Retro goodness

Well, the radio rally wasn't as good as it has been but there were some interesting things. I picked up two things, an old Compaq Armada laptop for £5, which turned out to be a Pentium with 32mb RAM and 2gb hard drive. Needs a keyboard as half the keys don't work but is otherwise fine.

The other item was a box that converts old video signals into VGA, which is something I thought I could use. Since I put the monitor on the 360 instead of using a TV, I've had no way of using the old PS2 or any other consoles. This box lets the PS2 display through the monitor, and has a bypass so the 360 can display perfectly well too. I've hooked it all up and it works fine although the quality isn't great. But it never was anyway, just been spoilt by the HD signal from the 360. Played a bit of San Andreas which proved it is the pinnacle of GTA, and going back to the original GTA III.

Week of meh

Well, it's not been too bad a week really. Work has been about average.

Badminton yesterday wasn't too bad, although The Hagg was up to her usual tricks. If I serve it too high, she smashes it at my face every time, and her aim is good enough to make it a real issue as the first instinct is to duck. I don't really care, I find it amusing she's so predictable more than anything else. It really pisses Em off though and for once The Hagg realised we weren't happy about it. Her justification was that it was my fault for serving like that. Hah. The numbers meant that we had one game where it was the three of us and someone else, while The Hagg sat out. I didn't do it intentionally but I found myself making it rather obvious how much more enjoyable the game was, and I find it fun to do silly or pointless things as it clearly winds her up such as discussing German or Welsh swearwords between serves, or blatantly insulting her in front of her face in sign language.

Played some retro games this evening. Fiddled about with Sim City 3000 although couldn't get it into it again, and then the original Theme Park. It runs well in DosBox although just a little too fast. Good fun though. Badminton was tempting but I got home and couldn't extricate myself again to get out to it. I feel bad for not going.

Not mentioned it on here but about a month ago I had some chequer tape spare so I put it on the right wing of the Focus for no real reason except I was bored. However, I had a dream last night where I took the tape off again and the car was all rotten underneath, like it had gangrene. It was really disgusting.

Sold my Neo Geo Pocket collection for £41, not too bad. The buyer is in Portugal, having ignored my statement that I'd only post it to the UK. Oh well.

Radio rally tomorrow, should be fun. Then off to Vicky's tomorrow evening for Mexican fest, and then Ed and Kat's on Sunday for Halloween shenanigans. I've taken Monday as flexi now too, hurrah.

Bike on fire

Today was spent doing some of the Diversity Awareness online training course which everyone has to do. It's not the most riveting thing but does have some interesting bits.

Took the bike out for a ride after work to see how it was after the oil change. I don't know if it was psychological on my part but it seemed to go really well. Stopped off in Denbigh briefly to see Andy and Maz who are off to London tomorrow, and then headed back home. By that time it was getting dark and was probably the darkest I've actually ridden the bike in. It was pretty cold as well, definitely need to get some sort of clothing for my legs.

I am a fat slob

Went out this morning and got oil for the bike, but it was a stupid day of unpredictable weather, one minute sunshine, next heavy rain. Gave up on the oil change and slobbed out in front of the third series of Torchwood, which was good. Morrisons was a heaving mass of people so I went to Lidl instead which can be relied upon to be quite empty even at peak times. It's a weird atmosphere in there, it always seems hushed compared to other supermarkets. I like the German stuff you can get in there though as well as all the usual stuff, and you can always get a parking space.

Other than that, it's been a quiet day. Listed my Neo Geo Pocket collection on Ebay, three consoles and some games. Great little machines to be fair, just haven't used them for ages. Also checked the status of my other auctions for a Sinclair ZX81 and a vintage PacMan 2 game. The ZX81 has bids, but not the other one, yet.

It's the radio rally next weekend. I haven't been since it was cancelled in 2005 when they couldn't afford to hold it in the theatre any more. It's a great place for finding computer equipment and retro stuff, and I've got many nice and interesting things from there, including the above mentioned ZX81.

In the last two years it's been held in the new school in Llandudno, but I haven't been. The first year I just didn't know it was happening, and last year I was in Berlin. Despite my financial crackdown, I am going to allow myself a bit of cash to go and see what's there, but this time, with the intent of seeing if there is anything I could possibly resell on Ebay. The problem I've had before is that I would buy something just to really have a play with it, but then never get rid of it and it would just sit around. When the stuff was PDAs and stuff it's not too bad, when you're talking huge Unix workstations and the like, it can get a bit silly.

Supposedly the weather tomorrow is going to be better, and hopefully will get the bike oil change done.

The gearbox plot thickens, when I was driving hom from town today, I had a lot on my mind, and forgot to avoid third gear, and it worked perfectly all the way home without me realising. Perhaps it's not as damaged as previously thought.

My brother has once again encouraged me to sign up for the Berlin half marathon next year. It is something I think it would be great to do, but I'm so unfit at the moment I'd never be ready to do it in time, and I'm still quite dubious about my running ability.

Rereading Harry Potter, just started book 4.

When I went into town, found that I'd forgotten to charge the HTC and it was completely flat, so I had to go out without a mobile phone. It was a somewhat strange sensation, probably the first time I've been out without one for years. Still like the HTC, found a C64 emulator for it, and there's even an Amiga emulator for Android, which seems totally unreal.

Goodbye Mac

Apple has started the process of locking down the Mac, just like the iPhone and iPod. OS X 10.7 will allow third party stuff to be installed without the Mac App store, but what about 10.8 or 10.9? When will the Launchpad interface which makes it look like an even bigger iPad become mandatory?

Ubuntu has its centralised Software Centre and Android has it's Market which install apps and automatically update them for you, but you are still able to install applications yourself from whereever you want. Windows is the other extreme, all apps are installed manually and handle updates themselves, which leads to chaos in the taskbar as they all jostle for your attention when updates are there. I think Ubuntu has it about right.

I saw this coming when they invented the iPhone, and I lost interest in the Mac platform some time ago. But the worrying thing is that what Apple does, everyone else tries to copy, with varying degress of success.

Badminot

End of a stressful but quite productive week in work, even though several things didn't really quite go as planned. Had details today of the restructure of the department, shouldn't think it'll affect me. Also been told that we have to do a Diversity Awareness course which is online and will take several hours to complete. Great, like we have the time to spare.

Didn't go to badminton tonight. Again. I just can't myself motivated to go for some reason. I don't think I'm going to join this year, mainly because with my financial crackdown I don't want to drop £70 on it.

Downloaded an Atari Lynx emulator and some games. It works quite well but the sound isn't quite right. I've got a Lynx somewhere with my old games, if I can find a power supply that'll work with it I'll dig it out. Not putting batteries in it.

No real plans this weekend except to change the oil on the bike, although it depends on the weather really.

Finished Big Bang season 2. It was pretty good. The bloopers on the DVD are so weird, seeing the guy who plays Sheldon not being Sheldon is just wrong.

Haven't done anything about the gearbox yet, going to keep an eye on Ebay and scrappies though. Someone told me that this coming winter is likely to be like the last one and I pondered briefly on getting a 4x4 for the winter but that would probably be a really bad idea. Finding it OK without 3rd gear but it can be really annoying on hills where 2nd or 4th just aren't right.

