My Excel skills are better than all the rest you mentioned. But I don’t have any certification for it. Just hours of use every day.
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Magpies, mate -- https://www.shop.themagpiewhisperer.com/pages/photo-gallery Who needs colour?
Except for the mad, glowing, red eyes...
I have just replaced my late 2015 iMac with a 2024 M4 Mac Mini. It goes like the clappers.
I don't have much experience with photo editing, mine is more with text processing. A long time ago, when I was between appointments, as they say, I turned the public domain version of the Douay-Rheims bible into LaTeX. (Ok, I was bored.) It is a 6 Mbyte text file. It took about 7 seconds to convert it into an ePub. That's about 5 times faster than my iMac could.
BTW, if anybody wants a PDF or ePub version of the Revised Challoner version of the Douay-Rheims bible from Project Gutenberg, just let me know. And no, I'm not going to do it for KJV, Webster, Latin Vulgate or any other version.
I'm sure it will be a lot better than my current 2018 Mac mini. But I need to increase the RAM and internal drive to bigger than what I currently have which is around £3k. But should get me another 5-6 years of use.
Did you just go with the base model? The 16GB with the 256GB SSD?
No, as mentioned elsewhere in other threads, my previous iMac had used about 400GBs of storage, so I went with the 512GB model. Apparently, not only is the SSD larger, but it is much faster than the 256GB SSD.
This is true. Airlines now make you pay up to 3x more for Premium Economy, and probably give you something similar, if not worse, than what regular seats used to be.
I’m not old enough to have experienced this. However, as I understand it, passengers could smoke, etc. on flights back in the day. Personally, I would much rather be in a less comfortable plane seat than potentially risk my life by constantly inhaling tobacco fumes.
What I also totally don’t understand - and this is another thing that I’ve heard didn’t used to happen - is overbooking flights. On my way to Europe (while getting from the smaller airport in my hometown to the large international one), there was a flight at the gate next to mine that had been overbooked.
The gate agents said that they “downgraded the aircraft” and so they needed 4 people to give up their seats. However, I question if this was actually the case, or whether they did this intentionally for the sake of profit. They began offering $1500 travel vouchers (which subsequently increased as everyone refused to give up their seats). However, obviously any amount of travel credit cannot fully compensate for the immense frustration - and possible consequences - of arriving late to your destination.
The gate agents said that they “downgraded the aircraft” and so they needed 4 people to give up their seats. However, I question if this was actually the case, or whether they did this intentionally for the sake of profit. They began offering $1500 travel vouchers (which subsequently increased as everyone refused to give up their seats). However, obviously any amount of travel credit cannot fully compensate for the immense frustration - and possible consequences - of arriving late to your destination.
Airlines have been using "overbooking" for....well, forever.....but it has become more visible since flights are more frequently full these days.
There are often people who book tickets and then cancel, and so the airlines sell more tickets than the actual number of seats. Ideally no-shows will equal the number of those overbooked and everything works out, but of course that's overly optimistic and then the airlines resort to offering compensation.
Depending on their circumstances, there are often people who will voluntarily take the vouchers. Usually they can get booked on a later flight in addition to compensation. When the airline can't get enough volunteers, then people get bumped.
And yes, sometimes airlines will change to a smaller airplane than was originally scheduled for a flight and that will create an overbooked flight.
So yes smoking was on planes. But it was also in bars, offices and restaurants. So unless you became a hermit, you’d be passive smoking.
Pubs particularly used to be bad. You’d come home stinking of cigarettes.
I remember how refreshing it was when the ban came in. I had a boss who used to chain smoke. Every time you’d come out of his office you’d stink to high heaven.
There was a stage here when cigarette smoking indoors (offices, clubs, bars, restaurants, etc) was banned, but the carpets in some establishments hadn't yet been changed. Going into them was like walking into a giant ashtray.
Reminds me of when we moved into our current house. Everytime we vacuumed it smelt of wet dog.
After a few weeks we moved out and the renovations started. All the carpets went in the skip.
Many weeks (if not months) after we moved back in I could still smell that wet dog when I used the vacuum cleaner.
Farmers are on my mind this morning.
I'm fortunate to live in a small farming community in the southeastern US. I arrived here after a circuitous journey, mostly as a military dependent. I've lived on both coasts of the US, Germany and Japan, the desert southwest, and the central Rockies of Colorado.
After living in military housing, cities, and suburbs for most of my life, I feel that I've arrived at a place that feels like Home. Country living suits me quite well. Living on a working farm, especially so, even though I'm not a farmer.
Never having known any farmers prior to living and working here, it's been a real education for me. The experience has significantly broadened what I thought was already a pretty broad perspective on the world. It's helped me realize that I was missing a key part of the picture.
Of course farmers grow stuff. However, what goes into actually doing that is a completely different mindset and combination of skills that most of us, raised in cities and suburbs, have little appreciation for.
