New Computer & Windows 10

Corsair  Mid Tower Case with side window

Having taken possession of my new super duper computer last Wednesday, I have been accustoming myself to Windows 10.

Much as I dreaded upgrading to Windows 10, it has not been all that stressful and is pretty much like Windows 7, except bossier.

Gratifyingly, all my beloved antique software works fine without any problems. Amazing to discover that MS Office 2003 (the last MS Office with the old interface before the ribbon interface was introduced in Office 2007)  is still operable under the latest version of Windows.

The picture above is of the mid tower case of the new computer. Tower cases have gotten groovier these days -  a far cry from the boring beige boxes of the past.  There was one at the computer shop with flashy lighting effects, but I settled on the minimalist Corsair 100R case which has a side glass panel so you can see the computer’s innards, and no doubt how dusty it will get as the years go by.

It is a fast machine that comes with bountiful USB 3 ports and runs quietly.

So overall I’m really pleased I opted for a new computer and that Windows 10 has proved (so far) not to be the gremlin I had anticipated and was easy to customise to my liking.

One good thing about Windows 10, is that Open Live Writer now has a spell checker, unavailable on Windows 7 , so hopefully I won’t be making as many inadvertent mistakes. I have yet to test that it uploads to Google, but this post will be the proof.

On other matters I have several events booked in February and March, two literary occasions – Margaret Atwood at Hamer Hall on 23 February and Neil Gaiman at the Capitol on February 25 – and three music concerts. The first of these is Patty Griffin on March 3, followed by Eilen Jewell on 19 March and Kieran Kane on 26 March. So there’s lots to look forward to in this brand new year.

Hopefully I’ll be back at the races next Saturday at Caulfield. Alas, transport disruptions mean that I will have to catch a bus to Caulfield next week as trains are not running, though the rest of the autumn racing season at Caulfield appears not to be affected, in February at least.

The 2020 All Star Mile will be run at Caulfield this year in mid March and is shaping up as the race of the Melbourne autumn season, with a plethora of classy horses nominated. 

I witnessed the inaugural running of the race last year at Flemington, won by Tassie filly Mystic Journey. She is nominated again and will probably get a start. Let’s hope the P B Lawrence Stakes curse has worn off this autumn and that she can add another win to her tally.

Apocalypse Now

The recent and ongoing bushfires raging across Australia give one a feeling of living in an end of days scenario.  Here in Melbourne today there is a haze of smoke, but otherwise I feel lucky to be in the city and not out in the bush. So far this summer in Melbourne has been fairly mild and tolerable. I suppose that might change as we move towards February which normally is the hottest month.

I can’t imagine what it would have been like in Mallacoota or Kangaroo Island and the other hot spots in the country. Bravo to the voluntary fire fighters.

With the bushfires dominating the news, my mind can’t help but think back to my childhood in the North East Victorian town of Woods Point, which was wiped out in the Black Friday fires of 13 January 1939.

The memory of those fires still lingered in the late 1950s when we lived in the town.  I used to worry every summer and fret about how I could save our animals from the flames.

We did bushfire evacuation drills at the school, marching from the school to the Morning Star mine to a shelter in one of the shafts.

Woods Point Hospital where we lived in the 1950s

The old Woods Point Hospital in 1905 before it was destroyed in the 1939 bushfire

The above black and white photo is one of several sent to me by former childhood friend Shirley who lived next door to the hospital.

Photo of me and my brothers with Shirley and her dog 1950s

Back in these modern times,  support for Windows 7 expires today. Rather than update this present five year old computer to Windows 10, I’ve opted to buy a brand new desktop, and have ordered a custom made machine from my favourite computer shop Cnet Technology in Preston.

It should be ready to pick up this week and I’m looking forward to firing it up despite it operating on Windows 10. It has all the bells and whistles – a fast CPU, lots of RAM, a sizeable (500 GB) Solid State Drive plus a second  1TB hard drive for data, a whizbang 4 GB Graphic Card, etc etc.

Thinking back over the 25 or so years since my first computer, Windows 10 will mark the seventh operating system I will have to master. Of course you can also count my iPad (OS 10) and mobile phone (new as well) with Android Version 9.

No doubt it will take me at least a day to attach the peripherals and load software. Cross fingers my old verions of MS Office and Dreamweaver MX will still work.

I’m pleasurably anticipating returning to the races in a little under a fortnight for the build up to the Autumn racing season, with the Blue Diamond Previews at Caulfield on 25 January.

There was a fine taster on the Gold Coast last Saturday with the Magic Millions race day. I even had a few bets on a couple of races and was delighted that Chris Waller trained mare Invincibella won the Fillies & Mares Magic Millions for the third consecutive time, paying $5.00 for the win.  I also invested a small sum on Conceited in the Two Year Old Classic. Though not winning, he payed $3.00 for running third.

Alligator Blood, if ever there was a future star of the turf, won the Three Year Old Guineas in fine style after much drama getting to the course. I would have placed money on him, but his odds were so short it wasn’t worth it. Hopefully we’ll get to see him in Melbourne over the Autumn Carnival.

We may be living in a dystopian world, but there are still enjoyable things to do amid the doom and gloom.

