I’ve taken my 20-year-old Olympus digital camera with me on the modular mobility scooter around various tracks and trails on the landward side of the main inlet in a little fishing/tourist village. I can’t get the pics off the camera until I’m back home but here’s a shot with the iPhone of a fishing platform by the creek.
Overdid the physiotherapy exercises at the local clinic on Friday. I need a crutch or cane to get around on foot when outside and I favout the left knee, taking a lot of my weight on the walking aid held by my right hand. The problem is that following the Friday session, my right thigh, from hip to knee is really sore and stiff in the muscle.
Over my back fence there's a massage business and I first met the chief masseur since 2011. Might be time to renew her acquaintance, a good massage session is likely what I need to alleviate this condition.
@matigo At least with the HDD-equipped 27-inch iMacs they were big enough to have space for a 3.5-inch 7200 rpm Hdd inside. The 21.5-inch ones could only fit a 2.5-in form factor drive.
It's a long story. In August 2017 I replaced my 2011 MacBook Pro (mostly used in clamshell mode with a mouse, keyboard and external monitor) with a built-to-order 4k 21.5-in iMac. Because I'd specified 16 GB of RAM to go with the 1 TB Fusion drive it was classed as build-to-order as it wasn't on off-the-shelf unit. I used this regularly until I replaced it in late 2022 with an M1 Mac mini. In February of 2021 I had the fine folk at an Apple reseller and repairer replace the faulty 1 TB Fusion drive with a 1 TB SSD.
Meanwhile in November 2017 retired friends in their late 70s decided they'd had it with Windoze 10 and switched to an iMac. They bought the basic off-the-shelf 4k 21.5-in iMac with 8 GB RAM and a 1 TB 5400 rpm (slow) HDD. Over time and with the passing of her husband, my friend's compute became increasingly slow and hard to use. Then one of her Widoze "expert" friends decided he could fix a problem with her iMac but made it worse by creating a new user account and installing Norton 360 for Mac on it.
This proved so incredibly difficult to fully uninstall but eventually I was able to get rid of it. I then threatened physical harm to this Windoze "expert" if he ever touched her iMac again. It seems his meddling had made on old and slow Mac even older and slower. Just to boot it up meant finding something else to do for five minutes while it started up.
This friend with the sick iMac is the Men's Shed's honorary Treasurer. On Wednesday she presented the monthly report in handwritten form as the iMac had died partway through printing out the latest issue. It was now taking in excess of 12 minutes to boot and would randomly shut down, the only way to boot it up again was to disrupt the power supply before hitting the power button on the back again.
On Wednesday I told her I could offer the use of a similar iMac or a 13-in M1 MacBook Air, she rejected the latter as being too small. Yesterday I arrived at her place at 3 pm with my spare 4k iMac with me. I'd updated it to the latest version of Ventura and created a basic user account.
After determining that her iMac was beyond salvage I enquired about the location of her Time Machine external HD, eventually finding it hiding on a high shelf, it had last been used on November 2nd, 2023. By this stage her iMac had stared and was as stable as it was going to get. I managed to get a new Time Machine backup made. I then connected the external drive to my iMac and used Migration Assistant app to add all of the content of the two user accounts from he old iMac to mine.
This process took about 3.5 hours to transfer 498 GB of data from the two user accounts, leaving 438 GB of free space on the 1 TB SSD. This was wrong, it shouldn't have been using that much space. After much investigation I found. in the invisible main Library a folder of Screen Recordings totalling 492 GB, created by her late husband in early 2018! Once these were deleted and his Photos Library transferred to her user account there was now 936 GB of free space. This was declared a win. I then started Mail to finish importing some 68,000 emails from the backup drive While this was done she went out for a pizza for our dinner.
I'm happy to report that my friend has a working computer that boots up fully in under 30 seconds and doesn't dick about when doing stuff. I'll go back later today to make sure her printer is working and to hide the invisible files I had to reveal in order to access the Library in her late husband's user account. Once I was satisfied the restored computer was woring well, I deleted the basic user account. It still has two admin-capable accounts. In addition I was able to find a user for my old-but-still-good iMac which I have given to her as no-one else wanted it and it was too good to dispose of otherwise.
That wasn't cheap but it had to be done. The previous owner of this 44-year-old unit had fitted a water filtration unit to the sink. The spout for that had snapped off years ago and the end of the plastic pipe capped.
Last night I noticed some water on the kitchen floor but put it down to being splashes from hand washing of dishes.
Tonight there was visible dripping from the bottom of the cupboard doors under the sink, so I hunted around for an after-hours plumber, by that stage it was after 8 pm. I found a reputable emergency plumber in the area and he arrived about an hour later. He confirmed the leak was coming from where the water filter's plastic hose connected to yhe copper pipes. He gave me a quote to fit a new filter unit but I've become accustomed to the taste of the local water and just wanted the old thing removed and professionally capped off. The job was done within an hour, now I'mdealing with seven soggy towels. I'm going to give them a riinse and spin cycle in the front load washer to fix that before hanging them out to dry.
@variablepulserate Mine was the second case for the day, all over and done with 20 minutes before the previously scheduled start.
@variablepulserate He wasn't cheap but the behaviour of the barrister in the actual courtroom was brilliant to watch. He forewarned me that the Judicial registrar (Magistrate-in-waiting) who had been chosen to hear the case was quite strict but he'd do his best with the references, etc that he'd asked me to collate.
The barrister managed to lead the Judicial Registrar in just the right directions, extremely subtle approach but really effective. The fellow just didn't come across as strict at all, mainly by the way the barrister did his job.
Following a driving incident in our shared driveway in January this year I had to front the Magistrates Court charged with careless driving. I had trouble getting free legal advice so I paid a barrister to do the worrying and other legal background and courtroom stuff for the two weeks prior to the case being heard.
The result was as favourable as possible: no conviction recorded, required to make a small donation to a road trauma charity and was placed on a six month good behaviour bond.
I also had the commercial vehicle endorsements of my driving licence downgraded and was required to pass a Traffic Authority Medical Review driving test by the 31st of march or my licence would be suspended for an unspecified time. I had not used ant aspect of the commercial driving licence in the past 14 years anyway, so no great loss there.
The test was originally scheduled for March 7th but I'd started what turned out to be 7 weeks of hospitalisation four days earlier and had to reschedule the test.
Fast forward a few months: I had until Sept 5th to pass the test which was scheduled for July 3rd but the tester had problems and had to reschedule once again. I underwent and passed the test on Monday morning this week. According to Google maps I travelled 20 km on the test and 3 km in vehicle familiarisation. Only three minor errors were made in the 40-minute test. Failure to observe traffic approaching a roundabout, failing to indicate intention to leave another roundabout and attempting to use the nonexistent clutch when selecting reverse while in the middle of a three-point turn. In this latter case, no deductions are made in such tests due to unfamiliarity with the vehicle which was a hybrid Toyota Corolla fitted with dual controls.
I have to repeat the test in July of 2026.
Nostalgia trip: I bought a used Olympus C750UZ digital camera in 2006, it was about 3 years old by then. Last night I found my missing set of four Eneloop long shelf life NiMH batteries - in that camera. I charged them up and I'm going to start using this camera a bit more, it takes surprisingly good shots for a 4 MP device. It has a neat interpretive setting that doubles the MP setting when selected, so I can take 8 MP photos with this 4 MP camera. It features 4x digital zoom and 10x optical zoom.
Scientifically, a raven has 17 primary wing feathers, the big ones at the end of the wing. They are called pinion feathers. A crow has 16. So, the difference between a crow and a raven is only a matter of a pinion.