Another new camera

That lovely new Nikon Coolpix camera I bought myself to replace the dying Fuji FinePix turned out to be less than perfect. I noticed after a couple of days some vignetting in the top right corner of the display, which seemed to have no cause.

Eventually, we went back to FNAC in Clermont-Ferrand with a view to exchanging it. We showed it to the salesperson, who agreed the fault and referred us to their after-sales people. The shop itself is as all high-tech shops - glitzy, bright and full of all manner of tempting stuff. After-sales is down two floors, out of the building and into a much less prepossessing building. Gone was the glitz; gone was the bright, airy, attractiveness. We were in the complaints department and we knew it.

For all that, the lady who dealt with us was courteous and efficient. When shown the fault, she immediately went off to locate a replacement. Interestingly, the plan was to replace the camera only. Although I had brought back everything, including the original batteries, as I received it nine days previously, she was only going to replace the unit. She even removed the wrist strap from the sick camera. I was baffled by that. I would have expected, as has happened before, a replacement boxed product. Still, that's the way they do it and it is strictly only that one unit that needs replacing.

They didn't have one.

She ended up giving us a credit note to use back in the main shop, within three months.

We went back to the shop and spent more time looking at cameras, specifications and so on, and finally settled for a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5 in a fetching shade of chocolate. It is the one that is advertised with the Golden Gate Bridge and the sphinx - but that's not why I bought it. In fact I didn't know that until I got it home and went off in search for the manual en anglais!I am not going to make any claims for this one - I don't want to be let down again. Tempting providence is one thing, but joking with fate is another thing altogether. I may be a lot of things but, unlike Boy George (with whom I share a birthday but nothing else), I am not a Karma comedian!

We have had a fabulous few days for weather again - our journey to Clermont-Ferrand was in the Mazda with the top down - and my youngest sister and her husband are coming this weekend, so I'm hoping the fine weather will continue. It makes such a difference for people on a break (no, not like Ross and Rachel were on a break, but on a bit of a holiday) if the weather is warm and dry. Sadly, a number of attractions tend to reduce their opening after the end of August, so their options may be slightly reduced, but I'm sure they will have a good rest, if nothing else. We do try to live our lives in the slow lane and try to make sure that our visitors have as relaxing a time as they can.

You may recall that, back in February, Clare hurt her thigh after using a fencepost to stop against when skiing rather briskly. That has never fully recovered, and it has, since then, looked like a chunk of muscle has escaped from its confines. She has been reluctant to see a doctor about it because of the language - my doctor surprised me this week by saying the first two English words I have heard him utter; my BP reading 14/8, which didn't help me because I was not familiar with the scale. Anyway, because it is advisable to nominate a GP as your médecin traitant, she was finally persuaded to see my doctor's wife who, as well as being a GP, speaks a little English. She had a quick consult whilst she was there and they spoke about her thigh. The doctor feels that it is probably just a deeply and heavily bruised muscle and that it should, in time, clear up. However, to be on the safe side, the doctor has ordered an MRI scan, and we are now waiting for the appointment.

For those who care, the reason it is advisable to nominate a médecin traitant is this; any medical costs incurred, including any specialist consultancies, treatment etc. will be reimbursed by CPAM (the state health insurance) at a reduced rate, unless such costs arise from your médecin traitant or through a referral by your médecin traitant.

Meanwhile, 310Km north of here, Tania has completed the purchase of her apartment! I am looking forward to seeing it once she has moved in and completed the decoration. She is also looking, longer term, at replacing the kitchen. The people from whom she bought it are extremely nice and are helping her to set up the electricity, telephone etc. accounts. We hope she will be happy there.

Wendy and Phil arrived on Saturday afternoon and it was such a nice evening that we broke out the barbecue. Both of them are very keen (and very good) photographers, and I took it as an opportunity to put my new camera through its paces.


This first photograph was taken on its sunset setting, and I have to say that I thought it did a good job.


The next photograph, taken at 9:30pm was a 60 second exposure, kind of supported on the balustrade, although not totally steady. Click on the image to enlarge it and you will see the extent to which the stars appear to move in 60 seconds.

The large, bright object at centre, close to the bottom of the picture is the planet Jupiter.

