Did something strike you about that last post? It was profusely illustrated with pictures, even though published from a caravan in a field deep in the North Devon countryside, and therefore using mobile internet only, the kind you get on your mobile phone. And in fact I was using my phone.
This is actually remarkable, that it's now possible to upload a post heavy with digital photos using a phone. In past years I struggled to publish even a text-only post: pictures were impossible, because the upload always timed out. I suppose that Vodafone's coverage in rural areas, or at least here, has been progressively upgraded. It does say '4G', but presently only one bar of signal strength. But it must be enough. Well, it means that I can put out an illustrated post while actually on holiday, and not have wait until I get home.
Of course, the pictures are reduced in size before being inserted into the text, and it's easiest to do that using a proper Windows program on the laptop. In fact my writing and publishing procedure in the caravan is this:
1. With the text of the post in mind, I select a batch of suitable photos to use and copy them into a separate desktop folder on my laptop. Then, using a Nikon photo-editing program, I batch-process all these copied shots, reducing the file size to 30% of the original, which strikes a good compromise between small size and image quality.
2. I write the post on my laptop, in html, which is plain text with punctuation and paragraph-creation tags. Using Bluetooth, I send this to my phone.
3. Using Bluetooth, I now send the reduced-size pictures to my phone.
4. On the phone now, I open the html document, select all the text, and copy it.
5. Opening Blogger, I select the 'New Post' option and the 'html' choice, then paste my post into the writing area. This done, I convert the html into standard rich text by switching from 'html' to 'compose'.
6. Now I insert whichever photos I am going to use.
7. After a quick tidy-up on line spacing and obvious typos, I hit the 'Publish' button and examine the result. This invariably reveals further typos to correct, spelling mistakes, and examples of stilted phrasing. I deal with these.
And that's it. A distinctly more convoluted procedure than publishing from home, but perfectly doable. I imagine that having a powerful phone helps, also a reasonable signal. But I'm amazed that it's possible to put out a fully-fledged post from deep countryside.
Monday, 25 September 2017
Sunday, 24 September 2017
Lunch with crime author Ian Rankin
That went rather well. In fact, it exceeded expectations.
Today I attended the Appledore Book Festival Friends' Sunday Lunch - with renowned crime author Ian Rankin as the guest. That's right: Ian Rankin of Inspector Rebus fame. The privilege of being there was certainly worth the £20 paid for my 2017 Friend status - although that £20 also let me have first crack at booking tickets for the events on offer during the Festival, before the general public could apply. That was an important advantage to have. I booked a wide range of talks to attend, given by this year's authors. But some events do sell out very quickly, and it happened that tickets for the 'ordinary' Friends' Lunch - this year a yummy indian feast with chef Vivek Singh as the celebrity author - went very quickly indeed. The email to say 'Friends can now make their bookings!' came in as I was driving down to Kent. By the time I was home again that evening, the Friends' Lunch had sold out. Bugger.
Next day I phoned up to lament my bad luck, and ask if I could go onto a reserve list. 'Ah,' said local historian David Carter (he and his wife Jenny handle the Festival ticketing from their Gallery in Appledore, and they know me for a faithful Festival-goer), 'We may be able to arrange another lunch, not with Vivek Singh, but another author. Shall I put you on the list for that?' 'Yes, please, David!' 'And the Vivek Singh lunch too, in case there are any cancellations?' 'Oh yes please!' 'Done. You're seventh on the Vivek Singh reserve list. Sorry it can't be higher, but these lunches are always very popular.' 'I understand. Let's hope the alternative lunch takes place.' And it did get arranged, at the same limited-seating venue - The Seagate, Appledore's poshest hotel and dining spot on the quay - and I got my ticket as soon as the email came through.
So there I was, all dolled up in my best new outfit, at 2.00pm this afternoon. This is the outfit:
The restaurant at The Seagate is on a mezzanine section of the ground floor, towards the back of the building, and doors lead out onto a rear patio, where, if you don't mind the breeze, you can eat al fresco. There is a central round table, with several other tables around it, including one or two in snug alcoves. Mr Rankin was going to be on the central table. I chose the table with the best light coming from behind me, and therefore nicely illuminating anybody sitting opposite me on my table. In due course that would be Ian Rankin, for before and after the serving of the food he was going to visit each table in turn, sitting with its occupants and talking to them for a few minutes. I was keen to get a decent shot or two of him if I possibly could.
