Goddess.  Photographer unknown.

I  was speaking yesterday of female beauty and what defines it. I don’t think anyone at any time throughout history has been able to answer that question, but what I know is, I know it when I see it. I don’t know who this is, but I called this downloaded image Goddess.jpg. I think she’s a Perth woman and I hope she doesn’t mind me posting this here. It’s entirely complimentary. What a beauty!

__________________________________________

My final cruise memories.

24 October 2014: I swore never again after the March cruise, but an ad caught my eye in about August 2014 for a cruise that ticked all my boxes for where I wanted to go. It was greatly helped when I asked an old school mate if he’d share a cabin, as for a single fare it’s double the advertised price. He agreed. The itinerary looked fantastic.

Fly to Singapore on Singapore Airlines, catch the ship, the ?? Princess and follow the red line. The name of the ship fooled me – if I’d known it was the same company as the March cruise I might not have booked. As it was, by the end of this cruise I blogged NEVER AGAIN!

I don’t know where I got it, but I caught some chest infection, in China I think, and by the end of the trip, when we reached Bali, I was reduced to sleeping for most of the day. I’d been to see a doctor while we were in Hanoi and he diagnosed pneumonia. He gave me an antibiotic and I guess it helped, but I just had no energy for the five days in Bali. What a disappointing end to the trip.

I blogged extensively about this trip, and you can see the entries from 24 October to 29 November 2014. I wrote a LOT! I won’t repeat it here but this was a great trip, full of interest, visiting some fantastic places that I never dreamed I would get to. My second visit to Hong Kong 22 years apart. Shanghai, then Beijing. Nagasaki – loved it. Busan in South Korea, but I felt too sick to go ashore. Then Hanoi! I never dreamed I would get there. I wanted to go because one of my cousins was the Australian ambassador to Vietnam so it was a great opportunity to see him in place. I loved Hanoi and would go back in a heartbeat (well, maybe…).

The cruise actually ended in Beijing and I with my friend’s approval, booked the flight from Beijing to Hanoi, the hotel there, then the flight from Hanoi via Singapore to Bali, Vietnamese Airlines all the way. Then five days in Bali to finish off. To be honest, I was looking forward to Bali almost more than any other part of that trip. It has a hold on me, as I’m sure others would feel too.

Again, no entry to the restaurants on the ship without being dressed up, with shoes and socks. I actually took some long trousers, shoes and sox but I hate wearing them and never bothered.

And again, I hated the crowds on the ship! There were roughly 2,500 passengers and everything involved long queues and waiting, waiting. Going ashore was incredibly expensive, all the bus tours costing upwards of US$100 at least. So if you count eight port stops, that’s at least US$800 = A$1,100 on top of the cruise fare of about $2,200. Not me.

One good thing was that I booked with the same travel firm in Perth who stuffed up my March cruise by not passing on my payment. She had said I would get $200 off my next booking, so this was it. I held her to it. She sounded a bit glum when she said that was their profit margin. Well, I’m sure she learnt her lesson to be more careful.

________________________________

I’ve mentioned that I’ve had notification from the Water company that I likely had a water leak as my readings were so high. I knew the ball valves in both my toilet cisterns were hissing a lot so I fixed that problem and thought that was it. I stopped looking.

Then on Monday I cleared some very luxuriant weeds away from near the water meter and found the ground was saturated. Uh oh.

Today my lawn mower man came and did the big cleanup. He remarked on how wet the soil was and got his spade out. He found a T-junction feed off the main water pipe into the house, this T-junction leading to the professionally installed reticulation. There is a metal stop valve there, luckily, but that has a brass fitting that mates to the PVC piping for the retic. This joint had worn through and now that it was exposed, at full pressure, it put up a spray at least 3m high. It was a big leak, in other words. So he turned the stop valve off, to fix it temporarily and he’ll come back and do a proper fix in a week or so. He charges much less than a plumber so that will be a relief. He asked for $30 for today but I had expected $50 so I gave him that and said thanks.

_____________________________________

From my garden just now. Dinner tonight? Lime and chillies? It’s hard to use these things.

Isn’t she beautiful?! What is it, the symmetry, the perfect proportions, the slight smile? What makes beauty?

__________________________________________

More about the cruises I’ve done.

27 July 1984: I was 37. This was a fly-cruise, flying from Perth to Singapore then taking the M. V. Turkmenia, a Russian cruise ship going from Singapore up through the Malacca Strait.

M.V. Turkmenia        credit: Shipspotting

The first stop was Kuala Lumpur, but KL’s port is Port Kelang on the coast, and KL city is about 30Km inland. Port K’lang looked drab and I didn’t want to spend the time and money for the bus tour so just stayed aboard that day.

Next stop was Penang and I did go ashore because that’s where the sister of my Malaysian girlfriend at the time (in Perth) lived. I met her and she gave me an island tour in her car. Unfortunately, her daughter was with her occupying the front passenger seat so I had to sit in the back where I could hardly see any of the things she was pointing out. I ended up with a splitting headache. I didn’t enjoy that day very much. Even so, it gave me a taste for Penang and I’ve been back there a couple of times. I could live there, easily.

Penang, July 1984

Next stop for the ship was the Thai island of Phuket. The ship had to anchor offshore and we had to transfer to a launch to go ashore. I don’t remember much except that I was told that a beach called Rawai was “very beautiful”, so I caught a local bus there. Sure, it was quite nice but not worth going all that way sitting on a hard seat in a cramped bus in the heat. On returning I got a brief look at the town centre which was very small in those days, then it was back to the ship in the late afternoon. Nothing much, in other words.

I do like this shot. Thai temple, Phuket.  July 1984  © PJ Croft 2020

Then the ship headed back down the Malacca Strait to Singapore again. Did we stop anywhere? Surely we must have, but I don’t remember it. We passed Malacca which is a very interesting town, but it doesn’t have a port. I’ve been back there since for a stay of several days and I liked it a lot.

There are only two main memories from that trip: first, one passenger was a wharfie from Brisbane, a burly, fair headed guy. The thing was that he spoke fluent Russian! I asked him how come. He said his father was an Aussie but his mother was Russian, that’s how, and she taught him as he grew up. I found it quite incongruous, this true-blue Aussie wharfie, yet he spoke Russian. The Russian crew ran classes in one of the saloons if anyone wanted to learn the language on board. Pretty hard in only eight days or whatever it was, but they got 6-8 people, I recall.

The other memory is that one of the kitchen ladies, servers in the dining room, was a very cute Russian girl, quite young, and I found her very attractive. I found her up on deck one day getting some sun and attempted to talk, but she just indicated no English and that was that. Oh well.

