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Friday 29th February 2008
06:54 GMT |
At last, a sunny morning ! It is also cold.
Almost, but not quite, cold enough for a frost, although some of the
heavy condensation on the cars does look very close to being frost, and
maybe earlier in the morning it was. The sunshine is not forecast to
continue. By this afternoon it could well be cloudy again, and that
might even bring a spot of rain.
I had a very uneventful day yesterday. Nothing much happened at
work, and nothing much happened in the evening. I popped into Tesco on
the way home from work and bought the latest edition of New Scientist.
Some of yesterday evening was just spent reading that.
Tonight I may, or may not, be drinking with Kevin. I was supposed
to be starting the drinking session with Dee, but she has had to
cancel. I am still waiting to hear from Patricia to see if she is
around. It's unlikely because it is her last day at work today, and she
will probably be too busy with all that entails. |
Thursday 28th February 2008
08:15 GMT |
It is overcast, but dry, this morning. It's not
too cold either. Although "not too cold" should not be mistaken for it
meaning anything like there being any hint of warmth. It is above
freezing, but not by more than a few degrees. Some sunny breaks are
forecast for this morning, but the complete cloud cover is expected to
be back this afternoon - or maybe not. If today is like yesterday we
can expect the sunny spells to last into the afternoon.
I never did write anything yesterday. Which was strange
considering I was at home on one days holiday. I was obviously too busy
doing other stuff. Amongst that stuff was playing with my old Pentium
III computer. After trying a multitude of things I came to the
conclusion that it was impossible for the onboard sound card and the
ethernet card to play together. In theory they used different IRQ and
memory setting, but would still interfere with each other. I decided,
rightly or wrongly (quite possibly wrongly) that there was a fault on
the motherboard. That motherboard has always been quirky, but running
Linux on it has always been mostly successful. It is more likely that
Windows NT4 (even with service pack 6) just can't do plug and play
properly.
Having decided that the motherboard was the root of all evil I
decided to try an alternative motherboard I had spare. This one worked
- sort of ! I successfully installed Windows NT4 but it ran at a snails
pace. I am pretty certain this was because the new motherboard does not
support the Pentium III processor. I need to flash the BIOS if I can
find the correct software, and rom image to do so. Alternately I could
fit a Pentium II processor back in the board and see how that fares.
Finally I could put the old motherboard back in and just leave the
machine quite happily running Mepis Lite Linux on it's own !
Tonight I really ought to make a positive decision about that old
PC. My back room is gradually becoming more cluttered as I pull bits
out of the PC and put alternative parts in, and also leave piles of CD
roms all over the place. Maybe the best thing would be to dump the
whole thing, along with a load more obsolete parts, into the wheelie
bin, but that would make me sad ! |
Tuesday 26th February 2008
06:52 GMT |
More rain has appeared. It is very dull and
cloudy outside. This means that it is warmer than yesteday, but it is
hard to choose which is best. While it is nice not being frozen on the
way to work, it is also rather cheering to travle in bright sunshine.
One other feature of the weather for today is the wind. It doesn't seem
too bad right now, but strong winds are forecast for today.
After yesterday's bright start the clouds gradually moved in. It
didn't rain, and it didn't get very grey, but going home was far less
pleasant than going to work. I met Aleemah after work, and we came back
to Catford to spend some time together. We arrived too late to get some
dinner in the pie and mash shop. Instead we bought some fish and chips.
That was a fairly rare treat for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We
only had small portions of fish and I was surprised that the two
portions only cost £5 together. I must be out of touch because I
was expecting it to cost a few more quids than that.
Aleemah stayed to about 8 pm and I walked her to the station. By
the time I got back it was almost time for bed, but I stayed up a bit
before taking a magazine to bed. I read for a little longer than I
should. So this morning I am just as tired as yesterday morning. I
guess I got just under seven hours sleep, but I do prefer a full eight
on the rare occasions when I manage that.
As far as I know nothing is happening tonight. So maybe I will
get to bed, and then to sleep, as early as I probably should. However I
want to experiment with some different graphics cards in my
experimental PC. If I am not careful I could end up playing far longer
than I should, but I'll just have to see what happens. |
Monday 25th February 2008
08:24 GMT |
Sometime during the night the clouds that brought
the rain during the evening went away. This morning the sky is clear,
and the sun is shining. It is also very cold. There was a fair bit of
frost when I left home to come to work. That frost is disappearing
fast, and if the sun can stay out until the afternoon it should warm up
nicely. The forecast is for more cloud this afternoon, but that was the
same forecast that said this mornings temperature would be 5° C !
I didn't think I would have much to write about this morning, but
Mike, in Canada, reminded me about a news story I read sometime last
week (I think). It concerns some loony attached to our paranoid
totalitarian government. He has proposed the ridiculous idea of a
smoking licence said to cost between £10 and as high as
£200 per year. We smokers are gradually reducing in numbers, but
there are still enough of us that one day one of us will crack and make
an assassination attempt on this idiot. It would be hard to feel sorry
if this purveyor of state sponsored terrorism against innocent smokers
was killed. Terrorising a reported 25% of the population (but more
likely 10%) is a dream that Muslim, and other loony terrorists can only
dream about. You can read the grisly details about the proposal in The Telegraph, The Metro, The Guardian, Yahoo News, and no doubt many other places too. |
Sunday 24th February 2008
18:45 GMT |
The
weather has been very variable over the weekend. Saturday was mostly
overcast, but it was not too cold. Today started bright and sunny. By
10 am it was warm enough for me to go shopping without putting a coat
on. Perhaps saying it was warm is slightly misleading. It might be more
accurate to say it was mild enough. I don't know what the highest
temperature achieved today was, but it did feel mild enough for me to
open a lot of windows and air the place for a few hours. Even now I
have left the bathroom window open, but secured with a special lock
that holds it open by about five inches. It is only since coming up to
the front bedroom PC to write this that I notice that there has been
some rain recently. I didn't notice that it was raining, but looking
out the window I can see that the ground is all wet.
