Geeky weekend

Friday evening was spent going to Wrexham to watch the rugby league game against Leeds. I'm not familiar with league but it's easier to follow and I actually found the game quite enjoyable. What was less enjoyable was the atmosphere of the crowd, it was much more akin to a football crowd and the chanting and thumping and general abuse directed at the referee and teams was not fun at all. It kind of put me off the whole league experience really.

Yesterday was a peculiar day, spent much of it with a frustrating and annoying pain in my chest which I couldn't identify. It had been building up a bit on Friday but got worse yesterday. I was naturally a bit concerned but all the guides said that if it was anything heart or lung related I would have other symptoms. So I hoped it was a pulled muscle or something and let it be, and today it has gone, so hopefully that's all it was.

Went to Mold to the music shops and picked up a bass effects unit. I've wanted one for ages and the one I bought was reasonably cheap. It's got some interesting sounds and can play drum loops too, which is ideal. I've hooked up all the basses to it and got some great sounds but the best was undoubtedly the fretless neck on the doubleneck. Absolutely awesome with a bit of overdrive and flanger.

The car journey also let me try out the new Shuffle - works as expected and the design makes it easier to use one handed without looking in the car, so that's perfect. Not sure what to do with the old one but if nothing else it can be used as a 1gb pendrive.

Today was spent watching yet more Battlestar Galactica and putting the black base coat on the experimental paint bass. The paint was so horrible that I had to take the body out to the shed to spray it as the fumes were unbearable and I had to leave it out there for some time before bringing it back into the house to dry. It looks OK so far, although the primer wasn't all that smooth even after going over it with wire wool to get rid of the worst parts. From what I read though a slightly rough finish works better with the chameleon paint so we'll see how it goes.

Also rebuilt my old Toughbook CF-M34, which I've had for a few years. It's a tiny little laptop but fully ruggedised. It has humble specs, being a PIII 400mhz with upgraded 256mb RAM and a 40gb hard drive. However, it is a surprisingly usable machine and is appealingly cute, if that makes sense. I put Windows 2000 on it as previous experiments with XP and Linux didn't work very well and 2000 is the one version that seems to allow everything to work.

Things like Firefox and other apps are surprisingly usable on it, and I finally got the touchscreen working after a lot of fiddling around with the drivers. The modern equivalent of the CF-M34 is the CF-18 and CF-19, which are about the same size but have tablet functionality. The older ones are becoming cheap but not quite cheap enough yet. I'd love to get one though - these rugged little machines are ideal for travelling.

Back to work tomorrow, hope it lets up a bit after last week, it was a bit of a nightmare to be honest.

Up to Carpe Jugulum in the Discworld reread. Enjoying them so far, it's been so long since I read most of them that there's new stuff each time.

Hacked off

I admit this is coming from someone who has never smoked but I can't understand how a woman, who is 72 years old, obese, borderline diabetic, has high blood pressure, never exercises and has to take dozens of pills every morning can't see that smoking is a really stupid thing to do. Also the house stinks of it and I've got a cough that won't go away.

It's times like this I wish I hadn't fucked up so badly and had my own place, preferably far away.

Random

My cousin's liver, blood and bone tests came back clear, so that's good news, but she's still going to have to have the masectomy.

Apple's released the iPad, which is a gigantic letdown in my opinion. Rather than an Atom based Mac capable of running OS X or Windows 7 with a multi-touch display, it's just a giant iPod touch, nothing more. Same platform, same software, same limitations and iTunes lockdown. I just don't really see the point of it. Steve Jobs did his best, but it just seems to be a solution in search of problem. Oh well, I'm sure it will sell and there'll be plenty of copycat products from everyone else.

Watched some more Battlestar Galactica. Season 2 is pretty good so far, and one thing I like about it is that it doesn't shy away from some quite gritty storylines. Good stuff.

Found a cheap iPod Shuffle 2nd generation for the car. Belkin make an adapter for the newest one that gives it a normal headphone socket and the buttons to control it but I think the whole idea of it is just so stupid I can't make myself buy one. The 2nd gen one will be fine for what I need it for.

Facebook is really flaky recently, I've lost count of the 'Ooops, something went wrong' messages I've had over the last week or so.