Really tired now.

Funny fun fun

A reconditioned gearbox for the car would cost £500+VAT so that's not really an option. A couple of guys in work said if I got a box, they would help me install it, as one of them has an engine crane. An intriguing idea but so much could go wrong. The idea of a second hand box is still doable, just need to sort out someone to put it in. Someone in work suggested the Focus RS8 conversion kit you can get in the States. It converts a Focus to rear wheel drive with a 5.0 litre V8. Could be fun, but it's £15,000, so not really an option. It would be ace to have a sleeper one though, a ratty old 4-door Focus with 250bhp would be hilarious in the traffic light grand prix.

Badminton this evening. First it was a meal at Rob's with a laptop shuffle, swapping out the HP 2133 I sold him for the Precision M65. The meal was haggis, first time I've had it I think. It was interesting, but probably not something I'll actively seek out. It did however have an unfortunate effect on digestion causing several involuntary eruptions during badminton from both Rob and I. Also someone got struck in the eye by a shuttle, which made her eye go all red and painful so she left to get it checked.

Boo cars.

Car broken again. Fumbled a gearchange on the way from one site to another and trashed 3rd gear. Now it just screeches and jumps out again when you try to select it. Probably the high mileage more than what I did but it's fucked. A mechanic drove it and says it'll go on for many miles yet if you ignore 3rd. Possibilies:

1) Get box repaired, not too sure about this as 4th and 5th have crunched in the past.
2) Get second hand box for as cheap as £45 off Ebay or breakers and get someone to install it.
3) Get reconditioned box for more, possibly up to £600
4) Get new car.
5) Ignore it.

4 and 3 are not happening. Leaning towards 2 at the moment, going to make some calls tomorrow. Absolutely typical this would happen right after I have it services and swear a vow of frugality for the next six months. Bahburgers.

Sart

A good weekend all round. My cousin Pauline came down for the first time since January to stay with my Dad, now that her breast cancer treatment has finally ended and she's back in work. So we spent yesterday hanging out and catching up. She had her laptop with her which was unfortunately inflicted with Vista and was running like a complete dog, so we went out and got a copy of Windows 7 for it, but then realised her optical drive doesn't work. That evening we went to the Prosperity in Rhuddlan. It's a Chinese which has a whole page of vegetarian stuff, which was ideal for Pauline. It was a really good meal.

Today went back over with my external DVD drive and we spent a few hours rebuilding her laptop. It's relatively old Compaq but it made a huge difference to the machine, like it always does if Vista is involved.

Didn't do much else today when I got home. Took the bike out for a short run, watched some more Big Bang Theory. Sold another old laptop on Ebay, good news.

The tacky Ferrari laptop is running well with the SSD and the 250gb drive from it is now a backup drive which is nice.

Hadn't seen this Dave Allen clip in years, damn he was funny.

Friday yay

At last the end of the week. Workload still frustrating. One nice success which I've done in spare time is build up a test version of the backup system using a spare PC. I had a couple of spare SCSI controllers and a pair of SCSI hard drives from scrapped machines, and added an LTO1 tape drive from a scrap server. Then followed the original configuration documents for the real thing to build it up. It's now at the point where it is successfully backing up data from a test client machine, although I haven't yet tried migrating the data to tape. It's definitely been worth doing as a lot of things about the real system make much more sense.

One last thing I bought before the frugal crackdown next week is an SSD for the tasteless Ferrari laptop. It gets moved around a lot and I didn't want the drive to get damaged. It's a Crucial RealSSD with a capacity of 64gb, considerably less than the original 250gb hard drive, but lighter, quieter and more power efficient. It also has extremely fast read speeds, so it should perform well too for what the machine is used for. It also came with a useful SATA to USB adapter to allow the original hard drive to be cloned onto the SSD to save having to rebuild the whole machine and hopefully to allow the original hard drive to be used externally.

Chocolate Weetabix was a bit of a let down, but still nicer than standard Weetabix. I can only eat Weetabix with sugar on, which defeats the point really.

The car is running much better since the service but I think one of the rear tyres has a slow puncture, will get that checked on Sunday.

One nice thing about the Android phone is that it synchronises everything with your Google account, which is something I had never really looked at before although I've had one for a while to do this blog. Found a cool geeky Tricorder app that actually does things, using the accelerometer, compass, GPS and microphone to give various readings. Fun. Also got the Amazon Kindle app for it, which is quite interesting although only put free books on it so far. Reading the original Dracula at the moment on it.

Girly my arse

The bike passed it's MOT with only a couple of bulbs needed. Quite amazed really, and it only cost £45 overall. People in work said that I could have got the MOT done cheaper elsewhere but this place was convenient for work. It was a VERY cold ride into town this morning though, but I was pleased that the bike wasn't any harder to start than normal. Work was meh, got some things done but not others. Constantly feeling tired this week, and had an on and off headache today. Bah.

Still really happy with the HTC phone. The only issues I have are the on screen keyboard, which is a bit fiddly, and the battery life. I've always preferred phones with good battery life, and previously the various Nokias I've used had at least a good couple of days. I think the HTC would manage a couple of days, depending on use, but it is capable of being charged from a normal mini-USB connector so it's quite easy to top it up. Also the camera is fairly dire. It's apparently a 3.2 megapixel one but it takes pretty poor photos in anything but bright daylight. Got an ace geocaching app for it. You can download the cache data onto the phone and then use the built in GPS to find it. If you have data access it can even tell you about nearby caches and log visits while out and about but I've disabled data access as it's prohibitively expensive on PAYG. Oh yes, apparently the HTC is 'girly' because it's white. I've decided I don't care, I like it.

Not much else going on really. Carried on with Big Bang Theory season 2, which is pretty good.

Still relatively Coke-free. Had some diet cherry while on overtime on Saturday and had some at Andy's meal, but otherwise still on the squash at work. I think my skin has improved quite a lot and it's probably due to that. Anyway, not consuming shitloads of sugar and caffeine every day has got to be a good thing. The squash I'm drinking now probably has various sweeteners and stuff but it's a lot better than full-fat Coke.

Once and for all going to work on my finances, so the next few months are going to be frugal (heard that before) although I will have to budget for a trip to Berlin as my cousin wants to go now that her treatments are all but finished with. Not sure when but we're going to discuss it on Saturday when she is down for a visit.

Bah

Better day today. Work wasn't too bad, although workload increased again, annoying.

The bike is going for an MOT tomorrow, hope it will be OK. They already know it has an issue with the headlight although that's hopefully a bulb.

Fuck everything

Yesterday was a good day, took the dog out geocaching, took the bike out geocaching and then went to the Semaphore for Andy's birthday meal, which was great. Also saw his mate Steve's menagerie which was fun. Turkeys, chickens and tortoises were all admired. Achieved my objective of getting my 100th geocache on 10/10/10, bit pathetic really.

Today was shit. Plenty of fallout from the office moves, took all day to get it sorted out completely combined with the usual shit caused by an unmanageable workload and general despair. Tired of it.