I think the other thing (and I may be getting my cruises confused) was that I shared a dining table (and cabin, that’s right!) with two elderly Perth guys, from Bayswater or Belmont or somewhere, and they were both retired TV techs, the TV Repair shop type of tech. One was Clarry and the other might have been Bert. So we could talk TV and electronics, not that we did much. This was also where I was introduced to borscht, that typical Russian soup. Not bad. The cooking was nice but very plain fare, three courses and that was it.

Finally, that was the time of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, at the height of the Cold War, when the Russians were banned from competing. Did it make any difference on the cruise? Nope.

So, back to Singapore and a few days in a hotel while I bought an Aiwa AD-F770 cassette deck:

I gave that away to a mate, free, when I moved here in 2013. What a fool I was. It was one of the best bits of gear I’ve ever owned, but with four Mini-Disc decks now, I don’t need it. 🙂

______________________________________________

March 2014: it was a long break, 30 years! but my next cruise was from Fremantle to Singapore again, also on the Arcadia. This was a new ship, no longer P&O, now Princess Cruises. I was 67 by now.

I remember clearly, my mate Barry drove me down to the Fremantle passenger terminal to join the ship at about 10am. I took my luggage to the loading bay and the ship guy consulted his clipboard, furrowed his brow, chewed his lip, sucked his teeth, then made a phone call. I found something to sit on and waited.

Soon he came over and said, “Sorry sir, but you are not on the passenger list.” What?! I had my documents and he perused them, but asked me to wait upstairs (escalator) in the main hall.

Long story – I waited three bloody hours, buying an expensive and crap lunch from the kiosk, getting more and more browned off, before they finally came over and told me the travel agent had not passed my fare money on to the cruise company. Therefore I wasn’t officially a passenger.  GRRRRRRR!  The travel agent phoned me, very apologetic and said she’d fixed it up, passed my money on and as compensation I would have $200 credit on board and would get $200 off my next cruise booked with them. (This cruise cost about $1,400 I think, for an inside cabin.)  Strike 1!

My ship, the Arcadia, while I was waiting in the terminal.

So finally, I was able to board at about 4pm and started to calm down, helped by a beer or two.  The QE2 was also in Fremantle at this time and departed before us:

The Queen Elisabeth 2 departs Fremantle.

We set off and headed north. I soon discovered the buffet restaurant.

Delicious food, serve yourself, anything, all  you can eat!

Life on board. It could be a bit boring but it’s certainly relaxing.

I explored the ship and found several restaurants apart from the buffet that were sit-down dining and looked very nice. So one or two evenings into the cruise, I fronted up at one of these and asked for a table. The waiter looked at me and mumbled something about standards. To be brief, this being a tropical cruise stopping at Bali to Singapore, I was dressed as I always dress, shorts, T-shirt (with a collar) and sandals. Not good enough. They required long trousers, shoes and socks and a shirt! I hadn’t brought any clothes like that. As I said, this is a tropical cruise!

The result was that I was banned from all seven sit-down restaurants and banished to the buffet only. GRRRRRRRRR!  I paid the same fare as everyone else, yet I was not allowed to use the restaurants. Strike 2!

I also discovered that the drink prices were the same as if we were on land. In other words, they buy all their alcoholic drinks free of excise (hence the 10c cans of beer on the Eastern Queen in 1974), but charge the customer full retail price. Nice little earner, guv’nor.

I also discovered that the fridge in the cabin was not cold enough to store my insulin (or make ice). I complained to the service desk and was directed to the doctor’s surgery way down below decks. Maybe they could store my insulin for me. I went there and found it closed at about 3pm. Open between 5-5.30pm or something. I went back at that time and still found it closed. Strike 3!

Also, knowing I was going to be on the new Arcadia, I took copies of the old 1977 Arcadia logs and menus (see yesterday’s blog). I presented these at the service desk, expecting a fair bit of interest, but all I got was “Oh, thanks very much, very interesting.” And that was all. I didn’t hear any more about it. I thought the captain might have been interested. Strike 4!

As an unattached bloke at that time, I admit I was also aware of the tales of shipboard romances and widows looking for a new partner on cruises. I don’t mind admitting, I was surveying the field all the time.

But I’m certain I was the only person on board who was alone! Everyone else was either one of a pair or a larger group. At meal times, I sat alone, wishing someone would ask to join me but no-one ever did. It was a bit disheartening. I did have a very brief chat with a woman from Adelaide who seemed interesting, but we were in a queue and when it was over, I never saw her again. These ships are huge, with 2,000 to 3,500 passengers so it’s not so surprising, but I was a bit disappointed. (One Aussie guy was a bit weird, though. He came up to me at the railing on deck and started chatting, but he was a touchy-feely kind of guy and put his arm around me, as if we were lovers. I wasn’t too happy and disengaged myself. He introduced me to his wife later. It wasn’t the kind of company I was looking for.)

I also gained 5Kg on that cruise, in eight days! Ugh. I got it off later.

Sunrise off Bali,  10 March 2014

No berthing for cruise ships then. There is now. This was the Arcadia off Benoa, Bali 10/3/2014

Then it was another couple of days at sea heading for Singapore up the east coast of Java.

What is it?

The Java Sea is known for pirates. This is an “acoustic cannon”. It’s a big diaphragm which when pulsed delivers a very loud aural pulse to the front, as shown in the diagram on the unit above. It doesn’t do any permanent damage to the pirates (well, maybe burst eardrums?) but they’d find it very uncomfortable and think twice about being near the ship. Did we see any pirates? No. But what a rotten thing, to have pirates ready to attack big ships.

Singapore at dawn, 13 March 2014  © PJ Croft 2020   Right click, select View Image to see it big.

Frankly, I was glad to get off the ship and into a hotel again. I was sick and tired of that cruise and vowed “Never again.” Little did I know what the future would hold.

______________________________________

That’s enough for today. This blogging takes a long time, but I’ve got plenty of that. I’m also building the spreadsheets I call “weight_graf.xls”  Yeah, I’m a nerd, but I weigh myself every morning, almost without fail although I do forget sometimes. I keep a notebook in which I enter what I spend every day, and I write my weight at the top of each day’s entries. Now I’m transferring those figures by hand into the spreadsheet. It doesn’t take too long, 365 entries per sheet and it took me about two hours, in two sessions, to add the 2018 figures yesterday. I’m starting 2019’s now.

They’re talking about retail expenditure for March on the radio at the moment. People spent a lot on groceries and so on when the virus first got serious, and I suppose I did a bit too, but these days each diary entry is virtually blank. I’m spending much less than I usually do, which is good for me, not so good for the retailers I guess.

