Finally!

Finally, at last, it's time for holidays. First the weekend with an ex Proact meetup, which will be at mine, weather permitting. The idea is that we'll have a go at the garden and clear out the shed and then retire to Amy's for food and stuff. Although if the weather is crap (likely) then the gardening bit might be skipped.

Then a flexi day on Monday, followed by Berlin. Because work has been so busy lately and I've had a lot on my mind, it's really crept up on me, although I'm quite excited about it now. Found out today that the Tempelhof airport was opened as a park in May, so I definitely want to check that out after seeing it in March.

Finding it difficult to unwind even though I'm not in work now for over a week.

Need to get some more stuff listed on Ebay. Haven't sold anything for a while.

Got an idea for another bass project but not sure if it's worth the time and funds to do it as it's a bit silly. However, I still got the body going spare that was the first test of the chameleon paint - hmm, could perhaps use that body, and it wouldn't actually take that many parts to do it - got a neck that would most likely fit, and a pickup. Just need some wiring and screws and things...

Hmm. iTunes just picked 'Hey Boy Hey Girl' by the Chemical Brothers - not heard this one in a LONG time. In fact it's been too long since I listened to any Chemical Brothers in general. I've been listening to a lot of Rammstein, Oomph, Eisbrecher, etc recently, and I realised that I'm understanding more of the German lyrics, which is good.

Lockpicking

Work = double argh. Frustrating moment of the day, moving a giant server from one site to another only to realise the front panel was locked, making it impossible to turn it on. We had to break into it and remove the lock mechanism. Annoying.

This evening was another badminton fail - went to Rob and Em's and had food but none of us felt particularly like going. So we watched Sherlock instead. I actually really liked it, even though I'm not normally a fan of the smarmy superior detective explaining to his lowly underling just how he worked it out. Poirot and Miss Marple fall into that category too, especially Poirot with that stupid moustache - what a twat.

Otherwise looking forward to one more day in work before holidays, can't wait.

Hit a pothole near Denbigh, enough to make quite a thud even with the 14@ wheels and balloon tyres on the Focus - wouldn't want to hit it with alloys. Just one reason to prefer steels in my opinion.

Listened to The Great Southern Trendkill by Pantera in the car. It's an album that I'm quite ambivalent about because I love the guitar on it but hate the vocals. But it's hard to imagine what other kind of vocals would fit on top of that guitar style. Dimebag Darrell was an amazing guitarist, hard to believe it's six years since he got shot on stage.

Eeek

Work = argh.

Attached the Explorist GPS to the bike with a load of elastic bands and took it out to compare the GPS speed to the cycle computer. The GPS read about 3-5mph below the cycle computer, but both that GPS and the TomTom read about that below the Focus speedo too, which is a little odd. So from that I'm assuming it is OK.

Noticed one of the shocks on the back was looking rather dodgy. Once I get back from Berlin I'm going to have to take it in somewhere and that and the exhaust checked out, and perhaps advise on getting a real speedo somehow.

Early start today, early start tomorrow, boo and hiss.

Rargh...splutter...churn...churn...churn...

A mildly improved day at work today, although there are things going on. One fun thing - I needed a new keyboard for my docking station and was given an old PS/2 HP keyboard that had never been used. During a dull luncthime I found a similar keyboard in white and swapped some of the keys over to create a replica of how PC keyboards used to look. It looks pretty cool I think. The keyboard the white keys came off was disgusting so I binned it or I'd have put the black keys on to make a negative version, although I have kept them in case I find another white one.

Got home and decided to take the bike out. For some reason I haven't quite got the hang of starting it from cold with the choke, although usually it'll run OK after a few goes. Tonight though, it was really stroppy and wouldn't run consistently, which was annoying. Eventually the battery went flat, but I was able to get it running with a bump start - a somewhat awkward procedure but at least it's easier than a car. Once I took it out though, it went really well. The whole thing is feeling more natural now, which is great. Really enjoyed the ride, even though it was only a lap around the block.

Looking forward to holidays...

Today was a very frustrating day in work for a few reasons. Some days you really do just want to hurl things around and scream. Lunch was nice though, a Chinese chicken bap with cheese and mayo, a rather strange combination recommended by one of the service desk staff that actually works surprisingly well.

Didn't do much this evening, took the dog for a walk and had another look at the bike speedo. I really would like to put a proper one on, just not sure how. There are some nice aftermarket ones but there's a lot to think about when fitting it. Not least because it would have a new odometer.

