Sunday.  5th.  Cooked up a cauliflower and potato bake, brussels sprouts and bacon and some zucchini to go with some leftover lamb for dinner.

DS9 7.22 then some of The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem. Oh, I forgot to mention that Aunty Rhonda called this arvo which was nice, haven't talked to her in forever.

Monday.  I keep getting the same APOD pic in my RSS feed. Went to the site and it hadn't been updated since Wednesday and had this note: "Due to the lapse in federal government funding, NASA is not updating this website. We sincerely regret this inconvenience." Sad times.

Flowerporn!!!

Quiet day. Actually had some time to do some hobbies which was nice. Feel like I don't have enough time on weekends for any fun stuff. So today was kinda nice. Leftovers for dinner. DS9 7.23 then finished watching The Antisocial Network.

Tuesday.  Philippians 2:10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father... Hymn 178!!

Trash sleep - took ages to get to sleep (restless legs), restless sleep (hot and sweaty every five minutes), awake early (needing to pee). Sigh. Achieved basically nothing all morning. In the afternoon got absorbed in proxy stuff and almost forgot to go get nuked. Got home a bit late and asked the sweetie what he wanted for dinner. hrmm.

Then DS9 7.24.

Wednesday.  Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! .. Sounds like another song..

Slept somewhat better but awake super early. Another day of being busy but not achieving much. Nuking session 5, they were ready for me as soon as I got there. Leftovers for dinner then the finale of Deep Space Nine. Pretty decent finale actually. Except for Worf looking around and not seeing Jadzia in the montage, how dumb is that!? And no Rom or Leeta?? Why not?? Got back to my computer and it had rebooted. hmmm.  Logged in, and it crashed - black screen of death. Held my breath as I rebooted it again. Possibly windoze updates caused it to crash in the first place. I was going to make some other comments about my day but I forget now, because my computer had crashed and it took so long to get back in that I'd forgotten stuff. Sigh.

Oh, met one of the new neighbours today. I heard a car and person out the front so go out to open the door. Dude has left a package and is leaving. I say that he can knock if he likes and he said, oh I was just taking a photo then I was going knock. BS. You were already walking away. Whatever. So take the package inside. It's not for us. It's for the neighbours. So I go out again and try and stop the dude and told him he needs to go down the back for next door, and he's like, isn't this all the one house. Um. No. And he wouldn't take it, he was like, can you just take it. Fricken useless Fedex driver. They're getting as bad as America. Anyways, so dude's truck was there so I went down and gave it to him and said hi.  

Got depressed about closing off browser tabs I had open for the Europe trip I never went on. Sigh.

Thursday.  Slept like crap - awake for half the night hot and sweaty and restless. Fighting with All The Stoopid all day. Nuking session 6. They're too efficient, I never get time to do any jigsaw while I wait - pretty much every time I've been (except for one) they grab me as soon as I've changed! Watched this POV of Rise of the Resistance at lunch which was pretty cool. Definitely not as epic as doing it for reals though! 

Pizzas for dinner, then we watched a documenatry on Deep Space Nine called What We Left Behind which was pretty cool.  

Friday.  Colossians 3:12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.. More stuff I need to remember.

More restless sleep. Another day of All The Crap from All The People wanting All The Things. Nuking day 7. Nearly half way done. Kievs for dinner then Wednesday 2.1. Then I watched Lilo and Stitch, the original animated version. Which I haven't seen in at least 20 years. I don't remember if I saw this at the movies or later. But it was before 2006.

Saturday.  Not great sleep again. Busy busy morning. Spent a good chunk of the afternoon trying to sort Mum's slides into chronological order based on frame information. Sadly Mum wasn't great about noting dates on her slides. Some I can't even pick a year - could be 1967 or 1968. There's a few places where frame numbers don't line up with dates. Meanwhile Stu's back pain is subsiding, replaced with weird hearing issues and vertigo and now nausea. Hurrah.  Cooked a pasta bake for dinner with some potatoes and zucchini then watched Wednesday 2.2.

Sunday.  Slept okish. We haven't run the heater in a few days. So had a look at the controller. Sure enough it's continually flashing on and off. So I have a feeling that it's actually the heater playing up, as this is the behaviour that we've seen when it hasn't been run for a while. Day of trying to keep on top of crap and fit some hobbies in there somewhere.

