Not So Sunny On The Sunny Coast

The bike has been stuck under the back veranda for well over week now because we remain in the grip of a strong S/E wind bringing continual showers on and off to our part of the world.  This morning we got 13 mls which is a lot when compared to other recent totals.

Most mornings have seen a mere between 1 and 7 mls but this rain falls around dawn and across the day with short and sharp showers.

Both of our affiliations with local Community Groups has kept us busy recently.  They have reorganized bus routes in our area and upped the number of services incredibly.  But instead of doing the rounds of the community, the bus route now goes directly along the main road and right through our estate.  It has seen 6 local stops closed which has disadvantaged many elderly locals.

When we moved in to the area the 50+ years demographic was above 50% with many buying homes near a local bus stop.  These bus stops have now closed and these 50 years+ residents are now 65+, many with extreme mobility problems.  The decision to close local stops now mean the majority of people have a good 1 km walk.

Needless to say I remain busy with my tech stuff.  Plex has become my go to application for watching stuff I have 'acquired' on my Nvidia Shield.  It works well and now means I am getting some excellent use out of the old PC.  The more I use it, the better I am finding it.  It is great fun.

Recently we had a 250GB SSD hard drive installed in Trish's laptop.  It is around 5 years old now and was needing a boost up.  A guy at computer club removed the 750GB mechanical hard drive and installed the speedier SSD drive.  It now loads super fast and responds very quickly.  It was $45 to cover the cost of the SSD drive and $15 for an enclosure for the old drive.

I will get the same done to the old laptop I was given.  By replacing the hard drive with a 16x faster SSD drive will give it a great boost.

At Computer Club I often get asked what browser I use when surfing the web.  I like many of the addons which I can install in Firefox but Firefox updates so frequently many of the addons I like to use can't keep up with the updates and won't work on the latest Firefox versions.  So I use a version of Firefox called Waterfox.  It is usually around 6 months behind in development to Firefox, and therefore all my preferred addons still work great.

One of the guys at Computer Club strongly recommends the new Microsoft Edge browser because it is so nippy and speedy.  I am not a fan of Edge and its few addons but read where a new version of it is incorporating much of the workings of Chrome.  In its early stages of development it is being called Edge Canary which you can download and install.

Being heavily based on Chrome you can sort of install many of the Chrome addons.  So it is easy to add ad blockers, Real Debrid, backup addons, select search and many other search programs.  You can even create "Search" links for yourself.  With many download websites now being blocked by the government, proxy websites have sprung up everywhere.  You can now create your own search for one of these proxy websites which is handy when you are looking for a particular movie or TV episode to download.

As the new Edge Canary browser is still in development it still has a few hassles.  But overall it works quite well and seems so much faster than other browsers I have tried.

As per usual we are both well and loving where we live.  And we hope everyone is also happy and content with their life and health as well.