I've given away the bits that were going to make up the quilted maple Telecaster, but I've found that guitar is much more fun when you remove the top two strings. I never like sounds in that range and if I do play guitar it's mostly powerchords so the top two strings just get in the way. Hey, it worked for Max Cavalera. Just makes it a bit ironic that I like playing bass with six strings and guitar with four...

Just realised how little time actually remains to Berlin - need to sort out currency and things. My Dad has offered me a lift to the airport this time, which is nice.

The dog is on my bed again, need to shift him. Seems a shame though, he was wagging his tail in his sleep earlier, quite a surreal sight.

You WILL eat meat!

A great weekend all in all. Yesterday was Rob's birthday bash, which took place in Chester. Mainly it was at place called the Brewery Tap, which was a really nice bar, where somehow we managed to get a table for 17. Twice. Impressive. It was good to catch up with people too. The main reason for going to Chester though was a visit to the Tropeiro, a Brazilian steakhouse. Basically you pay a set fee, put some salad on your plate and then they come round continuously with various kinds of meat on skewers. It was pretty good although perhaps a little too much like being force fed. At the end I was thinking longingly of chocolate and vegetables.

Today has been a fairly quiet one. Gave the bike a clean as it got quite muddy when I came up the track on it last. Also read Fatherland, which I started at Rob's this morning. I remember reading about it not so long ago and found the idea quite interesting. It turned out to be really good, thoroughly enjoyed it. Also watched Inglourious Basterds, which is a rather demented film. It has many reasons to dislike it but it has quite a lot to offer underneath and it does have some really good characters and dialogue. It's like Fatherland in that it's pretty much an alternate history type thing.

Tired now. Written this on the Alphasmart, still think it's one of the best keyboards I have ever used. I have improved it by sticking some rubber feet on the bottom - before it would slide around rather a lot if you weren't careful.

Stuff

Geocaching is one of those activities that I sometimes wonder why it appeals. I went to a meetup in Rhuallt last night which was good, and then went to find a couple of caches with a woman from work and a couple of other people. Most were OK including one suspended above the A55, but then there was one we didn't get. It was dark, there were trees, pointy things, scratchy things, and nettles. One of those moments where you do wonder just why you do something. Still, it was fun and got me out of the house.

Alphasmarts are interesting devices. The Neo is exactly what I've been looking for, something with a great keyboard, decent display and no distractions. Then you just hook it up to the PC and it spews the text into whatever program is running at the time.

Rob's birthday bash in Chester today, can't wait. It's going to be good. Heading into town first to get a few things. Need a footpump for the bike, and some other stuff.

Argh

Work today was frustrating and difficult, not least because I left all my stuff in one site and had to work from another. Fortunately I was able to remote control my laptop.

Badminton tonight. Rob's birthday demanded Chinese food, so we all felt a bit bloated by the time it came to throwing ourselves aroudn the court. Had a good time, except the last game was us three against The Poison One. I found myself nearly having hysterics at one point which was embarrassing.

Doppelganger?

After a slightly frustrating day at work (old Macs and Active Directory cannot be friends) I came home and took the bike out for a run. Had a good ride. There's a long straight road near home that then goes uphill and down a long steep hill, which is totally deserted most of the time. I used that to go back and forth to practice clutch control and hill starts. However, I went down the hill and back up, and while going back up, someone went past on a black cruiser style bike with L plates and they were wearing a black jacket and a white helmet, very surreal.

Had a slightly odd experience where I stopped by a gate to look at the rather nice view over the Vale of Clwyd. For some reason a flock of sheep decided I was interesting and the whole lot came to investigate, perhaps they were checking out the bike. Had a look at possible alternate speedometers while on lunch. There are various aftermarket speedos available that might fit but I'm not sure about calibrating them. It'll hit 13,000 miles soon too, not too bad.

A guy in work has just got a J-reg Toyota MR2 turbo. It's a nice looking car in black but has quite a long list of issues, not least a slipping clutch which means the boost has to be turned down. He took me out for a quick spin and it's bloody fast, even with low boost and a slipping clutch. It's been a while since I was in a genuinely fast car and it was a little worrying.

Pantsdown

So Crackdown 2 came out. The first game was the first I had on the 360 and I played it a LOT. Admittedly there wasn't much story or plot but the compulsion to explore the city and find all the agility orbs was very strong, and it was just good fun. I got the demo for the second one and I didn't like it. It seems like they've mixed it with Carmageddon and other things and it didn't seem right. Also the reviews aren't great.

