Last night I was ready for bed, checked a couple of things on the computer, and when I went to shut down there was another update available. As usual I Ok's it and it started staying on 0% and telling me to not swith my machine off, then severak restarts and loads of times staying on the same level. You never have a clue how long these things take and the various indicators never tell you how long it's going to be.
Eddie Izzard nails the situation in his Computers and Terms and Conditions stand up routine which you can watch here. This happens time and time again. Also recently Microsoft applications stopped giving you a time line and replacing them with a blue spinning circle and you haven't a clue what is happening.
#AnimalAugust is going to be "The Bonny Black Hare" by Fairport Convention , the thing is it's a traditional folk song , and it's not really about a rabbit related mammal, but the title will do for the sequence.
Yesterday I tried using the recommended Windows 10 Media player Groove which would not recognise the music library. For years I've been using iTunes , but that is just slow , cumbersome bloatware, and Amazon Music is not much better.
I then went to Windows Media Player and accidentally pressed a small icon which changed the view and very shortly had logged all my network music in it's library (iTunes took about two days to do this) , the only slight problem being that it defaults to the 32 bit version , but I have put the 64 bit version on the quick access bar.
So today I have listed to a Joy Division boxed set, a best of Julian Cope and a best of Warren Zevon. While the sound quality is a bit imperfect , it's great to listen to my own music collection rather than my normal 6Music diet, not that there's anything wrong with 6Music.
The thing is I am very happy with my musical options around my computer.I'm now listening to "God Save Us" by The Oz Elastic band which was released on Apple Records (and featured John Lennon) to raise money for the Oz Magazine Obscenity case.
So we'll go with "Mr Bad Example" one of my many favorite Warren Zevon songs, I think it's a polka , the lyrics are just perfect. Just a thought he looks very like Heisenberg (Walter White) from "Breaking Bad" which would be very appropriate ......
Walking into the back room where my computer, keyboard and stringed instruments lived I thought I'd left the light on , I hadn't, it was sunlight reflecting off the houses at the back into the room filling it with light. Sometimes benefits and good things come from unexpected sources.
Although it's still cold the fact that it's not too windy and there's little rain means that walking into work is far easier and I am less and less tempted to take the bus, although this morning have to take a bus to Haymarket to post off another CD that I sold on on Discogs. The other day I found that the minimum Paypal withdrawal is now six pounds, which is a surprise , but is fine by me. My latest sale was only a fiver.😊.
I recently found that pressing the Windows Key and ";" simultaneously gives you a list of emojis that you past easily , that added to Windows Key and "L" to lock your computer (which my youngest daughter told me about) and a couple of useful things to know.
I am happy with my new reconditioned Google Pixel 2XL which allows me to take reasonable pictures and video as well as being fairly quick , also being a Google device it keeps up with Android system updates and has unlimited cloud photo storage so although it can't take an SD card you are never short on space.
So what should I share this morning, one of my favourite Top of the Pops memories when Can hit the top 30 with "I Want More" , and I want more positivity and good stuff to come to everyone and everywhere.
I got to Settle on Friday and thought I would start up the laptop (which I am writing or should that be typing ) this on and the web browser wasn't saying it was insecure. Basically I hadn't used it for six months and battery needed charging but there was an avalanche of Windows 10 and ASUS Laptop updates that required installing , and as usual I said yes...... Ten hours later I think it finished , well it didn't because last night it required another restart and update.... and to quote Eddie Izzard ... Nothing has changed (Apparently).
This always happens and really I should start this up when I'm at home, but I don't, so it's my fault , at least partially,
Yesterday I walked to Scalebar Force (also signed as Scaleber Foss) and it was only a mile and a quarter but hadn't factored in the one in five (20%) gradient, and was amazed that on the way back down that there were two guys of my age or older biking up the gradient , that showed amazing determination and stamina. There are some photos and video on my Instagram feed here.
It's Sunday Morning and I have plans to visit The Hoffman Kiln again, and it's always great to share things with people. It's not good to always keep yourself to yourself , although solitude is good and necessary at times to recharge your batteries and do what YOU want. Remember the most important person in your life is YOU , if you are not there and 100% you cannot be there for those who matter to you.
