... and the News from New Jersey ...

The AG "crafts". That is to say, she makes physical things that are of practical use to herself and others. Whereas I have, on occasion and when the need has been apparent, been known to produce carpentry and items of metallic mechanics. The AG, on the other hand, takes pieces of sheep and transforms them. Yes - I do the same - using my teeth, but she uses needles and wool - she knits. Socks, shawls, scarves, gloves, and hats. You've maybe seen some of these on this blog. She also takes existing knitware (old sweaters) and turns it into more useful things like handbags. She produces hats and gloves from polar fleece (i.e. shredded plastic water bottles), and pouches from handles of old shop bags.
So where are we right now, and why am I te all .lling you all this?

Read on !

Three weeks ago we went to a craft fair at the end of our road. The AG has done this before, but I haven't. Being the dyed-in-the-wool geek that I am, she was fairly sure that I was going to be bored out of my mind and going to slope off quietly to find a pint or ten of Guinness at the nearest pub. Well, curiously enough, I wasn't bored at all. In fact, I was quite happy for two whole days away from the keyboard. We sold enough to cover our stall fees, cover food for the two days, and pay a couple of bills. Not a huge amount at all, but encouraging.

But why was I not unhappy to be parted from my PC ? Remember: this isn't really something that's happened more than three or four times in the last thirty years! (and you thought that you were addicted to computers!). Partly it was novelty, and the enjoyment of being with the AG all day. A lot of it, however was, I believe, down to our neighbours. One, just on Sunday,was a lady selling decorated bottles. On the other side, however, was a family selling picture frames that the wife had made. They were attractive and well made, and the family themselves were warm, welcoming, and friendly to their "newbie" neighbours - us.

The next week we went to a town open day nearby, and had about the same amount of success, but without the same friendly neighbours. The new neighbours were friendly enough - don't let me mislead you - but those on that first weekend were definitely superior!

The Much-Troubled Laptop.
Well, the SD's Acer Aspire One came to me last Thursday. It looked just as it would have done when it first came from the factory, except that there was no extra software on it. Nothing - just a note to say that there was a new hard drive in it together with standard software.

Here it is again - for real, this time, and not just company pictures. Here it's just starting up. You can see (if you enlarge the picture) the camera at the top-centre of the picture. You can pull images in from that into your applications if your application knows about a standard called TWAIN. If you're in a word processor (OOo Writer, for example) you select Insert and Picture. Then you choose Scan (not From File) and then Select Source. Once you've selected your source (Camera, Scanner, ...) you can go the same route and choose Acquire and get an image. Easy!

BTW, if you're wondering, the laptop peeking in around the corner is the edge of my 17" Acer laptop, it's almost three years old now. It also had a disk catastrophe in the first three months of its life, and it too was fixed by Acer. No problems since then, I'm happy to say!

Anyway, I stuffed it full of software that the SD needs and sent it off to her on Saturday, so she should get it tomorrow or Wednesday. Have fun, M !!

TTFN