I've enjoyed countless hours of entertainment over the years thanks to the ability to save BBC radio programmes using Radio Downloader.
But sadly it is no more. Matt at www.nerdoftheherd.com has taken the software down at the request of the BBC; even installed versions won't fetch programmes any more. The Technomage and I are very grateful to the developers for all the work they've put in,
especially as the software is free with just a polite request for
donations.
We've built up a huge library of BBC drama, sci-fi, comedy and odds-and-ends, so we're not going to be short of things to listen to - but catching up on new content will be harder.
We can of course still record programmes via other means, eg the TV, but these involve more convoluted processes to get them onto an mp3 player (or flash stick for the car). I will miss the ease of setting up subscriptions for things like the 15-minute drama on Woman's Hour and then just collecting a batch a few weeks later.
The glimmer of hope is that the BBC is apparently considering introducing more downloads - but these will have DRM protection and a time window for listening and I'm bound to find myself leaving it too late. Perhaps I'll end up digging out the old cassette player with a built-in
timer that I used to use for this very purpose 15 or 20 years ago!
Tuesday 2 July 2013
Monday 24 June 2013
Project Digitisation: phase 1 nears completion
Even though I'm so untidy, I do like information to be organised.
In line with this, I've long wanted to make digital copies of things like my old photos and diaries.The ultimate aim - still a long way off - is to have a grab-in-case-of-fire hard disc (actually of course backed up elsewhere) containing all kinds of things I'd hate to lose access to.
Photographing every page of the diaries I've been keeping since childhood is proving a chore, even though each volume only takes a couple of hours to photograph. Once one is complete, I tie it with a piece of ribbon and stick a note on it to say it's all done - the idea is that it can then be stored away while I retain access to what I did that year. It's easy enough to stay on top of current volumes, but going backwards is a task that I keep putting off.
Similarly, photographing my favourite (print) photos is something I've failed to get into the routine of, but it wouldn't be too hard to tackle. All I'm planning on doing is taking a snap of every print in the photo albums I used from the late 70s until I went digital in the late 90s (I filled about one scrapbook a year). It's really just a matter of picking an album every (dry - some hope) day for a couple of weeks and heading out into the garden with my camera. Of course, this doesn't make the most perfect of copies - but they do serve the purpose of protecting against total loss of the memories. By way of example, I was thrilled recently to take this shot of a copy a friend still had of a picture from 1986 that means a lot to me (the first time I met Tim, although he was going out with a friend of mine at the time!). I can't find my copy - but now I don't mind!
I scanned all of my parents' slides a few years ago to mark their 50th anniversary. I'm also taking ad-hoc snaps of prints of old family photos - as with my own prints, there are far too many to contemplate capturing them all so I'm just concentrating on special ones, ones we get talking about, or ones where a copy is wanted to give to someone.
So with all these aspects dragging on, it's been nice to get to the end of one of the tasks - copying my collection of a few hundred slides.
(and Tim's, except that he's just found another box - ggggrrrrrrrr!)
Scanning is horribly time-consuming, so instead I've turned to my trusty first-ever digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix 950. It still takes good pics (albeit only at 2 megapixels, so fine if you don't need enlargements) and has particularly good macro capabilities. I've even tried infrared photography with it - not many modern cameras can do that. It was a very high end model at the time (I paid £450 for it new in about 2000 or 2001, about 18 months after it was launched, when I think it was more like £600). Boosting its versatility still further, there were various lenses and accessories made for it - including the ES-E28 slide/negative copier.
It's so easy - all you do is drop the slide or negative into the appropriate carrier, slide it in front of the lens, photograph it and continue until you're bored. The original slides - mostly from the 70s - aren't top quality and not all the shots have come out very well - but it certainly beats them sitting forgotten in a box.
Above: the view - with and without fog - from my bedroom when a third-year student in Bristol
Below: Solomon, circa 1974
I've a bit of tidying up still to do - eg changing the file names to include any information I have about dates, people or location - but the hard bit is done.
Now time to get stuck into the photo albums - or maybe the diaries....
In line with this, I've long wanted to make digital copies of things like my old photos and diaries.The ultimate aim - still a long way off - is to have a grab-in-case-of-fire hard disc (actually of course backed up elsewhere) containing all kinds of things I'd hate to lose access to.