The
highlight of the last few days was definitely Patricia coming to dinner
on Friday night. My meal turned out exactly as I wanted it to,
and Patricia gave it the thumbs up. One surprise is that Patricia
turned up with a bottle of cider for us to drink. I can't remember the
name of it now, but it was a special cider flavoured with blackberry
liqueur. It was a small bottle, maybe only 330 ml, and enough for about
half a pint each. The surprise was not the type of cider, but that
Patricia decided to bring it at all. It is very rare that I see
Patricia drink booze. Her new partner must be corrupting her.
Patricia
stayed a lot later than I had imagined she would, and she left a little
while after 9 pm. During her visit we had a good gossip. I heard all
the latest news about her parents, and her plans for her extended stay
in Argentina looking after them as they both undergo treatment for
cancer. One final plan we made before she left was that she would pop
around today to leave a box of stuff she wants looking after while she
is away. I finally had a text message at about 7 pm saying that she was
too busy finishing some paperwork to come round today, but will
probably see me later in the week.
I thought I would be
seeing Aleemah yesterday, but during the morning she phoned in sick. So
I had to amuse myself for the day. My first thought was to go shopping
in Tesco, and buy the latest New Scientist magazine to read, and get
the usual supplies of cat stuff and human stuff in. However when I got
to Tesco it was just one heaving mass of people. I couldn't face that
so I bought my New Scientist from WH Smiths along with a couple of
other magazines. I then popped next door to Poundstetcher's and bought
some new sheets and a four way mains extension lead to use in my
bedroom. I also bough a packet of apple flavour liquorice sticks (or
twists). They were intriguing. I found they were bright green. Had the
consistency of liquorice, but did indeed taste of apples !
For
the rest of Saturday I wasn't exactly lazy, but at the same time I
didn't do that much. Using my new extension lead I tidied up the power
cables for my bedroom PC, and I did a load of washing. I also did a
little bit of tidying up here in the front bedroom to make way for the
stuff that Patricia wants me to look after. In between times I did some
reading, and also grabbed a snooze or two.
Today, with
little tidying up to do, and after finally doing my shopping in Tesco,
I spent some time, well quite a lot really, playing with my old 450 MHz
Pentium III computer. It is the same computer that I was trying all the
different Linux distributions on a month or so ago. Since that last bit
of intensive playing it had been sitting almost in the middle of the
floor in a partial state of dismantlement, and I thought it was time I
did something definite with it. I took it downstairs to use a CRT
monitor that is a little more forgiving with strange screen resolutions
than the LCD monitor I had been using with it, and decided that I would
dual boot Windows NT4 and Mepis Lite
(linux). Compared to all the faffing around trying to install NT4 on my
old laptop, the installation onto the desktop PC was as easy as pie.
One difficulty that I have yet to resolve is that Windows NT4 does not
really know what to make of an AGP
graphics card. Special drivers are needed for the motherboard chipset,
but I cannot find any that will work with Windows NT4. In consequence
my desktop is limited to a 16 colour 640x480 display. Apart from that
limitation I have full sound and networking all up and running. I think
the way to resolve the graphics problem is to use a PCI graphics card (but at this moment in time I am not sure if there is a spare PCI slot available).
Having
got Windows NT 4 installed, and working as well as I could, I installed
Mepis Lite. That was a simple and flawless process, and it was working
well without having to resort to any tweaking. Of course I did spend
some time tweaking it, and installing all the latest updates. The one
single problem I have with it is that Firefox, the web browser, seems
to crash a lot. Actually it is not really a crash, but more a sort of
random shutdown as if I had clicked the exit button. I am not sure what
is going on there, but several workarounds come to mind. The first is
to re-install Firefox, and others mostly revolve around not using
Firefox. For instance I could use the Konqueror web browser, or install
Opera. These are matters for another day though. The more significant
thing is that I have made a decision, and tidied things up.
I
think I am going to bed very early tonight. I still have quite a lot of
stuff to read, and an hour in bed reading sounds fine to me. I think I
am aiming to get to bed by 8 pm, and maybe turn out the light at 9 pm.
I doubt that I will write anything tomorrow morning, but if I do it
will probably only be a few short lines about the weather, and then in
the evening I will be too busy because I am seeing Aleemah. |
Friday 22nd February 2008
08:19 GMT |
It is a lot warmer this morning. The temperature
could even be close to double figures. It comes at a price though. It
is dull and gloomy outside, and the there is far more wind about. Last
night there were a few very light showers as I made my way home, but
even when I was caught in one it hardly wet me at all. More of these
light showers are forecast for today, and the weather is forecast to
stay very similar for the whole weekend.
I managed to get the place looking reasonably last night. All the
big and easy cleaning is done, but if I had more time I could have done
some of the more fiddly tidying up. I am looking forward to cooking for
Patricia tonight. I have decided on my special roast chicken thighs in
grilled baby tomato sauce served with pasta and some salad. To
accompany that I will do some garlic bread, and there will be
Patricia's favourite "Muller Corners" yoghurt for dessert.
After doing my cleaning, and having my dinner (liver and bacon
with mixed veg) I still had time to play with my laptop and fix the
WiFi browsing problem. I took the easy way out by removing Kubuntu and installing PCLinuxOS 2007.
That seemed to go well. All the bits of the laptop worked OK. I had
sound, network and graphics all working correctly until I installed
some programmes, and removed others while also updating all the
updatable packages. Then it all went horribly wrong. Half way through
loading the KDE
desktop I got an error message saying that Kdeinit could not be found
(or something similar). By that time I had run out of time and went to
bed. Perhaps after Patricia has gone home tonight I may well look at it
again, or I may put Kubuntu back. As another alternative I may try two
other Linux distributions I have my eye on. One is Linux Mint, and the other is Vixta. I briefly tried the live CD version of Vixta on my work PC yesterday. It sort of looks nice, but I didn't get a chance to explore it thoroughly. |
Thursday 21st February 2008
06:42 GMT |
There is no fog or mist this morning. It is
slightly damp outside, but not raining. The sky is cloudy, but the
clouds are not that thick, and it seems unlikely it will rain in the
near future. It is even possible that the sun may break through
sometime today. Something it did not manage yesterday. The sky did
clear early in the evening last night, but it was too late for any
sunshine. The moon looked big and bright though. At 3 am this morning
there was a total lunar eclipse. I did wake up at 3 am, but forgot all
about the eclipse and didn't bother looking to see what I could see.