And Windoze has forgotten all my folder settings.  AGAIN.  #hate

Last weekend was the ABC Classic 100 Piano.

When this first came up a while back I listed the first things that popped into my head.  All but one of them were listed:

Rhapsody in Blue - yes
Jessica's Theme (Man from Snowy River) - yes
Ice Castles soundtrack - no (this has a nice piano opening but not sure it's really a piano piece anyway)
Pride and Prejudice soundtrack - yes
The Entertainer - yes

They had a few novelty pieces too - Chopsticks and "Heart and soul" as well.. I never even knew it was called that.

In the end these were my votes and their places.  I wasn't really expecting the Shostakovich to get up, but I do like that piece from Fantasia 2000.

4 Rhapsody in Blue -- Gershwin, George
  (robbed!!!! this should have been number one!!)
18 The Man from Snowy River (incl. Jessica's Theme) -- Rowland, Bruce
22 Le Carnaval des animaux (The Carnival of the Animals, incl. The Swan) -- Saint-Saëns, Camille
25 The Entertainer -- Joplin, Scott
28 Pride & Prejudice Soundtrack (1995 TV) -- Davis, Carl
30 Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV565 -- Bach, Johann Sebastian
32 Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, K331 'Rondo alla Turca' -- Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
46 Up Soundtrack -- Giacchino, Michael
78 Lyric Pieces (incl. Wedding Day at Troldhaugen) -- Grieg, Edvard
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, Op. 102 -- Shostakovich, Dmitri

I actually listened to every piece they had open for voting.  Because most pieces I literally have no idea what they're called.  I pretty much added anything I'd ever heard of to my short list, then whittled them down from there.

Aside from the finals above, these were my maybes and their positions.  I did consider 4'33" too haha

17 Bagatelle in A minor, WoO59 'Für Elise' - Beethoven, Ludwig van
35 Flight of the Bumblebee - Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai (arr. Rachmaninov)
67 Forrest Gump Soundtrack - Silvestri, Alan
75 My Neighbour Totoro - Hisaishi, Joe
Chopsticks - Allen, Euphemia
  (just for the novelty factor)
Heart and Soul - Carmichael, Hoagy
  (again for the novelty factor)
Minuet No. 1 in G major - Petzold, Christian (formerly attributed to JS Bach)
Waltzing Matilda - Traditional (Australian) arr. Cowan, Marie

And these were my probably nots and their positions:

1 Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 'Emperor' - Beethoven, Ludwig van
2 Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2 'Moonlight' - Beethoven, Ludwig van
7 Gymnopédies - Satie, Erik
8 Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23 - Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich
  (this was the onlyTchaikovsky)
9 Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 - Rachmaninov, Sergei
10 Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K467 'Elvira Madigan' - Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
12 Variations on 'Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman', K265 (aka Twinkle Twinkle - Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
15 Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring - Bach, Johann Sebastian
19 The Piano Soundtrack (incl. The Heart Asks Pleasure First) - Nyman, Michael
21 Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 - Rachmaninov, Sergei
26 Howl's Moving Castle Soundtrack (incl. Merry-Go-Round of Life) - Hisaishi, Joe
29 I giorni - Einaudi, Ludovico
34 Peer Gynt, Op. 23 (incl. Morning Mood) - Grieg, Edvard
  (this might have gone into my maybes if I'd realised this was also Into the hall of the mountain king)
37 Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence - Sakamoto, Ryuichi
41 Spirited Away (incl. One Summer's Day) - Hisaishi, Joe
42 Pictures at an Exhibition - Mussorgsky, Modest
61 The Pink Panther - Mancini, Henry
71 Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major, K545 'Sonata facile' - Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
74 Maple Leaf Rag - Joplin, Scott
85 American Beauty Soundtrack - Newman, Thomas
89 Waltzes (incl. 'Minute') - Chopin, Frédéric
Je te veux - Satie, Erik
Rondo a Capriccio in G major, Op. 129 'Rage over a Lost Penny' - Beethoven, Ludwig van

So most of the stuff I might have voted for got up.  Guess that says something about "popular" music.  ie, crap that people have actually heard of got voted for haha.

A fun weekend!