Given up on Red Dead Redemption. It's a great game and I can appreciate that, but at the end of the day, I don't like westerns, and I just can't make myself interested in anything that goes on in it. So I'm giving it to Rob.

Not much else going on. Feeling overly pleased with myself that I remembered what 'manchmal' means in English.

It's rained a lot today, preventing bike or dog walk action, frustratingly. So more geeky action. Also put the new set of strings on the 6-string, which is good. It sounds OK although I'm still determined to replace the pickups and rewire it at some point.

After finishing another run through of Red Dwarf, including an evening of drunkenly pasting quotes into Facebook, I've lent the whole lot to a guy in work and started reading the books. If you're very familiar with the series, the books are a little odd, becuase quite often you'll see familiar quotes and things, but in the wrong place or with a word different.

Looked into phones at lunchtime. I know people with HTC Android devices and they look pretty nice but still quite expensive. If BlackBerry did more models with good cameras I might be tempted by a newer one but the only ones with half decent cameras are the newer ones. So sod it, I'll keep using the 8310. So far it hasn't crashed, it's good for texting, phone calls are clear and it has good signal strength, and the battery holds a half decent charge.

Hey hey, do the zombie stomp.

Complicated

Spent the day at my Dad's yesterday hanging out and sorting out some blown bulbs on the car. After that headed to Cheshire Oaks with some guys from work to see Inception, which was quite good. Bit slow in places while they tried to explain some of what was going on but it built up to a complex and well done finale.

The plan to back up the storage VM to the second ESXi server works, except it's taking a very long time to do the initial copy. Both the ESXi boxes have gigabit network cards but I only have a 10/100 switch - might look into a switch with some gigabit ports as the laptops that used the wired network do have gigabit ports.

Bit tired today so probably going to chill and not do much. The film was on quite late and was also long so didn't get in until late.

Energy drink fuelled geekiness

Payday, so filled the car up with petrol. While doing so, picked up a can of Relentless. I don't know why, I always regret it.

I got home and having drank the can and caught up with my e-mails, descended into a sort of rage, grabbed the PC I built last year but never really used (triple-core AMD with 4gb RAM) and decided I would use it for something. I stuffed three laptop hard drives in it, crammed in a network card and installed ESXi. Having done that, needed to find a purpose for it. The way my machines work at the moment is they all back up to a virtual machine on the first ESXi machine called Storage1. So the idea is to have another VM on the new ESXi box called Storage2 and use a spare VM on the first ESXi box to synchronise the two. However, since this machine uses considerably more power than the Atom based one, I don't want to leave it on all the time, so it would be nice to somehow automate all this, perhaps using wake-on-LAN to power it up, synchronise the data and then shut it down again. Not sure if that is possible.

So there we have it, my exciting and fun filled Friday night.

Tired of this now, I've been a lazy fat bastard fuck for the last couple of months, eating like shit, drinking too much Coke again and not really achieving anything. Just not sure why I lack the motivation and willpower to do anything about it.

Much to my surprise the little BlackBerry 8310 is working out rather well. As I've used one in work for so long it feels very familiar, and I like the way it handles texts. It works so well that the only thing that makes me think about something else is the rather rubbish 2mp camera, but perhaps it's about time I got a proper camera again instead of relying on phones.

FUCK

Should have remembered not to try and play bass when I'm miserable. £30 of new strings on order.

Fun with plums.

Not much to report. Weather crap when I got home, didn't feel too motivated.

Decided that now I've just finished Ringworld, I'm going to read Strata by Terrz Pratchett, which he says is a pisstake/homage/satire of it.

Did some more German stuff this evening, using the Berlitz software, which is actuallz quite good. Hence why there's a few typos in this post as I'm using the D800 with it's German keyboard.

Tried 4gb RAM in the MacBook with two matched 2gb DIMMs. It utterly failed to start, so it looks like Apple wasn't lying when they said it will take 2gb RAM max. What a pain though, every other Core Duo machine I've seen with a 32-bit motherboard will run happilz with 4gb RAM and just ignore the bit it can't address. With one 2gb DIMM in either socket, it boots up fine.

Payday soon. Must be restrained though, need to work on that fecking credit card and savings. Bit bothered about that right now...

Decided I'm never going to use the left handed neck on the quilted maple Telecaster body and am going to donate it to a left-handed guy in work who wants to build a guitar. Not sure what to do with the body though. It could be modified to take a bass neck but it would need to be a short scale one and thez are hard to find.