I was on my own, but there another person also there who was clearly not with anybody, so I caught his eye and asked him over. I didn't mind seeming to be Billie No-Mates, but it was better to offer company to another unattached person. His name was Chris. He lived in Bideford, and was actually married, but his wife was doing something else that afternoon. He was a very pleasant man. I had no problem at all chatting away with him. We faced two empty seats. Mr Rankin would sit in one of those. And if I dared to ask, and he acquiesced, I could nip into the seat beside him, and get Chris to take a few shots of us with Tigerlily. Serendipitously, it turned out that Chris was something of a photographer himself, and well-used to taking snaps with a phone. All set up, then!
And amazingly, I got what I wanted. Ian Rankin seemed to really enjoy meeting total strangers intent on asking him questions, and wanting a souvenir photo or two. What a top man. Mind you, I did wonder whether he was himself on the alert to discover people of singular personality or mannerisms whom he could use as models for characters in his books. Or at any rate, not get stuck with humdrum admirers. In which case, I hope he struck gold in my case. I may be mistaken, but (not unlike many of my friends) I am surely unconventional, and even frankly unusual, in the way I come across. And I wouldn't be offended if I were immortalised as a well-meaning but unbearable character in a future book!
Anyway, here are the shots of the man arriving - and giving our table a glance - and a little later, of him sitting with us, apparently in a high good humour. Many thanks, Chris!
Inevitability we concentrated on his creation Inspector Rebus, the Edinburgh detective with emotional baggage and a seriously unhealthy lifestyle. There wasn't time to enquire how much of the fictional character John Rebus was really drawn from the real-life Ian Rankin. A simple Jekyll-and-Hyde scenario seemed too glib. I wanted to know more. But I had a second chance to put a question to Mr Rankin after dessert, after Chris had left to have a walk around Appledore before catching his bus home. The restaurant was emptying, but the central table was still occupied with Ian Rankin, the romantic novelist Veronica Henry, and men from the press, one of them the photographer. There was one empty seat. Shamelessly, I walked over, asked if I could join them, and slid into that seat. I wasn't after photos now. I just wanted more conversation. Nobody seemed to mind. (You can never say of me that, in a situation like this, I lack bare-faced self-confidence)
I was sat next to the press photographer, and he was checking his recently-taken shots of veteran broadcaster Peter Snow and his wife. He let me see. I asked Ian Rankin what kind of shots he liked taken of himself. 'Well, nowadays I don't want any really,' he said, 'At least not the usual portraits you see on the covers of books.' And he told us how a writer friend of his - also in his fifties - went into contortions to make the paperback cover photo look good. He'd hide his sagging chin and throat by placing his right hand just so, then twist himself around to look over a shoulder. This performance (which Ian Rankin demonstrated) hid the effects of good living and encroaching older age, and it was what the publishers wanted anyway. When he had sat at our table, I noticed that he was drinking beer, and I'd said to him, 'I thought you were a whisky man?' And I'd offered to buy him one if he intended to linger after lunch. I now repeated that offer, but no, he was going for a stroll. Hey-ho, I tried! No chat at the bar then. It was however the nearest I'd yet got to securing a private interview with a celebrity writer.
Outside again, I immediately ran into Dave and Sandra, a couple from Milton Keynes who were holidaying in Appledore and staying at The Seagate. I'd sat next to them the previous day, at the Ann Cleeves event. We seemed to get on. We had apparently both visited Whitley Bay (where Ann Cleeves lived) on the same day last June. Then Chris arrived, his walk finished. Had I enjoyed my lunch with Ian Rankin? Oh yes! I showed them the best shot that Chris had taken of us together. Then I took a picture of the three of them:
Nice place, nice people.
Triumphant return of the hairband
One cause of dissatisfaction has now been eliminated. I've bought a fresh collection of black hairbands, at Boots in Barnstaple. Flyaway hair? No longer. It's back under control.
Boots had three kinds of hairband that I thought worth buying. First, this, actually a pair of black and brown all-plastic bands with curves ends that I'd been using in the past, before experimentally giving them up in early August:
Next, by the same manufacturer, a band with a rubber comfort lining and the ability to mould itself to the exact shape of one's head:
And finally, a band by Boots itself, also with a rubber comfort lining though without that moulding ability:
All three kinds are nice to wear, but already I'm tending to favour the Boots own-brand.