Aglets

Overtime went OK. We got there about 12:00pm and left shortly before 5pm, but the time seemed to fly past. Came home and didn't really feel like doing much so watched some more of the Big Bang Theory season 2, which Rob lent me on Thursday. It seems much funnier than season 1 for some reason.

Installed a new 160gb hard drive in the D800 and currently installing Windows 7 on it. I was going to put XP on it, but if it runs OK with 7 then I'll put the spare license I have on there.

The HTC is going OK. It's nice to use although still finding that the keyboard is a little awkward in portrait mode. The screen is the same resolution as the iPod touch but slightly smaller. It's fine in landscape mode though. The way it handles text messaging is quite different though, much prefer the BlackBerry for that.

Quite impressed with Android as a platform though, even though the Magic is on the older 1.6 version. It's not quite as slick as iOS but it is close, and it's more open - you can get apps from the Android Market, but you also have the option of installing them manually from websites or from the SD card. So there's more choice and less control than the iTunes app store, like when Apple rejected a Commodore 64 emulator because you could program it in BASIC.

It's the weekend!

But I'm working tomorrow...boo. Fecking office moves.

Car serviced yesterday, went OK. The handbrake was sorted quite easily - the cable hadn't snapped, it had just come off the handle, so it didn't cost much to sort. However, the front tyres were utterly screwed so had new ones fitted today by Etyres.

After the N97 incident, been looking for suitable replacement. Android has been intriguing for a while but took a while to find an affordable device. Found one eventually in the form of a HTC Magic, a slightly older device. So far it seems pretty decent although finding the onscreen keyboard a little difficult. Tried out a few apps and things, seems quite good. Can't believe there's actually an Amiga emulator for Android, that just seems wrong.

Fling

Didn't sleep well last night, but felt suprisingly good most of the day, and had a productive day in work, got a lot of jobs out of the way and it's all looking a little better than it was. Also made peace with the person who sent the e-mail that caused the bin kicking incident on Friday. Still wish I wasn't doing overtime on Saturday though. Set myself a little project to do when I have quiet moments, which is to set up a little copy of the backup system on a Linux machine by following the original documentation for the live one. It works to a degree but there is a time limit as without a valid license file, it only runs for 30 days.

The Focus goes in for it's service tomorrow, but I had to phone them up and add the handbrake as the cable snapped while I was parking it today. Also it looks a complete shed because I was tired of the paint flaking off the non original front bumper so I put Nitromors on it to strip off the old paint. It worked to a degree but it currently looks dreadful. Oh well.

Not a good week for cars, both Rob and Steve had bumps, and a guy in work has issues with his car cutting out and he's going to Devon with his family next week.

Think it's catching up with me now, urgently need sleep.

Computer hot-rod

It's fun to hack around with older computers and make them run better.

Just worked out at last how to replace the BIOS on the Latitude D800 with the one from the Precision M60. The two machines are pretty much the same but the D800 for some gimpy reason only runs the RAM at 266mhz, while the M60 runs it at 333mhz. The RAM I've installed in the D800 is capable of that speed so I have been meaning to swap the BIOS for ages, but 0nly just now worked out how it's actually done.

The D800 now thinks it's a Precision M60 and is noticeably quicker. I don't know why Dell did that, the Inspiron 8600, Latitude D800 and Precision M60 all use the same basic chassis and motherboard, but only the D800 has the slower RAM.

There was a HOLE here. It's gone now.

Not much went on the rest of the week on Friday when I had a disctinctly upsetting e-mail in work, that caused me to scream obscenities at the top of my voice and savagely kick a bin across the office. Not sure if it was because I used my left foot or what but it really damaged my foot to the point where it still hurts now. Oh well.

Picked up BioShock 2 from Morrisons for £14 so have been playing it off and on. It is pretty much more of the same except that this time you play as a Big Daddy. The plot is interesting and the environment as great as ever.

Didn't play badminton on Thursday due to Rob being ill and then Friday I didn't go because I wasn't in the mood and my foot was still hurting.

Yesterday was a fairly idle day with mostly BioShock and a couple of movies. I dug out some old movies that I hadn't seen for ages on VHS, The Living Daylights and The Craft. Then went to Llandudno with Andy and Maz to go to Pizza Hut and watch Back to the Future in the cinema. Both were OK although there were a group of tattooed bodybuilding gorillas who thought they were really funny and loud in Pizza Hut and then to our dismay went into the same screen as us. Fortunately we were far away from them and the sound was turned up so their constant talking was a faint murmer in the background. BTTF was a blast on the big screen, looked great on digital projection and it's just such a fun film to watch.

Today it was supposed to be rugby in Wrexham but it was cancelled due to heavy rain, but by the time it was announced, I had just arrived at Andy's. So we went to the Denbigh Chocolate Shop, which is really cool. It has a little cafe area, but then if you go upstairs there's a sweet shop, a gallery and a meeting room. Very nice.

Trying to rationalise the computers I use, so after the failed Acer behemoth experiment, I ended up buying a brand new Acer 17" 7741g with a Core i3, 4gb RAM, 500gb hard drive and ATI 5470 graphics. To fund it I'm selling off the older machines. Sold the MacBook on Ebay and made a small profit on it, even with the replacement keyboard. I also listed the Latitude D800 but that didn't sell, which came as a bit of a relief as I have a soft spot for it. Decided to keep it and treat it to some more RAM and a new hard drive to speed it up, but there's still a few others to list.

The car really needs attention now, it's definitely down on power and using more fuel than it should. The exhaust is getting steadily worse. Tired of exhausts now, wish I could just get one that stuck up out of the bonnet like a tractor.

Title of this entry is one of the stranger messages encountered written on a wall in Silent Hill 2.

So tired...

It's been a long, strange week. Work has just been impossible to keep up with. Get one job out of the way and in the meantime two more come in and just constantly being hassled to get things done.

Not many people were able to make it to the drumming workshop tonight so we went back to Darren's for a bit. Nice to sit down and catch up with him. We ended up playing drums for a while as his housemate played piano which was fun and interesting. Tired now though.

A fun packed weekend

Yesterday was OK. Amy and Huw came up to pick apples again, which was fairly entertaining and there were plenty of them on the tree. Also we had a look at the damson tree which I've ignored for some time, and found that it was covered in them. After that I took a trip into Denbigh to get a new tax disk holder for the bike as the original was all rusty and knackered. In the evening went for an Indian with Andy, Maz, Rob, Em and Vicky. A bit fat after going out on Friday night too, but wasn't going to turn that down. Had a chicken tikka masala which was slightly embarrassing to order, but was really really nice.

Today did some digging in the garden to clear out blocked water channels and fitted the tax disk to the bike. It was a bit of a pain as the old one really didn't want to come off, but got there in the end. Then took it out for a nice ride, although it was a bit cold. Had an interesting moment where I stopped on the side of the road near Cerrigydrudion to have a look at the view and some bikers slowed down to ask if I was OK. Dug out Fable II again after ages and progressed my evil character a bit more. Got to a new town with the normal routine of a rampant massacre of half the people there before buying out the place. Hehe.

Mmmm

Mum's birthday today so went to the Prosperity in Rhuddlan, a really good Chinese restaurant. Very good food there. Only been there once before with work, and it was good then.

