Rain all night and rain for much of the day with the occasional respite. The latest big storm the sweep the UK is now reaching South East Wales. A good night's sleep nevertheless. As I got up at eight thirty, a government cabinet re-shuffle began with the sacking of Sue Braverman, as I predicted, following her succession of outrageous remarks recently. David Cameron has returned to politics as Foreign Secretary, having accepted a place in the House of Lords, the first time for this to happen in fifty years, and there are many other personnel changes as well due to resignations rather than sackings.
After breakfast I did my share of the routine housework then emailed recipients of readings for next Sunday, prepared yesterday and made a few minor edits to the next issue of Sway. Next, I made this week's Morning Prayer slideshow video and uploaded it to YouTube. I decided to check if I could also do the job with MS Photos Legacy on my desktop workstation, as there are still a few discrepancies between the apps installed on each device. It seems that I never installed Photos Legacy on my workstation. Once I did, I couldn't get it to work as it should. I keep getting Clipchamp instead, which doesn't do the same task with photos as it will with videos. Ridiculous.
Clare cooked monkfish fillets for lunch and I prepared sprouts and leeks to go with them. The fish was disappointing, very bony and not much of it. I suspect these were the tail end of the fish. Not the best part. To my surprise, I fell asleep in the chair after lunch. On waking, I decided to investigate what alternatives I could find for exactly the same job as Photos Legacy, and discovered a Cloud based app called 'Canva', which worked using my Chromebook.
Although the layout was different, after a short session of trial and error finding my way around I was able to upload pictures and audio to create the same kind of slideshow with 'Canva' as I can with Photos Legacy. I means I have an alternative to fall back on if a Windows 11 update decides to delete, or change Photos Legacy in a way that makes it no longer fit for purpose. There are dozens of complaints about Microsoft updates rendering existing software useless. These big tech' giants love to tell us what we want or how we should be working.
Then Owain rang, pleased with the acquisition of a Google Pixel 7 on a monthly contract, and a new solid oak second hand chest of drawers for his flat. I look forward to seeing both in due course. It was half past four by the time I left the house for a walk, the rain had stopped and promised not to return for another hour. It was dusk by the time the wind and rain picked up again. Despite having my umbrella with me, my feet and legs were soaked through by the time I reached home at six.
Clare made a delicious cream of celeriac soup for supper, enhanced with a spoonful of miso which was well past its use by date and dried up, but with effort, it dissolved into the soup to give give it added flavour. A nice wintry evening dish.
I spent the evening troubleshooting. In order to Photos Legacy installed on my workstation to run, I had to find out how to make it the default app instead of Clipchamp. It wasn't as straightforward as it should be. It was also necessary to copy to the Cloud the special collection of downloaded photos I've compiled for use in making video slideshows. Now, it all works fine, enabling me to work in the same way on both devices.
Then I realised that the image found and adapted yesterday for the banner headline of this week's Sway, honouring Saint Cecilia I had incorrectly dated, and had to re-edit this from scratch. A very fiddly job. Then, an invoice document to correct for Iona to send to the diocesan finance office to remunerate me for the work on Sway. This too is part of the cost of running two vacancies, like locum fees for services, given that clergy have hitherto made publicity and information sharing part of their regular work. I don't think the work of a full time parish priest is ever valued and rewarded as that of a secular professional. But when a priest or lay person is appointed to an expert role in a diocese, their salaries are higher. No wonder morale is low when there are fewer clergy and more expert specialists on the payroll.
Hospitals in Gaza are getting to the stake where they can no longer treat patients as they are in areas under attack. The Israeli military claim to have instigated humanitarian pauses in the fighting, and safe passage corridors for evacuation of patients and others sheltering in hospital precincts, but fear of being shot or bombed in such conditions means that few are willing to take the risk of leaving, even though staying where they are is equally unsafe. The more fighting drags on, the more I suspect the Israelis will be unsure of when it will be safe to stop the assault. It's having repercussions for Jewish people all over the world, subjected to antisemitic attacks, even though Natanyahu's government is not their fault and there's nothing they can do to influence his action. It couldn't be worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment