Caley's new ball

There was no fresh air all day today. A mundane desk shift passed and as the light started to fail I took Caley over the back garden fence for a game with his ball and flinger. It was a new ball, perhaps slightly heavier or a better fit in the flinger cup, what ever I seemed to be able to launch it a quite incredible distance. With the previous ball you always had the feeling it had already gone airborne before you had delivered all the projecting force to it. It was particularly satisfying with the new combination as you felt that every ounce of effort had been transferred to the ball. Caley was impressed and was certainly puffing quite hard after a few pitches.

Its funny; on our Aviemore holiday I was cursing the pedestrian pace of my laptop and realised I was sitting in the same spot 12 months earlier having the same swear words about the device then. A totally ruthless hard disk reformat and re-installation of windows is the only answer and in reality its six year vintage is probably not going to handle any current apps efficiently. You know where I'm going with this.

Mr Dell gleefully accepted the credit card details but not before trying to punt some extended insurance cover too. My laptop is effectively a scaled down version of my work desktop machine (its groaning too and is one year newer). Most folk will realise that getting a new machine is only half the battle. The toil starts when you start transferring apps forward. Many you buy, are installations for the life of the computer (linked to the bios chip) it was initially loaded to. My main work programs are secured with USB dongles and this will be pretty easy.

There is huge anger and controversy out there in Photoshop land about Adobe CC (creative cloud). You pay per month (for ever) to use the most recent version of Photoshop and Lightroom. (Stop paying and any projects left in native format will not be accessible) The entire Adobe creative suite -including the afore mentioned photo utilities are delivered this way. It has been argued that if you are a heavy user of the full compliment then the monthly bill is reasonably good value; probably fine for a business user. However the monthly cost for the two photo programs is disproportionately high and has left many long time users (amateur enthusiasts) jumping with rage and frustration. The last version CS6, pre CC, remains a premium product and isn't heavily discounted. Perhaps Adobe know they have their customers where they want them.

I have just been browsing to see what other options are out there. Serif has a very photoshop like program but is reported to be clunky. The one that did catch my eye, and I don't know if it is a scam, was an apparently free download of Adobe CS2. Don't laugh because I might go there.

I would be intersted to hear views from blip people who dabble (or more) in post processing.