So Long to the 2010s

Bingo early December

I really can’t complain about the 2010s as I have been retired from work for  9/10ths of the decade, but globally the world is a different place to what it was in 2009.

Actually, in my humble opinion, the world changed for good on 11 September 2001 with the fall of the two towers and has been going downhill ever since.

Anyway, to see out the old year here are some of my highlights for this year.

Books

Though as usual I reread several old favourites, a number of new titles impressed me this year, notably two books by previously unknown authors – Diane Setterfield and Sarah Tolmie.

An engaging ghost story set on the river Thames, Once Upon A River by Diane Setterfield gripped me from the beginning. It’s a sort of old fashioned tale that you comfortably settle into and follow delightedly to its satisfying conclusion.

The Little Animals by Canadian writer, Sarah Tolmie, is the book I loved the most this year; an unremarked gem of a novel about Dutch scientist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, known as the Father of Microbiology. He was a contemporary of the famous artist Johannes Vermeer who is also a character in the book. Another main character, who haunts the book and lends an otherworldly vibe to it, is the goose girl, transported from a Grimm fairy story to 17th century Delft to become a strange collaborator in van Leeuwenhoek’s scientific investigations into animacules (Little Animals). 

If like me you are weary of books banging on about modern social issues, The Little Animals is a welcome escape from these troubled times and a pleasure to read.

I also enjoyed new books by favourite authors – The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, The Secret Commonwealth by Phillip Pullman and two new books by the wonderful American writer John Crowley, And Go Like This, a book of short stories, and Reading Backwards an illuminating, exquisitely written collection of essays and reviews covering an astonishingly wide range of topics.

Alas John Crowley’s 25th Anniversary edition of Little, Big was not published this year – no surprise really. Hopefully I get to finally hold it in my hands next year after a 15 year wait.

Next year I’m pleasantly anticipating Agency by William Gibson in January,  The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel in March, a new David Mitchell novel, Utopia Avenue, in June and after a 16 year hiatus Susanna Clarke (author of the magical Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel) has a new novel titled Piranisi coming in September.

We’re not doing anything special this New Year’s Eve and will be asleep by midnight, possibly awakened by fireworks, but more likely the cat Bingo.

He’s now three years old and just as mischievous as ever, not to mention noisily vocal. But he is a beautiful looking animal and a dear little fellow most of the time.

Let’s hope summer is not too trying. A few 40C+ degree days is normal in Melbourne, and luckily the few we’ve had so far  have only lasted 24 hours with a cool change following in a timely manner and lingering for days.

The hot weather has affected the horse racing industry. Several recent race meetings have been abandoned due to the heat, which is to be commended. Hopefully when the Group 1 racing resumes in early February the weather will be kind, though that’s unlikely. We wait and see.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the new racing season as I enjoy my Saturday afternoon outings to the track. It’s also pleasurable to speculate on the emergence of new stars of the turf in the Magic Millions two year old competitions in early January at the Gold Coast.

Whilst awaiting the new racing season I’ve been playing computer games, the current one on the go being Blade Runner, a 1997 game recently rejigged for modern computers by GOG.

Despite it’s 80s retro visuals, I recently  enjoyed a very well made game called Detective Di: The Silk Rose Murders.  The game is based on a real life ancient Chinese judge and investigator Di Renjie, who was also the hero of a series of novels by Robert van Gulick, quite few of which I have in my personal library.

As support for Windows 7 expires mid January, I’ll be obliged to either update my current computer to the dreaded Windows 10 or purchase a new one.  Despite this Windows 7 computer still going smoothly, I’m favouring getting a new computer for Windows 10 for several reasons. Firstly the SSD C: drive on this computer is running out of space, and secondly it being close to  five years old, the bios is pretty ancient and is probably not up to date or updateable.

I intend to buy another desktop with all the bells and whistles, ie a good graphics card, a fast CPU with lots of RAM. Hopefully my favourite old software will still work on a new machine and in Windows 10.

Windows 7 in my opinion has been the best version of Windows I’ve ever used. It’s stable, fast and problem free in the main and runs all my old beloved software programs.

This is turning into a marathon post, so I’ll end here, wishing my readers, whoever you are, a Happy 2020 and a more enlightened world.

Welcome 2018

B Kliban – Tree Party Hangover

World War III failed to eventuate in 2017, for which we can be thankful, but the odds of it happening in 2018 are much shorter, with Trump and Kim Jong Un causing Global anxiety with their belligerant exchanges of views.

Hopefully, sanity will prevail with 2018 featuring more good news than bad news. With any luck Trump will be impeached, Kim Jong Un will be overthrown, and peace will prevail.

2017 was an eventful year for the Cat Politics domicile, particulary the big move to another suburb and the raising of a new feline companion to fill the gap left by Willy’s death on Boxing Day 2016.

The feline in question is sitting on my knee as I write this post and is being good for change.

Cats – Talya in the cat bed with Bingo outside

Talya appears to have recovered from her stomach ailment, as she has not inappropriately voided her bowels inside for several weeks.  She has however abandoned her blanket on the chair and readopted the cat bed. I must say that the cat bed purchased in 2015 has been a great success as cats seem to love this particular model.

We had Christmas lunch at my brother’s place and I got to meet my new great niece Florence for the first time.

