Double duty day

I spent yesterday lying low. Clare and Owain went shopping in town, and Owain came home with a new Samsung phone for his birthday from us. He's also inherited my treasured Toshiba Chromebook and is delighted with it, as it performs so very well compared to the early Samsung he's been using for the past couple of years. He went out to a friend's birthday party for the evening, and once I'd got my sermon ready for the morrow, I went to bed early. There was nothing I wanted to watch on telly, and I needed to put my energy into recovering.

I was up early and out of the house on my way to Splott before nine this morning., to celebrate Mass at St Saviour's Parish Church. It must be over three years since I was last there. Sadly Fr Graham was away visiting his sister for her 70th birthday. I was a bit of a disappointment, as I had looked forward to sharing the Mass with him again, for the first time since I worked for USPG thirty five years ago. Never mind, I'll be here again in August, when I cover for Fr Phelim's annual holiday. Geraint, the St Padarn's ordinand assisted at the service and again at St German's. He's thoroughly enjoying his time in this long term placement, which is pleasing to hear. And the congregations are enjoying him too.

It was delightful to return to St German's, having been unable to offer cover on a Sunday since Fr Phelim's appointment because of being away or ill. It's a place I love to share in worship, whether celebrating or praying with the people. The sun shone brightly in the sanctuary during the Eucharist. It's awesomely beautiful, and slows me right down, it seems, almost to a halt, in pure enjoyment of being in The Presence. This is surely one of those 'thin places' the Celtic mystics talk about.

Clare cooked him a vegan recipe birthday cake, which we had slices of at tea-time. I was grateful to have come through my morning's work and feel none the worse for wear. It was good to know that I can manage to do two service back to back if needed like that. This is a distinct result of my general improvement over the past month, so that I can not get up and get going earlier than at any time in the past nine months. Slowly getting my life back!

Domestic and digital chores

We went to the Parish Eucharist at St Catherine's yesterday morning. It was Fr Mark's last appearance there on a Sunday, as next Sunday there's a united Benefice farewell service at St Luke's, then he'll be moving house. At the end of the service the children and parents from Sunday Club came into church, all bubbly, over twenty kids from toddlers to junior school age. They presented him with a big pot plant, decorated with messages wishing him well - a delightful moment.

Kath and Anto have been sending us a series of photos of WhatsApp, taken at last night's fiesta de los Reyes in Tenerife, where they're having a well deserved respite from work. Meanwhile Owain is discovering all the minutiae involved in setting up home from scratch in his new flat. It's not yet in sufficient order for him to be willing to send us photos, but we look forward to that, as it may be a while before we can travel over to visit his new abode.

I had to get up quite often in the night, although I quickly fell asleep in between time, but maybe my sleep snatches weren't long enough to really refresh me despite nine hours in bed. After I got up, had breakfast and said morning prayer, I dozed off again for an hour. I felt I could have slept for longer, but had another visit to Riverside Health surgery for a wound inspection and dressing arranged for this afternoon. I felt better for walking there in the fresh air, and wasn't lacking in physical energy. It could be that my body is making up for months of continued stress and uncertainty. The wound is now stable and for the moment not deteriorating further, thanks to the Christmas gift of nursing care in situ. Each day this is the case, I'm most grateful for.

After the surgery visit I did the week's shopping before returning home, glad to be out and about. Clare has got used to having a Linux driven computer over the past month or so, but having an old style hard drive, although still quicker than a modern windows machine, I felt it could benefit more from having solid state drive instead. She had complained about the cramped keyboard layout on the Acer I'd replaced her HP machine with. Having already tried and tested the HP running Linux from a solid state hard drive, the easiest solution would be to return all her data to her user area and let her continue to use a device her fingers are more used to. That took about half an hour, copying to and from an external drive.