It's good to be wearing a band again. Quite apart from its obvious functional use in keeping the Melford hairstyle in order, I have always felt that the visible line of the band on the top of my head has helped to 'frame' my face, and make the most of whatever appearance assets are still there. Sheer vanity? Well, I'm not wearing a jewelled tiara, am I? It's a plain black band, and not in any way cool and trendy. It's as stylish as a hair clip would be. Or indeed anything popped into or onto the hair to fix it into place. I could be a little more chic by wearing sunglasses as a hairband of sorts; but that would look strange, as I need to wear ordinary glasses all the time, and a pair of sunglasses perched above the regular specs would look ridiculous. 'Four-eyes', you know.
What about the band looking childish? Again, it's a plain black accessory. A grown-up colour. It's not pink or turquoise, with little ponies or fairies on it. OK, these things are known as 'Alice bands', but that's no reason to dismiss them with a snigger. Do I look like a child? I think not. Decidedly not. Nor do I go about dressed in pretty-pretty attire, sporting waist-length hair and a winsome expression.
So I have now renounced looking like this when out of doors:
And instead have returned to this:
I know which look I vastly prefer. The bottommost shot shows the hair being gently taken by a breeze coming in through the caravan doorway. That's an acceptable displacement.
It's a terrible nuisance, though, when the hair scatters in all directions, flopping around, and you see the world through a cascade of pearl-white strands, and you look generally bedraggled.
I can't think why I was ever so strongly urged to 'give up the hairband' in the first place. If I'd had thick, heavy, lustrous hair, and plenty of it, well, going bandless might have worked. If I'd been happy to smother it with creams or mousse or wax, which I wasn't, that too might have worked. If I'd used a packetful of pins and clips that also could have been an answer. Or maybe a hat - a beret, for instance. But none of those last alternatives were appealing. Freedom of choice matters. And although I respect my friends' views, and their own preferences, and their well-developed sense of style, I will always in the end do what I feel happiest with.
Boots had three kinds of hairband that I thought worth buying. First, this, actually a pair of black and brown all-plastic bands with curves ends that I'd been using in the past, before experimentally giving them up in early August:
Next, by the same manufacturer, a band with a rubber comfort lining and the ability to mould itself to the exact shape of one's head:
And finally, a band by Boots itself, also with a rubber comfort lining though without that moulding ability:
All three kinds are nice to wear, but already I'm tending to favour the Boots own-brand.
It's good to be wearing a band again. Quite apart from its obvious functional use in keeping the Melford hairstyle in order, I have always felt that the visible line of the band on the top of my head has helped to 'frame' my face, and make the most of whatever appearance assets are still there. Sheer vanity? Well, I'm not wearing a jewelled tiara, am I? It's a plain black band, and not in any way cool and trendy. It's as stylish as a hair clip would be. Or indeed anything popped into or onto the hair to fix it into place. I could be a little more chic by wearing sunglasses as a hairband of sorts; but that would look strange, as I need to wear ordinary glasses all the time, and a pair of sunglasses perched above the regular specs would look ridiculous. 'Four-eyes', you know.
What about the band looking childish? Again, it's a plain black accessory. A grown-up colour. It's not pink or turquoise, with little ponies or fairies on it. OK, these things are known as 'Alice bands', but that's no reason to dismiss them with a snigger. Do I look like a child? I think not. Decidedly not. Nor do I go about dressed in pretty-pretty attire, sporting waist-length hair and a winsome expression.
So I have now renounced looking like this when out of doors:
And instead have returned to this:
I know which look I vastly prefer. The bottommost shot shows the hair being gently taken by a breeze coming in through the caravan doorway. That's an acceptable displacement.
It's a terrible nuisance, though, when the hair scatters in all directions, flopping around, and you see the world through a cascade of pearl-white strands, and you look generally bedraggled.
I can't think why I was ever so strongly urged to 'give up the hairband' in the first place. If I'd had thick, heavy, lustrous hair, and plenty of it, well, going bandless might have worked. If I'd been happy to smother it with creams or mousse or wax, which I wasn't, that too might have worked. If I'd used a packetful of pins and clips that also could have been an answer. Or maybe a hat - a beret, for instance. But none of those last alternatives were appealing. Freedom of choice matters. And although I respect my friends' views, and their own preferences, and their well-developed sense of style, I will always in the end do what I feel happiest with.