Photographing every page of the diaries I've been keeping since childhood is proving a chore, even though each volume only takes a couple of hours to photograph. Once one is complete, I tie it with a piece of ribbon and stick a note on it to say it's all done - the idea is that it can then be stored away while I retain access to what I did that year. It's easy enough to stay on top of current volumes, but going backwards is a task that I keep putting off.
Similarly, photographing my favourite (print) photos is something I've failed to get into the routine of, but it wouldn't be too hard to tackle. All I'm planning on doing is taking a snap of every print in the photo albums I used from the late 70s until I went digital in the late 90s (I filled about one scrapbook a year). It's really just a matter of picking an album every (dry - some hope) day for a couple of weeks and heading out into the garden with my camera. Of course, this doesn't make the most perfect of copies - but they do serve the purpose of protecting against total loss of the memories. By way of example, I was thrilled recently to take this shot of a copy a friend still had of a picture from 1986 that means a lot to me (the first time I met Tim, although he was going out with a friend of mine at the time!). I can't find my copy - but now I don't mind!
I scanned all of my parents' slides a few years ago to mark their 50th anniversary. I'm also taking ad-hoc snaps of prints of old family photos - as with my own prints, there are far too many to contemplate capturing them all so I'm just concentrating on special ones, ones we get talking about, or ones where a copy is wanted to give to someone.
So with all these aspects dragging on, it's been nice to get to the end of one of the tasks - copying my collection of a few hundred slides.
(and Tim's, except that he's just found another box - ggggrrrrrrrr!)
Scanning is horribly time-consuming, so instead I've turned to my trusty first-ever digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix 950. It still takes good pics (albeit only at 2 megapixels, so fine if you don't need enlargements) and has particularly good macro capabilities. I've even tried infrared photography with it - not many modern cameras can do that. It was a very high end model at the time (I paid £450 for it new in about 2000 or 2001, about 18 months after it was launched, when I think it was more like £600). Boosting its versatility still further, there were various lenses and accessories made for it - including the ES-E28 slide/negative copier.
It's so easy - all you do is drop the slide or negative into the appropriate carrier, slide it in front of the lens, photograph it and continue until you're bored. The original slides - mostly from the 70s - aren't top quality and not all the shots have come out very well - but it certainly beats them sitting forgotten in a box.
Below: Solomon, circa 1974
I've a bit of tidying up still to do - eg changing the file names to include any information I have about dates, people or location - but the hard bit is done.
Now time to get stuck into the photo albums - or maybe the diaries....
Thursday 23 May 2013
Belatedly living below the line
Live below the line is a very interesting charitable challenge in which you have only £5 to buy all your food for 5 days in acknowledgement of the sobering reality that this is normal budgeting for much of the world.
We'd done very well with the challenge two years ago, overspent a little last year & were a bit late getting started this month.
And we did make life harder for ourselves this year, with Tim & I each having £5 to spend instead of pooling our resources (except for sharing a bag of rice & tub of drinking chocolate) (and I actually overspent by 5p as we decided I could spend £1 instead of 95p in order to get free range eggs).
He focused on chili (every day's evening meal!) while eggs, sausages, sweet and sour sauce and a 7p bag of batter mix were my main items.
One of my main conclusions was that it's much cheaper to buy things like biscuits and noodles than fruit or veg - all I managed to afford was a can of corn.
I normally buy many items in bulk but taking advantage of these savings is impossible without the cash in your purse. Immediately after finishing the exercise I bought 4kg of onions for just £1.20. This more than anything brought home to me that the best value purchases may often be beyond the reach of those who need them most.
(This is the first thing I've written and published from my new smartphone - the Blogger app has proved very easy to use.)
Sunday 3 March 2013
Time for a smaller handbag...I finally got a smartphone
The Technomage and I had resisted buying smartphones, even though we do like gadgets. But we have finally succumbed and have each bought an Acer Liquid Gallant Duo.
As I result, I've been looking at various things I normally carry round with me and wondering what can be left out of my handbag.
The camera (which has mixed reviews online) has already produced a nice snap of one of my little 2" bears even without messing around with the settings, so my Canon A495 isn't likely to be coming with me every trip out of the house (and for special events, I'm more likely to take my bigger, zoomier, camera).
Also out of my handbag, obviously, is my old phone as I can pick up its calls via the Acer's second sim slot. And my poor old Palm TX will semi-retire, replacing its predecessor (a Palm Zire 71) on my desk. It will now have a rather dull existence, primarily used for converting between imperial and metric units (something I seem to have to do a lot of) using its excellent calculator, imported from an even older PDA, a Handspring Visor Deluxe.
