Computers and random shite

Not much to report really. Cold though as there's a big hole in my roof where a builder is repairing it after it leaked a lot. It's been doing it for years where it meets the chimney.

Sold a lot more crap on Ebay and reshuffled my computers again. My main machine is now a Dell Latitude D630 with a 2ghz Core 2 Duo and 4gb RAM. Still using the Inspiron 9400 for games and things that need a graphics card. The Eee 900 and the Dell Mini 9 are gone, never used them as the keyboards were crap. The desktop PC I built a while back is going too, I find laptops much more suitable. There's also a Latitude D800 with a 1920x1200 display being gradually rebuilt and a Precision M65 with a random shutdown issue.

So yeah, Dell stuff. I know the stories about Dell, and I used to be a hater. But my rationale is that I like tinkering with machines, stripping them down and rebuilding them, and Dell stuff is plentiful and cheap. The consumer stuff is a bit crap but the business machines are much better and those are what I get. It does what I need it to, and when Windows pisses me off I can switch to Linux.

I did consider a MacBook but they hold their prices too well, and I can't bring myself to buy a machine that would cost a lot more, probably have inferior hardware, and a smaller glossy screen. I mean people are still paying £200 for old iBooks with 600mhz processors, which seems ludicrous to me. Yeah, there's the nice feeling that comes with owning an Apple machine, seeing how beautifully it's designed and thought out but that's not enough any more. Reliability? Yeah, well, my old iMac ran hot and my iBook had a hard drive failure. Also, I'm really not liking the way modern Apple stuff tends to be designed as sealed units, for example iPods and the MacBook Air.

Of course I'm approaching this with my probably rather specialist 'buy broken ones and make a working machine out of them' approach but it works for me. Buying a Latitude with a faulty motherboard and getting a new motherboard and rebuilding it is probably a silly way to get a laptop but I enjoy the challenge especially if it can be upgraded and hot-rodded at the same time.

Other things, the Focus is still leaking water in, but I think I know where, just need to have a look at it, and it needs a set of tyres. Work is meh, life in general a bit depressing. Despite feeling a lot better, haven't been to the gym properly yet, and when I played badminton last night it nearly killed me, so not quite there yet. Got bollocked by the dentist again for the state of my gums today, thought I was brushing right but apparently not.

Just finished watching Gavin and Stacey all the way through on DVD, thought I was going to hate it but it's actually pretty good, well written.

Sick of Christmas already, bah humbug.

Sod it all.

Bad week. Feel rough, work bad, car needs work, etc, etc. Can't play badminton or go to the gym due to looking after the dog. Tired and listless due to lack of sleep.

Ebay, car woes and work

Not a good week in work for various reasons, including a total screwup by payroll that saw everyone being paid a day late. Not good at all. Many people caught out by it. There's a new head of the department starting soon, which may or may not be a good thing. Interesting times ahead.

Sold a few more things on Ebay, including the Merc, which should be going today if the buyer can find the place. The cash is going towards the bits that the Focus needs, the blowing exhaust, a battery, the noise from the suspension and four new tyres - the ones on it are shit and the fronts are the wrong size.

One thing that I don't like about the Focus is that the little 14" wheels, which look too small and crap. I saw a nice set of 16" Mondeo wheels which would fit that had been painted anthracite grey which would have looked very nice on it, but no chance for such frivolous things for the forseeable future.

The house is going to have some work done this coming week, due to roof leaks. The useless chimney on one end is coming off and the roof extended over where it was. The weather has been really stupid recently but not as bad as some places on the news.

Typing this on my Dell Mini 9 which is a great little machine with only two flaws, the glossy screen, and a rather stupidly designed keyboard. It was recently treated to an SSD upgrade to 16gb which allowed it to run Windows 7 but it's currently on Ubuntu 9.10 which runs very well on it. It originally shipped with Windows XP.

Hips, Berlin, burly men with odd shaped balls, cars, and Ebay

Really got out of the habit of updating this thing in the last few months.

Finally know what is wrong with my hips, although it's not a problem as such. The physio reckons I've got hyper-mobile hip joints which means certain muscles in that area have to work harder than usual, hence the pain if I walk a long distance. Physio isn't the answer, instead he said I need to go to the gym and build up core muscle in that area. So I've signed up for the local gym, as it's a good reason to go and goodness knows I need to do something about my weight. When I used to go to the gym back in 2001 my weight was about 12 stone, now it's over 14.

Went back to Berlin again at the end of October with my cousin, had a great time. The weather was a bit grey and cold, and the first two days were rather dismal, but we still had a good time. The skies cleared on the third day so we finally got a chance to head up to the top of the Fernsehturm and after that the weather stayed clear, just rather cold. Also did a little bit of geocaching, only got two, but it's nice to have some international ones in my list. Picked up a little bit more German, which is always interesting. The issues with the S-bahn seemed to be under control while we were there and on one day we just wanted to sit down for a while so we got on an S-bahn train going around the Ringbahn, and did a complete loop. It took about an hour and was quite interesting. Probably going back at the end of March as my cousin and brother want to do the Berlin half-marathon. It would be nice if I could persuade my Dad to come but I don't think he will.

The weekend just gone was off to Cardiff for the Wales/New Zealand rugby game, which was great. We all piled into Rob's car and drove down on the Saturday morning. The trip was relatively uneventful except for hotel car park when a speedbump snapped the exhaust. The game was pretty good and this time we went back to Cardiff Bay rather than go into town and squidge into a pub with thousands of other people. This worked out quite well as we had a relaxed and leisurely meal in Chiquito before retiring. The next day the RAC put a temporary fix on the exhaust and we had a brief wander around the town before heading back.

Not much else to report. After I did the pickguards for the doubleneck, had a go at wiring it, but got stuck. Need to have another go after a nice guy on a bass forum drew me a diagram on how to wire the switch to select between the pickups. Once that's working, it'll need a finish on the body. I'm still planning on putting a new neck on my main Squier Jazz Bass and moving the neck off that to the lower position on the doubleneck as it will match the upper one more and make it look and feel better to play. Was watching a nice neck off a Squier 70's Jazz Bass with blocks and binding on Ebay but it went for too much so the plan now is to get a new Fender licensed Mighty Mite neck as they are affordable but really good for the price. Not sure when I can afford it though.

Up to Reaper Man in the epic Discworld reread marathon, which is quite a good one. Moving Pictures was also decent and I'd forgotten how good Guards! Guards! was.

Got a cold, was sent home from work early yesterday and didn't go in today. It's been the coughing stage today so hopefully will be OK tomorrow. Very frustrating as I was supposed to have the induction in the gym last night and my performance appraisal today.

The Focus is still going OK and gets about 380-400 miles to a full tank of fuel, which isn't too bad. I really wanted a diesel but the petrol one was much nicer overall to drive, not least because the diesel engine was an old-fashioned engine which was really noisy. It has a nice gearshift which has helped as I really have grown fond of automatics. There are automatic Focuses but they aren't very common and there weren't any around at a price I could afford. I did test drive a cheap Astra 1.4 auto but the gearbox was knackered.

The exhaust started blowing last week though - what the fuck is it with me and exhausts?! There's a few other things I need to sort too, a sidelight bulb, the cigarette lighter won't power the satnav and one of the rear tyres looks like a really shitty remould, and I don't do those. The AX had remoulds on the front when I got it and after the tread started to come off one when I was driving, I decided that I don't like them. All will have to wait till payday though.

The track has had the middle scraped off, which has allowed me to bring the Pimpmobile II up to the house, but that quickly showed another reason why I can't keep it. It's absolutely hopeless up there. It can't cope with mud at all and just ends up spinning its wheels pointlessly during the most simple of maneuvers. Just turning it round was a nightmare and at one point I genuinely thought it was irretrievably stuck in the most awkward place possible. My old W123 coped much better, it had much higher ground clearance and I think its manual gearbox helped.

Got the new GTA, Stories from Liberty City. I've already played The Lost and Damned, but the new one, The Ballad of Gay Tony, is more fun, feeling more like the old Vice City and San Andreas days. Done a few missions in it, and it's quite interesting, though some can be frustrating as always. It's hard to adapt back to the GTA way of playing sometimes.

Stuck more things on Ebay, the Eee PC 900, which I don't use any more, and my small collection of WonderSwan stuff. Wasn't expecting much from the WonderSwan auction but there's 5 people watching it, so who knows. The Pimpmobile is back on there too, it really needs to go.

Feh

Car is OK, more economical and nice to drive, but doesn't feel as planted on the road, particular at motorway speeds.

Double neck coming along but having problems with wiring. Hate cutting pickguards too. Next time I'll pay someone to building the fucking thing.

Installed final version of Windows 7 on PC, seems OK. Running 64-bit version with 4gb RAM, runs really well. Awaiting Ubuntu 9.10 so I can dual-boot.

New Rammstein album is really good.

Dispirited and pissed off.

Out with the old, in with the new

The beast awakens

Got the now double neck body back, and wow, it's amazing. The guy did such a good job at joining the two bodies. I've so far attached the necks and installed the bridges and strung it up for the first time. It's big, very big, but definitely quite playable. I even installed strap buttons to see how it felt on a strap and it's actually not bad at all.

It needs a good setup, the electrics, and then some sort of finish applied to the body but so far it's looking pretty good.

Riding along in my automobile

So, the Pimpmobile II had the exahust sorted and goes better now. It's still OK except now the passenger side front window has gone as well. It still works but judders at the top and makes loud noises so there's obviously something amiss.

Work has been hell on toast the last couple of weeks and that's all I need to say about that.