Friday, 22 September 2017
Dissatisfactions 1 - Hair and weight
There are things niggling me. Let's begin with my appearance: my hair and my weight loss.
Hair first. On 5th August I wrote a post titled The Hairband which went into why I'd stopped wearing one. Under some urging from local friends, I'd agreed to go hairbandless for a little while, as a trial, and I've stuck with it. But never without reservation. Out in the wind, my unrestrained hair instantly flies about and looks a mess. The old hairband hadn't prevented the wind ruffling my hair, but there was a definite limit to the damage that could occur; and once indoors, or in the car, order was very quickly restored. And the old hairband always preserved the fringe, no matter how strong the breeze, but without it the fringe disappears, exposing an unlovely forehead that I'd rather keep concealed.
Where now is the semblance of shape and style that my hair used to possess? As I said in that earlier post, untidy hair can look flattering, even sexy: but I think this works best with thick hair and a younger face. At my age, I can't really get away with anything too casual. Frankly, not looking well-groomed north of my eyes is undermining my self-esteem.
I admit that there was nothing cool about the hairband. But it did its job effectively most of the time. I'm now in blustery North Devon, with the Appledore Book Festival imminent, and I want to look presentable - and not like a bag lady. There are events to attend in smart clothes, and I want my hair to look decently tidy. So this afternoon I'm popping into Barnstaple, and I'll buy a new hairband to wear. My friends back in the village won't like it, but it's my hair, and I want to restore an appearance that seemed to work well.
Next, weight loss. This is coming along pretty nicely. I haven't found it very easy to shed my exceess weight, but when weighed two evenings ago at Slimming World I'd managed to throw off two stones and three pounds since starting last November. That's thirty-one pounds, or fourteen kilograms. I'm happy with that kind of progress, slow though it is.
Importantly, I've worked out a good personal regime that includes a wide variety of nice things to eat that are nevertheless Slimming World compliant and - if I stick to plan - will inexorably lead to gradual weight-loss. I have also worked out which 'naughty' things I can start eating again, in order to arrest the weight loss and just hover at the weight I want to be. Of course, it's impossible to get through the average week without a social life, and those things that tend to go with seeing friends (meals out, wine), which all put the brakes on anything more than very gradual weight loss. Even so, I should get to my ultimate target during the next four months. That target is now three stones - forty-two pounds, or nineteen kilograms.
What's not to like about losing weight? Well, for a start, it is ageing. I have lost that my chubby round face and neck, and gained lines and wrinkles that were there, but stretched out and not so visible. My neck doesn't look good at all. Elsewhere, however, the Melford carcass definitely looks trimmer and slimmer and because of that a bit younger.
So it's younger body, but older face. Is that what I really want? I'm not entirely sure.
I do of course look and feel healthier, more supple, and I can bend more easily. And my joints must welcome not having to cope with quite so much heft. These are very important points in favour of weight-loss. Points that will stop me backsliding and throwing away the dedication and effort needed to get so far towards my target. But I don't want to end up healthy but haggard. I'm starting to think that three stones may be just a few pounds too much.
Now there's something else. My head hair, fine not coarse, and never thickly-growing, is getting a bit thin. There are no bald patches yet, but I can see from many past photos that my hair isn't as luxuriant as it used to be. Whenever I wash it, I seem to lose quite a number of strands. More than I used to. What's changed?
I'm older, of course. How thick should a woman's hair be at sixty-five? I'm on HRT, so it's not an oestragen deficiency. It could be heredity. My Mum had thinning hair in her old age. She added volume by perming it relentlessly, something I am not going to do. Nor will I saturate my hair with goo and spray, to artificially bulk it out.
I do wonder whether my hair is missing the things I have eliminated from my diet since starting my current weight loss endeavour - things like bread, butter, and cheese. At the moment, the hair-thinning is slight, but neverthelesss concerning and I shall keep an eye on it. If necessary, I shall stop losing weight and eat some bread and cheese again.
