Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

The computer we bought today will be the last major purchase on our part for a while although I imagine that I could talk myself into getting Office 2007 for it rather than using Office 2003 that we already have. The new computer comes with a limited time edition of it so I’ll likely have a look into the cost of a student upgrade as they’re usually sensibly priced.

We’ve a slide scanner and digitizer pencilled in as our next IT purchases.

The slide scanner will let me use the massive library of slides that I’ve built up over the years rather than having to license photos for Whole Earth.

The digitizer is to let me improve the quality of maps used on our listings sites and to bring them all in-house. One limitation that we have at the moment is the totally over the top price to license maps for some countries: no license and you’re stuck with the very basic maps that the CIA put out in their World Factbook.

Snag is that a decent digitizer can run to hundreds of pounds and it’s something that we’d use relatively rarely: after the initial burst of usage, we’d probably only be getting it out of the box once or twice a year.

We were a little bit optimistic about how long it would take to do everything this morning but managed to be driving away from the dealership around 3pm which was pretty good going on the whole.

As you might expect, Credit Agricole was the worst. It took almost an entire hour from when we went in the door until we walked out with the bank cheque. That was with only two people in front of us too!

We dropped off the hire car next before heading over to organise the insurance at MAAF. Funnily enough, it turned out to be somewhat easier to do than it was doing the whole lot in English had been for the Alto. We’ve to get a statement from the old insurance company but otherwise that’s it. Well, we have to attempt to get a statement from the old insurance company I should say as they’ve pretty much completely ignored us over the last four months so it might not be quite so simple.

By then it was after 1200 so we had lunch before going on to the car dealership. Since we didn’t have any proof of address with us they seemed to be able to carry on without it which has us wondering why they asked for it in the first place, though we often wonder that in France. Having a leaf through what’s included in the price we’ve paid it looks like the overall price is lower than it was on the Internet as they’ve included a few substantial things that weren’t in the online price and, of course, we’d not to pay for hotels, petrol and tolls between here and Paris either.

Anyway, our little car is doing quite nicely. Between the low price of diesel and the 50+mpg that it gets we’ll likely not even have to top it up ’til well into next week.

From around June to August we expect to not be able to do anything that isn’t directly concerned with looking after guests. Non-essential administration just piles up, not to be looked at ’til September.

With the lower level of reservations in September, you’d expect that we’d be able to get stuck into that backlog of administration but that usually doesn’t happen ’til October as September represents the final month before the exam for my course so I end up needing to spend more time working on the Spanish which certainly makes up for any lower number of guests.

Also, some of that non-essential administration generally gets to move into the category of “essential” or at least “needing done” when it’s left undone for a few months which takes up the level of work required.

In fact, it’s not ’til well into October that we start to feel that we’re beginning to get on top of things again.

We figured that when the guy said that it would be here in October, that would really mean early November at best but he’s just called to say that it’s arrived which has thrown us a little.

For a start, we need to get the money organised to pay for it which’ll take us at least a day to do.

Then we need to sort out the insurance. Well, we’ve started on that already in that we got an online quote from MAAF which was getting on for EUR 200 cheaper than the renewal for the Alto insurance was from GAN. Yeah, I know, we don’t have the Alto any more but they still sent out the insurance renewal anyway.

Finally, for a change, I’d actually renewed the car rental early so I’d to cancel that as the new rental period kicks in tomorrow.

I’m sure that many of you have photos just like this one. It was taken in 1909 and shows my great grandparents and their whole family at that time.

You won’t have terribly many photos like that because at that time having your photograph taken was a grand event and, as you can see, everyone dressed up for the occasion. In fact, that remained the case for quite some time afterwards and it was really only as we edged into the 1950s that the number of photographs taken went up with cameras getting into the hands of amateurs in large numbers.

So, chances are, that you have quite a lot of photos from the 1950s and in increasing numbers through to the 1990s.

And then we all began to go digital and took even more photos than we ever did before.

Yet, how many of those digital photos will be printed? Don’t forget that it’s almost certainly only going to be those that are printed that will be available to future generations. Your grandchildren certainly won’t have anything capable of reading that SD card with your wedding photos on it for sure. Ah, but you wiped it when you copied the photos onto the computer, didn’t you?

But what about those photos on the computer? Have you taken a backup copy of them? You certainly can’t depend on the hard disc lasting forever so if you haven’t a second copy of them, chances are that you’ll lose them sooner or later. Even if you do make backup copies, how good are you at maintaining them? After all, backup discs wear out too. And, of course, there’s the issue that your grandchildren probably won’t be able to read that backup disc anyway, unless you’ve made a point of copying it onto the latest type every 3 to 5 years (don’t forget that USB drives have only been available for around 5 years and probably won’t be around for another 5).

So, despite us taking lots more photos, I suspect that our grandchildren will only have a very small selection of them to look at ie those that we’re printed out over the years.

As for video? No chance. Right through the 1980s you probably recorded your video on VHS but now that those players are starting to be phased out, have you bothered to copy those tapes onto your computer or onto DVDs? If you don’t do it within the next five years or so, you could find that you no longer have something capable of playing the tapes.