Whooosh

Yesterday it was off to Liverpool with Andy, Maz and Rob. Em was supposed to come too but sadly wasn't well. We drove to Hooton and got the train, which turns out to be a very quick and cheap way to get into the city.

We did some shopping, visited numerous pubs, encountered several accordion playing twats, and ended the day in an all you can eat Chines buffet just outside Lime Street station. I was quite good and only bought a set of bass strings from Dawsons, after drooling over an £1800 Rickenbacker bass and being somewhat astonished that a rather ordinary Fender Jazz Bass should be up for £3995. We also saw the nice Asus S200E in PC World, which is a nice affordable laptop with a touch screen. The Chinese buffet was pretty good but lacked any form of duck pancakes, a curious omission. Despite applying my usual strategy of many plates with small portions, I didn't gobble as much as I normally do at them. I think I've come to realise that my attitude to food is really unhealthy.

On the way home the Astra started to make a curious loud whooshing noise when the turbo came in, and at the same time the temperature gauge started to creep up. I checked it out today and the coolant level had dropped quite low, so I think the two things aren't related. From what Google tells me, it's probably just a split pipe somewhere, although it doesn't seem to affect the actual power of the engine at all.

The M17x is pretty much now fully set up on Windows 8 without any issues. It's running pretty nicely with most things I need. The only thing that was lost in the transition was my saved game for Minecraft which had been coming along quite well. Oh well, probably a good thing anyway.

Today has been OK. Rob P came over and hunted rabbits for a bit. As soon as he turned up there was a huge cheeky one that had been hiding under one of the cars, that got taken out at pretty much point blank range.

Can't believe it's New Year's Eve tomorrow. 2012 has been a curious year, good in some ways, utter shit in others.

Whoa...speeeeeeeeeed

Work today was even more quiet than yesterday. A long slow day. I was led astray and had chips for lunch with a couple of the others.

The SSD turned up today, so I backed up the M17x and popped it in. It's now running a nice fresh install of Windows 8, which is turning out to be rather interesting. So far, running on the SSD, it is ridiculously quick, although the 16gb RAM probably helps. Nearly all the hardware worked straight away with only little things like the freefall sensor that needed updating. I think it does need better graphics drivers though - while it recognises that there are two cards in there, it doesn't seem to understand the Crossfire link.

Annoyingly our broadband is being crap at the moment and slows to a crawl in the evenings, so getting hold of certain things has been tedious since it struggles even to download a 22mb file. In particular I need to enable the .net framework v3.5 for a couple of things, but it won't download. Same goes for the graphics drivers since they are about 134mb. Someone in work has had fibre installed and has something mad like a 33mb connection, galling when ours can't even manage 1mb in the evenings. I've left it copying the data back on which will take a while and then set it downloading stuff in the morning when the broadband should work again.

But so far things look quite promising. I find it interesting that they've introduced the new Metro interface which is somewhat dumbed down and easy to use, but have made a lot of changes that are nice for the more techy users, like the new file copy dialogue and task manager, and massively optimised it under the bonnet too. Also because it's Windows 8 Pro it has things that the old Windows 7 didn't have on this machine. Intrigued by Hyper-V, that sounds like it could be worth a play.

While the machine was backing up and things, had a go on Need for Speed: Most Wanted on the Vita. Only got it because it was cheap and had reasonable reviews. It's OK, but a bit annoying since there doesn't seem to be an option to have analogue acceleration, so you're driving balls-out all the time. Oh well. Apparently the old PS2 finally went out of production today, which seems quite bonkers really. I really enjoyed my old PS2. If the PS3 had had proper backwards compatibility I might have got one. The 360 is OK but I really don't like the way they've gone with it now, especially the new advert laden dashboard. The Wii U seems to have passed my radar completely, I know it's out and I've even watched the Ashens review of it, but it doesn't interest me in the slightest.

Also watched the Rammstein Live in Berlin DVD in the background, which is always awesome. I got it years ago before I really knew anything about the band and it was a bit of an eye opener. Due to my dislike of crowds I don't generally enjoy seeing bands live, but there are two that I would make an exception for - Iron Maiden and Rammstein.

Worth the wait (hopefully)

Work was very quiet today. ICT seemed quite busy but it turned out there were more people in our office than the entire rest of the building. I spent much of the day trying to set up a backup client that was being exceptionally awkward.

