The Buskers' Guide re-invented

Today's Morning Prayer video link got posted to WhatsApp a bit later than usual, as I fell soundly asleep again at seven when I woke up at eight fifteen. Clare had already left for an early swim, and I didn't hear her go. My erratic sleep pattern is something of a puzzle. I get as much as I need but not in any predictably routine way. I should be grateful for that, I suppose. 

There were nine of us at the Eucharist I celebrated at St John's. Over coffee afterwards mention was made of a big funeral procession from Splott causing a big traffic hold-up across town. I wondered if it was for a funeral at St Germans. but the local news report side it took place at Splott Catholic church. It seems that it was a Traveller funeral and these are often attended by large crowds of mourners, as I know from my own experience. Only today did I receive the fee cheque from the last one I took a fortnight ago, when the Funeral Conductor arrived without the church cheques, customarily handed over at the service. Talking of funerals, a request to do one on St David's day came in at lunchtime, nearly three weeks from now. Quite a contrast from such a busy January.

I cooked stir-fry veg with mussels and rice for lunch. Then, after we'd eaten drove to Penarth to get the 'Real Book' of lead sheets (jazz melodies plus chords) from the musical instrument store where Owain's sax was given a service. It's the modern equivalent of what Geoff my late brother-in-law used to call the Busker's Guide. Finally delivered Clare's belated Christmas present. I bought her the wrong kind of jazz tune book at Christmas, and she gave them to Kath who has started learning to play the piano. This book hits the spot, and gives her an even bigger range of jazz melodies to discover that ones she has already got to know, working her way through the family CD collection/ 

Mission accomplished, I went for a walk along the cliff-top before driving home. It was quite breezy with a rain cloud promising rain or even hail, but the wind seemed to blow mild and then cold gusts, as if two different masses of air were mixing. Anyway nothing developed, and I had a pleasant outing with even the hint of a rainbow among the clouds out across the Bristol Channel.

Just out of curiosity, I transferred the installation software for the negative scanner to a USB drive, and ran it on my desktop workstation. It worked OK up to a point, but needed a driver upgrade to complete the interface between scanner and computer, so it didn't work. I un-installed the software, as I couldn't find a way to obtain the driver upgrade, but maybe I'll have another go when I have nothing better to do. Meanwhile, the scanner works as well now on a thirteen year old desktop PC running Windows Vista as it did when I bought it. It's the only reason I keep the old machine, but it's be better if I could retire it completely, as it takes up space I could use better.

There wasn't much of interest on telly apart from the final ever episode of 'New Tricks' on Dave, which we watched together before turning in for the night.

Off-line working, old time style

I had a call this morning about a funeral in ten days time. The next of kin had to fly over from Ireland to make the arrangements as the deceased spouse was in a hospice over here. She was due to arrive at Pidgeon's office at one, so I arranged to go and introduce myself and discuss the service. It would be unthinkable to my mind, just to turn up at the crem with only a brief telephone contact beforehand. As most of the family are Irish Catholic and a few left over here indeterminate Protestant, I was glad to be able to brief them face to face.

On my afternoon walk the much warned of change in the weather started as the sun was going down, a clear blue sky slowly filled with clouds from the west. High winds and rain were expected, but there was no sign of that up to bed-time.

I occupied myself with more negative film scanning. I'm impressed by how stable my Windows Vista machine is, working with the scanner, permanently off-line these days because it doesn't need to be on-line with its outdated insecure browsers and antivirus. It boots into a functional state quicker than any comparable modern machine because it doesn't have to attach to the network, do security scans or software updates. It's still a useful working tool because it does what I need it to do without fail. Isn't that what tools are supposed to be?

 two more packs of photos from Monaco days, and reminders of just how many family and friends came to stay with us while we were there despite the dark days of conflict and rejection I endured in the last three months. The pain of that experience has long dissipated and I look at the photos with measure of detachment. I'd forgotten just how many photographs, film and digital, I took in those days. I guess I was comparatively well paid there and so able to afford to buy film and get it developed. 

Digital photography changed everything for me, even though initial investment in fast evolving cameras was expensive. I used an Olympus Trip travel camera in those days, and it gave excellent results. Digitally scanned negatives are superior in quality to the digital photos I took in those early days,  once they have been edited. I can see why there has been a resurgence of interest in old film cameras and photography. It may be more expensive than it ever used to be, but in some conditions the quality of digitised film delivers desirable results worth the expense and effort.

Perennial scanner

At Fr Phelim's request, I drove over to St German's this morning to celebrate the term time 'Class Mass' with two dozen children from Tredegarville School. It's still an enjoyable experience for me, working with Junior School kids, so I'm always pleased if I'm asked to stand in for him. It was good to catch up with the regulars over a coffee at the day centre afterwards. Apparently the winter night shelter in the hall has been successfully run for a second year with a big group of volunteers, not all of them church people, helping to accommodate and feed fifteen rough sleepers regularly.