Saw this on Neil's a while back and thought it would be cool to do.  One of those old-fashioned "blog memes" that people used to do twenty years ago.  I stopped commenting on Neil's blog forever ago because when I tried to catch up with him when I was in York in 2010 he completely ignored me.  His blog went dead for years but my feed reader still had it and notified me a few years back of new posts.

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

Vic said I should.  I was doing unpaid work at CIA/Host1 at the time (well, helping out with windows hosting support and answering support mail in exchange for free internet and web hosting).  I'd heard of blogs by then (January 2003) but had never read or subscribed to any.  Vic probably wanted to spread the word of his ISP a bit, so I did it.  But it very quickly became a place I could brain dump and I only wish I'd started the thing sooner so I could have recorded my life better.  Not that the early years were much good at recording events.  Too many times when I've been sorting my photos I've wondered what I was doing the day I took them, only to find no useful record.  These days are much more betterer.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?

Movable Type.  Been using it since day 1.  I started using it because it came as part of the cpanel setup Host1 had so it was easy to start with.  There was one big upgrade a few years in that changed the whole directory/post/file structure layout, and the one that started inserting images as assets, but otherwise it really hasn't changed much.  I'm still using the last free open source version before it started costing $500 USD .. PER YEAR..!!  WTF!??  I really do need to modernise, not the least of which is because it uses http not https and I still haven't figured out how to *fully* sslify it (eg, canonical links)

Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I did put a few entries up on blogger.com for some more private stuff, but it never really went anywhere.  Same with the "This Day in History" posts I was trying to do here.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that's part of your blog?

I just use the Movable Type web interface.  And only ever from my computer, or laptop when travelling.  Phone is too hard.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

Back in the day I would blog nearly every day and sometimes more often.  Usually in the evenings.  For several years now I've only blogged on the weekends after I've downloaded and processed my photos for the week.  I definitely post a lot more photos than I did twenty years ago.  Really my blog now is a place for me to post photos.  With a little bit of filler about what I've been doing.  It's also a bit less cryptic.  Reading my old entries now I have no idea what I was talking about half the time.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

I always publish immediately.  Usually on Sunday evenings.

What are you generally interested in writing about?

Nothing.  My blog's byline is "Boring Life Of a Geek" - BLOG for short.  My life is boring.  My photos are mostly of flowers and food.  I do like my travel blogs though.  There's even at least one holiday blog (USA 2000) that I wrote up from literally a paper notebook of notes I took during the trip.  And my USA 1983 blog was written entirely from my memories of the trip thirty years after the event!  When I was 9 years old!

Who are you writing for?

Myself. There's maybe like half a dozen readers that I know about, and maybe a few more I don't.  My mother and brother care most.  The sweetie might read things if they happen to show up in his feed reader.  Mostly I do it for the record of my own life.  And it's been quite useful for that.

What's your favourite post on your blog?

Don't have one. 

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

This thing really needs to move to something more modern.  One that bakes in https naturally.  But the idea of moving it is just too daunting.  Maybe if I retire and have more time to think about such things.

Who else do you want to tag?

Ha.  Who even does that anymore??  The only two active bloggers I know that might even still read my blog from time to time are Dave2 and kapgar.

Last weekend was nearing the end of the Constellations art work display by Robin Fox at the National Film and Sound Archives.

So Tony and I went along to it.

It's on a twelve minute continuous loop, but when we walked in it was right in the middle of a trance party.  Well that's what it felt like.  Electronic music and a laser show?  Count me in!  Would have been cool after a couple of drinks, but we went at 10:00.  Oh well.  

We stayed for a couple of rounds through.  I really enjoyed it!

Sunday.  27th.  Leftovers for dinner then Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I still don't like how they explain how he's the half blood prince in the movie. Not that the book was a whole lot better - it was just a line, but at least it had that line.