I know this, not because I know anything about things celestial, but because I run on my laptop the latest version of Starry Night Digital Download software from Imaginova (www.starrynight.com). Its default display is the current sky from our location and altitude and it identifies everything as well as giving notice of significant events. Tomorrow night we should be able to see Io transitting Jupiter. That is unlikely as, although we could see quite clearly through my little astronomical telescope the ball of Jupiter and her four moons, and even (just) make out Jupiter's bands, we are unlikely to be able to discern the disc of Io.

Having rehearsed the event through Starry Night's viewer, however, it looks as though we should just be able to pick up Io's shadow as it passes over Jupiter's upper atmosphere. There are, though, two reasons we may not see it, one natural and one, well, normal I suppose.

Natural? It may be cloudy. Normal? The event starts at a half past midnight and goes on for three hours. The possibility of my going on for three hours after a half past midnight is about as strong as that of Hobie sharing the visual experience with me!

That's about it for this week.

Have a good week.

À la prochaine

My old man said, "Follow the van!"

The title this week has no relevance whatever except that, early in the week, we saw a cock linnet for the first time in two years, so I thought it an event worth recording.


Another quiet week with mixed weather. I managed to get the grass cut on Monday, so it didn't look too disgusting for our visitors, who arrived on Saturday for a couple of days. Just as well I did, as it hasn't been dry enough since!

Nice people, this weekend's visitors. They have today (Sunday) gone off to climb the Puy de Dôme - the highest peak in the Massif Central, after which the department is named. We are staying at home to watch the F1 European Grand Prix from Valencia.

Clare was complaining that, when in Paris, she couldn't view in the camera photographs that she had taken at Tania's (fingers crossed - this coming week will tell for sure if it really is hers) apartment. When I looked at the camera, it was apparent that the only buttons working were on/off and shoot. No zoom, no flash, no macro, no menu - nut'n! I did some research online and it seems to be alarmingly common with the FujiFilm FinePix F470. It seems that between 18 months and two years of age a ribbon connector between the back panel buttons and the processor snaps! No-one is able to identify a source to replace the cable or even to identify the cable by part number. I haven't tried yet, but other people's experience seems to be that Fuji are not overly helpful, pointing out that the unit is out of guarantee. I shall do some digging and see what I can find. I have had a long-term love affair with Fuji kit and feel particularly let down by this otherwise excellent camera. It is now no better than a ten quid throw-away.

I have replaced it, within my limited budget, by a Nikon Coolpix P60. I was, the F470 notwithstanding, planning to replace it with another Fuji, but the model I wanted was about fifty percent more than I wanted to spend.


This little Nikon ticks most of the boxes, and has a proper viewfinder, too (albeit in the worst possible position - unless you like noseprints on the viewing panel). I hate trying to take photographs in bright light by peering into the rear display. The camera is reviewed here [link].

The Income Tax demand has arrived. It has to be paid in full by 15th September, then I can sign up to pay monthly from January next year. The arrangement is that it is assumed the 2009 bill will be the same as 2008 and it is paid in ten monthly instalments, the tenth being adjusted to take account of the actual bill next year. Better than paying it all at once, as I have to this year - looks like the sinking fund will be slipping a little lower in the water!

Golly. I think that is all I have for this week. I have checked through the photographs I have taken and incoming and outgoing emails and it seems that, apart from quite a lot of work on the Hawk Conservancy web sites, I haven't done much!

Have a good week.

À la prochaine

When Clare is away, Keith will ...

I've been on my own all week. Clare has been in Paris with Tania during that difficult phase of house purchase when you have been assured everything is going to plan, but you just know that there are a few things that can still go wrong - the cup is close to the lip, but they ain't touching yet. We are keeping everything crossed for her.

In the meantime, I have had a few projects that needed my attention which, coupled with the largely unfriendly weather, have kept me in the study for most of the week.

The first issue, which exercised my mind for a while, was that my newly refurbished PC does not have a parallel port. The laser printer was plugged into that PC after its network card gave up the ghost, so I was unable to make a connection. I couldn't use the parallel port on Clare's PC as that has the colour printer connected to it, that printer's USB connection having failed a few months ago. I finally decided to plug the laser printer into the Linux box and set up a secure network such that all printers can be used by all PCs including, hopefully, any guests making a wireless connection.

The next big issue was the estate agency site whose underlying software was in conflict with new security rules put in place by the hosting company. Not a major problem; the latest upgrade to that software deals with that. Upgrading that software is easy - upload the new files and run the install routine. I tried it on my Linux box at home and it took just over a half hour. I then started doing it on the live site and eleven hours, twelve support emails and a forty-five minute live chat session later the upgrade was complete (except for reworking the customisation we had done to the software, which was a couple of hours the following morning). I stand by my statement of a number of years ago - the only people who ever have stable software are horse breeders!

