{"id":1786,"date":"2021-02-16T20:01:39","date_gmt":"2021-02-16T20:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=1786"},"modified":"2021-02-16T20:01:39","modified_gmt":"2021-02-16T20:01:39","slug":"tuesday-16th-february-2021-day-337","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/02\/16\/tuesday-16th-february-2021-day-337\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday, 16th February, 2021 [Day 337]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every so often, computer manufacturers release new copies of their operating systems and it is generally beneficial to upgrade whilst one can. The major upgrades used to be once every two years but Apple now releases a major upgrade every single year. As the new releases come on stream, so support for older MAC models tends to drop away i.e. you cannot upgrade and the more cynical will say that this is Apple’s way of making you change your hardware every five years or so whether you want to or not. As it happens, the new\u00a0operating system will install on the desktop MAC I\u00a0have in my study and the portable I have in the lounge (on which I am typing this blog) and as they both date from 2015 that makes them both about 5-6 years old and therefore ‘just’ upgradeable. So when I had the chance to update my main system in the study, I did so – and that’s when the problem started. \u00a0Every major release of\u00a0operating system means that some programs which are well-loved and useful but ‘aged’ are no longer supported and therefore one had to learn to do without them. In my case, the update seemed to take most of the night and then the\u00a0whole computer\u00a0failed to\u00a0start. I was in complete\u00a0despair and thinking that I would probably have to buy a whole new system. What I did not know, but fortunately my son did, was that there is a special ‘Recovery mode’ for a dead MAC which enables a user with an\u00a0apparently dead machine to reboot it with a\u00a0special keyboard combination of keys \u00a0and this forces a reboot using an internet\u00a0connection. Anyway, this worked and I eventually got the new operating system installed. But then my son and I spent about four hours getting the system cleaned up of redundant and dead programs, ‘clutter’ and other things that might potentially cause problems. we still have a little tidying up to do but I was mighty relieved to get my system up and running and in a ‘cleaner’ state than it was in before the upgrade (If you install or re-install new programs, all\u00a0computers accumulate clutter so this is well known to most of us) So all is \u00a0well that ends well.<\/span><\/p>\n

After a night of precious little sleep and a lot of concentration in the morning, I should have felt terrible but in practice felt quite OK – I suppose it was a sort of\u00a0delayed\u00a0exhilaration in getting a system working again. We were were delayed in getting into town but passed by two of our sets of friends en route as well as coinciding with our Birmingham University friend who we had not expected to see this morning. After an extended chat about our various academic experiences of how we award classified degrees to our students, we returned home to a very, very late lunch but managed to rustle together a meal which was actually ready in about 20 minutes, which was just as well. Then\u00a0I spent some time playing? learning? some of the new features of the newly installed operating\u00a0system with which\u00a0I need to familiarise myself.In the late afternoon, we FaceTime<\/em>d \u00a0some of our ex-Waitrose<\/em> friends that we communicate with every week on a Tuesday at about the sam time. It was good to catch up on current news (although neither of us had that much new) but I did manage to tell our friends about my success in getting my EHIC cards upgraded to the new GHIC cards which will be current for\u00a0five years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tomorrow night, we will Zoom<\/em> some of our cousins in Derby and fortunately, the entire system has been set up for us so with a bit of luck, all I need to do is to click a link and enter the appropriate password (sent to me in an email). Also on Wednesday evenings, there is an excellent\u00a0series exploring the legacy of Donald Trump particularly from the\u00a0perspective of other world leaders and this has been a fascinating watch for us. Tomorrow morning, in the wee small hours of the morning, I need to\u00a0update my\u00a0Waitrose<\/em> shopping list for two weeks time – once in the groove, it is quite easy to get the slot you need with a bit of forward planning.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet another variant of the virus has been identified which may have the ability to bypass the vaccines so far\u00a0developed. Although this sounds frightening, it is the fact that UK medical science leads the world in\u00a0virus\u00a0genome\u00a0sequencing which means that we identify new mutations far\u00a0more\u00a0rapidly than other countries.\u00a0There is some evidence that these newly occurring mutations are both deadly and can evade current vaccines which sounds bad. But on the other hand, as\u00a0the rate of\u00a0infection\u00a0drops overall, it is easier for us to ‘jump’ on new mutations that do\u00a0occur and hopefully\u00a0try to prevent a rapid and\u00a0harmful transmission process.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every so often, computer manufacturers release new copies of their operating systems and it is generally beneficial to upgrade whilst one can. The major upgrades used to be once every two years but Apple now releases a major upgrade every single year. As the new releases come on stream, so support for older MAC models […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1786"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1788,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions\/1788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}