Anyway, I have graphs of my weight for each year since 2013. They say you shouldn’t weigh every day but I disagree. I can straight away see the trends. I dare not show the graphs for the past 18 months. Glum.

Singapore, June 2004  © PJ Croft 2020

Singapore  June 2004  © PJ Croft 2020

Chatting with someone yesterday about cruises, ship cruises, and it’s spurred me to remember all the cruises I’ve taken. There have been quite a few going back a long way.

April 1974: a first for everything; first cruise, first time out of the country, first passport, first encounter with a casino, on-board. It was a trip from Fremantle to Singapore on the way to the UK by “ship-jet” with my friend Geoff.

Wow, what a trip!! It lives in my memory forever. The gentle rocking motion of the ship, the Eastern Queen. The gradually increasing temperatures as we headed north. The flying fish in the sea. The passage through the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra.

The 10c cans of beer, all Swan Lager or VB, I think, but at 10c who cared. The casino on one of the upper decks. I’d never been in one before, never played any games, but I took to roulette, where the bets were only 20c. I seemed to be able to play it and at the end of the cruise I was $20 in front, which was quite a lot of money then.

Then the arrival at Singapore. It was at dawn and I got up and went on deck while it was still cool and hazy, before the sun rose.

6 April 1974 Singapore arrival. Agfa CT18 slide film faded to magenta!  © PJ Croft 2020

6 April 1974  Singapore docks. The skyscrapers were just starting to go up.  © PJ Croft 2020

Notice the absence of skyscrapers? Singapore was still a small city then, before the massive developments.

When Geoff and I arrived we were allocated to a hotel, but it turned out to be the Ambassador Hotel in Katong, well east of the city centre and requiring taxi transport to anywhere. Never mind, the taxis were dirt cheap, it had a beaut pool and a cafe that served cheap meals. It was my first experience of everything, including the real Asian food and my first taste of coriander leaves as a garnish, and I didn’t like it at all. I do now.

Somehow Geoff and I teamed up with two rather nice girls from Perth, Sue and Gabriel and we met up in the shopping areas, which had much more of a Chinatown feel than the glass and stainless steel malls today. Geoff and I both bought our first serious cameras, SLRs. Geoff bought a Minolta SRT-101 with 50mm f1.4 lens, complete with the black leather “ever-ready” case they came in in those days.

There he is, Geoff in Singapore April 1974   © PJ Croft 2020

I bought a Konica Autoreflex T3 with 50mm f1.7 lens, also complete with case. The body was serial number 586755 and the lens was serial number 762730. I memorised them then in case of theft and they’re imprinted on my mind forever.

A day or so later we went to Change Alley, a narrow crowded lane with shops either side. I’d been given a camera bag as a parting gift when I left Channel 7 to go on this trip and I bought two extra lenses for the Konica, a 28mm f2.8 and a 135mm f2.8, both Vivitar brand. There were no zooms in those days. They were good choices and I took some nice pictures with them. Unfortunately I used Agfa CT18 film for the whole trip and over the next 20 years or so it slowly faded to purple as you can see in the top shot above.

Then a day or so later it was time for our flight to London. I was a bit disturbed, though, when Geoff and I were put on different airlines. I was allocated to Czechoslovakian Airways. Ugh. I was a bit nervous. First time in an aircraft and it was a Communist aircraft. It turned out to be a Boeing 727 and Gabriel and I were teamed up to sit together. It was a night flight and flying away from the sun it was a long night. I still have the little notebook I carried with Gabriel’s stick figure drawings and spelling-bee words to pass the time.

We stopped in Abu Dhabi or somewhere to refuel (the airport was nothing at all like it is now) and Gabriel alarmed me by being very slow to emerge from the Ladies to get back on the bus to rejoin the flight. I considered going in to find her. I was a nervous Nelly then.

After we took off, morning dawned and we were served a Czech breakfast, which included white sausage, something new to me. Everything was! As we took off, a lot of passengers became alarmed, as I was, by what looked like white smoke coming from the air vents near the floor. It was just water vapour, of course.

After another long flight we landed in Prague (Czech Airlines, remember) for another stopover of a few hours and a change of planes, I think.

Then It was off to London Heathrow, arriving late morning. My first step into the UK. Somehow Geoff and I met up again and said goodbye to Sue and Gabriel, then set about getting a taxi to our booked hotel in Brixton?? south of the river. I clearly remember this was the first time I’d been in a country where tipping was required. We got a black cab and when I paid the fare I hesitated and made a comment about not having any English money, which was true. He said “Well mate, we’re not likely to meet up again, are we?” I was embarrassed and confused and pressed an Aussie 20c piece into his hand. I bet he had a good laugh over that.

This was my first experience of jet-lag too. I remember carrying my heavy suitcase up the stairs (I was 27 and reasonably fit then) to our dorm room on about the third floor and partly unpacking, then thinking I’ll just have a lie down at about 2pm. Next thing I knew it was 6.30pm and I was freezing. What happened there?

Anyway, that will have to end this part of the story for now or I’ll never get on to the next ship cruise.

____________________________________

December 1974:  I had been living in London all year since April, with several trips to the Continent (as it was called then), first the Autotours Europe 6 week trip. There was a two or three week gap after our arrival in Britain so Geoff and I hired a Ford Escort van and did a quick tour of Britain, starting in London, going south to Land’s End in Cornwall, then heading north through Wales (now I know why NSW is called that), right up through the Midlands to Scotland, not quite to John o’Groats but close, then down the east side to London again, Earl’s Court in fact, the Aquarius Hotel.

The six week Autotour was one of the highlights of my life. I remember so much of it and made friendships that lasted decades, although we’ve lost contact now.

Anyway, back to the topic. After more tours and the great thrill of living in a flat in Chelsea (in Camera Place, of all names), by November it was getting too dark and cold and I wanted to get home, so I booked the same ship-jet in reverse, flying from London to Singapore with a for or five day stopover, then taking the Eastern Queen again to Fremantle. Geoff had stayed on in London and I was alone this time, which took the edge off things, but it was OK. However, what I hadn’t reckoned on was the slowness of the ship journey. I just wanted to be home and the voyage just dragged! I was convinced the ship was deliberately going slow, dawdling, to keep to some timetable. It felt as if we were dead in the water. I’m sure we weren’t, but I learnt my lesson from that, fly back, don’t take the ship.

So that was my second cruise.

______________________________________

May 1977: I had the travel bug now and booked a fly-cruise, flying from Perth to Sydney and catching the original P&O Arcadia for an 11 day (I think) cruise around the Pacific Islands.

All aboard. The Arcadia, May 1977 Sydney

First stop Noumea, New Caledonia, then Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu, then Port Vila, New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), then Suva, Fiji, round the coast to Lautoka, then back to Sydney.

