Garden Puzzle
28 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Hearing Loss, Observations, TV and Films Tags: captions, garbled, subtitles, TV subtitles
A few days ago we caught part of the Chelsea Flower Show on TV. I grumbled to Mum that TV subtitles have a habit of putting the wrong word, then are interrupted by a correction even when the mistake was easy to guess. You wish it would just get on with it, as it seems slow enough already.
I spoke too soon! During an interview with Stephanie Cole, she said (according to the subtitles), “my garden is quite of Excise.” I’m still trying to work out what that meant!
Weekly Photo Challenge: Summer
28 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Photographs Tags: flowers, postaday, summer, weekly photo challenge
Taken in the garden a few days ago.
Look, No Feet!
25 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in My Cats, Photographs Tags: cats, crazy angle, outdoors, postaday, summer, weekly photo challenge
I liked Sarah’s series of photos that glance down at her shoes (especially this one). Loafing round the garden yesterday, I decided to be a real copycat and try something similar. Turns out there are certain obstacles to this kind of shot here!
Why I Wasn’t Blogging
23 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Blogging, Rants, Technology and Software Tags: blog hiatus, download limits, failure to blog, frustration, grumbles, ISPs, postaday
There was one major reason why I previously had to go slow on blogging and other pursuits — our low download limit! We have changed to unlimited now, and life is much easier.
The following shows my frustration (emails to various people. I expect the poor souls were as maddened by it all as I was).
27 December 2011
…the worst thing that happened on Boxing Day was that I had all these plans (updates, games, surfing the sales etc)… and boom, we lost our connection!!! I was in the middle of a software update to Mum’s new laptop, and it was cut off.
It turned out to be our ISP… we had exceeded our monthly download limit of 2GB. They aren’t supposed to cut off our email or stop us getting in to their site to do a ‘top-up’. But they did… I couldn’t get any email, and it wouldn’t let us online to do the top-up. Mum didn’t get a warning email, which she should have done. After having lost the entire day to this, I sent an email to our ISP (as I’d seen something saying we couldn’t receive mail but we could send it) and they topped up for us this morning.
To say I’m furious with them is an understatement!
30 Dec 2011
Most months we make it through without going over our limit… It would be fair to say we use just under 2GB to 4GB normally, though I have been held back this month on software updates and so on.
15 January 2012
I guess what I was saying is that sometimes we already pay them £25 for 4GB in a month (£20 for 2GB plus £5 for a 2GB top-up) and so we are getting a poorer deal for the same price that other people are paying for Unlimited.
17 January 2012
Everything’s gone quiet on the ISP front… I’m not quite sure why! Meanwhile our January allowance dwindles…. we are probably under 0.6 GB now.
18 January 2012
It wasn’t the ISP who went quiet, it was us.
On looking around, similar packages with other ISPs are no better. E pointed out that some of the other ISPs said if you needed support, here is their telephone number, but they don’t offer an email address… which ours does. We’ve never had any bad experiences (beyond the occasional glitch) and our queries are always responded to quickly and helpfully. We are like little kids in the parental nest… we don’t want to leave!!
Who knows, maybe we’ll be on the new unlimited speedy gonzales connection next month. Not before time!! (We have 0.5GB left now, and it doesn’t get reset till the 28th). Trying not to go online more than I need to.
Sinking slowly beneath the waves….. bubble bubble……
19 January 2012
M told them a two-year contract was too long. There was a day’s silence, and then she emailed them to say no one had answered her email, and they said they have been unwell… but they would bring our contract down to one year. Mum said yes, so they emailed a new contract, and it still says ‘two years’! Sigh.
She said she’s fed up with faffing about, so she’s just signed it, and it’s waiting to go out by snail mail.
Our ISP said it should protect her from any price rises, and she said in fact our old account has gone up just this month. But the reverse of the coin (which they didn’t mention) is that we risk having to pay large sums of money to get out of the contract in a hurry.
I don’t know how they will organize the change. I have so many plans that I can’t get on with until then. A wallpaper mod suggested turning off the images in my browser… it will help a little if I have to go online and look at something. 0.41GB left!
Mum said she didn’t realize that Facebooking counted… she thought downloads were only downloads.
20 January 2012
I asked Mum if our ISP will switch us over as soon as they get the form? And she said she doesn’t know, but the contract should start then.
I’m not quite sure where our Whiskas ball has got to… it disappeared! Maybe somebody ate the entire thing…
25 January 2012
M got an email today saying they got her signed form. They have sent it to the ‘provisioning’ department, whatever that is.
Meanwhile we have less than 0.25GB left, and three days to go….
26 January 2012
Bored bored bored boreditty bored.
I hope our ISP switches us soon.
Want games. Want books. Want Facebook. Want cat chat. Want blogging. Want wallpapers (sort of). Want shopping. Want software updates. Want research. Want! Want! WANT! Want.