Monday.  28th.  Remembering Alan's first heart attack, Como Presbyterian Church reopening after the 1994 bushfires, and the Port Arthur Massacre. Slept okish - restless and thermoregulation issues. My computer crashed last night #grunt and it wasn't even for patching this time. Managed to lose another hair tie overnight. Like how does that even happen, I've only been in like three rooms since last night. While searching I did find one I lost a couple of months ago. Hurray. Busy day. The sweetie cooked creamy mushroom fake noodles which was quite nice. DS9 3.4. Looked more into ways to disable Optus while overseas, including setting a SIM PIN, and locking the phone to Optus manually (but that causes a battery hit apparently). Also realised that my iPhone 5 is really a brick now on Optus since they shut down 3G, which is why it won't connect anymore. Spent entirely too much time stressing over Optus being such a ripoff.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok I think. Busy day. Lunch with the sweetie. Bought some light tshirts (all my tshirts are dark, which is no good for Greece or Dubai in summer). Lots of rain FINALLY and even some thunderbolts and lightning. The sweetie cooked some nice mince for dinner (well I cooked the mince the other weekend, but he added nicely to it). DS9 3.5 then holiday planning.

Wednesday.  Took forever to get to sleep - restless legs for ages. Tried to turn the heater on. But the control panel was dead. So Stu went to reboot it. The panel turned all the led things on. But then turned off. Then started flickering on and off. So he rebooted it again (leaving it off longer). It came up for a few seconds normally.. but then started flickering again. Sigh. So leaving it off for longer this time.

All on!

Did put a jumper on for third time this year. KFC for dinner, DS9 3.6, early night.

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep (cold!) but mostly slept ok. 12.7C in the study in the morning!! eep!! Achieved pretty much nothing all day. Super quiet drinks. Blue cheese pizzas for dinner. DS9 3.7. Early night.

Friday.  Got to sleep ok, but then awake from like 1-4. Sigh. The heater worked briefly in the morning then died. Nice warm day though so the house wasn't too crazy. Stu rebooted the heater again and it worked for a few minutes then died again. Sigh. Emailed Travis about recommendations for a split system but he hasn't mailed me back. The sweetie cooked up a cauliflower bake and brussels sprouts with kievs for dinner. 

DS9 3.8 which was pretty silly. Then another episode of an anime series of some Japanese travel blogger. Continued frustration with the heater which might work for a minute or two then just die. Sigh. The house is cold. Sigh.

Saturday.  Awake from like 3 or 4 and never got back to sleep. Sigh.

Another ripe mini capsicum!!

Super busy day. Attacked the todo list (mostly) in the order it happened to be in FreeMind. Chong Co for dinner then Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I. Finished just in time to see Dutton's concession speech.

Sunday.  Slept somewhat better. More ploughing through the todo list. Moved ten young guppies to the tank downstairs which has been empty for a while and desperately needing new fish, and four to the four foot (it definitely needs a lot more guppies). Need to get a few new guppies with different genetics though.

I doubt I'll get to eat this tomato.. 

Remember how much I was complaining about windoze resetting the folder views every time I went to use them?  Well the last week or two it's been a lot better - my in tray folder of photos for blogging has maintained my view settings.  This makes me happy.  I guess enough other people complained about it.

On our anniversary last weekend we did a bit of a magical mystery tour of Canberra.  We went to a heap of "our" places (mostly friends/family).  

We drove past Annie and Stu's, Mishi's and our old place

Through Gungahlin

Past Scott and Kerry's old house and Flemington Road

Through Dickson

Past Scott and Kerry's old old house (which has been demolished and replaced with two townhouses)

And into Ainslie

Where we returned to the scene of the crime!

Had a long chat with the lady cleaning the church.

Then into Ainslie shops.

Past the War Memorial

And up Mount Ainslie

Then we headed for home

It was a lovely way to spend a couple of hours with the sweetie!

Sunday.  13th.  Apple cider pulled pork and lots of veggies for dinner. I didn't measure out the apple cider vinegar this time so it was a little tangier than last time, and I also added less water in the gravy which made it a lot quicker to cook. Yum yum yum. DS9 2.18. Then watched the start of a new season (for me) of Air Crash Investigations. First time I'd watched any since 2021!!

Monday.  Slept mostly ok. Busy morning before work, busy day at work. The new version of Outlook sux donkeyballs. They shrunk down the ribbon so my quicksteps are now hidden behind a drop down menu. So now my quicksteps take twice as long because I have to click the drop down then click my action. And no way to customise it. They broke the categories/colours on our shared calendar so everything is grey and I can't create a new category to match the common ones. And every time I move a mail to a folder it pops up a stoopidly annoying "You've moved a mail, Undo" message RIGHT OVER THE NEXT MAIL I WANT TO READ. Microsoft is so trash. Ok got my ribbon and action buttons back by choosing Classic Ribbon. Leftovers for dinner, DS9 2.19. OMFG this is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time!!!! Don't even know what I did with my evening. I know there was some looking at optional tours for the Greece cruise. The extra tours practically double the day cost of the cruise. hrmmm.

