State of Alarm - Day fifteen

In addition to domestic tasks and exercising today, I had to focus on writing and recording the bible study commentary for tomorrow. Clare did me proud by recording the scripture passages from Acts chapter eight on her phone and emailing them to me for editing in to the sound file. Her sound files were better quality than mine. Annoyingly, they were in a proprietary .3GP file format which were playable, but wouldn't load into Audacity for editing. 

Windows 10 was, as it is so often, unhelpful in resolving this. As it also was in refusing to connect to my four year old standard Samsung phone. It works a treat with any Linux device and with my ancient Chromebook, which offered a cloud based file conversion facility swiftly and effectively. It just meant transferring converted files by flash drive from Chromebook to Windows 10 which hosts the vital copy of Audacity I edit with. It was just before midnight by the time I emailed a audio file of twenty-one minutes length to Dave, and it was just inside the website's 25mb file upload limit.

Plenty of job satisfaction in hitting my deadline, with all the other daily tasks also completed. I think I shall sleep well tonight. Small signs of the infection rate slowing down in Spain, though the death rate remains high. The UK is gearing up now, preparing massive field hospitals for the flood tide of gravely sick patients which will arrive in the next two weeks. The rate of mass testing which has helped other countries grapple with covd-19 is still far too slow in being rolled out on a large scale. I don't understand why the UK government has been so slow to learn from others. Thinking we are an exception and can always afford to do things our own way could cost Britain dearly. It's yet more brexitis, sad to say.

Study day

Again I woke up early enough to see the light of the full moon shining through the shutters an hour before dawn, and then fell asleep again. After breakfast, I walked down to the Suma supermarket in La Cala de Bou to get some deodorant, and happily came away with a jar of tahini as well. It means I can make my own hummous now, with the jar of chick peas I've already started. With fresh lemon from the tree outside the front door. Wonderful!

I spent the rest of the morning and some time after lunch preparing for an early evening bible study group on Outreach in the Acts of the Apostles. Then I went for another walk and returned just before they all arrived. Seven women attended. No men. We explored scripture for an hour and then prayed for half an hour. I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did.

Afterwards, I thought I'd watch telly for a change. I haven't had time to switch it on since I've been here, there's been too many other things to do first. I got all the devices working OK, but kept on getting a 'no signal' error with no idea of how to remedy this. Whether it's a physical connectivity fault or something in the setup routine I have failed to engage with, I've no idea. No doubt someone will show me in due course.

At least I've got the computer to work, and was able to print off copies of the bible study schedule and a page of notes on Christian healing to give to the group as they left. The device is a minimalist desktop PC, linked to internet input from the huge satellite dish in the garden. It's connected to a peripherals, all of which look strange to me. They deliver signals for the telly and for the house phone, as well as internet for the computer.  It offer no temptation to tinker with. It works and does so pretty quickly, not surprisingly as the PC is a Core i7 job with 8Gb of RAM.

I work on the old Chromebook I first bought. It came back to me from Owain when I gave him a newer one. I brought this with me, rather than my newest one. It's every bit as dependable, and if it breaks or gets nicked, it's already had quite a long life for a digital device. I simply transfer files for printing on the office system via a USB stick. That suits me just fine. This is probably the most up to date office system I've used of all five of the Spanish chaplaincies I've worked in, on a par with the set up in Montreux. Generally these assets, if they work and serve their purpose, lag behind the currently accepted digital norm. Although I suppose that could all have changed in the eighteen months I have been away from locum duty. 

  

Information age issues

Yesterday morning, an email arrived saying that my verified identity documents had been received by diocese in Europe child protection officer, and that now I could complete the application on-line, through the Churches Agency for Safeguarding website, something of a change from the last time I applied five years ago. Thankfully, the process was simple and user friendly, and ended with a confirmation of reception registration number, allowing the enquiry to be tracked if needs be.

In the morning post was a set of application forms for the Church in Wales CRB check. The older paper process is still used by the Provincial child protection office. I believe the reason for this isn't that the Church is Wales lags behind in technological labour saving devices, but because the automated enquiry cannot be carried out in Welsh - something I noticed when I logged into the CAS website. A bilingual church has its own values and priorities to maintain, and this may require a different way of engaging with a necessary process.

I wrote in my Lenten blog on Sunday on clouds in scripture, and the contrast between the image of the 'cloud of unknowing' reflecting the common experience of how cloud obscures all we think we know, and the marketing image of the internet Cloud as the ultimate receptacle of information and knowledge. Such a remarkable change has occurred since I retired. The user friendliness of interactive services delivered by the internet has improved vastly, shopping, banking, video and audio entertainment, travel booking, tax payment, CRB checks increasingly 'just work'. 