And a record has been playing through my head for some reason, ans I think I first heard it on John Peel and I want to share it with you because it;s a great record and you are important to me. I'm almost shocked that I've never shared this before, there's over 2K posts on this blog, but it's the excellent "Him or Me" by Paul Revere and the Raiders. Enjoy.
It's either a certain TV program or continue wit "The God Delusion" or write a blog post, so I've chosen the latter.
Yesterday I posted a couple of short videos of the vinyl copy of "This is The Moody Blues" which reminded me of the excellent "Bluejays" album by Justin Hayward and John Lodge. A fellow fan sent pictures of their copy of the album, and I remember the single "Blue Guitar" was ok but not brilliant but I loved "I Dreamed Last Night" and love the coda from "When You Wake Up" which I will include and am playing as I write this.
I used to use MusicMatch but couldn't get it to run under Windows 10 , so have drifted between iTunes and VLC and VLC seems to have just died so I've got the the "Bluejays" album playing using Windows Media Player. That has reminded me just how many versions of Windows I have been through since I started this blog, but probably best not to think too much about that because I am sure there will be another one along at some point.
Though every upgrade seems to make the computer a bit slower, but maybe that's just psychosomatic, so anyway I shall listen to the rest of the album, though the thing about digital is that it is extremely convenient, you don't even have to look for the disc, of that means it's a lot easier to skip , skim and completely miss stuff on albums.
The thing is a lot of kids these days can't even listen to more that 20 seconds of a song before they get bored, I don't suppose they will ever enjoy classical or progressive music, but each to their own. Years ago a friend to me to watch X-Factor for the best new music. Grudgingly I did and someone was covering "Nights In White Satin" (a five minute song written by Justin Hayward for The Moody Blues' "Days of Future Past" album) and it finished on two minutes.
I remarked on this that the song was not original and it was curtailed and was told they did that with all the songs. I never bothered again.
I bought my dad a laptop for his 80th birthday. He virtually never used it, so I bought him a tablet and he gave me the laptop back. He likes the tablet, it's easy to use though he's still getting to grips with the concept of wifi, but he likes using ing to watch youtube videos and research things via Google. So far so good.
I was going to sell the laptop but the battery was dead, which means I can't really sell it. A new battery will cost £20 - £40 and I could maybe get £50-£60 for the laptop. Then I thought I only use laptops plugged in , so I could make use of it, then I thought get my guitar interface and keyboard and this could be the studio. It's a 64 bit operating system, and was thinking it looked slightly strange. Ut was because it's Windows 8.1 . So I thought simple, just upgrade the Windows 10 then it's the same as my desktop and other laptop. No problem.
That was about twelve hours ago and I am still trying to upgrade to Windows 10 and it keeps getting into a loop searching for updates. There is nothing worse than something looping when you cannot break the loop. This is similar to the incident in March with an unexpectedly lengthy update that I documented here.
I am still attempting to do this upgrade, and each try takes a long time. I have nearly written a few songs while this has been going on, but as the laptop is going to be my recorder they have flown off into the ether. I was playing along with songs on the radio including "Isis" by Bob Dylan, then sat and played the guitar solo from Thin Lizzy's "Emerald" and still I came nowhere near having a recorder.
So we have just passed midnight and slipped into the Bank Holiday Monday and the upgrade is going along with no sense of urgency whatsoever and I am hoping for success but feel that I will hit another brick wall. It is now of the "Checking For Updates" sequence and this is where it keeps failing although I have taken precautions to try and circumvent this situation. Things should just work. I always say that if Washing Machines and Cookers were like computers we would never cook or wash anything.
And it looks like it has stuck once more.
So what do I leave you with, well Thin Lizzy's "Emerald", the penultimate song from the album "Jailbreak", is one of their finest moments so we will go with that.
Well Windows 10 decided to do an upgrade, it started about 1):30 last night and went on with that ominous warning "Do Not Switch Off Your Computer" while staying for a very long time on 0% Complete.. The thing is it started progressing every now and then with several restarts before finally finishing at 1:30 this morning. I actually wanted to go to bed, but that was three hours of my life gone and when it's finally finished what has changed? ..... Nothing!!