Came home and watched Short Circuit because we ended up talking about it in work somehow. What a great movie. I still love the introduction, makes me think of the 80s and all the potential that computers and robotics seemed to have at the time. Then I grew up and discovered that robotics is hard and computers aren't as exciting. Same with sci-fi, it's disappointing to read science fiction from the likes of Arthur C Clarke who assumed we'd be exploring space like anything by now. I read a quote once recently that said something along the lines of we're the generation where there isn't much left to explore on Earth, but haven't yet started exploring space properly.

Made the irritating discovery that mice attacked my water bottles for the bike, which I had brought in but forgotten to wash. Annoying. Have set up traps. The dog is still slightly traumatised from the fly incident and won't stay downstairs so I let him sleep on my bed for a bit. Serves the dual purpose of calming him down and warming my bed up.

I've had my eye on a Crucial SSD for my main laptop, the M17x, but kept off buying it in the hope of a price drop. My patience was rewarded as I checked today and it's come down by £50, so I've ordered one. The idea is to break the RAID0 setup it is using now and have the SSD as the primary drive and reformat the secondary drive for backups and things. It's going to have a fresh build as well since it's probably due for one, although I don't have any complaints about the performance. I'm dithering between just putting Windows 7 back on or making the jump to Windows 8. The Modern UI interface and other changes are rather offputting, especially without a touch screen, but I really like the sound of the way Windows 8 has been optimised under the hood.

I dithered about ordering one for the M11x too, but I'm not sure about that one yet.

Bit shocked about the Lostprophets singer being arrested. If the charges against him are true, then he's one sick bastard.

Feeling exceptionally tired at the moment, not really sure why.

Christmas

Well, Christmas is over and done with. The weekend was good, it was round to Andy and Maz's for the Christmas Eve Eve bash, which took place a day earlier this year. It was really good, lots of food, party games and random gossip, and a curiously hard quiz.

Yesterday was a good day. Went to my Dad's as usual for Christmas lunch and hung out for a bit before I came home again. I had got the stuff to make a Christmas pizza but I ended up having that today as I was too full. Basically a turkey and stuffing pizza. It turned out I'd accidentally picked up tikka flavoured turkey, which made it more interesting.

Spent today starting to clear out the room downstairs which is full of crap going back years. I found all sorts of things, such as my membership card and badges for the Dennis the Menace fan club and lots of invoices for repairs to my old Fiat Cinquecento which seems to have broken a lot more than I remember it doing. Also some random stuff from college and a couple of letters from my brother from when he'd just moved to Berlin.

There was also loads of tapes for the old Amstrad CPC, which I really didn't want to keep so I made a list of them. There's also a fair bit of old hardware that can go on Ebay, for examples a couple of Atari STs that I'd forgotten about, a couple of old Macs and things like that.

So basically at the moment there's a big pile of stuff to be burnt, a pile to be chucked, and so-on.

The dog hasn't had a good Christmas. He's scared of flies for some reason, which is ridiculous for a large greyhound. Somehow there's been an outbreak of big bluebottles, and so he's spent much of the last 48 hours as a shivering drooling wreck and trying to hide in the most peculiar places. I managed to squish at least six of the damn things this evening but there are still a couple more. I don't know where they're coming from.

In the time before Christmas, spent some time fooling around with the CPC emulator, playing some old games. I always seem to do this around this time of year, not really sure why. Some games are still fun, but some are truly terrible. I think the best game I ever played on the CPC was Stunt Car Racer, which was a 3D racing game that despite the track being barely there, still managed to have actual physics and was really good fun. Unlike Hard Drivin, which also had 3D graphics but had impossible steering and was monumentally unfair as other cars could just drive through you and cause a crash.

Work tomorrow. Hopefully it'll be nice and quiet.

Events

The rest of last week was OK. Thursday night was the Rhuddlan badminton club Christmas meal. Since the place it was going to be in St Asaph was flooded, we had it at one of the member's house, and since she is an epic cook, it was amazing. Really good fun.

On Friday it was off down to Kent to see Rob's sister and family, and then go to Belgos on the Saturday with that big group. The trip down wasn't fun since there was terrible weather until the M6 and we got there at about 11pm. The next day was spent hanging out and trying to get used to how gigantic the baby had grown, and then getting ready to get the train into Victoria from Whitstable. Totally random coincidence, while we were getting the Tube from Green Park to Covent Garden, the train pulled in and we saw some of the people we were meeting right outside the doors. Not only the same train and carriage, but the same set of doors!

The meal at Belgos was great as usual. The place is amazing, despite it being generally huge, chaotic and noisy, there's such a good atmosphere. I had the meat platter to start, followed by a giant steak and a chocolate orange cake. Last year I was brave and had lobster, but I decided it's a lot of work. It didn't stop Vicky who utterly demolished her lobster, leaving only fragments behind, which was quite impressive.