Personal productivity tools which were once a necessity on everyone's PC can now be used freely from the internet, courtesy of Microsoft One Drive or Google Drive and other services providing data storage and apps. All depends upon having an internet connection and a device that can be used for access, and that's a different story to what it was a few years ago, with phones and tablets now as powerful as a desktop machine, albeit, not quite so easy as a proper sized physical keyboard. But, there are still limitations, not least confidence in the continuity of this vast and elaborate electronic construct.

While writing this my internet connection, twice as fast as when I retired, and still the cheapest offer from TalkTalk has temporarily disconnected half a dozen times, and then stalled the router altogether. Using my Chromebook on this occasion resulted in losing the final part of my text. Despite caution in copying and saving before rebooting stalled router and Chromebook, the fully saved text was nowhere to be found, and the internal SSD is certainly not full. It a clever Cloud device, but not that clever. I'm not clever for trusting it, knowing how flaky my connection can be.

Admittedly, much more is required of our channel of communication to the internet now than three years ago. Three computers, two tablets, three smartphones, the phone signal booster, and the YouView internet TV box could occasionally all be running at the same time, and their connected data streams competing to communicate with the world outside the house.

It's not long since we had only a third of that number of devices connected. That's bound to make a difference. However much basic and essential service capacity is improved, however much we benefit from them, it's likely that demand will continue to outstrip supply. If I pay extra for a faster service, what guarantee will there be of improvement, as more devices are made requiring on-line access? Connectivity limitations have consequences for all development. It will remain a political, economic and social issue until the next paradigm shift in global communication occurs.

We're being warned that technological development has bred an obsolescence in hardware and storage media which puts at risk vast amounts of early digital data because it becomes unreadable, either due to deterioration of the media, or the breakdown of irreplaceable equipment used to read it. In addition to this is the long standing issue of file format incompatibility bred by unhealthy business competitiveness between software producers. Universally readable file formats are now becoming more widespread in their acceptance, but this can still be problematic for reading historic data and documents, so there is a double risk of loss.

Written information about life in ancient times exists because of the way records were kept. Although a great deal has undoubtedly been lost over millennia, new investigative material keeps on turning up. Thanks to forensic archaeological techniques more is discovered about our past. Understood better than ever today is how vital good data about anything is. Data retention needs future proofing, so that our generation aren't dubbed the problem ancestors who, despite themselves were careless about how they kept records. Thankfully, there is growing collaboration in the effort to find long term solutions to these problems, and hopefully the historic impulse to competitiveness can be be transformed into a desire to excel for the common good, if not for the glory of God.

Desk exchange

Today, I took Clare to the Heath hospital for an appointment, and browsed for bargains in Staples while I waited for her. My working habits have changed considerably this past few years, since I began using a smartphone and equally significant, a Chromebook. More routine tasks are achievable without needing to sit at a desk nowadays. Yet, I've been thinking of acquiring a higher resolution monitor, if not an all-in-one desktop PC to support viewing and editing photographs better. Browsing didn't get me far before I was summoned collect Clare and return for lunch, but it did get me thinking.

I still write sermons at a workstation because I need to print them, but create fewer documents that need printing, as so much more of my work is now done just on-line. I have little need of a better computer workstation when my existing one, running both Linux and Vista is adequate for my purposes. A better display is one possible improvement, and now I have to admit that faster broadband has become more desirable with so many internet connected devices in the house, as many as eight at a time calling upon the services of an existing standard set-up peaking at 100mb/sec, and these days often faltering. It's a few years since I upgraded Linux Mint, so this much I decided I should do first. This time I decided to back up my Home partititon first. It took many hours, so upgrading Mint from an installation disk which I made last week from a download has to wait.

Late afternoon a courier delivered the new office desk Clare ordered for me from Amazon. It's much smaller than the existing one, and will help give my home workplace a more spacious feel. But first, how to remove the existing desk from the study? The removal men carried it upstairs in one piece and it just squeezed into place before bookshelves were erected. Since then the shape of the landing at the top of the stairs has changed with adjustments to floor levels and a new corner linen cupboard. What went in won't come out in one piece.

I manhandled it out of the room, and was able to detach the very heavy desktop, but there wasn't enough room to manouvre the base, because of its size. So, reluctantly, sadly I had to cut it into manageably sized pieces to get it down the stairs. This desk is probably as old as I am constructed strongly enough to serve as an emergency air raid shelter, and last several lifetimes. Such a pity for it to come to such an end, but what else could I do, knowing we have no space to store it even for the few days it would take to find someone to take it away and re-use it. The remains will go to the tip tomorrow.

Then, with much loving support and organisational aid from Clare, I built the replacement desk from the flat pack kit. After four hours of physical labour altogether, I was satisfyingly tired. It is indeed tiny and flimsy in comparison to the old desk, and has half the amount of storage, so work has to be done on re-arranging office contents tomorrow.