Friday at last

Hurrah, finally, at last, it's Friday.

Mum's birthday today so going out for a meal this evening, woohoo.

Stupid Acer behemoth graphics card died, stripped it for parts and scrapped it, arse.

Bleh

Watched Hackers, a film which is shit in many ways but still has a bizarre appeal for some reason, even though anyone who knows anything about computers will go 'What?!' several times. It's good stupid fun though. Every time I watch it I still want to paint a computer in camo.

Also watched Total Recall while doing some hardware tweaking on an Acer 7520 17" laptop with serious overheating issues, CPU running at 70-80 degrees and graphics chip hitting nearly 100 degrees. Put some Actic Silver 5 on the heatsinks and removed a thick pad of dust from the fan and it's down to 40-50 degrees for the CPU and 60-65 degrees for the graphics chip, much improved although I think the graphics chip should be cooler still. It's away from the danger zone at least. Think it's because of the shit thermal pad between the chip and the heatsink, might see if I can get a copper shim for it like the Dell I had similar issues with as the heat transfer would be a lot better. Nice feature of this laptop is two hard drive slots, ideal for dual-booting or virtualisation. Just needs some more RAM now and perhaps a faster CPU if I can find a compatible one (AMD Socket S1).

The skin on the back of my neck is killing me, got a massive outbreak of painful pustules on it and it's really hurting because of the pressure my shirt collar puts on it. Probably caused by stress, I usually break out in spots if I'm worried about something or under pressure.

Unremarkable day

Not much going on today.

Had payment for another Ebay item, a HP 71B palmtop that is off to France. It's going to a place not far from Lyon, and just recently my lost lovespoon geocoin got moved to France to a cache in the same general area. How odd.

Stupid weather

This morning went to the biker cafe in Denbigh for breakfast with Andy, Maz and Vicky. It's actually called Sam's Cafe but I call it the biker cafe as it's right outside the motorbike dealer (in fact it used to be the dealer) and usually has plenty motorbikes parked outside. They do a pretty good all day breakfast to be fair and the lunchtime specials are usually good too.

This afternoon, Will and I were going to go up to the moors and take photos but the weather today has been grey and pissing it down with no let up so we gave up on that. Instead we had a go on Fable II multiplayer, which was quite good although I had to download the expansion packs as Will had them already. While they were downloading I played a few levels of Duke Nukem 3D, which was good fun.

Not done much else today really. Tidied up a bit and packaged up a couple of the Ebay sales for postage tomorrow after having the payment for them.

Having one of those weird introspective moments where I'm questioning quite a lot of things.

Beer, beer, beer, I hate beer

Today was the annual beer festival in Denbigh. I detest beer and cider in all forms, so I don't really get much from it really, but it's nice to meet up with everyone and hang out. I didn't go last year, but I did this year and had a good time. I tasted quite a few beers, all horrible, and some ciders which weren't great either. Fortunately this year they had a cafe which did food and drinks. I had two bowls of a really nice chilli and then Caroline bought cakes and chocolates. Also, I only just realised that I had two cans of Coke, breaking my no-Coke rule. I hadn't had any since Sunday. Oh well, it won't matter so long as I don't lapse into the old habits.

All four of the last things I put on Ebay sold, including a batch of Speak & Spells that went for £51, yay.

As it was payday yesterday, I did the tax for the car and bike. £205 for the Focus and £15 for the bike. Also the Focus is having a service next Saturday.

Came home from the beer festival at about 6pm as the noisy and annoying folk band had started up.

Felt tired today for some reason and at a bit of a loss what to do with myself. Oh well.

Need to have a tidy up tomorrow, living in a pigsty at the moment. Also can look at what else I can put on Ebay at the same time.

Flim

900th post.

A fairly ordinary week. Not much really to report. Found there are more caches gone live near home and a colleague and I went for one that had gone live yesterday, hoping to get first to find. Somehow we managed to time it so we arrived at the cache just as it poured down with rain, and got wet, and then found someone had got it an hour before - ARGH!

No drumming this week as the hall was booked out previously, boo.

Other than that not really done much. the inverter for the MacBook arrived today and I got it installed and the screen still flickers, although not as badly. Getting at the inverter was, surprise, a royal pain in the arse. Removing the screen bezel is easy but the cover over the hinges and the inverter is a rotten design. Officially you're supposed to remove the whole display assembly before taking it apart but that involves removing the fucking keyboard section and I'm not doing that again after last time. Wretched bloody thing. At least the screen should be swappable without too much hassle if I do buy a new one for it.

I haven't had a single drop of Coke since Sunday and I think I feel a lot better for it. I have been drinking Robinson's squash in work, which to be fair has it's own share of crap in it, but it's nowhere near as bad as Coke. I actually have a spare bottle of Diet Cherry Coke in my work laptop bag left over from last Friday, which I've been treating as a sort of test as I haven't opened it yet. The food hasn't been good this week mind you but the lack of Coke must help. Also been walking the dog a lot this week, which was fairly OK except the weather sucks rather a lot. Met a pair of friendly horses today poking their heads over a gate and demanding attention. Horses are alarming things really.

Great weekend

Saturday consisted of the gang going into Denbigh for a heritage festival. It was hyped up a bit and had things going on but after going around the underwhelming thing in the town hall which consisted of a fairly crappy market we sort of gave up on it. We did partake in the rather delicious hog roast though and then spent the rest of the day in a pub and having ice cream. So while the heritage thing wasn't great, we did have a good time.

Sunday was spent walking the dog and taking the bike out. Had a really good run on the bike, went further than usual and ended up seeing quite a lot of other bikes. At one point got stuck in the middle of a convoy of huge leather guys on big Harley Davidson type bikes, all loud farty things and then on the moors ended up in front of some sports bikes. Wasn't too bad though, quite good fun really. The evening consisted of a meal at the Brookhouse Mill, which was really good, lots of good food and conversation with friends.

Today wasn't too bad in work. After a protracted scream, managed to make my job list a bit more likable, and left a little early as it was quite a productive day. Got home to find the tasteless Ferrari laptop had arrived back from repair, which is good. It's back to normal now, so hopefully it'll behave now. It's a nice little machine. Debating now whether to take the dog out - it's rather windy but that I don't mind, but it's trying to rain as well. Hmm.

Update: Did take the dog out and it didn't do more than drizzle. It's actually better in poor weather though because you put more effort in rather than just pootling along enjoying the scenery.

Further update: Just listed a few more retro computing things on Ebay. One nice thing is that now I can put good quality images on there as the D50 works very well for that.

A shit day with highlights

Some days, I really hate my job. Again, not the work itself, just the way it suddenly piles up from people with no consideration that you might actually have other work for other people that, shock horror, might be more important, and then get all stroppy about it. And BlackBerrys are NOT important, I don't care how much you want your shiny toy but it doesn't take precedence over someone who can't work because their machine has died.

It was someone's 21st birthday today and so there was a vast, beautiful chocolate cake, and we all had chips for lunch. This was mildly cheering until I felt sick all evening, so much so that I didn't go to badminton. Throwing up on the court might not have been liked. Did take the bike out for a little jaunt and it went really well. Oh, except the headlight seems to have stopped working. Bah!