Hair first. On 5th August I wrote a post titled The Hairband which went into why I'd stopped wearing one. Under some urging from local friends, I'd agreed to go hairbandless for a little while, as a trial, and I've stuck with it. But never without reservation. Out in the wind, my unrestrained hair instantly flies about and looks a mess. The old hairband hadn't prevented the wind ruffling my hair, but there was a definite limit to the damage that could occur; and once indoors, or in the car, order was very quickly restored. And the old hairband always preserved the fringe, no matter how strong the breeze, but without it the fringe disappears, exposing an unlovely forehead that I'd rather keep concealed.
Where now is the semblance of shape and style that my hair used to possess? As I said in that earlier post, untidy hair can look flattering, even sexy: but I think this works best with thick hair and a younger face. At my age, I can't really get away with anything too casual. Frankly, not looking well-groomed north of my eyes is undermining my self-esteem.
I admit that there was nothing cool about the hairband. But it did its job effectively most of the time. I'm now in blustery North Devon, with the Appledore Book Festival imminent, and I want to look presentable - and not like a bag lady. There are events to attend in smart clothes, and I want my hair to look decently tidy. So this afternoon I'm popping into Barnstaple, and I'll buy a new hairband to wear. My friends back in the village won't like it, but it's my hair, and I want to restore an appearance that seemed to work well.
Next, weight loss. This is coming along pretty nicely. I haven't found it very easy to shed my exceess weight, but when weighed two evenings ago at Slimming World I'd managed to throw off two stones and three pounds since starting last November. That's thirty-one pounds, or fourteen kilograms. I'm happy with that kind of progress, slow though it is.
Importantly, I've worked out a good personal regime that includes a wide variety of nice things to eat that are nevertheless Slimming World compliant and - if I stick to plan - will inexorably lead to gradual weight-loss. I have also worked out which 'naughty' things I can start eating again, in order to arrest the weight loss and just hover at the weight I want to be. Of course, it's impossible to get through the average week without a social life, and those things that tend to go with seeing friends (meals out, wine), which all put the brakes on anything more than very gradual weight loss. Even so, I should get to my ultimate target during the next four months. That target is now three stones - forty-two pounds, or nineteen kilograms.
What's not to like about losing weight? Well, for a start, it is ageing. I have lost that my chubby round face and neck, and gained lines and wrinkles that were there, but stretched out and not so visible. My neck doesn't look good at all. Elsewhere, however, the Melford carcass definitely looks trimmer and slimmer and because of that a bit younger.
So it's younger body, but older face. Is that what I really want? I'm not entirely sure.
I do of course look and feel healthier, more supple, and I can bend more easily. And my joints must welcome not having to cope with quite so much heft. These are very important points in favour of weight-loss. Points that will stop me backsliding and throwing away the dedication and effort needed to get so far towards my target. But I don't want to end up healthy but haggard. I'm starting to think that three stones may be just a few pounds too much.
Now there's something else. My head hair, fine not coarse, and never thickly-growing, is getting a bit thin. There are no bald patches yet, but I can see from many past photos that my hair isn't as luxuriant as it used to be. Whenever I wash it, I seem to lose quite a number of strands. More than I used to. What's changed?
I'm older, of course. How thick should a woman's hair be at sixty-five? I'm on HRT, so it's not an oestragen deficiency. It could be heredity. My Mum had thinning hair in her old age. She added volume by perming it relentlessly, something I am not going to do. Nor will I saturate my hair with goo and spray, to artificially bulk it out.
I do wonder whether my hair is missing the things I have eliminated from my diet since starting my current weight loss endeavour - things like bread, butter, and cheese. At the moment, the hair-thinning is slight, but neverthelesss concerning and I shall keep an eye on it. If necessary, I shall stop losing weight and eat some bread and cheese again.
Sunday, 10 September 2017
Social networking and instant messaging
I'm starting to feel out of step with a lot of people, for not having a Facebook account. Apparently I am missing out on what's happening in other people's lives. And there's a suggestion that people are not going to send me special me-only messages if they have already posted something up on Facebook. They expect me to 'be on Facebook', and dip into what's going on, and generally be part of it all. And if I won't, then sadly I'll just have to miss out.
