Off-line working, old time style

I had a call this morning about a funeral in ten days time. The next of kin had to fly over from Ireland to make the arrangements as the deceased spouse was in a hospice over here. She was due to arrive at Pidgeon's office at one, so I arranged to go and introduce myself and discuss the service. It would be unthinkable to my mind, just to turn up at the crem with only a brief telephone contact beforehand. As most of the family are Irish Catholic and a few left over here indeterminate Protestant, I was glad to be able to brief them face to face.

On my afternoon walk the much warned of change in the weather started as the sun was going down, a clear blue sky slowly filled with clouds from the west. High winds and rain were expected, but there was no sign of that up to bed-time.

I occupied myself with more negative film scanning. I'm impressed by how stable my Windows Vista machine is, working with the scanner, permanently off-line these days because it doesn't need to be on-line with its outdated insecure browsers and antivirus. It boots into a functional state quicker than any comparable modern machine because it doesn't have to attach to the network, do security scans or software updates. It's still a useful working tool because it does what I need it to do without fail. Isn't that what tools are supposed to be?

 two more packs of photos from Monaco days, and reminders of just how many family and friends came to stay with us while we were there despite the dark days of conflict and rejection I endured in the last three months. The pain of that experience has long dissipated and I look at the photos with measure of detachment. I'd forgotten just how many photographs, film and digital, I took in those days. I guess I was comparatively well paid there and so able to afford to buy film and get it developed. 

Digital photography changed everything for me, even though initial investment in fast evolving cameras was expensive. I used an Olympus Trip travel camera in those days, and it gave excellent results. Digitally scanned negatives are superior in quality to the digital photos I took in those early days,  once they have been edited. I can see why there has been a resurgence of interest in old film cameras and photography. It may be more expensive than it ever used to be, but in some conditions the quality of digitised film delivers desirable results worth the expense and effort.