I tried it a while back and to my embarrassment was connected to the pompiers!
Don’t forget the 0044
I tried it a while back and to my embarrassment was connected to the pompiers!
Don’t forget the 0044
I started using the cloud and within a year was told that the storage I had bought was nearly full so needed to buy more (which I did, buying the recommended extra space). Twelve months later, I’m running out of room again !
I’m going back to backing up to an external hard drive.
What are you storing online, and how much “stuff” is there in gigabytes? In most cases you don’t really need the entire contents of your hard drive “in the cloud” - it’s really just the key stuff.
I have my Mac’s “Documents” folder backed up with iCloud and I pay £2.99 a month for 200GB and that does me.
Both my Macs working drives are synced to local backup HDs for day to day purposes, and edited photos etc. eventually go on external hard drives.
If you carry a smartphone and a wallet separately, you place a tracker in your wallet, apple iphone users have the popular airtag, while android phone users can use the tile pro tracker(which will also work for iphones). On the apple iphone you use the find my app and track down your wallet, while Tile Pro has its own app.
I have taken photos, front and back of CDS, CV, driving licence and a photo of passport page with my photo on it. When I’m travelling I carry one credit card and one debit card in my over the head bag, which is never taken off when out, and I hide one other debit and credit card about my person. I wear Craghoppers Nosilife trousers which have a secret zip pocket, the mens shirt has very useful secret pocket too, unfortunately the womens shirt has one but in the most uncomfortable place! And after what happened in Spain last week, I now always have some cash. Belts and braces and a bit obsessive, but it’s worked for me so far and I’ve back packed around much of the world.Fingers crossed it continues to do so.
I think I’m storing everything. I did what apple recommended. I’ll have to look and see what the parameters are, and the costs involved.
Where OH is concerned, that is an excellent idea! Black wallet / black car interior is a constant issue. (I have suggested a different coloured wallet.) I will now admit that I found his “lost/stolen” wallet under the hotel bed! The tracker would have a saved a good 3 hours of anguish.
These days he does normally keep wallet / car keys / phone in separate pockets in his cargo trousers. I always wear my handbag slung diagonally across my body (more difficult to grab). I need my bag always with me, not least because it carries all the paperwork for my pacemaker /blood thinners etc in the event of an accident.
I notoriously ‘lose’ my keys, my wallet and my smartphone somewhere around the house at some time or another. They are usually kept in my shoulder bag but if something is missing from my shoulder-bag I have no idea where it might be. So, I have Chipolo tags attached to each and I swear by them – they work.
However, if I can’t find the smartphone I can ring it from my landline phone, but if the smartphone battery is dead I need something else, and that is my old smartphone with the Chipolo app. which can find the new smartphone with its attached tag.
I don’t think there’s a perfect answer to losing and finding these things.
I was lucky one time when I left my shoulder bag hanging on the supermarket trolley and drove home. Once home I turned the car round and raced back. Gone! Made enquiries in the supermarket but no luck. Later in the evening I got a phone call from a shopper who said she thinks she has my shoulder bag. She said it was safer to take it home than hand it into the supermarket.
A close shave there, I think - my life is in my shoulder bag!
Another issue that I have is with my debit card at petrol stations. I usually take only the card with me when I go to the pump and once the machine has dealt with it I remove the card and put it in a pocket. The next time I get my wallet out to pay for something I’m confused by the missing card. Eventually I remember and start searching my pockets.
That was a result!
I once dropped my wallet in the Millenia* Mall in Orlando, Florida - retraced my steps to all the shops I’d been in, no sign of it.
Eventually I went to the Mall Security office and lo and behold some kind soul had handed it in, completely intact, all my cards in there and $400 in cash!
Mind you it is a posh Mall. ![]()
So was this…
When I was young and having a pint (in London) or two at the pub after work with the lads, I had my camera with me which was in the way, so deposited it under the bench seat. On getting home later I realised I’d left the camera behind! Went back to the pub, packed to the seams by then, and found a young woman sitting on her boyfriend’s lap on my bench seat. The boyfriend reached under, found the camera and handed it back me. Phew!