The second half of the ramen pack, with leftover pulled pork

Tuesday.  Took *ages* to get to sleep :( The Old Reader's CDNs are working again today hurray (they'd been broken for a few days). Found another bug in new Outlook. I only have one mail rule. It wasn't working. When I went to look at it I got the error "This rule can't be edited or viewed in Outlook for Windows". Found this page which said it was to do with the "mark as read" rule. So I turned that off in Classic, sure enough it can now be edited in 365.  Nearly had a meltdown over how much time I've wasted on Microsoft TRASH. Another "feature" is they've turned off the nice little count down the bottom which shows you how many messages you have in a folder. Ok at least you can see, but you have to hover over the folder to see it. Meeting notifications are dumb. Old version you could just hit snooze and it would automatically popup again at the five minute mark, hit snooze again and it would pop up at meeting start time. New version you have to hover, then click on snooze, then click a time to snooze. And even then it doesn't work properly, repeating notifications. Also whenever I even look away from Outlook, it navigates me to the top of my inbox, which are my oldest messages. So I'm constantly having to scroll all the way down to the bottom to see my newest messages. Went to get a Covid vaccine at lunch (been like eighteen months since I got my last one). Also spent a 50th birthday gift card. I probably should have looked around more for some cool games or something, but ended up just buying a couple of jigsaws. The sweetie cooked cabbage and bacon for dinner. DS9 2.20.

Wednesday.  Took quite a while to get to sleep and still woke up before 6. First meltdown of the day - the barrel fell out of my locker again at work, but no Connor around today to help me fix it. Took like ten minutes to get it back in. Second meltdown of the day - losing my mind over some proxy configs - turned out Wardie did a sneaky add and remove of a policy which confused me no end. All the middle of a MICROSOFT problem on the proxies that we spent literally all day on, and still haven't resolved. Microsoft is utter TRASH. Third meltdown of the day - YELLOW LIGHTS. I did have a nice birthday lunch with DC though. DS9 2.21.

Thursday.  Slept mostly okish. More trash today. Gave up and went back to Outlook Classic, which made me feel a whole lot better. Microsoft is almost entirely responsible for my very strong desire to retire early.  Super quiet drinks, just our group. Pizzas, DS9 2.22.

Good Friday.  Not so great for Jesus back in the day.  Slept mostly okish. Went for a walk then mostly holiday planning. Tuna bake and veggies for dinner. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Saturday.  Slept mostly okish. Went for a walk then mostly holiday planning. Finished my galah Diamond Dotz and did one of my birthday jigsaws. Steak and salad for dinner. DS9 2.23, then Death in Paradise 14.6.

Easter Sunday.  Christ has risen.  So did the sun in a nice way.

Slept mostly okish. Went for a walk. On the way back a group of kids (and parents) were out in their pyjamas doing an Easter egg hunt around one of the playgrounds. Funny.  Mostly house stuff in the morning. Mostly holiday stuff in the afternoon. Leftovers for dinner then Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Monday.  Somewhat restless sleep and thermoregulation issues. Another quiet day - bit of house stuff, bit of holiday stuff, food shopping (which was super quiet which was nice).

I really could get used to four day weekends....

Sunday.  30th.  Had Jenn over for dinner, wherein we cooked up a huge vegetarian feast.  Stu cooked his miso mushrooms.  I did a potato bake, a blue cheese broccoli/cauliflower/onion bake and brussels sprouts with hazelnuts.

We debated how long it had been since we saw Jenn last.  I looked up my blog and said April 2023, which seemed way too long, but I do remember taking a photo of her hair, and the date on that was April 2023, which pretty much confirms it.  We're such slackers at keeping up with people.  Watched DS9 2.7 after Jenn left.

Monday.  Slept mostly ok I think.  Got to hand back over the NEIL job back to Neil hurray!!!  Leftovers for dinner then DS9 2.8.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep #grunt.  Did a bunch of analysis of some catchall rules so I can put in some more specific ones so we can get rid of the catchall.  