After lunch I took my second funeral of the week, this time at St Luke's. The eulogy was given by a niece of the deceased and a daughter in law read a lesson. I don't recall taking a funeral there before, so I had to figure out beforehand where to place myself in relation to the congregation and the coffin. It's a big church with a central altar. Fortunately everyone in a congregation of fifty sat in the same central block of seats, so I conducted the service from behind the altar, as the lectern was too far back.

In the evening there was nothing on telly, so I got out my film scanner, as I have a bag full of wallets containing film negatives, and picked out one at random from 2000, just before I bought my first digital camera, when I was working in Monaco. The scanner won't work with any PC save my 2009 Windows Vista desktop machine. This still boots up, although its CMOS battery is kaput and there's no point in going on line because none of the browsers are fit for purpose. But it still runs the scan software, Adobe Photoshop and MS Office perfectly and with an acceptable turn of speed once it's settled down. An always online Windows device isn't always what you need to get jobs done. I will run it until it dies, and then look for a replacement of similar vintage to plug the gap.

Anyway I now have a set of seventy plus photos from the time when we first settled in Monte Carlo,  and of our top floor apartment in rue Montbrillant Geneva, close to the Place des Nations. There may be more to find and scan eventually.

  

Back at the workstation

Yesterday, I celebrated the eight o'clock Eucharist at St Catherine's, and for the rest of the day we didn't do anything special, apart from a walk in the park, as the weather wasn't wonderful for most of the day. It did however start designing a poster to advertise Rachel's gig at The Apothecary on the first weekend of July when she comes over from Arizona to visit us. This involved consultations on information and photo content, back and forth on WhatsApp followed by trial and error. At first I used Libre Office, but had to give up in frustration, as there was a single feature to do with overlay and transparency I couldn't find, either because it doesn't exist or because the instruction manual is not as clear as it needs to be.

I started up my old Windows Vista workstation, which worked without hesitation. As Microsoft no longer supports this operating system, browser use is plagued by security warning bells and whistles, but nevertheless it works. I was surprised by the speed at which MS Word and Publisher started up and continued to operate. Publisher 2000 isn't as sophisticated and complex as successive versions, but I'm familiar with it, and it just works for my limited purposes. Far too many modern software packages impose on users more than they ask for, and make things more complicated than necessary. Likewise hardware. My ten year old Acer, starts and runs faster than any Windows 10 system on modern hardware, because it's not as dependent on constant interaction with internet servers and that unending procession of updates patching a fundamentally flawed system.

Admittedly the system did crash a couple of times initially and needed a hard reset, but I suspect it wouldn't have been necessary if I'd run CCleaner before starting work. Although I haven't entirely forgotten how Publisher works, it did take some concentration and recourse to help files to get what I had failed to find in Libre Office. By the end of the evening, I'd composed trial draft version and emailed it to Rachel in Phoenix for comments. The devil will certainly be in the detail.

   

More digital chores

I had a funeral to take at St Catherine's yesterday morning, followed by a burial at Thornhill. Then in the afternoon and evening I scanned another collection of my sister June's old holiday slides from 40 years ago, which I brought back with me from my London visit last Friday. It's fascinating to see how the Amalfi coast, and Ibiza looked in those days, when tourism development was in its infancy, and most people still lived poor and simple rural lives around the Mediterranean. June is delighted to see them again on her computer, not least because it awakens pleasant memories of her youthful travels.

I was back again at St Catherine's this morning to celebrate the midweek Eucharist for five of us. Over coffee after the service, I acquired a handful of fresh basil and a variety of different tomatoes, freshly picked from the church veggie garden. I cooked these as soon as I got home into a delicious pasta sauce for lunch, such a pleasurable blessing.

The rest of the day I spent on computer chores. Typos in the CBS Network News I prepared when I was in Malaga needed correction. The printers were not able to take on editing tasks. I suspect now they are simply too busy with production runs. The MS Publisher file created was not backwards compatible. It would be a matter of finding a PDF editor up to the task of doing do accurately and cleanly. I downloaded and used PDF-Xchange, a free editor recommended by Tech Radar. It was very complex and it took a certain amount of ingenuity to make the required changes, as I didn't have time to learn how to use the editing tools properly, but I succeeded in the end, and the printer reported that the edited PDF performed as expected, before going into production.

