A Thursday Update

I usually begin with a weather report.  We are beginning to get sick of 33° days with 60%+ humidity.  Overnight it now is around 23° but this rises quickly once the sun comes up.  Our moderating afternoon sea breeze has deserted us and the air conditioner (even though it is set to 27°) is getting a fair bit of use.  The pool toggles between 28° and 32° from overnight to late afternoon.

Even the locals who have lived here all their lives are saying this is one of the hottest and driest summers they have ever known.

Despite the blinds across the back, the living area at home gets quite warm.  Thus the air con goes on around 4pm.  The late night swim and ceiling fans at least means we get a good night's sleep.

February is the month for my birthday and as a reward the local clubs of which we are a member send out some freebies.  Things like a discounted meal, a drink for free, $5 worth of pokies money are the sort of things you get.  So last night we had our tea using a set of freebies at the "Caloundra Mets Club".  This club is at the eastern end of the main King's Beach in Caloundra. As the photo shows it overlooks the beach.

The photo was taken with my new phone which I purchased from China.  It is a Xiaomi brand and is a lot dearer than what I usually pay for my phones from China.  This phone (a Redmi Note 3) gets rave reviews and is considered as great value at around $240 delivered.  It has 32GB of storage and 3GB of Ram.  It is compatible with all of Australia's mobile phone bands and works with any provider.  I now see the 4G sign in the notifications bar!

As with most new phones I spent a lot of time learning my way around it. I found a thing called "Talkback" which is a mode you can put a phone into for people who are blind and want to use the phone.  It speaks to you tells you what is on the screen. So a blind person won't accidentally swipe the screen, the swipe action is automatically turned off!

Foolishly "Talkback" got turned "on".  The swipe action across the screen was automatically disabled and no longer worked.  It was now impossible to navigate anywhere around the phone using the finger swipe motion.  A quick restart I hoped would clear it up.  After the restart there was the message "Swipe Up To Open".   But the swipe motion had been disabled.  Panic set in fairly quickly!

Eventually the internet came to the rescue.  I have never heard of doing a double tap and then a two finger swipe to get things moving.  After another 5 frustrating minutes or so and I was able to get into the phone's settings, find where "Accessibility" was hidden, and eventually turn Talkback 'off''.

Deep relief and several home brews soon followed!

Overall I am delighted with it, heaps of storage, heaps of ram, works fine, loud, excellent screen resolution and quite fast.  I see why it has the good reputation that it does.  Reviewers say it compares very favorably with phones well over double the price.  However, also as the reviewers say, the camera isn't anywhere near up to the standard of your top of the line models.

But I am delighted with it so far.

Watching the cricket from New Zealand on Pay TV will be the main focus of today along with the intermittent duck out into the pool for a swim.  I guess loading up the new phone with lots of apps will be on the cards as well.