Then, I fitted another solid state hard drive into the Acer, installed Linux Mint and updated it in about half an hour. It's the second five year old laptop in the house that's running faster than either of the two Windows 10 machines half their age. I'll have to decide what I'm going to use this machine for, and if I really want to bother to install Mint to dual boot on the remaining Windows laptop, now that I've got a secure device I have confidence in, to use for tax and e-banking. Having said that the most used device with a proper keyboard remains the Chromebook on which I'm writing now. While it has some limitations, it's still the lightest and fastest computer I have. How I'd love to have a full Linux version running on this! But that's too big an ask at the moment. Glad finally to have had the energy to compete this digital chore today, good for the morale!

Midsummer tech sales

Wednesday, I celebrated the St Catherine's midweek Eucharist, did some domestic errands, and not much else. We have warmer weather now, making life more comfortable and relaxing. I didn't get out and walk, as I should have done as curiosity led me to explore how best to take a good crisp close up photo of a piece of silver jewellery created by Clare from pieces of scrap silver fused together. She'd posted a rather blurry picture of her latest oeuvre on Instagram, using her phone, and I wondered if I could do better. It was less than easy, whatever camera or lens I used as I don't have a macro lens for this purpose. Although the closeup range of the cameras I have is fairly good, the ability to focus on a small object below 10cm reduces with a conventional lens. 

I settled for using my prime lens on the Alpha 68. I need to make more of an effort to use it and learn more about what it does best. Without any zooming capacity I find it rather narrow and restrictive for anything except portraiture, but then the majority of my photo interest is landscapes, urban and rural. Adjusting lighting helped to bring up the detail, but pinpoint accuracy while focusing hand-held with manual or auto focus, was elusive. Another time I must try mounting the camera on a tripod, and use a timer setting to hold on to the optimum sharp focus and distance.

Thursday, the longest day, no locum duty, so I took a walk with my Lumix LX5 camera to capture progress on the Central Square development. The pavements immediately surrounding the the BBC HQ are still being laid. There's been some activity on the bus station site next door, although I am not sure that and ground breaking work is yet under way, presuming that foundations will need to be dug to support the frame of the apartment building above. The steel skeleton of the HMRC building is nearing completion. It's an impressive sight.

I then visited the CBS office to catch up on the current difficult situation confronting the business, and on my way out og town, called into John Lewis store, whose electronic clearance sale has started. Not that there's anything I really need, or could make a case for buying, but just for interest. I met another old geezer just like me, ogling the hardware on offer and contemplating a purchase he knew he didn't really need. An extravert Chinese lady accosted me with questions about some of the low cost bargains, as she and her husband needed a device to Skype her son in Hong Kong. She know nothing about why there was such a range of bargain prices or the reason for it. I wondered how she'd get on with a Windows 10 machine once she got it home and working. But, I helped her to make a decision on a bargain 15" HP device, before she started chatted up the sales assistant and obtaining a further mark down on the already discounted kit.

There was one very recent and expensive Chromebook on display which I fancied, but now that I've discovered I can get a replacement battery for my immaculate Toshiba Chromebook CR104, whose battery life now is a third of what it was when I bought it two years ago, it's hardly worth considering a replacement for my everyday workhorse. It's far superior to any Windows 10 machine. There were several really cheap Windows 10 netbooks on offer, which could be run more efficiently with Linux instead. Indeed I have a laptop which I consider converting every time it annoys me by taking an age to open and update. But again, it is worth the effort?

Thanks to a cloudless sky it's been light this evening almost until bedtime. Summer delight.

  

Redevelopment progress in Central Square

Yesterday was a cold and rainy day, enough to sap motivation to go for my usual walk, so I just stayed in and pottered about. An email notification of pending water rates bill from Dwr Cymru prompted me to go on-line and register to get access to our account on-line. It wasn't quite as straightforward as it might have been, and I had to ring the help line to check about the entering the name of our account into a database field which seemed reluctant to accept what I entered from the account holder's name line of the bill address. Once sorted, I was able to download a pdf of the bill to examine.

When I mentioned to Clare that I'd done this, she complained, saying that she'd rather receive a paper copy, and then pay on line, something she's used to doing, perhaps even more than me. I returned to the Dwr Cymru website and discovered that in signing up for web access to the account (aka eBilling), I had lost the possibility of paper billing. Oh dear! So then I proceeded to de-register from using the online account, and when asked to explain why as part of this routine, stated I needed both and, not an either/or option..

