Snippets of Life under The Virus
Random items.
Things I’m Glad I Bought
Since the COVID-19 situation broke, there’s two very different things I’ve purchased, that I’m very glad I did:
The half-size tongs. So useful for quickly – and safely – grabbing small food items, including to directly eat. Jelly beans, sour snakes, weetbix-into-the-bowl, biscuits, tea-bags without strings etc.
The Kobo eBook Reader. As covered here, the ePub format is what my library supports for their main eBook collection. There are thousands of books I can choose from. The current one is very good: “Apollo 11: The Inside Story“. The Kobo is just excellent. Being a Digital Native helps here (see next).
I do have a working Kindle and have (historically) purchased eBooks for it. But the range of ePub books seems greater, at least to my eyes. Plus my library doesn’t support it.
Also: Glad I’ve Got a Dishwasher. My house, which I lived in for 20+ years didn’t have one (a sorta broken one was there when I moved in). So glad – now I’m cooking/preparing 3 meals a day here – that the apartment does have one.
On Being a Digital Native
In a recent email exchange with a friend – lucky enough to live in the rolling (and rumbling :-)) hills of Gippsland, I referred to both she and I as ‘Digital Natives’.
Officially, it’s not true, but my take is that we, for most of our adult lives, have been immersed in assorted digital technologies and just ‘get’ them. Mine was totally by luck; I fell into it and never studied such things at Uni. But I’m glad I did pick it up, as it means I can learn and dabble with new tech things during this period.
Like just today; I was stuck ‘programming’ the astronomy software Stellarium to automatically do a series of steps – as part of a forthcoming Blog series. The helpful people on the forum quickly gave some examples. Even though it’s a different programming language (JavaScript) than I know (VB and Python), I could see the similar concepts and constructs. The light went on.
Also, setting up the Kobo to directly ‘talk’ to my local library’s eBook service wasn’t that easy. It didn’t need ‘hacking’, just the experience to understand that multiple levels of s/w were required, that one was out of date and thinking through the ‘download’ process then authentication setup on the PC and Kobo. But all of this was one-time…and is working fine.
Last Train Trips, City Visits and Films
During the walk in the lovely rain just now, I saw a train pull up at the station. It’s 5 mins walk from my place. “Mmm, when did I last catch a train? When did I last go into Melbourne? Was either to see a Film – and if so, which one?”
Being a Digital Native :-), it quickly hit me. Myki. Logged in to the website and found:
- Last train trip: March 2nd, but only 1 stop from/to Newport. Car there for new tyres.
- Last trip into Melbourne: 31st January. Train. That’s about the only way I go in. Aha, FB tells me I was off to Carlton (derr, Myki says that, now that I look). Off to see the disappointing 1917 at The Nova.
Plus a bit of research also showed:
- Last film: Feb 24th. The Lighthouse at The Sun (source: FB)
Things I’m Surprised I Haven’t Done
I honestly thought, during this time, I’d:
- Watch more films, particularly Australian ones. Virtually none. Some TV series but nowhere near as many as I’d thought.
- Do more ‘formal’ on-line training. Nope; just did a few YouTube instructional videos on Python.
- Learn to play more complex things on the guitar. No, despite it sitting right here near the TV-chair. Have been dabbling again with MIDI ; music creation on the PC with the free Cakewalk by Bandlab DAW and my little USB (music) keyboard.
Not sure why. Probably just filling up the days with other stuff.
Hey, I’m not pining and none of this is morbid or expressing any form of loss nor longing. I’m in a good place; learning and relaxed. We are on the way out of this.
However, I’m NOT making plans for where I’ll go, or who I’ll see, on Day V+1. I’m not even speculating on what date that might be. We’ve come this far to rush and stuff it up at the last hurdle, so I’m all for waiting to hear what the doctor’s say.
