A better day

I’m on the mend, and some nice drugs quickly made my unmanageable headache manageable this morning, so I’ve been up and about and trying to catch up with all the jobs I’ve missed out on doing this week. The sun has kicked in as well, meaning that I feel (somewhat) more confident in prepping the garden and our outside spaces for Spring and some nicer weather.

The only dissention at this change in season seems to be coming – vocally – from the local Cape Rain Frog population. They’re much happier when it’s wet and cool. These blue skies and warm sunshine aren’t for them. They’re letting us know.

I’m still a little short of oomph, so things aren’t going as quickly as they could be, but on the plus side, at least the sun has charged up the house batteries and meant that I can do some energy-heavy tasks like washing the washing machine. Our Bosch machine has a special programme for this, which is 90 minutes of splashing around clean water at 90oC. Super effective, but not something that you want to be paying for via your meter. Hence today being a good day to do it: we’re dragging 3000W in at the moment, more than 80% of it going straight there.

I know. Sounds like an odd one until you see the colour of the water that’s supposedly “cleaning” your clothes. I’m well aware that even with your own Spring cleaning programme in full swing, you’re not looking for a sign to wash your washing machine, but if by any chance you were, then this is it.

Anyway. Lawn done, washing machine done, energy (mine) depleted. Time to sit down (and probably fall asleep) in front of the football.

Day 14 – Deep Clean

To be honest, the living room and dining room (ok, it’s actually just one room) weren’t dirty. But we do have two kids and a dog, and a large sliding door which is open all day every day in the nice weather. So yeah, I can see where a bit of muck might have got in.

I went at it with some enthusiasm and managed to remove basically a whole garden’s worth of dirt and dust, and at least two beagles worth of beagle fur from the house. I honestly cannot believe that we were living with that.

And yes, I still fully support my assertion that that bit of the house wasn’t dirty, but paradoxically, it does look cleaner now. For a short while, our place (or at least one big room of it) could have taken pride of place on one of those fancy house shows. Until the beagle trailed some grass clippings in from out the back, at least.

Later today, I’m going to pave over the garden and maybe the beagle as well, and I think that will make a big difference.

In other news, spring cleaning is great for your Discovery (health insurance) points. OK, so I did do a little workout yesterday evening as well, but I managed 16,000 steps and I (quite literally) didn’t leave the house the whole day.

Again.

Cleaning out my (digital) closet

What with one thing and another (but mainly one thing), I’ve spent less time on social media over the past few months.

That’s no bad thing: social media was becoming an increasingly unpleasant place to spend time (and continues to do so), and so I don’t feel that I’m missing out on anything particularly worthwhile. What has also changed, however, is that I haven’t been tidying up my social media accounts as often as usual.

Some digital housekeeping is called for.

There’s an awful lot out there, but I’m happy to limit myself to just a few different apps, and each of those requires me to take a different approach with regard to keeping things in order.

Instagram: Find me at instagram.com/6000coza

It does seem that I’m rubbish at following people on The ‘Gram. I like many of the photos that I see from people I have already followed, but I never seem to get round to following new people. This must change, and following new followers is probably one of the best ways to start to do it. I’ll be playing catch up over the next week or so in this regard, and if your name is in there, I’ll be seeing you(r photos) real soon.

Twitter: Hi, I’m @6000

For me, the most useful and entertaining of all of the social media platforms. And also one of the most toxic. Again, I do follow new people on here, but I have rules. I need some connection, some relevance. Perhaps they live in SA, like Sheffield, enjoy playing with their drone (careful now), or suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in also owning a beagle. I can like to sympathise.
Good, interesting, decent, sane people are quite hard to find on Twitter, but I think I’ve done ok in my choices so far. I don’t find it difficult to drop people if they get on my tits, though. My rule is “Three Strikes And You’re Out – Or Just One If I’m Feeling Particularly Irritable”. Actually, I just made that up, but I might give it a go.

Facebook: The blog is here: https://www.facebook.com/6000coza/

Things I use Facebook for:
1. Sharing new blog posts.
2. Marvelling at the number of people who will have their Brand New Excess Stock Audi Q7 in “white, please”.
3. Looking at pics of snakes and birds, photos of Sheffield and drone videos.

Things I don’t use Facebook for:
1. Everything else.

My Facebook won’t need much updating because I haven’t done anything with it in years anyway. It just sits there and I wander in occasionally and then usually wish I hadn’t.
Still, every new blog post on here is shared on there, so hit me up and don’t miss out.

Flickr: I put my photos here.

Is Flickr “social media”? I think that they’d quite like it to be. I use it to share my photographs and look at other people’s photographs. I don’t communicate with anyone on there. There are other, better apps for that sort of thing (see above). Still, if you show me yours, I’ll show you mine. Stop sniggering at the back!
(Note to self: a blog about the new changes to Flickr is required.)

Youtube: It’s for videos.

Is Youtube “social media”? I think that they’d quite like it to be. I use it to look at other people’s videos. I mean, I do have some videos uploaded on there, but I don’t actually expect people to look at them. I do follow some trashy accounts on Youtube though, and so a spring clean is required.

That’s it for me. No Snapchat or Linkedin. No Tumblr or Tinder. No Periscope, Plurk or Twitch.
And certainly no MySpace or FriendsReunited. Those were the days…

So as I said, I’m going to make an effort to tidy things up a bit. In the meantime, please feel free to follow me on any of the links above and I’ll endeavour to be equally and reciprocally social. 🙂

Fitter, happier…

more productive.

I’ll be honest. I’m not feeling very fit or very happy at the moment. But I have been rather productive today. It started with the realisation that the study was a mess. While I share this room with everyone else in the house (much like the rest of the house, to be honest), I have my own little corner of the study where my laptop, my camera stuff and Florence the Mavic live. My space. Not like the trashy old social media site. I mean it’s actually My Space.

But my little corner was a jumble of wires and gadgets and it was beginning to get me a bit stressed. So, I tidied it up. Not just in a rearranging the clutter kind of way, but in a bold, cable tie-utilising and attaching wires to the wall kind of way. The semi-permanent change kind of way that won’t allow for it to become messy again any time soon.

It looks better. I’m less stressed. Things are where I want them and it looks tidier, neater… more productive.

I’m almost tempted to embark on a digital spring clean while I’m on a roll.

Spring clean

This is a suitably out-of-season post then. While the Northern and Southern Hemispheres may differ diametrically in seasons, precisely neither of them are currently in Spring.
Never mind, we’ll soldier on.

This is about spring cleaning your technical devices, and it’s important:

Like your car, or your kitchen, your tech devices will run best when they’re maintained properly — and that means finding time to do all those low-level maintenance tasks that aren’t much fun, but can keep everything stable and smooth, and avoid problems in the future.

I can’t remember the last time that I maintained my kitchen to be honest, but well, yes – the car thing stands.

So, herewith a Gizmodo guide of several things that you can do to make your tech run more smoothly. They’re all common sense, but if it wasn’t for reminders like this, you’d probably just not remember to do them.
So yes, it’s dull, but it’s worth doing and it’s actually rather cathartic.

For several different reasons, I’ve done most of them over the last month or so. We’ve got a few new devices around at home, so that seemed like a good opportunity to sort some of these basic problems out. And, I have to say, my study is tidier and my devices are (currently) working flawlessly.

Set some time aside and have a tech spring clean. Thank me later.