Then it did it again tonight though this time it was five minutes, which a slight blessing.This put me in mind of Eddie Izzard's upgrade routine, which I will share with you before I go to bed.
This was the first month that I thought I couldn't hit my 340K step target. The main reason was the amount of time I was ill in bed. I hit my record all time low daily step count at less that 1.5K, that is half the very low national average. Many days I struggled to hit 5K and I needed to average 5k, but today I hit the target with two days to spare.
I think October should not be a problem but it's all based on the weather being OK and me being fit enough to walk.
As I write this I'm checking for updates for my laptop as it hasn't been used for a couple of months so that may take some time, last time I did it via my phone and it wiped out my data.
So it's Friday and this must be the most boring post I've ever done although it's my 250th this year.
So we'll go with The Pet Shop Boys "Being Boring" then I'll drop into the realms of Morpheus.
It's te last full day in Litton for this year, and we have had snow. At the sametime my Pixel XL is doing a half a gigabyte system update. In 1990 I was working on a DEC mainframe which was running accounts for a biggish company which had 4 Mb of memory, that's enough room for four minutes of basic MP3 music.
Prior to that my Cambridge Lynx computer had 3K of memory, I'd bought it because it ran CP/M which was an early competitor for MS/DOS but when IBM came calling the CP/M guy was outflying his plane so Bill Gates got the IBM gig and the rest, well you know the rest, I'm writing this on an ASUS laptop running Microsoft Windows 10.
Did you know that Microsoft have a patent on the technology for SD card slots which apparently is why so many phones don't have SD card slots.
Anyway my walking has been hit by the weather, yesterday it was rain and hail and today it may be the snow, so I will have some catching up to do when I get back.
I've had a brilliant breakfast at High Nelly's in Tideswell, and finally found out that a Derbyshire Oatcake was basically an oat pancake, and they are rather excellent too. There's a picture of my breakfast here.
I'm listening to 6Music and today's Album of the Year choice is Tom Robinson's and it's Nadine Shah's"Holday Destination" which I pre ordered about three months in advance. I have written about it before and it's not cheerful but addresses a lot of current serious issues especially on the title track which I will include here.
Have a great Friday everybody, the weekend is upon us.
Today something happened that shouldn’t have happened to me. I’m in a low connectivity area so I’ve been using my phone for tethering to give me internet access. I have a contract that gives me 4Gb a month which is usually plenty of data.
This morning I was doing a couple of blog posts and the laptop required what I thought was a routine update.
Then all of a sudden web sites were not available. I looked at my phone and there were messages saying I’d used 80% of my data then all of my data. I thought my phone company have screwed up again, then I checked and saw that according to the phone it had used up all the data in background tethering.
So it wasn’t my phone company, but I noticed the iPad had connected, so that was the next thing to blame because Apple products are always downloading stuff in the background.
So I bit the bullet and bought 10 Gb of data, and the download had finished then it said it was 50% complete.
I disconnected the tethering but the laptop continued to update itself, for the next two hours. It was that massive Windows 10 Update that happened on my desktop a couple of months back.
The thing is that I have experience of IT and mobile phones so I should have realised what was happening. But that is a lesson learned and it won’t happen again to me … I hope.
Though we cannot foresee everything no matter how much information we have at our disposal.
Anyway we hit number 41 in #ALifeinNumbers and the song I’ve chosen in #41 by Dave Matthews, an artist who doesn’t get enough exposure.
Here is some excellent guitar playing for you to enjoy, and for me to enjoy too. There are another 18 songs to go, in the sequence so we will hit the end probably in mid November.
Last month over 3,000 people visited my blog, that’s 100 people a day. It’s not a great number in the scheme of thing but given the number of visits I got for my first posts it’s nice to know that people return to look at what I have to say.
So enjoy Dave Matthews and enjoy your Sunday evening.
The next one is 41 which everyone knows, because Douglas Adams told them, is the meaning of life.
A weird thing. I am not at home and am using my laptop on Windows 10 and the wallpaper is reflecting the slideshow on my home desktop PC. The only vague connection is that they are both connected to the internet and Windows 10 wanted my email address. This is slightly worrying as it's doing something that I never asked for and I don't actually want. I want control of my stuff and I don't want Google , Microsoft and Apple connecting everything I do and potentially sharing it with anyone who pays them.
