Monday, August 02, 2010

Lots of news.
The big news is that Mungo has posted his first American blog entries. Don’t miss. Here is a picture of him at Boston airport last Tuesday, being signed for by my sister.
Here he is hanging out with the boys after a cycle ride to the beach – Mungo is lower right.

The sad news is that – I can scarcely bring myself to write the words – I broke TWO of my beloved Knit-Pick sock needles. I had laid the knitting on the floor beside my chair, and the chair somehow shifted itself on top of the knitting. Stupid, stupid. I have just ordered a set of 2.5mm KnitPro Symfonie’s from this source to replace them. I was afraid I’d have to get a whole pack of six sizes. Was I right to go for something that looks the same but might turn out not to be?


I finished the second rank of GGB’s for the right front, and should establish the third rank today. As usual, a picture will follow when I’m far enough past the second rank that it shows up properly.

Kristieinbc, my current thought is that I won’t knit anything for the Games this year. That could still change. I’ve got the pattern and there’s plenty of suitable yarn in the stash. Or the new “Knitting” magazine has a neat little garter stitch baby hat, preemie sizes included. It wouldn’t win but it could be useful to a premature baby and the more entries there are, the more the winners can feel justly proud. The entry form doesn’t have to go in until the week beforehand.

I’ll enter some vegetables: Four Potatoes, Six Pea Pods, and Collection of Four Vegetables should all be possible. One year I got a Second for my Collection of Four Vegetables.

MP3

Progress, of a sort.

I grabbed a Reith lecture from the BBC, downloaded it, and, I think, transferred it successfully to the MP3 player. When it is plugged in, the computer sees it as a removable storage device, and in that state the Reith lecture is clearly there and indeed the computer even started to play it to me at one point.

But I can’t get the MP3 player, when unplugged, to do the same. I can’t get it to do anything except scroll through the headings. The instruction book doesn’t help. I’ll take it along to Strathardle when next we go and set Archie to work on the problem. I don’t think he’s quite the technology buff his cousin Alistair is, but he’s a Modern Youth, and that should be enough.

Theresa and Linda, I tried a total search of my computer looking for *.mp3 files, after the Italians seemed to say that I had downloaded one, and nothing turned up.

More non-knit

The good news yesterday was that we met the man who very recently bought the flat next-door downstairs – he’s going to live there. This unremarkable-sounding fact is news because for the last ten years or so an absentee landlord has let the flat to students. Although it is next door, it is also, due to the kind of complicated architecture which often prevails behind those orderly Edinburgh facades, directly under part of our house, and in particular directly under our bedroom.

Joy was unconfined.

6 comments:

  1. You are doing brilliantly with the MP3 player. My father is still struggling with playing a DVD through the new television set!

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  2. I can't offer advice on MP3 players (mine is an iPod and talks directly to iTunes, and I leave it at that, which probably means missing out on some things i could do, but saves hair-tearing).

    But KnitPicks Harmony needles and KnitPro Symphonie are exactly the same - KnitPro make them for KnitPicks, I believe, and sell them themselves in the rest of the world. I have both kinds of tips for the interchangeable circular needles, and both kinds in sock needles, and there is no difference whatsoever.

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  3. sometimes the downloads are not in mp3 format, but another audio format. If you have windows media player on your machine you can search readable files from that. But really, a kid is best. My 10 year old nephew (see blog photo of his 'stir fry' had all the finer points of my ipod touch explained to me in no time.

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  4. There are so many variables among the different MP3 players and OS's. I recently updated to Win 7/Firefox 3 and the process is so much easier. One thing that usually works is to right click on the download link and choose 'save as'. That way you can see where the file is saved. Keep trying!

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  5. you may want to try this:

    sometimes when you hover your mouse over a link that is a downloadable file the address for that link will appear and the last part of it will be the actual file name.

    this may help you in your search ...

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  6. adding:

    the link's address will appear in your status bar - at the bottom of your browser (usually).

    you can also try RIGHT CLICKing on the link and choosing SAVE LINK AS and that will give you a popup box of Windows Explorer of your C drive with the file name already entered and then you can choose the folder to which you would like to download the file OR just make a note of the folder.

    most browsers have a place in their options where you indicate where you want your downloads to go - check that too for where the files may be disappearing.

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