Hope for America declared at last

The weather was bright to start with today, but deteriorated later, so I pottered around this morning, chatted with Ashley on the phone for an hour, then cooked lunch before going out to post a few more cards and then for a walk. It was almost dark by the time I got back. The tall tree at the entrance to our side street has been decorated for the festal season with huge pom-poms made by some of the kids from shredded plastic bags, strings of fake lanterns - I don't think they meant to glow, plus a string of white lights which do light up, spiralled around the tree. I saw them lit up for the first time this evening. 

Several houses in the street have decorated their front garden fences with lights, and curtains are being left open to reveal Christmas trees within. I think more people are making an effort this year, not just as a cheer-up measure, but because they may not be able to travel away to be with family at Christmas. Even though relaxed restrictions are meant to come into force in a week's time, concern is rising about the wisdom of this, given the rapid rise in cases in the South East, and in Wales, experiencing now what the North went through a couple of months back. Present restrictions may end up not being relaxed at all.

Last night Joe Biden was formally declared to be the next US President by state by state appointed members of an Electoral College. This will be confirmed by Congress in the run-up to the Inauguration in January. Trump has refused to concede that he has lost, many Republicans are silent or voice agreement with him, but some have acknowledged that his election was free, un-corrupt and fair. Trump's last ditch attempt to subvert the democratic process will be to produce his own alternative panel of state appointees, to declare him the winner, and insist that Congress examine his claim, although his lawyers have produced no concrete evident in support of his claims. 

In his last month as President he has approved the execution of several prisoners on death row for years, and plans to issue pardons for himself and some of his cronies. He has behaved consistently as a fantasizing megalomaniac ignoring deadly reality, fomenting racial and social divisions, denying climate change and America has suffered grievously as a result The fact that he now denies his decisive rejection by the majority of voters, poses serious questions about his mental health. Will he use an insanity plea in future to evade the long arm of the law when he's faced with a series of indictments, I wonder?  So glad he's going, even if the lame duck is acting strangely and savagely. The world will be a safer place with a practicing Catholic in the White House, with a record as a reconciler, and a declared re-unifying agenda.

After supper I continued preparing texts for Morning Prayer in the days before Christmas completing one started yesterday but interrupted by the Google server outage, then completing another, and saving a copy of the three done so far on the SD card attached to my Chromebook, so it can be taken away and edited in a standalone device if needs be. Better safe than sorry from now on. 

Tech reports today indicate the Google outage lasted only fifty minutes, although there have been knock-on effects in latency of function with some apps. My sister June was complaining about typing and words being slow to appear. Not an uncommon phenomenon in my experience, with Windows updates and scans usually seeming to hinder normal functioning, either because the background process hogs bandwidth, or processing power is consumed by security scans on the device. Grand scale server outages also part of the Google ecosystem too, if less frequently than Microsoft, and yesterday's outage was a prime example of this nerve wracking failure. 

Losing a grip on contagion

This morning I worked on the second of the four offices of Morning Prayer that I have to prepare for the week before Christmas. I'd just completed it at half past eleven when my Chromebook froze on me. Both Google Docs and Drive were inaccessible. I had no idea whether it was a fault in the device or on-line, but soon enough my newsfeed was reporting a global Google services outage, which made the afternoon news broadcasts, but by that time it had been fixed and I was able to access the document in question and it was undamaged, just as it had been when I finished it.

On reflection I thought how foolish it was to rely so heavily on Cloud storage. No matter how good and generally glitch free it can be, the bottom line is that I'm not in full control of my own work. All that's needed is to start a document and save it to the memory of the device itself or better still to its SD card extension, as the card can be removed and used on another device instead. I must change working habits to this effect, as it would be possible to work on a document stored on the device, even when off-line, even given the high web dependency of a Chromebook.

Yesterday evening before settling down to watch telly, I finally got around to putting cards and letters in the envelopes labelled last week to finish the job. After lunch I took them to Canton Post Office. Outside eight people were queuing. The prospect of a long wait to be served pushed me to walk half a mile up the road to Victoria Park Post Office, where only four people were queuing. I bought stamps for the fifty odd cards I had to send, five to Switzerland and forty five to UK addresses, but had to put the stamps on the envelopes outside as there was no room to do this inside. 