I tried feeding Stumpy today.  He's still being lethargic and not basking, but he did eat a blueberry and some food which was good.

I'm always suprised how quickly the COLD hits in Canberra.  It'll be 30C for days on end, and suddenly it's 5C overnight and leaving the windows open makes for a very cold house.  Decided April 1 should be close up all the windows day (several are left permanently locked open over summer).  In the afternoon I was cold and hungry so had a cup of tea in our fancy Cunard tea cups.

Luv-a-duck for dinner which was very nice.  All. The. Garlic.  !!

DS9 2.9.  After dinner was watching a video Dave2 linked to on living without a smartphone.  Yeah I literally can't even remember how friends and I would meet up without being able to text each other updates or issues.  Like what if a train was late, how would you tell who you were meeting?  Navigation is another big thing.  Nowadays I can turn up anywhere and use GPS on my phone to navigate (except that one time in Switzerland when I had to pay more for a car with satnav because the esim I got didn't work in Switzerland).  I can't even imagine the paperwork you'd need to cart around to try and do the same thing with maps.  Don't get me wrong, I love maps, and I like navigating, but they're damned heavy and more often than not I'm doing the driving not the navigating, and I can't imagine Mum would have much luck navigating me around European cities.  Having said that, we did manage to navigate our way around the USA and Canada in 1983 and 2004 before phones.  But for the most part we stayed out of big cities.  And the USA is literally designed for road tripping.  Signage is way way better there than in Australia or Europe.

Wednesday.  Second night in a row dreaming about toilets.  I have this bizarre thing where I stress about finding a clean/usable toilet.  And not even when I need to actually pee in the middle of the night, it's just this weird obsession I have.  Bizarre.  

Somewhat busy day.  Late home.  Stu had had a day so we got KFC hmmm.  DS9 2.10.  

OneNote is trying to force me to upgrade to Office 365.  It's already upgraded itself from the old Technet version I've been using for years AGAINST MY WILL I might add (apparently there's a way to turn off automatic updates so I might try reinstalling it and do that).  So now it says I have 90 days of free usage.  Well I can tell you that there is no way in HELL I'm going to pay to use it.  I will NEVER get an Office 365 subscription.  I'll rip everything out of it and use LibreOffice and Notepad if it comes down to it.  Which is a shame, because OneNote is actually quite a good product.  I like how it keeps different groupings of notes together and you can easily password protect sections.

Thursday.  Late getting to sleep, then awake from 5:30 sigh.  Went out to put a few things in the recycling bin before it got collected, only to find two big bags of RUBBISH in it!?!  WTF!?!  I pulled them out and raged for a while.  Messaged the neighbours but didn't get a response.  In the end put out our bin (which only had one bag of rubbish in it so wasn't worth putting out) and put their rubbish in it.  As we were leaving for work neighbour's Dad was out there and I asked him and he said he did it.  Sigh.  Simon was sick at drinks so if I get sick early next week we'll know why.  Pizzas for dinner then DS9 2.11.

Friday.  Slept mostly ok.  Busy day - put in a heap of those firewall rules which took me all afternoon to do.  Kievs and veggies for dinner then DS9 2.12.

Saturday.  Awake from like maybe 1 til 4.  Sigh.  Zombie day.  Spent a chunk of the day photo picking from "other peoples photos" and trying to sort out what backups I have of Mum's computer. I'm definitely missing a few years worth from 2015-2017 where I just haven't had the time during visits to get it all copied. Debating a trip to Sydney to do that, as well as sort out the mess they made when they built her a new computer and didn't transfer all the files. Luckily she has all the photos (I hope!) on an external hard drive that has a snapshot backup I made her do some years back. In the evening we went to Bar 59 for an "antiball" but it was a bit of a fizzer really. People forgot or double booked or just didn't turn up, so there was only seven of us there in the end. I tried a few cocktails just for a bit of fun. So it was nice enough night, but dunno if I could be bothered trying to organise another one. Neil very kindly gave us a lift home.

