Glad it's all over

 

It has been a trying number of weeks that has encrouched a little on blog posts with both personal health issues and Dad's too with ups and downs more suited to mountain ranges  than everyday life.

Then there has been complications and much anxiety with dealings with the Department for Work & Pensions with changes in arrangements, fresh claims, procedures and issues with a digital by default "gateway" with sticking plasters added as it became obvious that really would not work for all apart from massive issues with the I.T. system designed specifically for it too.

With me everything has been handled over the phone as I don't do online well - with my paws they soon start loosing grip and shaking - and seemingly in this district they'd closed off  the personal visits too but it's all been resolved with just periodic reminders of existance to by phoned in around every two weeks.

There won't be a "Monday Blog" tm as I'm away this weekend it there simply will not be time for that.

Sense of place

Bit of a cool start to the week here, working through some troubling family issues I'd sooner keep off the internet in any form and in some respects we return to the notion of "Sense of place" which to be fair has been a pretty big feeling over the decades.

Structurally the usual thing was great grand parents, grandparents, older siblings and then you before getting to more recent additions that might of included a child of your own or that of cousins say 

We generally pay more respects to thoughts, feelings and advice of older people not least for having been around they've learned from mistakes and tend to have a good handle on how things work.

You might well of learned things even as a child drom them by they skills like fixing your bike to how to conduct your life and generally keep out of trouble.

Within my family however whatever the chronological age might be  I am  a "boy" within it which isn't that I may be asked and do contribute to family discussions such as that I referred to earlier on nontheless ultimately I yield to them.

They are the grown ups.

It comes into play where for instance I may make drinks for members who turn up  while they may be engaged in conversation and I may sit on the floor, offering up any seat I might ordinarily had been in.

The fact I am dressed as a  smart casual boy in their presents just adds to whole dynamics, a mature boy who can be trusted rather than sat by the table as an adult.

That is my sense of place within the family and wider community and I have to say it works better for me than pretending to be fully grown up.

Accountability and the Middle

Our lives as Middles have this running through them surrounded as we are around our clothes, our cute stuffies as part of everyday domestic life which takes me a very important area of Middles life and that is accountability.

Accountability as a concept is simply that as Middles we are expected to be held to account for those things that we are responsible for, such as our learning, our house-hold chores, the things we agree to do for others and our attitudes and behaviour as they affect us and those in our lives.

This sense of place thing does seem to matter  so actually putting us back in boyhood clothing and rules makes some sense.

This is because, whatever as individuals we have difficulty with, we are capable of exercising some that within the Adult world we interact with. We need  and are expected to meet some basic standards to be with you such as being truthful, reliable and so on.

As middles, we need our parent-like figures to support, guide and discipline us when we mess up, letting ourselves and others down and to learn to expect ourselves to be held to account as a matter of course rather than excused from it, that some of us including me have been in the past.

Having to accept swift, strict  punishment  is something some may baulk at but it is a need of ours to help us make the best of ourselves.

It’s a important learning we should not be excused if we are to grow up to be as mature as we can within our limits.

Improved optics

 

You might recall on one of the blogs me going on in 2020 about getting a DSLR as I had grown up using a film based Minolta set up and was missing the creativity when I needed to use digital compact camera for blog posts as you could wait days before getting film and a set of scans back to use.

That camera, the Nikon D3500 had served me well but I was never totally happy with the supplied "kit" lens a 18-55mm that while okay had no focus scale indication and I felt did lack something when it came to contrast compared with the used telephoto that was more expensive I bought to complete the basic outfit.

I decided then recently to to get a replacement for the 18-55mm and this was it, made using better quality optics and while covering slightly less at the wide angle end (the 18-55mm covered what a film 28mm would while this is just under 34mm) it does go to moderate telephoto which saves a bit of lens changing for day trips.

You can disable the auto focus which you do sometimes need to  easily on the lens while it does benefit from having image stablization which hlep with hand holding in low light or, as with me,having the odd tremor in my hands.

It was bought used coming complete with with a lens hood for keeping reflections from the sun's rays under control a set of filters, full instructions and all the original packaging.

This is noticably  sharper, focuses a tadge faster and has much better contrast  requiring less correction in my photo program to get images to look right.

Hi Resolution audio revisited

Looking around, spotting the odd old Digital Audio Player seemed to be missing in action I was more concerned that the cards had content I didn't appear to have back ups for a whole batch of them that were downloads rather than copies "ripped" from my own extensive cd collection.

There was a buzz around 2015 around the idea of better than cd quality sound that would be played either at home over music players, possibly connected via servers to a Network or on Portable Digital Audio Players from SD card memory cards bypassing the issues that bedeviled attempts at popularizing higher quality physical formats such as DVD-Audio and the Super Audio cd as you needed no new hardwear as most digital audio gear can play them whereas the cd player can only play cds and to get the benefits a sacd has to be played on a dedicated player.

Any way a few of these Hi Res downloads were found on a external hard drive but in the meantime one site I had used no longer did downloads so there was no chance of redownloading but an accidental poke in my Profile details at a site I usually buy classical cds from I had bought many of them but because they didn't show up in the normal purchase history only via Downloads that doesn't have a clear seperate menu.

Having installed on a Windows machine the download manager for the site I've now re-established a folder with them and set that machine to play out using a USB-C to Coaxial digital adaptor to a spare input on the Rega digital to analogue convertor in their native resolutions.

While streaming is more popular with many classical HD downloads you get a PDF booklet that tells you about the recording and performers so while stream can be useful to get the feel of a particular work or performance, for everyday enjoyment the cd or especially a high resolution file can be more enjoyable.

Certainly after some ten years from when a number of these were paid for Tasmin Little performing The Lark Ascending in 24 bit 96hhz resolution sounds amazing.

The day after lessons

The good thing about boarding school is after school lessons are over, then you'd a ready assembled group for games and all manner of activities plus facilities you may not of had at home.

We played Table Tennis not that with my co-ordination I was good at it or squash, we played board games that didn't get too argumentative or might go to the theatre or cinema as a group with staff to keep an eye on us.

We did have a video recorder which wasn't something we had until I left school so we could see shows you otherwise might of missed in an age without iPlayer or school might hire a video for us to watch but it was always a shared thing.

The only thing that might be personal was your radio or tape recorder that was in the dorm but you needed to keep the volume down a bit if you didn't want a unexpected knock on the door.

After all these years it is that shared experience, the names of those you spent that time with that come back to you.

Who are we?

Bit of a different post this week.

Before all this identity politics business kicked life was pretty simple that we all belonged to four corners of the UK and so we would for thing just about our part show our English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish flags with pride.

Collectively we've never been big on flags and saluting them outside of military or ceremonial contexts while for things around the whole United Kingdom, we'd show the Union Flag and generally it wasn't one or the other.

Recently there have been many flags been put up, often the Cross of St. George so some say is it that we've changed that relationship or is it more around politics?

While no one can  deny the Cross of St, George has been used by Nationalists and by some for racially intolerate purposes perhaps when people feel identity is under question and some have issues referring to native identities while other groups are encourage to share theirs, shouldn't we all be free to show our pride for whatever part of the UK we are from and for bring British regardless of race, religion or country of birth?