Bored…..
28 January 2012 (the day our download allowance usually rolls over)
Guess what… our 2GB account didn’t refresh!! So we are still limping along on about 0.16 GB. Our ISP seems determined to put us through the mill…..
29 January 2012
Played cards yesterday.
30 January 2012
M accidentally copied her long email conversation with E and me…… to someone else. She got a reply saying “Your ticket number is…. the ISP Support Team will answer your query shortly.”
1 February 2012
It was a bit confusing actually, I thought probably we would have our 2GB refresh while waiting the extra five days for the Unlimited to be sorted out, but when I checked early on the 28th, there was a message in Mum’s account saying that her card hadn’t gone through, and so there had been no refresh. And an email would be sent to her about it. Only she didn’t get one!
Anyway, I figured it was something to do with our ISP, and that they had deliberately yanked the card (so that she wouldn’t have to make two payments). Unfortunately it also meant we didn’t get our 2GB refresh, and we had to crawl along on less than 0.16 GB for the remaining 5 days. That made sense, though, so I just shut up and kept off the internet as much as possible.
Then yesterday I went in to see how much usage was left, and it had been refreshed to 2GB!!! Does that mean she’s paid for that?? Anyway, I told her, and said she better keep an eye on her statement and see if she’s been charged twice, because she should query it with them. I’m staying offline as much as possible meantime, so she’ll be able to point at our usage and say “look, we didn’t use much; we don’t owe you the extra”.
2 February 2012
Our new broadband is here.
13 February 2012
My suspicion was borne out, by the way… Mum found she had two charges from our ISP. She sent a short little email saying could they look into giving her a refund? This morning she got a phone call to say that they are refunding it.
My Blogging Last Year
22 May 2012 6 Comments
in Blogging Tags: blog strategies, computer projects, fear of blogging, postaday, reorganization
Inspired by an old Daily Post: A Year in Posting.
According to my stats, I only posted 37 times last year. So… what prevented me from blogging?
Some thoughts:
The publish button ‘looms’…. once you’ve pressed it, there’s no way back. You can delete or edit your post, but in the meantime people will have seen it in all its roughness.
Sometimes I wrote something and it seemed empty.
Sometimes I just wanted to turn off the computer and be by myself… write my private journal (without feeling constrained), read a book, watch Death in Paradise.
My sight has been ageing and I’ve had trouble concentrating on all of my usual hobbies (e.g. digital art) along with new ones (such as trying to draw). It was unpleasant switching my focus from a book or magazine to the computer screen (or a drawing pad) and back again… there’s a point where you just can’t do that without developing a stoop in the back and a crick in your neck! Varifocals have helped, but my vision will never again be as good as it used to be.
What would I do differently this year??
I have various computer ‘projects’ that never seem to be firing on all cylinders at the same time. I was listing them last night: Facebook, digital art, blogging, a small chat forum, the Kindle Reader (it’s a world of its own)… and I think I forgot to list the DVD Subtitles site! It’s a while since I’ve rated any DVDs.
Anyway, where was I going with all that…? I feel I need to get all of these main hubs of internet activity organized and functioning equally, so that I don’t spend all my time in Facebook, for instance, leaving my other interests to suffer. It has to be easier to reach everything and get involved.
The most important thing I’ve done so far is setting Google Reader to show up automatically every time I fire up my browser. The blog posts of my blogging friends are the first items I see every day… so keep blogging! Fuzzy Bear is watching.
The Important Things: My Answers
20 May 2012 5 Comments
in Observations Tags: banging your head against a brick wall, diaries, happiness, journals, learning, life, memes, postaday, what's important
Doubtless his lot is important in his own eyes; and the chief reason that we think he asks too large a place in our consideration must be our want of room for him, since we refer him to the Divine regard with perfect confidence; nay, it is even held sublime for our neighbour to expect the utmost there, however little he may have got from us.
~ Middlemarch (George Eliot)
Sarah has posted some questions on her blog Stars and Rainbows — I can never resist answering these!
1. What is the one thing that makes you happiest, each day?
A peaceful day in which nothing has to be done or faced, and no fires have to be fought.
2. What is your biggest dream?
A more insightful, thoughtful and understanding world.
3. If you could meet your 16-year-old self, what advice would you give to her/him?
Keep in touch with your friends if possible, and keep that diary going! One day you will want to remember, and sometimes what you have written is a surprise… often good as well as bad. Also record your dreams… those are of interest too. Photos are good too, but they are never as evocative or as useful, somehow, as your own words from the past.
4. What is your most prized possession?
My sight.
5. What did school teach you?
That you learn more when you take an interest and get involved in your studies, especially when you choose additional books of your own (from the library or wherever). I didn’t hear at lessons, and sometimes didn’t hear what our homework was to be, and so home-study and planning were particularly important.
