Christmas edition

 By the time you read this I should be back from being away for a pre christmas get together playing games, competitions such as a version of the hit BBC show Pointless and a meal together,

Things have been hotting up here with visits, errands with CatMas cards, last minute organizing and so on but I did dig out a few favourite records to play in the gaps apart from cds of Carols from Kings as well I love a carol or two.

There will be a pause until at least after Boxing Day this year although I'm not quite show this year what the next post will be here.

All that remains is to wish you all a Happy Christmas and all the best for 2025.

kk

Moving towards the day

One more week before we go on the CatMas pause here as not much Tm will happen until after we've actually got through the christmas period with things like cards to write, preparations to be with friends just before Christmas week - bit of a first with me - and the inevitable visits although to be fair CatMas with Mom doesn't seem the same.

This weekend scouts will be out ho-ho-ho with Mr Claus although due to leadership recruitment issues the local Brownies folded a few years back, more's the pity  so they won't but in GirlGuiding there is a actually a Christmas badge and this is one from that bleak period in 2020 that I'm sure really helped.

As ever, across the area the signs are all though from candy canes, reindeer's of many sizes, post boxes for santa to leave his presents and many elves.

The official trees are are up, the council tree on a green presently soggy lung, one by the CoE church and this the one we the community raised funds for as it is where it can be used for carols and other gatherings, all illuminated and decorated.

I might just add this is first post on the new Chromebook since it arrived last week and was set up.

Replacing ones Chromebook

Friday it must be said wasn't a good day beyond even the mini tornado we had in the morning tearing up trees and blocking roads off.

I had problems with one cellphone sim provider, a laptop that died as the gales raged around me with no prior warning and the trackbar went on my Chromebook. Trying to control it with a mouse on your lap isn't so easy.

That the three things in a day your mothers always caution you of saying the pattern to be complete before things can get better

So after sorting out the laptop - ordered from the supplier of the last one a good decade ago - we got on to the task of looking for a brand new chromebook maybe something a bit beyond the basic educational models.

I found an Asus Cx3402CB with an interesting back story of being bought, opened once only for owner to find it wasn't a Windows notebook that seemingly he wanted (I wouldn't get one unless it was a fully spec'd and featured laptop).

This one he was selling this which had everything a Chromebook Plus had outside of the AI I was less bothered about such as 8gb of ram to fight sites like Tumblr and Reddit with with their ridiculously massive continuous feeds of photographs each far bigger than the screen needs to display clearly really driving your hardware trying to keep it all loading smoothly and some 256gb of solid state memory.

It is a bit bigger too, 14 inches rather than the usual 11  to 12.5 inch which helps the peepers read the text with less eyestrain.

It was all there with less than one hour use, wiped, for a massive discount and setting up is as easy as entering your Wifi stuff,  adding your account and you're done.

Another advantage of being bigger is a bit more space between the keys so it helps cross that rubicon between Chromebook and MacOs or Windows 11 when it comes to productivity and the bigger screen helps when using things like Pixlr to edit pictures with or working with Google Docs

We'll see how this unexpected pre-christmas present works out.

Playing again

 

Bit of a damp squid of a weekend outside, another missing cat in the neighbourhood this time white and from someone whose only just moved into the neighbourhood so the microchip details aren't up to date and a few things coming from the Swan.

So I've been playing a few Beatles records I bought ten years ago that at one place people keep on saying they never got and now they're really expensive used as they've been unobtainable for a good few years new.

Now there's always people who just get into something, an author, a series of models or whatever late in the day but a number of folks just kept putting off being them and you didn't have to buy the box set which I didn't but individually which I did a few at a time from the cheapest sources.

What I have now is a bit better, replacing cartridges and what not and while obviously these records aren't any better than when they were bought and well cared for, the quality in them shines a fair bit more from early albums like A Hard Day's Night which in the U.K. was a thirteen track album of all beatle performances and that great compilation Mono Masters that compiles single and that which sounds better than my late 1970's box set of singles.

That's great as set of artifacts but the limits in cutting seven inch records not least for inexpensive portable players to avoid jumping does show on modern high quality equipment.