Really tired and dispirited this evening. Can't be arsed doing anything. Tried to play bass, failed, tried to play Xbox, failed, so just listening to music.

Bike sorted

Yesterday was fairly dull until the evening, another African drumming workshop. Slightly less people this time but it was still really good fun with more complex stuff going on and different people doing different parts of the rhythm. Really enjoying it.

Today I had a flexi day to take the bike in for the work. They did the faulty lights, the chain, spark plug, handlebar bearings and the exhaust. It's amazing, it rides and sounds like new, which is great and it only cost £51. The only thing they couldn't do was fit a long mudflap to the front mudguard as they didn't have one but will let me know when they've got one in.

The tasteless Ferrari laptop has been repaired and is on it's way back, which is good news.

Fraaark

Work has been frustrating. My Latitude D520 laptop had been pretty reliable until three weeks ago. First it had an intermittent line appear across the screen, then started to have issues with the hard drive clicking, and then three times yesterday it crashed hard. Unfortunately I was told I couldn't have a new one, instead have someone else's old one. It's a D620 which isn't much younger than mine, which had just suffered a graphics chip failure. Fortunately Dell extended the warranty on that part as it was a known fault (Nvidia made a few million shit chips) so it had a new motherboard two weeks ago. Finally got hold of it today and started building it so that was a relief. It's got a nice screen, a 14" 1440x900 panel which is so much nicer than the 15" 1024x768 panel in the D520. It seems to be in good nick and the new motherboard should hopefully mean it will be reliable. Would have been nice to put Windows 7 on it but we're not quite at that stage yet.

Just washed the motorbike in preparation for taking it in on Thursday as I won't get a chance to do it tomorrow night. Doesn't take long but is fiddly. It could really do with a longer mudguard on the front wheel to stop more of the mud being flung back.

Bought a Nikon D50 which is a slightly elderly DSLR after decided I'd relied on phone cameras long enough. Kind of overkill I guess but it does take lovely photos despite being five years old and 6.3mp. All the settings are rather bewildering though - taking some time to get used to it.

Haven't been using the MacBook much since I repaired the keyboard because the screen flicker pisses me off. I've just read though that this is more commonly caused by an inverter problem rather than the screen itself, so I've ordered one as they are pretty cheap compared to a new LCD. If it works, great, if not then I'll get a screen when I can afford one. I really like the keyboard on the MacBook but not the sharp edges on the front. When it makes typing on the machine actively painful, it makes you wonder what they were thinking when they designed the thing.

Hah, that's ironic, just yanked the screen bezel off the MacBook to see how hard it is to get to the inverter and I think I did something to the cables. Now the screen looks brighter and it doesn't seem to be flickering. Shit, wish I'd tried that before I ordered the inverter. Mind you, compared to the Dell laptop to it, the screen does have a yellow tinge, but that might just be the gimpy colour calibration in OS X. Oh well. We'll see.

Update: Nope, it's flickering again.

Tired and unmotivated this evening. Again. Not sure why.

New work shoes I bought on Saturday are working out well. My feet feel much better.

Unproductive

Well, that was probably the least productive Sunday ever. I literally did nothing but sit and watch the Top Gear challenges on Youtube all day, except to package up the Acorn A4 laptops (Went for £127) and the tasteless Ferrari laptop so they can go to the purchaser and warranty repair centre respectively.

Up to the 3rd James Herriot book. I've read them so often before that I nearly know them off by heart but they are great books.

Back to work tomorrow. Bleh. I am going to have a lie in though because I need to call DHL to arrange collection of the broken laptop and they don't open their call centre until 8am.

Windows 7 aplenty

Spent much of the day at my Dad's. Went and got some packing stuff and things and a new pair of work shoes. Hopefully this will help my feet get back to normal.

After that went to the new PC World and Currys shop in Llandudno, which is pretty cool. We picked up a couple of copies of Windows 7 for my Dad and Jean's laptops, which were unfortunately inflicted with Vista. Spent the rest of the afternoon backing up the machines and rebuilding them.

Exercise fail

It took four days, loads of parts, and a whole load of aggro, but finally the tape library works. It's not been a good week because of that, having to neglect my normal work and concentrate solely on the backup system was a real pain. On the plus side, I'm much more confident with the system and the various processes, due to having to shift tapes around manually and keep on top what the system usually does automatically. When the main guy is in, it's all to easy to let him do the hard stuff when it breaks. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end. I'm not saying it's perfect, there are still issues, but the backups themselves ran each night and the offsite tapes are where they should be.

Booked the bike in to the garage on this coming Thursday. I'm taking it as a flexi day - because of coming in early for the last five days I've got loads of time to take. Basically I've given them a list of what it needs and asked them to check it over to see if it will be OK on the upcoming MOT.

Now on South Park season 2. This seems much more familiar than season 1 as I think I had it on tape. Enjoying it though.

Started reading the James Herriot books. I've always really liked them and it's been a while. I've always liked the way they are written, especially the vivid characters.

Need to have a tidy up, the house is a disgrace at the moment.

Went to Friday night badminton today for the first time this season. However, my feet haven't been right since Monday after the walk, and so I only lasted two games. Also made it rather clear how unfit I am right now. My trainers are OK but it's my work shoes that are the problem. Going to try and pick some up tomorrow. Also need to get a box and bubblewrap to send the Ferrari laptop back to Acer as they have agreed the fan is faulty and it needs to be repaired. They say to send it with at least 5cm of bubblewrap around it, which is mad because the original box doesn't give it anything like as much protection. Oh well. It needs doing and otherwise it's a damn fine machine.

Tax forms came through for both the bike and the car, in the same envelope which seems unusually efficient of the DVLA. Bike tax is £15 for a year, car tax is £205 for a year. Ouch.

Not much else going on. Going to my Dad's tomorrow as I haven't been for a while.

Today is the first day I didn't go mad for Coke. Feel better for it I think.

Grah

Yet more parts needed for the library. Argh. Given up hope now, but only one more day and I can hand the whole blessed system back to the guy who normally looks after it.

Didn't go to badminton tonight as my feet have been complaining all week - I think the walk on Monday followed by a day in my shit work shoes ruined them. I've been wearing my trainers all week and they do feel better. Should be OK for badminton tomorrow however.

Went out on the bike for a little spin and it went OK. Slightly alarming moment when I went round a bend on a relatively narrow road to encounter a green 08 reg left hand drive Aston Martin. The bike does need attention, the occasional hesitation it had before is getting worse and it generally just needs some bits doing. Hoping to take a day of work next week to have a garage look at it and evaluate its condition and what needs doing, bearing in mind the MOT in October. If it comes to a lot, it might be more sensible to sell it for parts and put the money towards another 125 which is easier to get parts for - either that or put it towards the DAS scheme to get a full license.

Other than that it's been a quiet evening.

I like hitting things

Tape library still broken, needs more parts and that's all that needs to be said about that.

An old friend of mine from school announced drumming workshops nearby and I thought I've give it a go. There were about 10 people there of various ages and it was really good. It's been a while since I've seen him but it was probably 9 years ago that he was starting out. He's really good on the drums now. Found it very relaxing after the nightmare day in work. It's a weekly thing for a little while now so will probably go again.