Owain expressed shock and regret when I told him about the demise of the desk, protesting that it was a sort of family heirloom, as it had been among our domestic goods and chattels since before he was alive. For most of its time with us since it was originally bought second hand, it helped fill space in Vicarage offices with far larger rooms than any we now have. Sometimes, such desks stay where they are housed. At one time, both Clare and I had such large desks. Now both are gone. All part of the task of down-sizing as you get older. One day, I'm sure Owain will understand, and be grateful this wasn't a furniture headache he inherited.
   

Conferencing in London

Tuesday morning I visited the NHS dentist with whom I am newly registered for a first check-up. Apart from a few minor repairs and the need for a crown on one of my vintage fillings, my teeth are thankfully in fairly decent shape. I now have a couple of appointment for the course of treatment, when I return from Spain.

I went into the office for the afternoon, and after my weekly Chi Gung class headed for London on a late train to attend a Business Crime reduction Partnership conference. I stayed overnight with my sister June, arriving there at nearly midnight, to find the automatic door opening mechanism, repaired that very day was not functioning, due to a mechanical fault caused by installing a new lock. The building management agents are hopelessly inefficient. I wonder how long an effective repair will take?

The Wednesday conference was held at the Hippodrome Casino in Leicester Square, a century old building that started life as a permanent indoor circus, and later became used as a music hall, a theatre and even a night club. It has been renovated and adapted for its new use, restoring lots of its original decorative features. During one of the breaks one of the business partners in the venture chatted to us with enthusiasm about its building in 1900 and its subsequent history. It's one of several fine Edwardian theatres by architect Frank Matcham, a very strictly run gaming house open to the public as long as they behave themselves properly.

Our conference was excellent in that the failures and problems as well as the successes of Partnership working were discussed. It became clear to us that the difficulties Cardiff B.C.R.P. has striven to overcome in the past five years are far from unique. We had a meeting after the meeting with the Operational Director of the Association of Business Crime Partnerships, who was very helpful in his analysis of our situation and in giving us valuable advice. 

I got back to my sister's place at seven. We had supper, then I introduced her to the Samsung Chromebook I'd brought with me for her to try out. It wasn't a success, as the track-pad was too sensitive to control properly for stiff old fingers, and the font size too small for easy reading. She very much liked the ease of access to iPlayer, YouTube and GMail, albeit recent interface changes to GMail make this much less easy to use than the old form she'd gotten used to. It's a nice light machine, but it's clearly not older non technical user friendly. I could see myself on the phone for hours talking her through getting used to it and getting only exasperation as the outcome. So I decided not to leave it with her, and reconfigured it for my own use before packing it for the return journey.

I left London on the train late this morning, and completed my sermon for Sunday en route, using the Asus Transformer which I'd also brought with me, and its Polaris Office suite, for a change. What it can do is quite good, but I still prefer the proper desktop user interface I'm accustomed to, than any interface designed primarily for touch screen users. I don't care if this means I'm stuck in the past. Maintaining productivity is what matters.

Before going home I went into the office for a couple of hours, and as Clare was poorly, went out on my own for my last Tai Chi session until December.

Down with the shed. Enter the Chromebook

Finally, it was time to take down our garden bike shed, in preparation for the arrival of one larger shed to hold the bikes, mower and gardening tools. After a late breakfast I set to, with same power screwdriver I used to erect it three and a half years ago, I carefully dismantled it, and Clare bagged up the screws and labelled the components. It's due to go to the Steiner school playground for another life as an equipment store. Apart from one panel water damaged because rainwater accumulated at that corner of its concrete base, it's still in remarkably good condition, with a good number of years of life left in it. The little tool shed is quite ruinous, but it has been there since we bought the house twenty years ago, so it's hardly surprising.

 

It only took us an hour, then we both returned to preparing things - lesson plans for Clare and two funeral services for me. It was four by the time we left the house for a walk into town and then a bus down to the Millennium Centre to book tickets for a show at half term when Rhiannon comes to stay. We decided to catch the bus back to the centre for a cup of tea at John Lewis', open until six for refreshments and seven for purchases. I had my usual nose around in the electronics department and came away with a Samsung Chromebook at  nearly twenty percent discount. My sister June has been saying for some time that she'd like a small light computer she can use on her lap, to look things up when she's watching TV (as I and many others do these days), so I thought I'd buy one and set it up with her account details for a try-out.

I spent an hour after supper before my weekly episode of 'Young Montalbano' familiarising myself with the machine and configuring it with June's favourites. Then, when I deliver it, the only thing remaining to do will be to upload all her data to Google Drive, and show her how to use it.  I wonder how easily she'll adjust to the change of habitual usage?

I found the Samsung a pleasure to use: good keyboard, bright sharp easy to read screen, quick to start up, not to mention long battery life. Thinking of what my sister uses a computer for - browsing, emails, the occasional document and photo management - it's adequate for her needs, and easier to live with than any Windows operating system with its endless notifications, and different ways of achieving the same task. I'd find its narrow simplicity constraining if it was my only computer, but as several computer journalists have observed in the last year, it's possible to work on it for days at a time before you need to use a tool or a program that is more powerful or versatile.