A day before I am off for a few days at Littles Camp, this post has been prepared a bit quicker than usual to facilitate getting my things together, booking a cab to the rail station and so on
Although there won't be any formal classes they'll be opportunities to sit at desks working on things although the likelihood of a finger wagging like that, common enough when I was in school is somewhat remote.
The main thing to remember travelling will be to keep my phone on as it wasn't a part of my experiences growing up and even now it's not quite second nature.
This week I have been listening to the proms concerts on the radio such as the one on Saturday with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra playing Dvorak's Violin Concerto and Smetana's Ma Vlast (My Country) which is a cycle of six symphonic poems that was a part of what was creation of a wholly Czeck arts culture as much from before was part Germanic the nation was absorbed into others.
That was a thing of my childhood too although I often listened with headphones to reduce background noise and also avoid making a din to others in the dorm having a classical record collection too.
See you next week.
Today sees the resumption of the BBC promenade concerts in person and live on radio, television and online for this one hundred and twenty-fifth season where mainly classical and a small amount of popular music music will performed by various orchestras, conductors and soloists.
For me it's a season where for most nights there will be music on, some I am familiar with - you don't really want to see my cd collection!- and some not that you just take in with thousands of others and explore.
It also is a continuation rather like most things of a childhood ritual where even as a nine year old, I'd listen to the odd prom by myself and indeed my 'transistor radio' spent almost as much time tuned to 247 metres (the then home of Radio One) as 464 metres (the then home of Radio Three the arts and classical music station) as a junior school child and where possible by the time I was at high school I was even tape recording whole concerts on reels of tape.
This Friday we'll hear the Czech composer Janacek's Glogolitic Mass, Dvorak's The Golden Spinning Wheel and the newly commissioned by the BBC Long Is the Journey – Short Is the Memory by Zosha Di Castri that marks the 50th anniversary this week of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon.
The week here has seen the installation of the new full laptop while you know who gets used to their Chromebook having found a photo processing app so actually they can most of the things they need.
Here, my first task was to re-install dbPoweramp from the email link I used back in 2014 when I bought a family license which is a program that allows for copying your cds to either full cd quality but smaller lossless files such as Free Lossless (Flac) or Apples form called Alac or forms that remove some elements of the music that (many people believe) cannot be heard as our ears tend to mask softer sounds next to loud sounds of a similar frequency such as the evergreen Mp3 which in the form they use is actually very good.
It finds you the track and artist information and adds the album art to the folder.
I also installed Roxio's Photosuite 5, a program from 2005 that amazingly still runs on modern forms of Windows which is simple lightweight program for touching up pictures and making simple captions.
There have been media players of various sorts over the years often multimedia ones but as Microsoft dropped its Windows Media Player from Windows 10 I went back in time and installed the evergreen Winamp 5.666 which in various forms I had used since 2003 simply because it's a very good music player that plays most formats and nothing else that displays album art and has a pull down equalizer if needed. For video there's always VLC.
Because I get confused and aren't much good looking at onscreen guides and remembering what they said as I do it, I got this basic guide in everyday english to help me find my way around various options and where things are compared to Windows 7
This is a Targus classic clamshell premium laptop bag, designed for MacBooks and smaller windows laptops like my Lenovo X230.
It has two sectioned pockets, a wide section for note books of the paper kind and another shallow set to take thinks you need together with your laptop with you and keep it protected.
As for that first image actually that goes back to 2008 and my original internet service provider which was used for a period under my signature box.
The history of computing here almost runs with the history of this blog as the first computer I got online with was a desktop unit that run Windows 98 Second Edition from 2005 and when that died in September 2006, It was replaced by a Stone desktop running Windows XP service pack three which I had until the Summer of 2012 when I had a short lived HP Compaq 15.6 inch laptop running Windows 7.
That machine remains a sore point with me with keys losing lettering numerous resets when it got locked up and being rather sluggish do for main usage I had an older Dell 620 that had been put on Windows 7 which worked much better with a much more responsive keyboard.
One issue that can't be dodged is support as in bug and security fixes for Windows 7 ends in January next year unless you're an enterprise use that's paid for it so I needed to migrate over to something that is current.
Quite a few things have changed over the years like I do have one of those cross between a Tablet that has a Keyboard called a Chromebook that actually does a solid 90 odd percent of what I use a computer for such as emails, using sites and blogging because it's very quick and supremely portable with the ability to use googles and a fair number of android apps, versatile too.
I have now a Lenovo X230 12.5 inch which has been reconditioned with a 256gb solid state hard drive and 8gb of ram mainly because the more specialized uses I have are with copying ("ripping") cds to Mp3's at 320kbps or Flac (Free lossless) coupled with photo processing where I might need to crop, correct colour, exposure and the like or use an office suite.
Even leaving aside the question of operating system, the Dell only had 3gb of ram that admittedly it used very well and its mechanical hard drive only had a capacity of 43gb which after Windows 7 and programs took a bite left little for content.
It also was the case the dvd drive in the dell no longer worked and the door for it kept falling off so it needed replacing at some point.
This Lenovo doesn't have built in dvd drive which many laptops whither they run Windows or Mac OSX don't today but will take an external one connected via its USB connectors.
Microsofts Edge browser will needless to say be replaced by Chrome to sync with the Chromebook that should save setting up bookmarks and log in details.
I do have a guide to Windows 10 to cover those nagging and usual silly questions like and "where they they put this?" as developers ignore the impact in the workplace of unnecessary changes just they think hiding everything is cool.