Apple has redesigned the iPod shuffle yet again. Someone must have realised the buttonless design was incredibly stupid.

Flibble

Went into work to general chaos with the backup system. Again took all day to sort it out and I found that removing tapes manually from the library is a very tedious operation indeed since there doesn't seem to be any logical order in which it stores them. And it still isn't fixed, awaiting engineer from IBM to come in and repair the actual hardware.

Other than that, quiet day. Listed the two Acorn A4 laptops on Ebay. After years in storage, one of them powered up after a bit of fiddling but the other didn't, so I've put them on as a job lot. Both hard drives appear to have failed however. Quite gutted to be getting rid of them as I remember them coming out in the early 90s and being outrageously expensive and then being thrilled to get them cheap a few years later. Oh well.

Not much else going on, tired now after going into work very early. I woke up and I couldn't think of anything but the backup system so I got up and went straight in to see what had happened.

Awesome walk

Went for a walk around the Abergele area with Rob, Will and Sarah. It was really good as the weather was superb and we went around the Gwylch Castle area which I had never seen before. It's pretty impressive, even if it's not that old, and we saw some amazing views down the coast. I looked up some geocaches beforehand and we found five in the end, which was good. Also picked up two travelbugs, which is always nice. One of the caches had already been found twice today by the time we got to it, but it was on the sea front next to the cycle track so it would be in a prime location to be picked up.

So overall it's been a fairly decent weekend other than the strange mood I was in yesterday. I've successfully managed to avoid thinking about work too, which is good. It's kind of getting a bit a close now, I'm really hoping the backup system hasn't died over the weekend though, it was bad enough on Friday.

Need to get stuff on Ebay due to financial issues mentioned previously. I watched an old Acorn A4 go for £132 recently - the rare RISC OS laptop. I've got two of them, which both worked several years ago although I think one had a dodgy hard drive. Not so much of an issue with Acorn machines though as the operating system is in ROM. Once I've tested them I'm going to put them on as a job lot because I've lost the power supply for one of them. Still loads more crap I can list though.

Tired now after the walk, need to get to bed.

Superhero name generator. This has been around for ages, I remember playing with it in college in what must be around 1997 or so.

Examples:

The puerile Ice Woman
Power(s): Telekinesis, Image projection
Source of powers: Mutant mutagen
Weapon: Ice Pistol
Transportation: Woman Pig

The naughty Tomorrow Thing
Power(s): Shrinking, Clairvoyance, Telescopic vision
Source of powers: Mutant spinach
Weapon: Thing Pistol
Transportation: Tomorrow Sleigh

The brazen Wolf Hitmen
Power(s): Gadget creation, Speed reading, Deus ex machina
Source of powers: Magic mutant
Weapon(s): Hitmen Amplifier(s)
Transportation: Astrosubmarine(s)

A less than productive day

Didn't really do much today, didn't feel quite right. I thought at first I was coming down with something but then it just seemed to be tiredness with a bit of a headache.

Watched some South Park season 1, which I haven't seen since it originally aired in the UK which I guess would be about 1997. Funny stuff. Discovered it had a German audio track, that was slightly weird to say the least.

Not been a good month for finances or health, real willpower issues at the moment, but today was not a day to worry about it as I really didn't feel up to doing much at all.

Acer fan is getting louder but tech support lines only open Monday to Friday, 9-5 which is less than helpful.

A bad day with a happy ending

Typically, it being a Bank Holiday Friday, the backup system broke. It always does this without fail when I am left in charge of it. This time it was a hardware failure in the tape library. The door where you insert tapes had a sensor problem and if the system tried to do anything with tapes in the door the whole thing would lock up. So spent much of the day trying to sort it out and worrying about the backups over the weekend. I think it's going to be OK though, but the engineer is coming back first thing on Tuesday to repair it so we can get the tapes out again. This also caused a debate amongst the helpdesk team who were thrilled by the robot in the tape library and decided to try and name it. So far the candidates are 'Bertie', 'Jeffrey' and 'Bender'.

After all that was in a very tired and stressed mood, but went for an Indian in the Village Masala with Andy, Maz and Vicky, which was great as usual. The food was excellent although rather filling and they have puddings where you keep the container. Andy had a Punky Penguin which was a plastic penguin filled with ice cream and I had a pistachio kulfi that came in a nice little pot which you could keep too. That was nice.

Looking forward to the weekend now. The replacement speedo for the bike has turned up and hopefully should fit OK, but it reads up to 160mph which is perhaps a little excessive. Mind you my old Vectra had a speedo that did the same.

Strange day

An confusing and unproductive day in work. I did have my interim PA in the morning though, which went OK.

Evening consisted of a meetup with a few people from work to bid farewell to a Canadian woman who is returning to Canada with her husband. I've known her in work for a couple of years now and she lived down the road from me. It was a good evening and a good turnout, which was nice.

In a weird mood this evening.

The fan in the new Acer laptop has developed a slight buzz. It's not very loud but is noticable. Think I'll give them a call about it as it didn't do it to start with. Bah. Otherwise it's really good, very happy with the performance and usability of it. It runs Windows 7 very well.

Bank holiday weekend coming up and already I think it's going to be a fat one. Oh well.

Random

A fairly hectic day in work after the day off yesterday. One of the test Unix partitions had gone down and only I could get it up and running, although it didn't really take much. But there were loads of e-mails waiting for me about it.

Took the bike out when I got home, went. Definitely needs attention to the exhaust now though, and the rear light has gone, although the brake light is still OK. The list is getting longer. I have however ordered a universal speedo for £30 after discovering the original item is about £130 and is notoriously unreliable, presumably why it was replaced by the cycle computer in the first place.

Gave the poor dog a bath this evening as he needed one. He doesn't like it, but at least he doesn't struggle or fight. The worst part is when he shakes himself afterwards, although I did accidentally get water in his ears which caused a shake in the tub which wasn't good.

Attempt to make lunch to take into work failed, as I forgot it. Oh well, I had it this evening and it was nice, and fairly filling as it was pasta. Will try again tomorrow.

Fairly quiet otherwise.

Clean-cut or mate

A fairly decent day. Played around with the Acer a bit more, getting it how I like it. It definitely runs better than the average netbook. The Atom server seems stable, which is good.

Got another key for the bike, so I've got two again now. Hopefully the other one will turn up at some point. Dropped into a place in Kinmel Bay where I've been a few times to ask their advice. This time it was about the speedo and chain tension. They were really helpful and said to just bring it in whenever, which is good. It's good when they are really approachable like that. Also I think the exhaust will need looking at.

I dug out an old plywood bass body that has been the basis for several previous experiments and attacked it with a hole cutter. It's now got about 20 holes in it, removing a large amount of wood and making the body much lighter. I've got a neck that will fit on it and the rest of the hardware, so just need to put it together. I don't know if the holes will affect the strength of the body but we'll see.

Chips for supper, from the really good one in Denbigh, and once again it was really good. A battered sausage is a pretty vulgar item of food really, but from there it's a work of art, and the curry sauce from there is sublime.