Feeling really tired today, was supposed to be going to the gym this evening but need to sort out a new programme and just didn't really feel up to it.

Need to practise German more, been letting it slip recently.

Things can change in an instant

Wow, how things can suddenly change. Found out yesterday that my cousin who I went to Berlin with has breast cancer, and the Unix guy in work is off sick for three weeks. My cousin is going in for tests for the next day or so and then gets the results on Friday. It's definitely going to need a masectomy though - what a nightmare. After the surgery it's going to mean six weeks of convalescence and she's not going to be able to do much at all during that time.

The Unix guy was in the middle of sorting out the high school server backups, quite a large and urgent project as the old servers need to be backed up, but at the same time, are about to be replaced with new ones. I've been drafted in to help with that. Also three of the virtual Unix machines are playing up since a power cut over the weekend, and I can't work out why. Fortunately they are only two test machines but it's a pain not knowing what the problem is. I'm going to dig out my home AIX machine to play with networking, but if it's a problem with the hypervisor or something I can't test that on it.

Fun weekend

Saturday consisted of spending much of the day round at my Dad's, as my cousin was visiting. We set him off on the Pier-to-Pier 10k from Llandudno to Colwyn Bay with a lot of other nutters. To be honest, I'd love to be able to something like that but I'm just not built to be a runner. The evening was spent with Andy and Maz, eating a rather delicious curry with suitable accessories, ice cream, and watching Charlie Brooker and some of those police chase programs, good fun.

Today was spent getting back into Battlestar Galactica Season 2 with a vengeance after a long break since about November or so, while in between episodes going to put coats of primer on the bass body being used in the great paint experiment. I put several coats of primer on it before the can ran out and it looks OK. It'll need some smoothing before I start putting the chameleon paint on it. There's three cans for that, a black base coat, the colour coat and the clear coat. I hope there's going to be enough - I think I'll need two complete sets of it if i'm going to do the double neck in it. The plan is to build the experimental body into a working bass even if the paint doesn't work out, to try out active EMG electronics. This is the first time I've tried to paint a bass body properly without just splurging paint all over it in a great mess so we'll see how it goes.

Watched six episodes of BSG and it's really rather good and surprisingly easy to get back into after the long break. I was quite surprised when it was first broadcast and people said it was good, but I've really enjoyed it.

The naff car stereo is still working OK and the overly bright display was cured by putting parcel tape over it. Makes it look rather shit in the daylight but since I'm just using the Aux input it doesn't display anything useful anyway. Also replaced the door card but still can't work out what happened to the speaker wiring - looks like someone just ripped the speaker out, wiring and all. It's possible to get a complete new wiring loom for the door but installing it would be rather a hassle. Bah. Annoyingly my faithful iPod Shuffle has developed an annoying fault with the headphone socket where the plug has to be pulled slightly out to get a proper signal. It's getting on for five years old now though, so it's done quite well. Still holds a good charge too, so it's frustrating that what is probably quite a simple fault can't be repaired.

Ups and downs

A weird week of ups and downs, flitting from wild optimism and hope to downright bitterness and depression. Today was the tipping point, had a surprisingly good day in work, and then decided to go to badminton, which was absolutely brilliant.

There were only 10 there so I had several games with the same three guys, and we didn't swap sides or anything. The guy I was playing with has a style that somehow works with mine and we did quite well. Absolutely shattered now and I can feel the ache in my right arm. I haven't been since about the end of November so I was quite pleased at how well I played. Feeling more motivated now to get some decent exercise.

Decided I needed a car stereo with aux in so ended up getting one off a guy in work. It's a bit of a silly one and quite naff really, but it has a good sound and plenty of inputs and works well. The only hassle is that it's stupidly bright when it's dark which is really distracting.

Cars, Apple, everything, people suck

Focus is misfiring and the temperature gauge isn't reading correctly.

Apple make very pretty things but they are truly the epitome of the mindset where if it breaks, buy a new one, which I really despise. I've genuinely had it with Apple now, I just can't be fucked with that mindset and the elitist crap any more. This all came about because I picked up an iPod mini to use in the car, and changing the battery was an unnecessarily difficult and tedious experience and is pretty much impossible to do without damaging the case.

