Long time no see

Wow! It’s over ten years since my last post. I can’t believe the blog is still here. I’m going to try to post at least once a week from now on. Momentous events: oh, yes ... England won a game of football. That is all I have to say on the subject. If I had a choice between watching a game of football or wood warping, I’d be sitting in the sunshine staring at a plank.

iPodRip

A few weeks ago my iMac G5 crashed (a Mac? Crashing? I know - unbelievable isn't it?). I lost a lot of stuff I am painfully attempting to retrieve. One of the major casualties was my iTunes library including all those Free Music Tuesday freebies I could never replace. The horror! The horror! :(

Fortunately it was all on my trusty iPod. :)

Unfortunately, Apple does not allow you to download from iPod to hard drive. :(

Fortunately I ran across iPodRip and all my precious music was downloaded to my brand new iMac G5.:)

What are you waiting for? Get over there and download it. What? Oh yes - iPodRip also works on Windoze.

Honesty

I am abandoning all pretence at being a heavyweight blogger. No more analysis of political and economic trends (not that there was much to start with!). No more pontificating on matters social. Unless I feel like it if course. It's my blo-og and I'll cry if I want to.

That said, I envy the Americans their new President. Can we have him instead of Gordon? Yes we can. Well, no unfortunately we can't. Apart from anything else, Gordon isn't our head of state. 

Talking of which, I was so moved by the picture of the Queen and Michelle Obama hugging. The Queen looked so old and frail next to Michelle, and I felt a pang: I'm not a raving monarchist, but HM has been there my entire life, and when she goes it will be a huge chunk of the landscape of my life and youth breaking off and sliding into the sea of oblivion.

One of my American friends, a lifelong Democrat, is muttering darkly about Socialism and says she's scared. I suppose being this side of "the pond" we're used to the sort of measures BHO (that middle initial really is essential if you're turning him into an acronym :p) is introducing. There's nothing very terrible or startling to a European in what he's putting forward. I have to say I have never understood why a country that welcomes "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" would charge for healthcare. My friend tells me it's the American way. Equally I have never understood why we allowed anyone who wanted to come here and take advantage of our NHS.

OK I'm done being serious. If you want to find out more about what President Obama thinks — go right ahead and Google him. It's not rocket science. And I have provided one Obama link entirely free of charge.

Wasteland

That is what my life has become since my last but one posting.

I had anticipated resuming my life once my duties as a carer came to an end, but then my own already poor health deteriorated much more rapidly than I could have anticipated. I think the last few months of my mother's life with the daily visits to the hospital took such a toll.

I wonder what will happen to me when I am no longer able to look after myself. Stuck in a care home with people 20 to 40 years my senior? The financial implications are less worrying. I won't be any worse off than I am now, and possibly slightly better off.

I'm glad to see Mick Jagger has no worries on that score. He is now one of the lucky recipients of the State Pension, having reached the venerable age of 65.

Judy Frankel

Judy Frankel, preserver and performer of Sephardic songs died on 20th March. I have put up a website to honour her memory.

First Person Account

One of the survivors of the London bombings has given her moving account of the incident. Read Survivor's Blog at BBC Online.

It was only a matter of time

I turned on the television yesterday lunch time to watch the news on BBC1. A reporter was saying something about a bus and at first I thought there had been some sort of accident. I turned to Sky One's interactive service and saw that London had been subject to a terror attack.
I remember that when I first heard about 9/11, my reaction was one of total disbelief: it felt as if I were watching a movie. This time there was no sense of disbelief, nor even of surprise (I think everyone had expected this since 9/11). I just felt numb.

It's not the first time we've watched the aftermath of a terror attack, of course. I worked in London during the worst period of IRA bombing. I always wondered if they would ever hit the Tube. They planted bombs at Tube stations, but never on the trains themselves. And there was usually a warning. I do not for a moment think that the IRA were motivated by humanity to limit loss of life, but I do think that they held back to some extent because they didn't want to lose credibility and support.

The contrast between the euphoria over the Olympics the day before, and the horror that unfolded was particularly poignant. I think we need the Olympics like we need a hole in the head, but it was so uplifting to see the celebrations in London and Singapore.

Then I thought about Israel, and how London's terrible day is a way of life for Israelis. How many of those rushing to condemn yesterday's terrorism have been equally quick to excuse Palestinian suicide bombings as "desperation"?

I rang the one person I thought might have been in London; he was fine and so was his brother, but his sister-in-law hadn't been in touch (she was all right, it turned out).

One thing puzzles me, and, I'm sure, many others. Why were 1500 police officers sent north of the border to the G8 summit? I'm sure the Scottish police are more than capable of mounting a security operation of this nature.

This morning I watched the news, and then turned to S4C and, for the rest of the morning, watched the International Eisteddfod from Llangollen. It was a wonderful antidote - singers from all over the world united by their love of music.

I don't know much about Anime...

in fact I don't know anything about Anime, but I took this quiz:

YOU ARE ... INNOCENT SCHOOLGIRL! (Kareshi Kanojo No
Jijou)


What Kind of Anime Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

It's a long time since I was an innocent schoolgirl!

A new version of dashblog!

Version 0.12b has just been released and it gets better all the time. You can download it at June Tate's blog.

Dimitry Kirillov has developed a widget that allows Live Journal users to post from their desktops. Download it at dashboard widgets, or at Dimitry's website. Beautiful interface and nice features: mood selector, private/public/friends only selection and music pick-up.