Last weekend was spent doing some more geocaching and things. This weekend I headed up to see my cousin who lives in Kirkham near Preston. She moved into a new house a few months ago and it's really nice, a small bungalow that is ideal for her. We went out for a nice long walk in the afternoon and took in some geocaches and saw Kirkham and the surrounding countryside. It's quite a nice place. That evening we had a really nice Italian meal.

Today I drove back down from Kirkham and met up with the usual gang for another walk which yes, included some geocaches. This was less successful as it was around Rhyl and it just confirmed that it is a complete dive. After we got back it was epic Chinese meal takeaway time before everyone headed off.

Can't wait for Berlin at the end of the month. Sometimes it's just so damned tempting to book a one-way ticket...

Started a new bass project, a double neck. Got two cheap Precision bass style bodies off Ebay which are currently with a friendly neighbourhood carpenter being cut into pieces and glued together. I've already got most of the parts including the two necks, one fretted, one fretless. I need a pickup for one of the necks and the various parts to wire it up but I'm not too fussed about that until the body and necks are mated together. It's definitely going to be big, but as the bodies are light bassword, it shouldn't be outrageously heavy.

Work tomorrow. Argh.

Heh

The grace and dignity of the Pimpmobile II is somewhat ruined when the exhaust sounds like someone shaking coins in a tin can when you accelerate.

Got rid of lots of stuff and feel good about it, lots more to go yet though.

Cars and cats

So, the Pimpmobile's rattles and sounds were getting a bit much and I took it to a local garage to get it up on the ramp to see what was going on. I already knew the rear heat shield was loose and they said it wasn't needed and ripped it off. Then they gave the catalytic converters a thump and all became clear - they are ancient, and basically completely fubared. The internal components of the cats are loose and rattling, hence all the peculiar sounds and the loud clacking noise when accelerating hard. They quoted £135 for a new front pipe and cats which is actually pretty good. Going to get it done as it's really bloody annoying. Also some git has scraped the passenger side rear door and arch, which is annoying. Also got a rear light to replace the broken one.

Traingasm and stuff

Weekend was good. One of the now traditional Chinese/Wii night meetups with the people from the company I used to work for. The guy who normally hosts it has moved to Crewe so we ended up going there and staying the night. Their house is in the middle of a load of identical terraces but it's really nice inside, with nice high ceilings and big windows making the rooms feel airy.

It was a good day on Saturday, we got there early enough to go over to the Crewe Heritage Centre with lots of old trains. It was really good, and it was great to see the APT prototype, looking much better with a nice fresh coat of paint. There were lots of old trains and in a surprising move in this day and age, no signs saying keep off so we quite happily examined old steam and diesel engines. We also found a set of points that we tried out, unfortunately after setting them to the other direction, the lever suddenly stopped working and flopped pointlessly back and forth, so we beat a hasty retreat from there. Don't think they used them much though.

The evening was spent in the usual way, plenty of food, Wii action and general nonsense. The next morning everyone awoke in various states of tiredness but were soon brought awake by copious amounts of bacon, sausage, egg and crumpets.

Work wasn't good today, one of those days where everything I touched seem to turn to disaster. I had to move some data and phone points and all was going fine when until I suddenly realised I had six phone cables hanging out disconnected and had no idea which went where. Embarassing as I had to then call someone from each line so I could find out what number it was. Fortunately I hadn't unplugged anything crucial so it wasn't too bad.

Ever since Denbigh badminton started, my shoulder has been giving me pain and it's proving very irritating. I can feel the muscle in my shoulder that is the problem and if I lift my arm in a certain way it's really painful.

Got a cheapo GPS and did my first geocache on Friday. It was good fun and took me down a road not far from my house that I've very rarely been down, and it turned out there was a lot of interesting and lovely scenery, a friendly horse and some very nice views down the Vale of Clwyd.

Still loving the 6 string bass. I don't know why but it really feels easy and natural to play, something about the shape of the neck just feels right. It's wide but I can reach all the strings no problem. I have noticed that I don't use the highest string much, if at all, but it still feels more natural to play than the 5 string I had a couple of years ago.

Sold a lot of stuff. The white Flying V bass has gone, two Nokia tablets, the Precision workstation and the DSi. Only now do I look back at the last decade or so and realise how pointlessly materialistic my outlook on life was. Problem is I'm not sure how to move on, change things, before it's too late.

Poo.

This is probably my most listened track at the moment: Alkohol by Eisbrecher. They're sort of like Rammstein but with electronic stuff mixed in. One nice thing is they put translations of the lyrics on the website. I think I actually prefer Eisbrecher over Rammstein but the stuff I've heard from the forthcoming Rammstein album sounds pretty good.

Walkies

Last week was almost entirely not memorable. The weekend was good, Saturday was spent out with some work colleagues doing some geocaching which they are really into. It was a great walk, looping around the Dyserth/Meliden/Prestatyn area. We saw loads of things I had never realised were there and found loads of caches. It was really interesting.

The evening was spent watching Iron Man round at Will's with copious amounts of pizza and snacks, which was good. I really like Iron Man. I'm not familiar with the original comic but it's one of the better superhero movies out there.

Sunday was spent doing the beat the bounds in St Asaph which was OK other than the route taking in a large number of decidedly dog-unfriendly stiles so we had to lift and manhandle the poor dog over them. Fortunately he's a patient creature and simply looked resigned to his fate as he was hoisted over.

Silence

I swapped out the PSU in the Atom for an older one that draws air out of the case and out of the back and has a control to set the fan speed. As the Atom runs so cool it doesn't need any other fans and it's possible to set the speed of the PSU fans to the lowest setting. It now runs in almost blissful silence, which is nice. The chipset heatsink has a little fan attached which whines a bit but I'm not sure if disconnecting that would be a good idea. Anyway it's still better than the previous PSU, a cheapo one that was annoyingly loud.

The trailer is out for the next GTA IV pack, and if it lives up to the trailer at all, this is what I wanted GTA IV to be like in the first place.

PCs are fun to build

Not much going on recently other than an attempt to rationalise my computer setup. I had an urge to build a PC so I ended up getting some parts to put into a battered but working case I had. A short shopping spree later and I had an Asus motherboard, an AMD Phenom x3 triple core processor, 4gb RAM and a new hard drive, which I cheerfully put into the battered case. A spanner was thrown in the works by the power supply not having SATA connectors so I was unable to use the new hard drive. So I gave in and bought a new shiny case which had a power supply in it. It's a pretty quick machine, even using the onboard graphics chip. At the moment it's running the RC version of Windows 7 which installed without needing any additional drivers, it got them all by itself.

It then dawned on me that I could replace the Dell Precision 450 that has been running as a VMware ESXi server for the past year or so. Because of the hassle of shutting down the four or five virtual machines that it constantly ran, I tended to leave it on all the time, not ideal as it's quite a big power hungry machine. I ended up getting another case and installing an ASRock Atom motherboard. The Atom is more commonly seen in netbooks but this motherboard has the dual-core Atom 330. Due to funds running low I had to put 2gb of the RAM from the Phenom into it and used a spare 120gb laptop SATA hard drive to get it up and running. At first it didn't look like ESXi was going to like the Atom as it kept dying with the PSoD (Purple Screen of Death) as soon as there was anything running with any load. Uncertain as to the cause, I tried turning off Hyperthreading in the BIOS and it's been stable ever since. It's currently running a single FreeNAS VM with a wodge of disk space as a network store.

The plan now is to get some faster RAM for the Phenom motherboard, and transfer the remaining 2gb to the Atom board. Then get a better power supply and a proper graphics card for the Phenom and a network card for the Atom that will let it run ESXi 4 which is 64-bit, and perhaps a bigger hard drive.

Weekend

It's been a fairly busy week. Yesterday it was the Rhuddlan badminton club meal, which was in a Chinese restaurant this time. The food there is excellent, so that was good. I've pretty much undone the exercise I've done this week in one go as I had sweet and sour crispy chicken followed by a huge piece of chocolate fudge cake. Then today was an epic fail too as it was chips again for lunch, second Friday in a row and once again the fire alarm got stuck on during the midday test so again it was seething hoardes of confusion.

Not sure what I'm doing this weekend, everyone seems to be off doing things so I'll probably take the chance to see my Dad tomorrow and get some more tidying out of the way.

Got the latest Eisbrecher album, Sunde, which is really good. Well, if you like that sort of thing at least. I really liked their first two albums, and this is just as good. It's also quite appropriate for the hulking beast of German engineering that is the Pimpmobile II. Any album that includes a track that starts 'This...is...DEUTSCH' followed by a Speak & Spell croaking 'That is right' is worth a listen in my book.

Otherwise things are much the same. The 6 string bass is really cool, much easier to play than I expected and sounds quite decent. It's very solidly built but I don't like the electronics so I might swap them out at some point, and perhaps the pickups too. Q-tuner pickups are very interesting and look like nothing else with the huge coils visible through the transparent shell, but they are quite pricey.

I found an old ZX81 underneath a load of old cables. It's been around for a while, think I got it at a radio rally for £1. I'm pretty sure it actually worked last time I tried it. It's amazing how minimalist it is, yet it kick-started the computing revolution in the UK, and they sold 1.5 million of them. I find it quite impressive what people managed to get out of it though. It was slightly tempting to dig out a power supply and leads and see if it still works but instead I downloaded an emulator that is pretty much perfect, to the point where you can even emulate the dodgy TV signals.

Spent half an hour or so dismantling BlackBerrys while doing helpdesk calls. One was savaged by a dog and had a cracked case and screen while two others had dodgy trackballs. I got one working by moving the good trackball from the damaged one to the better of the other two and managed to clean out the other trackball, so I ended up with two good ones that might be suitable for reissue.

