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Back to the Flickr

Flickr is one of the first social networks I joined way back in 2007, which to me feels like just a few years ago and not 16 years ago!

The first photograph I uploaded was of Admiralty Arch having just emerged from the Strand Tube station. The photo was taken on March 30th 2007 with a Nokia N73 mobile phone.

In March 2019 when they decided to move to a (more expensive) charging model.

However I think the time has come to cull my Flickr account. I don’t think it’s worth $50 per year. The value is there, but I am not sure if that value is $50. I am a little disappointed that existing Pro subscribers are not only not grandfathered in, on their old pro rate, but that they don’t even get the introductory discount of 40% that new subscribers get.

You could still have a free account, but there was a limit of a 1000 photographs. At the time I had 14,454 photographs on Flickr.

As all the photographs I had on the service were CC licensed this meant, despite the 1000 photograph limit for free accounts the photos were retained, even though I didn’t take out a professional subscription.

There were lots of reasons why I didn’t take out a professional subscription, one of the main ones was that they (at the time) only had annual plans available.

I never deleted my account though.

Flickr was never a place which I used as a backup to my photographs, it was to me a social network. I now use Amazon Prime and more recently iCloud to store my photographs online.

In addition Instagram was becoming the “better” social network for photographs. Well people were engaging with Instagram (and it was free).

So why am I now thinking about going back to the Flickr?

It was at the ALT conference this year that I started thinking about going back. It was the 30th anniversary of conference and I was sharing on the Discord channel the different ALT-C albums I had created over the years.

However after I published the link to the ALT-C 2018 conference, I realised I didn’t have albums for 2019 or 2022. There wasn’t in-person conferences in 2020 and 2021.

I did have photographs from those conferences, but they were not in an shareable state. It was then I started thinking about going back to Flickr. It would be easier now as they now have a monthly plan as well.

So something to think about.

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One year on…

A year ago today I was shopping at The Mall, Cribbs Causeway, Bristol, and I saw outside John Lewis a car on display.

Funky Cat

It was an Ora Funky Cat.

I had not only never seen the Funky Cat before, but I had also never heard of it either. I looked over it and really liked the look of it.

I looked over it and really liked the look of it.

Didn’t even think or realise that in less than a year I would be driving my own Funky Cat.

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It’s getting cold out there

It’s November and the weather is getting colder this week. The Funky Cat was telling me this morning that it was 0℃ outside.

I did appreciate using the app to heat the car this morning, so it was nice and toasty when I got inside, and that the windscreen was clear.

What was less appreciated was that certain features were unavailable. I couldn’t use Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), and Smart Cruise Control (SCC) was also not available. In addition the front assist sensors weren’t working, so  was told that wasn’t going to work either. I am not sure if this was the frost or even mud. 

Obviously these aren’t critical systems, in previous cars I never had them, and you shouldn’t really rely on them either when driving. Will need to see if they are back online later. Will keep an eye on it, just in case it is something other than the cold weather. 

I also think the cold is impacting on the battery and I am as a result getting a reduced range. I mentioned in another post how, even with a 100% charge, the car was predicting just a 147 mile range. Today it was only 141 miles.

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Only 147

I was rather disappointed on charging the Funky Cat that the predicted range was just 147 miles. I wonder if this is down to the cold weather we’ve been having, combined with using the heater.

The last time I charged to 100% it was 157 miles. Usually it is higher, and has been 185 miles.

 

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Muscle Memory

I have now had my Funky Cat for four months. This means I have been driving an electric car for four months, driving a car with no gears and an automatic transmission, driving a car with an electric automatic handbrake (well a parking brake). I’ve also had to get use to not having a rear windscreen wiper.

Prior to getting the Funky Cat I drove manual petrol (and diesel) cars for over thirty years. These had gears, manual transmission, a manual handbrake, and a rear windscreen wiper.

As a result, it isn’t too surprising that in some instances I still do things that I did driving a petrol car that I don’t need to do with the Funky Cat. I still have muscle memory based on those thirty years of driving experience.

For example, driving off from a roundabout, sometimes my left hand drops to change gear. Now and again, I try and put the handbrake on, where there isn’t one. When it’s raining, I still try and turn on the rear windscreen wiper. I smile when I do these things when driving the Funky Cat.

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Automatic Side Mirror Folding

When I got my Funky Cat I found it useful to fold the side mirrors into the car when I parked.

Looking through the manual, I realised I could set this automatically when I locked the car.

You can set the side mirror functions in 

【Vehicle Settings】→【Body】→【Side Mirrors】on the multimedia screen.

【Fold Side Mirrors】: Set the side mirror folding mode to automatic mode.

When set to automatic folding mode, the side mirrors are automatically folded and unfolded when the doors are locked and unlocked.

This made life much easier. It also gives me a visual cue that the car is locked.

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No more Funky Cat

headlight of a red car

No, I still have my Funky Cat, the story is that Ora are losing the Funky Cat moniker. Ora 03 is the new (European) name for the Ora Funky Cat.

I liked the fact that the car was called the Funky Cat. For me the quirky nature of the car, the name and looks was why I got the car in the first place. I was a little disappointed that my Funky Cat didn’t have Funky Cat on the back. 

It also looks like the Lightning Cat will also be renamed to Ora 07.

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deck.blue

In a recent post I blogged about my experiences of using Bluesky on the iPad. I found that sing busky.app in the browser useful on the iPad instead of using the native iOS app  I was recently recommended using deck.blue to access Bluesky.

This service provides a multi-column layout and support for hashtags when using Bluesky.

Reminded me of Tweetdeck which I have used now and again (in the past) to access the Twitter.

I recently used deck.blue when using Blueksy at a conference and found the user experience much better than just accessing Bluesky on the browser or using the native iOS app.

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Mercedes Benz Self Driving Vehicles

I recently drove to a hotel in London and parking in the hotel car park I saw a couple of Mercedes Benz cars, which didn’t look quite right.

I took a closer look, these were self-driving autonomous vehicles, they had German number plates.

Not sure what they were doing in the hotel car park, but they looked interesting.

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Charging at the Q-Park Dickens Yard

When I had stayed in Ealing before I had parked my car in the Q-Park at Dickens Yard. On those visits I had remembered seeing the EV charging spaces as I drove through the car park to park.

So on my most recent visit to Ealing, driving there in the Funky Cat, I needed a place to park, so I decided I would try out the charging points in the Q-Park Dickens Yard Car Park.

Having first parked in a space with a non-functioning charger, I moved my car to a different space and, using my own cable, plugged the Funky Cat into the charger.

The process is different to other chargers I have used, you need to walk towards the pedestrian exit and there is a machine there. To be honest I nearly missed it. You then scan the barcode on your ticket and select the right bay on the screen. Then the charging starts.

The bill for the charging is added to your parking charge. So when you come to pay for your parking, your EV charge is added to the parking charge. This is nice and simple. The charge is 35p/kWh. These are Type 2 (7kW) chargers so won’t be charging your car that rapidly, but useful for adding charge to your car whilst shopping (or as I was eating). I got something like a 25% charge in just under two hours.