Category: Tinkering

Reuse, Repair, Repurpose, Recycle

Thankfully, Carindale Mall’s Apple outlet encourages people to bring in their old Apple appliances for recycling. Getting rid of my old laptop didn’t need me asking someone to drive me to the tip, I swung by on one of my shopping trips.

Ditto the iPhone wandering from cupboard to shelf to benchtop unable to be switched on. I could’ve sent it to mobilemuster.org but that would’ve meant a trip to the post office by bus and money to send.

Another initiative also in the Carindale Shopping Centre, is the Food Bank out the front of Woollies. That’s where I bring unopened food products I’ve bought and brought home, and then reading the finely printed ingredients list, discover an ingredient on my dietary exclusions list.

I love how there are beginning to be recycling opportunities in places where people need to go anyway—to not have to spend money, time, and cough out CO2 and petrol fumes—to recycle.

Camera and mobile phone places often have a box out front for batteries to be recycled. One of the bookshops takes secondhand books in good condition, which was another good discovery. As I get more books relating to the course I’m studying, I also need to send other books on their way. Shelf space is limited.

Then there are opportunities for repair. All three pairs of my bamboo socks were starting to thin in places. The solution to that are patches. I usually crochet patches. This time I thought I would also try some felt.

Above, everything I need for a repair job. Below, the orange in the sock and the sewing in progress …

Microsoft Word: the installation update …

I’ve cancelled! The only page I was able to access the whole time was my account page. I never was able to access the word processor, the bit I need more than all the other frills. All work is meant to happen in the cloud these days … I know that … I don’t have the inner fortitude to wrestle with passwords every single time I want to use a word processor.

I’d really like the installation to happen without hang ups. I’d really like it if after I click on Install, the behemoth just installed itself without hanging itself up somewhere. I’d really like it if I didn’t have to uninstall, then go through all the steps outlined in the Troubleshooting page then reinstall and go through it all again.

All the boasting going on in the clean no-frills accompanying text isn’t having the required effect, because I can already see, that despite that they have already taken my money–which wasn’t outrageous this week–this is not going to be a smooth operation. I wonder if the reason that it’s only the third week after the end of the Financial Year, that the buy-price was a full $30AUD less than the original?

[And you know what? There is a bot following me around. Just got a suggestion for a less complex word for ‘purchase’ … fits better in the grammar, apparently … ‘buy-price’. Sounds like US slang to me. And apparently following is also too complex. Not buying that and this is WordPress, not the subject of the post.

Well, my online account works. Naturally, they start pushing more products the minute my feet hit the deck. Like, will I want a co pilot? No thanks. I’m used to flying alone, and am quite capable. And why would I want to pay an extra $33 a month for having a co-pilot?

They don’t see any devices? Well, duh. No devices, thank you. Trying to do this on a shoe string. Why would I open an Outlook account when I have had one operating since I got this computer? Another problem rearing its ugly head. Well, that’s My MS Account explored. Seems to be working. Its hiccups might iron out overnight. Wouldn’t that be something?

Next? The installation process … was encouraged to save the License agreement. Have you ever noticed how an encouragement like that is hedged by the further choices being grey-ed out and your attention narrowed to the word that must be reacted upon?

It seems to be happening. Then … per-ling-lingk … that Microsoft-specific sound of success. it says it’s done. A couple more hurdles, because not quite done yet. It has to initialize.

You should to laugh, I think at myself. A window just popped up. 2 updates available! I haven’t even opened anything yet. Update in progress is the next message. At 27 minutes that’s going to take longer than the installation process.

So the Updates are done. I click it, and it then tells me that a number of the new programs, since they were installed back in May 2024,… which they definitely weren’t … need updating. Ha ha ha! It’s like a maze. And I still don’t have anything to work with.

So finally I get a couple of aliased icons on my desktop … and here is the test … open one of my previously clamped documents and get …. taraaaahhh! Drum roll, please!

Nope! Forget the drum roll! A bit of Bosley and his crew from long ago, see those two little angles just under the Header? The clamps. My stuff is still not usable. Up in the top left it says I must ‘Activate‘ Microsoft.

Huh? Haven’t I done that already? I click on Activate just in case …

You know what? I’m calling it a day. Cheers all

‘A Scanner Darkly’

By Phillip Dick, an SF Masterwork published in 1999, original from 1977

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly

Wrote this post three years ago:

“She risked her masked-up health and went into her new favorite library, St Vinnies—an Op Shop, charity or opportunity store—and “borrowed” eight old-fashioned print books. This because the local library was shut for Christmas-and-New-Year and the local virtual library not listening to her passwords, library id or pins.

“On arriving home, she began reading Phillip K Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. Not wanting to stop for lunch she got a bottle of water, and a jar of Pano dark choc bits. Ate the latter and drank the former while continuing to read. Round about 4.30 PM, she remembered the not-getting-sick parameter, and drank more water before making and eating a peanut butter sandwich with blueberries.

“Though the read was not all that gripping, she’d decided to read it, so read it she would. If that makes sense. The title, which an FB friend was attracted to after the crone posted a pic of a bag full of reading matter, sounds like a take on ‘through a glass darkly’ … let me just check that …

“OMG! yourbibleversedaily dot com tells her: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. – 1 Corinthians 13:12. Paul’s famously poetic statement about the difficulty of knowing God in this life says a lot more than at first meets the eye.”