Bleh

Tired and crappy over the last week or so, not sure why.

Car needed new exhaust unexpectedly but now goes OK, needs various bits but nothing too critical.

New Eisbrecher album is good.

D&D works well over Skype.

Nothing else.

Bored.

Tired.

Things and more things and stuff

Well, been lazy and not updated this in a while. It's been nearly a month. Interesting things that have happened include a trip to Berlin, a replacement car and various work related stress.

I like Berlin. It's a really interesting place with a lot of things going on. The atmosphere of the place is still very different from a typical city. It may have been 20 years since the city was reunited, but it still has quite a distinctly split personality. This was my third visit and I went with my cousin, who had never been. It was a fantastic trip. We spent quite a lot of time hanging out with my brother and just wandering around taking in the sights. The hotel was in the east, happily near a station on the U5, so we were able to get around very easily. I like the language too, we picked up a few useful phrases, and at one point I was even able to direct a native Berliner who didn't speak English to a nearby U-bahn station, although admittedly by saying one word and pointing.

Saw the 5-episode Torchwood miniseries on iPlayer and really liked it. The first two series were interesting but it was trying too hard to be Doctor Who for adults. The second series did improve though and they seem to have got it right with the last one.

I had a 6-string bass a few years ago and couldn't play it, and recently I picked up a cheap Shine one. It's absolutely brilliant. The electrics are a bit crappy but the body and neck are great, so I'm planning on rewiring it and possibly replacing the pickups. The neck is very wide but I can play this one. For some reason, a 6-string feels more right than a 5-string which you'd expect to be the natural progression from a 4-string. But I did the 5-string thing and didn't like it, though that might have been the bass itself.

I've been trying to work out what makes my skin so flaky and hideous every now and again. The prime suspect at the moment is dairy, although now I'm not completely sure. I suppose the best thing would to be tested properly but I'm not sure how to go about it. Last time I saw the doctor I mentioned it and they weren't particularly helpful. Also had an eye test yesterday and need new glasses. The optician I've been seeing since I was 8 is retiring, which is a bit gutting as he knows the history of my somewhat peculiar eyesight.

The Vectra, nice as it was, had a lot of issues coming up and despite it being a nice car, when the gearbox started to graunch into gear, enough was enough. I spotted an automatic 1993 Mercedes W124 220E for sale in Cheshire and went to have a look. After a test drive I put a deposit down on it and picked it up yesterday. It's cosmetically a bit shabby but mechanically seems to be fine. There are some issues, the exhaust had a slight blow which has become worse suddenly and the driver's window won't move and a couple of other things. It's a basic model without many toys and cloth seats but the interior looks brand new.

I've always wanted another Merc since my old W123 200. It's much like the old one to drive too, not a quick car but comfortable and relaxing, helped by the old-school autobox. Running costs remain to be seen. However, when I changed the insurance, there was no difference from the Vectra. It cost a little more to fill the tank than the Vectra but it looks like it should get about the same mileage to the a tank. The autobox has Standard and Economy modes and so far I've been quite happy leaving it in the Economy setting. It's actually quite quick if you use the kickdown but it's much more a gentle cruiser than anything else, though they did make a 500E with a 5-litre V8. I'd have liked a diesel one; they came in 5-cylinder 2.5 litre and 6-cylinder 3.0 litre versions but they aren't very common compared to the petrols.

I can see why people dislike autos but I've developed a bit of a taste for them. After a while driving it you learn when it's going to change gear and how it's going to behave in different situations.

Work has been busy. Lots of things coming in and going on, and making it hard to keep on top of the jobs. Every time I seem to get my job level down again a load more come in.

After not seeing Watchmen in the cinema, we saw it on DVD last week. It was interesting. I was quite impressed at how well they'd stuck to the book but it felt very long and drawn out, probably because of that. There were some good bits, Rorschach was great, and some bits were a bit less good. OK, excruciating (owl ship shagging). I wasn't sure about Dr Manhattan at all, the look just didn't seem right.

Weekend of fun

Friday night was spent with the gang at Caroline and Rob's, first having a rather tasty BBQ (lamb burgers and kebabs FTW!) , being entertained by their demented cat which climbs the apple tree and shakes apples onto your head, and then having a fest of Red Dwarf episodes. All good fun.

Saturday was spent round at my Dad's, as my cousin had come down from Preston. It was a good day, enlivened by a trip to Llandudno for a shopping trip. While my Dad's wife and my cousin went off to the shops, my Dad and I went to a video game shop and a music shop. I picked up a cheap copy of Dead Space for the 360 and lusted after a rather nice MTD bass which was pretty cheap at £280 - perhaps it was cheap due to the tasteless lime green strings that were on it.

Sunday was spent assembling my latest parts bass (a white Jazz type thing) before settling down to a good long session of Dead Space. I was tempted to get itwhen it first came out, and at £10, I thought it would be worth a go. It's a pretty decent game, though not very original in plot. The gameplay is pretty much like Bioshock in space with creatures from Silent Hill. It has some good ideas though, such as areas in vacuum and zero gravity and it ties in well with the story. I've done three chapters or so and it's decent so far.

Enough of the Michael Jackson crap already. I don't CARE about his brain being left out to dry while he's being buried in a gold coffin.

Handed arse on plate

So a few days of really quite warm weather. Normally cause for celebration but not when you're in offices without air conditioning. Also, when the air conditioning dies in the server room, this is a bad thing. Oh well.

The car had the other new tyre and the tracking done by a gibbon at ATS. The last guy was quite good, this one was an arse. It seems pretty much the same but now I'm really paranoid about the tracking, as I know the rough track can throw it off.

Badminton this evening. Despite the heat it was good fun and Em and I had a great match where She Who Doth Take It Too Seriously had her arsed handed to her on a plate. It was great, she gets so angry when she is losing, and at one point she threw her racket on the floor. Oh, sorry, no, she 'dropped' it. Heh. Her trademark smashes into her opponents face all went straight back to her, it was truly a thing of beauty.

I've been trying to eat well this week and did OK apart from a sandwich at lunchtime, a Mars bar and a bit of Coke. The one thing I've really avoided is dairy stuff and my skin seems better, although I don't know if it's the sun or that.

Learn how to echolocate. Could be a great party trick.

Broken car and excessive heat

So, if paying £140 for the exhaust wasn't enough, this morning I became aware of a strange steering issue on the way to work. Investigation showed that there was a puncture in the nearside front tyre, caused by a huge splinter of wood. Annoyingly the tyre was unrepairable. The tyre was replaced, but the garage had a look at the other tyres and found that the other front tyre had no tread on the inside. So, on the weekend it'll need to go in for the tracking and yet another new tyre.

Bah.

It's also damned hot. I wouldn't mind but it's really muggy, need a really good thunderstorm to come along and clean up the air.

Watched the first episode of the new Top Gear series. It was pretty good. Shame the steam engine didn't win the race though, but it wasn't far behind. Amazing thing.

This is very cool.

Fun and things and stuff and noise

Yesterday was Vicky's birthday so we all met up at Andy's to watch the start of the F1 qualifying before heading up to the pub to watch the Lions game in the pub. This would have been better if they had won, but oh well.

After that it was back down to Andy's before heading off to Rhyl. Unfortunately I didn't take into account the weight of five people and the metal thing in the middle of Andy's driveway for the gate. It caught underneath and snapped the exhaust clean in half. Unfortunately this meant the car was now completely unsilenced, and was unbelievably loud. Not the first time I've had this experience.

We headed off to Rhyl which was very embarrassing due to the loud noise scaring people, dogs and small children. Fortunately there were no police about, so that was OK. The evening was pretty good with lots of people, gossip and drink and then a really good meal. Finally though Andy and I had to head back. Word had got about of the Car of Death (tm) and a small crowd gathered to watch us roar away. It was even worse with the engine cold and there were a few backfires too. I dropped Andy off and got home OK, although coming up the track was a worry as what was left of the exhaust kept bouncing up and down and smacking the floor.

So today I took it down to Lobitos on the coast road and they said it will be £120 for the part as the whole front end needs replacing and it includes the cat. Oh well.

Haven't done much else today, took the neck off the fretless bass and put it back on properly as it wasn't quite right and put new strings on it, and about to sit down and watch some more Monty Python.

BBQ excess

The weekend was decent with a nice long BBQ at Rob and Caroline's, consisting of lots of talk, food and the usual things. All good fun.

Other than that watched Monty Python, a documentary about Iron Maiden's tour from last year, experimented with two old and battered Tablet PCs (one is now running XP Tablet Edition, the other FreeNAS) and not really much else.

Back in work today, fun fun fun. Trying to eat healthily again, today went reasonably well. I've made it through the day without a single sip of Coke, which is good given how bad I've been over the last couple of months, well, since London really.

Nothing

Nothing.

Lost cows

Work was again busy but quite productive today.

It looked like it was going to be a grim evening so I settled down with a book and a web browser displaying live updates from the Apple conference. This however got boring and I found the weather was looking better so I took the dog out for a walk. It was very quiet, didn't see a single person until about half way round, when I got asked three times by seperate groups of people if I'd seen six cows that had somehow escaped. I hadn't.

Still unmotivated.

Feh

Nothing particularly interesting this week. Work was busy busy busy. The weather was also excellent until typically it rained most of Saturday.

Yesterday was another Wii night with ex Proact people, always good fun. Plenty of food, Wii gamage and general stuff.

Today was my Dad's birthday so we went to Ruthin Castle for food. Pretty good. His wife had arranged for my cousin and I to appear unexpectedly which was a success.