Hmmmmmm

I finished rebuilding an old 500mhz iBook today and outfitted it with a 512mb DIMM and an Airport card, so pretty much maxed out. Works fine but feels quite slow running OS X 10.3.9. Just spent an hour or so checking out the Mac formatted backup CDs I used to create when I was using my original bondi-blue iMac.

Something that I didn't quite appreciate until I did that was just how much more I used the computer to actually create stuff back then. When I could only go on the Internet for about an hour a day on a 56k dialup, such time was precious, and the rest of the time I would use the machine to write stuff and create pictures in graphics programs. Yeah, probably should have been going out and socialising, but back then, that was my idea of hell.

These days, with the Internet available all the time with much faster speeds, not so much. Also, when I had just one decent working machine available, it made it much easier to have a central document store.

I don't like the thought that now I'm just an avid consumer of stuff from the Internet, and don't create anything any more. Also I'm still shit at socialising.

Hmm, something to think about.

Meh

Took the dog for a nice walk, despite the gloomy clouds which made me worry about the rain. Fairly uneventful other than some other silly dogs aggravating him. Also some horses, which he doesn't like, and a shitload of flies.

Found that the N97 had rather a lot of contacts which didn't exist on the SIM card so now I'm having to chase people for their numbers...oops.

Oh well.

In a weird pensive mood tonight.

Flange

Cleared out the crap that had accumulated around the Panda in the garage. Quite a few random things in there, including a set of badges from the Saab 96 that is now basically a few bits of rusted metal and a V4 engine sat in the field. Took the bike out for a spin too, although I'll need to get some advice on the exhaust soon as it is wobbling rather, and blowing at the engine end.

Finally got around to dumping the vast collection of unsorted images from the various machines onto the MacBook. Most of it is the exported collection from when I used to use iPhoto on the iBook, but that ends abruptly in December 2008 when it was retired. Since then I never really bothered to keep photographs in any particular place, so it's a bit of a mess. After the Pentax camera broke in about May 2009, I've just been using phones, so it's not too bad. There is still a gap from September 2009 to February 2009 when the memory card failed in the E90.

Weird looking back at the pictures, things really do change a lot. In particular the September 2005 visit to Berlin was interesting, looking back at things which are rather more familiar to me. One thing that I really noticed is the Palast der Republik in some of the pictures, which we took no notice of back then. Since then it's been demolished and is now a big grass square. The Madrid photos were good too, that was a fun visit.

Having completed the great Discworld re-read fest, I'm reading Ringworld again, which is a great book. Might look into picking up the sequels.

Ooops...

How does a Nokia N97 cope with being hurled out of a car window at 60mph, and then driven over repeatly? See above for the answer.

I have never developed a hatred for a phone quite like this before. The hardware was good, the hinge mechanism worked well, and the touch screen and keyboard worked well. I could cope with the scratches and dents, but what ruined it was the ghastly firmware. There were numberous and random glitches, and it had ludicrously poor reception. It would sometimes beep to say it was charging when there was no power supply plugged in and crash for no reason. Some menus would scroll smoothly, others would judder arthritically down the screen, and then randomly select something. The camera would activate randomly, and it was just a miserable experience using the thing.

I had hoped all the stuff I had read about the N97 being crap was wrong, but sadly it wasn't. As it was so battered already I thought there would be no point trying to sell it on and finally I'd had enough, hence the scene of carnage. I thought about making up a story about it falling out of my pocket while out on the motorbike but sometimes you just have to hold up your hands and admit you've made a mistake. Should have kept the E90.

Now I see why people are saying that the Nokia high end line has gone to shit. I've seen a few Android devices in work, and they are pretty decent. Of course there's the iPhone if you can cope with Apple's walled garden.

The only spare phones I had were car boot fodder, the tasteless gold D&G Motorola RAZR and a BlackBerry 8310, identical to my work one. I've now put my SIM into the BlackBerry and got it set up reasonably. It works OK, and will do for now.

In other news it was my Mum's graduation for her MA today in Bangor, which went fine. Fairly typical ceremony really, except for the initial music. Some woman played a piece on a clarinet, which was the worst piece of music I have ever heard. It sounded like someone just starting out, random peeps and tootles with the occasional scale, and loads of high pitched squeals like when you blow really hard into a wind instrument when you're a child to see what happens. This was, for some reason, combined with lots of foot stamping, prancing about, and a mask. It was horrendous. It made the harp music in the middle seem brilliant, and I'm not a huge fan of harps.

A long slow Friday

Today seemed like the slowest Friday ever. Not sure why, felt really lethargic and hopeless. Not just me that commented on that though.