Our weather this week has been decidedly autumnal. Mind you, at almost 2000 feet altitude and close to the volcano chain we expect to be a tad cooler and subject to more windy and stormy weather than some other places. During dry spells I did manage to get out to cut some of the grass (the front of the house and the side of the road for a couple of hundred metres - the main lot at the back is too wet to cut yet) and pick a few veg. There is still a lot more to do but I did collect, in one brief session, over a Kg of French beans and ten overgrown courgettes totalling 4.3Kg.


I left the bulk of the courgettes, taking mostly only those that I considered had grown more than large enough, thank you very much indeed. I shall leave most of the stuff to ensure Clare has something to write about in her garden blog.

For my treat, I went down and picked a sweet corn, which I opened and ate raw on the way back up the garden. It really is the only way to eat the stuff – never mind getting it into boiling water as quickly as possible; it is so sweet and tender straight off the plant!


It's not perfect - there are a few holes where the fertilisation didn't work, but it is a lot better than we had last year, and it was gorgeous!

After all the kerfuffle we had to go through to become accepted into the health system here, I have now received from the relevant people, a request to justify our remaining in the system for another year. We need to prove that we are legally resident in France (copies of passports), that we are bona fide residents (copies of utility bills and Taxe d'Habitation demands) and that we are currently in the system (copies of Cartes Vitales and attestations). So that they know how much to charge us we also have to provide a copy of this year's Income Tax demand (not yet received but, fortunately, available on-line).

Now I remember why I needed the scanner and printer working!

That is now all ready to go off, although I shall wait until Clare gets back so I can put in a copy of her Carte Vitale, too.

Meanwhile, another visitor. Not human this time (although we have a friend from the gardening site arriving with her husband at the end of this week for a couple of days, which we are really looking forward to), but welcome nonetheless. Here (s)he is:


It's a slug eater! Much to be encouraged. It looks quite fat and healthy, so we are now considering whether to provide an accommodation opportunity in the shape of a covered pile of logs or similar. The only trouble is that would also provide more opportunities for the rat we occasionally see. We have recently stopped feeding the wild birds in a bid to discourage the rat, but in so doing we have deprived ourselves of the constant chattering and activity that we love to see through the back door.

Life is so hard!

Have a good week.

À la prochaine

Vegetables, dogs, decorating and travel plans.

Three varieties of potatoes (Rosabelle, Mona Lisa and Bleu d'Auvergne) edged with french beans run up a flagpole of yellow courgettes. All destined for the pot, and all from our garden and, as Jimmy Cricket said, "There's more". See Clare's occasional garden blog for the more that there most clearly is.

Hobie is just about hanging on in there. The weather has been warm and humid for most of the week, which seems to help him. We have noticed that he appears to suffer a little when the temperature drops, so I am not looking forward to the day summer ends.

Tania called us last weekend to let us know that she had seen a small dog sitting outside her club for well over three hours one night and, on at least one occasion, it had wandered into the road and almost been run over. Being the kind soul she is, she took it home with her and set about finding its owner. Shortly after she had contacted the Société Central Canine they called her back to let her know that the owner had reported the dog as missing.

Unfortunately for Tania, she had become quite attached to the dog, whom she had provisionally named Pompidou, for reasons that are far too complex to discuss here, and she was a little upset at having to give him back. Here he is with Tinkerbell (Tania's Chihuahua which, incidentally, she had purchased and named Tinkerbell some months before Paris Hilton acquired her Tinkerbell - so who copied whom?).


Following this experience, I think it will not be too long before Tania acquires a second dog, albeit possibly one smaller than Pompidou (real name Ugo). What sort of name is Ugo for a dog? It's almost as silly as the name Flash had when he came to us. When we first rescued them, eleven years ago, we kept Hobie's name, as it seemed right for a Labrador - even though just about everyone wants to call him Toby (he doesn't mind - he's deaf), but a Greyhound called Spud? I ask you!

