Computer Technology

My OSX 10.6.8. has messages that tell that Firefox (I use) and Google Chrome ( I don't often use) will be, or are now, 'unsupported'.    HELP!
Does this mean that only Safari (which I rarely use) will be 'supported' or that too will be 'unsupported'.
Is this Apple's way of ensuring we buy, buy, buy?
 Wondering whether to continue the Apple route ..... 

I am worried about how I keep important poetry and written documents on my current laptop and photos, the latter of which are in three libraries of iphoto (created by The Apple store) and so I have such a big job to delete duplicates of sometimes 5 copies! 

Now, I know that my laptop MUST be replaced; slight hinge problem, has had a new battery, it is 8 + years old, and although new technology might be welcomed I was hoping to wait until next year before such an expenditure. 
The kitchen demanded last year's and this year's income and savings.
A newer vehicle, becoming a necessity, presents a dilemma whilst being resident in France when I don't ever get much time in UK to address this problem. I would prefer a RH drive vehicle.
Then there are some other personal issues I need to resolve with regard to finance. 

All that couple with UK and global issues plus ageing and feeling isolated though not always lonely, I am wondering how long I can manage here. 
Selling up and moving back seems to be too big an issue. 
I needed to be levered out of my last property in UK but that was because it was me, me , me except for the traffic and neighour issues.
Before that I needed courage to climb the property ladder and my friend gave me that courage.

Now is perhaps not the time to sell up.
I stilhave things to do and need to banish procrastination. Maybe once there is no more major renovation... ( I do have ideas!)  I will be able to open more boxes AND sell, give away, STUFF.

Meanwhile once that kitchen is IN, I look forwards to opening boxes of collected pottery and seeing what I wish to keep or pass to it's next owner!

Not an apple for an eye

I have been very p***** off with Apple ...

a few weeks ago, albeit my fault for not remembering which password the mini ipad required after I had reluctantly pressed the button to agree / OK the software update.... it disabled!!!!!!!!!!!

and after hours on the phone to the american apple company whose employees were in Greece and UK with american accents... I knew that I could not enable the ipad with my laptop because the apple mac pro laptop is too old, despite what they said because I did believe the Norwich APPLE STORE that my laptop cannot be upgraded to El Capitaine!!!!!!!!  The hardware is too old at about 8 years old!!!!!!!!

Today, I read the Guardian article on line and look:

I quote:

"Actually, ... Siri. We can tell you exactly why the world is falling out of love with Apple. We’ve been storing up these complaints for years. So, why don’t you just shut your British/American/Australian, male/female speech unit and listen?

1 The passwords

Signing into the iTunes store: Apple ID? Password? User password? Password for this Mac? System admin password? Password for password manager? Forgot? Given up? Gone to get a sledgehammer?"

YUP ... that is how I felt... get a hammer to it... NOW...
I have to take it to an APPLE STORE TO GET IT ENABLED!!!
This means UK or Bordeaux or Paris.
This just after the battery failed in my other machine, necessitating the swap or purchase of a revamped mini ipad... the consequences of which was not easy to deal with as they link the ipad to my computer passwords etc.... gggggrrrrrr... why can't an ipad machine be independent?

NO WONDER that ,one lively Sunday morning, I thought, which password do they mean?   By the time I had tried most of them I was logged out / disabled and  after several weeks I almost do not care!!!!!!!

Maybe now is the time for Windows 10! MY friend has bought a small computer rather like a tablet, where the keyboard can disconnect from the screen and use the integrated mouse...

H'm... Apple had better fix /  enable themselves before they crash out of the market!!!!!!

Thinking outside of the box

RANDOM THOUGHTS THAT POP INTO MY HEAD ... in this case, as I light the woodburner and look at the crisp clear blue sky.

I have thought this, in this link which I include here ... not so much about his music but his eloquent intellectual style:
he was the one who did open the theatrical door onto a world already heading in that direction of openness in the late 70s...
who did make it OK for people to experiment with who they are to find their true person.
This man who has just died seems to have almost a godly persona .. and I believe he really has walked into the gates of heaven!   I also believe that his life, now ended, will ricochet causing new positive developments in a modern world which is already changing.

The BBC one can share the link:   http://bbc.in/1n7er5h  
and if that link does not work:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/d5c291be-258c-4217-922e-38f9d78de878

and so I do agree ....