A baby photo! Florence in elf hat

She’s another Leo born into the family. That makes five of us in all.  My youngest nephew became a father this year in November with the birth of baby Tex.  I haven’t seen the nephew for several years as he lives and works in Queensland.

One of the joys of New Year’s Day is putting up a new calendar. I buy a calendar every year and have a huge collection (though I culled it before we moved) of calendars dating back to the 1970s.

This year I purchased the Mimi Vang Olsen cat calendar, which has 12 delightful portraits of cats.

We had a quiet New Year’s Eve as usual and went to bed early, though were awoken briefly by the bang of fireworks nearby around midnight. 

I’ve started the New Year with a head cold, awaking with it yesterday morning. Who knows how I caught it, but it’s not that bad so far and my nose seems to have stopped dribbling.

There are a few things I’m looking forward to in 2018 - a Jason Isbell concert in late March, and seeing New York writer and wit, Fran Lebowizt, earlier the same month at the Athenaeum Theatre. I have an ancient copy of her first book, Metropolitan Life, which I enjoyed reading at the time, though it’s a bit dated now.

There are not many books I’m eagerly awaiting in 2018, other than the new Kate Atkinson novel Transcription, and William Gibson is purported to have the follow up to The Peripheral, called Agency out this year as well. No doubt there will be other books that will catch my fancy as the year progresses.

And - I didn’t think I would be writing this again - the 25th Anniversary Edition of John Crowley’s Little, Big, now awaited for 12 years, will hopefully be published this year. It was supposed to come out last year, and must be close to being sent to the printers, according to the latest news on the Little, Big website.  God, I hope it arrives before I die!

Anyway on this first day of a brand new year I’m mostly optimistic that we will all survive to live a few more.

PS The phone and Internet are now working after a technician came and fixed the wiring in the street just after Christmas.

The Internet - Twenty Years On

As well as turning a significant age this year, 2017 marks for me my 20th Anniversary on the Internet.

I can’t remember which month it was when I signed up for Internet access with my first ISP,  Rod Irving Electronics, but it was early to mid 1997.

Rod Irving Electronics advertisement for Internet Services

Back in those days Internet access was via dial up modem through the telephone network for most users.

I remember the ghastly screech of a modem, at first alarming, but reassuring thereafter as a connection was made. Dial up modems tended to be unreliable, unless you had a good quality machine. For many years I used US Robotics modems, which were steady as a rock and rarely lost the connection to the ISP server.

Initially, speed was a mere 33.6 kilobits per second, though a few years later you could get modems that ran at 56 kilobits per second. It took hours for a video to download, so it’s fortunate that You Tube wasn’t around then, or you would use up your free 30 hours per month access in a day. There was was no such thing as a data allowance as you couldn’t download huge files anyway.

The main internet browsers  in 1997 were Internet Explorer (Versions 1 and 2) and Netscape Navigator Version 3, and major search engines of the time were AltaVista and Yahoo. AltaVista lost out when Google became the most popular search engine, though Yahoo is still going strong.

When I first connected to the Internet, my computer system was Windows 3.11, so a tech guy from Rod Irving had to come around and set up the connection and show us how it worked.

I’d purchased my first PC from Rod Irving in 1994 and also bought my second computer - a Pentium MMX 166 running Windows 95 – from them sometime in 1997. They went out of operation a few years later and their ISP business was taken over by a small independent company who registered their business as Relax Internet Enterprises, so that Rod Irving customers wouldn’t have to change their email addresses at rie.net.au.

Rod Irving Electronics ad for computer systems etc.

I stuck with dial up internet until 2005, when I switched to ADSL 1 with Relax who were offering broadband at that time at a higher cost than dial up, but it was faster. Their service went downhill so I switched to iinet and ADSL2+ ten years ago. Amazingly my original ADSL 2 Netgear Modem is still going strong and in use to this day. Coupled to a wireless Router it allows all the wireless enabled devices in the house to connect to the internet.

Apparently the NBN will be coming to my street sometime in July this year, but I’m dithering as to whether I’ll switch from  ADSL2+ to NBN as my current connection speeds on ADSL are quite good (up to 25mbps on a good day) and a basic NBN service offers only 12mbps, which isn’t as fast, though it might be more constant.

As I don’t care about streaming movies and have no buffering problems when watching You Tube clips or live streamed services, I can’t see the point of going to NBN and paying extra to get 25mbps, when I already have it on ADSL.

Of course I fell in love with the Internet from the beginning and twenty years on couldn’t imagine living without it. You could say I’ve become addicted; to the detriment of whatever I did before I signed up for a lifetime of connectivity.

Us baby boomers have certainly witnessed many technical advances; from Television in the 1950s to video players and CDs (1970s), DVDs (1990s), to media streaming via smart phones and TVs today via the Internet.

I get quite nostagic for old tech and still have old Rod Irving catalogues and even  copies of The Complete Idiot’s Pocket Guide to MS-DOS 6.2 and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to PCs (both pub 1993).

That’s not to mention a stack of old software such as old versions of MS Office, various Graphics and Web Page editors and ancient DOS games.

I also have many floppy disks and forethought to purchase a USB floppy disk drive some years ago so I can still access them if I need to.

I’ve given up trying to keep ahead of the latest technological marvels such as VR, though I hear VR is now regarded as passé.

