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I've been wondering if/when anyone would get around to this – some basic in-camera fitlers that I can apply to photos on the iphone to replicate the effect of various old-style cameras. Well, yes, someone has come with an app to do it, and it does it bloody well. This is going to make my phhone cam much more useful.
Author: Alasdair
I Am Suffering
So you all will, too.
This Will Only Matter To One Of You
And I suspect that he’ll either have already heard, or be distracted by that new lass that moved in with him the other week, but today’s exciting music news is that The Paradise Motel have reformed and a new album is due at some point soon.
It’s Back
Oh, that’s much better. I can type looking straight ahead again. The screen’s a proper size. On the one hand, it’s kind of sad that I really did miss this computer, and on the other, well, it’s my main workstation for a reason.
There’s a bit in Accelerando (which you should all read, available free at the link if you’re too cheap to pay for it) where one of the leads is cut off from the various electronic devices that are perpetually about his person, connecting him the internet cloud, and suffers for it, because so much of his intellect is distributed outside the two and a half pounds of grey matter in his skull.
Obviously, not yet being an electric posthuman (there’s a joke for a certain type and vintage of comic reader) my intellect remains locked inside my head, but still: there was a point the morning that this beast died, and my laptop was running on only battery charge, where I was very keenly aware that without them, and particularly without this machine, I am missing a vital set of tools that I use to run my life – data files, organisers, indexes and a weirdly cross-referenced archive of notes, research and random crap I’ve accumulated over the last decade. There was a genuine sense of mild panic at the prospect being cut off from it, or at least, reduced to accessing it in a less-than-optimal manner. I sort of feel like I’m doing the electronic equivalent of getting by after a trip, looking around the room, and sighing in contentment because it’s good to be home.
Mind you, I’m also bloody territorial about my computers. This one, particularly. I don’t mind someone using my laptop for periods, to look something up quickly, or even just because they can’t get on-line for some reason. I prefer to be in the room while they do. Not y’know, looking over their shoulder, or anything, but just present. And my laptop is the “public” machine. It doesn’t have my proper archive on it, or half the passwords and tools that this does.
But this one, frankly, I could be having the most appallingly intimate relationship with someone, in a knows-where-the-bodies-are-buried-and-exactly-what-buttons-to-push way, and I’d still be leery of letting them use this machine. In some ways, it really does feel like an extension of my brain.
It also occurs to me that this is the longest piece of writing I’ve done in weeks. Hmmm.
Does anyone else get like this about their computers? Or am I the freak again?
A friend of mine has just launched his own jewellery website selling all sorts of pretty glass and crystal, just in time for you to give him a big pile of cash as you buy shiny objects for your loved ones for Christmas. I suggest you get on with doing this at once.
Life Without My Beloved
Day 10.
Nearly started to sob uncontrollably last night, when after taking my camera out and about for the first time in ages, I plugged it into the laptop to take the photos off and see if there was anything decent in there. The screen is so fucking tiny, and the work area even smaller. How am I supposed to work on photos when they’re not twice the size of my head on the screen?
In theory, I should hear about repair costs today. At this point, I’ll pay almost whatever they ask, if I can just have my real computer back sharpish.
Links For Monday 6th October 2008
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Seriously, look at this rubbish. And what kind of a name is "Raven Digitalis"? I bet that's not the fucking name on her birth certificate. I'm all for letting people reinvent themselves, and an individuals right to self expressing, and to be called what they want, but there's people who spoil it for the rest of us, you know?
(And yet, there is a small, horrible part of me that want to read this book.)
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Yes. Today is esoteric claptrap day. Which reminds me, I saw a completely horrifying book at the weekend, that I nearly bought for its sheer awfulness.
Golden Dawn
Status Report
Arrival at office: 9:10am.
Time when I was able to start the work I had planned today: 4:15pm.
Progress!
So Much For A Quiet Weekend
So, this was the first weekend in a while where overtime wasn’t y’know, a thing that was happening. I was looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend of doing not-a-lot.
Woke up this morning to discover that my beloved iMac had died in the night. Looks like the power supply went. In diagnosing the problem, I managed to kill the power supply for my Macbook, too – looks like a dodgy socket in the 4-gang I’ve been using for some years now. So first things first, off to the apple store for a new power supply for the Macbook. (That’s some fucking racket they’ve got going there, charging 60 quid a throw to replace them.) And I’ve picked at a new 8 gang with monster surge protection, and special indicator lights to let me know if there’s a problem, so with any luck I won’t put my vital electronics at risk again.
Have made arrangements to get the iMac taken away, and probably repaired, but that’s still several hundred quid I could have done without spending. (It’s *just* out of warranty, by a matter of weeks, which is a complete fucker.)
On the bright side: I have lost no data whatsoever. The last backup Time Machine did was about 2am this morning, and plugging the external drive into the Laptop confirms that all is OK. There was a hairy moment when I realised that the backup drive was plugged in to the same 4-gang, but it really does seem to have been a single socket with the problem.
So: I’m going to be annoyingly out of pocket, and I’ve got a few weeks of living with this strange, stunted little laptop screen as my main work space, and a hard drive that’s missing most of my music collection, and my photo library. (And come to that, a machine that really isn’t up to serious photo editing, but I don’t really have anything outstanding, anyway.) But it could have been much worse.
So, because what happened to me can happen to you, I ask: when did you last do a backup? If your computer died today, what would *you* lose?