A friend of mine, Robert, lived in an Officers’ Mess in Germany quite close to the Dutch border. His parents had booked onto a coach trip to Keukenhof in Holland to visit the bulb fields so he arranged to meet up with them. His only means of transport was an MX5 two seater so he arranged with one of the other mess members to exchange cars for the weekend. The friend was quite happy to use the little Mazda and Robert got the four seat car he needed to drive his parents around in. The first stop for Robert was the local florist in the nearby village so he parked the borrowed elderly Mercedes, locked the door with the key, crossed the road and bought some flowers for his mother. He left the shop, crossed the road, unlocked the car, put his jacket and the flowers on the back seat got in and started the engine. He was looking with surprise at the automatic gear change as he was sure the car was manual when he was interrupted by someone knocking on the window. He looked up and saw a gentleman standing there pointing at a similar Mercedes parked behind the one that he was in. He realised that he had unlocked and started the wrong car. He got out quickly, muttered an apology to the smiling man, got into the correct car and drove off. It was only when he got to his parent’s hotel that he realised that he did not have the flowers, his jacket or the wallet in the jacket pocket. He spent most of the afternoon cancelling the cards in his wallet. That evening he returned to the military base and expected a bit of trouble entering without his ID card. He had no such problem. As soon as he started explaining the guard reached through the office window and handed him a bunch of flowers and his jacket complete with his wallet. The owner of the other Mercedes had dropped them off that morning.
Robert was one of those people who seemed to attract bad luck. A couple of years later he was killed in a road accident when the taxi he had booked to take him to a friend’s house for an evening meal crashed into a lorry watering flowers on a roundabout.
There are three things that bug me - not being able to have my CdS - or whatever it is called now - digitised (but I believe soon possible), not being able to use the iphone at an ATM and this, not being able to use the iphone to buy fuel.
I had a boat on The Thames in London. One day coming through the barrier, I was distracted by a helicopter above and noticed a black case fall from it not twenty metres from me! I immediately motored over and fished it out. It was a camera case with what I thought was some pretty serious stuff inside, but no id of the owner.
Called into the Thames Police on the way up and handed it in. The Sergeant smiled ruefully and said that it unlikely anyone will claim it - apparently this is not an uncommon accident for well insured photographers to upgrade their kit… ![]()
Hmmm… speaking as a professional photographer the last thing I would be doing is deliberately dumping all my kit out of a helicopter in the middle of a job!
And usually with camera insurance you only get “current value” so you’re not going to get a lot more off the insurance than you would trading the gear in.
Not to mention an increased insurance premium the following year!
Funny that, those are the three things that cheer me up. ![]()
My mother once fell into a canal in Venice with an SLR camera around her neck. We had been on a boat ride, in a motor boat, we weren’t posh enough for a gondola, and as we were disembarking the boatman accidentally bumped into her and she fell. She was hauled out quickly but she had two concerns, her health and the condition of the camera. It was their favourite camera which they always referred to Topcon so I presume that was it’s make. The always took 35mm slides, never prints. Her health worries were related to something that the boatmen had said only a few minutes before. One of my sisters had eaten an apple and asked what to do with the core. The boatman said, throw it in the canal, all the rubbish ends up there. Dad took the drenched camera to a nearby camera shop for advice and was told to rinse the body with petrol. He did and lots of the plastic bits melted. He thought that something must have been lost in translation and that it was meant to be paraffin. I sometimes think of that episode when buying petrole for the heater in my kitchen. They later bought another Topcon to replace the ruined one but for some reason didn’t find the new one as good as the original. There was no insurance involved.
Tokyo Optical Company, a long-vanished camera maker - I think they stopped production in about 1980.
I’ve never given any of those any thought either other than carry on in the normal way. What good are these items when it all goes to pot, the phone gets stolen or hacked or broken?
Hope your mum didn’t get any nasty lurgies from her soaking. We went on a gondola ride years ago, what was floating in the canals was nobodies business, if it was dead, broken or not wanted, in it went and then we were told not to put hands in and if we fell in, get immediate hospital aid. That was not an enjoyable experience when we got back to the pier.