Back to work tomorrow. I always worry about going back after a holiday, even if it's just a day off.

Iron Maiden got to number 1 with their latest album. Who would have thought it!

It lives!

Got a replacement power supply for the Atom machine and it powered right up, which is very good news. Also the new power supply is quieter, so that's nice too.

Wedding trip

It was my nephew's wedding on Saturday, which was taking place in a Llanegryn on the west coast of Wales near Barmouth. I travelled down on Friday evening right after work and met up with the family for an Indian.

The B&B my sister had booked us into was in a place called Llwyngwril. It is on top of a hill and has incredible views over the village and the sea. You can see right across the bay to the peninsula and it's amazing how it reaches right across the skyline. Simply stunning. The B&B was great too, very quiet and peaceful and the hosts were very nice and friendly.

The wedding went OK with a good turnout. The church was very nice, clearly very old and nicely decorated. The vicar is Dutch, oddly, and can speak fluent Welsh, which leads to quite a peculiar accent. After that it was back to Llwyngwril for the reception, which was held in a pub. It was a really good day overall. At one point Amogharatna and I took a break and had a look at the beach, and it was a pretty amazing view. The whole area had a really nice atmosphere, and was very beautiful. Living in Wales can make it easy to forget how lovely the countryside can be.

Amogharatna wanted to run a half marathon while in the UK so we headed off early on Sunday to go to Leek where one was being held. It was a three hour drive but traffic was fine and we made it in good time. While he was running, I went over Blackshaw Moor to Buxton, and was treated to some amazing views over the countryside. Buxton seemed very nice and was very pretty. After that we headed off to the East Midlands Airport so Amogharatna could catch his flight home to Berlin, after which I drove home. It wasn't too bad, the M6 was a little busy but otherwise it was fairly painless. I did feel quite zoned out when I got home because of all the driving. I used a whole tank of petrol in three days.

Decided I needed a more portable machine and due to some fairly mediocre experiences with Atom based netbooks, picked up an Acer Ferrari One. The reason being that it is only a bit bigger than a netbook but has a much better spec, with a dual-core AMD CPU, full-size hard drive, discrete graphics, decent 11" screen and a decently sized keyboard. The downside is the Ferrari styling with a bright red lid and red highlights around the machine. I've seen much worse however. The default OS install was as I expected, loaded with crapware and an embarrassing F1 engine startup sound. Blew that away immediately with a fresh install of Windows 7 and I'm happy with the performance so far.

There was a thunderstorm on Friday morning so I shut everything down and left it all unplugged. When I got back last night I powered up the Atom based server. It came on OK but after about thirty seconds, the power supply expired with several loud flashes and bangs, which was a little startling to say the least. I just hope it hasn't taken out any of the other components with it.

Carnal Octet Emu

Screw the Microsoft dictation stuff.

A fairly decent day in work. It was my Unix day, so I spent the morning going over the backup system as I'm going to have to be solely responsible for it for the next two weeks. It's getting rather near capacity now and so the daily admin needs to be kept on top of, especially the bank holiday weekend where it usually throws a tantrum because nobody has taken the tapes out of the I/O door. The afternoon was spent struggling with the slightly bonkers way that Unix keeps time, which was causing issues with scripting.

Pleasantly surprised by Dell today. We had a Latitude D620 with screwed up graphics. It has an Nvidia Quadro NVS 110 that was one of the many that Nvidia had problems with a couple of years ago. The standard warranty on the laptop expired in April, but I read on the Internet that Dell had extended the warranty on affected machines. I logged a call with them, expecting a battle to get the laptop repaired but nope, they said cheerfully it had a 5 year warranty on the graphics chip and after I did a couple of tests over the phone, they said an engineer would be out tomorrow to replace the motherboard and screen. Result!

Came home and packed up for the weekend, off to my nephew's wedding on Saturday. I leave tomorrow evening directly after work, as all the family are staying in a B&B, which should be good. On Sunday, I'm taking Amogharatna to Leek so he can do a half marathon there, and then to the airport I think. I've got Monday off as I think I'll need it after all that.

It's been a hugely fat day. First I was persuaded to have chips for lunch, which was actually good as they really hit the spot, the weather was OK, and it was nice to get out of the office. On the way home I thought sod it and got a Chinese. I don't know how to get out of this cycle I'm in right now, it's pissing me off.

A local cash for local people Will have a key spotted a menu andq bark U

It was an okay day in work today. Finally got a few jobs out of the way that had been there for quite some time which was a relief.

Found out today that somebody has put a geocache in the local village. I have often thought that it would be a good place to put some caches as it is a nice village with quite a lot of history. It is on the footpath which I haven't been a long for many years, if ever. I was the first person to find it, which is nice.

Also, by go for a ride backspace backspace backspace backspace backspace. Microsoft dictation in Windows 7 is a little bit patchy as you may have gathered from the previous sentence. This also explains the title. Anyway, took the bike out for ride which was good fun. Otherwise it has been a fairly uneventful day, and haven't really done much else.

Mmm...smooth...

A not too bad day at work. Got quite a bit done and finally getting rid of some older jobs that have sat around for a while, which is a relief.

Took the bike out when I got home with the new key. took it up to the road near the Brenig which has just been resurfaced. It was great to ride on such a perfect surface, so great in fact that I went back and forth along it several times. After a trip down towards the lake itself I came back along that road to see people making some sort of film. At least, there was a Focus ST parked up and then some other car following an estate with a guy sat in the boot with a camera. I guess I ruined their shot as I came up behind and they pulled in to let me get past. The bike went fine although the handlebars still squeak a bit and sometimes it hesitates while accelerating and occasionally backfires on the overrun. Oh well.

Finally sorting out the photos on the MacBook. iPhoto is currently importing the library from the old iPhoto setup on the iBook, all 5,156 photos of it. It's a bit weird as it seems to be doing it quite randomly. Pictures keep flashing up and triggering memories - Rob's wedding, Ed's wedding, holidays to Berlin, New York, Madrid, America, etc, plus many random ones from barbeques, pictures of Sandy, etc. Odd but fun. Just need to sort out all the other pictures from since the iBook was retired.

I really want to visit Steve and Kara again, but when I looked into flights, they are quite expensive, over £400. That is a lot, although I haven't written off the idea completely.

Flamps

An odd day. Frustratingly, sunny and clear right until I left to go home, but took the dog for a walk and it was nice enough.

Got into Tanzwut recently, a band which combines medieval rocky type stuff with industrial metal. I've downloaded the first and third albums but the other two aren't available yet. Really interesting stuff. Some tracks combine the metal with electronic sounds and the medieval stuff, which is a strange mixture but I like it. In fact the album I just downloaded, Ihr Wolltet Spaß, has got some fucking stunning tracks.

Fun weekend

A good weekend.

Yesterday it was Rob and Caroline's housewarming BBQ, which was good fun. Plenty of food and gossip, and the discovery that nothing is more important than 'It's mealworm time!' Their new house is pretty cool, an old farm house that has been extended and done up. Lots of land with a field that has a very good view over the vale. We went up there to watch the sunset. What should have been a solemn, thoughtful moment was marred by donkey impressions, farting and for some reason Airplane quotes. Still, it was nice to watch the sun go down.