I used the top of a telephone relay cabinet next to the building as a work surface, and popped them in the posting box in batches as I proceeded, grateful that it was dry and not windy. By the time I'd finished, the queue outside had eight people waiting, and when I walked back past Canton Post Office fifteen people were waiting. I was lucky to have gone out before most people had finished their lunch.

Now there's the digital greetings to do, and a cross-checking interrogation from Clare to ensure that I have registered this year's changes of address. There are always a few.

Then, a quick visit to Tesco's for some wine, and after taking it home, as circuit of the park past the crab apple trees, as Clare reported that apples were beginning to fall from the tree which hadn't been stripped bare. I took my Reacher device along to help me grab hold of branches and pull them down to get at high level fruit. It wasn't that good, but I did gather about 250 grams worth, so now we have 400 grams to  turn into jelly and puree. And now I feel stiff all over from all the athletic effort of stretching up to grab branches. I hate being old.

More surges in infection rates locally and particularly in the South East of England, and probably easing of restrictions over Christmas may get cut back nationally as the heath services are already getting over-stretched in a worrying way. Early closure of schools and reverting to on-line learning is being ordered in England, and was already put in place in Wales last week. Would that schooling was better geared up to this change, and that everyone had equal access to digital equipment and service provision, but they don't. 

The country is not being well served by reactive policies. Our leaders are quite nervous about imposing proactive stricter measures for fear of push-back from the public. No measures are really adequate to address the complexity of the problems we're facing right now. This is a long a steep learning curve for people at every level of society, leaders and the led.

 

A fruitful day in several ways

Clare went off to the gym before I got up. My first task after breakfast this morning was to process and edit yesterday's videos, upload them to my Google Drive and send a link to Anna. Then, I found a link to my Sarajevo photos and sent it to Daniel when I arranged to meet him, Thursday this week. I started cooking lunch early and it was nearly ready by the time Clare returned. Afterwards I did the week's main grocery shopping, then we went out for a walk together.

Taking my usual route, I showed Clare where I'd collected the crab apples for making two lots of jelly. The higher fruit on the two trees still hasn't fallen. I found a long stick and with it we were able to hook and bring down some higher branches heavily laden and pick their fruit. We returned home with another load of nearly three pounds weight to clean and cook. We hadn't intended do this when we went out. Somehow we just spurred each other into action. The cooked fruit mash is hung in a straining bag overnight. I think the crab apples picked have produced about a litre of juice. Jelly making tomorrow.

An interesting new detective series started on BBC Two this evening, called 'Vienna Blood'. It's set in 1906, the era when Sigmund Freud was teaching in Vienna and publishing his work. A young medical student does a placement with a detective working on a murder case, and using what he has learned from Dr Freud's lectures starts to develop profiles on both the victim and the murderer. This is the birth of forensic psychiatry. Is this really how it happened, I wonder? It well portrays the open anti-semitism of the city in that era, and the frightful way in which mentally sick people were dealt with, including  ECT therapy trending in those days. A three parter, based on novel I understand.

Pentecost fruit

Up bright and early, getting on with video processing and uploading to Google Drive. I don't know why, but several uploads failed, and they weren't big files. The network connection went down, and I had to restart the router and everything attached to it to restore functionality. The same happened last night, while we were watching Montalbano on iPlayer. The Talk Talk Freeview box,called YouView just crashed. It's the second time recently. Diagnosing this lost us time and was in part the reason why we went to bed quite so late. Is it a random hardware glitch, or a mini dropout on the part of the server, or a power spike, I wonder? Not sure I know how to diagnose this. One more time and I'll get TalkTalk on the case, as it could be the router needs replacement. 

Anyway, the uploading job was done by quarter to ten, and I was able to go off to St Catherine's to celebrate the Pentecost Parish Eucharist without unfinished business. There were forty five adults and fifteen children in church. The atmosphere was rather subdued and unenthusiastic for such a great feast, despite giving it my best efforts. I was quite tired by the time we got home afterwards and siesta'd for over two hours before going for a walk around Pontcanna Fields. A couple of late nights and early starts really has an impact on how I feel and wound comfort, strange to say. We are indeed 'fearfully and wonderfully made'.