For some months, I've been trying to fathom out why my daughter is as she is... I have been thinking that her because it is my opinion that she has not been using her creativity, her intelligence, her happiness, her  complex talents...one would perhaps think she isn't very intelligent but she has deep, deep knowledge that is blocked for some reason.   She finds it difficult to be consistent - don't many of us?  That in itself is a consistency in that she is inconsistent!!!!!!
Creativity is important.. people cannot live around the internet...I know this about my own behaviour.  Two different peas in a pod!

As a young, naive person with television in the house, which I didn't often like to watch when family did on a boringly basis,  I didn't know about the REAL world but I did tap into the aural one.  We had loud, non stop rock music in our houses, once I'd left home. I also played classical stuff as a music student, until I managed to find Radio 4 and 'Woman's Hour' in my life.   My husband played Indian music.  One rental was a student house, the next in the middle of a field attached to a neighbour  was a house sit where we were mindful of sound levels. Another was a detached house in the middle of rural England where the nearest neighbour was some distance!   Great years for feeling a sense of freedom and an attempt at 'the good life'.  They were the times, the early 1970s when even though one was a rebel one still did what establishment said ... for example, following what the BABY BOOKS said about babies... and I very much regret their advice to leave the screaming child who needed a hug to sob itself to sleep!!!!!!!

The internet for me is a wonderful tool for personal self learning and to learn about psychology, but as David Bowie said it comes with a WARNING LABEL: those are not his words.   He warns of the creativity of the tool but also of the dangerous aspects which indeed that prophecy is indeed true.

In the last 24 hours I have discovered a very interesting man... also suffering from a common phenomena of anxiety about the world and self.

He thought outside of the box. In my younger years I too was encouraged to think sideways. However, my problem was that I was never proactive! 

Where am I? Part Two

Safely in France, having escaped to England for three weeks!

I walked today and appreciated the quiet landscape.
The patron of "Les Belles Toitures" arrived unexpectedly and not knowing I had returned was showing off my roof to his supplier. He has now been fully paid!  
I highly recommend this company.
I love my roof.  Although I have empty pockets, the pleasure my new roof gives is enormous when I look up to the little bird and when the little bird looks down on me!

My visit to England was eventful in very many ways which I can and cannot report here in public.
Fortunately, the computer issues were corrected after at least 8 hours in the Apple Store over 5 appointments with no charge. Now it seems to run differently. Gmail and everything seems altered!

Flights and National Express were challenging with 10kg of techy baggage!  At the airport, I didn't realise the differences between parking charges of French airports in this region as I had not fully done research, but luckily managed to get the fee halved by initiative!  Hiring a car in England was difficult as one arrives and the questions and costs mount. Nothing is transparent in the world of commerce.  I passed the tests and was given the responsibility to drive about 400 miles in the car... a Fiat, but it wasn't small!

I met a very dear friend from over 30 years ago!  Sadly, I couldn't see several people that I planned to see and wanted / needed to see. I did see others unexpectedly and that was great fun. Though when my cousin's daughter arrived at my cousin's house as she had been evacuated with the FLOOD ALERT, that was not amusing.  It seems her little abode was safe. The sea was a hungry brown dog between tidal surges and has torn savagely at the east coast.

I did see my son but his timetable spun mine topsy-turvy so that I saw more of my daughter and grand daughter which pleased me.  Daughter and her friends who are parents of the school are having incomprehensible problems at my grand-daughters primary school, but no, I can't mention the name of the school, YET.... but dearly would like to!!! I yearn to report how they treat parents !!!!

I stayed on my son's boat but strong winds turned the turbine almost non stop in order to generate electricity for the boat. Sound magnified down the funnel shouting at my ears and mind perhaps like the tramontaine.  The steel tug acted as a sound box.  Now, I really don't need to be driven more crazy!  It didn't stop raining on the south coast for several days whilst I was there whereas when I was in East Anglia there was no rain at all! Cooped up and living without side windows is not for me!!!! and I don't really understand why it is for him, except that madness clearly runs in the family blood!

I went dressed for winter but it was mild in the home country!
N.B. 10 mm of rain fell in my absence then 18mm on my second night back at home.

Where am I? Part One

Exploring a different kind of rest and restoration.
I'm feeling stress free at last!!! Most probably there will be a run of new posts soon.
My computer has been repaired. It was a Multiple Volumes issue therefore not needing a new internal hard drive. PHEW!!!  The lovely Apple Store were excellent service and after many many hours corrected the iPhoto libraries issues so now all my photos (60,000 +) are in one place, ready for the mammoth cull and reorganisation.....because and I don't know how it has happened but there are often several copies of one photo!!! Now I can find photos going back to 2008 and before!
As if I haven't enough to do!!!! Serves me right for being so clicky happy!!!
I will return to posting soon.
PS. Now that I have started using the laptop again as opposed to the mini ipad the machine seems very slow and that rainbow wheel keeps spinning.
Must delete delete but when!!!???