Oh well. I suppose I'm fairly unusual in that I like to tinker and repair things, every one of my main computers was a discarded faulty unit which I've repaired. This evening I'm going to try the copper sheet mod on the Precision M65 to see if that helps the GPU cooling. Cos that's just how great my life is. Woo fucking hoo.

Times change, people change, sometimes it can be a real fucking bitch when you realise suddenly just how much.

Fleh

A fairly productive day in work, and for once I didn't go home in a towering rage. It's going to be a good long while of early starts though, what with illness in December and then the weather, my flexi balance is about minus 9 hours which is a real pain.

Went to the gym after work, which was OK. It's going to take some getting used to and I think I'm probably going to start heading there in the evening rather than directly after work. Did have quite a healthy food day though, got low fat chicken and fruit and stuff for lunch and successfully avoided the evil vending machine and drank only water. Not sure if it's that but I feel much better this evening after all the weeks of eating crap.

Setting up an Acer laptop for someone, and the amount of shite preinstalled by Acer was ridiculous. It has a dual-core Pentium with 4gb RAM, running Windows 7 and out of the box it was hobbled by the sheer amount of crap installed. After clearing it out, it runs a lot better.

My D630 which now has the boxed copy of Windows 7 on it was being a pain, saying the product code was incorrect for ages and that I'd have to call Microsoft to sort it out. Then today, after the activation period expired, it activated perfectly. What the hell? That's one nice thing about basically every other OS, none of this activation crap.

Bleurgh

One of those days, busy, but dull, and not very productive.

Up to Jingo in the Discworld marathon, having just read Hogfather. That's one of the best ones as it some of the best scenes for Death, the Wizards and Hex, and it's just really good.

Found a brilliant German phrase: 'Er macht einen Donnerschlag aus einem Furz'. Translates as 'He's making a thunderclap out of a fart', or making a mountain out of a molehill.

Back to normality, sort of

Last night was Maz's birthday bash, basically consisting of a mini pub crawl around Denbigh. It was a good evening all round, the only let down being the chippy closing early and Andy's awkward neighbours blocking my car in.

The snow has pretty much melted overnight, a huge relief. Spent most of the day at my Dad's in the house that they have now moved back to, but has been much altered so it's not really the same. Took the crap Ford stereo out of the Focus and fitted my ancient Sony one in using a cheap adapter. It's ten years old, and was originally bought to fit into my Fiat Cinquecento but after that it was moved into several cars before spending several years in Rob's old 205. Annoyingly it doesn't like CD-RWs, which is a bit of a pain.

Still need to fix the door, the local scrappy had a door card but it was the wrong colour, so I've ordered one off (inevitably) Ebay.

After that, came home and found the body for the paint experiment bass had arrived. Attempted to fit a neck to it, unwisely as I was feeling tired and quick to anger, so I had to give up as it was being remarkably awkward. I have however got hopefully all the stuff I need, such as various grades of sandpaper, primer, etc. It's going to be a dismal failure, but hey.

Got the new tube of Arctic Silver 5 for the Precision M65, but still awaiting the copper sheet so I can try the method of putting a copper shim between the GPU and heatsink to improve the heat transfer, to see if that stop the thermal shutdowns it suffers from if the GPU overheats.

In a weird state of mind, fluctuating between optimism and hope and depression. It's not good.

Bah

Got the car up to the track but on the way pulled too hard on the door and it fell to bits so it needs a new interior panel. Bah.

We have water

It has thawed slightly, but the track is still impassable. The water has finally unfrozen though, although I took a towel and shampoo in and made use of the shower in County Hall, which is a bit of a mystery as to why it's there at all. It worked though.

Didn't go to badminton tonight but was tempted. Got to start exercising soon, it's been really bad recently.

Hate snow

Snowed all day. Didn't stick at work but it had at home. Tired of it now.

Not much else to report, just been a dull day at work and a lazy pointless evening.

Smell

Weather not improving. Snow on track unchanged although most roads are clear now. Very windy today, not helping matters.

Had epic lunch in work, a panini from the deli with brie, cranberry and salami. Absolutely stunning.

