Moments in Time

Wanted to change the file format for saving screenshots on the Mac for something I was fiddling with and it turned out to be surprisingly easy, this is the solution I found:

1. Launch Terminal, located at /Applications/Utilities.

2. Type or copy/paste the following commands into the Terminal window. Press the return or enter key after you enter each line of text:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg

killall SystemUIServer

The above commands will set the file format to JPG. You can use any of the following for the value following "Type" in the first command above: jpg, tiff, gif, png, or pdf.

Easy morning pottering about but then had some matters to attend to in Newcastle so set off into town after lunch. Lorena doing sterling work getting ready for our trip and also wanted to do some clarinet practice so this was a solo journey.

Managed to find pretty much everything I wanted in Newcastle and bumped into some friends, Baz and Kevin from the Tyneside Vagabonds Cycling Club which was nice. Bought some inner tubes, needed some with a 60mm valve length as the ones if currently have are for either deeper or shallower rims these should be just the job. For some reason I always seem to end up with the wrong tube when I need one, seems to be a problem plenty of folks have from past observations!

Lorena out at the concert band this evening so I spent some time getting all my stuff ready for the trip. Also did some experimenting with different white balance settings on my video camera, I think these colour cards are going to be very useful and I'm looking forward to shooting some trial clips with them if we get some decent weather.

Sounds as if the weather is still pretty good out in Majorca so just hoping against hope that it will stay that way and that I can build a little fitness during this trip, I'll try anyway.

Twitter Updated: October 06, 2014 at 10:28AM @tyabblemons @postachio Thanks for that, have posted my thoughts as a disqus comment, personal preference I guess but good to have options!

Facebook Updated: Steven Gilligan http://ift.tt/1s2eUG0 Vacancy: university lecturer. Must be able to read a .pdf out loud that everyone else in the room is capable of reading themselves. Salary: £outrageous p.a.

Twitter Updated: October 06, 2014 at 11:05AM @The_Cycle_Hub Now that is a work of art, I could almost drink one of those, if you twisted my arm :-)

Twitter Updated: October 06, 2014 at 05:39PM @firsthippy Wow! That's a serious ripoff! We are doing the same as you and taking our TomTom with us, and a map :-)

Twitter Updated: October 06, 2014 at 11:06PM @firsthippy Hmm, no expert with TomTom tech but the maps are not proper maps, more of a schematic representation if that makes sense?

Facebook Updated: This Will Give You True Perspective About the World http://ift.tt/1vJu4xY Just to give you an idea of what the world really is... I loved this, sure puts things into perspective!

As expected had a small rebound weight gain after the large drop and went back up by a pound today. No big deal, had quite a feast yesterday and also didn’t go out walking so there will be an increased storage of glycogen with it’s associated water, this will be easily and quickly reversed. Perfectly happy with still being 2.5lbs down on my start weight, all going in the right direction.

Decided to have a quick look at car hire options to add a different dimension to our upcoming trip and it actually looks very reasonable. There are always the extras to protect this and protect that but the headline cost of £86 for an 18 day trip is well worth considering. On this trip we will be self catering as an experiment so a little runaround would be great for the local shopping and would enable us to really get all over the island and cart a decent video camera around too.

Sorting out a hire car turned out to be a right pain in the backside because there were "system problems" at the Jet2 end which meant that they were not able to access booking details etc. They ended up ringing me back when things were sorted out and we now have a hire car, who knows how it will work out but it wil be a different experience. On this basis I am going to take some decent video gear over with me and when we are out and about I will make shooting some material a priority, too good an opportunity to miss.

Bought a set of WarmCards the other day which I’m hoping will help me get better control of white balance in my video recordings in particular so this trip would potentially be the ideal place to give these a try. As always I am going to fail miserably when it comes down to traveling light but such is life, Lorena is very tolerant!

Nice relaxing evening after a lovely dinner and then the weekly pleasure of Downton Abbey which we always enjoy. Definitely been spending too much time on the computer recently and I'm looking forward to spending a whole lot more time outdoors over the next few weeks, should be good.

£86 to rent a car for almost three weeks in Majorca seems like a pretty decent deal to me. Gonna pack the proper video camera :-)

— Quentin (@VeloTraining) October 5, 2014

Twitter Updated: October 05, 2014 at 05:20PM @postachio Everything "on the roadmap" is something to annoy users. Currently I'm a step down from Blogger having lost search + navigation.

Pouring with rain this morning so I couldn’t be more pleased to be setting off for Majorca soon. Checked the current forecast for Majorca and as things stand it looks as if it’s likely to be generally warm and sunny with a few cloudy days but hell, I can cope with that! The plan for the holiday is to use it to properly launch a general return to fitness and generally use the time like a training camp, hoping to make better use of the health spa facilities at the place we go to which generally we haven’t really bothered with. That’s the plan anyway ;-)

Lorena and I once again today turned our minds to how we might end up with our tandem out in Majorca but so far we have pretty much drawn a blank. We had hoped that without it’s wheels it might fit in the back of the X-Trail but even then I’m almost certain it is too long. One final check needed but it’s looking as if it might not be a runner. Thought we could have delivered it out there when we go out late in 2015 on a road trip and we would have had it there then for future trips, still not completely given up on the idea!