Disappointingly, Clare picked only a handful of black currants from our garden bush, which as new and a bit more fruitful last year. We get loads of bees pollinating so why this has happened is not at all obvious. Maybe it lost flowers when vulnerable to cold and wind? Maybe it was lack of nutrients in the soil? Who knows? She cooked the new with an apple to make a mini pie filling or a pudding on its own. Will Kath's blackcurrent bush in Kenilworth will be fruitful enough to make a few pots of jam from this year as previously, I wonder? None of them up there like blackcurrant jam, but fruit from the bush Kath turns into excellent jam, and keeps as a special gift for Dad. What a kind and lovely daughter!

  

A summer concert and a couple of weighty matters

I last used Windows Movie Maker a year ago, so I had to re-acquire from the depths of my memory the ability to use it. There may be better, cleverer and more up to date programs out there. This one dates back to Windows 7, but still works and is available to download, so I have it installed on my desktop Windows 10 workstation. As my use is so occasional, it's not worth getting acquainted with anything else, given my limited needs. It's a waste of time. Once I got back into gear with it, a batch of ten short videos to process took the morning to complete and upload. Alan had asked if I could use Dropbox. I opened an account last year, but had little need to use it. Google Drive serves most of my limited needs. In fact, the free 2GB upload limit wasn't enough to complete the job, so I had to open a second account with a different email address, for the remainder. Once these have all been accessed and downloaded by Alan, I can remove the files. They'll be kept on a USB drive for future reference.

In the evening Clare had a lift to Insole Court, the performance venue to prepare the concert with the other choir members. It was a pleasant summer evening, so walked there. This time, there was room to mount the Song HX300 on a tripod, so filming was easier and better quality. I think the sound was OK, but no doubt the critical ears of choir director Anna will have something to say about that! The concert presented an international mix of little known madrigals English, Welsh, Italian, German, Macedonian and Hungarian, challenging to sing, as I well know from listening to Clare learn words and music over the past few months.

I was press-ganged into taking ticket money at the door. There was an audience of twenty in a room which held double that amount, in the beautifully restored out-buildings of the main Insole Court mansion. How the place has changed since Rachel's wedding reception was held here 13 years ago. It was quite run down in those days, but a group of local community activists campaigned to bring it back from the brink, and everybody now benefits. 

Uploading this batch of video clips to YouTube for Anna will have to wait until tomorrow. We got back after Inspector Montalbano had started, and thanks to BBC iPlayer we were able to watch it from the start. It was late when we went to bed, but it was worth staying up for. It was a complex tale with unusual twists and surprises, full of beauty and sadness - the second time I've used that phrase this week. The episode included a delightful portrayal of Vigata's Festa di San Giorgio procession through the streets with a Spanish style trona, for the saint's image, carried by a crew of white shirted guys, who bore it on high at arms length, rather than shouldering it. That's how light it was. Or else a dramatic fictional conceit. In Spain tronas are so heavy that if they are lifted up on high it's possible only for a matter of minutes.

To add insult to injury,  the episode included the funeral of Pasquano, the irascible overweight cake eating crime scene pathologist. Four bearers handled his coffin, as if it was empty. For a corpse of his size and weight six bearers are needed, and have to shoulder and carry with care, as I have often seen, to avoid a dropping disaster or injury. It was bad acting, in the absence of borrowing a few redundant cemetery kerbstones, to give weight and authenticity to the fictional proceedings. 

   

The risk of over depending on the Cloud

It rained all day today, so I couldn't get out for a walk and didn't much feel like it anyway, as my affliction was more painful and energy sapping than usual. I spent some time writing, and backing up data from my newer Windows 10 laptop, to prepare for a Linux Mint installation and making it into a dual booting device. I am so fed up with the the length of time it takes to reach a browser or a word processor page I want to work on, often between three and five minutes. In spite of keeping it fully updated, this continues to be the case. 

The laptop's UEFI firmware makes Linux installation a bit tricky. If this fails, I have the option to get rid of Windows 10 altogether. I have a Windows 10 desktop PC, for guests to use, or if I need to run a one of the few proprietary Windows only programs I use occasionally. For the most part, apps I need are part of Linux and accessible so much quicker. Also Linux on a PC isn't at all reliant on Cloud data storage, unless you want it to be. Sure you can set up a Windows 10 account which doesn't rely on OneDrive storage, but device registration and essential information from it are still extracted and stored on line, and not always used in ways that are easy to determine or control. 

