Go on go on go on go on go on
I started tinkering thirteen years ago, good grief. I would install Linux on my old machine when I got a new one, and play around with it. I can’t remember all the distros, but most recently Mint for a while, then Bodhi, then Zorin - which I’ve also now installed on my PC.
I love how much choice there is - and how passionate people can be about their choices. It seems there’s a flavour for everyone.
Hallaig, by Sorley MacLean.Here translated by the poet from Scots Gaelic:
‘Time, the deer, is in the wood of Hallaig’
The window is nailed and boarded through which I saw the West and my love is at the Burn of Hallaig, a birch tree, and she has always been
between Inver and Milk Hollow, here and there about Baile-chuirn: she is a birch, a hazel, a straight, slender young rowan.
In Screapadal of my people where Norman and Big Hector were, their daughters and their sons are a wood going up beside the stream.
Proud tonight the pine cocks crowing on the top of Cnoc an Ra, straight their backs in the moonlight – they are not the wood I love.
I will wait for the birch wood until it comes up by the cairn, until the whole ridge from Beinn na Lice will be under its shade.
If it does not, I will go down to Hallaig, to the Sabbath of the dead, where the people are frequenting, every single generation gone.
They are still in Hallaig, MacLeans and MacLeods, all who were there in the time of Mac Gille Chaluim: the dead have been seen alive.
The men lying on the green at the end of every house that was, the girls a wood of birches, straight their backs, bent their heads.
Between the Leac and Fearns the road is under mild moss and the girls in silent bands go to Clachan as in the beginning,
and return from Clachan, from Suisnish and the land of the living; each one young and light-stepping, without the heartbreak of the tale.
From the Burn of Fearns to the raised beach that is clear in the mystery of the hills, there is only the congregation of the girls keeping up the endless walk,
coming back to Hallaig in the evening, in the dumb living twilight, filling the steep slopes, their laughter a mist in my ears,
and their beauty a film on my heart before the dimness comes on the kyles, and when the sun goes down behind Dun Cana a vehement bullet will come from the gun of Love;
and will strike the deer that goes dizzily, sniffing at the grass-grown ruined homes; his eye will freeze in the wood, his blood will not be traced while I live.
And here a reading by the poet set to music by the late great Martyn Bennett:
Some of us are quiet because we’re listening. I’ve made some very solid friendships that way.
I love the story where he kills everyone in the world except for that one disfunctional family.
I’m all for this innovation if it means commercial bee farmers use the supplement and it helps native bees compete for natural pollen. People get very sentimental about honeybees, but honestly even as a hobbyist with just a few colonies I feel like a “baddie”. There are 200+ species of bees in the UK, most living in tiny colonies. At the moment bumblebee queens are out foraging for pollen and nectar, enough so they can start laying (only the queens live through winter). In my hives the overwintered workers are also out foraging, thousands of them. Multiply that by the hundreds of hives in a commercial operation and you can see the issue.
I’ve found the opposite - using Linux on my PC has been a breeze. I expected drama connecting my phone and e-reader, but no. Plain sailing, everything just works. I’m so glad I jumped when I did, hearing some of the recent Windows nonsense.
I’m on Zorin if it helps. The free version.
Ouch. Big ouch.
I was walking the Cornish coastal path past some cliffs and saw a side path that the map showed led to a cave. It was really a narrow ledge, cut in the cliff side. I walked along it, stepping over a gap and spent a bit of time looking at the cave.
Heading back to the main path, I had the sudden realisation that the gap I’d stepped over earlier was where a section of the ledge had broken off. Which meant that the bit I was standing on was also at risk of breaking off. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced fear like it. I got a shot of adrenaline that left me shaking. The sea was a long way down, big waves pounding jagged rocks. I had to hug the cliff and wait for my heart rate to settle before I could step over the gap again.
I picked up a hitchhiker just outside Edinburgh once, and drove him all the way to Devon. The first thing he said was “Aren’t you afraid to pick someone up when you’re on your own?” I replied “You’re right, I’ll drop you off at the next lay-by.” His face!! Happily he realised how dumb he was, apologised, and we had a good trip.