Not looking bad out there is it!

Down another touch on the scales this morning so currently 3.5lbs down from my start point so just over a third of the way to my target which is good. Probably have a rest today from walking around especially with the rain so will lose a bit of ground but as long as the general trend is good that’s just fine by me.

Had some domestic matters to attend to today, first thing was to sort of out gas and electricity suppliers for the forthcoming year and to fix the prices. Did the groundwork for this not long ago so needed to just complete all the details. As is always the case getting through was not as easy as it should be so I had to resort to Twitter to get things moving. Finally got everything resolved and it does surprise me how often resorting to Twitter can at least register one’s feelings, SSE did at least get back to me:

@VeloTraining @SSE Hi. I hope you got through earlier. If not, I can arrange a callback on Monday if you complete some details on our >>>

— SSE (@YourSSE) October 4, 2014

Have now taken the Slideshare project about as far as I intend to and I have reached the point where I have a system I can use easily and quickly and that’s really all I need. I think that completes the set, I wanted to be able to embed slideshows, video, audio, and still images into my weblog and I can now do all those things quickly and conveniently so no point in continuing to tinker with things.

I have quite a few lectures from my working life available as Powerpoint files so I did wonder whether I might upload those to Slideshare for posterity but I’m not sure I can actually be bothered. Doubtful that anyone would actually be interested so probably not worthwhile! Work is history!

Twitter Updated: October 04, 2014 at 12:14PM @SSE You position may be clear but that doesn't help your existing customers who are unable to get through to you on the telephone!

Twitter Updated: October 04, 2014 at 12:15PM Absolutely hopeless, again, trying to get through to @SSE on the telephone.

Today’s fun and games kicked off with a nice 7 mile walk with a few hills thrown in so that got the exercise done for the day. Then it was off down to Ashington for various things, the first of which was a haircut at The Forum in readiness for the upcoming holiday. That done off to the bank for Eric and then to get a few bits and bobs from the shops. I hate going to the shops in Ashington, it’s all just so damned grim.

Onward from there to do some more grass cutting at the cottage and then to deliver Eric’s spending money which I sort out for the old chap. Spent a little time at Mum’s Cottage with Eric, nice for him to have some company even if it is just me!

Once home continued with my travails trying to get decent quality images in these SlideShare slideshows and I think I’m slowly getting there. Been experimenting with Powerpoint, Keynote, Preview and Automator trying to find the best approach to the various issues I’ve encountered. Currently think I will end up using either Keynote or Powerpoint but I’m not at the final decision point yet.

Work with Postach.io is going pretty well now, things seem to have settled down and after all there is really no way back now after the work I have put into it. I did do a bit more experimenting with the "Pages" feature which is pretty neat and I will be fine tuning that side of things over the next few weeks.

Weight management still going in the right direction, pleased to say that I am now 3.2lbs down since my start date so already almost a third of the way towards my ten pound target. Dropped suddenly yesterday so that will almost certainly go into reverse in the next day or two!

Facebook Updated: The Alnwick Clarinet Trio http://ift.tt/1sPPgp7 Listen to The Alnwick Clarinet Trio by LFieldBoden #np on #SoundCloud Made a few short sound recordings of The Alnwick Clarinet Trio this afternoon, I reckon SoundClod is a nice little system for this kind of thing.

Twitter Updated: October 03, 2014 at 12:57AM @postachio @SlideShare @Flickr I've done some experimenting, here's my output: http://t.co/nGXgrNTMJ8 Slideshow viewable on an iPad.

Have finally reached the section of this Postach.io weblog work where all my material is already in Evernote so it should make it easier to get things posted, that's the theory at any rate. As it happened this section of the work took me a very long time because of the volume of embedded media in the notes all of which I had to transfer into the correct format so that things worked properly. Never mind, well worth it in the end.

Lorena off out for a walk with Alison Slassor so I'm sitting here at the moment working my way through my May 2014 diary entries, just hoping that uploading them will be a smooth process and that I won't hit any major synchronisation issues again with Postach.io. For some reason this part of the work did go more smoothly in terms of synchronisation which I was grateful for, certainly saved me a great deal of hassle which there would have been had there been lots of delays as there have been previously.

Been a pretty slow day and I will be very glad when this work is done, which it now almost is, it will be nice to get back to a more normal existence and to spend a whole lot more time outside. Lorena was out at the band this evening and she seems to have had a nice time so that is good. I did write up a bit of a summary of my experiences with the transfer from one blogging platform to another which can be accessed here if anyone is interested.

This will be my first "live" posting as pretty much everything else has been backloaded from my previous platform, hopefully everything should work a whole lot more smoothly from here on, fingers crossed!

The job is done!

Twitter Updated: September 29, 2014 at 01:43PM Disappointing that the @postachio system does not offer a search feature and Google search can't be added as no access to Source Editor :-(

Twitter Updated: September 29, 2014 at 11:26PM @postachio @tyabblemons My thoughts and experiences of things so far, might be of interest to potential users? http://t.co/6gq4aqlWy3