Bord och stolar

Nyligen läste jag att många köpte skrivbord och/eller skrivbordsstolar när de började jobba hemifrån.

Jag förstår inte folk som lever utan skrivbord och kontorstol trots att de inte behöver. Faktiskt, det är det första jag köpte varje gång jag flyttade. (Nej, andra - efter en ny vattenkokare. Men ändå.) Skriver de där människor inte ens? Det är så mycket lättare med ett lämpligt bord och stol ...

(Okej, jag förstår inte heller dem som använder mobil när de kan använda bärbar dator. Jag är en gammal stofil.)

Leabhar ùr

Bha mi gu math teabadach, ach aig a cheann thall cheannaich mi leabhar an clò, ged a bha mi air cur orm nach cuireadh mi ris an dà a bha agam a-cheana, agus iad sin an dà leabhar is annsa leam. Ach cha mhòr nach bi leabhraichean sa Ghàidhlig ri fhaotainn ann an cruth digiteach; chan eil agam ach aon (agus chan eil mi buileach cinnteach gur e fileantach a tha san ùghdar), 's mar sin, dh'òrdaich mi clò-bhualadh de Chaogad san Fhàsach le Dòmhnall Iain MacÌomhair an-diugh. As dèidh sin 's na dhèidh, cha robh mi air tiodhlac Nollaige 2020 a cheannach dhomsa fhathast.

Done with WordPress

Today I've finally transferred here my remaining old WordPress blogposts, deleted the blog and closed my account.

I used to like the WP website, but it fell victim to a not uncommon disease: developers continually making major 'improvements', which actually kept making it ever less user-friendly, at least for those of us who are primarily interested in the words we write, with the editing interface remaining by and large what we're used to, not changing every couple of years or so.

So to celebrate I opened a bottle or (red) wine; if I remember correctly, my first one since I went into my self-imposed exile.

On the impossibility to edit tweets

As a stickler for spelling I every now and then get annoyed when I post a tweet, then notice I've committed a typo, and have to delete and repost it corrected. Which would be impolite when somebody has already reacted, in which case I can only leave it, gnashing my teeth, as it is.

But the other day it occurred to me that this is actually a good feature of the software. If tweets were editable, how could one be sure that after 'liking' or retweeting something the author doesn't change it altogether?

Theoretically you might, say, like a tweet praising XY as a paragon, and some time later somebody else coming across your account would see your 'like' attached to a tweet callling XY a scumbag (or vice versa).

Theoretically somebody might, say, post a tweet praising NHS workers, get loads of likes, than rewrite it into one praising some obscure politician (or worse), and all the likes would still be proudly glowing there ...

Back to basics?

I’ve finally run out of patience with my new HP that I'd no doubt abused here earlier, and bought an Asus - a trademark I'd been satisfied with before. So it’s 'back to Asus', strictly speaking - but in a sense back to basics too: I'm not transferring my files wholesale as usual, only moving those I really want to keep and deleting the junk I've accumulated over the years.

As for the new machine, the first impression was disappointment, because unlike the picture it didn't come with a numeric keypad, but the speed is what I was used to before the HP, and that's what matters.

 (originally posted probably on Tumblr)

Kindle Keyboard

At the turn of the month my first Kindle died at last. (More precisely, it’s screen did.) It’s been with me since 2011, and I used it a lot, so it’s no surprise (in fact I’d bought a Kindle Voyage as early as 2016 to have a spare one just in case this happened), but it took some time to get used to not being able to use it all the same. After all, eight years is a considerable time for an IT product to use on a virtually daily basis; it’s been with me during my 3 years in my homeland; and then again, while an older model, it was in general as good as the new one, either having some features lacking in the other.


(originally posted on Tumblr or WordPress)

Vivaldi

Installed, tried and uninstalled. What use is a browser which doesn’t allow a multilingual literate guy disable spellchecking?


(originally posted on Tumblr)

New laptop

It’s been two months now since the day my Acer Aspire died. I never liked it all that much, although it wasn’t its own fault (it had Windows 8 pre-installed like the others at that time, and I found that a step back rather than an improvement in comparison with Win7), and in fact it served me reasonably reliably for more than five years – longer than any of its predecessors.

It’s been two months now since the following day, when I bought a new device, a cheap HP, and I still can’t get used to how slow it is. Even opening a 20KB .rtf file takes it as long as the Acer needed to open a 1.3MB .odt file, and as for opening a few browser tabs at once … sometimes it feels like the sod thinks that multitasking simply means doing one task at a time, but remembering what to do next. I’ve learned that if I want to watch an iPlayer programme, I need to close almost every other programme to have at least a chance at avoiding a stop-start execution. (And of course, Win10 is even worse than Win8.)

But I was always good at finding the silver lining of a cloud. I console myself by admitting that like this I’m becoming less addicted to the internet. Readier to accept that I simply don’t have the time to read, watch, listen to, edit, write &c&c this or that.

I even began spending more time reading books again. For a lifelong bookworm, not such a bad deal.


(originally posted on Tumblr)