As planned, I was in The Catford Ram at 6 pm last night. There
was no WiFi in there, well free Wifi, but there was still Winter Warmer
available. So I had one pint of Winter Warmer before going to the
Wetherspoon pub where beer is half the price of The Catford Ram.
Unfortunately there was no WiFi in there either. We heard that some kid
had been climbing up the back of the fruit machine, that houses the
WiFi point, and pulled all the wires out ! I did manage to connect to
BTopenzone, but that is not free, and was really only a curiosity.
During my experimentation in there I managed to completely muck up my
network connection manager. It no longer shows all active wireless
points. In fact it doesn't show anything ! It was a classic case of the
KDE desktop configuration settings fighting with the operating systems
configurations - something I have seen before. I think the cure is
going to be to delete all the KDE files in my home folder and let KDE
rebuild them (although that is a route I will only take if all else
fails). Despite no WiFi there was a nice beer available it was a dark
lager from the Czech Herold brewery called Dark Chalice. Kevin hated
it, but I thought it was rather good. I have to admit that after a few
pints I found myself going off it, and finished the evening with a
double scotch, but that was more about time than flavour.
When I got home I had time to watch the end of The Brits award
show while I ate my dinner. It wasn't terribly entertaining, but was of
academic interest. Rather surprisingly I found that Sharon and Kelly
Osbourne seemed to be fairly competent presenters. Albeit with a little
horseplay. Ozzy Osbourne was relegated to shouting out a few short
introductions in his drug wasted voice. It was the second time I have
seen Amy Winehouse perform. She is a sad case. She has all the right
moves but her voice, although in tune, is really crap. To sing those
soul songs she should have lungs like a great pair of bellows, but even
when half swallowing the microphone her voice sounds weak and
uninspiring. Sir Paul Mcartney was looking and sounding old. Well at
something beyond 60 he is, and I suppose he is actually doing quite
well. The first song he performed was some unknown (to me) piece of
crap, but he got the audience going with Hey Jude.
Tonight is going to be a tough night. When I get home I have a
lot of clearing up, and hoovering, to do to make the place ready for
when Patricia comes to dinner on Friday night. Doing that sort of stuff
after a day at work, and then the hard commute home, just doesn't feel
right ! But it has to be done. It seems that the living room is really
in one big mess at the moment and it will take some time to get that
right. Let alone doing all the hoovering. |
Wednesday 20th February 2008
08:18 GMT |
The morning fog is back. In some parts it is
quite thick, but it is patchy, and in other areas it is just thick mist
(although I have still yet to work out how thick mist has to be to be
called fog). It may be a degree warmer this morning compared to
yesterday morning. I think I read somewhere that the day would start at
around 5° C. The fog, mist, and cloud is forecast to hang around
for most of the morning, but there could be some sunny intervals this
afternoon.
I obtained something very useful yesterday. We are starting to
have a clear out at work in preparation for the move to new premises
sometime early next month. Among the rubbish being thrown out was a
complete boxed set of Red Hat Linux 8. As a Linux distribution it has
little value by itself, but the box contains a complete set of
documentation in three thin paperback sized books. They have the
potential to be very useful, and may answer some questions I didn't
even know to ask.
I did some more experimental cookery last night. It was another
sort of stew, but this one contained a bag of Tesco's carrot batons, a
whole red onion, and a smoked gammon steak. Once again I thickened up
the gravy with some sage and onion stuffing. With a generous sprinkling
of hot pepper sauce when served, it was very, very nice !
Despite my intention to get to bed extra early last night, I did
not go to bed until after 9 pm again. It was probably closer to 10 pm
before I fell asleep. Maybe it is because the days are getting longer
now, but I don't feel as tired as I thought I might do (although it has
taken quite a few hours to feel that way). I am surprised that I don't
feel too tired now because of what happened when I woke up at 4 am. I
woke up and needed to have a pee, but after getting back in bed it
seems I didn't even have time to finish thinking about whether I could
get back to sleep for an hour before I was asleep. I woke up to my
clock radio alarm at 5 am and at that point desperately wanted to go
back to sleep once again, but the cats needed feeding, and I needed to
go through the rest of the rituals prior to going to work. So I
reluctantly got out of bed again and headed downstairs.
One reason for wanting extra, or maybe even the right amount of
sleep last night is that tonight will probably be boozing night. I
haven't heard the plans yet, but I believe we are all meeting for a
very early drink. Maybe as early as 5 pm. Well it won't be quite that
early for me. I have to pop into Tesco on the way home, and feed the
cats, but assuming I get the early train home I should be able to make
it to the pub before 6 pm. I think we are starting off in The Ram, and
I shall take my laptop along to see if any WiFi signals are available.
One observation I have wanted to record (if I haven't done so
already) is the time it takes to change trains at Waterloo. Walking
from near the rear of the train at Waterloo East to half way down the
train on platform 18 at Waterloo mainline station seems to take about a
minute less than it does to walk from home to Catford Bridge station.
As walks go that is not particularly far, but for changing trains it is
ludicrous ! |
Tuesday 19th February 2008
08:21 GMT |
There is no frost this morning, but it is still
very chilly. The clear skies have given away to fairly thin clouds that
the sun is trying to breakthrough even now. There is also some fine
mist this morning. It is not really enough to reduce visibility, but it
gave the streetlights a slight extra glowing halo, and you could see it
in the beams of a cars headlights. It still looks a little murky
outside, but on my way through Wandsworth town, coming into work, I
could see the sun burning bright behind the clouds and mist.
Going home last night was a pleasant experience. I managed to get
the bus really quickly, and from then on made all my connections
without the need for any excessive rushing about. I travelled on the
16:29 from Waterloo East in bright daylight, occasionally being almost
blinded when the setting sun appeared directly in the window adjacent
to me.
