stuff

sa 18 Dec 2021	A month or so back there was an operating system update for Apple iPhones of some 4Gbyte in size. Here on a 16Gbyte of memory iPhone some apps had to be temporarily removed so the update could install. LEARNT: Even if you don't pig out on photies and music a bit more memory on a smartphone can be useful.
fr 26 Mar 2021	Today we got both a scam text and a scam email pretending to be Royal Mail about the same fictional delivery. DON'T click on the links but if you hover your mouse over the links in the email you'll see the web addresses are nothing to do with Royal Mail.
su 24 Jan 2021	Most writers find it difficult to edit themselves so here are some useful tips from Gemma Arrowsmith on how to get the page count down.
tu 1 Oct 2019	The last pager service provider in Japan has closed for the 1,000+ remaining users. We had one, it beeped when the battery was running low, mostly in the middle of the night when the temperature is lowest.
tu 24 Sep 2019	Oh poo, flickr have started putting adverts in when flicking through a free account photostream and in the Martlesham Tesco a couple of weeks back there was a £20 personal cassette/radio with built in speaker and mike ... cassettes eh?
fr 1 Feb 2019	Last Friday we spent well over an hour resetting and then configuring a new to us camera body so it would behave as we expected. Saturday after a photo op in Bedfordshire we found it had defaulted to jpg not RAW file format. Sunday in Norwich we noticed it wasn't auto-rotating portrait orientation pix. MORAL: Expect it to take time to sort out new kit.
th 5 Apr 2018	We've pointed out/complained before that if you use RAW files and upgrade your camera be prepared to upgrade your edit software as well. More recently we found our newer camera had a new to us USB Superspeed 3 connector so we had no lead to tether it to a laptop, older camera would tether but wouldn't work properly with the new to us flashes ... same old same old.
th 5 Apr 2018	We've pointed out/complained before that if you use RAW files and upgrade your camera be prepared to upgrade your edit software as well. More recently we found our newer camera had a new to us USB Superspeed 3 connector so we had no lead to tether it to a laptop, older camera would tether but wouldn't work properly with the new to us flashes ... same old same old.
fr 9 Mar 2018	We've banged on about rechargeable batteries before. Recently we bought eight Eneloop AAs for a sizeable £20 but boy they made our flashes fly, they recycle faster than we've ever seen before. Then we found this YouTube vid proving that the half the price Ikea LADDAs were even faster, but do they hold a charge well when not in use?
fr 3 Feb 2017	Dipping a toe in the world of Apple we bought a second hand iPhone 5S ... knew that battery life is an issue but didn't know it's that much of an issue. Deciding if we're brave enough to change the battery ourselves.
we 28 Sep 2016	Registering with the FREE Telephone Preference Service will significantly reduce the number of time wasting phone calls you get. If someone phones you saying you have to re-register with the service and there's a charge hang up, it's a con.
mo 21 Nov 2016	Digital camera RAW files are powerful, but they are specific to each camera model and Photoshop and other software has to know about the individual. If like us your begrudge paying monthly to use software and instead use an older version be prepared it won't know about the RAW files from your upgraded camera body ... mind you the Canon 7D mkII's improved low light performance and auto focus are worth the effort.
th 11 Aug 2016	To deal with an incoming telephone call on a Blackberry Q10 you slide the virtual button to either red or green ... missed two calls before we figured that one out.
sa 3 Jan 2015	Perhaps obvious but if your wireless mouse/keyboard gobbles batteries get some rechargeable batteries and a charger. Rechargeable batteries come in different flavours determined by the mAh rating, that's milliampere-hour, the higher the mAh rating (2000 mAh for a AA is getting high) the longer the battery will last before it needs to be charged ... and the more it will cost. There are also precharged rechargeables that will hold a charge when not in use, sometimes up to a year ... allegedly, relevant when you want to hold ready to go spares.