The Sunday was spent watching movies and generally being slobby. We had a snack/drinks run to Tesco and then we studiously ignored the welcoming sunshine outside and watched several movies mingled with Red Dwarf VI and then late night pizza. It was awesome. Movies:

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol: I wasn't expecting much from this, but it was surprisingly enjoyable, and despite his scientology weirdness, Tom Cruise has still got it. Jeremy Renner was pretty good too.

The Cabin in the Woods: Heard good things about this and I really liked it. The concept was nicely different and it didn't chicken out.

Brave: It looked amazing but I wasn't quite sure about this one. generally rather strange, but at least it didn't end with the princess marrying a handsome prince as that would be predictable.

The Escapist: Odd and random one, and dark in places, but very good.

On Monday I had to dial in to work and run a script on a Linux server that nobody else could remember their password to, and then it was time to drive back, which was fine until we got back to Wales when it started to rain again, in an annoyingly stereotypical way.

Yesterday and today have been OK in work. Today I managed to overdose on liquorice allsorts and sweets and make myself ill so I came home early, and then scoffed half a giant Toblerone, which didn't really help things. Oh well.

Geeky time

Work was OK except for another slightly perturbing meeting in the afternoon.

Yesterday evening was bored and flung a machine together out of spare parts. It used the old Atom motherboard, 1gb RAM, a 160gb laptop SATA drive and a 120gb IDE drive. Onto this mixture of parts I installed Windows Server 2012, because I could. It took forever to install and set itself up but once done it runs OK. Not sure what it'll do, if anything, but it was fun.

Really cold this morning. The car was frozen up and it was saying it was -4 on the way to work.

Another geeky evening. Someone in work said they had a laptop with a busted power connector, and they asked if I could install the new board that has the connector on it. It was a Dell Inspiron 1545, and it wasn't until I got home and looked at the service manual that I realised the charger board, as it's called, is literally underneath every other part. So it had to come completely apart, which also meant the CPU had to be regunked and everything. Fortunately the part went in OK and it fired up again without any issues. The Inspirons are definitely not in the same class as the Latitudes, not as easy to work on at all. Still, at least it wan't a Mac.

After that I looked at the Series 3mx I picked up recently. It was the pinnacle of the Psion Series 3 range, the last model with the faster CPU. Unfortunately both hinges were smashed. I did have a spare Series 3c that had good hinges, so I took them apart and put the mainboard from the 3mx into the 3c. So now it's a true frankenstein. The outside of it is branded as an Xemplar PocketBook III (for education), the screen half says it's a Series 3c and the keyboard is labeled as a 3mx. To confuse things even more the underside now has the shiny grey SSD doors and battery cover from the 3mx casing.

Watched a couple more episodes of The Walking Dead season 3, which is already massively better than the dull whinge-fest that was season 2, which felt like it could have been done in a couple of episodes.

I'm a hapless geek and I don't care.

Shopping

Yesterday was a curious day. Rob had to go to Manchester to do a tedious payroll module for his course, and came up with a cunning plan that Em and I would go with him and do some Christmas shopping. So we got up at stupid o'clock and got the train. The journey was uneventful and after we left Rob to go and find the hotel, Em and I went to a Costa Coffee and contemplated the relatively empty pavements outside and thought that perhaps the day would be productive and perhaps even fun.

First we went to some small and interesting places in the back streets by Picadilly Gardens. Em was particularly taken with Pop Boutique and if the logistics had allowed, would have transformed their house into a 70's paradise.

After this we went to the Arndale Centre. By now the city was predictably busier and the giant monument to consumerism was crammed with people. After a couple of hours it was getting somewhat wearying and we needed food. The food court was packed, but we got lucky because the only place without a queue was Taco Bell. I went up and ordered a burrito, quesadilla and two portions of churros without queueing at all, while KFC next door had a queue about 20 people deep. I think I started a new trend since as I was waiting for our food, the queue for Taco Bell suddenly grew hugely. The food from there isn't great, it's basically semi-Mexican fast food, but it's a nice change from McDonalds or KFC.

We saw a nice laptop in Currys, an Asus Vivobook with a touch screen and Windows 8. It worked surprisingly well, with the touch screen being a complimentary input device to the mouse and keyboard. The only thing it needed was a more substantial hinge to stop the screen wobbling when you touched it. I think that's the way it needs to go - instead of touch screens becoming the only input device, an additional one to the usual mouse and keyboard, at least for desktops and laptops. Dockable tablets are probably the way to go.