The ship, a BIG one, was fine although having to sleep in an iron framed bunk bed with several other guys in the shared cabin and having to go down the passage to the bathroom, all green painted steel floor and walls, with cockroaches on the floor was not so great. But the food! Holy smoke, every meal was a banquet. I’d never had food like that before. No limit, all you can eat.

I had asked to be seated with some ladies and so I was placed on a table of four with three young women. Wow, I became the favourite guy there. Two were from Sydney, Louise and “Tamia”, actually Cheryl, and the best, the one I fell for, Carol from Brisbane. She was Eurasian, beautiful, coffee coloured, long silky black hair. But she had a boyfriend back in Brizzy and although we talked a lot, that was it. “In Fond Memories, to Peter”. Wow. If only.

My dinner companions, Tamia, Louise and Carol.

I can still picture all their faces. Unfortunately I lost a lot of photos of that trip in the big disk crash of 2013.

So that was cruise number three. I’d better wrap here otherwise I’ll never finish. I have three or four more cruises to write about.

________________________________________

Nothing much to report. Beautiful day. If you have to be locked up, is there a better place to be? Well, maybe one or two but this is nice.

Coles Butler this afternoon. Busy, eh?

___________________________________

I’ve just come back from the medical centre, seeing my GP. You have to wait outside where a nurse takes your temperature (36.5dg, “perfect”; yes I knooow!) then sit on a chair 2m apart out on the verandah. I got rained on a little bit, but that was OK as the sun burst through and it was hot sun.

Then the doctor opens the door and calls you in. He was wearing a mask but no gloves, but he used hand sanitiser.

I asked if they’d had any cases of the virus at the med centre. He said one woman had it, but she’d phoned first and then gone to a testing station. He said he dreads the thought of any patient with the infection being in the medical centre because if that happens, they would have to close down for two weeks. And if any doctor gets it, same thing, close down for two weeks. This would be a serious loss of income, apart from anything else. He didn’t say that, that’s my thought.

Anyway, my fears about my problems were allayed, so that’s good.

_________________________________

Then I went to Coles and noticed a rough looking guy outside on the paved area with bags arrayed around him, homeless. I walked past on the way in, but coming out I felt sorry for him and gave him a tenner, more than I would usually hand out but I’d just spent money on stuff I probably don’t need, so…

But he hardly thanked me, because he was busy looking across the intersection and said he could see his “missus” at the liquor store. Apparently she’s forced him out of the house and he’s hopping mad. He’s living on the street. She’s told him she doesn’t have any money but he sees her buying liquor. Uh oh, he wanted to keep talking but I edged away from that one. Good luck to him.

_____________________________________

My neighbour asked me to clear some of the vegetation from our common boundary this morning. I must admit, I’d let it get a bit tall as I find things a bit hard these days.

Anyway, I tackled it and I’ve realised what the Water Corp means now about me having a suspected water leak. I’d assumed it was my leaking toilet cistern stop valves and I’ve done a temporary fix, so I didn’t do any more.

But wow, now I can see what the Water guys mean. The ground near the meter is saturated, waterlogged, with standing water on the surface. There must be a leak right near the meter which had been covered up by the vegetation.

I managed to clear enough to see it, but now I have to clear it all away. I’ll fill two wheely bins easily, probably three, but the lawn mowing guy pointed out that there’s a green pickup soon so I should be able to add it to my other neighbours’ pile.

At least it’s obvious where the leak is so it won’t take much work to fix it.

_____________________________________

By chance, searching the web this morning, I came across an ad for a villa in Lovina, Bali. Lovina Villa for sale.  These are screen grabs. Boy, did this trigger memories. I spent a month there with my partner in 2017 when she was renting it. It looks very nice in these photos but there are a few down-sides. It’s huge, with four bedrooms and two large bathrooms with a third smaller bathroom. Beautiful pool, as you can see. Maid’s quarters down the back. Yours for A$250,000.

___________________________________________

I watched Killing Eve for the first time last night, just the one episode. Huh? What was that about? I couldn’t work it out. Disjointed, no story line that I could follow. I guess you have to be a fan.

Kyoto restaurant 1992   © PJ Croft 2020

Hmmmm, the days are blurring into each other. What did I do yesterday? Oh, I know, I went to Aldi. I’m pleased to report that there was ample toilet paper at 12.30pm. I bet you’re relieved to hear that.

There was also plenty of food on the cold shelves too; no sign of the panic buying of a couple of weeks ago. Everything looked normal, in other words.

_________________________________

I just went there to buy a power board. Notice anything about this one?

Give up?  Look at the way the sockets are facing – inwards. It means that when you plug in anything like power packs, they interfere with each other. The only plugs you can put in are symmetrical ones which don’t protrude toward the other plug. Effectively, you can only have two plugs in at once. I’ve been putting up with this for about three years and I’ve had enough. Yesterday I bought this:

See how the plugs face outwards here? The reel above is going to get unreeled, the cable cut off and saved and the reel will be ditched. Someone made a blunder when they designed these. Maybe that’s why they were on special for about $10. I bought two. Wasted my money.

____________________________________

I’m not a religious person, in fact I describe myself as an atheist. But I recommend a show on Radio National (810AM in WA) called God Forbid at 6am on Sunday mornings. It’s hosted by James Carleton, who I had assumed is the son of the late Richard Carleton (but something’s made me doubt that. I don’t know at the moment.) He’s got a very rich voice and is very smart.

Anyway, it’s a religious discussion program but with a very big dollop of humour. The guests are very varied, from all religions, Christian – Proddies, Catholics, Mormons, Jewish, Muslim, you name it. The discussions are lively and good humoured and they even have a quiz with “buzzers” that will have you laughing.

As I said, it’s not usually my area but I actually look forward to it. If I’m awake, that is. I usually fall asleep again, but it’s also available on the RN web site so you can listen at a reasonable hour. I’ve actually learnt a lot from it. Recommended.

________________________________

I have a doctor appointment at 2.30pm tomorrow at the medical centre. I want a face-to-face consultation, not a tele-medicine one, but I’m wondering how careful I’ll need to be. I’ll wear rubber gloves as I always do now, dishwashing gloves, but will I wear a mask as well? I think I’d better be safe than sorry.

I need a new referral to a specialist, a look at my left leg which is swelling up alarmingly with blood pooling, and to see if he got a report from the audiologist about my right ear. They said I need to see an ENT man about it.