Been playing on the DS a bit, and trying to summon up the energy to sort out the mess in my room which is now ridiculous. Can't see the point though. It's starting to remind me of my flat in Bath which was a festering pit of loneliness and despair.

10 things

1) Office fires are bad, especially when the people in said office have saved their work to their local hard drives and not the network.

2) It's been very hot. I wish the air conditioning worked in the Vectra but it just makes the air coming out of the vents smell slightly instead of making it cold.

3) Good Omens is a damned good book.

4) Why does every other dog have to attack our greyhound on sight? I'm developing a serious hatred of labradors in particular because of this.

5) The Vectra is running much better and stops better too with the new manifold gasket and rear discs and pads fitted on Saturday.

6) Coke is evil. The drink that is, although I'm sure the drug must be pretty bad too.

7) I have little to no self control when it comes to vintage Unix hardware.

8) Cardiff is populated entirely with promiscuous bisexuals and aliens, according to Torchwood.

9) Drug dealing is fun and productive in GTA Chinatown Wars.

10) Soul Calibur 4 is worth it just for the sheer hilarity of giving Voldo an afro, a Tyrolean hat and a monacle.

Bank holiday

It's been a fairly dull bank holiday, the main events being a visit to various Denbigh pubs on Friday evening to celebrate Andy's release from voluntary college work exile and a car boot on Sunday. The pubs were quiet, which was nice, and the car boot was the usual shedloads of tat, only more of it due to the bank holiday.

Haven't done much else, watched a few DVDs. Started the 2nd series of Torchwood which someone has lent me and once again discovered that Cardiff seems to be populated by promiscuous bisexuals and aliens. Fun fun.

Feeling really unmotivated at the moment, I can't get myself to do anything at all. Not sure why but it's pissing me off.

Blades

Work has been busy busy busy. Today was my Unix day. The morning was spent examining the possibility of hooking up an old tape libary to the server to use on the test sytem, but it proved not to work. The afternoon was spent putting a loaned JS21 Power6 blade and suitable management module into a spare Bladecenter (just like the one above) and see if it would work. It did, but the blade had been configured in a different Bladecenter with internal disks and kept hanging trying to see devices that weren't there. Still, it was a start. It was interesting as I've never had much to do with the blade servers before as normally they are populated with normal Intel machines. They are incredibly loud things, due to the vast amounts of airflow needed to keep 14 servers packed into a relatively tiny space running at a tolerable temperature.

The evening was spent round at Rob and Em's before going to badminton. It was OK but that ghastly woman was there again making things miserable again. It's just no fun to play with her at all, whether you're on her side or not.

Feh

Friday: Saw Star Trek in the evening, woohoo! Actually really quite impressed. It had a few things that weren't quite right (the Kelvin had a single warp nacelle!) but the whole thing really worked. The guy who played Spock did an awesome job and everyone else was pretty good. The only one who irked me was the guy playing Chekov as his accent was really far too exaggerated.

The weekend was spent feeling crappy with an agonising throat, so I didn't do much. I did however discover the joys of DS homebrew with the assistance of the apparently very naughty R4 card. The best thing is a clone of Lemmings, which is absolutely brilliant. I've always said Lemmings would be awesome on the DS, and I was right.

Today was payday, unfortunately my expenses form from London went missing, so I didn't get any of it. After a number of calls to Payroll, I think I should have the money by Thursday, so that's OK. I did however book the flights for a trip to Berlin in July to see my brother. My cousin is coming with me, which will be good as she's never been. So that's something to look forward to.

Minton of the bad

Work was meh, enlivened only by the visiting of a new office, which is part of a new development. It's actually really nice and has cool windows that take the entire wall and have a nice view over the town.

After that it was off to Rob and Em's for food and badminton. She Who Irks Me was there but I'm used to her ways now. There was one hilarious moment where I cocked up a serve and I heard her do a big fake laugh and then when I turned around and she was rolling her eyes in despair. Not sure why as she wasn't playing well after a few weeks away on holiday.

Fun.

Seeing Star Trek tomorrow evening, can't wait!

Fun week

It's been a busy week so far with work so not much in the evenings. Took the dog for a walk which was good and showed that I need to get back into the routine of doing so after the various weeks of travelling and things.

Went round to see the near completed house that I helped shift the timber for a while back. It's really nice. One thing I didn't realise is that the frame is visible in the walls which is really cool.

I put the fretless neck back on the Fart Machine which I thought went OK until I realised there was a gap between the neck and body and the neck keeps shifting in the pocket slightly. I suppose I'll have to take it off again and have another look. With the big humbucker on by itself, it sounds really quite double bass like which is interesting.

The car has a couple of issues which need to be dealt with. The handbrake has basically stopped working, one of the rear brake disks is looking interesting and the manifold gasket is ticking again. Oh well.

Tomorrow is badminton and Friday is Star Trek, good stuff.

Frustrating dream

I just had a weird dream where I was a train driver on the London Underground. There was a day where I was driving the train happily enough, but then the next day I was trying to get to work to drive the train but couldn't get there because things were either getting in my way or I kept getting distracted. It was really frustrating as I kept looking at my watch and seeing the time tick past and getting really worried.

Weird.

Glasgow and uber geekery

So it was up to Glasgow last weekend. The drive up was pretty much clear traffic all the way and we had no problems finding where we were meant to be going. Rob drove until about half way and then I took over. We did get slightly lost in Glasgow after I accelerated past a junction a little too enthusiastically and we had to take the scenic route over the river. After that we took a nice tour around Buchanan Street and the surrounding area before heading back to the hotel for a nap and to get changed.

The bash was pretty good, almost everyone doing the whole 30's themed thing. There was live music including a woman singing and playing a ukulele while being backed by a double bass, and the band that Laura's new husband plays in, which was pretty cool. It was interesting to see all the people there and there was quite a mix.

The next day was spent hanging out with Ed, Kat and Will at Loch Lomond. There is a touristy place there with shops and things, and we took a cruise out onto the loch which was interesting, although cold, and then went around the new acquarium. That was good but the cost was pretty high and we saw a lot of people going in and then leaving when they saw the price of admission. The evening was spent having a rather nice Indian meal and then finding an interesting underground bar where Rob endeared himself to the owner and got us all a free round of schnapps. Win.

After all this the drive back was reasonably OK. It wasn't quite as clear as the drive up but there were only a couple of minor delays on the M6 and the M56. We had the Hitch-hikers's Guide to the Galaxy playing all the way there and back and the 12th episode ended just as we were approaching Rhuallt Hill, so that worked out pretty well.

The week has been very busy and tiring in work, so I've not really done much in the evenings. Yesterday evening and today have been spent in an orgy of geekness. First I played around with the old Freescape games (Driller, Total Eclipse, Castle Master). I first played these on an Amstrad CPC where the frame rate is less than 1 per second. This really got on my nerves for a while so I got hold of the PC versions. These didn't run under XP but did run under Dosbox, and are much more playable. I also got the 3D Construction Kit. Again I had this on the Amstrad and it kept me occupied, creating all sorts of interesting worlds.

Today was spent with Rob and Em, and Jane and Wes who were visiting. We went to see the Wolverine movie, which was OK, and then pizza and desert in Pizza Hut. The pizza was OK but they cocked up the order so we got a free large one, so can't complain. After that it was back to Rob's for a game fest.

After I came home, I embarked upon a quest to update the BIOS of a Dell Mini 9. If it was running XP this is dead easy, if it's running Ubuntu, not so much. There were various ways of making a pendrive bootable and using the DOS update utility, but they were all too crappy and annoying so I tried to find an alternate solution. Eventually I found an ancient 300mb laptop hard drive that had a copy of Windows 95 installed on it. This was hooked up to a USB to IDE adapter, which allowed the update to be copied to it. The Mini 9 was then able to boot to a DOS prompt from the old disk and then run the update. Quite a palaver but worth doing as it fixes a lot of quirks with the original BIOS version.

I'm 31 tomorrow. 30 is an age I can cope with...31 I'm not sure about...

Argh, hotels

Just spent a week in London another course at IBM, this time it was 'Korn and Bash Shell Programming'. It was a pretty decent course and I stayed in the same place as last time, the Comfort Inn in Kings Cross. It's fairly similar to the Travelodge but has two important advantages - it's not on a main road, and it doesn't have any Underground lines going under it.

Off to Glasgow tomorrow for a wedding bash, should be good but I'm a bit anxious about the drive.

Work work work

Work has been interesting since I got back. I was quite alarmed to see that my inbox had 278 mails but about 70 of them were automated reports from the backup system and there wasn't anything catastrophic in the rest of them. It's been a slightly odd week as I'm off to London next week for a training course so it's been quite fiddly trying to get the important stuff done.

We've got BlackBerry devices now. They aren't bad to be fair but they have some strange quirks. For example it can open a PDF from an e-mail but not from the memory card, and the interface as a whole is quite strange and takes some getting used to.

Been playing both Lost and Damned on the 360 and Chinatown Wars on the DS, both good fun. I'm still finding the GTAIV mode of play a bit more challenging after so long on Saints Row 2 but I'm getting there.

Huge update

The USA trip went pretty well. Everything worked out OK, such as the car and the hotels. The car itself was a Chrysler Town & Country, a big van type thing which had three rows of seats. We knew it was going to be big but it was still a bit of a shock. It was OK to drive, although it did feel quite different from a car.

The first part of the trip was spent with Steve and Kara in Manchester CT, which was great as always. The time was spent mainly chilling and exploring Manchester and some of the further reaches of Connecticut. It was good to see more of the town where they live and we had probably one of the best burgers on the whole trip in a place called Catsup & Mustard. Even better, they do Ranch flavoured fries, which were really delicious. Another highlight was taking a trip to the Groton submarine base and touring the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine which is now parked up there.