My phone, though smart, is not the latest Apple or Galaxy and I would not consider using it as a computer substitute.

I like my computers to be big machines with decent sized monitors, and I love my excellent Logitech illuminated keyboard that is comfortable to use in both good and bad light.

Apropos the new wide screen monitor I was obliged to buy recently, I’ve grown used to it and appreciate its higher resolution. Windows 7 handles monitor customisation very well, so I don’t have to squint to read a screen, now that I’ve set it up to my taste.

Frustration and Good Fortune

This past week has been rather trying and frustrating, but it ended well eventually.

You might guess that it had something to do with computers, and you’d be right on the money.

It was not something that the computer did inadvertently, but rather my own choice to update the operating system from Windows 7 32 bit, to Windows 7 64 bit.

I had purchased the Windows 7 64 bit software several months ago, and was all fired to update it at the time, when I noticed that Mercury was Retrograde and thought better of it, knowing how frustrating things often are when that planet is in that configuration. Mercury rules transport, communications and information technology, so when it goes retrograde (appears to be going backwards) all sorts of delays and setbacks occur. So, not a good time to upgrade your computer.

Being clear of any Mercury backward influences I decided to gird my loins and update the computer last Monday. This meant I had to wipe C: drive and reinstall the operating system.

The new installation was a success, but I was unable to access the files on my second hard drive, which held all my data. I had backed up to an external hard drive everything I wanted to save on C: drive, but assumed (foolishly it turns out) that the bulk of my data was safe on E: drive.

It wasn’t.

Rather than search for days on Google for a solution to the problem, I gave up and took the computer to the trusty Computer Repair Shop, Cnet Technology, in Preston, which was where I purchased the computer in 2014.

Whilst there I thought I’d upgrade my graphics card as I’d been thinking of doing for a while,  the original card  being incredibly noisy. It also generated heat inside the case that was hot to touch.

The heat was actually caused by the burn out of one of the CPU fans, so it was lucky that we took the machine to be repaired or it could have been disastrous in the near future. Also, it turned out that the second hard drive was on the brink of death - the reason the files couldn’t be accessed.

The marvellous Michael at Cnet Tech was able to copy all the data from the dying disk to a new hard drive.

It all ended up being quite pricey, but with disaster averted, it was worth every penny and I have a quiet, fast, squeaky clean computer again.

The only problem is that my old monitor is not compatible with the new graphics card and needs an adaptor to work at all. It’s an old fashioned square LCD monitor, so I’m forced to update to a wide screen HD monitor, which I’ve been resisting doing for years.

Having to put up with a resolution of 800 x 600 pix until the new monitor arrives (the screen blacks out if I try to increase the resolution) makes the prospect of a new, bigger, wide screen quite attractive.

So what started out as a frustrating week was conversely fortunate. If I hadn’t tried to update my computer, pretty soon it would have been cactus, so the timing was perfect as it turned out.

I’ll never trust a hard disk to keep on keeping on ever again.  Some do seem to last forever, e.g. the one in the old XP computer which must be getting on for nine years of age. At least I know what to look for now if it’s on the point of death and back up my data regularly.

In The Mood For Romance…

Chautauqua begins his autumn campaign this weekend

The romance of the turf, I mean, seeing as the autumn racing season kicks off on Saturday, St Valentine’s Day.  I’m too old for the other sort of romance (perish the thought) so the romance of racing is it for me.

Caulfield reopens its gates for the first time since the Caulfield Cup, to host the first Group 1 race of the season and the meeting also includes several choice Group 2 and 3 events as well to be run on the newly resurfaced track.

To digress, it has been a technologically trying week with my new computer developing a serious hard drive problem over the weekend, where, after a series of BSOD (blue screen of death) incidents the operating system refused to load. Fortunately, the hard drive in question, a SSD (solid state drive), was the one on which all programs were loaded, and had hardly any data saved on it. I store my data files on a second internal hard drive.

I did have an inkling that all was not well after the BSODs, so hastened to save essential stuff on my C: drive, such as email addresses, messages etc. to the secondary E: drive, so I didn’t lose anything important.

Back to the computer shop we went early on Monday and they had a new SSD installed with a fresh install of Windows 7 ready by Tuesday afternoon. It only took me a day to set it all up this time, after the tedium of the initial set up back in April last year which had me trying to install the printer driver for a week. Now the computer is back in business and performing better than before.

So it will be a pleasant break from computer woes attending the races tomorrow.

As was the case last summer, Caulfield is calling its program of summer racing “Relaxed Racing”, and in their wisdom have scheduled the feature race for 5.50pm, so it will a long day trackside as I want to get to the course by the second race.

Race 2 is the Group 3 Kevin Hayes Stakes for three year old fillies run over 1200 metres. Most of the fillies engaged in the race are resuming from a spell, and there are several familiar names among the contenders – Fontein Ruby, Afleet Esprit, Sabatini and Royal Snitzel. The winner will most probably be one of the above.

The third and fourth races on the program are of great interest in terms of assessing the current two year old crop for the upcoming Blue Diamond Stakes.  The Group 2 Blue Diamond Prelude  (1100 metres) for fillies is run first and the raging favourite is Fontiton who has won her only two starts, the last being the fillies Blue Diamond Preview on Australia Day. Her main rivals are Flamboyant Lass, Heatherly and Secret Agenda who all won their last races.