Anyway, GPs are saying, “Please don’t stop coming to see us.”  [We need the money :-)]

__________________________________

Today I paid for a new program, Affinity Designer  https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/designer/  This is one of a suite of three new programs, Photo, Publisher and Designer, developed by the British company Serif. They’ve set out to make alternatives to Adobe’s products which are notoriously expensive, even though Photoshop has become so ubiquitous as to have become a verb – to photoshop something. You can’t buy standalone versions of Adobe’s programs any more – you have to commit to an on-line version at quite a high fee per month, more than $350 per year I think.

The three Affinity programs have been halved in price during this pandemic and are now just A$38.99 each. For that you get a perpetual copy. It doesn’t expire, you don’t have to renew it each year. It’s yours. I’m a huge fan.

Yes, they are serious programs and there’s a learning curve but unless you use Photoshop every day, it won’t be hard to switch.

Photo is for image development and manipulation including painting, shown here.

Designer is a vector illustration program.

Publisher is a desktop publishing program.

All are top class, aimed at professionals but priced for all of us. Recommended. At the price, it’s not a big risk and you can get rid of your bootleg copies of the old stuff and be fully legal.

Take it easy, eh? Hoo roo.    Photographer unknown.

What did you do today? Same as yesterday? Yeah, me too. What are you doing tomorrow? Yeah, me too. Sama sama.

My partner and I agreed this morning, we are sooooo lucky. We have no problems compared to others. No mortgage, no rent, no job to lose, no kids to teach or pacify, no worry about putting food on the table and wine in the fridge, a pension to buy the food. Everything I could wish for in the house and kitchen. And great places to live, so safe compared to other places in the world.

On that topic, I’ve been contacted on SmashedFace a few times by a bloke in Bali who messaged me a few times when I was posting photos in the Lost Bali Group. I’ve never met him, I don’t know him, we’ve never corresponded before.

But he says his income has dried up with the loss of tourists in Bali and no income, no food on the table in the absence of any social security in Indonesia. Could I send him some money?

Aaaaggh, it tugs at my heart strings. But I don’t even know him. Never met him. He could be a rupiah billionaire for all I know (no, I don’t believe that; anyway, being a billionaire in rupiahs is not that hard).

Well, yesterday he messaged me again with a link. Daringly, I clicked on it and, clever guy, he’s set up a GoFundMe page where you can make donations, anonymously if you like. It’s here: GoFundMe page if you would like to help him. He has a photo of what I assume is his family. I did make a donation, anonymously. It occurs to me that I bought four magazines a few days ago totalling $45 and all but one will be discarded. I think I should help out. But I made myself anonymous.

Another way to help is: https://www.ticbali.net/bali-care-packages.html  Do you have to buy for someone specific or can you ask them to direct a package where they see a need? I don’t know.

All I know is that I am so rich compared to them. I do know real people in Bali and maybe I should see if they need help too.

_______________________________________

I’ve been doing odd jobs today, which included trying to resurrect two hard drives to see what’s on them. But no luck, two 2Terabyte drives, dead! A Terabyte is 1,000 Megabytes. I can remember paying over $400 for a 40MB drive in the 1990s.

With one of them I tried the technical tap – I bashed it on the table. Did it help? Not the drive, but it made me feel a bit better 🙂

________________________________________

It did make me realise just how much data I’ve got. I have thousands of images, thousands of video files, thousands of music tracks, thousands of DVDs on hard drives. More than I could watch in six months of lockdown. Not to mention all the TV programs I’ve got stored up on my DVD/HD recorder attached to the TV. It’s crazy. I’ve got whole series stored up waiting for that far distant day when I can tear myself away from browsing and writing on this PC.

We had a pink moon on Monday. Here’s the pink super-moon we had on 10 Dec 2017. This shot is over Lake Joondalup. Panasonic FZ300 at 1200mm.

Wow, thirty days gone, staying home just doing this and things on the computer. It’s enjoyable but not good for me.

It’s dawning on me that being in a long distance relationship, we are not going to be able to see each other ad corporeum (my version of Latin, actually in carne but I don’t like that – too meaty sounding) for at least the next year, and probably longer.

Even if we manage to control this virus within Australia to very low levels of infection, it’s highly likely that entry from another country without a good reason is going to be severely restricted for another year beyond that, unless an effective vaccine is found, of course.

That means a long distance relationship is truly going to be just that for the foreseeable future. Until a few days ago, I had been vaguely thinking that we might be together again later this year, or next year, or “soon” but being realistic, it probably won’t be possible. That’s quite depressing for me. At my age I’m more and more thinking I’m running out of time and travelling is becoming a more daunting prospect too. This is not good. I’m sad.

_____________________________________

With every day that passes, Trump is looking more and more like a deranged lunatic. As someone (who knows what he’s talking about) said yesterday, Trump’s move to stop the US funding of the World Health Organisation is a crime against humanity. That’s a pretty amazing accusation to make about the president of the USA, but I agree. The same can be said of him reneging on the US’s agreement to the Paris Climate Change Accords.

The USA has become a pariah country. It is the most militaristic country on Earth, it starts more wars and military adventures than any other country, it believes its citizens are not subject to the laws of any other country (witness the way the wife of a US diplomat who killed a British guy in a car accident was smuggled out of the UK to the US before she could be brought to justice in the UK!). US servicemen who killed Italians in an aircraft accident got the same, they were smuggled straight back to the US in a military operation before they could be made to face the Italian courts.

This same USA is one of the last “civilised” countries still retaining the death penalty along with those wonderful countries Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, North Korea, Yemen, Sudan and other bastions of freedom (and Japan, to their shame). What’s more, many people convicted of serious crimes are kept imprisoned for decades on Death Row before finally being executed 10, 20, 30 years later. This violates their own constitution which outlaws “cruel and unusual punishment”. This could hardly be more cruel. The US practices torture alongside those other civilised countries I mentioned before. Many, many innocent people in the US are convicted by corrupt and incompetent courts and judges.

Their health system is dysfunctional, their voting system is corrupt, their tax laws massively favour the rich, they have levels of poverty comparable with third world countries, their politicians are corrupt. Their obsession with guns makes them the mass murder capital of the world.

Yet this lunatic Trump says he’s making America great again? That means he acknowledges America was not great before, but although he repeatedly lies without shame, he has made America infinitely worse than it was under Obama.

____________________________________________

Speaking of that backward country, America, slowly trying to drag itself out of the dark ages, did you know that there are only three countries in the world that have not adopted the SI units of measurement?

I’m reading Simon Winchester’s book, Exactly, about the development of precision in measurement and manufacturing since around the turn of the 17th century. He points out that there are only three countries left which have not subscribed to the Systeme Internationale measurement system which defines the meter, kilogram, second and other fundamental units of measurement. Those three countries are Liberia, Myanmar and you guessed it, the USA.

