Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Quiet but successful day - MP4 Player - And Computer work.

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Picture 1 is a Rhine Holiday shot from where we left the boat at Basel. We always used to pronounce it Barl, I think, but now Bazel is preferred. And who cares ? I'm happy enough with Bazel because we had no wish to give offence.

Picture 2 is some Beech Trees in Hardwick Park when we went to the Hardwick Inn for Y's Birthday meal.

If someone says they aren't Beech, with sufficient firmness, I shan't argue. Someone once told me that a tree grows to the same shape as its leaf. And I've always found it to be more-or-less true with mature trees. It's a little harder while they are still toddlers or teenagers.

My day of quiet achievement began with around an hour's work transferring files from 'My Pictures' on my laptop, to my external Freecom Hard Drive.

The reason for this is that I suspect that on this machine (my laptop) the hard-disc is beginning to falter. There is much jumping about and occasional disinclination to do what it's told. As Bungus said the other day I have given it much to do and perhaps 'hammered it' a little.

If it failed, it would be hard to bear the complete loss of many hundreds of pictures.

Brian is to be admired. He has got into the habit of, when returning home from a shoot, he immediately burns the pictures onto a back-up CD. A very professional approach which we all should emulate. One advantage of Google Mail is that your own computer can crash, but all your mail and anything else you've saved in google-mail, is safely on Google's big computer and you can access it from wherever you happen to be and on whatever machine you happen to be using. Likewise with Picasa Web Albums and my Blog.

I managed to move just over 6GB of information which left my hard-disc looking like the picture on the right. Much healthier amount of free space than yesterday and hopefully taking some of the strain off the disc. I'm afraid it is still on the blink though - but every little helps !

A worst case scenario would be my computer crashing and me forgetting or mislaying my password. Perhaps I ought to have it tattooed on my chest.

Another hour or so was spent transferring a goodly selection of Y's CD collection onto her MP4 player. We hit on the idea of laptops side-by-side. Y had her CDs and her MP 4 plugged into her laptop, while I had the Zen user-manual open on mine. Together we shuffled through. We even managed to create a Playlist and a setting of Random Shuffle for playing them. It's a great little machine - when you get used to it, it's easy to work out what to do, or find particular tracks etc.

Tomorrow we'll have a go at her picture collection !

Roger called in around tea time and shared a pot of tea with us. He only lives round the corner and it was nice. We talked about photographs, inevitably, and he is a fellow subscriber to Ephotozine.

Comments

bungus ...... Glad you sorted out your Supanet. Easier to talk about than sorting out Virgin. When I read your second para, due to your putting the exclamation mark right up to the word Change! I read it as 'Changel' - a useful word for charming young ladies with English accents who change things in your favour.

Re Jill's keyboard. I read too much into an e-mail from her about the subject. She said "I shall carry on........" which I assumed to mean she would 'carry on' using her existing keyboard rather than replace it.

Thanks for the photo. But wearing your pink shirt and jacket without trousers at all, is perhaps overkill as a method of avoiding the 'tuck in/or not' decision.

Jill ...... I am pleased that Ro is a tucker in ! Wearing them flapping about outside is for woofters.

See e-mail re Hereford and 'neat'.

If you insist - A modem is "A device that converts the digital signals used inside a computer to an analogue system that can be transmitted over the phone lines, and vice versa".

I'm with you 100% about carrying music around. To me most music is just noise. My MP3 player carries all talk programmes which I download from bbc.co.uk. in the form of 'podcasts'. Please click here for the relevant page. When on our Rhine Holiday I took around 20 hours of listening because I knew I would be denied Radio 4. Have a look at the page and if it interests you I would be happy to talk you through the system.

Please see above re my misunderstanding of your position about your keyboard. Sorry !

anonymousrob ...... Brilliant Haiku !!! You've got a gift there I think. I'm taking the liberty of copying it here into the body of the blog because not everyone opens the 'comments' box -

"Wear your shirt outside
Why bother tucking it in?
It's cool and trendy"

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Quotation slot ...... Time and inclination for a relevant quote tonight..... Benchley should never have put himself down like this - his prose was magic !

"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous".
Robert Benchley

His name is a link to his Wiki page and, as you will see if you open it, a very interesting multi-faceted man. I have only read him in an anthology (not a book review Rob!) but he was able to make me guffaw while reading. Only a few humourists have managed that.

"Sleep tight - hope to catch you tomorrow"



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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your blog took 2 1/2 hours to arrive.

Nice Rhine picture and the building-like-boat.
I was looking for a pun or hidden witticism in the Barl/Barzel dissertation but failed to find one.

I’ve never heard the ’tree like its leaf’ thing before. If you have just made it up, well done.

Didn’t you once tell me that all Picasa pictures are stored by Google and therefore retrievable? If not, I had better find out how get my latest on to external hard drive as Dan reckons my PC is quite likely to give up the ghost any time soon.
Or is it, as you hint, only if they have been saved to web albums? - which I have forgotten how to do.
And how do you get it back from Google anyway? Perhaps better not try answering that as it is bound to be beyond my comprehension!

May I suggest that anything tattooed on your chest should be in mirror writing (and webdings) to make it less accessible to agents of foreign powers.

Whoops! Nearly dropped off there! (Well, it is gerrin’ on for gooin’ ‘om time.)

Ephotozine sounds like a remedy for hayfever.

And the helpful young ladies on the other end of the telephone line who alter things 'with a knowing look' are Archangels of course.

In magazines I have seen many photos of young ladies wearing shirts without trousers and therefore thought it must be the ‘in’ thing.

As for your divisive comment on the ‘in’ or ‘out’ preference I can only suggest that it takes one to know one. Are there ‘tuckers-in’ lurking in the closet mayhap?
Possibly Shadowy Members of the Cabinet?