Sunday.  Awake for maybe an hour or so in the middle of the night - from 2:27, but the new 2:27, so didn't get to watch the clock go from 2:59 to 2:00. Still pretty tired though. Finally managed to setup SMTP on my iPhone using CloudLoop. Optus is flaky as hell for sending SMTP mail through, plus I get SPF softfails with them because I don't have their mail servers in my SPF records. Did a bit of house stuff, and started thinking about some holiday stuff. Tried again to add my Qantas frequent flier number to my Emirates flights, but I kept getting the error:

Warning:
Sorry, we`re unable to save the changes. Please check all the information and try again.

So I tried their online chat. It was quick and they just did it for me. Unexpectedly quick and painless! Not that I know why I bother really - Qantas expire all my points before I can use them. Then did some other holiday planning.

The Windows 11 Explorer trash is really pissing me off.  I have an in tray where I have all the photos that I post to this blog.  I update it every week when I'm processing my photos, and when I've posted them they get moved to Done.  I sort this folder by date (in reverse to what windows likes to set it to) so that when I'm blogging them I can see and post the photos in order.  Every time my computer reboots this setting is lost.  I have to go Sort By -> Date (twice to get it in the right order) not just in Explorer, but in Chrome as well.  Every damned time.  But lately it's gotten worse.   Tonight I did an experiment.  I had the folder set the way I wanted it, and copied the path to clipboard.  I closed explorer on this desktop.  Opened up again and pasted the path.  Folder view was reset to default.  So did it again, this time by navigating manually to the folder.  In this method the folder view is retained.  And it's repeatable. 

I also epic hate how Explorer collapses all explorer folders that you've had expanded whenever you insert or eject removable media.  Like WHYYYYYYYY????

I hate Windoze SO MUCH!!

And suddenly the weekend is over. hrmmm.

After seeing all the dead pixels in my (Dad's) old 600D thought it was time for a new one.  The new one has a dead pixel right in the middle.  But we won't talk about that.

The first photo I took on it I didn't even realise I had taken it.  It's fast and silent!

Second shot was of the sweetie of course.  Quite soft though

Obligatory Lego shot

I think at this point I'd set the date wrong on the camera so fixed that.  We won't mention that the time was actually 12 hours out as well. 

Not bad at fish photos, with a fair bit of zoom

A couple of shots of the sweetie later on - super shallow depth of field here, I'm wondering if that's cause it focussed on him being a human

Next up the true test - under the house with almost no light.  It did really well here - quite bright - a lot brighter than it looks in real life!

Went outside and took a bunch of photos of flowers which turned out quite well

Had a play with the "art" filters.  Yeah nah, none of them are any good.

A closeup of a fish - not bad

I went back downstairs to try out more options.  I tried the "hand held night scene" which supposedly takes like three photos and stacks them.  But this turned out all fuzzy.  The simple single shot (below) worked better.

This was using the "food" filter which is supposed to make things look more vibrant.  I guess it did maybe?

The next day took it to Annie's and got a nice, fairly candid, shot of her

And then the real test - comet photos!

If you can get past all of Elon's space junk cluttering up the sky #grunt

One without satellites

Thanks Elon

Thanks Elon.  This shot has TEN satellites ruining it!! (hard to see resized)

Thanks Elon

I did get a nice shot of Orion.  Well one, the others were ruined by Elon's space junk

A couple of weeks later took some more photos of the fish

And other random stuff around the house

Fern closeup

Did I mention the super shallow depth of field, even with only a modest zoom?

When I took it to Adelaide the other weekend, all of my photos on it were rather dull and lifeless compared to my phone photos.  

Like.. compare the pair..

 

Seriously WTF??

Hoping it's just a setting somewhere.. will have to do some more playing.

I'm also frustrated with the lack of zoom.  And I knew I was going to be.  I stand by my opinion of many years ago.. L series lenses are like twice the cost, but they're not twice as good.  Things are still soft at raw pixels..

I miss the old 18-135mm lens I had (~24-200 equivalent with crop).  I only get half that now. Sigh.

Yeup.

Sunday.  9th.  Got home from the coast and spent some time doing Dotz, then closing off browser tabs.  I really feel like I need to spend less time on the computer/internet/phone... hrmmmm.  Downloaded photos from the week and blogged the last two weeks and some of the coast weekend.  Leftover mince with cauliflower rice and cheese for dinner.  Death in Paradise 14.1.  Somehow managed to lose a BRAND NEW HAIR TIE!!!  Had a slight meltdown because I'd been out of sorts all day, and this just sent me over the edge.  