The colts and geldings Prelude is harder to assess, but I fancy Of The Brave who I witnessed winning his first race back in October at Caulfield. He is a half brother to the speedy Eloping and looks to share  her talent.  Others with a chance are Darley colts Bantam and Sampeah.

The Carlyon Cup is a Group 3 race run over 1600 metres, and the field has a mix of stayers and middle distance runners. The most interesting of them is Sydney horse Red Excitement who has a remarkable CV with a picket fence of wins against his name.  He’ll have to beat the very fit and in form  Jacquinot Bay who has won his last three starts. 

Top sprinter Chautauqua, resuming after spell, is the hot favourite to take out the Group 2 Rubiton Stakes (1100 metres). Top challengers are three year old fillies Eloping and Oakleigh Girl and four year old mares Atmospherical and Missy Longstocking.

Race 7, the Group 2 Autumn Stakes for three year olds looks like a match race between Hong Kong Captain and Profit Share, both having recent wins under their belts.

The feature race is the Group 1 CF Orr Stakes run over 1400 metres.  Past winners of this race include Black Caviar, Typhoon Tracy (twice), All Too Hard, Lonhro and Saintly among many illustrious champions of the turf. Last year it was won by Moment of Change.

This year’s edition looks rather uninspiring with the class horses in the field being Happy Trails resuming and  Dissident, whobegan his autumn campaign at Moonee Valley in January to run third in the Australia Stakes behind Mourinho who is also in the field and has to be respected. There are two three year olds in the field – Petrology and Java – who with the weight advantage could steal the show. Java has the distinction of beating Hong Kong Captain two starts back and Petrology at his last start. And Chris Waller also has two runners who wouldn’t surprise with a win considering Waller’s reputation, these being Bagman and Beaten Up.

The omen bet for St Valentines Day is WA mare Real Love who has great form over longer distances, but has won over 1400 metres in the past.  West Australian horses either thrive in the eastern states – Northerly and Marasco are two that come mind – or disappoint like recent visitors Luckygray and Mr Moet. Will Real Love emulate the former or the latter West Australian champs in her sojourn in the east?

There are more Valentine’s Day omen bets running in Sydney, most notably Lucia Valentina and He’s Your Man in the Group 2 Apollo Stakes, which has a much classier field than the Orr Stakes with  Boban, Foreteller, Hawkspur, Weary, Diamond Drille and Silent Achiever being contenders as well.

In fact the race card at Randwick on Saturday is much more interesting than Caulfield’s with classy gallopers like Golden Slipper winner Mossfun resuming from an injury induced spell in the Group 2 Light Fingers Stakes along with Flight Stakes winner First Seal and Thousand Guineas winner Amicus who are also in the race.

After a two year absence due to a tendon injury, it’s good to welcome back the lately lamented Super Cool’s great rival Fiveandahalfstar in the Group 3  Southern Cross Stakes. It being a 1200 metre race he is not expected to win it, but it sure will be interesting watching him in action again.

So the racing scene will be hot this weekend and no doubt the weather will be too. It is forecast to be a humid and warm day tomorrow with the threat of a thunderstorm in the afternoon. Let’s hope that the storm that overtook Flemington on Australia Cup day in 2010 will not be repeated at Caulfield tomorrow.

It’s raining in Melbourne as I write this so who knows how the newly laid  track at Caulfield Racecourse will play.

A Few Screws Loose, but It Still Works

What the hell am I talking about? It’s not my mental condition I’m referring to, but another intelligent machine, in this case my old Kindle eBook reader.

Kindle with broken screen

Back in early June my old Kindle 3 gave up the ghost, or rather became unreadable due to the screen breaking through misadventure (see photo above).  I purchased a new Kindle Paperwhite as a result and am perfectly happy with it.

So the old Kindle appeared to be defunct and destined for the recyclers, that is until I found a video on You Tube that explained very succinctly how to replace the broken screen, and subsequent to that I came across an excellent instructable on the web that elucidated on the video.  It didn’t look all that hard, so I decided to give it try and rescue my old Kindle from the scrap heap.

Finding a new screen was easy. You can buy them on Ebay and they cost about $40.00 –$50.00.  Far cheaper than buying a new Kindle.

My new screen arrived, but I put off the task of  replacing the old broken screen for a month. I felt I had to psych myself up to begin, as I have never done anything like this before. That is, taking apart a device and reassembling it.

Yesterday I felt in the mood to try and I’m pleased to report that the Kindle is now operable again.

It took me all afternoon, involving as it did, removing all the innards bit by bit and putting it together again with the new screen installed.

It was, I admit, not as easy as it looked on the video, which I had playing  on my laptop computer in front of me as I worked.

There were at least twenty five screws to unscrew, some of them little black ones the size of ants. If you don’t have twenty-twenty vision it can be incredibly difficult and frustrating unscrewing and replacing them. One of course fell on the floor, so I gave it up as a lost cause and figured one less screw wouldn’t make much difference in the long run.

I was right. I actually ended up with a few extra screws and little metal whatsits which I couldn’t find a place for in the reassembly.

