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Personal blog and comfy corner of Lyra Rhodes: musician, cake aficionado, whinger...maybe just a place where I can stuff things (words!), rather than them falling down the back of the sofa

Sunday 7 June 2015

Cakes, Guitars, Handbags or Gadgets?

Sounds like a Rod Stewart song.

This weekend I've sampled most of these, in an attempt to make sense of the stress of things, and regain a bit of normality to the merry-go-round of work, kids, lack of sleep, family issues, and general stress. Sadly, recently, cake hasn't been able to solve most of these. Not even a Manuka-honey-propolis-seagrass cake could fix things recently. Nevertheless, I played my guitar for the first time in about 3 months yesterday, remembering that the songs I wrote a few years ago actually weren't TOO bad, and remembering how to play with any kind of speed. Even a passing neighbour who popped in to say hi grunted "quite nice" lol

On gadgets. I bought my 2nd Chromebook, the latest full HD Toshiba Chromebook 2.
Most folks LAUGH at these things.
Well, I bought one a few years ago, but Son no.1 kind of grabbed that, and I haven't really seen it much. The simplicity is outstanding.
We're all sick of how long it takes to setup and keep running a Windows laptop, from antivirus, spyware, controlling wanton windows updates, cleaning up.
Plus the Chromebook auto updates, and starts in about 3 seconds, works immensely fast for Google drive/docs, Facebook, Hangouts, Gmail, Spotify and ZX Spectrum Games... ;-)
I also prefer it to a tablet, especially a clunky bluetooth keyboard option.

Plenty of things still need Windows of course, like Calibre, using a separate browser like Firefox, FLAC ripping, phone backups, loading up & setting up my NAS, VLC etc etc
But this list is getting less and less I think.
Chromebooks are still much more than simple consumption devices, I've got my Galaxy Note3 phone or Android tablet for that.

Here's a picture of a Toasted Teacake I also had today in a cafe with my Dad, as I've been forgetting what cake and life is like.




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