On the Saturday (4th), we started out on Stage 2 of the trip, which was Washingon DC. This was the longest drive of the whole trip. We travelled in convoy with Steve and Kara with a break at Pottsville in Pennsylvania to have a look at the Yeungling brewery, which was pretty cool. The journey itself was quite unremarkable until we encountered the horror that is the Beltway. Things weren't too bad until some git pulled out of the slip road onto the carriageway. Everyone had to slam on, and an SUV behind us lost control and slammed into the central reservation. This flipped it onto its roof, and then it was hit by another car that rolled it back onto its wheels. This happened probably 10-15 feet behind us, and was distinctly scary. We were all a bit shaken up and very glad to make it to the hotel 20 minutes later. The Sunday was spent having a look around the Mall, the Washington Monument and the various memorials and things in that area. It was incredibly sunny and hot that day so it was a bit uncomfortable. Monday was spent looking at the Smithsonian but annoyingly it was very busy, which made the Air and Space Museum in particular very frustrating.

On Tuesday (the 7th) we bade farewell to Steve and Kara before heading off to New York, Stage 3 of the trip. This was a nice quiet journey with only a slight detour to Redbank, New Jersey, which is the home of Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash. It is pretty much a glorified comic book store but it was worth seeing. The only bit of the journey which caused us worry was getting to the hotel, which is right next to the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. We had such worries about getting sucked into it and having to drive around Manhattan that we took a very circuitous route to the hotel. We quickly made our way to the Path trains and spent the evening in Manhattan, hunting for the Times Square Brewery, which sadly had closed down.

Last time we came to New York, we spent 10 days in Manhattan which was a bit of a mistake as we got burnt out fairly quickly. This time though, four days was plenty. The first day was just spend wandering around Manhattan. We got out of the Path at the Christopher Street station and took a walk through Greenwich Village and up through Manhattan, finally ending up at the United Nations. It was great to just stroll along and see what was there without any particular rush. We found the Strand Bookstore with 18 miles of books, which isn't a lie or exaggeration. After that we got the subway to the south end again and ended up at Ground Zero, still a sobering sight.

The second day was spent in Brooklyn, which was pretty interesting as it has quite a varied atmosphere. Some parts are really quiet and nice, while other bits were like Manhattan but smaller. After lunch in Prospect Park, we headed to Coney Island. Sadly this was a bad mistake - it's like Rhyl, but worse. Even more unlucky, I had to use the toilet. The ones in the subway station were unbelievable and the ones out on the promenade weren't much better. We spent hardly any time there but the subway trip was quite interesting as it is elevated over most of Brooklyn, and there was a lot to see. The day ended with a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, which was great. Rob insisted that this had to be done in the dark, so we waited for it to become dark in the Henry St. Ale House, which had good drinks, and eventually, good food. The walk across the bridge was really cool, although slightly alarming when you realise you're walking directly above the road. Everyone did their own thing for the last day, so I just wandered around Manhattan, seeing various things.

That Saturday it was the final drive from New York back to Boston, Stage 4 of the trip. This was probably one of the worst trips in the car. It was raining hard nearly all the way, with terrible visibility on the highway. This wasn't helped by the Satnav which picked a completely stupid route which included the northern tip of Manhattan. After the highways and things, it also took us the wrong way to the Avis place, which was annoying. We managed to get the car back with 7 minutes to spare, so that was lucky. The hotel turned out to be really good and we were all on the 10th floor. The weather was still horrible that evening so we ate quite near to the hotel. Sunday was spent with Steve and Kara and Bridie, walking the Freedom Trail around the city, taking in various landmarks. Despite it being clear and sunny, it was bitterly cold. On the Monday we took in one of the famous Duck Tours, which was really interesting and entertaining. The driver was an ex-magician and the way he did it could have been hideously embarrassing but somehow it worked. After that we went up the Prudential Tower and gazed down on the city from the 50th floor, and went to the fire station so Em could buy a sweatshirt. After a meal in a place recommended by the Duck driver, I headed back to the hotel for an early night. The next day everyone did their own thing, while the last day was spent visiting the USS Constition before the flight home.

The trip back was uneventful except for Rob's entertainment screen getting stuck on an image of a dying woman 40 minutes before landing in Heathrow, which was slightly alarming.

Since getting back it's been a case of trying to adapt back to UK time and not doing much at all really. On Friday it was the annual badminton club bash which is always entertaining. Yesterday I went to see my Dad and today it was a trip to the big car boot sale with Will and Kat. It was the usual crap and only Kat ended up buying anything, a couple of vinyl records and a giant sketchbook. The weather was great today so I took the dog for a walk and attacked some of the overgrowth on the track.

Back to work tomorrow, should be interesting.

I also did end up with a DSi after half-heartedly thinking about picking one up. After the incident on the Beltway which included severely heavy braking, we found a DS Lite in the car which must have been left in there. I had a cunning plan to trade it in for a DSi until I found out that DSi specific stuff is region locked. So I bought one in the tax-free PC World in Heathrow. I wasn't planning to, but they had one out on display and the feel of the buttons did it. Nintendo finally fixed the mushy and useless D-pad of the Lite and made it more like the old Phat DS. So far it's interesting. The camera and sound features are quite good fun and games look nice on the (slightly) larger screens.

STUPID

Why, why, WHY is the Xbox 360 music player so crippled?! You can't skip back and forth within a track, which is completely stupid. How utterly pointless.

Back with a vengeance

So, after a few months away, I'm back in Liberty City with a vengeance. Both in GTA IV: The Lost and Damned, and now in Chinatown Wars on the DS. The Lost and Damned feels better than the main GTAIV storyline, which I still can't be arsed with, and Chinatown Wars has the same map but looks and feels like a cross between GTA 2 and III.

I think Saints Row and GTA can co-exist quite happily. They used some idea from Saints Row in GTAIV and Saints Row 2 used some ideas from GTAIV, so if the franchises keep going and feeding from each other, both can benefit. GTA for the more serious stuff and Saints Row for the ludicrous over the top action.

With all the shovelware crap on the DS, it's easy to forget that it's a capable little system. Probably the most impressive game I saw on it before I sold my DS Lite was Metroid Prime Hunters. But GTA comes quite close. It has it's own look and feel, and somehow feels more 'right' than the PSP games. One thing that has become clear is that the Phat DS is far superior to the Lite. It's bigger, easier to hold, and it has a far superior D-pad that actually lets you hit diagnonals. I just wish there was some way to retrofit a Phat DS with Lite screens.

I actually tried to cook something this evening, a sort of pasta bake thing that came out unexpectedly well. It had a cheese topping made from the wonderful caramelised onion cheddar that Morrisons is selling at the moment.

Many things

Friday evening was spent at an Indian with a load of people from work for a couple of people's birthdays. It was a good evening with 14 of us there and the meal was pretty good. Someone along the line though the bill got cocked up which caused a certain amount of hassle.

Saturday consisted of watching some rugby round at Andy's and having a go on the new GTA:Chinatown Wars on the DS. It's actually really quite good. I've ordered my own copy and now I just need a DS to play it on. I'm certain I want one of the old Phat ones as the Lite cramps my hand and I can't afford the DSi. After that it was time to meet up with some old work colleagues from my last place for an evening of food and Wii. As always we ended up with far too much food and things. I always enjoy the Wii in this kind of situation as this is where it works but it sucks for ordinary gaming sessions.

Today was spent cleaning out my Mum's car (the first time she's ever asked me to do anything for Mother's day) which was quite a lot of work. I jetwashed the outside in town, got some special gunk to clean the brake dust from the alloys and hoovered the inside to clean out all the dog hair, mud, soil and leaves that seemed to have accumulated. It looks quite nice now. This was followed by an epic session of listening to the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio show. I haven't heard it for years and when I last heard it, it was taped off the radio. Listening to it in proper stereo on a decent sound system is really cool. Also, we never had the eighth episode on tape so it was the first time I heard that one.

The phone development is an E90. I read a lot of good stuff so I picked one up. It's more of a business phone than the N93 so it's quite different, and lacks the games and multimedia features. But it has basically the same features as the N93 with the bonus of the internal screen and keyboard, and GPS. So far it's been pretty good. Mine is brown, or Mocha, as Nokia calls it. It actually looks quite nice though.



This is the E90 with the original 9000 Communicator released way back in 1996, which is an absolute monster. This one does actually work but isn't charged at the moment.

I hate the way everything hassles you to update in Windows. You get all these wretched popups all the damn time at the bottom right.

So very tired...

Work has been rather busy this week and I think its that making me so tired. That and waking up too early and those annoying little fears and worries that gibber at you in the night and seem so much worse when you're lying awake in the dark. The other night I had to get up and reassure myself that my passport was still safe and where I had last left it.

Not much else to report really. It's been an odd couple weeks for some reason.

There has been a development on the phone front. Details forthcoming...

Urm

It's huge, red, triangular and has three strings. There's nothing more to say.

Much too nice to be in an office

It's been a fairly strange week. It's been annoying trying to keep the computer room from melting down each day after the air conditioning failed, this time in a way that meant it's been a week now. Bah. Other than that it's been fairly average other than the stunning weather taunting us from outside the office. At least it meant the evening dog walks were very nice.

In other news it was payday today, the last one before the (hopefully) epic trip to the USA that I'll be embarking upon with Andy, Rob and Em in April. Shame the exchange rate is so poor at the moment - when I last went it was about 1.92. Oh well.