When I got home, having picked up a few things in Tesco's on the
way there, I cooked up a nice lamb stew for myself. I thickened it with
some sage and onion stuffing. It may have look less than gourmet after
it was thrown on the plate, but it was delicious. My only regret was
that there was far less meat left on the bone than I had imagined. That
made for the greater part of the meal just mixed vegetables. You could
say it was even healthy !
One particular point of contention I have with Tesco at the
moment is that they seem to have stopped stocking six packs of Whiskers
"Supermeat". It is a particular favourite of my cats. The alternative
to the six pack is the twelve pack. Now that is damned heavy, and I
wasn't sure if t would fit in a single carrier bag, or even if a single
carrier bag could support that weight. Fortunately a single carrier bag
was OK, but it was still an annoyance to have to lug all those tins
home in one go.
A lot of the time life is fairly humdrum, but occasionally
something happens to raise the spirits. Such a thinh happened yesterday
afternoon. I finally got an email from Patricia taking me up on my
suggestion that I should cook her one last meal before she and her
partner move to Argentina. It's been ages since I last cooked a meal
for Patricia (12 months ?), and I am looking forward to cooking for her
on Friday night. It is possible it will be the very last time I ever
see her, but there could be other opportunities. She does not move for
a fortnight now, and she does have return tickets valid for twelve
months. |
Monday 18th February 2008
06:57 GMT |
It's daylight outside ! This is because of clear
skies. Another consequence of the cloudless sky is that it is viciously
cold outside. There is another thick frost for something like the third
day running. Hopefully the sky will remain clear and it will warm up
during the day. It seems unlikely we will get the warmth of some of the
days we had earlier in the month, but if I am very lucky the
temperature will rise to at least double figures (Centigrade).
The weekend was mostly, if not entirely, uneventful. I felt
slightly fragile all day on Saturday, and in consequnce I did not even
go out for any shopping. On Sunday I managed to get to Tesco soon after
they opened in the morning. Apart from the usual bits and pieces I did
manage to find a nice bit of lamb marked down to about half price on
the special reduced price shelves. It made for a very nice Sunday
dinner.
One thing I did manage on Saturday was a little more spring
cleaning. I did all the hoovering upstairs and sorted out some stuff to
throw out downstairs. I threw out a box of old home recorded VHS tapes,
and had a phone around to see if any cat charity wanted to take a box
of pre-recorded VHS tapes off my hands for some fundraising. So far I
have come up with a total blank on that score. Maybe someone reading
can suggest a good home for those tapes. (Send a message by clicking on
comments over on the left hand side of this page).
On Sunday I meant to do a load of hoovering downstairs, but
somehow never got around to it. Apart from the shopping trip, and doing
an extra load of washing, I had a very lazy day. |
Saturday 16th February 2008
10:49 GMT |
The
weather has turned around again. It is a beautiful sunny morning, and
the forecast is for it to stay this way for the entire weekend.
Yesterday's clouds eventually melted away during the afternoon, and I
came home from work in sunshine. A consequence of last night's clear
skies is that it was very cold this morning, and there may be remnants
of a frost even now.
Once again Patricia failed to say if
she was available to meet last night, but I did have a good drink with
Kevin and Iain last night. Taking the laptop to the pub was less
useful, or less exciting, than it was last week, but it still got a
fair bit of use, and I expect I will take it with me on further visits.
It seems we may be drinking in The Catford Ram next Wednesday. There is
no advertised free WiFi in there, but there may be some signal from the
club next door which may have free WiFi. I'll be taking the laptop with
me and searching for any usable signals !
Early on in the
pub I sent an email complaining that while there was decent beer
available, there was nothing particularly exciting. I was wrong ! There
was an exciting beer available. It was a Belgium fruit beer, and it was
very nice ! It was a definite contribution to me leaving the pub a bit
later than I had intended, and was possibly the source of a bit of a
fierce hangover this morning. Fortunately any painful remnants of that
hangover have now gone, but I still feel a bit undynamic (or something).
Despite
feeling the way I do I will soon be doing some housework, but as to how
much, I'll have to find out when I get there. I do have some drunken
hazy memories of being told the was an opportunity to go drinking again
this afternoon. I am not sure if I want to right now, but I may change
my mind later. |
Friday 15th February 2008
08:20 GMT |
There was some rain overnight, but it is dry now
(apart from some puddles). The clouds have not gone away yet, and it
could rain again later on, although the weather forecasters have not
predicted any. The cloudy sky means that it is a miserable sort of grey
day, and the only cheer is knowing it is Friday and the weekend is
nearly upon us.
It feels good that once again I can access my web server from work.
It's a strange feeling like either impotence, or withdrawal symptoms
when something goes wrong with the network. I guess I am some sort of
network addict !
In a similar way to last Friday, I may be going for a drink with
either Patricia or Kevin, or both, tonight. Last Friday I didn't hear
from Patricia, but I did have a rather pleasant drink with Kevin. Who
knows what will happen tonight. |
Thursday 14th February 2008
20:03 GMT |
MY WEBSITE IS NOW BACK ON THE AIR
AFTER TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES
Today started off
grey and overcast, and hardly improved all day long. One small plus
point was that there was no frost this morning. In fact it was probably
a fair bit warmer than the previous few mornings (still quite chilly
though). It seemed to colder through the day. This was because the wind
picked up, and was coming from the east (I think). All this was in
complete contrast to yesterday, and that was similar to the day before
when the sun shone all day long.
I was late getting to work yesterday. This was unfortunate
because I had to leave on time to meet up with Aleemah. We went to
another free lecture at the Royal Aeronautical Society. Last nights
lecture was about spy satelites. It was not that good a lecture,
although parts of it were interesting. I suppose the main problem was
that the material covered was stretched out to last a full hour instead
of about thirty minutes. It was still worth going, and it was quite
pleasant to be in that part of London while the sun was still shining
(it would have been nicer if the sun was still shining when we left the
place).