We've found decent mp3 apps for Android, but my wonderful Sansa Clip+ (actually a Sansa doesn'tClip+ as I broke the clip) will remain in use, as its battery lasts far longer and it is so tiny and a joy to use.
I installed an app called Swiss Army Knife - but it doesn't feature a knife or scissors, so my Victorinox Minichamp is safe.
But the app does include tools for magnifying using the Acer's camera and can also measure and turn on a 'flashlight' so maybe I don't need to carry round the spare pair of reading specs, tape measure, loupe or torch....
There'll be no need for the spare batteries for the phone and camera (though perhaps a need for a spare for the Acer instead). And maybe I won't need a notebook and pen, given all the different ways of recording notes in the smartphone (my primary method will, I expect, involve using the trusty old Palm handwriting recognition system, Graffiti, thanks to an Android app that I was very pleased to find. It's a joy to be able to write without having to watch my fingers trying to hit little keys).
Having a dual sim phone like the Acer seems the ideal solution for a first smartphone.
We don't have reliable mobile reception at home (ie no reception away from the upstairs windows) and spend more time near computers and landlines than out and about, so I don't often use a mobile to call people. My typical bill on Virgin pay-as-you-go, paid monthly by direct debit, is somewhere between £1 and £4.50 - so having a contract would be a waste of money.
Thanks to the dual sims, I can keep my existing sim to receive calls from people I know without having to transfer my number or commit to a particular data provider/package. I can then try various pay-as-you-go deals depending on who has a good deal for what I'll be doing that month. Giffgaff is this month's choice - a £12 goody bag (actually costing a few pounds less thanks to introductory discounts) gets a month's unlimited internet plus loads of calls and texts.
Although we didn't really need the smartphones we were both keen to get new PDAs, even though we did already have an Android tablet. I've had various Palm OS devices over the last 13 or 14 years - the Technomage started with a Sharp digital diary many years before that, before getting a Psion about 20 years ago.
My current Palm TX was bought secondhand two years ago after I stupidly lost an identical one. It has most of the functions of a smartphone apart from the actual phone, but development of and for the Palm OS has long been abandoned and it's feeling rather long in the tooth. Nevertheless, up until getting the Acer this week I've used it every day - I'm still addicted to various games on it (sadly mostly ones that don't seem to be available for any other platform) and have a lot of information stashed away in Palm memos and in the fantastic List program. List is a very simple Palm tool that's perfect for - as the name implies - listing things. I use mine for everything from my bear collection to keeping track of which books I've read in a series. A version is available for Android, though I haven't got it to display properly yet.
We've both wasted a ridiculous amount of time over the last few days playing with the phones on wi-fi and downloading apps. As the Technomage has a particular interest in databases (!), he's been very clever at importing data from List and various other Palm database programs. He's even tranferred his CD database, which started on a mainframe in the 1980s and has been on all his handhelds since the Psion. I've been much less focused this week, though I did waste an hour today trying to connect to the internet vai giffgaff before realising that our signal by the window here at home is only 2G and that was why the internet isn't available.... I've still got a lot to learn!
As I result, I've been looking at various things I normally carry round with me and wondering what can be left out of my handbag.
The camera (which has mixed reviews online) has already produced a nice snap of one of my little 2" bears even without messing around with the settings, so my Canon A495 isn't likely to be coming with me every trip out of the house (and for special events, I'm more likely to take my bigger, zoomier, camera).
Also out of my handbag, obviously, is my old phone as I can pick up its calls via the Acer's second sim slot. And my poor old Palm TX will semi-retire, replacing its predecessor (a Palm Zire 71) on my desk. It will now have a rather dull existence, primarily used for converting between imperial and metric units (something I seem to have to do a lot of) using its excellent calculator, imported from an even older PDA, a Handspring Visor Deluxe.
We've found decent mp3 apps for Android, but my wonderful Sansa Clip+ (actually a Sansa doesn'tClip+ as I broke the clip) will remain in use, as its battery lasts far longer and it is so tiny and a joy to use.
I installed an app called Swiss Army Knife - but it doesn't feature a knife or scissors, so my Victorinox Minichamp is safe.
But the app does include tools for magnifying using the Acer's camera and can also measure and turn on a 'flashlight' so maybe I don't need to carry round the spare pair of reading specs, tape measure, loupe or torch....