I think Benchley was prone to self deprecation.
I try to do it myself sometimes, even to the point of occasionally going without trousers.
But, even then, he gets more laughs than I do.

Jill:
In case anyone else is inrterested in your crossword clue; an archaic meaning for ‘neat’ is ‘cattle’ (hence ‘neatsfoot jelly’). And, also in case anyone is interested, I learnt that from doing crosswords and it is something of which I have since been always aware. It is a not uncommon conceit.

I did, however have to look up ‘modem’. If Graham’s explanation is too technical, it appears that it is the gismo that connects one’s computer to the internet (or to other computers).

Smooth mover Mandelson. Move over Sergeant.

Like you, I have no wish to carry music around. And, despite seeing myself AS a music lover, I never owned a record player or, until this century, a tape or CD player.
If I want to listen to music I do not want any distraction other than that provided by the audience or dancers at a live show – and, almost without exception, I would only pay to listen to jazz or swing (which is all I ever play recordings of, occasionally, when at the computer. And, in the 1950's, all I ever attempted to play on the piano).

Anonymousrob:
Like you / Haiku.

Shirt outside, wear with
Pride. Inside shirt does not hurt.
Either or. No more.

I thought the ‘layered look’ was in, ie: oversized shirt ouside trousers and showing beneath jacket. But it’s likely that I am probably at least two years out of date or I simply made it up.

If in doubt do not
Hesitate to make it up
To self justify.

Quotation:
“Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”
Peter Kay

Anonymous said...

I have never heard of 'neat' meaning cattle. It seems such an odd word to use for them - they are not really neat. I've never heard of a herd of neats - though perhaps it means the plural anyway. Never heard of neatsfoot jelly either. Calvesfoot jelly, yes. I'm more ignorant than I thought - well, I knew I was over technical terms for things....

Loved the Peter Kay quote, I must remember it. And G's Robert Benchley - there is another American humorist of that generation whose name I can't remember (not James Thurber)that I like - the only quote I can bring to mind is 'candy is dandy - but liquor is quicker'. He wrote one about his wife's knitting which is often quoted in the knitting world.

I'd never heard about the trww looking like the leaf either, are you sure you are not making that up?

I went to Cafe Rouge with friend, we thought it wasn't as good as previously, the chicken was a bit chewy (and less of it) and the beef was on the tough side, whereas last time it was melt-in-the-mouth. We reckon they were buying cheaper meat, prices have not gone up, and we had a voucher for a free main course along with one other main course at lunch time.

Thanks G, but am not really interested in podcasts either, I don't like things in my ears.....ordinary radio suits me fine, I just listen to what I want to, I don't need talk all the time, I'm happy being quiet and thinking...or doing complicated knitting....

Anonymous said...

I'm not anonymous, it whizzed through without me.

Anonymous said...

Have just remembered the name of the humorist - it was Ogden Nash!

Anonymous said...

When you have removed all the picture files it would be a good time to defragment your hard drive which should help speed it up.
look under your system tools and you will find the relevent programme in windows,It can take some time but should make a big difference.
Kevin

Anonymous said...

Kevin and RG - would a 'disk clean up' help as well? I was told recently that's better than defragging the hard drive but I'm not that computer savvy to know the difference.

I went to Shirebrook today, for the first time in my life. I recall Bungus mentioning the merits of its Market Square some time ago and I have to agree with him. It looked better, to me, than the Old Market (Slab) Square in Nottingham. All the buildings around the square (in Shirebrook) seemed to be in keeping with the space. Mind you, I only had a drive around the Square, parked up, visited a dog grooming parlour for a few minutes and left again. Such is the excitement of my working life. I am going back next Tuesday, however, and intend to have a look around. Maybe there is a worthwhile cafe for three old codgers to meet in if Bungus and RG are so inclined?

I am shocked and disappointed with the blogmeister's comments about those of us who do not tuck in. A sweeping generalisation methinks. My riposte is thus:
Wear your shirt outside
With gay abandon and pride
Make it pink - don't hide!


Thank you for commenting on my 'gift'. I don't think so somehow though having visited a haiku site recently you could be right. On that one most of the haikus didn't fit the 5/7/5 syllable requirements.

Is the picture of the pink shirt and jacket sans pantalons not fit for family viewing?

I understand from the news that a police officer and a vicar were listed as BNP members. How shocked am I? Not as shocked as the fact that, in the end, it was John Sargeant who considered his position. My suspicion is that there will be some fall out and he'll take a few with him.

RG, given your explanation of a modem, does that mean that broadband is an analogue system? I thought the main thing about broadband was that it avoided the use of telephone lines. And, when you've answered that query, what about fibre optic cables? Sorry, but it wasn't me who opened this can of worms!

What is a modem?
I wish you hadn't said that
Now I'm in the ***t


Bungus, the layered look is still in; you can even wear your shirt outside your trousers and a jumper on top with the bottom of the shirt showing. To be really trendy, though, you need to wear jeans as well. Here we go again. However, never, ever wear sandles with any sort of socks.

Who's covering the Sports Desk now I'm doing fashion? If it's me, let's say well done to Panthers for their win at Newcastle last Sunday night. Always a tricky away fixture and a much needed win after losing at home to Belfast on Saturday.

Rob

Anonymous said...

Was our John leant on? We should be told......over 4000 mostly cross comments on BBC web site...

Anonymous said...

A disk defragment cleans your files very much like a liberien puts books in order making a file easier to find and faster.
A disk cleanup remove files that it considers that is no longer needed, Im always weary of this option as im not sure myself and the computer agree whats needed.

TO Remove unwanted files go into control panel and click remove software, this will give you a list of every programme on your computer with the option to delete.
This gives me more control in My oppinion

Kevin