My journey home from the lecture started at Hyde Park Corner tube
station. Both Aleemah and I were heading for Green Park tube station,
which is one stop from Hyde Park Corner on the Piccadilly line to
change to the Jubilee line. It is a long walk underground to change
from the Piccadilly line platforms to the Jubilee line platforms, but
eventually we arrived - Aleemah for northbound services, and southbound
for me. I saw three northbound services depart before my soutbound
service arrived. I was heading for London Bridge, and eventually
arrived at the surface at 20:00, or the same time as my next Catford
bound train would have been departing from the mainline platforms above
me. So I had what I thought would be a thirty minute wait for my next
train. I was a trifle peeved when my train finally arrived eight
minutes late. It was getting very cold waiting all that time on the
platform at London Bridge, and by the time I finally got on my train I
was feeling cold, tired and very hungry !
Not only was I hungry when I finally got indoors not long before
9 pm, but the cats were starving. So I fed the cats and sat down and
watched some Red Dwarf while eating the two rolls I had bought while
waiting at London Bridge. I finally got to bed around 10 pm, and fell
asleep very quickly.
This morning I was on time when I got to work, but was dismayed
to find I could not access my server to write anything here. I didn't
know if the house had burnt down, or whether my internet connection had
failed. It was Steve who came to the partial rescue when he emailed me
to say that he could still access my server by direct ip address, but
not by my domain name of sunnyside.homelinux.org. I had to stay late at
work today to make up for my late morning yesterday, and then did some
shopping on the way home, so it was geting late before I could look up
my passwords to find out what had happened to my domain name. It turned
out that it had expired because I had not received the usual email to
suggest that I update it a couple of days ago. Fortunately it was very
easy to re-instate it, and this website should have gone back on the
air at least thirty minutes ago (as I write this).
|
Tuesday 12th February 2008
08:17 GMT |
Once again it is a foggy start to the day. There
is no frost this morning, but everything is dripping with dew. The fog
in Catford was not as thick as the fog near the River Thames. On the
train between Waterloo and Wandsworth Town stations the visibility
dropped to a very low figure for some parts of the journey. It's hard
to estimate just how far you could see, but at the worst it must have
been as little as twenty five feet. That's almost as low as the glory
days of the famous London Peasoupers of years gone by. The weather
forecasters have predicted that today will be the last sunny day for
some time to come. Tomorrow is forecast to be fairly cloudy with little
chance of any sunshine. So although it could be a few hours before the
sun manages to "burn off" this fog, I had better try and enjoy the
sunshine while it lasts.
I left work ten minutes late last night. It wasn't much, but it
was late enough to mean that I had to get the later train from Waterloo
East back to Catford. On a plus note, it did give me time to have a
smoke at Waterloo, or should I say outside Waterloo, on my way home. It
was still daylight when I got off the train at Catford, but by the time
I had done a little shopping in Tesco it was getting gloomy outside.
That is still a vast improvement on as little as a week ago when it
would definitely have been night (perhaps with some brightness on the
western horizon).
I didn't do much last night, but I did bundle up some old video
cassettes and bin them. That gave me a little more room on my bedroom
bookshelf to tidy up a small pile of books. Tonight I have more
interesting things to do. I am expecting a delivery of computer bits
today. The principle item is a carrying case for my laptop. I won't get
much play out of that, but I am also expecting a 2.5 inch to 3.5 inch
hard disk adaptor to replace one, or even two, that I seem to have
mislaid over the years. That will allow me to connect up the laptop
hard drive from my ancient laptop to a full size PC of similar age, and
have another go at installing Windows NT4 (will this saga never end
?). |
Monday 11th February 2008
06:38 GMT |
This morning there is a thick freezing fog outside.
After clear sunny skies for almost the whole of yesterday, I guess I
should have expected the temperature to plummet, but I didn't
anticipate fog this morning. I would like to think that today will end
up as another fine sunny day once the fog has lifted, but I haven't
seen any weather forecasts to either bolster that hope, or to dash it.
For the second day running I went out and did some shopping
without putting on a coat yesterday. It was not such a pleasant
experience as on Saturday, but only because I went out much earlier in
the morning. Had I waited until the afternoon I am sure it would have
been really nice, but at 10 am it was still a little bit too chilly.
During the afternoon the heat from the sun was sufficient to warm the
front bedroon up to the point where it was almost feeling hot in there.
Yesterday was a curious mix of mostly acting like a couch potato,
and doing some serious cleaning. The result of the serious cleaning was
that yet another bit of my bedroom has been decluttered, and a small
corner of my downstairs back room is also a bit cleaner/decluttered. A
significant part of the cleaning exercise has resulted in a box of
about 35 old prerecorded VHS video cassettes being up for grabs.
Initially I have offered them to the EPB Preservation Group
in case they can use them for fundraising. If they don't want them then
I am open to offers or suggestions to dispose of them. I'd probably
prefer them to go to an animal charity before I would consider a human
charity. Failing that it will be the wheely bin because I can't be
bothered to mess around with the likes of Ebay, and they are too heavy
to cart off to some second hand shop (which would probably only offer
50p per tape, if that).
After my intensive burst of cleaning I settled own to some
serious couch poatao work. I managed to watch eleven new episodes of
The Simpsons back to back. This did make me a little late getting to
bed, but I was in bed and asleep before 10 pm. I slept fairly well once
I did get to sleep, and only woke up once in the night at 3.30 am.
After that I went back to sleep and didn't wake until my alarm went off
at 5.30 am. |
Sunday 10th February 2008
08:15 GMT |
The
sun has risen on what looks to be another bright sunny day. The clear
skies let the temperature drop to close to freezing overnight. There
may have even been a bit of a frost, but I can't see at the moment.
Yesterday it became so mild that I was able to go shopping without
putting on a coat. In fact when I opened the front door to go out it
felt positively hot ! That heat only lasted a moment, and was because
my south facing front door is in a little recess (almost, but not
really a porch), and it traps the heat of the sun rather nicely. There
is one little problem with the afternoon temperature recently. It's
sort of half and half. Being just a few degrees below the comfort level
it is easy to overheat the rooms here at home. One moment it feels too
cool for comfort, and the next you realise it is too hot. I think I
need to fine tune the thermostats. Perhaps that is a bit premature.
