I’m writing this quickly, Dear Reader, (and therefore making lots of typos) as I’m not sure how much I’ll manage to write before my computer reboots itself again. The machine has had problems with its graphics card for a while, as I’ve mentioned before, but it would appear that the machines memory (don’t confuse this with hard disk space – as a lot of people seem to) is now developing faults with numerous “Blue-Screens of Death” (as system crashes are referred to on Windows machines) occurring throughout the day – luckily I didn’t lose any information, just a number of open web pages I was using to research from. I guess I’d better start looking for another machine.
On the whole it’s been a very productive day; I finally found time to phone the Canon Service Centre back today to discuss what I need to do to get it repaired. The good, news is I can simply drop the lens off at their Service Centre in Elstree (Hertfordshire) and as I plan to visit a zoo nearby I can combine the two in one trip.
Not only, but also* – I’ve finally got around to hanging the Big Cat canvas prints I showed you a while ago. Whilst the canvases were finished off to the highest standard, they didn’t include any fastening to attach the to the wall and as I was passing a DIY store I made a detour and bought the necessary fastenings. The pictures look resplendent on the dining room wall, and whilst we’re used to seeing them, guests may get the feeling they’re being watched when they sit down to a meal.
Whilst out in the garden, cutting the grass for the first time this year, I heard a nuthatch calling from the trees behind our garden. I’ve mentioned before how I like to try and mimic bird calls when I’m out and about but the nuthatch call is a little to high pitched as well as too fast to be able to achieve anything anywhere near believable but technology was on hand to help out. As I had my mobile phone to hand which has a voice recording function built into it, I decided to see whether I could use this to confuse the bird into thinking another bird was calling to it. Whilst not exactly high quality (I don’t mind, a lot of the bands I really like are classed as LoFi – as opposed to HiFi, High Fidelity), playing the recording back through the speaker did see to initiate a conversation between the bird and the phone. Amazing things these smartphones and the first of you who even remotely think about a joke involving twitter can go now.. go on, get your coat!
* A 1960’s BBC TV program starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore
** A misquote of another 1960’s TV program, “That Was The Week That Was”
Andrew Skelton: 
great shot Andrew, love the color purple!
By: H2O by Joanna on 30/03/2012
at 10:54 pm