The cats were starting to grumble about being fed as I finally snapped the back cover of the Kindle into place.

After recharging the device I tentatively turned it on and to my delight, it was working. It’s not perfect, as the images are not displayed properly (faded out) but the text is crisp.

Kindle image display	Kindle text display

This could be the quality of the screen, but most probably it is a “bad waveform” problem - explained here (with advice on how to fix it). I certainly don’t feel up to taking the Kindle apart again, so I’ll just live with its imperfections. After all, as I have a new Kindle for reading, the old one can now be a spare should the new one stuff up.

I am however really chuffed that I was able to get my old Kindle working again. It was an educational exercise and I learned a lot in the process.

Miracles and other things

Miracles of Life  - Flemington 1 March 2014

I’ve been rather slack on the blogging front of late, being disinclined to write anything. The death of my friend Maureen affected me more than I thought it would and has proved distracting, her sudden and shocking demise being foremost in my brain over the last few weeks.

Even so, I have been following the racing as a matter of course, and was delighted to see Miracles of Life, the fairy tale 2013 Blue Diamond Stakes winner, return to form victoriously last Saturday in a Group 2 race at Morphettville. She is scheduled to be sold very soon in a dispersal sale on the part of her owner, so last Saturday’s race could well have been her last.  She is nominated for the Group 1 Goodwood at Morphettville next Saturday and may take her place in the field, pending a decision tomorrow.

We bid farewell to quite a few stars of the turf after the Sydney racing carnival. It’s A Dundeel has been retired, as has Fiorente, Shamus Award, Guelph and Appearance, so they’ll be missed come the Spring.

However, others will no doubt compensate for their absence, Lankan Rupee for one, who being a gelding will be around the scene for some years, and if he stays sound will be the next big thing in sprinting circles and most likely Australian Horse of the Year for the 2013/14 season.

On the cat political front, the two resident cat masters are still not particularly friendly to one another, but they rarely fight. I did catch them both facing off on the roof of the backyard studio a week or so ago, where Willy had Talya cornered, but I managed to defuse the situation so no blood was spilled. As I write they’re both asleep on the bed only yards apart and unconcerned with the proximity.

Recent photo of Talya curled up on a rug

Clever Willy sheltering from the rain on the front verandah

As Melbourne has been experiencing an early onset of winter, the cold, wet weather has meant that the cats spend more time inside. By the time winter officially arrives we’ll have grown used to it, but the next stretch of chilly months will seem never ending.

Meantime I’m eagerly awaiting the release of the new Tex Murphy game which is mooted to be available on 7th May. A big download (15GB) will certainly take an age to get onto my computer, but after waiting for 16 years for the game, I’m sure it will be worth it.

At least it will be an amusing way to occupy some my time over the winter months.

I’ve got used to my new computer and I must admit that it is a lot faster and quieter than the old one. My only complaint is that the monitor colours are a bit off; something to do with the graphics card I suspect, which I have yet to configure correctly.

What Did We Do Without Them? - Continued

It’s more the question of are they worth the trouble?

It took me all last week to successfully set up my new computer, and I wonder if the stress and distraction was worth it.  The main problem was installing the printer, which being over five years of age required a Windows 7 driver. That was OK as it was easy to find on the Fuji Xerox site, but could I get the printer to install it properly? No.

After putting the printer problem in the too hard basket for most of the week, I somehow or other managed to successfully install the driver on Friday. Don’t ask me how I did it, but after detaching the printer from the computer, then reattaching it, Windows automatically found the printer driver and installed it and the printer worked.  What a relief!

In the meantime I installed my most useful software, MS Office, Dreamweaver, Cute FTP for example and even though the software in most cases is over ten years old they all work in Windows 7. Even some really ancient Windows 3.1 games work in the OS. 

The only problematic application was Dreamweaver 4, which worked, but had a major problem that could not be surmounted easily. I then remembered that I had a later version of Dreamweaver which I had purchased in 2004, so installed that and it worked fine. It is however a slightly more sophisticated program which had me on a swift learning curve  when I used it to  edit web pages today. I had grown so used to the layout of Dreamweaver 4, that I’d stuck with it through the years, so had hardly tried Dreamweaver MX 2004 as it looked different and required time to grow accustomed to the interface, so I basically stuck with the tried and true and familiar as I knew it in Dreamweaver 4. 

It’s amazing how fast you can learn when you have to. Having worked out Dreamweaver MX  today, I’ve decided that actually it isn’t that bad a program, and has some pleasing improvements that I’d  never noticed before, like retaining the formatting of Word documents copied into it and automatically inserting links.

So setting up the new computer has been unusually educational if frustrating at times.

Writing this post in the latest version of Windows Live Writer, I’m also learning something new. I don’t really think it’s as easy to use as the old 2009 Live Writer, but I’m trying to get used to it by writing this post.

As for Windows 7, it’s actually pretty similar to XP and certainly not as bossy as Vista, so I have no issues with it at all.

You will notice in the picture above that the racing form guide is sitting in front of the printer.  I was too distracted last week to preview the first of Randwick’s “Championship” meetings, which featured the Group One Sires, ATC Derby, T J Smith and the hallowed mile of the Doncaster Handicap.  They were run  on a bog track (Heavy 9) and the winners were a mix of class and specialist mudrunners.