It's like the iCloud situation where Apple delete personal files and put copies in "The Cloud" which you can access if you pay them money and have an internet connection (see here). The guys personal recordings were stolen by Apple and he was basically told "tough". It amazes me the arrogance of corporations who put things in very small print and then say it covers them for anything they want to do. Mobile phone companies are like that too.
One article says they wont delete your stuff (see here) , but I have had dealings with them and they will never ever admit there is a problem. Your iPhone could explode and burn your hand off and Apple would say it is performing as required.
I thought She's Lost Control by Joy Division is appropriate because our reliance on technology , sees technology doing more and more things we didn't expect.
Fog From Claybank
I still don't know what's happening with my laptop.
On a lighter note Leicester were crowned Premiership Champions and had a massive party. The media generally hate it because they would rather cover Arsenal , Chelsea, Manchester City and United, in fact anybody with money and no soul. Money is the new religion you would think. To me it's a necessary evil but not something to be worshiped and put on a pedestal. It negates the need for barter , that's all. The problem is when the big clubs win , it's just about collecting shekels , they don't give a damn about anybody else , they are perfect corporate material.
Leicester have provided The Premier League with a shot in the arm and a great deal of fun , and the combined technical genii of the "big clubs" still can't get near them, and anyone with any sense is loving it.
Anyway I am enjoying the sun and quiet and I don't have to get up tomorrow morning.
After months of waiting Windows 10 has come to my Zoostorm Tower . It's like the Eddie Izzard sketch you wait forever for the upgrade and what changes? Well more store things more things on your start up that you don't want there and basically it's the same as it was before . I will obviously gove it a chance , well I don't really have a choice now do ? Oh it has Cortana which is Windows version of Siri . Love to see an argument between Cortana and Siri
Today has been a draggy day but those things happen . All of a sudden I've finished with the music Odyssey and really surprised that the last post has virtually no views for some reason. I got photographed by the Evening Chronicle last night in this gallery here in the protest against more government cuts.
Anyway I know its only short but enjoy the rest of your Wednesday , I hope my next post will be more substantial
Another day and software update on the iPad. I mean these are getting weekly and I spend more time updating the damned thing than actually using the damned thing. And it still asks you for passwords after it has updated , though Windows isn't much better. I've been waiting for Windows 10 on the tower for three months , yet Windows 8 is still updating , while my laptop went Windows 10 a month back. I'm sure it will come at some point.
Well the laptop has been upgraded to Windows 10 over Hotel Wifi at La Rosa. Started around 9 finished around 12 and nothing much has changed apart from pop up messages about features I didn't ask for , probably don't want and don't think will make my life better. However I thought that about the snipping tool and stickys and I use them all the time now so what to I know.
This morning I woke to see an amazing sunrise over the abbey, so now time for last breakfast here and the drive back home.
The song from 1961 my fifth year on earth when I turned 4 is Temptation by The Everly Brothers. This is not your usual Everly song , but they were an incredibly talented duo and I do love this
Today , and the last few days have been sodden by rain and black clouds. I came home to my website not working and my favourite FTP program not working , but it's so old I can't trouble shoot it so have to get used to a new one , then I went out , luckily with an umbrella but got hit with another downpour.
Anyway I'm sorting things out slowly but finding it really hard to be positive about the whole thing. I think part of it is the dark clouds that don't exactly brighten your mood. But I always find positives in things even when all seems like it's disappearing over a cliff. If that's what happens then you deal with it . If stuff goes your probably not meant to have it. Certainly my old FTP program hits that category nad my new one is Windows 10 Compatible so it was probably going to have to be done.
Thing is it's half way through the week , for most people it's on or near payday , and tomorrow will be a bright and lovely day , with lots of great fun things happening . There is so much good to enjoy that most of the time you can ignore and forget about the bad. Which is my intention for this short post. And I will choose one of my mum's favourite Carpenter's songs "Happy" because will make me happy and it's a damned site more uplifting than that Pharrel song.