The Lost and Damned is interesting. It feels new because it starts off in the 3rd island in the main GTA IV storyline, which I never made it to. I did a mission last night which had a very satisfying gunfight. It was difficult to adjust from the Saints Row 2 method of simply charging in, wildly spraying bullets from the infinite ammo rifle, but once I got used to the cover system again, it was good fun. Especially after Will gave me hints on how to get headshots easily.

IBM is apparently in negotiation to buy Sun Microsystems, could be an interesting turn of events if that happened.

Realism...fun?

Well, having just played the Lost and Damned for a little while and dying repeatedly, I completely forgot about the difference in Saints Row and GTAIV. You sort of get used to being some ubermensch who is able to take multiple bullet and stab wounds, regenerate his health and survive any fall, sprint for miles without stopping and teleport out of water. I can see that it's going to take some adjustment to the GTAIV mindset again.

On the plus side it looks good and the bikes work well, as promised.

Edit: I think I've got the hang of it again. Also I just won a race by smashing the the leaders of the race off their bikes with a baseball bat.

A great weekend

Yesterday was pretty good. Didn't do much in the morning, just slobbed around a bit and then it was time to head over to Rob and Em's for the rugby. I managed to provoke a huge tirade of abuse from Rob by waving a piece of cheese with caramelised onion in it, which Morrisons are doing at the moment. It's really, really nice. I also had carrot sticks and a tub of humous with caramelised onion and roast garlic. Although Rob wasn't able to help, there were plenty of volunteers to help and the cheese disappeared alarmingly rapidly.

The rugby itself wasn't particularly inspiring. The Wales game provoked many groans of dismay and the one after was mostly ignored. This was followed by a rather amazing batch of chilli and home made rolls and then lots of conversation and hilarity and all sorts of stuff.

Today has been busy in a good way. Took the car to town to wash it, got some better headlight bulbs for it, and worked out how to route the cable to hook the iPod shuffle up and while I was in town, threw away some crap I don't need. After that, walked the dog, and watched the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie, which isn't great but does have some good bits. This evening downloaded the Lost and Damned expansion for GTA IV after having a go on Duke Nukem 3D on the 360, which seems a lot harder than I remember.

Crushed in defeat

It really has been one of those weeks. I wasn't really looking forward to badminton, but I went anyway. It was a good evening although I ended up playing with the same guy almost all evening. Unfortunately both of us were having an off night and weren't playing well at all. At least it was good exercise and we found our lack of ability more entertaining than anything else.

Beat It, the metal version. I rather like this, but then again you could probably make a metal version of Barbie Girl and I'd like it. Well, maybe not.

Second Life is about to have a major crackdown on adult content, moving it to a special zone and making people pay to access it. This will undoubtedly be the thing that kills it as that's pretty much all it's good for, at least if your thing is watching avatars have badly animated glitchy sex with organs that usually...urm...don't 'mesh' very well.

Tired. But in a good way.

The fun fun things

A week of meh.

If you ever watched Star Trek TNG, take a look at these. They are pretty funny and a few are quite, quite brilliant.

Shuffle jumps the shark

Apple has finally broken the iPod Shuffle, irretrievably. They've removed all the buttons and moved them onto the headphone cable and then put in a speech synthesiser that tells you what is playing. The epic fail part is that the remote is built into the cable so you can't use it with anything else.

Frustration and boredom

It was another stressful day in work. It just was one of those.

Came home and had a nice quiet geeky evening not doing much. Fiddled around with an old laptop that has a bootable CD of a prototype Linux distribution that was designed to be used without a screen. It has built in speech synthesis and is quite interesting.

In a bit of a weird place at the moment, for reasons I won't go into. Not sure what to do.

Bah.

One of THOSE Mondays

Work was rather stressful and annoying, unusually so for a Monday. This wasn't helped by one of the AIX boxes running out of space in /tmp, bringing everything to a grinding halt. The main Unix guy wasn't in so I had to sort it out and it was a right pain. Also of all the boxes, this was the most critical. It turned out to be corruption that took seconds to fix, but it was shutting down everything that was running that was a pain.

I came home in that furious rage mood with a hair trigger temper, so I took the dog out for a walk which really calmed me down and by the time I got back, I was cold and wet but reasonably cheerful again.


Found this cute but unwelcome visitor running around the bathtub, so I persuaded him to run into a pint glass so I could take him far away into the field and let him go. They are really quite sweet little things, I just wish they'd stay outside.

Nothing comes close

Took this by accident and it looks quite nice.

The N93 has been the best phone I've had for a long time, and I can't find anything that comes close to replacing it. There's things like the N95 but I don't like sliders. The E90 Communicator is really nice but is big and I don't really need all the stuff it can do. The only non Nokia I might consider is an iPhone, but they are so expensive and locked to O2.

The only thing I've found that could feasibly replace it is the N93i, which is just a slightly shrunken version of the same phone. Sadly, these are still remarkably expensive for some reason. Truth be told, my N93 is still working perfectly, it's just getting more and more worn-in, so I can't really justify replacing it anyway.

A fun weekend

Yesterday was quite a long day but fun. In the morning I went over to my Dad's to see how the new house was shaping up and to see my cousin who had come down. We spent the morning picking up some things from Homebase for the house and picked up some fish and chips for lunch, which was good.

After that I headed over to Rob's and before heading into town with him and Will in search of Futurama. Annoyingly we couldn't get the third of the four movies, only the last one. It was pretty decent to be fair. This was followed by meeting Andy and heading into Rhyl to The Best Curry House in Wales 2009. It's near the sea front in Rhyl and couldn't be more out of place. It was nice though and the food was good, although it was a little pricey. OK, well, very pricey. We walked out to find wind and horizontal rain, so when we got back to Rob's house, we were all only wet on one side, which was annoying. The drive home was not fun, once past Denbigh, it was very difficult to see anything past the driving rain.

Today has been a stupid mix of wind, snow and sun. I took the dog for a nice run in the field, but didn't trust the weather to go out for the whole walk. Spent some time removing the 16gb SSD from the Eee, which is faulty, and installed Ubuntu on the internal 4gb one, which works fine. It only leaves 1.4gb free though. I thought about using an SD card as the /home partition but it didn't want to do it so I left it like that. At least it works to a degree now. After that, did some more missions on Saints Row and finally got some points to get the full version of Rez HD.

Shattered

It's been one of those weeks. Today wasn't too bad but there were still some moments of stress.

Badminton was OK this evening. Played twice with someone who is exceptionally good and has this mysterious ability to teleport around the court and extend arms like tentacles to reach the most improbable shots. This really highlighted my lack of ability to get around the court and in the process of trying to improve this, my knee started giving some warning twinges. Bah. It would certainly help if I was a stone or two lighter, that's for sure.

Really, really tired now.

Yay food

It's been a busy couple of days in work. Came back from two days off to a lot going on. Today was my Unix day which involved laying a new fibre connection for a new tape drive that's going in soon. All good fun.

It was the annual badminton meal this evening, which was at a different place which hasn't been open that long. I must have driven past it dozens of times but never noticed it. The food was excellent though and reasonably priced.

Before that, did a couple more missions on Saints Row. It's proving harder going than the sequel, although I discovered that there are a lot more character customisation options than it looks like at first, so I was able to make him look a lot more like my character in the second one, which is nice.

Losing weight

One reason to lose weight, when you have a bass strapped on and it sort of rests uncomfortably on top of your stomach so you have to shift it to the side.

Damn it.

The Offspring is one of those bands where you know pretty much what you're getting when you get one of their albums. The new one is OK though.

Holidays = nice

I had yesterday and today off as annual leave. Mainly because last year I pretty much didn't take any holidays at all and I had a lot to use up. It worked out OK though as yesterday my Mum had a a hospital appointment, and today my Dad and his wife moved house.

Yesterday was a fairly uninspiring day, didn't really do all that much, just slobbed around and watched a couple of DVDs. Also did something that I've been meaning to do and watch the bit in the first Star Trek movie where two people die in a transporter accident. I was quite young when I saw that for the first time and it absolutely traumatised me. The distorted and agonised screams emanating from the blurry misshapen form caught in the beam was utterly horrific for some reason. It wasn't as bad this time around, but it still wasn't very nice. I once glanced at that section from the novelisation and that was even worse, going into graphic detail about organs pumping outside the body and things. There have been worse and more graphic accidents since, mind you.

Today was helping out my Dad and his wife move. They had some very efficient removal people so the morning was standing around a lot before loading some stuff into my car and heading over to the new house. It's not as far to drive from home, so that's good. I spent much of the afternoon unpacking the kitchen stuff and attempting to work out just how the 40" plasma connected to all the various boxes. Lunch consisted of sandwiches from Sainsbury's and the evening meal was a quick takeaway from a nearby Pizza Hut. I never realised just how well caramelised onion worked on a pizza before, but it does. Mind you I've had caramelised onion in basically every way possible since I found out it existed a couple of years ago.

Meh

A very unspectacular day.

A long day

Rugby last night was OK. The first place we went to was heaving and smelled of wee so we went to another place which was quite empty. Will and I left early as I was tired and his car was in the way of mine. On the way back we saw the beginnings of a fight at the bottom of town and when I went back that way a few minutes later, two police cars were in attendance and there were at least two people flat out on the ground.

The overtime went OK today as much as reconfiguring dozens of PCs can be. Lunch was good, chips and a battered sausage, slathered in curry sauce. After that, it was over to Andy's to watch some uninspiring rugby and sort out the final gap in the USA holiday in April. The Ireland/England match was stupid, the England players were being cocks and the only entertainment was at the end when Martin Johnson was being interviewed and clearly trying to contain his fury and not punch the interviewer out. We also ate some rather tasty burgers from a local butcher and spent about an hour and a half thinking of alternate things to do in the holiday gap, only to go back the original plan in the end and book that.

