Puttering in the Study

Get Organized: How to Clean Up Your Messy Digital Life - Jill E Duffy

I'm a sucker for books about organizing, and I ran across this while reading this month's PC Magazine.  It turned out to be a really helpful book on how to organize the digital side of things (okay, that's pretty obvious from the title, right?).  But seriously, I took away a lot of useful information from it, but there were two big changes I made as a result of it:

• I cleaned up my backups by deleting the routine iPad backups to iCloud - in most cases I didn't need them; and started organizing my overall online backup system; and 
• I organized my photos (mostly on a going-forward basis, as she recommends), including coming up with a weekly task to save photos from the camera, iPad and phone into Dropbox.  From there they are saved into the 2014 photo folder on iDrive - and the unnecessary copies deleted from the devices. I am gradually cleaning up the various older photo locations on the computer so that I can find everything.

There's also a lot about smartphones, music, e-mails, passwords, etc., but these were the main things I got from it.

 

 

Changing header for Puttering in the Study

Have been meaning to change the header for my Puttering weblog to show the painted ceiling finished last year (well, not finished, but at a stopping point after I added the faux bas relief of Admiral Nimitz over the naval history books) but just hadn't found time.  

Finally got around to it this afternoon.  I am still not crazy about it - can't get the right color for the lettering - but it's better than it was.

Deadly Heat - Richard Castle

Of course I have to get these on audiobook as soon as they come out.  But this one in particular since the last one kind of left me hanging.  But all's finally well with this one, with the mystery surrounding the death of Nikki Heat's mother resolved and disaster averted.

These are actually pretty good thrillers - or is it mysteries?  The only place they depart from form is the intimate scenes, which are howlingly over the top bodice-ripping Harlequin style narratives, and remind you that tongue is planted firmly in cheek here.  

Testament: The Bible and History

I bought this book years ago and read it without realizing it was the companion to a BBC series in 1988.  My post on the book is here.  When I ran across the latter on Amazon Video on Demand I picked it up and watched it.  It wasn't the enthralling story that Byzantium: The Lost Empire was, but then nothing is.  I did learn a bit more about the history of the Bible, though - more than I did reading the book, I think.