Up at the back of four after tossing around in bed since about three with jumpy legs driving me potty. Thinking, I’ll see what Facebook’s doing, I’m scunnered by the WiFi being off overnight. I forget the reason why, it is not normally a problem, given I’m not wont to frequent my desk at shitey o’clock. When I do, like right now, it’s bloody annoying. Any emails? Who knows - no WiFi! Okay, so I’ll just write in the blog… argh, no WiFi!
Note to self, find out how in the hell you set the Wifi on again, for those rare nights you’re up and about! It’s one of those things where (apart from the obvious), if he kicks the bucket, I’ll be snookered. That and the central heating. And the buckets. And the cooker which didn’t work for months except sporadically and if you were lucky, and now magically does, but only for him.
Then I spot my camera and remember to replace the SD card
after yesterday afternoon’s walk lugging a redundant camera about with me. The
card was left in the slot on the laptop after uploading the latest pics. I only
noticed at the third photo I took! I take the camera with me every time ‘just in
case’ and always find something to aim it at. It now occurs to me… yesterday
was the 23rd and we’ve gone out every day for a while now, but the 19th
is the date on the last photo on the chip. So it hasn’t just been yesterday I
took phantom photos, it was the 20th and the 21st too. 22nd,
it rained and we didn’t go anywhere. I wouldn’t even know that so precisely but I somehow managed to stamp the photos with
the date recently and haven’t figured out how I managed that, nor how to take
the stamp off again.
I shouldn’t even need to take the chip out of the camera as you can upload photos wirelessly, directly to ‘the cloud’, but it’s such a faff I prefer just taking it out. Actually, that’s a faff too but one I work around that little bit quicker, if with the usual hair-pulling. I’m constantly reminded that technology and I are not the best of pals. My many years of messing with cables under office desks, lying on my back ‘sorting’ things, stood me in no good stead if I’m honest. We’ve had a ‘home computer’ since the early eighties but they just don’t like me. It has been said, not least by those closest to me, that I have some sort of magnetic field around me that sends things haywire at odd intervals.
I actually
only ended up getting my own laptop instead of the shared one here in house
because the thing would explode any time I took a shot on it. I also drove many
an office fixer-upper daft with weirdness happening that ‘couldn’t possibly
happen’ and could never be replicated, despite being witnessed! Here at home,
he’d be using it to do, whatever, for hours, so ‘my turn’, (which sounds silly now as
I’m on this thing so much now). I’d be on it for mere minutes and it would
crash, or the mouse wouldn’t work and he’d have to come and fiddle with things
before I could continue. It got to be spooky! ‘What have you done now?!’ No
amount of caution seemed to help avoid things just blowing up on me.
That said, I’m glad I have had my own machine to mess on,
for many years now, and several laptops have already bitten the dust. Not that
what we already had was any less mine, just that I did most of my usage on any
computer at the office. Mostly to avoid crashing the thing or have someone
around that could fix it who couldn’t shout at me with impunity. Now my
‘office’ is here at home of course where all is fine, as long as the bloody
thing plays the game.
I’ve always backed up regularly but never once been able to ‘restore from backup’ when required, so do wonder why I bother. I also have many thousands of photos, sorted nicely in findable folders on a separate hard drive to avoid clogging the laptop, that recently conked out on me. I try and ignore the pest lying there looking at me until I can afford to buy another one, in the hope I can somehow transfer what’s on there to the new one. I honestly don’t have much hope. I mean, it’s not like I don’t try and do it right! It’s rather disheartening to lose so many photos though. I already have a big box upstairs with CDRoms full of holidays photos and this laptop doesn’t have a CDRom player so I can’t look at them ever again. Not without a rigmarol.
I think it was the
American holiday we came back from that I had a pile of 12x36 spools back from
the developers, presented in like pizza boxes. Ludicrously including all the
rubbish prints too but the pile of boxes themselves made a great photo. Egypt
was already digital I think, but still had everything printed and negatives
produced. Since then though, the SD cards have had ever more room on them. I’m no
‘photographer’, strictly point and shoot me, but I just like to take photos and
I love deleting rubbish ones and blurry ones and stuff that would otherwise
have been developed and printed, only to lie in a drawer (witness the piles
upstairs). The tablet/mobile phone camera doesn’t get used much, which is a
shame as dead handy, but it wobbles… or rather, I wobble it, and being a
tablet, it’s daft anyway, too big.
Which is another thing. I need an upgrade really, but
definitely do want a tablet/phone again and not sure if they even have them
now. Surely eh? When I look at specs though, it’s a bit like reading Chinese
so, I just don’t know which to get. A big screen, tablet-sized is best for me
as I generally do not phone on it, more text and Skype/Whatsapp video calls than
‘normal’ phone use. I also watch Netflix on it and type with the keyboard
easily, compared to a hand mobile. If I just knew what to go for if/when this
packs in as it is sure to do at the most inconvenient moment. Funny how you get
captured by the things eh? We were both quite late in succumbing to mobile
phonery actually. I’ve even given up leaving it at home while on holiday
because I use it to read books on too if nothing else. My ‘magnetic field’
seems to ignore the phone so… touch wood.
Nearly six a.m. now and still not light. Huh. Who knew? I
was never an early riser but of course, saw the odd dawn over the years. I must
have, as a child, been up and about early without a groan, but can’t say I
remember. Barring Christmas morning. We have an ‘in’ joke here saying at
bedtime ‘yaay, don’t have to get up in the morning’. It’s been so long since
either of us had to for a boss, is what makes the joke, and it’s daft, but it
still makes us laugh. Oh, hey, I see a slight line of light above the rooftops
there, and a quick shufty at the phone tells me sunrise is 06:40 so we’re
getting there. I should get back to my bed. I had a banana. They say that helps
jumpy legs… is it potassium? See, I’d look it up but still bloody cannot!
So, I’ll away and will post these ramblings to my blog when I resurface, hopefully still in the a.m. It’s our wedding anniversary tomorrow (actual tomorrow, not just when I get up again). Forty-seven years. There were no computers, no mobile phones, man we barely had colour telly when we got married. Here’s me, lost without my digital diary nowadays, not to mention the camera (when the chip’s in!) I wonder what the next fifty years will bring. I might see the next 25 at least. Hmmm, interesting. I should predict a coupla things, see how they transpire when my great-grandchildren read back on me. I might get it spot on. What do you mean ‘not likely!’?