You probably know that in America, a gallon is not a gallon, a ton is not a tonne, a pound is not a pound, an ounce is not an ounce and so on. Only America stands in the way of a worldwide universal system of measurement units. Even Great Britain, which started the whole business, has adopted the SI units.

America. What a stupid, backward country. The world’s most violent country.

______________________________________

I find it hard to be optimistic. Due to the unusual “winter that wasn’t a winter” in the northern hemisphere just finished, the Greenland ice cover is melting at unprecedented levels. This will raise sea levels since the ice sits on land in Greenland. The same is happening in Antarctica, where glaciers are slipping into the sea at unprecedented rates. This pandemic has driven global heating from the headlines, but it’s not only still happening, it’s accelerating.

My mind boggles – after all the fires in NSW with the massive loss of koalas and their habitats, the eucalypt forests, the NSW Liberal government is allowing increased logging and land clearing in the remaining forests. Reducing the koala habitats even further!

Is this a Kafka mad house? How can anyone think this is OK? The answer, as always, is money, and money flows to people in power. I not only spit, I hurl ordure. It’s a lost cause.

_____________________________________

And in this state the Liberal and National parties have blocked the reappointment of the Commissioner of the Corruption and Crime Commission, John McKechnie, which expires on the 28th of this month. He is willing and wants to be reappointed. The leaders of these parties, both women, say because the premier, Mark McGowan, didn’t talk to them before making moves to reappoint the commissioner, they don’t like his attitude and will refuse.

Petty. Petulance. Foot stamping. Noses out of joint. Hissy fits. Hanky dropping.

OR, could it be that the CCC has investigations on foot into Liberal and National members of the WA parliament and they want him called off. I have emailed both leaders of these parties and put this to them in strong terms. I await answers.

________________________________________

Continuing my phone conversation with Rosco on Tuesday: he has a van fitted out with equipment and benches, so he offers a slide scanning service “at your door”. He drives his van into the driveway of the customer, disinfects a plastic tray or bin and get s the customer to put their slides into the tray. In the van, he uses an Epson V850 flat bed scanner which can do eight slides at a time and does the job on the spot. He says it takes him about 3 mins per slide. When I was doing mine with my Nikon LS4000, it took me about 6 mins per slide, but that scanner was slower. I also have a 4990 flat bed which will also do eight at a time and that takes about 3-5 mins per slide. The thing is, to do a good job, each slide has to be brought up in a preview window and careful adjustments made, eight times over, before pressing the Go button to carry out the automated scan. That final scan takes 20-30 mins on my system, but mine’s an older scanner and PC.

However, he made a comment that astounded me. He’s had to get a Working With Children police clearance to do this work, because he may come into contact with children at these customers’ premises. This is crazy! What have we come to?

As well, he has to have insurance for all the activities he does and the costs of these insurance policies is more than $10,000 per year. And that’s just for liabilities, that’s not cover for his van or equipment, that’s extra. Criminy!

I used to think I could offer a scanning service myself, but I was always worried about customers blaming me for damaged materials, lost slides, missing results and so on, and non-payers and all the hassles of postage and deliveries and so on. Not to mention the difficulties of dealing with the tax office and Centrelink. Therefore I never did it.

Recently I’ve thought seriously about buying a new Epson high speed scanner that can scan paper photo prints and any documents up to A4 size at a rate of around 1 per second. I’ve read the reviews and they all praise it for quality and paper handling.

It costs $645 approx. and I thought I might offer a service, but after hearing Rosco’s warnings, I’ll push that to the back burner. Too risky, too many hassles. Pity.

_____________

Isn’t that beautiful, fantastic, wondrous, magnificent? This is from a NASA website which allows you to show and download a Hubble Space Telescope image which was shot on your birthdate.  https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/what-did-hubble-see-on-your-birthday    Give it a go.

________________________________________

Here’s another picture, a bit more mundane:

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I misread this picture and asked a friend, “Is that saw blade on the wrong way? Shouldn’t the teeth be reversed so that they cut upwards from underneath the wood?”  The way I saw the picture is the saw cutting from left to right. It must have been too late at night or I’d had one too many wines.

Now, in the bright light of day, I’m ashamed to admit that the picture is correct. The saw is shown with the blade facing the camera which means it gets pushed from right to left.

Duh! My mistake.

_____________________________________________

Uuuurrrrgh, I went to the shops yesterday and did a fair bit of walking around the shopping centre. Now my left foot, with its excessive pronation, is hurting like hell and I can hardly stand on it. My hips are painful – not the joints, the muscles. My thighs are aching. I could hardly get up out of my chair last night and I still feel very… weak? today.

All this isolation means I’m not getting out walking as much as before and wow, my muscles are deteriorating. I’ve moved the treadmill back a bit to allow for the hi-fi trolley to move to its new location, so the treadmill’s powered up. I’d better start using it more but walking on my left foot is painful.

While writing this I had a burst of nerve pain in my right foot, between the toes, that had me throwing my head back and yelling with the pain. It died away after about 15 secs and is gone now but wow, diabetic peripheral neuropathy! I’m having to take Panadol Osteo which dulls it somewhat.

_________________________________________

I was just talking about a NAS for backups yesterday and a friend has filled me in with his experiences. It’s not as reliable as you might think, was the message. To be sure and certain, you really need two backups, one stored off the premises, that is stored with a relative or a friend. If a thief sees a NAS box, it’s possible they could pick it up as part of the loot in the house. I dunno about that, I think thieves would be satisfied with all my cameras and TV and other stuff that’s more easily saleable before a blank faced computer box. However, once again, all the other things can be replaced, whereas your computer stored images can’t.

Anyway, I’ve just had reason to use my backup software in earnest today. I use a program called Macrium Reflect (I’ve actually paid for three licences in a discount deal – for two desktops and a laptop).

For several years I’ve been keeping a desktop folder called Great Images from the Web on my desktop. Whenever I saw a spectacular or useful image on the web, I copied it to this folder. It’s grown to contain 421 images taking up 750MB approx.

About a week ago I started to make a slide show using the late lamented (the company’s gone bust) Photodex Proshow Producer. This is a fabulously complex program which is fantastically easy to use. It’s one of the best designed pieces of software I’ve ever found. Although the company’s gone bust, the program still works and will continue to do so, so I’m happy to use it.

Usually it’s fantastically stable. I never worried about crashes, it never seemed to. But this week while making this huge slide show with around 300 images it’s been crashing regularly, I don’t know why. I do know how to make it crash, but since the makers have gone away, that’s not much help.

Get to the point, Pete! OK, just now I tried to open my slide show only to find that all the images are not there. The framework of the show is OK, I haven’t lost that, it’s just lost the images. And sure enough, the folder was gone from my Desktop. Gaaaah!