Finally we met up with Rob, went to Forbidden Planet and got the train back. We got a sack of takeaway food from Sainsbury's and ate it in front of Michael Portillo riding astonishing railways in Switzerland and making a prat of himself trying to talk to locals.

Today has been a fairly unproductive day, but I did spend an hour or so sorting out some Christmas shopping online when I wasn't sitting around watching DVDs. I also had a go at making macaroni cheese, which came out rather nice and there was enough for tomorrow lunchtime too.

Patrick Moore has died. Shame as he was a real character.

Meh

Badminton tonight was OK. More than the usual amount of people there so only had two games. We're rapidly developing a dislike for someone who comes with the Hateful One. She is rather large and other than being able to hit the shuttle quite well, seems to never understand how badminton is played. She'll serve to people on the same side as her all the time, never know whether she is serving, or even if people are just passing the shuttle to her. She'll be told several times a game but it doesn't stick. My theory is that she does it to appear ditzy, but it's just annoying.

Not much else to report. Tried to get some Christmas shopping out of the way since it's worryingly close now, but not all that easy.

Found the entirety of 'Live After Death' by Iron Maiden on Youtube in work today, that kept me isolated from the usual office gibbering that is so distracting for some time. Absolutely amazing live album. Also found a track by them I'd never heard before, a cover of 'Doctor Doctor' by UFO. Really good, even though it's when they had Blaze Bayley singing.

NCC-1701

Busy days in work. A lot going on with the backup system. Was tasked today with documenting how the backup system handles data retention in a 'See Spot Run' fashion, because every time I try to explain it, it gets out of hand and nobody understands it. I thought this would be quite easy but when I actually came to put it down, it ran away with me and I was left with a page of incomprehensible gibberish.

Made pasta this evening with a cheese sauce, sweetcorn and peas. Bit of an odd combination and I used caramelised onion cheese for the sauce and put some jalfrezi curry powder in it too, so while it was nice, it was something of a unique taste. Also made far too much so I think I've got lunch for two days now too.

I watched the 2009 Star Trek movie tonight, almost by accident. I didn't actually plan to watch the whole thing, but it sucked me in. Once again I really enjoyed it. It's a pretty radical development over the old series, but with it being an alternate reality, it doesn't invalidate any of the old stuff either. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with for the next one. Zachary Quinto is amazing as Spock too, absolutely spot on performance.

Radiator

Went into work in much the same mood as yesterday, but it gradually improved. I dropped the car off at the garage and they found it had a punctured radiator, which cost £150 to sort out.

The buyer of the M15x received it and left me the most glowing feedback I've ever had on Ebay, so I'm guessing he's happy with it. Good news.

Had another evening of fail. But never mind. It's early but I think I'm going to go to bed with the Kindle or the PS Vita. Tired and unable to process basic information at the moment.

Crudity

Yesterday was a busy day. Went to my Dad's in the morning as I hadn't been for a while. We didn't do all that much, just chilled and looked at my Berlin pictures and had the traditional Saturday fish and chips.

After that it was Steve's random Christmas bash, which was really fun. Ridiculous amounts of food, lots of conversation and general abuse. I met up with Rob and Andy beforehand to watch the dreadful rugby game between Wales and Australia, which was lost in the last seconds, and then we headed off. We were a bit tired which I think helped the conversation reache previously untold levels of crudity. I think the zenith was reached when Maz said she had a swirly chocolate brioche and I said it was because she didn't wipe front to back. This was followed by probably an hour or so of telling each other to fuck off and me farting loudly. It was all in fun but I look back and think it's one of those moments when you realise that it's you that's the arsehole if all you can bring to the conversation is stupid genital humour, farts and burps.

Spent today in a grumpy and bitter mood, consuming snacks in front of DVDs and loathing myself for it at the same time. I ran into someone from college in Morrisons, who I haven't seen in some time and I wish I hadn't while I was stood there with a basket full of crisps and several days worth of stubble because there's a pimple on my jaw that I didn't want to shave over. It didn't really help my mood.

And of course now it's December, which is a month I generally loathe because all the Christmas shit starts happening. It came as something of a shock to realise that I think I hate Christmas so much because everyone else has people to properly enjoy it with. That sounds terrible.

Work tomorrow and taking the car in to have the cooling checked out. Hope it's nothing serious but at least if it is, I've got the cash from the Alienware sale, so I'll keep that on standby.

The next thing I want to get rid of is the PowerEdge 1950. It comes to something when you want to get rid of a machine with 8 CPU cores and 16gb of RAM because you just can't think of anything to do with it. The problem is shipping the damn thing because it's such an awkward shape.