Whilst the Cloud is a useful resource, this is the price to be paid for having your data accessible on all kinds of devices. It risks taking too exclusive a hold on my information and workflow, Windows 10 relies on a decent internet connection to work as designed, and this slows things down, to my mind. Ever since local data storage became affordable, I've kept backups to hand. It was insurance against unreliable PCs in the old days. The more reliable Cloud storage is however, the more risk there is of losing the discipline to back things up. Then, if the worst happens - total loss of internet, Cloud storage access catastrophe, ransomware etc., you lose out, especially on recent stuff you've been working on, often things you most need.

Chromebooks are even more dependent on internet access, leaving you quite limited in what can be done off-line. It is however far quicker and less insecure than any Windows set up. I'll be better off with Linux, as I can control where and how I store the data I use, and maintaining backup habits that don't rely on the Cloud. It's a matter of getting around to tackling the installation procedure I've been rehearsing and putting off for some time. 

Limits to Cloud confidence

This morning I wrote my Sunday sermon, tidied my office, and shredded some old documents. There are more to do, which no longer have relevance, as they are so old and not really interesting to anyone any longer. On a suggestion from Clare, I also started compiling a list of vital personal information on my digital life, and finances for others to use when I'm incapacitated or dead. Half way through, writing up this on my Chromebook, it occurred to me that, no matter how good Google Cloud security is, a digital document can still be found read by others, unless encrypted. The chances of this may be very remote, but there can be no such thing as 100% certain security, ever. Yet here was I, at the drafting stage, working on a computer with on-line storage, which, if my password was stolen could be found by someone else and my digital secrets hijacked. Not a good idea. 

I transferred to file to an external flash drive, then double deleted it from the Chromebook  system. When I went later to examine the file on an off-line computer, the data consisted only of information to connect to the deleted Cloud stored file. Caught out! Data lost. If only I'd first created a file on an off-line computer coupled to an external flash drive, this wouldn't have happened. Almost everything I do on computers I am prepared to entrust to secure on-line storage, except the digital keys to access it all. Putting everything on one piece of paper is the eventual answer, and making sure this is kept in a safe place to be found only on a need to know basis. Now I'll need to start again, though not today.

This afternoon I needed to go into the office again for a final planning session with Ashley before leaving for Spain. On the way there, I remembered I needed to buy some 'cargo shorts' and a dark short sleeved shirt. On impulse, I turned into the Edinbugh Woollen Mills shop on Working Street, and within minutes bought exactly what I needed. I don't much like shopping, as so often it involves agonising over an excessive variety of choices, so this was a fortunate impulse which saved me time and effort.  

The big switch-over

Tuesday, more time in the office working on the inventory database for all our new equipment, now being readies for issue over the coming weekend. Our long term equipment replacement plan has been in place for a couple of years, and it's been beneficial to us, as a not for profit enterprise that the expected 4-5 year lifespan of our radio handsets has been extended, thanks to many careful users, to seven years. The government, however, has reassigned our operating frequencies to the roll-out of smart metering, and given us replacement frequencies, so our oldest radios turn into useless scrap when the original transmitter switches over to a new one, soon to be installed. 

Fortunately, our unused stocks and newer ones issued can work on different frequencies, and this has reduced significantly the acquisition of extra replacements needed. Organising the switch-over is something we've been preparing for a long time, and thanks to good housekeeping it won't cause us a financial crisis either. The challenge will be co-ordinating the front line volunteers to get the job done without interrupting the use of the network. My small part in all this is simply keeping track of equipment stocks as they arrive and are processed, and there can be 6-7 components to unite  and register before each handset, fully charged, ready for action, is fit to issue. In an office workspace temporarily inundated with hundreds of items of packaging of different sizes, this is something of a nightmare, and quite stressful. I certainly was glad of a Chi Gung session in the evening.

Same again Wednesday, except that I went into the office early by car, before going to St German's for the midweek 'class Mass', to retrieve and replace some handsets left on charge overnight, and log them into the inventory database. After church I returned to the office and spent the next eleven hours charging and logging radios, not sure how long any of this would take, given that very few arrived fully charged and most were two thirds empty. On average, high capacity long life batteries of the kind we use take around three hours to charge. We were running eighteen chargers at a time, and by the time I left two thirds of those to be issued were charged and recorded.