There is still plenty of time left for ice and snow before spring
really happens. If not ice and snow, we still have the March winds and
April showers to get through yet !
After going back to bed
yesterday morning I managed far more sleep than I hoped for, and it was
almost as much as I wished for. I couldn't get back to sleep initially,
but after I did fall asleep properly I did not wake up until 10.45 am.
I probably should have woken up all keen and ready for action, but
instead I woke up feeling very lazy. My housework was limited to some
washing, and emptying Nelly's litter tray. Maybe I will do some
hoovering today (or maybe not !). Overall I had a quite lazy day, and I
have little to show for it (apart from some shopping from Tesco).
Today
I am contemplating going out for a wander with my camera if the
afternoon is as mild as yesterday. A quick spin round the park seems
like it could be a good idea. However I may get bogged down playing
with the ancient laptop and Windows NT4 (or not). I think I only have
two important goals for today. The first is to buy some fruit for my
lunch at work. The second is to get to bed nice and early in order to
get up fresh and early for work in the morning.
This
morning my stiff shoulder seems to have improved quite a lot. It wasn't
all that bad yesterday, but it was a bit sore trying to get to sleep in
my favourite position. With the current rate of improvement it may well
be cured by tomorrow. Even now I nearly have a full range of pain free
movement. |
Saturday 9th February 2008
05:10 GMT |
As far as I can tell it is dry and cold outside
right now. There could be a touch of frost, and a bit of mist, but from
a quick peek from behind the curtains it is difficult to tell. As far
as I know the day is still forecast to be bright and sunny like
yesterday. I have no idea what the air temperature reached yesterday,
maybe only 10° C, but when the air was still the sun felt
pleasantly warm.
I didn't feel as tired as I thought I would yesterday, but I felt
tired enough. I think there was only one time when I fell asleep for a
few seconds while reading some stuff off the computer monitor. Later in
the afternoon it became apparent that I had some sort of new ailment.
For seemingly no reason my right shoulder became very sore. It was as
if I had crashed into something, and my shoulder had taken the full
force of the impact. I don't recall doing anything like that, but I
suppose I could have been sleep walking or something. The pain was a
bit inconvenient, but the only time it became really painful was when I
was reaching behind my back to wipe my bottom !
Patricia had promised to text or email me to say whether we were
meeting after work last night. No text or email came through from her,
but I did get a text from Kevin while I was on the train from Clapham
Junction to Waterloo. He said he was up for a beer from as early as 6
pm. This seemed like a good idea, and I responded in the affirmative.
It was a little after 6 pm when I met Kevin in the Catford
Wetherspoons pub. After our experiments with the free wireless internet
access in there a couple of weeks back, I decided to take my laptop
along to the pub. I was unsure how well the batteries would last out in
it after doing my little bodge to bypass the faulty charging circuit.
Last night was to be the first big test. I was both astonished, and
rather pleased that the batteries held out far longer than I would ever
have imagined. I switched the laptop on at about 6.15 pm, and there was
still an alleged one hours life left in the battery pack when I
eventually shut it down at around 9 pm.
It would be nice to attribute the battery life to the power
management capabilities of Linux, but I don't think it is any different
to the capabilities of Windows. I am not sure if Kevin was impressed
with seeing Kubuntu Linux running for the first time, or whether he
found it to be just another way of running Firefox. He did seem
impressed with FreeNAS
when I connected to my FreeNAS box and showed him the configuration
options. (FreeNAS being a free operating system that utilises a cheap
old PC as a Network Attached Storage device).
One of the things we did with the laptop was to download and install Google Earth.
Kevin managed to download the installer while I was out having a fag,
and without consulting any "readme" I managed to run the installer
without too much bother. Once I remembered to make the install script
an executable file it was actually plain sailing, and a simple as
installing a Windows program. I had never played with Google Earth
before, but it seemed good fun, although trying to operate it using the
highly dubious touchpad on a laptop was "interesting". Using a proper
mouse would have made the experience a little less hit or miss.
I think I left the pub around 9 pm and came home to have some
dinner.From then on time seemed to fly. I have no idea where the time
went, but I am sure it was as late as midnight before I got into bed.
Despite my shoulder giving me some pain, I slept fine until 4.30 am.
Rather than try and fight myself back to sleep I thought I may as well
get up and potter around a bit. Soon I will go back to bed where I hope
I can sleep for another four hours. I am not seeing Aleemah today so I
have no need to rush around doing housework, and could stay in bed
until midday if I wanted to. I suppose I would like to do that if I
could, but past experience suggests that it is unlikely to happen.
Later today I may well continue the long running saga of trying
to get Windows NT4 installed on my ancient laptop. This saga has
probably been going on too long now, and sometime soon I ought to admit
defeat and move on to something more productive. However, while there
is still some sort of hope, I will continue to waste my time and write
more boring stuff about my failures.
Before all that, I am now off to bed again. |
Friday 8th February 2008
08:34 GMT |
Clear skies mean it's very cold this morning. So cold
that there is a light frost ! As I left the house for the first time
this morning, at 6.40 am, the eastern sky was just beginning to light
up. Had I continued to the station it would almost have been light by
the time I caught my train. Half way to the station I turned back. I
think it might have had something to do with the baked beans and
lashings of hot pepper sauce I ate last night ! When I left for the
station a second time, at 7.15 am, it was just about daylight. By the
time I got on the train, at 7.29 am, the sun had appeared and I enjoyed
the sunshine all the way to work. The weather forecasters have promised
sunshine for most of today (and tomorrow). This should make for a most
pleasant day, and with any luck it will begin to feel almost warm by
the afternoon.