I spent a lot of time going through the Recycle Bin looking for it. I installed two File Recovery programs and searched, with no luck. Gone, phut! Why? How? I’ll never know. One of the crashes must have caused it.

Jeez, I was pretty worried, but then I realised, I have daily backups courtesy of Macrium Reflect stored on another drive. It took a bit of searching but there it was, in the compressed backup from yesterday morning’s 9am backup. Copy the folder to my desktop and I’m back in business. Phew. It pays to back up. Money well spent.

___________________________________

By the way, some of the former employees of Photodex have taken the software with them to another firm and relaunched it as Photopia Director or Photopia Creator http://photopia.nl/proshow/  They say their new software is better, enhanced. Normally I would have jumped at it and paid for the new program, but they’ve made it into an annual subscription model. It costs around US$129 a year. That’s about A$200 pa! Grrrr. I used to buy the almost annual upgrades but as an existing user I only had to pay about US$79 for each one. That was reasonable, but this model is too much. I think I’ll write to them and say so. (On the other hand, maybe that’s why Photodex went bust, that they didn’t charge enough?)

_____________________________________

There’s a woman on the radio at the moment saying she feels we should be taking photos in this time of pandemic, showing streets and scenes in their deserted state. I agree! This is history being made and deserted streets are a completely new phenomenon. It should be documented. I think it is in the big news sources but we should take our own shots.

Actually now I’ve listened more, she’s talking about taking photos of families in their driveways and posting them online. That’s not of interest to me, but…

____________________________________

Continuing on from yesterday about my friend Rosco: another thing he’s been doing is offering a slide scanning service, something I’ve been thinking about for years.

Phew, more later, I’ve been writing for too long.

Laem Chabang, the port for Saigon  © PJ Croft 2020

Uh oh, another missed day. A friend suggested I’m only posting on even days. It’s not intentional, just accidental, it depends on whether I have anything interesting to write about. Today I’ve started early and I’ll add things as the day goes on.

There’s a piece in The Guardian today by Paul Daley urging us to keep a diary of this time. He did some research and found that people a hundred years ago in Australia at critical times, such as the flu pandemic in 1917-18 kept diaries, and they make fascinating reading now. It doesn’t have to be detailed or a great literary tome, just observations of the mundane which although of slight interest now, will be of great interest in the next century, if we last that long.

That’s a big part of why I write this blog. I’ve read a great book about Samuel Pepys who kept diaries of his life in London during the 17th century. He lived through the Black Plague and the Great Fire of London in 1666 and his accounts make great reading. He was not averse to writing about his touchy-feely urges toward his maid servant, even though he was a married man, and nearly always ended his daily writing with the phrase, “And so to bed.” The book was so good I read it twice and when I went to London in 2008, I hunted down the street where his house was, near the Tower. It’s even named Pepys Street, but unfortunately there’s not a trace of the houses left. It’s just brick walls and new office buildings.

__________________________________

Kyoto 1992.  © PJ Croft 2020

Well! I’ve just had two very interesting phone calls.

The first was from Western Power to explain, after my complaint, why we had three major power failures in a week, two of them in three days.

It seems the first two were faults in a 22KV underground power cable in Alkimos, up the road, which feeds this suburb. Get that? 22,000 Volts! I jokingly said, what was it, earthworms? He didn’t laugh – he didn’t know an actual cause for this cable fault but he said termites are a real problem with underground cables. Wow. I asked if the cable is in conduit and he said not unless it’s going under a road or similar. If there are rocks in the area, they can rub their way through the cable as well with movement.

Anyway, he said it’s highly unusual for two breaches of the cable to occur in three days but that’s what happened. As you can imagine, fixing damage to a massive copper wire cable in a thick jacket underground takes time and expertise. First they have to find the break. Then a section has to be cut out and a new length put in and jointed at each end. I’ve seen YouTube video of this being done and it’s a major job.

Then the third failure was caused by a bushfire burning a pole down, a pole carrying high voltage lines. That also took time, (2hrs and 10mins, I timed it) and was just bad luck.

So he was very apologetic but it was just misfortune. I said we, as customers, would rather power lines were underground from the visual aspect, but I can see that they are not immune to damage after all. I told him that I used to be a tech (used to be? Once a tech, always a tech I think) and I always thought of current in terms of microamps and milliamps. But in Western Power work, they talk in terms of hundreds or thousands of amps, which I visualise as like treacle or oil flowing in the wires. We finished the conversation on good terms.

_________________________________

Next I had a long chat with a guy I used to work with at Channel 7, Rosco for those who know him. It was fascinating.

At Ch.7 he specialised in the TV equipment and radios installed in the helicopter, very specialised work requiring a huge amount of knowledge, not just about the electronics but also about all the rules and regulations and licencing involved in working on aircraft. People have no idea of how much expertise is involved and the paperwork dealing with CASA, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and their inspectors. Techs like him are very, very scarce.

Anyway, he left the station last year to work for himself. He’s built up a “truck” as he calls it, a van fitted out with all the equipment he needs which, in particular, involves specialised antennas which go on the roof of the van, which he can swap depending on the job. These require special and expensive cables leading from the antenna to the very expensive equipment inside the van. He’s very experienced in “interference” work, that’s tracking down the sources of interference to TV and radio reception. I don’t mean just your TV in your house, it can mean interference with vital radio services such as medical equipment. Or just annoying stuff – like the case recently where people with modern cars were parking in a carpark and locking using the small transmitters in their keys, then returning to their cars and being unable to get in or start the car, since interference was causing the keys to fail.

In this case, he tracked it down to a small company using high power transmitters for pagers. The transmitters they were using were on the same frequencies as the car keys, probably illegally.

He estimates that to get himself to where he is now with the equipment he needs, the van fitout, the insurance and licences has cost him around $45,000 so far. In order to make an income he mainly takes work from big companies who don’t balk at the price he has to charge. There are not many people (fingers of one hand?) who can do this kind of work so he charges what it costs.

I’ll have to finish this later – there was much more. Rosco! Talks the leg off a table. But full of interest.

__________________________________

The Vietnamese were wearing masks long before us.  © PJ Croft 2020

Since this lockdown started my postie comes much earlier than he used to, before 9am rather than around midday. This morning I was still in bed at 9am and the doorbell sounded once. I get stray ding-dongs and I figure if someone really is at the door, there’ll be another bell or a knock. There wasn’t so I ignored it.

Yeah, you guessed it, there was a card in the letterbox, “attempted delivery”, collect at my local post office after 5pm. I get very annoyed. What a waste of time and resources. The postie has to make the trip to the local PO and I have to do the same. If he’d rung the bell again or knocked, I would have jumped up and opened the door, saving all this trouble. Why can’t they knock??!! That way I’d know it really was a person at the door.