Well, judging from the trivia I often see when friends look up something they want to show me, I don't think I'm missing anything very important, although I do acknowledge that I'm standing apart from the rising generation of people - billions of them, I suppose - who share their lives online. For blogging isn't quite the same thing. Certainly, a lot of my life is there, in my posts, but you only get a disconnected picture, not a stream. And you don't see who all my friends and family are, and what they might be getting up to. And although the photos posted up on Flickr reveal where I've been, and what catches my attention, they share no confidences. I can inadvertently say silly or indiscreet things on the blog, but as each post has structure and has to be carefully composed, the likelihood of a slip is much smaller.
When writing about Facebook before, I've highlighted the distressing fact that its quick-fire nature promotes flippancy and encourages carelessness. Too often I see - on other phones - people I know undermining themselves with terse or stupid remarks, and offhand commentary that does them no credit. Facebook clearly has abundant potential to stir up dissent, and create disharmony and misunderstanding. A far cry from the original benign notion of linking up people, re-establishing contact, and letting them come together again. There are too many tales nowadays of damage done with hurtful or bullying messages, and untruthful rumours spread that trash reputations. Then there are all the dodgy opinions, misinformation, and gossip from people who claim some kind of peer-group connection, designed to influence or destabilise or subvert one's point of view. And Facebook's own policies on how it handles all the information fed into it by its users are open to question. It regularly changes its rules for handling sensitive data, and lets people down on protecting personal security.
I don't trust Facebook. What are its motives and intentions? It has become way too big and powerful. I have a gut feeling that it's wisest to keep a safe distance, as you would a dangerous and unpredictable beast, and not enter its cage just because most other people have. There is every good reason not to feed it with the kind of meat it wants - information about my life that it will secretly use (or misuse) for its own ends.
For similar reasons, I am most reluctant to sign up for Whatsapp - which is now of course owned by Facebook, and shares personal data with its parent company. These two apps together seem to me like overweening machines. Sign up and be bound to them, with no escape. No thanks.
If wishing to stay in touch with friends and family, I still don't see what's wrong with ordinary texting and emailing. I'm not going to abandon Gmail and Samsung's messaging app merely because some people consider them dull and untrendy.
In any case, I don't have the temperament to enjoy being part of a huge community. I hesitate to 'join in'. That's not to say that I haven't joined local real-world groups (like the pilates class, and Slimming World) to meet a definite purpose (so far, though, only a health-connected purpose), but I'm not the sort to belong to clubs, societies and hobby groups. Nor action groups and political parties. I don't want to be a member. I want to be my own person. And if that means being cut off to some extent from the mainstream, then so be it.
Well, judging from the trivia I often see when friends look up something they want to show me, I don't think I'm missing anything very important, although I do acknowledge that I'm standing apart from the rising generation of people - billions of them, I suppose - who share their lives online. For blogging isn't quite the same thing. Certainly, a lot of my life is there, in my posts, but you only get a disconnected picture, not a stream. And you don't see who all my friends and family are, and what they might be getting up to. And although the photos posted up on Flickr reveal where I've been, and what catches my attention, they share no confidences. I can inadvertently say silly or indiscreet things on the blog, but as each post has structure and has to be carefully composed, the likelihood of a slip is much smaller.
When writing about Facebook before, I've highlighted the distressing fact that its quick-fire nature promotes flippancy and encourages carelessness. Too often I see - on other phones - people I know undermining themselves with terse or stupid remarks, and offhand commentary that does them no credit. Facebook clearly has abundant potential to stir up dissent, and create disharmony and misunderstanding. A far cry from the original benign notion of linking up people, re-establishing contact, and letting them come together again. There are too many tales nowadays of damage done with hurtful or bullying messages, and untruthful rumours spread that trash reputations. Then there are all the dodgy opinions, misinformation, and gossip from people who claim some kind of peer-group connection, designed to influence or destabilise or subvert one's point of view. And Facebook's own policies on how it handles all the information fed into it by its users are open to question. It regularly changes its rules for handling sensitive data, and lets people down on protecting personal security.
I don't trust Facebook. What are its motives and intentions? It has become way too big and powerful. I have a gut feeling that it's wisest to keep a safe distance, as you would a dangerous and unpredictable beast, and not enter its cage just because most other people have. There is every good reason not to feed it with the kind of meat it wants - information about my life that it will secretly use (or misuse) for its own ends.