Today, Gary, one of our Board members joined Julie, Ashley and I, completing the detail task of assembling all the replacement equipment for issue. In the afternoon, Gary drove Ashley around the city centre issuing equipment, instructing and making test transmissions. Thus, the great switch over began! After lunch, I had an engagement to speak to the St Augustine's Mothers' Union group in Penarth, which took me away from the action for a couple of hours. There were thirty people there, including a couple of men who are members, and during the meeting the new Vicar Fr Mark was also admitted as a branch member. Sadly I didn't get to meet him apart from an introductory handshake as he left the meeting almost as soon as I'd finished. I hope that doesn't mean I went on for too long.

Back in the office, Julie had continued the work of inventory data building in my absence, only to discover, after several hours of intermittent additions, that nothing new was being saved to the OneDrive account. She'd opened the file direct from the cloud account and it appeared to behave normally. She thought she'd saved in the routine manner when closing the program, but the time displayed in the browser version of OneDrive, was four hours earlier. The browser version is usually more reliable than the version sync'd from the computer's hard drive, which not infrequently takes time to update, even on the fastest machine in the office. 

This is not the first time we've had this kind of issue with OneDrive. I now need to do some hard thinking about an alternative. Once upon a time we used Google Drive, although its quirky dealing with documents is not an easy thing for lifelog MS Word or Excel users to get used to. But, I guess there'd be no harm in using it for uploading critical data files for storage only. I'd just need to test this out for reliability and ease of access before inflicting the change on other users. Just the sort of additional hassle we didn't need right now. By the time I got home, late for supper again, I was drained and exhausted. All this, and preparing for the Danube Cruise makes me feel my age.

But nobody can say my life is dull, can they?

   

Unhappy meal

This bank holiday Monday morning, I walked into town, as the crowds slowly began to drive in and queue for city centre shopping car parks. I needed to visit the office to retrieve a file which was meant to sync to OneDrive, but once more failed to. Microsoft puts more effort into driving people to rely on cloud based storage without being able to provide necessary total reliability. For years I carried all I needed to work on around with me on a flash drive. I've rather got out of the habit this past year, but the inconsistency of syncing operations on OneDrive, on which we rely so heavily for work, are causing me to re-think. Oddly enough, Google Drive never seems to present any problems, although it's helpful or otherwise insistence of converting everything in and out of Gdrive format for editing and sharing is rather annoying when all you want to do is work with your chosen tools in your own work setting in your own way.

Once in the office, I got drawn into entering data on recent acquisitions into our newest database, and testing a barcode scanning application that I'm hoping will ease the task at little cost. Then before I knw it, Clare was calling, wondering when I'd be back for lunch. Hours slip by very quickly in the fact of a pile of detail to be attended to.

After lunch we drove to Bristol to see Amanda and James. Her new wifi printer has failed to work since the batch of replacement inks purchased with the equipment are not recognised as present by the machine. The inks are genuine enough, but it's as if the sensor meant to recognise them isn't working. It's going to be difficult getting this sorted, as they don't have the means to get to the nearest branch of PC World to sort it out. Frustrating and very disappointing.

As we were approaching the Seven Bridge on the drive home, I suddenly noticed that the car engine was overheating, and stopped underneath the junction with the M49 to see what was wrong. I wasn't yet another leak, but apparently no fluid was passing through the radiator, suggesting either a blockage or a radiator thermostat stuck in the shut position - probably a legacy of using radiator sealant compound to cope with previous leak problems which eventually turned into a head gasket rupture. Once the engine had cooled enough, we drove over the bridge to Magor services, and called Green Flag services for help. In an hour a mechanic arrived from Abergavenny, confirming my tentative diagnosis. Then we had another hour to wait for a tow truck collect us, arriving from Stroud, on the way home to Newport,. 

We'd promised ourselves fish and chips for supper, for a change, and the only resemblance to this to be found was a McDonald's 'Happy Meal' from the one fast food outlet still open late in the service area. A little bag of over salted dry stick-like frites and another bag containing three fish fingers. Another bag contained a couple of plastic kids toys. The frites would have make a Belgian lose the will to live. Why on earth? A children's meal was the only way it was possible to obtain a few small pieces of fish. The plastic toys pulled apart into to sections, one of which was the right size for a small child to get in its mouth, swallow and choke on. Incredible! It has to rate as one of the worst and most ill conceived meals I've ever had. It may even have been the first time I've ever eaten McDonald's style and it'll certainly be the last. Next time I'll go hungry.