There'll be no need for the spare batteries for the phone and camera (though perhaps a need for a spare for the Acer instead). And maybe I won't need a notebook and pen, given all the different ways of recording notes in the smartphone (my primary method will, I expect, involve using the trusty old Palm handwriting recognition system, Graffiti, thanks to an Android app that I was very pleased to find. It's a joy to be able to write without having to watch my fingers trying to hit little keys).
Having a dual sim phone like the Acer seems the ideal solution for a first smartphone.
We don't have reliable mobile reception at home (ie no reception away from the upstairs windows) and spend more time near computers and landlines than out and about, so I don't often use a mobile to call people. My typical bill on Virgin pay-as-you-go, paid monthly by direct debit, is somewhere between £1 and £4.50 - so having a contract would be a waste of money.
Thanks to the dual sims, I can keep my existing sim to receive calls from people I know without having to transfer my number or commit to a particular data provider/package. I can then try various pay-as-you-go deals depending on who has a good deal for what I'll be doing that month. Giffgaff is this month's choice - a £12 goody bag (actually costing a few pounds less thanks to introductory discounts) gets a month's unlimited internet plus loads of calls and texts.
Although we didn't really need the smartphones we were both keen to get new PDAs, even though we did already have an Android tablet. I've had various Palm OS devices over the last 13 or 14 years - the Technomage started with a Sharp digital diary many years before that, before getting a Psion about 20 years ago.
My current Palm TX was bought secondhand two years ago after I stupidly lost an identical one. It has most of the functions of a smartphone apart from the actual phone, but development of and for the Palm OS has long been abandoned and it's feeling rather long in the tooth. Nevertheless, up until getting the Acer this week I've used it every day - I'm still addicted to various games on it (sadly mostly ones that don't seem to be available for any other platform) and have a lot of information stashed away in Palm memos and in the fantastic List program. List is a very simple Palm tool that's perfect for - as the name implies - listing things. I use mine for everything from my bear collection to keeping track of which books I've read in a series. A version is available for Android, though I haven't got it to display properly yet.
We've both wasted a ridiculous amount of time over the last few days playing with the phones on wi-fi and downloading apps. As the Technomage has a particular interest in databases (!), he's been very clever at importing data from List and various other Palm database programs. He's even tranferred his CD database, which started on a mainframe in the 1980s and has been on all his handhelds since the Psion. I've been much less focused this week, though I did waste an hour today trying to connect to the internet vai giffgaff before realising that our signal by the window here at home is only 2G and that was why the internet isn't available.... I've still got a lot to learn!
Tuesday 1 January 2013
Starting the new year only a little better organised than last year...
One of my high hopes for last year was to sort through lots of things. I haven't done as much as I'd hoped but some things are falling into place a little.
In most respects I am a very organised person - eg I file things away efficiently, meet deadlines, index my photos, keep a diary and can generally remember where things can be found lurking round the house. However, I'm also very untidy and have a tendency to hang onto all manner of things, on the basis they may be useful or interesting one day.
I made some progress in 2012 in things like going through boxes of old letters dating back to my childhood. I don't really know why I'd hung on to so many, but having kept them for in some cases 30 or 40 years it would seem wrong to chuck them out without thought. Some have ended up straight in the recycling (eg where I can't remember the person they were from) but there are others that I can't bring myself to throw away at the moment. At least the volume is being whittled down.
Another area where I made progress was in sorting a lot of old school memorabilia I'd hung onto - mostly old exercise books. At least I was able to get these out of the house without having to destroy them - the school archivist was pleased to receive them. I guess there will be interest in seeing how much some subjects have changed in the 40 years since I started high school - and not many people hoard such things like I do! (My Mum also had a comprehensive folder of letters to parents that I've added to the pile - appeals for funding, uniform rules, even a letter about head lice!) If you find yourself with similar things I'd really recommend seeing if your school would be interested as it's so much more worthwhile than recycling them!
Clearing out junk has been harder as there are lots of decisions to take even when we're agreed on getting rid of something, to determine what just has to be thrown away and what can go to the recycling centre, the textile recycling bag collected with the bins, a charity shop, freecycle or similar, ebay or a car boot. We ended the year by knuckling under and finalising decisions on masses of stuff - I suspect we won' t be alone in arriving with a car load at the charity shop in a few days' time!