Took the bike into work, went OK. I had a look at the exhaust and it seems that the bolt that is not there is missing completely and not snapped off in the engine, which is good news. Need to sort out the cover over the cycle computer, I tried to glue the plastic in place better and it went all cloudy.

Being fat tonight and having a Chinese.

Thought I'd play with Time Machine on the MacBook but it doesn't seem to like using a Windows shared folder as a backup volume, and I'm not sure how to make FreeNAS run AFP. Oh well.

The Panda Moves

Amy's Dad came up today with his rather lovely custom built Land Rover 90 called Bertie, which was used to drag the old Panda from the garage. It moved quite easily surprisingly and then it was barged into a spot in the field where it should be easy to move it down the track. The poor old thing took a bit of a battering when Bertie barged it backwards. Since it's been under cover all the time it's been stood, it actually looks fairly decent under the dust. Just need to get someone to scrap it now.

Not much else to report really. MacBook still working OK, quite happy with the performance although need to try some more things on it. A guy in work has ditched his iPhone for a HTC Android device after becoming thoroughly disenchanted with Apple and its business practices.

Did some geocaching today with some colleagues, some new ones had gone live in Ruthin which we got first to find on. I had to shimmy up a stop sign to get one of them, glad nobody was around to see.

Dell 1, Apple 0

Idiotic moment of the day - realising the exhaust on the motorbike was loose while I was going on along and pulling over to have a look, and grabbing it. Lucky I had gloves on or I'd be quite burnt I think as it hurt enough as it was.

Replacing the keyboard unit on the MacBook was the most traumatic laptop repair I have yet done. Simply removing the top case involved removing at least twenty screws of varying sizes, and then spudgering the edges away from the case. Having finally done this, I was greeted with a motherboard coated in gunk and dog hairs, which I tried to clean up as much as possible. I'm rather bothered now about my plans to replace the screen.

I can strip the Dell Latitude D-series laptops we use in work to bare parts in about five minutes, and at the end will have about twenty screws in total, of two sizes. The same screws are used to hold the case together, the motherboard in, and the display in place. The only screws of a different size are the slightly smaller ones that hold in the keyboard. The Precision M65 and Latitude D630 I use at home are very similar and I've them each apart at least twice with no problems at all.

On the plus side I did get the MacBook back together fine and it looks hugely better with the new clean palmrest even though it does have a little piece missing. I took the opportunity to swipe a 2gb DIMM from the M65 for it. It didn't like mismatched DIMMs though, with a 2gb and a 512mb in, it failed to power up. With the single 2gb DIMM it worked fine. Odd. Snow Leopard seems to appreciate the extra RAM though.

Wasted day

Not a very productive day today. Took some crap to the tip though, and took my Mum's car as she was worried it was making bad noises. It had new front springs recently and I think it might be something to do with that as it's making a creaking sort of noise.

Other than that, didn't do much except watch DVDs and take the dog out for a run in the field a few times. Just one of those days. Unfortunately those sort of days seem to be what I do most at the moment, and I can't work out why I'm so demotivated. Annoying and slightly depressing. I haven't been to the gym in ages now although I really need to. Might try to go tomorrow evening.

Argh...hurl...*SMASH* *TINKLE*

So today we did overtime. There's a site closing which used to house the offices for the schools ICT section, and we had to clear out all the crap that was there. And there was a LOT of it. Tons and tons of old machines, monitors, software, accessories, and quite a lot of new stuff that just hadn't been used. We found several shrinkwrapped copies of MS-DOS 6, ludicrous amounts of Windows 95 copies, absolute shitloads of old floppies (AutoCAD on floppy!), and a load of old PCs and servers and stuff. Spare parts for ancient Macintosh machines, ROM cartridges for BBC Masters? All there. The PCs and monitors had to be put aside to be disposed of properly, but other than genuinely useful stuff, it all went in the huge skip, which was very satisfying. Hurling it all in there was very therapeutic.

Afterwards, I picked up a ver cheap external DVD burner to get the MacBook up and running. It allowed me to install Snow Leopard and wipe the hard drive. Since I hardly ever use CD drives these days I thought I might as well get an external one rather than replace the internal drive as I can use the USB one on other machines. If I see an affordable screen after next payday I'll pick it up as when it flickers, it's annoying, although it doesn't do it all the time.

It's quite worrying how natural the Mac feels to use after so long of using other operating systems. It seems to perform well despite it being one of the earliest first generation MacBooks although I'm sure it could use some more RAM.