Skype

Steve, Skype need OS X vr 10.3 (Panther) or higher and as my G4 PowerBook is slightly older than yours it only has 10.2.8, so the download won't run. Never mind. Maybe if I hit the jackpot on the lottery I'll upgrade but, for the moment, there are other pressing needs for my financial attention such as Christmas and that Canopus ADVC white box I mentioned last month.

We've just come in from our church carol singing evening. It bucketed down! Despite stair rods all evening, most found some degree of shelter under restaurant umbrellas. For my sins I do all the microphone set-up and mixing. This evening, unfortunately, even the set-up was performed in the rain and the technical bits and bobs like the mixer/amp, mikes, cables, speakers and so on were pretty wet by the time I pressed the power switch. In fact the cables were all lying around in puddles and you got a faint buzz from the wires if you tried to touch anything once the juice was flowing! Still, it worked okay - nothing blew and nobody except me and the pastor's wife noticed the underlying electricity filtering through. She was a bit flustered by it, poor lass but it stopped her holding the mike to her mouth so in the end we got better balance!

I skooted back in the rain on the little 50cc Yamaha scooter that we've now got. It's quite fun but the low centre of gravity is a little tricky to get used to. Now I annoy all the English tourists by ziiiiiiiiiiiingggiiing through narrow streets at 50kph and passing up the sides of stationary traffic to jump the queues at the lights. It has two speeds...on and off. Acceleration is no stranger to this little cheeky chappy. As the automatic gear doesn't engage until the revs are high enough you do tend to launch into the traffic, but I'm slowly getting to grips with the fine points of handling its awesome power which can only be measured in bgp (break greyhound power). The girls love going on the back but tonight it was too wet. The streets were awash and I had to curtail my speed a little, especially round corners. Tomorrow is a holiday but I have some work to do as the school has an inspection on Friday. Wish us well. TTFN. Pete