A Bulging Album

I had the need to take a look through my photos the other day, needing to see what photos I had of the town for a project that I'm working on. It's a sobering sight; looking at just how my photography has dropped off so dramatically in the last decade or so.

I'm one of the die-hard users of Google's Picasa software for quickly finding my photos and it can order by folder as well as show how many photos are in each folder. Because I always file my images by year and date it becomes trivial to see how many I'm taking each year. The headline figures are still scary - 156,000 images taken digitally on whatever camera was my main device over the years. There are about another ten thousand taken with phone and pocket camera as well.

Taking more than 60,000 travel photos out of the equation leaves me with something around 100,000 that have been taken right here on the Isle of Man and it's a staggering number of images that almost defy explanation.

Still, let's try.

Firstly, and by far the biggest count is photos of the TT. I'm trigger happy and I've experimented extensively with multi-shot composites of bikes over the years. Without adding them all up precisely, it's clear that between fifty and fifty-five thousand of these are photos of bikes.

So, we're down to those 50,000 or so that are photos of the Isle of Man. I can easily explain 2,000 of them away as the usual daily junk that I've taken with my phone. There are countless photos of screens or the labels on routers and printers that I just never get around to throwing away.

Then there are about 2,000, taken on one day watching the F4SA Powerboat race in Douglas when I once again got carried away. The same is true for roughly a thousand from the last Jurby air show.

A thousand more are panorama shots. That might not sound like a lot, but this probably also accounts for up to 10,000 of the remaining total, as they are the shots that the panoramas are built from and I still keep everything.

If I take a little time and look through the rest, I find many of birds and flowers. From perhaps a thousand attempts to get a photo of a diving gannet to dozens of studies of primroses, roses, daffodils and daisies, there's much that I'm glad I have taken.

Beyond that, it's landscapes, seascapes, woodland walks and failed experiments. There's no rhythm, rhyme or reason to them all, but they tell a story of the last 25 years.

6,000 images a year on average. I'm well behind and it's time to get the numbers back up.

Right in Front of Me

I suppose that I always feel that the longest day of the year is the most important of the milestones that we use to mark the passage of time. Whether it feels like the start of the long descent into a dark and dreary winter or the beginning of a warm an pleasant summer is a metaphor for the passing of another year and the state of one's life.

For 2026, I don't yet feel as if I have a handle on which way I think it's all going. We've been here in Ramsey for about ten months now and I think I can truly say that I am settled into life in the busier surroundings of the town. There is something quite satisfying about being able to walk down to the Co-Op when the sun is shining, even if it's somewhere close to my walkable limit right now, particularly if I'm going to carry shopping.

I mentioned in the last post a little about my enjoyment of the view from my window and this continues to draw my eye far more than it should. It's bordering on a distraction, but I'm only reaching for the camera - actually, usually my phone - when the sun is low in the sky.

The best view is the one you both look at and appreciate. My yardstick for this is now simply the view that I can be bothered to take a picture of. Ramsey, looking north-west is apparently one of these views.

An Office With a View

 

At some point in the last six months, things just began to click into place. I can't say that I ever missed being in Jurby per se, but for a while I did feel truly out-of-place. Slowly, however, that seems to be changing. Now, this little apartment on the edge of town is becoming home. Even more surprising is that my brother seems to feel the same.

For me in particular, a great deal of the reason for this has to be the view. It is, honestly, something we really didn't have in Jurby, despite the possibilities. In many ways, my two office views are similar. Both look out of a bedroom/office over the rooftops.

In Jurby, however, that view was of close bungalow roofs and only the sky beyond. There wasn't much to see out of the window, apart from the odd gull, rook or pigeon.

Here, in Ramsey, that is totally different. I still see the rooftops of the bungalows opposite, but here I'm high enough up that the view is of the whole of town, or so it seems on a bright and clear day. You don't really get to see the movements of people in the town, but you get a real sense of what the day is like. Trees blow in the wind, the mist closes in as the rain falls and the roofs get dusted with snow on those rare days when we actually have some.

The sea is tantalisingly just out of direct view. I need to stand in the lounge window and look out to the right to see a bit of the Pier and the bay, but even that minor detraction doesn't bother me anymore.

It's dynamic and interesting in a way that the view in Jurby just wasn't able to be. Now, if only I can manage to not let it distract me from either work or writing!

The MANXNET Thing

I'm trying my best to be understanding under the circumstances, but I've been bleating on about this happening for more than three years now and have spent much of that time trying to get people to switch to some other mail service.

There must come a time when, no matter how much you are attached to the nostalgia and familiarity of a thing, it is time to let go. Even that old car gets sent to scrap when your feet are rubbing on the ground as you drive along. All things must pass.

Rubbish

My fondness for the manx.net email platform is very different from that of anyone else. I earn so much from helping people to keep it working that I'll actually be sorry to see it go. Well, I'll be sorry to see the income from it go, at least.

Frankly, for the last ten years or so, the service from MT for this part of their business has been abysmal. It's not just bad, it's bloody awful. In an ill-advised push to get everyone to use a web-based interface, they have neglected the support for POP3 and IMAP users on home computers and basically disowned them. Indeed, they probably only keep IMAP working for their thousands of mobile-phone users.

The Offer

So, for basically £80 per year, they will allow you to keep your email address and continue to use it with the same service provider - something new called Jumara that appears to have been created specifically to be a new brand. The backbone is provided by ATMAIL who are apparently respected in the field of providing email services to entities like MT. Sadly, they don't seem to be highly rated - https://au.trustpilot.com/review/www.atmail.com.

Some of the reviews hit home hard. Servers randomly down for indeterminate periods sounds eerily familiar.

Perhaps the oddest thing about all of this is that they are starting to sell this new service as a step forward at a point where the POP3 and IMAP servers are actually down for many people. They would apparently have been better to have taken manx.net out the back and quietly despatched it!

The Alternatives?

Well, whatever you do, don't go with their ridiculous offer. There are countless alternatives and options out there. Changing your email isn't as bad as you might think and it can be a good chance to get rid of all that stuff that you're subscribed to but never read.

If you already have a GMAIL, HOTMAIL/LIVE/OUTLOOK, ICLOUD or YAHOO address, then perhaps just keep on using that. If you don't, then these are good options for switching.

Slightly less well-known are providers like PROTON or MAIL.COM. Do a search for "FREE EMAIL PROVIDERS" and take a look at the many options out there.

Finally - and not as complex as you might think - is the creation of your own email accounts on a domain of your choosing. Almost any website hosting company will offer unlimited email addresses and massive amounts of storage when you buy a domain name. They can offer full functionality for a fraction of the cost. I pay less than £40 per year for my david@dkinrade.com address with FREEOLA.

The Bottom Line

Don't get caught by the trap. 

YOU HAVE TIME TO THINK ABOUT THIS

You do not have to stick with manx.net just because it is familiar. They are too expensive and far too unreliable to be worth hanging on to.

Explore the alternatives - this is what searching the internet is for.

Shout if you need help. There are always options and I'm happy to chat. I'll even try and avoid all the jargon and keep it in English!