I had another go at getting Windows NT4 on my old laptop
last night. Once again I never succeeded, although I got very close. My
plan to put the hard drive in my modern laptop failed for the simple
reason that it was only designed to take a slim drive, and not the
thicker old one that I was attempting to use. In desparation I decided
to overwrite a hard disk that I had Windows XP installed on. Ideally I
wanted to keep that as a spare, but with Kubuntu working so well on the
modern laptop it was hardly necessary. I started off the installation
process, and it all went well. At the point when the installer has
finished copying files, and wants to reboot the computer, I took that
drive out and fitted it into the old laptop. Initially it seemed as if
it would work. One of the quirks of Windows NT4 is that it always
installs onto a FAT32 partition, and then converts that to an NTFS
partition on the next boot. I watched that happen OK, but upon
rebooting I got an error message saying there was a problem with the
hard disk. I am sure the trouble was that the old laptop could not
recognise the drive properly because it was too big. So although the
new NTFS partition is most probably perfectly intact, it can't be read
because the Master Boot Record cannot find the start of the partition.
I have seen this problem before, and there is no easy fix for it.
My next attempt at this silly game will probably be to open up
the casing of the modern laptop so I can fit in the physically bigger,
but smaller capacity hard drive (that the old laptop can recognise
correctly) and start again.
I managed to get into bed by 9 pm last night, but I found I could
not get to sleep until about 10 pm. Every time I found a comfortable
position I would start to cough and wake myself up again. I eventually
fell into a slightly troubled sleep, but woke up coughing again at 3
am. From then on I only managed to catch a few very short naps until at
4 am I decided I might as well get up. By 4.30 am I was writing emails
and "surfing the net". Of course I now feel devestatedly tired, and I
am looking forward to going home again. The saying that there is no
rest for the wicked is probably some sort of truism. There are two
possibilities for me to grab a pint or two tonight. I may be meeting
Patricia after work, or I may be meeting Kevin for a pint later on. It
is not impossible that I may do both. Whatever I do I am sure that I
will be looking forward to my bed as early as possible tonight. It is
handy that I am not seeing Aleemah tomorrow. That means I can have a
lie in without having to worry about getting up early enough to do a
pile of housework ( I'll still be doing some, but it won't be to a
deadline). |
Thursday 7th February 2008
08:14 GMT |
The dry weather continues, and today is forecast
to be sunnier than yesterday. The wind is coming from the south (more
or less), but the temperature is only forecast to get up to 10°
today. That's not bad, but if the sky is clear tonight, the temperature
could plummet to low single figures overnight. It was not so warm this
morning, but it would have to be a fair bit colder for any frost to
develop. There is still plenty of time for more ice and snow, but for
the most part it is easy to believe that winter is behind us, and
spring is starting.
I left work, last night, with just about enough time to reach
Waterloo East for my 16:29 train. It was a bit of a rush though, and
tonight I hope I can leave myself a little more time (i.e. leave a tiny
bit earlier still). It was, once again, a pleasure to get home in
sunlight - well as far as Catford Bridge station in sunlight. As the
days continue to lengthen it will still be a little while yet before
the sun is decently above the horizon to actually feel the warmth of
the sun for those last few minutes walk from the station to home. It
can't be all that long now before I can get the next train from
Waterloo East, the 16:55, and be able to get indoors while it is still
bright outside. In a similar timescale it will soon be fully light when
I leave home to go to work, but the real high point will be when I can
wake up to daylight. That will be really good !
I did two things to excess last night. One was to eat too much,
and I am feeling the effects of that this morning (mainly a certain
lack of stamina). The other was to make myself late for bed again by
trying to get Windows NT4 installed on my ancient laptop computer. (in
case I haven't mentioned it recently, I am hoping that Windows NT4 will
be better behaved than Windows 98SE when attempting to use a certain
wireless network card). To recap, my failure to install Windows NT4 is
because the installation proceedure calls for both a floppy drive and
CD drive. The laptop has both, but they use the same slot and can't be
fitted at the same time. Last night I experimented with making a
special bootable CD that had the contents of the floppy disks as well
as the installation CD. It worked as far as it was definitely bootable,
but failed because the installation procedure STILL wanted to read the
data off of a floppy disk. Tonight, if I still have the will to live
(!) I will put the hard disk I am using into my modern laptop, and
attempt the first part of the installation on that. It may work despite
no floppy drive being available because with 512 MB of ram available
(instead of a mere 32 MB) I can use some special software that can, in
effect, emulate the floppy drive in RAM (and still have plenty of
memory left over to run the installation). Assuming that I can get to
the first reboot in the installation process I feel there is a good
chance that the installation will be able to proceed with the hard disk
replaced in the museum piece laptop. I just hope I can manage all that
and still get to bed before 9 pm tonight ! |
Wednesday 6th February 2008
08:21 GMT |
Once again it is dry this morning. There are a
lot of clouds about, but they are broken, and I think we can expect
some sunshine today. One less than favourable indicator is that a lot
of this mornings clouds are tinged with red, suggesting bad weather is
on it's way.
I was late leaving work yesterday, and even later arriving home.
It sounds unlikely, considering how keen I am to go home on most day,
but last night I just got a little carried away with what I was doing.
Having missed any chance of catching my early train, I didn't bother to
rush to get the next one. I left work at about 4.50 pm, and took it
easy getting to Clapham Junction station. I had an unusually long wait
there - five minutes instead of usually no longer than two or three
minutes. I arrived at Waterloo just a little too late to catch the
17:17 train, and ended up catching the 17:41 train. It was gone 6 pm
when I finally arrived home.
Once I had satisfied my hunger with a couple of Pot Noodles
(which were as crappy as you would expect them to be), I had another go
at installing Windows NT4 on my old NEC laptop. The method I tried last
night was to copy the installation files from the installation CD to a
spare, 1.44 GB, hard drive which was connected via an USB adaptor to
another computer. The brief result was that did not work either. The
installation routine still wants to install directly from a CD. If I
have the time, or the patience, or even the inclination, I may try and
make a bootable version of the installation CD using the NT4
installation floppy disks as the source of the bootable image, and copy
all their files, together with the files from the original CD to it.