But my biggest organisational success of the year has been to start using Evernote, an excellent note-keeping system that you can keep synchronised between your computers and can also access via a web interface from someone else's computer. I'd long been a fan of Microsoft's OneNote, using it both as a kind of scrapbook and for organising complicated work projects. I've scarcely opened OneNote since reading about Evernote in an excellent feature by the Guardian's Oliver Burkeman in summer.
Evernote has completely transformed how I keep track of all kinds of things. I've got lots of lists in it and also use it for some work. I'll write another time about some of the ways I use it and how I work around some of its shortcomings such as its lack of a calendar.
The Technomage and I are sharing the account and gradually building up notes and lists covering everything from when our teeth are due for a check-up to purchase dates of important items. I feel it's really taken over from my old Palm handheld, which I'd got out of the habit of using very much. And it's brilliant being able to access the information from any web-connected device. When I finally buy a smartphone I'll be able to use it on that too - it works fine on my Android tablet.
If only I'd started using Evernote earlier - I'd wouldn't have got stung with a £60 'quarantine' fee when I let a .eu domain lapse as a credit card had expired and I missed the email about it...- the first time this has happened in a dozen years of owning various domains. (By coincidence, the same thing happened to the Technomage the same month but his was a .org and the quarantine fee was only £2.99) Needless to say such renewals have now joined countless other things in the Evernote system.
Starting to get all this sort of information organised is making me more confident that there's hope for clearing the ebay/charity shop/car boot backlog in the new year....
In most respects I am a very organised person - eg I file things away efficiently, meet deadlines, index my photos, keep a diary and can generally remember where things can be found lurking round the house. However, I'm also very untidy and have a tendency to hang onto all manner of things, on the basis they may be useful or interesting one day.
I made some progress in 2012 in things like going through boxes of old letters dating back to my childhood. I don't really know why I'd hung on to so many, but having kept them for in some cases 30 or 40 years it would seem wrong to chuck them out without thought. Some have ended up straight in the recycling (eg where I can't remember the person they were from) but there are others that I can't bring myself to throw away at the moment. At least the volume is being whittled down.
Another area where I made progress was in sorting a lot of old school memorabilia I'd hung onto - mostly old exercise books. At least I was able to get these out of the house without having to destroy them - the school archivist was pleased to receive them. I guess there will be interest in seeing how much some subjects have changed in the 40 years since I started high school - and not many people hoard such things like I do! (My Mum also had a comprehensive folder of letters to parents that I've added to the pile - appeals for funding, uniform rules, even a letter about head lice!) If you find yourself with similar things I'd really recommend seeing if your school would be interested as it's so much more worthwhile than recycling them!
Clearing out junk has been harder as there are lots of decisions to take even when we're agreed on getting rid of something, to determine what just has to be thrown away and what can go to the recycling centre, the textile recycling bag collected with the bins, a charity shop, freecycle or similar, ebay or a car boot. We ended the year by knuckling under and finalising decisions on masses of stuff - I suspect we won' t be alone in arriving with a car load at the charity shop in a few days' time!
But my biggest organisational success of the year has been to start using Evernote, an excellent note-keeping system that you can keep synchronised between your computers and can also access via a web interface from someone else's computer. I'd long been a fan of Microsoft's OneNote, using it both as a kind of scrapbook and for organising complicated work projects. I've scarcely opened OneNote since reading about Evernote in an excellent feature by the Guardian's Oliver Burkeman in summer.
Evernote has completely transformed how I keep track of all kinds of things. I've got lots of lists in it and also use it for some work. I'll write another time about some of the ways I use it and how I work around some of its shortcomings such as its lack of a calendar.
The Technomage and I are sharing the account and gradually building up notes and lists covering everything from when our teeth are due for a check-up to purchase dates of important items. I feel it's really taken over from my old Palm handheld, which I'd got out of the habit of using very much. And it's brilliant being able to access the information from any web-connected device. When I finally buy a smartphone I'll be able to use it on that too - it works fine on my Android tablet.
If only I'd started using Evernote earlier - I'd wouldn't have got stung with a £60 'quarantine' fee when I let a .eu domain lapse as a credit card had expired and I missed the email about it...- the first time this has happened in a dozen years of owning various domains. (By coincidence, the same thing happened to the Technomage the same month but his was a .org and the quarantine fee was only £2.99) Needless to say such renewals have now joined countless other things in the Evernote system.
Starting to get all this sort of information organised is making me more confident that there's hope for clearing the ebay/charity shop/car boot backlog in the new year....
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