Up to Hogfather in the Discworld reread, what a great book. I'd forgotten how good it was. I hated the TV versions they did of that and the Colour of Magic though, what a load of crap they were. Mind you I fully admit I've read the Discworld books so many times that I have my own very definite ideas about what it should look like. Same with Lord of the Rings, although that was better. Also David Jason as Rincewind? Really? That really didn't sit right with me.

Tired. Bored. Pissed off at being stuck at home without water. Need a shower.

German is complicated but fun.

Have ordered another of the bodies that the double neck was made of. I've got enough spare parts to build it up into a complete bass, so I'm going to follow the exact process I did to build the doubleneck and then strip it back down and paint the body, to see if I can do it decently. If all goes well, will order more of the paint and do the doubleneck body. Not particularly looking forward to pulling it to bits again but it will need some sort of finish on the body eventually.

Need to list more crap on Ebay but don't want to until the weather has sorted out in case it cocks up postage. Boo.

Not convinced this Precision M65 is quite happy yet. The Nvidia GPU still gets very hot if it's asked to do too much. Tempted to try the copper mod, where a small shim of copper is placed between the heatsink and the top of the chip to make better contact and improve heat transfer. Might be worth a go as I think the heatsink wasn't making proper contact with the chip, causing the original thermal shutdown issues, and the thermal paste I added (Arctic Silver 5) is helping but it's not quite right. Either that or get a motherboard from the Precision M4300 which has the Santa Rosa chipset and can handle 4gb RAM properly. The 32gb OCZ SSD is working OK though, not the fastest SSD around but it seems quite responsive and snappy. Still not quite the time for SSD yet, give it another year or so.

Face itching, haven't shaved in ages due to lack of water.

A pointless day

Snow still here. No need to go out, so didn't. Spent the day mostly in front of the 360. Played through the rest of Halo 3, except for the STUPID bit in the Flood ship, and did a bit on more on GTA Gay Tony. Watched Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run) as well, which is a great film and was a good way to try and pick up some more German. Also ate like crap and smell because I've not been able to have a shower in ages, although I've made sure there's enough water to have one tomorrow morning.

Looked back at a few things and it's scary how much time has passed. I've been working at the council for five years, for example. It's true what they say, time passes faster as you get older.

Gah

Snow still here. Had to go into town to get urgently needed supplies, not fun as Morrisons was heaving. Then had to carry it all up the track. Living off convenience food at the moment as trying to generate less washing up due to no water. Flushing toilet with buckets from the spring outside and haven't showered in days. Had enough now. Diet and exercise appalling. Have put new year resolutions on hold until weather sorts itself out.

Didn't do much else today. Watched District 9 on DVD, quite enjoyed it. Played through quite a lot of Halo 3 due to boredom. Reasonably fun but it still seems to me that the Master Chief feels so slow to get around, particularly outside.

Got some chameleon flip paint off Ebay, consists of base coat, colour coat and clear coat. Still need to get decent sandpaper and some primer though. I was going to do a laptop in it but I'm thinking about getting another of the cheap bodies I made the doubleneck out of, and painting that in it. Then if that works, do the doubleneck body. I'm still quite amazed at how well the doubleneck actually turned out, given that it was done on the cheap. It would be nice to do one with a custom shaped body to make it smaller and more ergonomic, but the problem is getting hold of a slab of wood big enough.

WiBrain

It has a stupid name, looks like an 80's reject and is unspeakably hideous, but somehow this UMPC looks strangely compelling...

Snow still not melting, also I'm a fat bastard

Snow situation unchanged. Stressful day on helpdesk, took 20 minutes to sort out the 1500 or so messages in my inbox into the appropriate folders and then found 10 calls had suddenly appeared.

Fat lunch, wanted to go to the new chip shop in Denbigh but it was closed. Ended up going to the Chinese instead, and had chip and onion rings with sweet and sour sauce. Except I didn't appreciate the scale of the onion rings - they were gigantic, about the size of an average saucer, and there were six of them. Very nice though. Also been naughty and had some full-fat Coke.

Really wanted to go to badminton tonight but I can't face the track twice again, especially not in the dark. Just had to walk up it with two heavy bags of shopping - not fun. Not sure what to do instead.