By just after eleven we were home safely, enjoying a little cheese and a glass of wine before bed. It's rather strange to think that on my third journey to and from Bristol in a row there have been problems with the car's cooling system. Last week we went to Monmouth without any cause for concern, plus trips around down in traffic. Let's hope that this'll be the last occurrence, or else it'll be time to say goodbye to our beloved ancient Golf.

I drove the car across town to N.G. Motors our VW service garage in Splott this morning, hoping that the car wouldn't overheat on the way. Almost every traffic light was red, so I switched off the engine while I waited. It was just up to normal temperature by the time I arrived and handed it over. Then a walk into town, during which I discovered that the Lidl store on Tyndall street which offers a handy place to shop on my way back, has been demolished, and the adjacent land cleared for new buildings, one of which will be a new improved Lidl, to open by the end of this year. I wonder what the neighbouring buildings on the site will be?
   

Cloud woes again

After preparing a sermon for Sunday and working on an office document at home, I went into town mid afternoon for a short spell this afternoon, but it turned into a longer spell than intended, as we realised that Julie's HP All in one PC 'admin central' hadn't synced with MS OneDrive for the past three weeks. It's now the third time this has happened since the the machine was upgraded from Windows 7 to 10 at the end of September last. We discovered this because Julie couldn't find some template documents I had prepared at home a few weeks ago. They were there in the Cloud, but not on her machine as they should have been.

As Julie's worked almost exclusively on issuing invoices in the past three weeks, all I had to do was copy the missing files to a flash drive, and upload them to OneDrive form another machine, then Julie could continue working uninterrupted. For me, it gave an impressive reminder of how productive she's been recently. I completed the missing template task after Julie had finished work for the day and didn't get home until well after eight.

Thank goodness we haven't given up using a network drive and flash drive to back up all that we also keep into the Cloud. Frankly, I wonder if this new way of working is ever going to be quite as good as office back up hardware system under our exclusive control. Mobile computing is great for anyone who works at different locations. In our outfit, I'm the only one that does. Before Windows 10 and OneDrive file system sync by default, we kept files in the Cloud, accessed them from a browser, and/or emailed documents being worked on, admittedly struggling some times to maintain version control. Moving from there to the new status quo seems not a big step, but three sync breakdowns in six months without an obvious reason, using reliable hardware and internet services is ominous.

Trouble shooting to find out exactly how the sync mechanism aborts could take a long time, and might not be possible in the limited hours I have available to spend in the office from Monday to Wednesday, to do the job while she's not at work. Julie's machine's been in use two years and four months. It was solidly reliable syncing to OneDrive under Windows 7, but now no longer. It's the one machine which does need to be completely reliably up to date in every respect.

It's time to get a new PC and set it up, make sure it syncs correctly, before next Thursday so as not to interrupt Julie's workflow. Then, if syncing proves unreliable on an all-new machine, we simply revert to the way we used to do things, restrict our file system to office hardware, and back up to the Cloud just once a week. And maybe ditch OneDrive for Google Drive storage. It's not slick and perfectly safe, but better controllable and safe than sorry.

Our company accountant works on what seems to me like an insanely fast depreciation rate for office electronic equipment, and regularly expects us to include a sum for replacements in our annual budget. So far I've avoided replacing equipment unless its really dead. Older kit has not necessarily proved to be much slower in action for normal office tasks, thanks to our increased use of on-line resources and a faster office internet connection. As with one's car, reliability is the most decisive criterion, not glitz or speed.
      

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.

Study makeover

My study is full of stuff, kinda organised but never totally tidy, a work in progress ever since I retired. There's never been enough time or energy to spare for proper review. Clare has been more conscious of its shortcomings than I have, and has diplomatically suggested improvements over the past four years, but without chagrin whenever events have diverted the course of action elsewhere. In fact, the only 'improvement' since I moved in, four and three quarter years ago, was the acquirement of a decent adjustable height office chair last year.