The Sires was won by smart filly Peggy Jean,  Criterion added the Derby to his Rosehill Guineas victory, Lankan Rupee demonstrated just how brilliant he is with a stunning two length win in the T J Smith, and Sacred Falls won the Doncaster for the second year  in succession.

What Did We Do Without Them?

I’m speaking of computers of course.

What inspired me to write this post is that having just purchased a new desktop computer, it occurred to me that 2014 is the 20th anniversary of my acquiring my first PC.  It looked a lot like the one in the image above and was a 486DX33 IBM clone. It was top of the range at the time having a 2 x speed CD drive, a 250mb hard disk, 4mb ram and cost me about $5000 all up with printer, monitor, keyboard and mouse included. It ran on Windows 3.11 and Dos 6.2.

By comparison, my new custom made box only cost me $800 and is probably 1000 times more powerful than the 486. I’ve yet to fire it up, steeling myself for the tedium of loading software and attaching peripherals, and also getting used to a new operating system, Windows 7 in this case.

Yes, I’ve been a die hard Windows XP user, and as the system will not be supported from 8 April 2014, I figured that rather than upgrading the OS of my current 5½ year old computer – who knows how much longer it’ll chug along - I’d start afresh with a new computer running a newer operating system that was not Windows 8.

I know desk top computers are going out of fashion and that laptops and tablets are more popular these days. However, even though I do have a laptop and a tablet, I greatly prefer to work and play from a big computer and with a square LED/LCD monitor to boot. They are  pretty hard to get these days too, with wide screens being the monitor of choice for younger folk.  My current computer, when I bought it, came with a wide screen, but I couldn’t stand it and got rid of it as soon as I could.

My theory is that newer is not necessarily better and the same goes for my ancient beloved software, so I hope it all works in Windows 7.

One interesting coincidence regarding the 20 year interim between my first computer and the latest one, is that one of the first PC games I played on the 486 was Under A Killing Moon, the first FMV Tex Murphy game.  Tesla Effect,  the long awaited new Tex Murphy FMV game, is set to be released in a few weeks, so I’ll get to play it on my new computer, which should handle the game easily.  I’ve been playing a beta sneak peek of Tesla Effect on my current computer and it works fine in XP.  In order to play Under A Killing Moon I had to buy more RAM, and settled on 16mb which cost me $600 back in 1994 – that’s $50.00 a megabyte!

How times and technology have changed over the twenty years since I took up computing!

Returning to the title of this post, what did we do when there were no computers or internet?

It’s hard to recall, but I probably watched more television, read more books, occupied my free time in other unfathomable ways. 

I remember when we first got computers at work in the early 1990s we went along to Computer Shows and lusted after such devices as digital cameras, cd burners, scanners, colour inkjet printers etc. Colleagues used to return from these shows and show off their booty – free giveaways from the exhibitors like CD roms, copy paper samples and the odd game.  I’ve still got a packet of paper samples from the Canon stand for which I’ve never found a use.

T’is the Season to be Jolly

Ronald Searle – St Trinian’s girls mug Santa

As a contrast to my state of health and mind at this time last year, when I was recovering from a nasty dose of the flu, this evening finds me chipper and in good spirits and looking forward to Christmas.

The image above kind of matches my rather jaundiced view of the season, after my email account has been battered by every site, on which I am on the mailing list, sending constant messages about Christmas specials. I bought all my presents ages ago, so their pleas for me to buy their goods leave me cold and unresponsive.

But to mark the occasion on my blog, I thought I would put up a seasonal crossword for my blog readers to puzzle over.

Firstly a bit of history.

Back in 1989, a drinking buddy of mine who was also a cryptic crossword enthusiast, decided that he would have a go at creating one himself. Not to be outdone, I followed suit, and from then on we both produced cryptic crosswords for several years, and distributed them to fellow crossword enthusiasts at the pub we frequented back in those days.

At first, as I didn’t have a computer until 1994, I used to hand draw the crossword pattern,  painstakingly colour the black squares with a texta pen, then type the clues on a typewriter. After that I would physically paste the typed document and crossword grid onto a fresh piece of paper and photocopy it.

After getting a computer I created my crosswords using a nifty shareware program called Crossword Compiler. Amazingly, that old shareware program still works on my current computer as I used it today to create the solution to the crossword below.

Please click on the image to enlarge it and print it out if you want to have a bash at solving it.  Most (not all) of the words relate to 13 across, the answer to which is Christmas.

I’ll put up the solution after Christmas.

With that, wishing Merry Christmas to you all.

Sea Change–Day One at Port Fairy

Arrived here yesterday afternoon after a relaxing train trip and am writing this from the accommodation, which is a short distance to the beach. The above picture I snapped last evening when the tide was out.

Fortunately the mobile broadband dongle works a treat, so reportage will be possible.

More news will be forthcoming when the festival begins this evening.

Strike a Light! Cat Politics has a Kindle

My brand new Kindle arrived today from Amazon and I’ve been exploring its capabilities.

It’s a pretty object and looks even more handsome in its leather cover.

This is what it looks like before you switch on the power…

The picture changes every time you turn the Kindle on and off.

