miss luna blue eyes

22 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by in casa azahar, cats, home

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My loopy Luna, caught in a quiet moment. She is my one cat that is PURE CAT (Loki is a dog, Morcilla is an alien being who was sent here to live among us) and, well, you gotta admire her. Because she truly doesn’t give a flying. She lives her life, and makes her needs known (food, occasional cuddles), but otherwise you wouldn’t even know she was here. Unless standards fall, like if I let the cat sand go an extra day without changing it (she then complains by peeing on the wall).

It may seem to others that she’s not affectionate, but it turns out I am the only one she allows to pick her up… and then she goes further, giving me “belly access” so I can make a fuss. Then she’ll purr… and I am lost. Also, she’s ridiculously pretty. My Luna.

becky’s back!

21 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by in food & drink, friends

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I first met Becky, Scott and their 4 kids in December 2015, after they had taken a We Love Tapas Tour with the fabulous Delia. And that Christmas Day I spent a wonderful afternoon with them. Then in the spring of 2017 Scott came back to Sevilla with a friend and took a Sherry & Tapas Tour with me. The family has been back to Spain a few times since then, but this time Becky was passing through Sevilla with three of her brood (husband and eldest stayed home this trip), and we got to meet up for a lovely lunch.

Wow, what a difference 2.5 years have made, as you can see from the two photos above. Honestly, I love these kids (NOT a phrase you hear me say often 😉 ). They are so inquisitive and fun to be with. And of course, it was great to catch up with Becky. After lunch we stopped at Rayas for ice cream and then it was time to say “hasta luego”. Plans are afoot for a return visit to Sevilla in October. Can’t wait!

moving on from picasa…

20 Monday Aug 2018

Posted by in blogging, photography, work

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Moving on from Picasa… but where to?? Actually, this change came about in early 2016, which basically meant that there would be no more updates or support for Picasa, but it didn’t affect the existing versions. In fact, Peter downloaded the last version for his new laptop last month and it’s been working fine. That is, until Saturday.

I uploaded some photos from the day out, planning to do some editing and hopefully get a couple of review updates posted (my massive backlog is ALMOST cleared!!), but while the photos were uploaded properly into the file, they didn’t show up on Picasa. I thought it might just be a glitch and so I just shut things down, thinking that things would probably be back to normal after a reboot. But nope.

It occurred to me to reinstall Picasa, but then I thought I might screw up my present Picasa “library” which is showing everything I uploaded before Saturday. I also checked with Peter and his Picasa also wasn’t showing new photos he uploaded, so the possibility of losing everything seemed likely. Damn.

The thing I have always liked about Picasa was its simple editing options, and also that it was easy to scroll through the library that showed all my photo files. It also had a text option, so I could add my watermark, a collage maker, plus I could export the edited photos to other files at smaller sizes, keeping the originals in the original files. Google Photos, the recommended substitute for Picasa has only basic cropping and filter features, so it’s useless for me.

What to do?? I mean, photo editing is a HUGE part of my job, and I’m really stuck if I don’t have some means of doing this. I tried downloading the Windows Live editor, but that one doesn’t appear to be working either. I also tried GIMP and have just spent the last two hours totally frustrated with it, which is the same experience I had with it a few years ago. I’m sure it does wonderful stuff if you know how to do them, but it is not a user-friendly platform at all, and is very “clunky” in terms of finding the uploaded files and then exporting them.

I honestly don’t know what to do next. Any ideas?