This morning, by co-incidence, the water rates bill arrived in the post. It was already on its way when I was registering and de-registering yesterday. Hopefully this won't have disrupted the paper billing sequence in future. When you only get two water rate bills a year, it's easy to forget when they are due. I may get an email reminder, but Clare doesn't. If I was away when it was due, it might not get paid if she wasn't aware it was due.

Later in the morning I walked into town, with the aim of returning some surplus equipment to the office, and to take some photos of the Central Square Redevelopment construction site. It's seven weeks since I last did so. Work had just been started on demolishing the four storey row of shops and offices flanking Central Square on the east side. Now, all but a fraction the southern corner of the row has been cleared, exposing the car park behind, itself due for demolition, some time soon.

Amazingly, two tall concrete lift towers have sprung out of the ground, the excavated car park has been enclosed at ground level, and in separate areas of the site, two large skeletal steel structures have been erected. Very impressive indeed. I circumnavigated the site and took twice as many photos as usual, but can't make up for seven weeks of absence. Just as well that I don't have any travel plans for next year, and won't make any until Clare and I can plan to travel again together.

I had a wander around the shops for a while, looking for possible Black Friday sale bargains, but saw nothing that really tempted me at all. I'd quite like a smaller Windows laptop with a hi-res screen, as the work one I have is really too heavy and bulky to take in a rucksack. Most of those on offer are not the right size, and the screens are just not what I need for photo editing, and the ones worth considering are twice the price I am prepared to pay. If Toshiba can so a hi-res Chromebook for under £300, why can so few Windows PC manufacturers do the same for under £400. My other complaint about the new generation of portables is that so many of them have the battery hard wired and sealed in the case, and thus the device dies when the battery does. It's the same with phones too. Built in redundancy - it's the curse of consumerism and on the environment.

Having completed a tour of most of the shops I wanted to visit, I began to feel bored with shopping and headed for home, whereupon it started to rain and get colder, so instead of walking for another half an hour to get home, I waited for a 61 bus. During the journey, the heavens opened, sending forth a torrent of hail as well as water. It had just about stopped by the time I got off the bus, but everywhere was briefly covered with a white slushy blanket. By the time it got dark, the temperature had dropped just enough to cover the cars with frost. Winter is certainly on its way.
   

Saturday tech and movie time

Owain departed after a late breakfast this morning. I spent some time 're-purposing' a work phone made redundant by the continuing upgrade cycle. It's a Samsung Galaxy III, functional and in good condition. Clare's phone is a Samsung Galaxy III Mini, just like mine. It's slightly newer and has more memory, but its connectivity has never been as good as mine, and no remedial fix has ever been effective, so it's probably a hard to detect fault in the aerial, as all else works fine. The new phone works just fine, but will have to wait until Monday to check of it can be used straightforwardly with a different network SIM card from the one the phone was first registered with.

In the afternoon, we walked in the rain to Staples on Western Avenue, to buy an Epson wireless printer and a Toshiba CR 104 Chromebook, like mine, for Amanda. A little shopping around had determined a price on both that was good enough to pay for an extra set of ink cartridges for the same price I'd have paid elsewhere. Carrying the kit back involved a capacious rucksack, long arms and patience. We got wet, but that was preferable to losing our parking space in the street, always crowded on weekends.

After supper, I used iPlayer to catch up on the first episode of 'Hinterland', set in the cefn gwlad up behind Aberystwyth, in and around Llanafan Parish uplands, which we discovered the summer before last when we visited our friend Margaret LeGrice, Vicar of that six church benefice. The lead actors in the series are melancholic, serious, preoccupied, in keeping with the often bleak storyline and stark landscape. It's beautifully crafted, and best of all, as normally bi-lingual as the social environment in which it is set. It's must-watch for Welsh people everywhere. The portrayal of the environment, the dialogue in either language and the relationships between characters are honest, resonant, authentic. A triumph of Welsh film making.

