Mostly Digital Photography

I intended to spend the day at a Zoom conference arranged by Andy Rouse for Olympus. I enjoyed the first hour, but decided I should watch the Turkish GP without sound at the same time, given its importance to the World Championship. Unfortunately I got engrossed by the race, and did not see the rest of the conference. However, I hope to be able to watch the part of the conference I missed when it is posted on line.

Many congratulations to Lewis Hamilton on clinching his record-equalling seventh world championship.

I use an SSD for the photographs of the current year, and then copy the contents to a conventional disc at the end of the year and clear the space on the SSD (actually I copy the contents daily rather than waiting until the end of the year!). Today I discovered a problem which I have not encountered before. I usually use my Surface 3 Pro computer in a docking station, and connect the drive via the docking station. However, today I plugged the SSD into the Surface Pro 3 without using the docking station, though I was using mains power. The Surface refuses to recognise the SSD. I can only assume this is because the SSD tries to draw more current from the Surface than it is able to provide. But plugging in a conventional spinning disc, also powered direct from the USB port on the Surface is fine. So perhaps surprisingly the SSD drive, with no moving parts, seems to draw more current than one (larger capacity) with a spinning disc.

The news that the first Macs using Apple’s own processors rather than Intel ones came out earlier this week. Anyone who remembers the last time that Apple switched processors was not a happy time for many. This photo shows an iMac which used the old Power PC processor, and so dates back to before the first Intel machines appeared. The new machines either could not run some existing software or had to use an emulation mode, reducing performance. As the Intel processor became more widespread, updates to the old software became less frequent and capable. I expect the same will happen this time. This old iMac will just about run (first time I’ve turned it on for many months!), but has no recent software, and the CD/DVD drive stopped working many years ago. I can’t imagine I’ll ever have one of the M1 Macs. 

A present I received  yesterday – very welcome!

I spent much of the day at a model railway exhibition – a virtual one of course! Inspired by this I finally tried weathering one of my wagons, and also the Land Rover which is just visible in the background. 

The flower stem on the amaryllis is developing well.