Taking care of your clothes

I don't know if that will be happening today, but I do have a soft spot for vintage photographs that explore childhood but beyond the shoes and black dresses it's really their pinafores that grab my attention.
The girl on the right appears to feeling it by the hem - perhaps it was starched?- while the other looks as though she's pointing to a stain as if to say "You'll be in trouble for that" although the entire point is to protect her actual dress from any spills and the like.
I'm always getting them on me.
In an era when wash was done by hand taking ages, perhaps it can be understood why that generation took great care to avoid your main clothes getting stained rather than today with easy to machine wash materials.

Introducing Oswald

It's been a little wet with showers across the week and indeed as this was typed up it was poring down heavily thoughts turned to indoor stuff.

 One thing I am very partial too is plushies and this one recently joined the collection that has been seen by a fair few people here like disability assessors of late as I don't believe in hiding this part of my life.
Oswald joined the menagerie a week ago being a gift that came from Northwich, Cheshire and flow down from the fireplace for his picture to be taken.
There has been just minor adjustment of the exposure as I get to grips with a newer photo processing program but that's about it.
I will be away next Monday so while there will be a blog issue coming out, I won't be around the usual sites posting links as a bit of being away is about digital detoxing apart from the rough internet where I'll be.
While I respect those who need to check works emails while away, personally I don't and so leave all such stuff behind.

Old Masters

Recently I got a few discs in a series that came out in the early years of the Compact Disc that did result in some research into what exactly was available when it came to finding the cleanest recordings of the final mix by artists from the past.

One character who remains controversial for reasons I won't go into here is the former MCA Records employee Steve Hoffman who was a pioneer in the early days of cd for hunting down the actual master tapes to assemble releases from rather the nearest tape box that might be a copy of copy with processing applied to it.
This disc in the opinions of many set the bar upon release for the quality recordings made in mid 1950's could sound and many hadn't heard in the lp era of often so-so sounding compilations.
Bill Haley was one the three big influences on British Rock and Roll responsible for See You Later Alligator and Rock Around The Clock.

 Buddy Holly was a sensation from 1957 through 1960 after his untimely death in late 1959 proving very popular in Great Britain and this remains the best overall sounding compilation of his songs such as Rave On, Well that's Alright, Not Fade Way and It Doesn't Matter Anymore.
Ignored after death in America, revered by britishers, the UK arm of MCA issued many great compilations that covered all his recordings in contrast the the US parent company.
The last two were taped and mixed into stereo.

 Sadly the actual mastertapes to all the Mama's and Papa's hits were burnt to a cinder 11 years ago in a massive fire that I as a moderator at a big music forum wasn't allowed to disclose nor allow to be mentioned on their by "cease and desist" from Universal Records. 
Sorry, the business sucks royally at times but that cat's well out of the bag now so I can say that much.
Thankfully this 1985 compilation was done from them extremely well so we can enjoy Monday Monday, Creeque Alley, California Dreaming and Go Where You Wanna Go they way Lou Adler who produced would of want us to hear them.

July weekend edition

Golly gosh, it's been a bright warm week here where I've been out of doors visiting the woodlands nearby, seeing quite a lot of bees, birds, the odd butterfly and dogs while about with plenty of summer meadowland too.
Quite a few people have been working on their gardens as we have too putting in new features like our ducks, putting compost down for the new plants and pulling up the weeds not just in the garden itself  but also at the edges and between the paving slabs with the literary cat putting in an appearance
I've been on my swing in the front corner side garden a good number of times too with just a top and shorts on going whee through the air which just so relaxing apart from spinning the odd record like this one.

Actually I first bought that in August 1995 and it is quite valuable as it was available for a very short period of time.
I've been using my Chromebook quite a bit as it save the time, especially the heat generated from the main laptop for chat and talking with my BFF although the new one will need to be set up in few days, just as soon as the hand book comes  then gradually adding the various programs and that I need before I can phase the old one out, confident by that point I know how to do things on it.
Things I have got arranged are my tickets to catch a train so I can get a lift to camp and back at the end of the month and printing the quiz questions with answer sheet off.