tu 16 Sep 2014	Last week we dropped our Blackberry down the toilet. Fortunately the toilet wasn't in use so after a few seconds hesitation we picked it out and removed the battery. A quick wipe with soft toilet paper and then we left it keyboard down for twenty four hours. A bit of hesitation when the battery was replaced next day but it did eventually fire up satisfactorily. The important bit here was promptly taking the battery out, if there's no battery then phone damaging current can't flow through short circuits caused by the eau de toilette.
sa 31 Aug 2013	At 1am on a Sunday morning some weeks back our power went off and we convinced ourselves it was them not us and went to sleep. Waking at seven concerned about the deep freeze we eventually found the new RCD had tripped but on the way discovered this useful wheeze, text POWER and your post code to 80876 and UK Power Networks will text you during power cuts.
tu 20 Aug 2013	snapfish is Hewlett Packard with a different shirt on and is the print service associated with flickr. We ordered a 10 x 8 from snapfish and it arrived in an envelope so flimsy that the print was creased. We ordered a 10 x 8 from PhotoBox and it arrived uncreased in a substantial corrugated cardboard container.
fr 19 Jul 2013	If the fan on your computer starts to get busy it's because the cpu (central processing unit) is getting hot and bothered emphasised by this weather. If you're uploading the entire family album to Facebook, doing a defrag and watching Storage Hunters online whilst Google Drive clunks away in the background then give the cpu less to do by watching Storage Hunters on the telly ... though we do realise Freeview is still problematic in some parts of near the coast and particularly so in this hot dry weather.
fr 2 Nov 2012	For some reason professional ID photos have to make you look like a terrorist on drugs, don't know why. For the same cost you can take the pic and email the file for printing, Photobox will post you eight images (they need cutting up) for less than a fiver. You need to check what's needed, passport regs are particularly rigorous; neutral background, no smiling, no fun, and if a nearest and dearest is the official photographer after they take the first snap tell them to take a step forward and snap another ... then another step ... and another.
fr 30 Apr 2010	Coastal Suffolk Conservative candidate Therese (it's French) Coffey lives in Westleton so she can't get Channel 5 or Freeview and no doubt rubbish broadband. When she asked BT why near the coast broadband is so rubbish so close to BT's research centre they said Oh, our broadband is rubbish too. We found out yesterday at the Martlesham Black Tiles that Therese has stood as an mp once before, her rescued dog Rizzo is very patient, when she ordered the panini she hadn't realised it came with chips, and is very aware this time round she's not a shoo in. More pix on Facebook
we 11 Apr 2012	We're late adopters and got our first satnav just a month back. We first used it in hot blood to find Milton Keynes and it went all nervy on a roundabout near Bedford plus it didn't know about the tunnel under Hindhead ... though it is difficult to get lost in a tunnel. We should have first used the supplied usb cable to connect it to a pc and see if there's a map update, the first update with our Garmin was free ... we haven't used the satnav yet to find Benhall.
fr 7 Aug 2009	At £200 the new Blackberry Curve 8520 is affordable apparently; well it's half the price of the Palm Pre (not available in the UK yet) which we were hanging out for but got a poor review on the Gadget Show and perhaps the 8520 would hold the data we need and the £120 iPaq we bought wouldn't.
we 28 Jan 2009	Our first PDA was a Sharp something or other and we were very fond of it, it had a rounded case which was nice to hold and a four line text only monochrome display with no back light. It DOA'd after falling from a great height ... twice. Fondness became the real thing when the Sharp was replaced by an early Palm Pilot. The Palm was such a clever, useful and successful product that inevitably the accountants took over and the creative people left to start Handspring. Handspring always seemed to be driven by financial imperative rather than creativity and though we now use an elderly Handspring Treo it's design is an unhappy compromise. Time passed and Palm bought Handspring ... more time passed ... but now the Palm Pre is tipped to rival the iPhone and it runs Linux not Windows!

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