I hitchhiked a lot in my twenties, ie in the 1970s, and only had a couple of scary experiences. Once my boyfriend and I were picked up by a guy who was a Vietnam veteran. He told us horror stories while driving at high speed down one of NZ’s windiest roads. Another time in Australia the driver turned out to be a drunk. It was a long ride so we stuck with it, until it got dark and very frightening. My boyfriend finally persuaded the guy to let him drive.
The best hitchhiking experience was in France, around 1980. A friend and I got a lift from a very friendly, nice man. He knew a scenic route to Marseille, ok fine. At one point he asked if we smoked, and produced a big bag of weed. Bonjour! Very strong weed. Happy days.
Aaaand then he ran out of petrol. On a deserted stretch of scenery. It’s ok though - he had a jerry can in the boot and put out his thumb to hitch ahead to where he thought there was a petrol station. He was away for a very long time, and we started getting paranoid. There was a briefcase in the back seat. We opened it, and it was full of pornography - photos stuck to boards that fit exactly into the case. Sacré bleu!
Very stoned and fearing the worst (kidnapping), we decided to hitch away and abandon the car. Stuck out our thumbs and a car stopped. A man jumped out, and it was our driver! The petrol station was closed, so he had hitched PAST us to another one. He put the petrol in the car and we continued on our way. He took us all the way to Marseille as promised, gave us a couple of joints and waved us goodbye.
I’m 73 and I reckon I’m learning more now than when I was in my 20s. I have a few things I’m interested in and I have a real thirst to know more about them. Not like in school where I was forced to remember a load of names and dates.
I might have hit a wall as far as tech goes though - I see people here on Lemmy talking about servers and I’m interested, but struggle to understand the basics.
I’m old and tech-y, and my contemporaries still use the “I’m too old to learn” line on me - and then ask me to sort out their issue. Deeply annoying.
Thanks! For me, finding books I’d bought and paid for locked away underlined the stupidity of DRM. If they were print books, I could lend them to people, sell them, give them away. Because they’d belong to me, I bought them. No fuss about intellectual property rights or whatever.
Have you done any DRM stripping recently? I bought books back in my Kindle days that are now trapped there. They made changes last year so you can’t easily transfer files on to your Kindle reader and I think they tightened the DRM too. I tried via Calibre, which used to work but doesn’t any more.
Ha ha, that reminds me of some of the performative reading I did as a teen - ostentatiously reading a “cool” or difficult book to impress people. The joke was on me when I started reading War and Peace. I got swept away by it, loved it, and was condemned to carrying around this massive paperback until I’d finished it.
Yes. I’ve got a Kobo reader but mostly use the Kobo phone app to read the books I buy there. For my own files, eg from Project Gutenberg, I use ReadEra Premium, which is superior to the Kobo app. It can handle just about any format, including .mobi, which not even Amazon’s Kindle app does now. I like it a lot.
Finally, there’s Libby, the library app. I use it mainly to read the New Yorker magazine. You need to belong to a library first. Sign up to Libby and you can borrow from the library’s collection. Mine allows you to borrow a book for two weeks, so I mainly stick to magazines.
I’m so used to reading on my phone now that I find print books cumbersome and limiting - I always have half a dozen books on the go and can’t imagine carting around that many books.
I remember telling someone my sister and I were going to the Dordogne in France. He said, “Oh but it’s so touristy.”
We went anyway, and it was awesome! The cave paintings alone made it worthwhile, but there was also beautiful scenery, great food, interesting towns. Highly recommend.
Venice would be my pick too. I was there to see the Vogalonga, which was spectacular. I spent a week wandering the canals, toured the Fenice and a hundred churches. I also had a lesson in rowing Venetian style, in the canals and out on the lagoon. The locals I met (mostly while food shopping) were gracious and friendly. . Magic city.
Mate, I know people who died as babies, as teenagers, a friend was murdered in her thirties, life can be over in the snap of the fingers at any age. My own father died in his fifties; that has had a huge effect on how I live my life. I take risks, I stretch myself.
I remember when he first threw his toys out of the pram over a wind farm visible from one of his Scottish golf courses. He’s lost all his battles here, hah!
Wind farms aren’t ideal given all the infrastructure needed, but they are certainly preferable to a war.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo