{"id":2278,"date":"2021-04-30T21:04:35","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T21:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2278"},"modified":"2021-04-30T22:15:35","modified_gmt":"2021-04-30T22:15:35","slug":"friday-30th-april-2021-day-410","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/04\/30\/friday-30th-april-2021-day-410\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday, 30th April, 2021 [Day 410]"},"content":{"rendered":"

We were somewhat delayed this morning as Meg nd I had some domestic jobs to get done before we went on our walk. We did not\u00a0want to rush in any case as it had started raining \u00a0at about 5-6 in the morning (and\u00a0perhaps even earlier) and\u00a0was spluttering on even in the mid morning. As the morning wore on, though, the sun eventually broke through and we finished with quite a\u00a0sunny morning\u00a0 Again, we had a slightly different\u00a0routine this morning because having picked up our\u00a0<\/span>newspapers, we knew that we had better make a trip to W H Smiths (which also incorporates the Post Office these days) in order to buy some birthday cards and one, in\u00a0particular, which needed to arrive by tomorrow in time for the birthday on Sunday. There was a group of colleagues at the University of Winchester who all had their birthdays strung out through various dates in May. We decided about twenty years ago now that we would have a\u00a0large celebratory birthday meal to accommodate all of us, and this has carried on even after the year that many of us retired in 2007 or shortly thereafter. In fact, we call ourselves ‘The Old Fogies<\/em>‘ and when we meet e exchange news of\u00a0families,current\u00a0politics an so on, I would like to think that we remind ourselves how excellent things were when we in charge and how things have gone to the dogs ever since then. We don’t actually say any of this but we might secretly think it, all the same. This year, one of our number has busily organised a large Zoom session for us on the night of 11th May (which happens to be my birthday) so\u00a0the we can raise a virtual glass to\u00a0each other (although, come to think of it, they could be real). Another of our number is 60 this year and would have\u00a0daily loved to\u00a0have a party at home but that\u00a0pleasure may have to wait for another year (and perhaps even longer than that if a third wave strikes us).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I had another little ‘play’ on my IBM ThinkPad this afternoon. From\u00a0<\/span>somewhere, I have found about a free utility suite named ‘Glary Utilities’<\/em> which does all kind of housekeeping things on your computer. These include examining the Registry for any\u00a0error or inconsistencies, getting rid of any tracks you may have left around whilst browsing, using a Disk Cleanup utility, examining the\u00a0processes and start-up items on your computer and so on. Most of these things are forgotten about by the average user but a set of utilities like these helps get rid of the clutter which eventually slows all computers down. As I only have a small amount of installed memory by today’s standards (1.25 Gb rather\u00a0than the more common 4Gb) I am trying to run a ‘clean and mean machine’ whilst I can. I also have given the sound system a good workover by installing and then playing from my Music Library a whole series of Mozart tracks. Just out of interest, I wondered how easy it would be to get my\u00a0favourite\u00a0Paint Concerto (Mozart’s No. 23) onto my system and found it\u00a0ridiculously easy. I located and\u00a0downloaded the relevant mp3 files I needed onto a\u00a0pen drive on my main computer (I intend to use the Thinkpad to go on the web only when\u00a0absolutely necessary) and then\u00a0transferred them into the ThinkPad – the whole process must have taken about 2 minutes. I was then giving my little external speaker system a good workout – it looks a little like a\u00a0golfball but\u00a0the top twists to add some miniature\u00a0bellows to give a bit of extra volume. The whole\u00a0caboodle has to be charged up beforehand and lasts, I think, for about 5 hours but has the advantage that it doesn’t occupy a precious USB port but all you have to do is to plug in the audio lead. I am quite astonished by how good the quality is for such a tiny (and cheap!) device so this helps to extend the functionality of the sound system as a whole. I\u00a0discovered that the sound card is by Realtek (very good reputation for quality) and is\u00a0part of the motherboard whilst the video\u00a0controller is built into the chip itself. Incidentally, one of my acquaintances in the park today handed me a leaflet for a little firm housed in the upstairs of a store\u00a0whose function is to recycle unwanted furniture into the hands of ‘needy’ people. The little firm \u00a0advertises some incredibly cheap laptop deals with laptops with a 2.5Ghz CPU, 4 GB of Ram and a 250GB hard disk at prices ranging from \u00a360.00 for a Lenovo to \u00a390 for a Toshiba. If I need to install any new\u00a0memory (quite a possibility) or have a need for a more specialised cable, then I know where I will be heading for in the future.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were somewhat delayed this morning as Meg nd I had some domestic jobs to get done before we went on our walk. We did not\u00a0want to rush in any case as it had started raining \u00a0at about 5-6 in the morning (and\u00a0perhaps even earlier) and\u00a0was spluttering on even in the mid morning. As the […]<\/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-2278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278","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=2278"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2283,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions\/2283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}