Like most of us I learned about farming at a distance, mostly through school. But simply describing the role of farmers and how they do what they do doesn't even begin to do it justice.
Interacting with farmers, first through the land work that brought me here, taught me a lot about what they do and the schedule they keep. That was an eye-opening experience. Getting to know them over time as neighbors and friends, once I actually moved here, took it to another level. I can honestly say that I now look at the world through a different lens; one that is a bit wider and deeper.
Farmers are fundamental to the health of the human ecosystem. I didn't really appreciate that fact until the past few years. Now I'm extremely concerned by the loss of farmland through residential and commercial development, industrial solar farms, and so forth. Clearly, it's a non-sustainable trend. What to do? I'm not sure.
Anyway, that's what's on my mind this morning.
I'm fortunate to live in a small farming community in the southeastern US. I arrived here after a circuitous journey, mostly as a military dependent. I've lived on both coasts of the US, Germany and Japan, the desert southwest, and the central Rockies of Colorado.
After living in military housing, cities, and suburbs for most of my life, I feel that I've arrived at a place that feels like Home. Country living suits me quite well. Living on a working farm, especially so, even though I'm not a farmer.
Never having known any farmers prior to living and working here, it's been a real education for me. The experience has significantly broadened what I thought was already a pretty broad perspective on the world. It's helped me realize that I was missing a key part of the picture.
Of course farmers grow stuff. However, what goes into actually doing that is a completely different mindset and combination of skills that most of us, raised in cities and suburbs, have little appreciation for.
Like most of us I learned about farming at a distance, mostly through school. But simply describing the role of farmers and how they do what they do doesn't even begin to do it justice.
Interacting with farmers, first through the land work that brought me here, taught me a lot about what they do and the schedule they keep. That was an eye-opening experience. Getting to know them over time as neighbors and friends, once I actually moved here, took it to another level. I can honestly say that I now look at the world through a different lens; one that is a bit wider and deeper.
Farmers are fundamental to the health of the human ecosystem. I didn't really appreciate that fact until the past few years. Now I'm extremely concerned by the loss of farmland through residential and commercial development, industrial solar farms, and so forth. Clearly, it's a non-sustainable trend. What to do? I'm not sure.
Anyway, that's what's on my mind this morning.
We moved to the country about 5 years ago. Never been happier. Hated city living and suburbia.
We are surrounded by farms. Country walks right from the front door. Town is only a short drive away when we need something (rarely).
Looks like fun!
Mad Max
Arrived in frigid Prague this evening. Train ride was miserable, had a fever/aches and was super uncomfortable. Wore a mask and could hardly breathe. My folks tried to comfort me but nothing really worked. Feeling a lot worse than this morning. Just took another Tylenol which should help temporarily. Hope I feel well enough tomorrow to go out. If not, I’ll take a COVID test.
Not gotten this sick on a vacation since I was in Spain with the flu in 2018.
Not gotten this sick on a vacation since I was in Spain with the flu in 2018.
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I hate big cities. Profoundly. I think they’re cool to visit and all, but I would never live in one. Even if it was cheap, still no. Too much going on at once and I like the slow pace.
Even my hometown has 1 million people. I like both that and Appleton, my college town, for different reasons. But if I had to pick somewhere to live full-time, it’d be the latter. Very easy to navigate, I think ifs just kind of a perfect city infrastructure wise.
Absolute blast.
And it can take several forms. One, is me with some friends, also in their SXS's, blasting across the open desert or rock crawling some jeep trail.
But second is just the wife and I moseying along remote trails seeing things you can only see by a long hike or on one of these machines. For example this pic was taken up on the top of Secret Mtn. Wilderness overlooking the Verde Valley near Sedona AZ. Only way there is on some type of OHV (Off-Highway Vehicle) or a long (10+ mile ) hike with a 1500'+ elevation change.
Yes, I remember all of that; even as a kid, (an teen) I was a fanatical non-smoker, and I am delighted to see that smoking in the public space is no longer considered, or deemed, acceptable.
Glad that this has worked out well for you.
The move worked out exceptionally well for you both.
I suspect that I am in something of a minority here, as I love cities, - especially old city centres - but they have to be old, historic, and atmospheric, as well.
Apparently, I spent the first three years of my life in the top floor of a Georgian house, looking out over an old square, right in the centre of an old city - where my parents had a flat at the time; I thrill to antique city centres.
While I like visiting the country, and especially like viewing it - and, sometimes, even admiring it - from behind the windscreen of a car, I also like knowing that I have a car at my disposal whenever I am in the country, so that I am secure in the knowledge of my exit, or escape.
My mother - who was raised in very comfortable circumstances, one might also say almost affluent circumstances - in the country, always used the verb "escape" to describe when she was sent to boarding school during the Second World War; my father - raised in a village around five miles (eight kms) from an ancient city - loathed the country - actually, both parents detested it and found refuge, what they viewed as civilisation, culture, progress and progressive values in cities and urban settings and spaces.