Monday.  Went to bed early (like 20:30) but woke up at 12:45 and stayed awake for HOURS.  Sigh.  So not transfunctionating during the day.  Mostly just did house stuff during the day, which all took a lot longer than normal because I wasn't transfunctionating.  Finally finally got a bit of rain around 18:00 (even the weeds are dying at the moment!!).  Need to bribe the little brother into visiting before daylight savings finishes so I can see what I'm cooking.  Had lamb chops from Chris's and cabbage for dinner.  I never used to like lamb chops growing up because they were just too damned fiddly with all the fat and bones.  After forty years (and almost never having eaten them in the meantime) I have to say my opinion hasn't changed much.  Sure they're tasty, but just too annoying.

Tried to watch Stranger Things but nothing would connect to the Chromecast, even after rebooting it, the wifi and Stu's phone.  Did a bit of a Google and found everyone on the internet complaining about it.  Enshittification much??  We ended up watching a bit of Hard Quiz.  I think I could answer ONE question - football, meat pies, <what> and Holden cars?

Tuesday.  Slightly early night.  Actually slept quite well.  Hurray.  NEIL at work, who was off getting bits of him chopped out.  Chromecast still down.  Turns out an intermediate certificate expired so stuff couldn't authenticate.  I wonder if Google are debating whether or not to fix it or let the generation 2 devices all just die and force people to buy new ones.  I imagine that would piss off enough people that they would refuse to buy anything Google again.  I also got my quarterly reminder at work to check for expiring certificates coming up in the next quarter.  If only Google had done that.

Wednesday.  The brother type person called me while I was at lunch.  He could come TONIGHT.  Except I didn't have a new light to install yet.  He suggested Bunnings.  I walked up to Project Lighting instead.  They had a record of what we bought last time and I got something similar.  Not the same of course.  No no no.  Maybe that's a good thing though because turns out Mercator Franklin lights are TRASH!!!  Seriously LED lights should last years and years and years.  Not SIX years!!  And it's not like you can just replace a bulb, now you have to REPLACE THE WHOLE DAMNED FITTING!!! #hate  Anyways, so David picked me up after work and installed the new light! Hurray!!  Bestest brother ever. 

Had a few drinks and chatted then he got a bee in his bonnet to setup the PS3 to be able to use Netflix and Amazon Prime.  Did I mention I have the bestest brother ever?? :)

Thursday.  Woke up around 2:45 for several hours.  Sigh.  Although surprisingly unzombielike. 

NEIL again for the day.  Julian's farewell at drinks which was nice (I called the Japanese whisky, but not Lego Himeji Castle :) ).  Pizza with blue cheese for dinner!

DS9 1.13.  Another dumb episode.

Friday.  Slept fairly well.  NEIL at work.  Brown Food Friday!!!

DS9 1.14 and Death in Paradise 14.2.

Saturday.  Went to bed at 21:30 but didn't get to sleep til after 00:30.  Sigh.  Then meh sleep.  So twice this week I've had crap sleep the night before a day off.  Sigh.  Zombie morning, mostly house stuff.  Did some Dotz and even did a jigsaw in the late afternoon - 500 pieces in an hour and a quarter flat!  I asked the sweetie what's for dinner?  His response:

Google fixed the Chromecast issue.  Haven't looked up what they did.  Watched DS9 1.14.  Another meh episode.  Does DS9 actually get any better?  Most of season 1 is lame.  Stranger Things 1.5.  They finally banded together after all attackings things separately.  Reminded me in one place of E.T.  :)  

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok.  Got a bee in my bonnet to write a script to swap out Picasa database directories.  And spent a chunk of the day tagging people in photos.  Whoops.  Also gave Neil a lift to the hospital for antibiotics (did you know "hospital at home" is a thing?  You stay home but have to pop into the hospital every day for treatment.  Advantages and disadvantages - nice that you can hang out in your own house but a pain to have to trek into the hospital every day). 

Also.  Why TF does windoze reset the sort order of my directories EVERY DAMNED TIME IT REBOOTS???  Far out it pisses me off.

Have had like three drops of rain this afternoon.  So much for showers.