Monday, December 03, 2007

The computer is having a joke on me

The nice computer man came round and told a lot of programmes to stop running in the background (don't ask!) and now he assures me all my little problems will stop happening. And he said it's quite a powerful computer. And yes, that is a lot of photos. And why not get rid of Norton which is a large, expensive, interfering programme and install AVG (?) which is free, small, quick and efficient. When my Norton expires that is! Er - not for 465 days!
Anyway, he also suggested backing up a different way so I started doing that. and the computer chirped and chuntered to itself, like they do and then said brightly "13 minutes and 3 seconds". After a bit more chuntering it said "40 minutes and 12 seconds". Then variously offered 2 hours and 10 seconds, 5 hours and 40 seconds, 13 hours and 55 seconds and Oh! - 0 seconds. Done. In about 3 minutes. Mind, it always does that. Built in sense of humour maybe? Some geek in programming or engineering having a laugh at us out here?

Mel asked for a demonstration of the magic photomatix. See, it takes this photo, in which you can see quite a lot of detail in the shadows but the sky is dead and white

And this photo where the shadows are all black but you can see the glorious colours in the sky
And puts them together to produce this photo which has detail in the shadows and a nice bright sunset.
Which is pretty much what the scene really looked like if I took my glasses off.
Clever or what !
(I did cheat though because the sky went a bit garish and pale and odd, so I cut out the sky from an in between photo and stuck it on top of the finished one. I think photomatix works better with several different exposures, not just two.)

Now I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself. A few...lot of....months ago, I had to go on bended knee to Eldest to ask him, yet again, to show me how to update Barney's website. Because the editing window is, to my mind, quirky. That means it's not like all the other editing windows I use regularly and does a bit more and if I don't do any for a while, I forget how.
Eldest agreed to teach me again, Barney got in a strop because he didn't understand what was going on with HIS* website (a bit like you would if your son and your wife got together and started fiddling about under the bonnet of your car which wasn't working and you didn't know why and you didn't know what the hell they were doing in there either and they kept trying to explain the incomprehensible, calmly and firmly thus underlining that you had to depend on people who couldn't even tell you what they were doing without resorting to incomprehensible jargon).
So Eldest made me promise faithfully to keep practising the website editing so I wouldn't forget again. I did for a while.
Anyway, last night I thought I'd better just check that I could still do it.
I couldn't.
Searched all my files for the instructions I'd surely saved somewhere????
Couldn't find them.
*AAAArghhhh*!
~*^##**!!
Went to bed dreaming of uploads and resizes and thumbnails and links.

Got up this morning and tried something and it worked :)
Ineffable relief :)
I've now written a post, on the website, carefully hidden from public view, detailing the process. With pictures.
And I've checked with Thursday that the post works properly if it's public and vanishes when I tell it to (wouldn't do for the first thing anyone sees on the website was a detailed explanation of how it's done).
Phew.
I am that website manager. After all.

Oops, now our house is upside down in a puddle. No problem...a website manager can do a simple thing like turn a house rightway up surely. Just a bit of wiping and drying needed to set it to rights again.
Yes I am being very silly :)

*That is, HIS in that it shows his work and his roofs and his materials and how thatching is done and all that. It may be a thing he can't use without help from his friends but it is HIS!

3 comments:

At 9:56 AM, Blogger Thursday said...

I ended up dumping Norton well before the end date was due - it slowed my computer down horribly. AVG is pretty good - I've not had a virus problem with it. Good explanation of fancy new photo thing.

 
At 3:50 AM, Blogger Mel said...

Wow.......it IS a fancy 'putery thing.
What a difference it made.

And yippee for the 'puter dude...and for working 'puters.....AND for upside down puddle houses.
(which is a way cool photo, btw)

 
At 11:07 PM, Blogger mig bardsley said...

Well I may not last 465 days Thursday. If the other is all it's cracked up to be Norton may be out on it's shiny yellow backside before too long. Computer man says AVG finds more viruses too.
Thanks Mel, I did rather like the upside down House :) and that blue sky full of pebbles and leaves :)

 

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