Thursday 8 November 2018

HOLIDAY SNAPS

I was talking to Mike today. He's off to Wellington soon and will be staying with Chris and Sue.
I believe that Richard and Shelley will be coming around for dinner so he'll be able to hear all about the Italian Campaign.


Richard apparently has threatened promised to put on a slide show of his holiday snaps. kind of like what people did in the 1950s and 60s.



I guess that as Richard's latest photographs are all digital he'll be able to show them on a computer screen. He may of course, since he'll have a captive audience, bring out old slides of his holidays in the 60s and 70s - resplendent in his red corduroy trousers, hippie necklace and vinyl jacket.




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While we were talking, Mike and I reminisced about the photos we took when we were young and it turns out that we both used colour slides. I think that this was because they were much cheaper than having colour prints made. Mike says that he has hundreds of slides from his OE experiences in the 1970s and I have, somewhere hundreds from the 1970s that I took after buying my first decent camera - a Praktica SLR 35mm.





Mike says that he still has a slide projector and is going to get it going and look at his slides.



I don't have one of these and don't know how I'll view my slides if I find them. They are likely to be in a box somewhere that hasn't been opened for 40 years. I'm keen to see them though as no doubt there will be some nice family snaps.

I'm a bit of a Luddite regarding technology but there must be a simple way of transferring the slides to digital. A quick Google search came up with professional companies doing this for $1 a slide. I don't think I'll take up that offer and will look on Trade Me for a machine that can do this.


Tuesday 13 March 2018

SKEET, SORRY, TWEET SHOOTING





As you know I have an aversion to new things particularly when they aren't really necessary and the old things are doing the job fine.

Years ago - in the late 1980s I resisted having a mobile phone as I didn't need one. The desk phone worked perfectly well. I had a few people working for me in brands, sales and distribution roles and made sure that they had the right tools for the job starting with the brick-like Motorola:




and progressively through the smaller ones that could operate 'hands-free' in cars.




I personally had no desire to have one of the stupid things until my senior management made it compulsory and I got a series of Nokias in the early days



I prided myself of hanging on to  a particular out of date Nokia  in the late 1990s and early 2000s even though the IT Department were offering me early versions of smart phones,  because my Nokia had a fold out QWERTY keyboard which was useful for texting.



The chairman of the company was an early adopter (or a poseur). He liked to have the latest models as it was some kind of status symbol or a badge of honour. In those days (90s) every new release was smaller than the last release. This guy ended up getting phones so bloody small that he kept losing them which drove our IT Department and insurers nuts. What an idiot.



In the later 2000s I finally switched to the Apple iPhone and have an iPhone 5 which has served me pretty well since 2014 and I hope I don't have to upgrade (although Apple will no doubt work out a final solution for old machines).

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My career has been in marketing (and sales) and as such I had to keep abreast of what was going on in the computer programming world, business tools and social media but I employed people to action it. On a personal level I never operated a Facebook or Twitter account or a blog until after I'd given up full-time marketing. After I left, good friend Richard told me about his blog Richard's Bass Bag that he was running and how much he enjoyed being in contact with people through it. I remember asking Mike and Tony if they knew about this and the consistent reply was along the lines of ..... "That's just old Richard being silly - sort of like all those letters he used to write to the editor of Salient (the Victoria University of Wellington's student newspaper) under the pseudonym ' President of the White Sport Coat and Pink Carnation Society.  I'd give it a miss if I were you".

Well I remember helping Richard in those letter-writing campaigns (Mike and Tony were sadly missing on the front lines) so this stimulated my interest and I set up some blogs of my own to join in to the exciting world of blogging with its global connectivity and  exciting sharing of ideas.



So. In 2018 we have Richard's (sadly historically depleted) blog with a few limp hangers on and his brother Robert's famous disappearing blog. Sad really.

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And now we get to the reason for this post.

I had some time on my hands today having played tennis in the morning but with the afternoon being quite windy with a threat of rain. I played around with the computer watching Youtube clips of American comedians making fun of that old bloated wowser Donald Trump. I read some of his ridiculous tweets and thought that I could do better than him at that.



I set about starting up a Twitter account. 




For something that most dumb people on the planet have no problem setting up and running with daily inane tweets I found it to be bloody annoying and difficult. For a start I couldn't select a username that hadn't already been used and Twitter recommended one with my name followed by a seven digit number. Fuck! I cancelled out of all the set up after having decided that I didn't need it and certainly the world isn't waiting to hear from me every 5 minutes.


Sunday 28 January 2018

NO COMMENT

I've been having problems with the settings on my blog posts recently.

I find that when I read the odd (and I do mean odd) posts by Richard's alter egos (and Robert's) that I cannot post a comment. I can comment on Richard's main blog but not the secondary ones.

I know, I know, I hear you ...... "why would you be bothered even reading those let alone trying to comment.." but it's a long weekend, it's hot outside, we've had visitors so .... I needed something to do.

I've tried doing resets (and worry about losing all the important stuff i.e. my blog posts) and have even asked old Richard if his settings were OK. To be honest this is like Eddie The Eagle asking Mr Blobby for tips on Olympic skiing but, needs must.

"Hey Blobby. Which way is down?"


Richard couldn't help but one consolation is that being a OCD person this will nag him and he'll fiddle with his settings and maybe delete all his blogs again.