6. What has life, thus far, taught you?
That there’s no point banging your head against a brick wall, and that some people will believe what they want against all reason. Just accept you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and that so long as you get on with some people most of the time, you’re fine!
7. How would you describe your style?
Best when light…. but I keep forgetting that! 
8. What is your favourite thing about blogging?
It’s a way of getting your view across, while discovering and talking to other bloggers. It’s a way of venting steam, preferably without scalding anyone. Your blog is a record of your past thoughts and actions, and sometimes a reminder to get on with something that you were putting off and blogged about ages ago…
It’s also that moment when you think “what could I blog about today? It could be absolutely anything!” and feel an anticipatory thrill.
9. What is your favourite meal? Describe it, in a way that will make the reader want it.
Prawn curry! The rich tang of the curry sauce steams and curls under your nose. The plump sultanas glisten alongside sweet pink prawns, nestling on a bed of pearly white rice. At your side sits a large, finely etched glass of chilled white wine — we like ours to be dessert wine. Sometimes you also have a crunchy spiced poppadum – I love to break mine into big pieces for scooping up the curry.
10. Imagine you are off on an adventure, and you need to pack a bag of food. What will your picnic consist of?
A Cornish Pasty or an onion bridie, if I felt a little more adventurous than usual! Sometimes cold quiche, or cous cous mixed with roast vegetables. Normally (more boringly) it would be a Marks and Sparks sandwich with a pricy little bottle of Coca-Cola.
11. What is the one thing that you wish everyone could understand?
It’s communication that’s important, not how one communicates.
A Tag Cloud Dropped In Unexpectedly
19 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Blogging Tags: frequent topics, postaday, tag cloud, trivialities, word cloud, WordPress
One of the things about having fallen out of blogging for so long is that WordPress has changed a lot, and I don’t quite know how to use it any more! I’ve been slowly finding out. The last time I created a blog post, it made tag suggestions and gave me the opportunity to add them. It also invited me to choose from the ‘most used’ tags, and when I clicked on the link, this image came up…
It didn’t take me long to work out that this isn’t a list of common tags on the WordPress site… this is my OWN cloud of tags!
The word ‘trivialities’ is unsettlingly huge. On the other hand, ‘grumbles’ is surprisingly small. Perhaps I just forget to add it most of the time…
Weekly Photo Challenge: Unfocused
18 May 2012 2 Comments
in My Cats, Photographs Tags: animals, blurred, blurry, cats, fuzzy photo, fuzzy photos, postaday, soft focus, weekly photo challenge
Oops, this is an old photo challenge, but I have gone to some trouble preparing the photo for publishing, so I’m posting it anyway.
We were out this morning, and when I came in the front door and saw the way my two cats were sleepily regarding me, I took photos, trying to capture their mood. Unfortunately the girl cat (Delilah) first of all just put her head down and closed her eyes, and didn’t look at the camera the way she had looked at me… then she sat up and did a very sweet green-eyed yawn, and at that precise moment my camera decided it had run out of card-space!!!!
That sort of thing is enough to throw you into a screaming tantrum.
I behaved myself though, and fetched another camera card… by that time Delilah had hopped off and left through the cat flap. Thank goodness for Samson, who stayed in bed, occasionally blinking at me, though with not quite the roguish grin that he had before.
I tried to focus sharply on him (dark room and ageing eyesight), and sometimes managed; other times it was way off, like here… I would have deleted this picture without a second thought, but I suddenly remembered the photo challenge.
Well, I thought, if I have to post a fuzzy photo, it might as well be this one! I made it even softer in Photoshop, mostly round the edges. Will have to look and see what other challenges I can respond to… my camera has been a bit covered in cobwebs recently.
Spring-Cleaning My Blog
17 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Blogging Tags: daily post, mind clutter, postaday
Still spring-cleaning…
I’ve been weeding out my mailbox. I found a lot of unread Daily Post emails, but have been reading through them as I delete; making notes of some of the tips and suggestions. They did inspire a few more blog posts out of me last year than I would otherwise have managed, so I knew the potential value of them!
I’m only partway through the task but have already put a new badge in my sidebar (‘I’m part of Post A Week 2012′)… better late than never! If you click on the badge, it will take you to WordPress’s Daily Post page.
I have also set Google Reader to appear whenever I fire up my browser. I used to do that before, but for a long time it’s been displaced by other sites.
Reading the Daily Posts have got me dusting off my blog again, thinking about the posts I could write… thank you to the staff there. I don’t know if I can keep blogging even once a week, but would like very much to get back into the swing of it.
Ad Positioning
12 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Rants Tags: advertising, adverts, disruptive advertising, google ads, site ads
I don’t like the practice some sites have of placing ads part of the way down the page… sometimes interrupting the article; sometimes interrupting the following comments… before now I’ve made the mistake of thinking I’ve reached the end and there is no more to read.
But when I was surfing around today, I found an example of particularly poor ad positioning!
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