Picasa revisited

Having woken up and breakfasted at the usual time, I spent the morning receiving and sending messages, some of them to do with setting up communication channels for Sway information. Then I cooked a lunch of sardines and veg, rather hastily, as my concentration was elsewhere, but it turned out all right, if late. They were really tasty. It made me miss Spain.

During the morning, I printed off Sunday's sermon, and then decided to hunt for an an installation file for the desktop version of Picasa to run on my desktop. It's a digital antique but contains some useful features absent from the phased out web version and its successor Google Photos. It took me a while to find it on an archive hard drives. Installation didn't take long, but it took even longer, half a day in fact, for it to scan my OneDrive account to collect thousands of linked thumbnails of every graphic file it contained. A useful tool, worth having as a stand alone graphic editor and file manager.

I went for a walk after lunch. I took my Sony Alpha 68 and made some progress in understanding how to get good results from a 50mm prime lens. I took a decent photo of a butterfly I've not seen before and have yet to identify. Funny how I've come across several different butterflies this week alone, more than during the rest of the summer.

After supper, hunting for something new to watch I came across 'Lolita Lobosco', an Italian crimmie about a detective Superintendent who returns to her beautiful native port city of Bari in Puglia after working up north for decades. She had grown up in the heart of the urban village at the heart of the city, so there are flashbacks that help to explain her as a person. I enjoyed hearing the Italian spoke clear and found I could understand most of it, thanks to similarities with Spanish.

The crime story line is worthy of Montalbano, but it's set in what is in effect a family comedy with superb dialogue and a deep dive into social and domestic customs. I've not ever laughed as much at a crimmie. It rang true for a boy who grew up in a village. Delightful to watch. Refreshing. A great treat for the weekend.