Delicious Library

This is an awesome piece of software from Delicious Monster that catalogues books, CDs, DVDs and games and stores them on your hard drive in a - well - delicious interface. I have about 2,000 books and I've made half-hearted attempts to catalogue them the Dark Ages way (pen and card index) but never got anywhere. You can input details by hand or, if that's too slow for you, scan in the ISBN. There are other programs that do something similar, but DL is far and away the best IMHO.

I would like to see more places to look up in addition to Amazon such as Abebooks as many of my books pre-date ISBNs, but that's a minor peeve. I can enter the info myself and scan in the dustjacket or cover to provide artwork (once my HP all-in-one catches up with Tiger).

I've seen a couple of negative reports (I'm not going to link to them, but you can Google them easily enough), but these seem to relate to version 1; I have 1.5 (Tiger-ready) It even comes with a cute little widget.

Sorry PC-users - you'll just have to come to your senses and buy a Mac.

A Gripe

Why doesn't Blogger recognize Daylight Saving? I suppose I could say that I'm in France during the summer months (if only), but would that change the times for the whole Blog? Oh, well, a little enough wrinkle.

More about DashBlog

June Tate (respect!), creator of this widget, has a blog where you can download the latest release and read about DashBlog's progress. I cannot praise this widget highly enough!. You WinDO'Hs users don't know what you're missing.

Any British Blogger worth her salt ...

would be posting something insightful and incisive about the election. Here goes: Tony Blair got in again.

Waddya want - Jonathan Dimbleby? Robin Cook thinks he should step down as leader. Read all abaht it in The Guardian. I concur, but where does Cookie get off describing Lib Dems as 'reactionary'? I resemble that!!!!

Yes it can

It can cope with HTML.

This reporter for one welcomes our new Tiger overlord!

Problems

Connecting to the Internet has been a nightmare, although it looks as if everything has been sorted out now.

I do love Tiger - especially the Dashboard widgets. This Dash Blog gizmo is awesome. At least, it worked with plain text, but I'm using HTML now. Can it cope?

I've got a Tiger by the tail

I've just installed Tiger on my Mac. There are a few teething troubles, but I love Spotlight: an incredibly fast program for searching your computer, and Dashboard and its widgets. One of the latter is a cute gizmo that enables ypu to post to your blog (I hope)!

I can see why Eve was tempted by the Apple

I love my new Mac: the operating system is a doddle. I took me a while to get used to some things, though, like working without right-click; I miss the Solitaire and Free Cell games. Wonder if there's a commercial Mac version. A major disappointment was the loss of my ftp program, Terrapin. There's no Mac version and never going to be. I now use Transmit, and it's OK, but it's not Terrapin.

I have been using a CD-ROM (aimed at kids) called Rivka Teaches Hebrew. According to the liner notes, it works for both PC and Mac. Yeah, right. There are no Mac files on the CD. I surfed to lexingtonwarner.com/support only to be redirected to timeslearning.com. I emailed them and got no response, so I rang up. They couldn't understand why I had no reply, this was most unusual, etc, but told me that Lexington Warner are now in receivership so there was nothing they could do. I suppose I shall have to invest in Virtual PC.

My Runes program doesn't work in Mac either, so I found a Mac version called Rune Hilda. Couldn't get that to work either, so I emailed Ray@Mindmedia.com on 15 November. Guess what? I'm still waiting for a reply. I have since realised that I needed to install the Classic environment, and now it works fine. I'm not going to bother to tell Ray, though. Why should I put myself out for someone who can't be bothered.

C-Pen

It's come! I haven't yet explored its scanning qualities as I'm too busy using it as a mouse to get back on my desktop. It has to be said that it makes a rather clumsy mouse (or perhaps that's the fault of the mouser), but that is, after all, its secondary function.

It's great to be back on the desktop. I thank heaven for my laptop, but it kept freezing because it was 'out of resources' every time I opened Eudora and my browser at the same time

Gotta go - The Bill is just starting.

Disposing of old computers

You can try to sell them of course. You can pass them on to a friend. You can bin them (not good for the environment). Or you can use them to help the Third World. Computer Aid International "has already shipped over 37,000 PCs to more than 90 developing countries. Of those 37,000 shipped over 25,000 have gone to educational institutions and the remaining to community organisations working in fields as diverse as HIV/Aids, environment, human rights, and primary healthcare.".

They do have a limited collection service (they're based in London), but I use Parcel2go.com. Their rates are good, and they have a special low price for Computer Aid donations (at least, they did, last time I sent one.)

Of Mice and Women

I've been hitting the credit cards lately (so no change there) and buying all those accoutrements without which no home office is complete. I have a beautiful minimalist silver mesh letter tray that will set off my iMac to perfection [SIGH].

I am now the proud possessor of a cross-cut shredder. I'm still playing ... I mean familiarising myself with its various features. I have also installed a pull-out keyboard shelf on my desk. The mouse sits on a little pad to the side. It was a nice mouse. It was optical, but not cordless because I found they ate batteries. So the cord droops down under the desk. On the left-hand side, because I'm left-handed. The shredder is under the desk. On the left-hand side. Just under the drooping cord. You can probably guess the rest. It made the most dreadful sound, like someone flatlining. But more plaintive.

Luckily I had just ordered a C-Pen pen scanner, and that doubles as a mouse. Until it arrives, I have my battered old laptop. No point in getting another mouse. My iMac will be here soon [SIGH].