Tania is very close to completing the purchase of her apartment on the outskirts of Paris - not in the hallowed district of Neuilly, where she lives now and where Nicolas Sarkozy bought a property not long before being elevated to the Presidency, but just across the river in what seems to be an OK area, and the apartment itself looks very nice indeed. Clare will be travelling to Paris tomorrow to spend a few days helping Tania with her preparations for the move and the two of them will be redecorating the apartment. It is, apparently, in good decorative order, but the colours are not to Tania's taste. Left to me, I would paint everything magnolia. I like magnolia. It reminds me of Waitrose Clotted Cream ice cream which, if not the original ambrosia of the gods, is a bloody close contender!

We are finalising our outline travel plans for our trip to the UK in October. We shall arrive in Folkestone during the evening of 2nd October and overnight there, before going on to Welsh Wales for a family wedding where we shall be until the morning of Sunday 5th October. From there we shall travel to Plymouth to see daughter Miranda and husband Dave, staying until Monday morning. We shall then be in England until our return home on Saturday 11th October. We haven't yet worked out our full itinerary for the week, as there are a number of people we shall wish to see and we shall aim to make steady eastward progress during the week. We know that we shall need to spend one full day in the Andover area (currently looking like Thursday 9th) and some time in the Reading area (probably Friday 10th) from where we shall leave for Folkestone on Saturday.

That apart - not too much happening here.

Have a good week.

À la prochaine

Another very quiet week.

Hobie is now off the tablets and seems to be coping. I still have grave doubts about his quality of life, though. Being blind and deaf his only interaction with the world around is by smell and touch, the latter often taking him by surprise. As he cannot see or hear, the only way he can be aware of an approach (smell doesn't seem to help him here) is to pick up vibrations from approaching footsteps. That would be fine if we had wooden floorboards, but the floor downstairs is tiled on concrete. Hence he often jumps when you touch him even gently. He has no way of knowing when his food is ready, unless he is already close enough to his bowl to smell its arrival. Happily his internal clock works and, if you touch him around six in the evening, he gets up and makes his way to his feeding area. Air movement tells him when a door is open so he can go outside to do his business. Apart from that, he sleeps. Somehow the word quality seems hugely inappropriate.

My PC came back on Thursday afternoon. There was a problem on Wednesday in that the system couldn't address the hard disks. It turned out that the 633MHz memory chips were not compatible with the processor, so Christophe needed to replace them with the 800MHz variety. I also had a new CPU and a new case, as well as the new motherboard and PSU planned.

Then I found out why the PC was such a bargain.

When I bought it, as a customer return/manager's special, I noticed that, although the box said Windows Vista Home Premium, it booted into XP Media Centre Edition. I was quite happy with that, as I still believe Vista to be related to the mound of cattle detritus alongside the barn next door.

When we started the PC, it wanted to activate Windows - probably because everything had changed. I couldn't activate online as the motherboard has a gigabit network card that needs special drivers installed in Windows. I couldn't get into Windows until it had been activated, so was getting nowhere. I called the activation telephone line, tapped in the numbers that had been generated by Windows and had a refusal. The only alternative then was to retry the telephone activation using the product key printed on the certificate stuck to the old case.

The certificate stuck to the old case was for Windows Vista Home Premium!

So I installed another copy of Windows and thus needed to reinstall all of my software! Deep joy!

I have spent some very interesting time trying to update my Visa details on PayPal. My Visa card expired on 31st July, so I wanted to register the new one. Just the expiry date and CVV to change, everything else is the same. Quite straightforward - you'd think!

They said, "upon checking your account we were unable to verify this credit card because an incorrect billing address was provided. Please enter another billing address or contact your issuer for clarification on the correct primary billing address for this card."

I replied, "The billing address you have is correct. I have just tried again using the same capitalisation, spelling and sequencing that I have just copied from this month's statement.

Let me put this in the simplest terms I can.

I know my address, I live here. Barclaycard knows my address, they successfully send statements here. eBay knows my address, I have had numerous purchases delivered here. Guess what? The address I know, the one Barclaycard knows and the one eBay knows are all the same.

Is there any intelligence in these systems? Does anyone with the authority to think look at this?"

Their response used exactly the same words as their initial email. I have yet to reply. I did, however, complete the satisfaction survey they asked me to do!!

I thought you might be interested to see how the emancipated bonsai is doing. This is it, a little over two feet tall now.

Still no idea what it is, though!

Nice news during the week. It looks like my sister and her husband may be coming here for a break at the beginning of September. We enjoy their visits and are looking forward to this one.

Finally, a piece of video from our Tour de France viewing last week.

Have a good week.

À la prochaine