“Well, it tells her it’s definitely worth it to check references, sometimes only vaguely known. What she has read so far of Through a Scanner Darkly … Yep, yep, definitely shaping up … to Augustine’s interpretation: “For Augustine, we see the image of ourselves clearly, but, as a reflection of God, the image is an imperfect way of gazing upon God.”

“All she can think is, that poor sap. (Thinking about A Scanner Darkly’s MC now.) He thinks he’s on top of what he’s trying to do but of course he will come a cropper. I wouldn’t be surprised, she thinks, if there’s a proper death at the end, not just the split-brain drug-addled undeath.
So. She’ll keep reading. [Posted 22 Dec 2021]

This is me, here and now, two and a half years on. Apparently I did blog this at the time but I can’t somehow deliver the image. As you’ll have noticed this isn’t a book review but another post about blogging. What a supposed ‘seamless transfer’ looks like on the ground. When advertising gurus talk about seamless transfers they don’t take into account the oceanic number of input/output skills out there/here or the infinite gradations of computer use competence.

I know that though I’ve been using computers for 28+/- years, my skill set is highly idiosyncratic, as is that of everyone else who was self-taught. And I believe the majority of us are, aren’t we?

I had three options of delivering that pic and none worked so far. My Media Library has about 800 images in it, but not apparently the cover of the novel I was writing about. I did a Search and got a virtual copy. The result of that maneuver is at the top. No image that I can see. And if it does appear in the post between the time I hit the Publish button and you read it, it’ll be the old pic. Not the Blue green and yellow version gracing the Masterwork.

Or I could take a photo of the print version I have, email it to myself and download it. That hasn’t worked either. So far. Google for some reason has retrieved an email address I left in the dust six years ago.

My Google ID is my next job.

Stuck!

Me screaming frustration …

I am stuck between a rock and a hard place Americans might say. Old Americans, probably. I don’t know if that aphorism is still being used.

I am stuck between my old Mac, with an old copy of Microsoft Word that I’m perfectly happy with, and new Mac with a so-far unlicensed Microsoft Word 365 that has frozen several of my Files. I haven’t been asked did I want the new version and I definitely haven’t agreed to hosting it on my computer.

Of course I know it’s probably some handshake agreement between Apple and Microsoft, they thinking that because a person purchases an Apple laptop they will naturally want also to purchase a gazillion MB word processor suite with no questions asked.

It’s here and it’s freezing my work as if it owns my output. That fact already is making me dig my heels in. My files, on my computer–not even online– frozen on the say-so of a company too big for its boots? Ee-ee-eh! That’s me screaming, frustrated already.

I can’t post either Brick Stories or Lodestar as my files are stuck in Word-ruled limbo for some so-far unidentified reason, and it’s ironic because the only thing I use Word for is to turn screeds into PDFs, as I generally use Scrivener for first and second drafts. So I really really resent having to purchase a huge program, either on a monthly basis at $11 US ad infinitum, or outright for over $200 US … just to free my work!

I can’t even copy and paste into a another program. And this is immediately after I proved I’m human. This is the material I personally wrote, for pity’s sake!

Just had a call from BH who suggested I check out Acrobat Reader. Good idea. I will. But first Scrivener. Surely it has the capability to PDF? Sounds like a dance. It’s all I need a couple of steps here, then there.

Found it. Scrivener dances the PDF.

Goodbye, Microsoft.

Blogging: ‘On the Edge’

This is the post where I learn to embed a video clip …

I started with a sentence intro’ing my post. ‘Stumbled across this video clip entirely serendipitously just after realizing I’m no longer living on a knife edge between two dramas.’

Intended to embed without a drama. The instructions are clear, can I follow directions finally?

I followed the directions and pasted a link to the content I wanted to embed. I clicked on the button EMBED. It tells me to paste an URL. Huh? Where? Like, the box where is filled with the link?

I click on ‘Learn more about embeds’ and I’m told everything I already know and that I have already done.

No. Wait … scrolling further down I learn that I need to paste in the URL which acts as a link. Never mind FB telling me to do it the other way round. I’ll give the WP way another go.

So I paste the URL.

I get a tell … ‘Sorry this content could not be embedded.’ And two blue boxes with ‘Try again.’ and ‘Convert to link.’

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2462779200599055

But. In actual fact. Checking the post I see that I have a LINK where I had expected an EMBED.

LOL, topping Everest!

Not the one I wanted of a couple of climbers negotiating an edge.

Back to the drawing board

Flickering Touchbar …

I’m on my mobile phone … cell phone to some of you! So I can’t insert the 5 second video clip illustration of the above … either because I can’t find the instructions to achieve it or it’s not available.

Have to make do with a still photo of the problem

So you’ll need to imagine it. The whole touchbar—at the top of the keyboard in certain models of Macbook Pro—is now flickering the whole time the laptop is being used. For all that I know it continues to flicker when the lid is closed.

I’ve been putting up with it since about September 2022, when it began with a couple of centimetres or an inch. After trying to have it fixed, the malady extended to 5 or 6 centimetres, which was when I stuck some blue electrical tape over it. This year that spilled into the rest of the bar, and became unbearable to use.

Hence went out Monday afternoon to purchase a new laptop … thought I caught Covid that day … but it was probably earlier.