I know, I’ll remove the door bell so that visitors have to knock.

____________________________________

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that a local guy posted on the NextDoor web site that he could help if anyone needed it, like elderly people needing grocery deliveries or such like.

I answered him on the web, saying thanks for the offer, much appreciated, I don’t need any help but if I do I’d give him a call.

Well, yesterday I was surprised to get a message from him on that site saying, “Hi mate, how are you doing?” I immediately wrote an answer saying how pleased I am that he thought of me and saying all’s well, I have plenty to do and “plenty of toys” and thanks again.

I am genuinely chuffed that someone I don’t know from a bar of soap would keep me in mind. It’s like that offer from the guy who did my headlight polishing, that if I need help with anything he only lives in Clarkson and could pop over and give me a hand. Bloody hell, I am almost emotional.

__________________________________

Speaking of pandemics, I’m old enough to remember the polio epidemic in the early to mid 1950s, where many people who caught it were left paralysed and many had to be placed in an “iron lung” to assist them to breathe.

I think I was about seven or eight and I thought, at the time, that polio was a dog, that it could bite you and you would get that mysterious disease that way. I really didn’t know what it was about. Needless to say, I didn’t get it but I can still remember a scene in the street outside Grandma’s house in Bruce Rock associated with that idea of it being a dog. I don’t know why it was that place. Funny how we remember things.

My idea of hell, having to live my life in one of those iron lungs. Unable to move or watch TV or hold a book. Condemned to a life like that, I think I’d rather die.

____________________________________

America’s Cup, Fremantle 1986/87.  © PJ Croft 2020

I went shopping to Ocean Keys today, buying four magazines and four books in the process. Many shops were open as usual, including Target, K-Mart and JB HiFi as well as the grocers. A few shops are open in the food court but if you buy anything, you can’t sit down to eat it. As I hadn’t had lunch, that was a bit frustrating.

Anyway, one of the books is Hilary Mantel’s new book about Thomas Cromwell. Holy smoke, it’s hard cover and so thick you can hardly lift it, let alone hold it up for long periods to read.

I learnt something I didn’t know a few weeks ago, or didn’t realise: there were two Cromwells. Thomas Cromwell c.1485 – 1550, the secretary to Henry 8th and the subject of her books, and Oliver Cromwell 1599 – 1658, the parliamentarian and hard man. They were related: Oliver was “born to a family descended from the sister of Henry VIII‘s minister Thomas Cromwell”. That’s a defect in my knowledge of history, not that English history should be all that important to me. I’d heard of Oliver Cromwell for donkey’s years, but Thomas Cromwell first impinged on my consciousness in Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons. The movie with Paul Scofield is at the top of my list of DVDs. I had the two confused, or I should say fused, in my mind.

Always something new to learn.

_______________________________________

Amazing – I filled my car (one of them, the Verada) just now and unleaded 91 cost just 81.7c per litre after the 4c discount. I can’t remember a price that low since maybe the 1980s. I can look it up; being a slightly obsessive list and note maker, I’ve been writing down the cost and distance of every fuel fill in every car I’ve had since 1978. Just handwritten in a spiral bound notebook that I keep in the car. It’s no trouble and comes in handy at times. Each notebook lasts me five years or more, so there are not many. It’s a bit of a diary, a log book. I stick receipts for work done inside. I’ll have to go back through them to see when we last paid that low price.

Aaaah, cool. I get tired of the heat after a while, so I’m very happy to have a grey humid cool day for a change. I like change.

____________________________________

I look at Facebook Marketplace a lot and occasionally I buy something. Looking at cars, I do not believe I have ever seen a car’s air conditioning described as anything other than “icy cold” or “ice cold”.

Listing batteries: I’ve seen battry, bettery, bettry, battrie, battrys, bettries, betry, batry… the low level of spelling!

Teachers, you have failed. Two generations, at least, have passed through the school systems without learning to spell. The standard of spelling is just disgraceful. Even when the word is written on the maker’s label, they still can’t get it right.

And apostrophes? Anything ending in s seem’s to get an apostrophe, whether it needs’ it or not. sic. I roll my eye’s. Potato’s. Tomatos’. Chilli’s. Pizza’s. Kapow, take that.

This takes the cake, though. Talk about confused.

________________________________

How about this?

Facebook applies iron fisted censorship of any image posted that contains even a hint of a woman’s nipple or exposed breast. I found this out on the Lost Bali group when they banned me for 48hrs.

Yet the picture above is allowed. It was posted by my female cousin in the US as a bit of titillation for the girls. I don’t care about the picture, it’s just Facebook’s hypocrisy I object to. Talk about double standards!

_____________________________________

I think it’s time I bought and built up a NAS, Network Attached Storage. I have so much on my hard drives that it’s not feasible to back it up to DVDs as I used to do, 20 years ago and if I lost it, it would be disastrous. I’m still lamenting the loss of a pair of RAID disks when I moved from the old house to here. They had to stay as a pair, but one hard disk looks much like another and somehow I got them separated. They contained all my images to that point in 2013. Luckily I had nearly all of them backed up to CDs, but to this day, I still get flashbacks of images that I used to have but are lost forever.

A NAS box contains a motherboard and power supply and can take two, four or more hard drives and connects to your home network. Unfortunately, they’re expensive – they start at around $250 and go to $1,500 or more for the big ones. For what I need, to take four drives, will be about $650. Ouch. That’s just for the case, not including drives. I have about eight on my shelves which I want to reuse, so that’s OK.

The benefits are: 1. RAID configuration, which can mean one drive failure won’t bring the lot down; 2. possible hot-swapping, changing a drive without powering down; 3. networking, meaning more than one PC can access the drives over a network; 4. reliability; 5. ability to access the drives remotely by a client over the internet – access my files in Perth from Bali, for example. And so on. The benefits are clear. It’s just the cost. Hmmm.

_______________________________________

A couple of weeks ago I saw a posting on NextDoor, a web group which tries to link people in neighbourhoods and local suburbs. The post said, “Hi, my name is Amir [or some such name], I’m a boy looking to make some money. Does anyone have any jobs for me to do?”

I didn’t immediately reply but last week I did, saying, “Hi, I want some things done. How are you at washing and polishing cars? How old are you?”

Answer? Nothing. No reply. So much for youth. So much for enterprise.

______________________________________

I’m looking at NextDoor now. Oooohhh! The spelling, the grammar, the punctuation! It’s almost unreadable. No-one cares, no-one reads their own writing back before posting. I feel as if I’m contaminating myself by continuing. The education system has failed.