Age Regression

What we mean by age regression sadly isn't well understood by the wider public even if in the last ten years or so it has more of an acceptance by health professionals and people engaged more in the world of mental well-being.
I think the first thing we need to say is being in a child-like state of mind doesn't mean we are not cognizant that physically  we are that chronological age recorded by law and therefore governed by law, rules and to a point custom that apply to it.
To put it another way if we're over the age of majority then that does mean those things that are inappropriate  to be engaged in with an actual child still apply even if we see ourselves as being one still.
If as I did I started regressing in my teens elements of the same did come into play too even if then I was under the Minor umbrella cos somethings you may do at say sixteen aren't appropriate to doing around younger kids either. 
It's no more a route into hurting kids than medicine, teaching, or being involved in any activity that may involve working with kids regardless of some of the ignorant comments you may read might suggest because boundaries still apply.
The second thing is there's no magical age of transition from play to 'serious' activity alone with many of things regarding social roles being formed out of economic necessity during the Industrial Revolution and the tendency in agricultural communities for everyone to pitch in doing what they could taking into account age to gather the crops in or work on garments to be sold to raise money.
The discovery of Childhood as we understand it today goes back to what Britishers would call the Victorian era, that's to say from the 1830's onward and the reaction to the previous eras seeing children as mini adults, being dressed as such, having to work and not being able to have time alone from adults to play.
If you look at the common driver of much of the legislation during this era it is to gradually reduce the hours and ages children worked, to provide for education and encourage a separate social life  for children alone through things such as play or crafts.
That space is created and then filled by children themselves.
Similarly for those of working age more free time has been made by law and custom so that even if of necessity we may work (and most of us do) then we too can play, explore or make things.
Age Regression is more a question of going back to that point in our lives as children  and acting on those feelings and interests we had and for a good number of us still have that we feel most comfortable with. 
The only difference is some of those things are more associated with being a child even though we all know adults must be involved as they design toys, test out construction kits or even get paid to play with Lego.
For a good number of us we find going back to more of our past lives therapeutic, putting in a place mentally we feel more comfortable, at one with ourselves being able to BE ourselves and for some work through emotional issues too.

JoBook 2

As mentioned at Furry Story Time, I had been experiencing  computer problems and needed borrow another machine temporarily.
In the beginning there was the JoBook tm that arrived around September 16, 2016 which a kind of replacement for a Netbook that was incredibly slow on busy sites such as Tumblr and in any event had died totally.
That chromebook, a Lenovo N22 that had over the years had the ability  to use Google Apps supplemented by Android ones had been performing well being used to check emails with, use on Tumblr, FA, the IK chat and Lil Jennies story time  seemed to develop a fault that left it with static lines flying across the screen.
Thus I really needed to get a replacement organized for it as it used rather a lot.

This is JoBook 2 a Asus C202sa gj0027 which like the original is a 11.6 inch screen with a unspectacular but adequate 1366 x 768 resolution which is fine for general usage or watching anything from the BBC iPlayer on.
It has 16gb of memory but that's expandable to whatever you want using a SD card and 2gb of RAM which unless you've got absolutely heaps of tabs open is fine with the Chrome Os which is a kind of Linux in a browser system that doesn't suck processing power unlike Windows.
It comes in nice white and silver trim and like practically all of the species has a built in video cam should it be needed.
Hopefully it won't be long before it arrives and be quickly set up plus I have 64gb Sandisk card coming to up the memory to insert.

Resting

In a world where to be honest I have not been feeling too good apart from listening to a bit of music softly while taking tablets my thoughts were on other things.

I have a bit of an fascination for oldish compilations of short stories usually written by the top authors of the day not least for the quality of the stories with believable characters and rich language that is so much the polar opposite of today's obsession with 'accessible language' that rather than stretching your knowledge of words and means actually holds it back.
They also tend to have a clear idea as to who their audience is, tailoring the topics very much to them so a compilation like this is clearly aimed for and around the interests of girls of that era rather than trying to trying to appeal to boys too which never quite worked when it came to set books for school English Lit as almost inevitably we'd be at odds about which ones we wanted to study and discuss as a group.