All good fun.

It's been a bad week for food and exercise. Need to crack down on it tomorrow and next week. I'm off Monday and Tuesday, which is nice.

Argh

A very busy day. Didn't sleep at all well last night either, so knackered now. I would be looking forward to a nice weekend of relaxation but there's overtime tomorrow. Oh well, hopefully it won't take too long and we always get chips for lunch so that should be fun.

Rugby tonight, should be fun. I don't think I'll be out too late though, so tired and need to be up for the overtime.

Holy crap

Work was OK today but I have a bad feeling about tomorrow.

Picked up the new Prodigy album when I went out for lunch and put it on in the car on the way home. I'd already heard a few of the tracks, but through laptop speakers, and I think 'Omen' is the best thing I'd heard by them in a long time. It's just amazing when it all kicks in at the beginning. There's some other great tracks too.

Badminton was OK this evening, played reasonably well I thought, especially as I've felt really tired all day, well, all week really, and I wasn't sure how well I'd play.

A Saints Row movie will suck, because it'll focus on the whole hip-hop gangsta thing. The second game only really worked for me because having the character played by a sarcastic cockney bastard made the gangsta thing rather more tolerable for some reason.

One of those weeks

It's shaping up to be one of those weeks. Today was particularly annoying with hassle coming from all quarters. It was made worse by not having the car so I had to traipse half a mile across town with a laptop in tow to deliver to an ungrateful user.

I got the car back this evening. It was definitely the crankshaft sensor so they put in a new one and it's running perfectly now. I hadn't realised how rough it was running while the light was on but I suppose that's understandable if it was in limp mode. As to the cost, I don't know as the garage guy didn't have the bill handy so is posting it.

Played around a bit with the RS/6000. I successfully mirrored the hard drives, which is something I remembered doing on the course. This is really why I wanted one because the AIX implementation of LVM is really powerful and flexible, but it's not easy to practice without a machine that doesn't matter if I break it. I'd like to get a couple of tapes for the drive in it so I can back it up before trying stuff that might break the OS, as it took quite some time to install. It's an ancient DDS3 drive and the tapes are about £1 each these days.

Anyway, I'm going to shut it down now and try and relax.

RS/6000

So that RS/6000 I mentioned had a significant price drop, so I ended up with it. It's old, but it does support AIX 5.3, which is what we use in work. Also, unlike most of the other machines I've seen for sale, it isn't a hulking great beast of a server and is about the size of a large tower PC. It has the following specs:

400mhz Power3-II processor
256mb RAM
2x 36gb SCSI hard drives
DDS3 tape drive (12gb per tape)

As you can see it's not the most powerful machine, but it should run AIX nicely enough and certainly will be good enough to play around with LVM and disk management. It has two free RAM slots so allows room for expansion and a third hard drive could be installed. Also it's capable of running AIX in 64-bit mode, which is nice. There is no graphics card though so it has to be accessed via a serial console. Annoyingly RS/232 ports are rapidly disappearing from modern machines so I had to use the Latitude D400 as a console.

The installation of AIX 5.3 went as expected, but when the machine tried to boot from the new install, it hung when it tried to start the kernel. Investigation showed it had a very old firmware version that didn't support AIX 5.3. I found the latest firmware for it, but it required installation from floppy disks. I had to go and dig out a USB floppy drive, and then find a disk, not that easy. Then I found that it wasn't able to update the firmware from the system management so I had to download a diagnostic CD from IBMs website, write that to a CD, boot from that, install the firmware, and then reboot and see if the OS would load. It finally booted and I was able to set the initial system settings, and then finally reboot again. I was slightly worried that I didn't get a login prompt on the serial console but I was able to telnet in over a network connection.

So hurrah, I tamed the beast. I found a quote that probabaly describes this quite well. "Unix IS user friendly. It's just selective who it's friends are."

Stuff

In preparation for the Watchmen movie that is out next month, I thought I'd get a copy of the graphic novel and reread it. The last time I read it was in about 2004. I've read a few chapters so far.

Completed one of the gangs in the first Saints Row yesterday. It was quite decent but seemingly harder than I expected. Also I didn't realise just how much of a bonus unlimited rifle ammo was until now. Unofrtunately there doesn't seem to be any way of getting it in the first game without cheating.

New Prodigy album is out and Will sent me links to some of the new tracks, and from what I've heard so far, it's pretty good.

Chinese Democracy

Well, everyone's heard all the stories, hype and rumours about this Duke Nukem Forever of music. Axle Rose might be a cock of the highest order but after all this time, it would be rude not to listen to it at least once.

If it had been entitled 'Axl Rose and the Amazing Musical Variety Show' it would be more appropriate. It's definitely not Guns N Roses, or at least not if you have fond memories of Appetite for Destruction. It has some interesting tracks and a couple I quite like.

But I'll stick with Velvet Revolver, thanks anyway Axl.

A nice lazy day

The weather today was absolutely fantastic, so I took the dog for a good long walk in the sunshine. Really nice. One of those days where I stopped on the road and marvelled at the scenery. When you live somewhere like this, it's very easy to become used to it and just take it for granted. Due to the car woes, I stayed at home otherwise.

Other than being V shaped, the drunken rugby bass doesn't do anything in particular that my other basses can't do. So I took one of the sets of octave strings from a 12 string bass set (which I got a long time ago when I wanted a 12 string) and put them on it, making it into a piccolo bass, which is tuned exactly the same as the bottom four strings of a guitar. This is quite often regarded as a pointless thing to do but it lets you play it like a bass and get guitar like sounds.

I fired up the first Saints Row and have played it a bit. Probably because I'm so used to the second one, it's far better than I remember. I think it's because I was so used to GTA San Andreas that I never gave it a chance originally. It has more rough edges than the sequel but it's not as bad as expected. The city is also a lot smaller, but I keep driving through areas that I recognise from the second game, and it's interesting to see the original Saints Row area which has been completely redeveloped in the second game, much to your character's dismay. Quite a lt of other things are the same, mainly a number of the cars and some of the character animation. The character creation is much more limited but I managed to make him look a bit like he does in SR2. Not really necessary though as the story dictates that the character has extensive plastic surgery while in a five year coma between the two games. One thing that is difficult to get used to is that your character never speaks in the first game, while he never shuts up in the sequel.

Finally got to listen to the second Velvet Revolver album, which is really good. Also listened to Chinese Democracy, which is...well, it sure as hell isn't Guns N Roses, despite what it says on the cover and whatever Axl might say.

Yay badminton

It was a fairly busy day in work and it was one of those annoying days where I felt tired for most of it. As a result I nearly didn't go to badminton this evening. To be honest, what with one thing and another and bouts of laziness, it's been ages since I went on a Friday so I wasn't sure if there was any point. I'm glad I did go though as it was a really good evening. I played reasonably well but there was one game where I had a complete blast and both myself and my partner played really well, so that was good. After that, it was time to go to the pub which was good fun as always.

Nothing's going on this weekend, which is probably a good thing. It's nice to have two days of nothing to look forward to.

I took the car to a garage at lunchtime where they hooked it up to a PC and read the fault code. Apprently it is the crankshaft sensor. They cleared the fault and said to drive it back to the office and see how it went. For half a mile or so it was fine, just like normal and then it went back into safe mode and the light came back on, so that'll have to be looked at next week. Boo. Oh well.

The drunken rugby bass turned up. It's a cheapo Wesley which was ordered during the first boring match last Saturday. Alcohol and Internet access should not be combined - this is why I own a unicycle. Anyway, it's a white Flying V which is very 80's metal, and given how little it cost, it's actually rather nice. I think my reasoning was that it would be a nice platform to modify but all it really needs is some extra shielding in the cavities. I've always liked the Flying V guitar and you don't see bass versions very often. It's rather strange after a normal bass though, mainly because it's so long.

Dwi'n hoffi Cymraeg

Work was OK today, being my Unix day which is always entertaining and a nice break from the usual stuff that goes on.

The Vectra tried to start this morning but the battery was too low. I had to take my Mum's car to work and then come home at lunch time with jump leads. Once the Vectra was started it ran OK but clearly is stuck in safe mode In theory it's possible to cross two pins in the ECU connector to make it flash an error code but I'll see ifI can get someone to actually use the proper tool. Apparently the most common cause of this is the crankshaft sensor, but who knows. The top end of the engine has always been a little noisy, hope it's not anything to do with that.

It was badminton in the evening, which was good fun and very energetic. There was also the now usual impromptu Welsh lesson, which is surprisingly entertaining and it's quite surprising how much of it I remember from high school lessons. I wish I was more fluent in it.

Orange Light of Death

I was merrily driving home when the engine management light on the dash lit up. It still drove OK and there weren't any other signs of issues, so I carried on. However when I got home I switched the engine off and tried starting it again, and it was very reluctant to restart. Eventually it did and it seemed OK once it was actually running. I suppose I'll have to find someone who can plug it into a computer to find out what the fault is that it has picked up and hope it's not serious. Apparently it's far more common for the various sensors to fail rather than the actual thing they are monitoring, which is a bit silly.

One of those evenings where I wanted to put some music on but couldn't decide what to listen to, so I put iTunes on shuffle. And then The Great Southern Trendkill by Pantera came up - perfect.

Life is fundamentally unfair - there's an RS/6000 on Ebay right now with enough power to run AIX 5.3. It's reasonably affordable, has hard drives (most are removed before sale) and the only thing wrong is a lack of RAM (256mb). And what with holidays coming up, car failures and things, I can't really think about getting it. Annoying.