The next chore was document scanning. Clare's Will and mine to send the children copies, plus a long company document, which missed my scanning blitz six years ago. when I was setting up the CBS office data system. Both jobs took ages, as the scanning routine is so slow. It's hard not to lose concentration and remember to turn over double sided pages. The one page I did miss was number thirteen, what else. Scanning the page later after checking the whole pdf revealed the error. The challenge was to insert the missing scanned page. I had no suitable software on my Windows 10, but thankfully my old Vista desktop, still running happily and hosting reliably my slide scanner when needed, has a suite of PDF editing apps which are simple and effective.

All in all, a productive sort of day, despite the challenge of obtaining right tools to do the job with the minumum of learning necessary for the task.

Ministry joys and Linux Legacy

Yesterday afternoon in beautiful sunny weather, I caught the bus into town, took photos of the Central Square construction site, then walked down the Taff Embankment to the Bay Wetland Area. There was a couple of Coots with some young chicks swimming on one of the ponds.

I also got glimpses of what I think was another pair of chicks hiding in a reed bed, but they seemed different from the Coot chicks, as their heads were red/orange. Were they moorhen offspring, I wonder? I've seen both kinds of bird down there in the past. With most things ready for our Rhine cruise journey and a sermon prepared, I watched a couple of episodes of NCIS season 13 which I've not seen before. One was about an agent suffering from the theft of his identity multiple times. Quite timely really, given the on-going global ransomware crisis.

I celebrated the Solemn Mass at St German's this morning as usual. Priest in charge designate Fr Phelim O'Hare came with his wife Annette and two sons to meet people and sit in the congregation. We're still waiting for an induction date, however. It now looks certain that it will take place while I'm out in Malaga, Although I won't be at St German's for the final few Sundays of the interregnum, I will take much pleasure in seeing photos of the event, content to have worked myself out of a job at St German's, for a second time in five years.

After the service, the church filled again with a congregation double the numbers for the Mass, there for the baptism of Michelle and her baby daughter Millie. For me it was a great pleasure to complete something which started last year when I officiated at Andy Michelle's wedding in St German's. Out of curiosity, I checked the baptism register, and discovered, much to my surprise, that over past five years of locum duties at St German's, I have performed 23 baptisms, double the number I did in the eight years of my last job as Vicar of St John's City Parish Church.

By the time I got home, after attending the Christening party in the church hall, Clare had already left for a final rehearsal for the afternoon Community Choir Concert at the Fountain Steiner School, but she'd left lunch for me. Once I'd eaten, I sat down to do my daily Duo Lingo Spanish drill, and when I reached the end of it, I nodded off, waking up only just in time to drive to the school for the start of the concert. The programme was an unusual mix of mediaeval secular and sacred music, technically a challenge for the singers. I've been listening to Clare rehearse for weeks, but only hearing everything sung in performance made sense of what I'd been listening to at home, as some of the pieces involved part singing which was dissonant to modern ears. It was an ear opening success, for the audience and for the singers.

After supper, a quiet evening without telly, making sure computers were all up to date, trying to find some files of photographs I'd digitized for my sister three years ago, which she said she couldn't find. It took me a while to locate them, as they weren't in any of my archives. Then I remembered that I'd done the original job on my previous desktop PC, which I left in its usual position on the floor to the left of my desk, rather than decommission and dispose of it. Once re-connected to peripherals, it powered up into Linux Mint perfectly, and within a couple of minutes I'd found the files and copied them to a backup drive. Later, I discovered that I had already uploaded the missing photos to the web, as well as putting them on June's PC hard drive. They weren't missing. Finding them in either place was her problem. Just as well I had an evening with nothing better to do.

When I next have an idle moment, I'll to a timed comparison of booting the machine to a functioning desktop using the now defunct original Windows Vista operating system and Linux Mint. Vista was less dependent on internet connectivity and than its successors, except for anti-virus updating. Mint works just as well with or without internet. When connected and ready to update, it does so unobtrusively and without interfering with one's workflow. So much better than Windows, once you've learned it and made the switch. Time I switched a couple of my machines over permanently to Linux, and retain Windows only where necessary for working with outsiders.

   

Virtuous re-cycle

I had another of my restless nights and early risings today. Tucked away on my One Drive, I found a folder entitled 'New Book' that was newer and different from another I'd found on the computer I was working on yesterday. I still haven't mastered version control or system consistency. This time I was amazed to discover half a dozen chapters dating from my first stay in Vinaros, two and a half years ago. I enjoyed re-reading them and then editing and adding to them. Apart from sermons and blog postings I've not stretched my mind with fresh efforts at creative writing since then, shame on me, though come to think of it, on returning to St Mikes in the autumn of 2012, I did re-visit my first book writing effort, and did a further revision encouraged feedback from by Peter Sedgwick who had read and commented on it. Whether either book will ever get published isn't as important as making an effort to keep thinking and reflecting creatively in as many ways as possible.