Had a go on Dead Space yesterday and today. It's a game that I've been playing for some time. I like the atmosphere, in particular the way it has no HUD, instead integrating health and other status indicators into your character's suit, and the menus and things are holographic projections. It also has a fairly interesting storyline, but it is a very intense gaming experience so I find it a bit of a struggle. It's frustrating because I'm enjoying exploring the ship and building up the storyline, but the game mechanic demands that you dismember the mutant enemies by shooting off their limbs, rather than just blast away until they stop moving. I'm fairly desensitised to hideous creatures in games (Silent Hill has a lot to answer for) but the dismemberment thing lost its novelty some time ago. So I tend to only play it in short bursts every few months. Completed the fourth chapter today so I think that means I'm about half way through.

Took the bike out which went OK. A couple more issues now - the handlebars seem to have developed a squeak, and I found that the rear numberplate light appears to have fallen apart and lost its bulb somehow. Also, I've now lost the second of the two keys I had made when the original snapped. Not sure how, I think it was between doing some work on it and taking the dog for a walk. Fortunately I still have the snapped one so I can get some more made, but why I'm so crap with these keys I don't know. Oh well. It's not surprising that the bike is having issues since I have to take it up and down the track and even at low speeds it probably puts it through more stress than it was designed for. Oh, and the odometer should have rolled over to 13,000 miles the other day. It rolled over all right but the 2 didn't change - so it's back to 12,000. It's time to look into a complete replacement speedo I think, even if that means faffing about with the DVLA as the mileage will revert to 00000 again.

Other than that it's been a lazy day. Had a play with a Toshiba laptop that Rob and Caroline found in their house when they moved in. It's a 486DX 75mhz with 16mb RAM and a 500mb hard drive. It must have been quite a high end model when new as it has a TFT screen and most unusually, a SCSI port. The only laptops I've ever seen with SCSI are Apple PowerBooks and the rare Tadpole Unix laptops. Unfortunately the Toshiba has a faulty hard drive but I'm sure I have one that will fit, or could possibly use a Compact Flash card instead with an adapter.

Big update

Thursday morning I set off to Bernauser Strasse, one of the parts where the wall is still preserved along with teh deathstrip. This was the scene of several escapes when people jumped out of apartment windows. After that got on the train at Nordbahnhof, which itself has some interesting displays about the history of the divided city.

After that went down to Yorckstrasse station and had a little look around there and from there back to the Charlottenburg station to have a look at the hotel where we stayed in 2005, nearly five years ago.

That evening went for a meal with Amogharatna at an Indian restaurant which was pretty good but so busy that they had to put more tables out in the street. It was a warm evening though, so it was fine. It was right next to the elevated section of the U1. The drivers of the trains that went past had their doors open, which seemed quite strange. After the meal, took the train to the end of the U1 where it goes over the Oberbaumbrucke and where the East Side Gallery is. Both were pretty cool to see but it was dark then.

Friday morning was spent at a museum where there was an installation Amogharatna wanted to see. It had quite a few interactive exhibits made up with lights, and a weird room where there were mirrors all the way up to a skylight. The room was only a few metres large but it looked huge. The final room was the best though. Basically they sealed off a few rooms and filled them with fog. Then there were lights in the ceiling that made different areas of the fog glow with colour. It was a strange experience as when you moved from one area of colour to another, it was so intense.

After that we spent some time finding an MP3 player for Amogharatna and had a coffee in the Kaufhof Galleria, a big department store in Alexanderplatz. It was nice and had a great view over the station,

On Saturday I moved into the hotel. In between Amogharatna's apartment and the hotel I took in the musical instrument museum near the Philharmonie. It was pretty interesting with many unusual and rare instruments.

The was originally going to be the Agon Aldea by the Bulowstrasse U-bahn, but they had screwed it up and overbooked. Fortunately as the Agon is a chain, it just meant they had to put me in another one. This turned out to be the Agon Franke, which somewhat frustratingly was not in an area I was familiar with. But after a rather scary taxi ride I found the hotel was pretty close to a station on the U7, so that was fine. Spent the rest of the day having a look at the Berlin nightlife, which is interesting.

Sunday morning was spent having a look at the flea market in the Mauerpark near Bernauer Strasse. Unfortunately I fell ill around midday due to the rather stupid calamari breakfast I had from a place in Alexanderplatz. Fortunately I had started to feel headachy and tired so when the throwing up and diarrhoea started, I was back at the hotel. The rest of the day was spent recovering with the aid of a giant bottle of Coke.

Monday I felt much better although I didn't really do much before going to meet Amogharatna again. We wandered around a bit and had some really good falafel from a place called DaDa, which I've had it from before. Really tasty. After that he had to go back to the Buddhist centre. I wasn't feeling great so I picked up a DVD and watched it on my laptop back at the hotel.

The last morning was spent with Amogharatna again. We went down to the nearby Turkish market, which was really interesting, loads of unusual food and things there. We got some bread things for lunch with sheeps's cheese and spinach that were really nice. All too soon though I had to get the train to Alexanderplatz to get the airport express.

The flight back was not good, was surrounded by unruly children so it wasn't peaceful at all. Saw some pretty amazing views on the way down though.

The rest of this week hasn't been too bad. Work is interesting as usual, and depressingly it feels like I was never gone.

Took the bike out this evening but was out longer than I meant to be as I saw Andy and Maz and chatted. I got caught in a rainstorm on the way home. Worrying as I hadn't ridden in proper rain before, and I'd read that the Gilera can have issues with the electrics in the wet. Fortunately it coped OK and I managed fine except my lower half got utterly soaked through. Fun fun.

Airports rule

First full day in Berlin. Amogharatna had to teach English in the morning and then had meetings so I spent the day exploring. First headed out to the Westend S-bahn station and took a stroll down through Charlottenburg and found an U-bahn station. From there I went to the Olympic Stadium to have a look at that, which looks impressive from the outside. Hungry by this point so went to the Hauptbahnhof and had some fast food currywurst, which was pretty good.

After that, had a wander round the Tiergarten before going back to the apartment for a break. Amogharatna went for a run and then we went and had a look at what is now the new Tempelhofer Park. It's simply amazing, the whole thing is basically as it was except for a few maps and things dotted about and some extra marking on the runways. It's just great though - there were people playing ball games, flying kites, skating, riding around, etc. It took a while to get from one end of the runway to another though.

Supper was found in Kreuzberg - had a veggie burger for the first time ever probably and it was actually really nice.

Arrived

Flight was OK yesterday, quite uneventful. Liverpool airport was interesting, it's being remodeled so the paths through security and everything was quite different. It was very busy but they seemed quite efficient.

Got to Berlin and Amogharatna wasn't at the airport, so I assumed he wasn't able to make it to the airport to meet me, so I got the train and headed to his apartment. Turned out he had gone there but my flight had actually landed early and he had been slightly late and forgotten his mobile, so while I was waiting on the platform for the train, he was arriving on a bus. It took a while due to my phone playing up, but we eventually got in contact and met up. Went for a nice meal at an Italian round the corner.

The weather seems much better this morning, yesterday was cloudy and rainy.

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.