This version of Kindle has free Global wireless, so I could instantly log onto the Amazon Kindle store and browse the Kindle books on offer.

I selected a childhood favourite, Treasure Island and it downloaded instantly.

You may wonder at me, a dedicated book worm, and devotee of the physical book, succumbing to an ebook reader, but I figured it was about time I got with the trend. I do not have a mobile phone nor an ipod, let alone an ipad, so as gadgetry goes the ebook struck me as my sort of thing. Think of the shelf space and forests it will save!

I have been exploring the Project Gutenberg site and have discovered a veritable treasure trove of old, out of print and hard to get novels. For instance, all Josephine Tey’s detective novels are available for free in ebook format on the Australian Project Gutenberg site. I can send the text files to my Amazon Kindle account and have them converted to Kindle format for free.

I look forward to exploring the world of ebooks and testing my Kindle further.

Playing Games

Of the computer variety, I mean.

I spent most of last weekend and spare time I can find at night playing a new Adventure game. I’ve become addicted to it and have shamefully neglected everything else to continue playing it.

Mostly I do not have the time or inclination to play computer games, other than card games and such, but I occasionally can’t resist buying a new Adventure game. It has been several years since I last bought, let alone played a long and involved computer game. This was Dream Fall – The Longest Journey 2, in June 2006. Though, I must admit that earlier this year, I installed Virtual PC with Windows 98SE loaded into it, onto my computer so I could play the original Longest Journey again, after the game refused to install on Windows XP. The game works extremely well in Virtual PC, but I lost interest in playing the game after a short while, but will probably take it up again sometime or other.

Anyway, last year I was delighted to hear the news that the creators of my all time favourite games, the Tex Murphy series, were developing a new game. It’s not a Tex Murphy game, alas, but a casual, puzzle driven adventure game called Three Cards To Midnight, which promised to have an interesting story and be well written and enjoyable to play. It was released for download last Friday at Big Finish Games – the new company of Aaron Connors and Chris Jones who were the creators of the Tex Murphy games when they traded under the name Access Software.

So I paid my $20.00 and downloaded Three Cards To Midnight and haven’t regretted it at all. It’s a good game, certainly not up to the sophisticated level of the Tex Murphy games, but I really like the way the plot is slowly being revealed and is building up to a very interesting story. The opening scenes set the picture. A young woman finds herself facing a man whom she has never seen before. He tells her that she has lost her memory and that he will help her to remember. He hands her a pack of Tarot cards and asks her to shuffle and draw the first three cards. The cards represent the keys to open her lost memories, by key word suggestions.

The game is puzzle driven and mostly involves finding objects through word association in rooms opened by the memories triggered by the cards, though at the end of each “chapter” there is a puzzle to solve. I’m now up to chapter three and so far it has been easy going. My only beef is that it is impossible to save the game when in the word association section of the game, so if you use up your tries, you have to start from the beginning of that section again.

Despite this irritation, I’m only too pleased to support Big Finish Games in the hope that they will get around to developing a new Tex Murphy game.

The Tex Murphy game Under A Killing Moon, was one the first games I played on my first PC way back in 1994. It totally captivated me and I subsequently bought and played The Pandora Directive and Tex Murphy Overseer. I haven’t played them for years so I really must try them out in Virtual PC as they certainly can’t be played in Windows XP.

Excuse me now…I’m going back to play Three Cards To Midnight…

The Vandas Unplugged at Basement Discs

Mikey Madden & Chris Altmann from The Vandas at Basement Discs

It’s been a while since there has been an in store at Basement Discs so today’s mini show was a welcome diversion from the usual run of the mill lunch hour, where I generally go for a constitutional walk down to the centre of the city.

The Vandas have just released their debut full length CD Slow Burn which has been receiving rave reviews in the music press. They are a local four piece rock band, but today they were represented by two members, Chris Altmann and Mikey Madden, playing an acoustic version of some of the songs on the new album, as well as a few from the past.

They were pretty good I thought – their music being a mix of genres from pop to rock to country. One the songs they performed was a Hank Williams type tear jerker which they played wonderfully.

Chris and Mikey took turns with the vocals and also sounded great in harmony, both having quite distinctive voices. Chris sang with a slight American accent and at other times sounded like Aussie icon Paul Kelly. Mikey had a higher register in terms of vocals and came across as Brit Pop.

I must admit, I had not seen these guys before or even heard of them until quite recently. Basement Discs is to be commended for presenting such a diverse range of artists in their wonderful lunchtime in store shows.

Scheduled for November is Charles Jenkins, local singer songwriter and all round lovely guy, Fireside Bellows with the combined talents of Jodie Lane and Tracy McNeil and Justin Townes Earle, who is of course Steve Earle’s son, so that will really be something special.

I will be on recreation leave from work for the next two weeks, oh joy unbounded, though I won’t be going anywhere. I plan to lounge around at home and read, for a start, Neal Stephenson’s new monster novel Anathem.

Also I have just purchased a new desktop computer and will be spending a fair bit of time transferring everything from my old computer onto it. The new computer is sitting in boxes at the moment, but I am really looking forward to seeing how it performs when it’s up and going. By all accounts it should be really speedy and powerful, being equipped with a Core 2 Quad processor and 4 gigabytes of RAM.