For similar reasons, I am most reluctant to sign up for Whatsapp - which is now of course owned by Facebook, and shares personal data with its parent company. These two apps together seem to me like overweening machines. Sign up and be bound to them, with no escape. No thanks.
If wishing to stay in touch with friends and family, I still don't see what's wrong with ordinary texting and emailing. I'm not going to abandon Gmail and Samsung's messaging app merely because some people consider them dull and untrendy.
In any case, I don't have the temperament to enjoy being part of a huge community. I hesitate to 'join in'. That's not to say that I haven't joined local real-world groups (like the pilates class, and Slimming World) to meet a definite purpose (so far, though, only a health-connected purpose), but I'm not the sort to belong to clubs, societies and hobby groups. Nor action groups and political parties. I don't want to be a member. I want to be my own person. And if that means being cut off to some extent from the mainstream, then so be it.
Tuesday, 5 September 2017
Penguins
An online article I noticed yesterday on TechRadar prompted me to relive the famous John Smith's Extra Smooth Bitter TV ad from July 1996. This is the one that shows comedian Jack Dee extolling the virtues of that brew against a lurid bubble-filled background inhabited by oversized flame-spouting penguins. But more on that in a moment.
The TechRadar article was bemoaning Google's decision to crack down on apps that copied videos on YouTube. I didn't know any existed. Apparently there were several. Now they are all under threat, and may shortly become unobtainable, with the result that no ordinary Internet user will be able to download and keep their very own personal copy of something shown on YouTube.
I wish I had known sooner that this had been a possibility. It always irritated me about YouTube that although you could watch, you couldn't download. Now it looks as if that's how it will be forever, as Google clearly want to make YouTube's content inaccessible except through streaming.
The article is at http://www.techradar.com/news/a-number-of-third-party-youtube-apps-and-youtube-rippers-are-closing-down. They supply instructions on how to set up - at your own risk - one of the remaining apps that will capture and download a favourite video. I don't think I will be attempting that. Even if it proves technically successful, there is the legality issue to consider. Google clearly regard such downloading as near-piracy - the video equivalent of downloading music tracks one hasn't paid for - and I wouldn't want to invite trouble. (It is however tempting to set up the app in question, and see what it can accomplish...)
Naturally I fired up YouTube and checked what I presently had in my 'favourites'. Not much, as it happens. I am not an avid watcher or collector of videos. But I did have a few items bookmarked that I would consider downloading if I had the means to do so. Among them was the 1996 Jack Dee ad with the giant flame-belching and flipper-waving penguins.
This mustn't be confused with the 1993 series of John Smith's penguin ads, in which Jack Dee would be typically propping up the bar at a very quiet and traditional spit-and-sawdust Yorkshire pub, surrounded by squeaky little penguins whom he is easily able to put down and dismiss with his dry humour. The 1996 ad might be called The Penguins' Revenge. The penguins mock and menace him, as he strolls oblivious over a vast penguin belly, through a frothy and bubbly beer-glass landscape, up through the anus of a humongous penguin, emerging from its gaping mouth, and then finally stepping over beer can lids floating over a beery void. Unaware of his bizarre surroundings, and the near-misses of projectile penguins, he maintains a cool, detached and matter-of-fact delivery. The final custard-pie in his face - and he is still oblivious of this - is to pop him into a silly penguin suit as he walks off at the end.
All the time he believes he is doing his deadpan stuff on an empty set, merely holding a pint of John Smith's Extra Smooth Bitter in his hand, and taking the odd sip. At the end he is assured that the post-production team will project him into a normal pub background. But of course we see that they have an 'action sequence' in mind that he absolutely won't like.
Jack Dee later distanced himself from the penguins. The earlier John Smith ads had helped to make him a household name, but he must have felt that his future career was being hindered by the creatures. I went to see him at the Dome in Brighton sometime late in the 1990s, and his act (and our enjoyment of the show) was ruined by a loud heckler who kept asking him where the penguins were. He had ample reason to dislike them.
By the 1990s beer was no longer my favourite drink, but I thought the 1996 John Smith's ad with Jack Dee was very amusing. It had, at the time, been possible to capture ads like this on a VHS home video recording. And no doubt the variable-quality clips from that time that you can now see on YouTube were originally saved in that way. But nobody in a home environment could then have used a computer to make and preserve a modern video file, the mp4 video format being available only from 2001. What a pity.
