Monthly Archives: March 2022

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons played by London Concertante

London Concertante in St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork. March 2022

We haven’t been to a concert in a long time. Last night I went to St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral in the heart of Cork City to listen to London Concertante.

My son has shown a huge interest in music over the course of lockdown. He started with an electronic keyboard, and then on to other instruments. I know Matt would be delighted to hear he has expressed an interest in learning the saxophone too.

Anyway, we heard that there would be a classical concert in the Cathedral so we had to go. It was an amazing night. I’ll admit I don’t know much about classical music. I recognise the most popular compositions everyone else recognises. But despite that it was a feast for the ears.

In the video above they play Vivaldi‘s Four Seasons. I can’t imagine there’s anyone reading this who won’t recognise this fabulous piece of music.

PS. I shared this video on Facebook too and received a copyright strike. Luckily, I could dispute it without penalty and it was not muted “in 74 territories”.

A 100 Year Old Online Time Capsule?

The next census to take place in Ireland will be on April 3rd. On the last page they’ve added a blank space for people to add a hand written “time capsule” that will be revealed in 100 years time when census data is made public. There’s a thread on Reddit asking “what would you write there?” which got me thinking.

What I would love to do is create an online time capsule that future generations could find using hand written clues in that census form.

Much as I’d like to think that donncha.wordpress.com will still be around in 100 years time it’s highly likely that we won’t be using the same method of addressing content online that we are now. Will the wordpress.com website even be around in 2122? Will “https://” mean anything to someone looking over old census forms in 100 years time?

I found this blog post talking about “the100yearwebsite.com” back in 2007. For a one off fee of £20 you could keep your capsule safe until 2107! Unfortunately, by 2010 it was gone.

The obvious choice is archive.org. It’s well funded right now and has a very good reputation for preserving sites. It even has my old Geocities website from the late 90s!

Could I tell a future relative to look up “odd.blog” on the website “archive.org” and will it mean anything to them?

I suspect it’s none of the above. Only the most basic information will be useful to future generations.

  • Prices of goods such as bread, milk, fuel.
  • Our worries such as Covid 19 and the war in Ukraine.
  • Where I work or the shops I frequent.
  • Nice places to visit at the weekend. I guess Blarney Castle will still be here in 100 years time.

Apart from this census, we should all print out a selection of the family photos we have on our phones and computers, add the date and names on the back in good ball point pen and put them in a photo album. In 100 years time that may be all that survives of your vast digital footprint.

HOWTO: Fix missing Thumbnails in Finder

I recently upgraded to macOS Monterey (yeah, finally) and immediately noticed that previews of new images weren’t showing up in Finder.

Old images did have a preview image so something was wrong with how previews were generated.

Searching online, I found a few solutions, including one that involved deleting the Finder configuration file (plist file) which may have worked in 2009 or 2012 but that was long ago and it doesn’t work now.

So, to save you doing that and having to resize your favourite Finder windows and configure settings again, the answer is very simple and I found it here.

Load up Activity Monitor and search for com.apple.quicklook.ThumbnailsAgent. Double click on it and force it to quit.

CMD-right click on Finder in the dock and relaunch Finder and your thumbnails should now appear in all their tiny glory.

I’m writing this here because apparently this happens to people over and over again. While it’s the first time I’ve seen this problem it probably won’t be the last.