Then we watched together the ever comic and colourful with dark undertones second episode of 'Young Montalbano'. Much more complex threads in the storyline, but each thought provoking. Best of all in this episode was the banter between Montalbano and the parish priest about attending marriage preparation classes. It was very true to life, the excuses busy men make to avoid have to sit through life coaching sessions from someone they believe have no direct experience to draw upon in talking to them about intimate relationships.

After this I finally got around to writing and printing the baptismal homily which I'd devised in my head one very late night this week, and scribbled a few notes before falling asleep. And was late to bed again, thankful that I don't have an early start tommorrow.
   

Back to Chromebook

A nice quiet lazy morning goes down nicely after a busy Sunday. Time to recuperate. I seem to need more of it these days. Then after lunch a walk. I also need constant exercise to stay fit. So, I walked first to the GP surgery with a prescription renewal, and booked myself a 'flu jab appointment, although I forgot to book an doctor's appointment as requested, but as the 'flu jab is tomorrow, all I have to do is remember to book as soon as I arrive. Then I walked part of the way to Victoria Park, hopping on a convenient bus to speed up the process of returning church keys from Sunday morning to Fr Mark, and from there walked over to the Staples store in Western Avenue and back, to buy a new Chromebook.

I gave Owain my 'early adopter' Samsung model. It has served me well over the past two years, and is in good nick, although its battery life is only four hours, about 60% of its original,. He's always made a bee line for it when he's visiting because of its convenient quick access for casual use. I've had my eye on a Toshiba Chromebook 2 for some time, as there's a model with a higher resolution screen which boasts more RAM and a better processor, although a Chromebook's speed relies as much on internet connectivity as anything due to its downloadable operating system. Staples had one one display last time I was in store, twenty quid cheaper than John Lewis, so my walk had added incentive.

There were rain showers as I arrived at the store. The rucksack I'd taken to carry home my purchase was too small for the containing box, and it slipped out and fell to the floor as I was leaving, fortunately not on a corner, so there was no damage to the box and none to the computer when I unpacked it. It was wonderful to set it up and be using it in under five minutes with all my Google account details and bookmarks in place. I'd waited a month before buying a new one, just to find out what it would be like to do without it, and rely just on the Asus Transformer for quick casual usage away from the office desk. 

Well, if you keep the Transformer switched off it takes minutes to book up and re-sync its registered accounts. The native browser is unbearably slow. Chrome and Firefox user interfaces are not fully consistent with desktop or phone versions. The software is showing signs of age in lacking user interface updates, and offering no convenient path to acquire them. I found I was repeating keyboard errors when writing or editing as use of certain keys is not the same as that acquired from habitually using other keyboards. While the keyboard itself is not that bad, the speeds of interaction of both keyboard and touch-screen with the display seem to fluctuate in practice. Such a relief to get back to the simple consistency and responsiveness of a Google Chrome device. Touch screens aren't always as precise as they need to be to avoid error, a good trackpad and/or a mouse is superior in my experience.

The other thing I like about Chromebooks is that the time from switch on to work is half a Windows 10 device and delivers a fully updated operating system. What Microsoft ads don't tell is the amount of time that has to be spent machine minding, either as the PC syncs filesystems, or while updates are installed, either at switch-off or start-up, and this can add a five minute delay to whatever you're doing. Time is always of the essence when you need information from an internet device. Closing many PCs while performing these essential routines may lead to it switching into sleep mode in the middle of updating, and that carries the risk of error. No problem if you rarely switch off your computer, but a risk if you're conscientious, and always switch off, to save battery or isolate from network hackers while unattended. 

Will Microsoft ever be as good as Google in delivering devices that address these issues at source? I find it very interesting that Microsoft partners are now marketing basic PCs in the same price bracket as Google Chromebooks, and with similar specifications. But, sales promoters always have to offer internet security packages to customers, to cover the glaring design deficiency in Windows operating systems, exploited in so many ingenious ways by global cyber criminals.

I notice that Five USA is currently promoting the launch of new CSI series on cyber crime. It'll be very interesting to see what kind of product placement (both hardware and software) features in the laboratory mis-en-scene.