team principals, so much bad feeling. Then the the drivers themselves fist bumped and behaved like sportsmen on screen despite what they said off screen. A strange day. It might be worth watching the highlights just to see how stupid it all was.

Almost no chance for photos today. The furthest I was away from the house was to bring the car down to our parking space from where I’d parked it last night. PoD was a shot of some starlings sitting in the bare trees trying to find some berries for their dinner. Ours was beef burger for me, veggie sausages for Scamp, both served with roasted veg. Scamp’s Christmas Sponge for pudding, served with custard.

Tomorrow we’re going for the messages and to get Scamp’s meds. I also need to call the faults team.

The last dance – 14 November 2021

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One more breakfast of champions, One more morning walk through Perth, One more tea dance. Then home.

Breakfast was a bit quieter than yesterday with a lot more empty tables, but the same selection of fruit and fries. Not all the tables were fully stocked with cups, cutlery and napkins. Just another little niggle that showed this was indeed a three star hotel. I’ll bet Bonnie Prince Charlie didn’t have to go and nick his cutlery from another table!

Fed and watered, we went for a walk along Perth’s riverside. It was a bit colder than yesterday and a lot duller too. Neither of these inconveniences stopped us walking through the park for half an hour and neither did it stop me from getting a photo or five, more like twenty five though. The one that eventually, after some post processing, made PoD was a slow shutter speed shot (alliteration of ’S’) of the upstream bridge over the Tay with the smooth water that only comes with shutter speeds of 1/8th of a second or longer. I knew you’d want to know that Jamie!

Walked back and we were ready for the final dance of the weekend. First we all observed the Minute’s Silence, then the dance began. I was expecting a couple of dozen folk to be there, but there must have been around fifty. All still raring to go. It was only an hour long session, but it finished off the weekend perfectly. Said goodbye to the folk we knew.  After that we handed back our key and got a QR code to scan into the parking ticket machine which gave us a 50% reduction on our parking costs, once we worked out the sequence of scans to do it.

Drove home via M&S in Dunblane to get tonight’s dinner, because apparently we have to make our own dinner, and breakfast here in Cumbersheugh!

It was an interesting and exhausting three days. Now it’s back to “auld claes and purrich” as my dad would say. Tomorrow we’re hoping to have a more relaxing day.

Another beautiful day – 18 May 2021

Posted on by Zogman

It was another beautiful morning. Too good to stay in bed and even too good for a morning coffee. That kind of good!

Scamp had booked a table for her and Margie for early afternoon, so a walk, not local, but not too far was the request. I thought maybe the walk along the canal to Twechar would probably be too long for today and the short version with the shortcut across the plantation would be too short. Maybe Colzium. It’s a week or so since we’d been there and there were a couple of little waterfalls I wanted to investigate in the park, so there was another bonus. So it was that we drove out through Kilsyth to the once private estate that is now open to the public.

We have worked out a decent route around the park with some short hill climbs and interesting scenery past rushy streams and walks through the woods. Just to make it a bit different I chose a path we hadn’t walked before, not knowing it had a long climb in it. It took us to a bridge over the Colzium Burn. I thought we’d crossed this particular bridge before, but Scamp disagreed and she was right. When we walked down the other side of the burn we came to the bridge I was thinking about. That’s where I got today’s PoD. Again it was Scamp’s observation that brought the heart shape hanging from the tree branch to my attention. I was quite pleased with the composition, positioning the heart against the white of the falls. We walked on down.

We walked down the wide avenue from the ‘Big House’ to the old curling pond. Some of the rhododendrons were in full flower, but most were like our own and just coming into flower. The trees, though, were glowing with colour. Strangely it was autumn colour, but it seemed to work with the green around it. We drove home.

While Scamp went off for lunch with Margie, I started today’s sketch. As usual, some of the prompts are slightly random. Today’s was An Interdental Brush. I decided to be generous and sketched both of mine, one with its holder. It’s amazing how useful these little wire brushes are. My friend, Fred, describes them as miniature toilet brushes. I’ll leave that thought with you!

Next task was a bit of technology (That’s your five minute warning JIC). Lightroom is having problems with the new Mojave OS and it simply won’t run on the new laptop. With that in mind I’m thinking about moving to the new Lightroom/Photoshop package from Adobe that is a subscription system. To do that I need to create a new Adobe account. Now many years ago Adobe was hacked and my email address was one of the ones that was sold off by the hackers. Despite changing my password as soon as I knew, I eventually had to shut down that address. Just in case the same thing happens again, I created a new email address for the new account. For some reason it was simplicity itself to set up on both machines. Maybe Apple are making improvements with these new operating systems. Now that the email works and has been checked, tomorrow I’m ready to sell my soul to Adobe for a Lightroom for the 21st century. (OK, JIC it’s safe to come back.)

When Scamp returned I was putting the finishing touches to the Interdental Brush still life and she pronounced it good enough to post.

Spoke to Fred tonight and we discussed politics, Rangers supporters and how boring life is these days. Then the conversation turned to cars before touching down for a while on painting.

That was about it for today. Tomorrow we’re hoping to get out for another walk, because it may be the last dry day for a while.

Dull, dull, dull – 13 May 2021

Posted on by Zogman

White sky this morning. No texture in the clouds, just milky white

At least it was dry and it remained so all day. The furthest we got was a walk down to the shops and back. Apart from the ‘messages’, Scamp got some Bizzy Lizzies for her Wanderella planter that hangs by the back door. She did get some last week too, but they turned out to be too big for the holes in the planter and were used up elsewhere. These ones were much smaller and fitted perfectly. I got some chocolate limes to which I’m addicted. Tonight I divided them up into bags of five. When I go out for a walk I allow myself one bag. When they’re done, that’s it until the next day. If I put ten in the bag, I’d just eat them all without thinking about it, that’s why I limit myself to five. Not much chance of a walk in St Mo’s today though.

Last night I found a tick. First one for ages. Today I found another. That’s the walk in the woods at St Mo’s off the list until the first hard frost, because the ticks don’t seem to like the cold. Neither do I, but I hate ticks and that makes the cold bearable.

<Technospeak>
Apart from slapping Germoline and TCP on the tick bites, I found time to delve into the old NAS drive’s hard drive. I found that if I booted from a Linux distro (a live Linux installation on a USB stick) on the Mac, I could access the drive. All the files are still there on the hard drive, but the drive is formatted to Linux and can’t be read on a Mac or PC. What I didn’t know was that I could drag the files from the old NAS drive on to an NTFS (PC) formatted memory stick and load them on to the Mac. I wanted Office 11 for Mac and that was in the downloads I’d stored on the old NAS. It worked! Well, it almost worked. The new Mac is running Catalina and it doesn’t allow you to open any 32 bit apps. Office 11 is a 32 bit app. Game Over. Apparently I can still get Office for free by connecting to iCloud. A bit cumbersome, but it might work.
</Technospeak>

In the afternoon I did a bit of photography in the garden and that’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s a Strawberry & Cream Aquilegia with a Spirea bush behind. That was in the hour or so of sunshine we had today. I managed to get a few shots of plants just coming in to flower. Good to see it.

Today’s sketch was to be A Close Up View of Something. I chose the pliers of the multi-tool I drew earlier in the week. Lots of lovely detail in the mechanics of the tool which allows the jaws to open and close, but to fold away again when you’re finished. Cleverly designed.

I forgot to post a photo of the Challah bread I made. As you can see we really needed to test it, even before I could get the photo taken. It’s just as nice today.

No plans for tomorrow. Scamp and Veronica are out in the morning, so I might get some painting done.