In the afternoon I visited the office, where Julie, under Jane's tutelage, was getting to grips with the use of Sage accounts for invoice production. Getting the information display design right is indeed tricky. incorporating the CBS letterhead into the production template was trivial in comparison. The challenge was to find the right sized most up to date version on the office data system, one thing I was able to contribute to the process. Having Sage properly set up as well as the file of invoices that I generated last week, will make it possible for Julie to issue invoices in a rolling programme while she gets to grips with a new procedure. We need changes of this kind to be as painless as possible to ensure the workflow continues as it needs to at this time of year.

My old Dell laptop has languished under the office desk the during the year I've mostly been away, and is surplus to current needs. There's nothing that cannot be done using it that can't be also done on a newer more portable piece of kit. Given that it's six years old it's still quite quick and has a superb HD screen. It must have cost a fortune when it was new before I arrived on the scene with less costly hardware requirements to fulfil our working needs. As it's not found a use, and is superior in speed and quality to my home desktop workstation, which serves personal and work needs, I decided to take it home and re-instate it as a space saving workstation substitute. The result is satisfying. The old Acer desktop Vista PC can now deliver its file content ad lib over my home network to the laptop, thanks to the improved network efficiency of Windows 7, and my study work space looks that much freer as a result. Less clutter around the office and at home, a real win-win situation.

  

Packing and more packing

Back onto the office, first thing, to meet with Julie and get her started on invoicing using my old Dell office laptop, finally free of Windows Vista and working sweetly on Windows 7 with all the programs and data she needs. Then I got on with unloading into collapsible crates borrowed from home some filing cabinet drawers in which our security sensitive business material is kept, ready to spend the night under lock and key with the electronic gear, so that there's no unfortunate mishaps with either while the removal people are taking our furniture. My job for tomorrow will be to shift all this stuff over to our new admin base, and get the office network running. I'll be crossing my fingers as it's the day before I return to Fuengirola. It needs to be perfect so that I can work remotely with Julie in the office.

The engineers from PMR turned up just ahead of me to start the installation of new signal relay equipment and the remote monitoring kit for our new office. I had first to take the new PC to them to work on, then later a couple of our radios for test purposes. People working in the next door office, where City Centre Management will in future operate were busy transforming their orderly environment into the usual chaos of packing up to move out. Our room won't be empty of its furniture before mid-morning tomorrow. I hope ours will arrive in good time for me to set up our equipment properly before the day is out. I need the peace of mind. So much so that in a rare fit of zeal I started packing my travel case this evening - a whole day before I usually get around to thinking about it.

 

Bargain hunt continues

Eddie and Ann set off for Felixstowe in Monday rain after a long slow breakfast together, and we made a hesitant start to our week. Mid afternoon we travelled into town together - me to bank a cheque and Clare to meet Owain over an exchange of birthday present. 

Duty done, I made my way to John Lewis' store only to see Clare descending the escalator as I was ascending on a bargain hunt. Having landed two great bargains here recently, I can't resist looking for a third when there's nothing better to do. I found just what I was after, a big HP desktop PC running Windows 7 for the office at forty percent discount, to replace Ashley's big laptop, designed with gamers in mind in late 2008, running Windows Vista. It was, in its day, the most expensive piece of equipment we had, and the only one to have failed requiring a visit from a Dell service engineer to sort out the RAID array and re-install the OS, with corresponding data loss. 

Unfortunately, I was in Spain at the time, helpless to intervene with caution in this emergency - probably out cycling somewhere out of 'phone signal range. Getting all the necessary software back up to required standard was one of the first jobs I did when I returned. There was minimal real data loss. A little email data was lost because British Telecom re-jigged their email servers in the same month of misfortune, so missing stuff couldn't be downloaded again. Nothing critical to Company business was lost, due to an obsessive dispersed back-up policy for which there is no need to apologise.. Tomorrow is dedicated to setting up the new machine ready for Ashley to use when he gets back into action after a retail crime conference in London the day after.

Having delivered the new PC to the CBS office, I headed for home. Passing St John's church, I noticed that the contractors shutters around the tower arches had been removed, revealing the new glass door and wall panels which have just been installed. It gave me great pleasure to see this as it was a project close to my heart. I took a few unsatisfactory photos using my Blackberry phone camera. Here's the best of a mediocre bunch.

After supper, I drove out to Cowbridge Holy Cross to join a two hundred strong congregation for the licensing and welcome of Fr Edward Dowland-Owen, the Benefice's new Team Vicar. It was an enjoyable experience, sitting in the congregation with lay people I normally lead in worship, feeling part of this 'community of communities' that calls itself 'church' in this area. Apart from attending summer Evensong at Llanfrynach, this is the first big Benefice event I've taken part it. It gave me a sense of belonging that, if I'm honest, I've missed since retirement. It makes me feel blessed.