Double troubles

I think I have tried to post photos in too large a format not having learned how to edit to smaller size using iPad. I may have to investigate a friend's method for publishing photos but everything takes so long.  Evidently there is more than one method.  This is an aide-memoir of what I did.

1. go to photos on iPad which have been downloaded from camera. 

2. select with a tick then click square in bottom left which opens new window and click copy.

3. go to new post and press screen and click paste...

4. then I clicked publish so as not to lose effort.

5. then edit title and text as I am doing here.

6. click DONE and

7. click SAVE...... this last is very important or one loses a post like I did a few days ago..
8. click publish ... this is also very important or else no photo!!!
9... but  since writing this I click on the camera icon on edit post, select a photo from my iPad, copy it, position cursor where photo is to be positioned, and paste. 

ROOF and FOOT update:

My foot is still tender and being unable to wear a normal shoe I have not yet driven,  except I am being driven round the bend with roofers and home confinement. Fortunately, no one else is here to suffer my lapses!!!! 

The last tiles were laid on Friday and the hole by the chimney was left uncovered so the lovely rain that afternoon trickled down the chimney wall in the grenier and I did not know. At mid afternoon on Saturday I thought I had better check in the attic; plastic sheets and buckets came to the rescue...as did the patron of the business whom I telephoned. On Tuesday morning I heard my teacher's voice emerge to the normally very good workers to explain that it was irresponsible and lacking in thought to leave no flashing around the chimney, aka a hole!   I think they were so tired on Friday afternoon and looking forward to the long weekend when they told me all was safe as the roof was covered! It can't be an easy job. I wouldn't  like to have to work in the rain or heat of the sun. They were contrite.

The site is being cleared and cleaned. Guttering is being installed. The dormer window will have to wait

as it has to be made to measure. 

I am hoping that we can celebrate their hard work and congratulate their endurance and tolerance of the English Lady who asks a lot of questions and expects high standards. 

But I have provided coffee three times a day and they have used my kitchen every day to eat their meal. I am very impressed that they eat healthily and with variety.  If only they realised me how dangerous smoking is! 

Challenges!

The hard drive on my applemacbook has crashed. Tests suggest hard drive cannot be repaired...   Ooh lah lah ...  Thank goodness I have an iPad because I can't reach an Apple Genius bar until I go to Uk.
This will be an exercise in blogs and posts from the mini screen. I recently learned to transfer photos from camera onto iPad with a small device...so photos may be possible.
Thank goodness I have the iPod as the old CD player I was gifted, really to use as an amplifier for louder music from laptop, skips sections of cd tracks ... My radio, CD player, DVD player, all on the laptop was my source of media stimulus. I was just enjoying watching videos!
AND ALSO the internet phone does not always ring. Unless people use the landline I do not know if they have called.   Maybe, it's not much different from being in a nunnery. I could start playing hymns for I still have a hymn book (would prefer catholic hymns for Nostalgic reasons) ...  and burning frankincense but I have none left.
My techno world and life support system is not being helpful to the isolation I have been experiencing.

However.  Today.   A friend took me to a restaurant for lunch (le Grillon) and she brought yellow flowers and roses, DIY shopping and oatcakes from UK.  I feel normal again, human. I was really losing the plot at the weekend and had become severely depressed! I refuse to take any tablets. I slept and slept and didn't even notice the fall back of Time. The stresses of the last  4 weeks, medication and loss of regular sleep patterns as a result of all of that plus roof or no roof, wind and rain ingress has been very worrying!

The foot has made brilliant progress and the wound has closed, so I am waiting for the swelling to subside further before I can abandon the adapted walking sandal and wear a PAIR of flat shoes.. And drive my car. It will sure be a celebration day when I can wear walking boots. Oh and what joy to feel a madam and wear heels!

Marmalade Queen

Press the wrong button and the whole of my finished posting with poetry and emotion was deleted.
B*****.
I just spent over an hour creating and now I am disheartened and very p***** off!!!!!!!
MORAL: Type in Word and SAVE!!!!!!!!!!
PS. I am not usually one for invective comments but, as you see, if you read asterisks as letters, then your interpretation is as good (bad) as mine!