Snow snow go away

Snow not melted at all. Car completely frozen this morning, inside and out.

Had one of those moments when I said I hadn't seen something to be greeted with gasps of horror and exclamations of 'What?!'. In this case it was the original Planet of the Apes. So I've now seen it. Pretty good I thought.

Snow and cold and snow and cold

New Year's Resolution #98: Update this thing more often.

Christmas was OK, split the day between the parents as usual. Got the soldering iron I needed. New Year's Eve was good, spent at Em's parents with the usual gang. Good time had by all, but I felt slightly odd that evening and the next few days confirmed why as I came down with a cough and a head full of snot.

It's been snowy and cold for a number of days now, leading to yet more traipsing up and down the track. We had to leave work early yesterday due to snow and while I thought I had a rough time, it was nothing compared to people's experiences in apparently more civilised areas. I was able to make it to work today, although the roads were pretty bad with a layer of slippery slushy stuff. The Focus had previously shown itself to be pathetic in snow, sliding all over the place with no grip at all. Fortunately it had four new tyres on Monday and they've made a massive difference to how it handles in difficult conditions. It's still no 4x4 though, and this time of year I really miss the Discovery.

Not much else to report really. Difficult month financially, need to put some more stuff on Ebay and get rid of more crap. Eaten badly the last couple of days after a good start on Monday. When you have to carry it half a mile up the track and have limited water supplies it's best to get easy, convenient food that doesn't need too much cooking and doesn't generate too much washing up.

The double neck is basically done at last, all wired up with the help of a nice diagram and the new soldering iron. It does however need new pickups. The ones in it are cheap, and one is much louder than the other. Come next payday I'll get a matched pair and install them. After that the only thing left is to put a finish of some kind on the body and shield the cavities.

Need to stop getting computer and bass stuff I don't need. If my bass and computing needs can't be met by six laptops and four basses (including the doubleneck), then that's just stupid. Also the retro computing stuff needs to go. I'm not really fussed any more about collecting it and it never gets used. Interesting item I did get recently though is a 32gb OCZ SSD which went into one of the Dells. It's running Windows 7 at the moment and it's pretty responsive. Can't wait until SSDs finally become mainstream.

Saw Avatar in 3D. Unoriginal plot and characters, but the CGI was absolutely amazing, and it's very well made. I liked the 3D but would probably have enjoyed the film just as much without it to be honest. Definitely one to watch in the cinema though. That night was the busiest I've ever seen the Llandudno cinema, and Will and I had to go to a later showing than we had planned. We subsequently found that Tesco is very boring.

Been playing the Sims 3 a fair bit. It's not bad, much like the previous games but with a few things added in. I'm finding it much more fun to have insane or evil Sims, which have far more interesting quirks and do quite peculiar things if left to their own devices. It still lets you do fun things like wall up neighbours and stuff like that, which is good, and you can also bring people back as ghosts. I've got a married couple where one is living and the other a ghost, which is quite weird.

Wasn't too convinced by the end of Gavin and Stacey to be honest, or the whole third series really. Just wasn't the same as the first or second series. Also wasn't too convinced by the Doctor Who special.

Trying to approach the new decade with optimism and hope about many things, not entirely sure how successful I'll be. Sorting out my finances is still the thing I really want to do, but might take some time. Really need to get going to the gym properly, first was foiled by illness in December and now because of the wretched snow.

Up to Feet of Clay in the epic Discworld reread marathon. One of the ones I really enjoyed, probably because of the similarity of the golems to robots. Also got another German book and a decent dictionary to try and help learn some more. I've also built a Latitude D800 out of parts and it's running Windows Vista in German, which is fun. It's a nice machine, but it has a 1920x1200 15" display, which is ridiculous really. Running at the native resolution, things are absolutely tiny, which is understandable given that 24" monitors typically run at that resolution.

Current music is the album Cult by Apocalyptica. Stunning music. Just wish I could listen to it in the car, but the stereo died the other day and wouldn't read any CDs, not even pressed ones. What a pain. I've got a spare stereo, but I need a fascia adapter and cables, as Ford use a weird size.

Shaved my head again. I don't do it very often but it's nice when it's freshly done, all smooth. Shame it grows back so quickly.