@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.
@matigo I'd checked eBay to get an indication of prices and found them to vary between a realistic $45 and a wildly optimistic $120. I put a price of $40 or near offer on it, which was the selling price.
The buyer is a teacher who'd failed to integrate an older Apple TV into his workflow and a 4k version was ideal, he said.
At 5:55 pm on Wednesday evening I posted to the Mac User Group that I had a 1st generation 32 GB 2017 Apple TV 4k for sale. Its new owner collected it today, a mere 67 hours after the original posting.
Today I upgraded my 1st gen Apple TV 4k to a 3rd gen version. Using the iPhone to set it up was very simple. The Siri remote control now comes with a USB-C port in place of the Lightning port previously used.
Apple update time again. Now available, tvOS 17.6, HomePod OS 17.6, iOS 17.6, iPadOS 17.6, watchOS 10.6, macOS 13.6.8 and macOS 14.6.
Thus far I have updated one iPhone, 1 iPad Air 5, one Apple TV 4k, one Apple Watch SE (1st edition), one M1 Mac Mini, one M3 MacBook Air and 5 HomePods.
I still have to update the iPad Mini 5 but it's in the car andit's cold outside.
Another aspect of the new TV in combination with the Apple TV is that powering the Apple TV on and off does the same for the TV itself.