Monday, 25 January 2016

Muxed ip



5 January

Yet another Monday morning and we’re up early because we have a friend arriving at around 10.30 for a visit. This time next week I shall be trying to deaden the sound of the workers ripping out our old kitchen ready for installing the new one. That we are not looking forward to but we are going to have to put up with. I can always de-camp down to the library to get so I can get some writing done. If not there I should be OK in the bedroom. Kile is due here on Thursday evening and will stay here until Sunday when he goes back home ready for school on Monday. He’s not overly happy that this weekend he won’t be able to come for a month all told. Well, we will all have to make do I’m afraid.

On Saturday I mentioned all the How To books, along with the various writing related magazines that are on the market and how if we are not careful we would end reading so many of them that we don’t have time to actually do any writing. The vast photo-mag industry is the same really, and yet I do read them and enjoy them. I finished AP yesterday and Nphoto last night. The highlight in the latter for me was the interview with Mike Maloney, a pro-snapper who worked for the Daily Mirror for a long time. Mike explained how he became a snapper and worked his way the slippery pole. He’s the one that got a shot of the Queen jumping up and waving her fist because her horse was winning a race she attended. But there’s another printed in the mag, of the Queen again, but this time picking her nose. I’m not sure she enjoyed having that being published!

We still haven’t had the chance to go off for another day yet this year, and it looks like it will be at least a month before we can think of planning one. What we will need to do is to make sure we don’t go on a Thursday seeing as we have Kile here every Thursday night. But where to go … We both like Oxford while I enjoy Cambridge, while Jan doesn’t. We are both looking for a chance to get to Brum when the market is on, lots of photos there. We will need to have our scooters with us, the city centre is far too big to try to get around using our walkers.

Then of course there’s all the birding sites. We decided that we won’t be going birding this year anyway. By that I mean we won’t be keeping a sightings list, but of course there are lots of photos at them. But which site; Slimbridge, Titchwell, London Wetlands Centre, Leighton Moss, Paxton Pits, Brandon Marsh … … …  

Windows 10 is still got me puzzled somewhat. Computeractive a list of over 50 changes MS had changed during an upgrade from W8.1. I worked through them and changed the ones that they recommend, even though I have a clean installation on a new PC. And yet I am still getting loads of ads coming through on Firefox. The new Edge, the replacement to the old one, is even worse and I can’t see the work desk for all the ads that continually pop-up. In the same mag about a month ago, I read of a way to stop that. At that time I wasn’t interested in W10, so I let the mag go. Of course, I could do with now.

Two particular ads that I am concerned about, are coming up when I click through a link in Firefox, both are security related. I normally close them when they appear, but is that the right reaction. At the moment for on-line security I am using the month’s free trail of MacAfee. That is due to run out in seven days. After that I am puzzled as to what to do next. According to a Which? Test, Kaspersky is the best of the bunch, and at only £19 for a year, it is tempting. I normally use Norton 360 though and in this test it got the same result as the two above. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses of course, but I still have a week to decide.

Here’s another shot of rocks at Ballycastle ...


Today’s funny (sorry for the underlining, I can't get rid of it) …


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