And it wasn't going to be possible now. I wondered whether I might instead get the gist of the thing by taking a series of still screenshots on my phone. It would certainly convey the look and development of the 43-second ad, but there wouldn't be Jack Dee's voice, nor the music. Oh well, better than nothing. See what you think.
The TechRadar article was bemoaning Google's decision to crack down on apps that copied videos on YouTube. I didn't know any existed. Apparently there were several. Now they are all under threat, and may shortly become unobtainable, with the result that no ordinary Internet user will be able to download and keep their very own personal copy of something shown on YouTube.
I wish I had known sooner that this had been a possibility. It always irritated me about YouTube that although you could watch, you couldn't download. Now it looks as if that's how it will be forever, as Google clearly want to make YouTube's content inaccessible except through streaming.
The article is at http://www.techradar.com/news/a-number-of-third-party-youtube-apps-and-youtube-rippers-are-closing-down. They supply instructions on how to set up - at your own risk - one of the remaining apps that will capture and download a favourite video. I don't think I will be attempting that. Even if it proves technically successful, there is the legality issue to consider. Google clearly regard such downloading as near-piracy - the video equivalent of downloading music tracks one hasn't paid for - and I wouldn't want to invite trouble. (It is however tempting to set up the app in question, and see what it can accomplish...)
Naturally I fired up YouTube and checked what I presently had in my 'favourites'. Not much, as it happens. I am not an avid watcher or collector of videos. But I did have a few items bookmarked that I would consider downloading if I had the means to do so. Among them was the 1996 Jack Dee ad with the giant flame-belching and flipper-waving penguins.
This mustn't be confused with the 1993 series of John Smith's penguin ads, in which Jack Dee would be typically propping up the bar at a very quiet and traditional spit-and-sawdust Yorkshire pub, surrounded by squeaky little penguins whom he is easily able to put down and dismiss with his dry humour. The 1996 ad might be called The Penguins' Revenge. The penguins mock and menace him, as he strolls oblivious over a vast penguin belly, through a frothy and bubbly beer-glass landscape, up through the anus of a humongous penguin, emerging from its gaping mouth, and then finally stepping over beer can lids floating over a beery void. Unaware of his bizarre surroundings, and the near-misses of projectile penguins, he maintains a cool, detached and matter-of-fact delivery. The final custard-pie in his face - and he is still oblivious of this - is to pop him into a silly penguin suit as he walks off at the end.
All the time he believes he is doing his deadpan stuff on an empty set, merely holding a pint of John Smith's Extra Smooth Bitter in his hand, and taking the odd sip. At the end he is assured that the post-production team will project him into a normal pub background. But of course we see that they have an 'action sequence' in mind that he absolutely won't like.
Jack Dee later distanced himself from the penguins. The earlier John Smith ads had helped to make him a household name, but he must have felt that his future career was being hindered by the creatures. I went to see him at the Dome in Brighton sometime late in the 1990s, and his act (and our enjoyment of the show) was ruined by a loud heckler who kept asking him where the penguins were. He had ample reason to dislike them.
By the 1990s beer was no longer my favourite drink, but I thought the 1996 John Smith's ad with Jack Dee was very amusing. It had, at the time, been possible to capture ads like this on a VHS home video recording. And no doubt the variable-quality clips from that time that you can now see on YouTube were originally saved in that way. But nobody in a home environment could then have used a computer to make and preserve a modern video file, the mp4 video format being available only from 2001. What a pity.
And it wasn't going to be possible now. I wondered whether I might instead get the gist of the thing by taking a series of still screenshots on my phone. It would certainly convey the look and development of the 43-second ad, but there wouldn't be Jack Dee's voice, nor the music. Oh well, better than nothing. See what you think.
Nearly all the above were taken as screenshots on my phone. The taller shots were screen prints on my laptop - I thought the rendition might be better, but it isn't. Clearly the YouTube video was derived from a smeary, low-resolution VHS tape! I used to have software that would stretch the narrower shots vertically, but it wasn't compatible with Windows 10, and I'm not going to spend money on having that rarely-used facility.
Gosh, didn't Jack Dee look young then? Well, it was twenty-one years ago, and he was only thirty-five.
I wonder who played the penguins? Unless, of course, they were real...
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