Skip to main content

The 'On' Switch and Other Mysteries.


Here's my most recent art video, which shows how I created a watercolour and gouache portrait of Freddie Higson, a lovely lady who I've had the pleasure of knowing since our high school days. I hope you enjoy watching it.

I've been offline for nearly two months. My computer suddenly died. It was six years old and had already been fixed a couple of times, and had always been okay rather than great. So I decided to pension it off and buy a better one. This in itself caused minor confusion, as when I unpacked it there was no tower. Had it been left in the shop? So off I went, back to said shop whose staff then hunted for the missing tower. It stayed missing. So they contacted their company's computer whiz kid, who gently explained that this computer doesn't have a tower - it's all built in behind the monitor. Oh. Mystery solved.

So I began the process of setting up my new computer, which seemed simple. The various bits were plugged into the correct places, but could I find the 'On' switch? No. The instruction booklet used only simplistic illustrations without any explanatory text, which is fine if you know in advance which bit of the computer you're supposed to be looking at. The 'On' button image showed only a line with a 90degree bend in it, obviously indicating a corner. But which corner? There was absolutely nothing on the monitor which said 'On'. Nearly an hour later - I kid you not - out of curiosity I poked an insignificant-looking pattern on the back of the monitor, which was exactly the same colour as the rest of the machine's back and just looked like some sort of manufacturers' logo. Yup, that's the 'On' switch. Another mystery solved.

The next job was to set up my internet connection. Simple, isn't it. Ah, but while I quickly linked the computer to the modem/router, (call it what you will), there was hardly any response from the computer. Odd. Usually new computer runs towards the internet like a hound sprinting after a squirrel. Not my computer, oh no; mine didn't budge. Diagnostics insisted nothing was wrong with the computer.

I called out an expert, who scratched his head then linked the computer to the internet by hotwiring it via his mobile phone. The computer was fine, he said, but my broadband speed was awful, so awful that the computer couldn't function. Go see your broadband supplier, he said.

So I did, and the assistant looked at my account and told me that my contract was out of date and so they'd dialled down my speed. A new contract was agreed upon, which is exactly the same as the old one except that I needed a new router. I was assured this would arrive in seven days. Wrong! When I went back to query its whereabouts, I was told the router wasn't scheduled to go live until nearly three weeks later, and it would arrive in the mail five days before that. A quick calculation followed. So my new router would arrive on Xmas day? "Er, erm, well, no, but close to that". Okaaaay, (like I had much choice!)

Anyway, here we are, back online all solved. 

Well, mostly. Now I have to figure out how to make video slideshows of stuff in Windows 10, as Movie Maker seems conspicuous by its absence.

Happy New Year to you all, by the way!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Cure for Aging?

"All that we profess to do is but this, - to find out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effort of time.  This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood.  In our order we hold most noble -, first, that knowledge which elevates the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body.  But the mere art (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret which I will only hint to thee at present, by which heat or calorific, as ye call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle of life, can be made its perpectual renovator...." Zanoni, book IV, chapter II, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first published in 1842. Oroboros keyring - Spooky Cute Designs The idea of being able to achieve an immortal life is probably as old as human life itself.  Folklore and myt...
15 comments
Read more

Remembering Richie Tattoo Artist's Studio

Richard in the street entrance to his tattoo studio in Liverpool. The vertical sign next to Richard is now in the Liverpool Tattoo Museum. Yesterday, my sister Evelyn, Richard and myself stood outside Richard's old tattoo studio and looked up at the few remaining signs, whose paint has now mostly flacked away to reveal bare wood. On the studio's window are stick-on letters which read, "Art", where once it boldly announced his presence as the city's only "Tattoo Artist".  I can remember him buying that simple plastic lettering from an old-fashioned printer's shop. This was in 1993, not long after he'd opened the studio and before he could afford better signs. After he'd patiently stuck them onto the glass we realised that from the outside the sign read "Artist Tattoo", so we had to carefully peel the letters off the window and have another go, laughing over having made such an obvious error yet worried in case we spoiled the letteri...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dear Diary...

Do you keep a diary? Why did you start it, and, if you started one then stopped, why was that? What sort of things do (or did) you write about? I ask as, as a long-time diarist myself, there is an interesting piece in The Guardian today which talks about one woman's diary habit, which she began at the age of fourteen. I started a diary around that age too, but destroyed it after my mother accused me of using cocaine.  A stern scene followed, with both parents perched ram-rod straight in their armchairs, while I was subjected to a heated inquisition. Where had I bought it, and who from? Didn't I know such things led to death and doom? I struggled to decipher their bewildering accusations, until Mum blurted out, "I read it in your diary!" To find my diary, Mum would first have had to rummage through my dressing table, obviously when I wasn't around to protest. Her intrusion on my privacy was assumed by both parents to be acceptable, and now, with this handwritten c...
Post a Comment
Read more