Cuba has banned Windows and is creating a custom Linux based OS for everyone to use instead. Seems a bit OTT.

Long time no post

The last two work days of last week were much the same as the beginning of the week, unnecessarily stressful, due to various reasons. I went to Rob and Em's for badminton on Thursday but Em wasn't well, and Rob and I decided we couldn't be arsed. So we ended up looking at laptop options to replace the venerable iMac they've had on loan from me since about 2005 and drinking hot chocolate with Twirls to dip into them.

It was the rugby on Saturday which worked out quite nicely. We ended up on the top floor of a club in Denbigh with the matches on a projector. Somehow we ended up with that top floor all to ourselves for the whole thing, which was nice. After that it was out around more pubs, stopping off to get chips on the way.

Sunday was spent doing nothing much due to tiredness, other than doing some more crap in SR2 and watching a couple of DVDs.

The Lost and Damned came out today, the DLC for GTAIV. I've heard encouraging things from Will about it so I might just pick it up, especially as I've got SR2 up to 97% complete and little motivation to get the last 3% as it's mainly the last levels of some activities which are annoyingly hard.

I did put GTAIV on today anyway to see how it felt and it was a distinct shock after the craziness of SR2, primarily the more realistic handling of the cars. The first car I got into was a typical 70's American land yacht, which was almost impossible to control at any kind of speed. Fun though, especially as it drifted sideways yet again onto a pavement, sending hapless crowds of people flying. It just feels so dull after SR2 though, you miss the bizarre little touches like when I left my character standing around in a nightclub and he strolled over to the dancefloor and started dancing. You'd never catch Nico doing something random like that. Also I found Nico infuriatingly slow in his movements, even running.

Found a great invention in Morrisons. USB AA batteries. You pop the end off and put them into USB sockets to charge. Once full, you put the end back on and use them as a normal AA battery. What a great idea.

Not much else to report really. Payday tomorrow, woo.

Touchy feely

Work was better today. A couple of meetings in the morning and Unix in the afternoon. This just reminded me of why I need an AIX machine to play with. There's a load of things which I haven't had a chance to practice and an actual physical machine is really the best way of doing it.

Saw a 3G iPhone in person which was nice. They are very nice devices, it must be said. If they were available on other networks than O2 I'd probably own one. The iFart application is just as puerile and hilarious as I expected. There is also a BlackBerry Storm in for evaluation, not impressed. The way the screen responds with an actual click is quite interesting but the software is pants. Sluggish, unresponsive and clunky.

Took the dog for a walk and went the full circuit for the first time this year. The light has got better so while it was pretty dark towards the end, it wasn't too bad. The roads are annoyingly wet from melting snow though.

Downloaded a few things onto the 360, a Watchmen trailer, and a couple of game demos. Nothing particularly interesting. The Lego Batman demo was fun for about two minutes until I realised it was more of the same. I replayed the first level of Rez HD, which looks absolutely awesome on the new screen. It's not really the kind of game you'd expect HD to make a difference but somehow seeing all the lines rendered so sharply makes it much easier to see what's going on. I've never yet bought any Microsoft points but I might just do it to get the full version.

Argh, work

It's bad enough going back to work after a week's holiday anyway, but when there's office moves going on, it's a recipe for a whole load of stress. Things could have gone better, but today was very annoying. I was finishing off the phones and merrily ripped out one of the lines and rewired it, only to find it was the wrong line. Oh well. It didn't take long to sort but was frustrating.

Other than that it's been a fairly ordinary couple of days.

They won!

Well, after the retro madness of the morning, it was off to Rob and Em's, picking up Andy and Will on the way to watch the Wales/Scotland rugby game. It was a good match with Wales playing really well until it all suddenly went to pot in the last 20 minutes. They still won though. After that it was a good few hours of conversation, YouTube videos and some rather nice chilli made by Rob.

Before that I downloaded the ST version of Captain Blood as it's supposed to be the best one. It's a really good game, and the visual style in it is absolutely amazing. It also has the best sounds apparently, which are important when you are communicating with the aliens. I remember seeing screenshots of the CPC version and that itself looked pretty decent, other than the resolution being rather low. A friend of mine actually had it on the Spectrum, but that didn't look quite as good.

For some reason I'm feeling astonishingly tired, and depressingly today feels like Saturday.

Amstrad CPC

In a fit of retro madness I downloaded an Amstrad CPC emulator and some games. Playing them on the keyboard was a bit crap though so I hooked up the 360 controller. It actually works pretty well and the analogue stick works quite well when mapped to the joystick input.

Currently playing Captain Blood, which was an amazing game that I never actually got hold of at the time, so I thought I'd try it out.

Video game addiction

Video game addiction is an interesting thing. I've had it a few times where I've played a game far too much. Most of the GTA series (but not IV) did this, BioShock, Fable II and most recently Saint's Row 2. It's quite weird when you realise just how much time you are spending on it. But at least these games come to an end. As much as I've enjoyed Saints Row 2 there isn't much more I can do in it except finish off the activies and finding the tags and CDs dotted about. I thought about replaying it with a new character, but I found that all the cutscenes and missions seem faintly ridiculous if I change the character at all. The other voices in particular just don't seem right.

Hilariously when I was experimenting with alcohol in the game, I found the character drunkenly says things like 'I really hate this fucking town'. 'I only hurt people because I'm crying inside' and 'Oh Christ I want to give up', bringing to mind a gang leader who secretly wants to dump the whole thing and move to the countryside.

Anyway, online games such as WoW don't come to an end, they keep changing and updating, keeping you coming back for more. I can't really speak from experience with this but this might be why they can be more addictive. The closest I've come to this is playing Second Life. I was worried that I might get too involved in it. Fortunately, it's such total shit that it didn't happen.

Shopping, rugby and steam engines

Supplies were low so I had to go and get the car from the bottom of the track and get some supplies. Morrisons was annoyingly busy but it didn't take too long. After that I hung out at Andy's with the krew for some rugby. While watching it we tried out the new flavours that Walkers crisps are trialing. The results were as follows:

Chocolate and Chilli: Nice but flavour too weak.
Builder's breakfast: Quite tasty with bacon and egg easily distinguishable.
Cajun Squirrel: Interesting but eew after a couple.
Crispy Duck and Hoi Sin sauce: Pretty nice, but not great.
Fish and Chips: Not too bad but a bit fishy for my taste.
Onion Bhaji: Easily the nicest, agreed by all.

I got home OK but the last bit of the track needed about five goes to get the car up to the top. After that, spent some time recovering the data from Sian's laptop hard drive after deciding the motherboard is toast, and then resuming my experiments with USB RAID under FreeNAS.

The new Tornado steam engine has made it's first long distance trip with actual passengers. The shot at the end where it pulls up next to a modern train is awesome.

The curious case of hailbound

Didn't do too much today. Faffed around a bit in Saints Row 2, doing some of the activies that I hadn't done and replayed a couple of missions.

After that, met up with a couple of people from work to go and see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The journey didn't start out well. As I approached Denbigh, I noticed some hail falling, and by the time I got to the town, the roads were thick with it. I had to go to a cash machine and the road was blocked by idiots so I had to go to another one. After that though, the journey was uneventful. After going to Pizza Hut (a large cheesy bites BBQ deluxe is to die for), we watched the film.

It was long. Very long, but unusually, while you noticed it was long, you didn't really mind. It was a very odd film though. Also, with all the stupid hype about Brangelina, it's easy to forget that Brad Pitt can actually act when he puts his mind to it.

When I came home, the hail hadn't melted, and the roads gradually became more and more treacherous. I had a go at the track but couldn't get anywhere so I had to abandon the car right at the bottom and walk up. Oddly enough, it was a very pleasant experience in the cool air and bright moonlight. Having just typed that, it's started hailing again, so that was lucky.

Snowbound

It was snowing all the time at my Dads' and when I drove home, the roads were pretty slushy. The track was pretty bad at the bottom, then it was OK and then the top bit was too much. The Vectra battled valiantly up the track with the traction control light blinking all the way, but finally the snow got the better of it. Still, it was only a short walk from where I had to leave it.

That was the 1000th photo I've taken with the N93.

The Fart Machine is complete

The string tree and the pickup cover on the Fart Machine are now in place, effectively making it complete, assuming that the wiring hasn't come undone during the work. Just need to sort the finish out on the back, but that isn't too urgent.

The Fart Machine strikes

Went out to Will's today. The track was still quite snowy so the car basically tobogganed all the way down. After that, the roads were OK.

The modified bass proved to sound quite nice when hooked up to Will's system, which was definitely good. The new pickup is only really good for big fat low frequencies by itself, which is why they're generally called mudbuckers. We ended up making a track which is hard to describe but starts off with a bass duet, a weird bit in the middle and a death metal rampage at the end. Good fun.

I wasn't expecting to make it up the track on the way home, but much to my surprise, I got up fine. There was a nasty bit at the bottom, which I got past by flooring it around the corner, startling some people with dogs who thought I was revving at them. Once again the traction control proved it's worth.

Going to my Dad's tomorrow, we're going to attach the new pickup cover to the bass, and it could also do with a string tree on the headstock if I can find a spare one. I'm trying to think of a way of removing the damaged finish on the back of the body. It's this nasty thick lacquer stuff. Ideally, if I could be at all arsed, I'd pull it to bits and strip all the finish off, but I'm not quite in the mood to do that yet. It would be easier to just strip the back, make it smooth again and chuck some lacquer on it.

Installed FreeNAS on a VM and set up some iSCSI targets. These work quite well as remote storage, appearing on the client machine as an actual connected disk. I'm sure it would come in insanely useful for something but I can't think what.