Maybe spending so much time away from 'mission control' over the past year, and having less to do over the holiday season led to a longer than usual conversation about 'doing something' to improve the study as a work environment. As a result, yesterday I did some tricky furniture shifting in a narrow space, to re-locate a book case into a space where it didn't fit flush to the wall, but at least the difference this made was reason to be persuaded by Clare to go the next stop.

Today, working slowly and carefully together, we tackled the challenge of reducing the height of the bookcase by 5cm. This involved removing all the books to the spare room, wielding a saw in quite a narrow space, plus some inaccurately aligned hole drilling to get the bolts to fit the structure together again. 

Getting everything back in place once this was completed resulted in a tidier and more manageable arrangement of computer workstation cables.  I've now re-arranged some of the bookshelves to allow easy access to stuff used most requently, and banished archive file, never accessed from prominence to obscurity where they properly belong, until needed if ever. I'm pleased with the result, having made the effort to consider the use I make of the room that's mine.

The advent of mobile computing has changed the way I work over the past few years living mostly in Spain. My home workstation is a great tool for doing some things I do occasionally, beyond writing documents, sending emails and surfing the web. Compared to just few years ago, I can do most of what I need from a web connected computer anywhere, though not everything. Anything involving precision scanning, managing all my files, either in the cloud or on a physical device, I prefer to do from a single place of reference. My study. 

It's no good, however clever modern auto-sync programs are, I end up with puzzling file duplications, version control nightmares and document hunts owing their existence to the fact that I'm creating documents on half a dozen different devices and not always remembering to save them to places where I can be sure they will end up being sharable in a recognisable location. The format war between Microsft and Google hardly helps. Default use of one consistent universal file format on all devices and platforms would help. In reality, moving between Google and Microsoft cloud storage systems is a fiddle (what the hell is .gdoc Google? And why do I need it?). On principle, I use both, for the same as well as different purposes. After all, why should I entrust my digital life to a single mega-corporate, when two are offering me their free services? (Forget the Apple cult).

Anyway, my study is now more habitable than it used to be. A new, smaller desk has been ordered from Amazon. Once installed, my little room will offer much more space than before, and easier access to things I need most.

All thanks to Clare's persistence in making my study fit for purpose.
     

That scynching feeling

Rachel got in about half past three, tired but happy, and we all got up late. It rained most of the day, and Clare took Jasmine around to Anwen's house for another afternoon of play. With nothing better to do, I decided to update the funeral database record I've kept since returning to Britain in 2002. It's occasionally useful to consult if a family request me to conduct a service for another of their kith and kin. I was appalled to discover that I hadn't made any entries since the end of May, only filed away some, but not all of the paperwork. There were half a dozen entries to make, not counting the half a dozen funerals taken in Spain on three separate locum visits. I didn't have any documentation for those, only odd notes in my diary, and very different recollections from those attaching to the sombre routine of pastoral duties close to home.

I'm now making an effort to maintain a degree of consistency between records and documents kept on all work and personal Windows machines via Sky Drive, still fearful that I'll end up losing stuff with automatic synchronisation, because I've forgotten to configure something properly. The source of this apprehension is trouble I've had with getting X-Marks to behave synchronising bookmarks between devices, phones, tablets and computers. Not configuring something correctly at installation of a new browser extension, I find it hasn't merged, but added the same set of bookmarks to the X-Marks web server, then synced multiple copies of the duplicated set of bookmarks to other machines. I then have to spend time de-duplicating bookmarks on X-Marks web server, and browsers I use - two, sometimes three different browsers for each operating system installed, ten different uses of X-Marks on current and legacy computers. It's a tangled mess going back years. It's what you get when you allow auto-sync to rule before checking you have it configured correctly. It's good to achieve some order and consistency, but it can be dauntingly difficult. It's not the stuff of which to make New Year's resolutions, it takes too much time!

 

I also use Google Drive to shift material around between machines I use, work and personal in a rather ad hoc manner, simply because all our accounts are GMail. This system also has its virtues, though I'm not in a position where I work collaboratively on documents that can take advantage of them. In a perfect world all work and personal stuff would be backed up on both Google Drive and Sky Drive for any kind of access, but it's hard to imagine Google and Microsoft competing Cloud systems being able to synchronise with each other.