Maybe it will work, or maybe it will not. The laughable alternative is
to try and get the whole installation onto a huge great teetering mound
of floppy disks. It is possible that there is a way of doing this
available on the original CD, but it may only be just for making the
three floppies that are used to start the installation.
I was late getting to bed again last night, but once again it was only
just on the wrong side of 9 pm. After two such late nights I am
beginning to feel I am losing energy. I am mindful that it is probably
all in the mind, but tonight I will have another go at getting to bed
the right side of 9 pm. I did feel pretty good yesterday, and did not
feel the need for any decongestants or cough remedies. Maybe not taking
any was not such a good idea. This morning it feels like some of my
sinuses are discharging their accumulated snot just a little too
quickly. My nose is not running, and for most of the time clear, but
rather too often than I would prefer, from time to time I suddenly find
a big sticky bogey flopping about at the back of the nose. Shifting
these is a noisy and unpleasant task, and one that is quite
embarrassing on a crowded train. After that unpleasantness I will add
that my cough has taken a turn for the different. Any dry ticklyness
has gone, but this morning I find that periodically I am coughing up
muck from deep within my chest. That is possibly good, but once again
it is not ideal doing this on a crowded train. Despite this expelling
of assorted detritus, and a feeling that an extra thirty minutes sleep
might have served me better, I don't feel too bad today, perhaps not
quite as good as yesterday, but not bad. In restrospect, yesterday I
might have felt better than I really did because I was riding a wave of
euphoria because it was the first day for over a week when I
didn't feel totally, and utterly crap ! Perhaps today I just feel
sort of average. |
Tuesday 5th February 2008
08:19 GMT |
The weather has taken a turn for the worse. It is
still quite mild, possibly even milder, but it is now wet. Although it
was forecast, it was still a bit of a surprise considering that I
travelled home from work under almost clear blues skies last night.
When I arrived at Catford Bridge station, not only was it still light,
it was light enough for the sky to be a distinct blue. It was still
very light when I arrived home after having done some shopping in
Tesco. It seemed to be quite a pleasant evening. It was dry and not too
cold. The cats took advantage of it by spending a lot of time outdoors.
This was not unusual for Smudge, but even Nelly went on some long
exploration and made me late getting to bed. Nelly is getting old and
in some ways is fairly frail like many an old lady. So I was rather
concerned when she was nowhere to be seen for about two hours.
Eventually she appeared looking quite pleased with herself, shortly
before 9 pm, and I was able to get to bed shortly after. It was an
acceptable time to get to bed, but I would have preferred to have got
there half an hour earlier.
Meanwhile Smudge stayed out. I was sleeping quite well after
consuming yet more 86% pure cocoa chocolate, but I still woke up at
sometime a little before 1 am to have a pee. While I was up I checked
to see if Smudge wanted to come in, and a very soggy Smudge did want to
come in !!
After a quite reasonable sleep, helped by medicating myself with
Theobromine, I do feel rather good this morning. I still have an
intermittent cough, but that is to be expected, and sometimes my nose
still feels a little stuffy, but I do not appear to be suffering from
any particular aches or pains, or from any unusual fatigue. I reckon I
am, more or less, cured !
One thing I was reminded of this morning, while admiring myself
in the bathroom mirror, was that on Sunday evening I attempted
something that has always proved foolhardy in the past. I tried, and
for the first time ever, succeeded in trimming my own beard ! I didn't
attempt anything too drastic, but just trimmed off the worst of the
straggly bits. Ideally I would have liked to prune it back to an even
3.2mm length, but the fact that I managed to get it fairly even at all
is something of a miracle. All previous attempts have lead to unsightly
bald spots, copious amounts of blood and gore, and the need to shave
the whole lot off and start again from scratch. I did manage a small
nick on my neck that produce a tiny spot of blood, but that was more of
a stabbing rather than a cut !
Tonight I am going to stay late at work. Partly to make up for
leaving a bit early last night, and partly to fool the opposition. That
last bit may sound slightly cryptic, but I have explained it, maybe in
different words, to a few people in the past.
One thing I will spend a few odd minutes doing from time to time
during the day is to look for a new job. I was disappointed to not see
any wage rise when I got my pay slip yesterday (for the money that
actually went in last Thursday). I am looking for any job that I have a
reasonable chance of doing, and that pays a bare minimum of £24K
P.A. Ideally it should involve less than an hours travelling time from
Catford (less than 30 minutes would be even better). I did find a job
yesterday that was electronics based, and 90% of it was well within my
capabilities, and I reckon I could wing the other 10%. The starting
salary for that was £26.5K, and that gives me an idea of my true
worth. Unfortunately the closing date was yesterday and unless I had
the time to fill in all the applications bumf (using information that I
did not have to hand) and then hand deliver it. I would miss the
closing date by at least a day, and probably two. Maybe it could have
still been worth trying for, but if nothing else it has given me a
baseline from which to work to. So if anybody knows of any jobs going
that you think I could do (not necessarily involved in attacking things
with a soldering iron), please do get in touch. (click on comments in
the top left of this page if you don't know my email address). |
Monday 4th February 2008
08:29 GMT |
It's fairly bright this morning, but at the same
time it is rather chilly. The forecast seems to be for a day similar to
yesterday when it was dry and bright for most of the day. There was
some overnight rain last night, but I don't think it was very heavy. At
least, not very heavy in Catford, but I did notice that the exposed
ends of the platforms at Waterloo seemed to have had a good soaking
when I went past them this morning.
I have made it into work this morning despite feeling very rough.
My nose has ceased to run, and even my cough is not too bad, but I
still feel very heady, and bits of me ache. The strangest thing is that
both my wrists seem to hurt for no apparent reason. The other great
area of soreness are the muscles used for coughing in the chest and
stomach areas. I didn't think my coughing was that bad. In fact I am
sure I can remember times when it was ten times as bad, and yet the
evidence from my muscular pain suggests otherwise.
I managed to go and do some shopping in Tesco yesterday morning.
It was really nice to get out into the fresh air, but even nicer to get
home again. I got there soon after 10 am when the place had just
opened, and it was comparatively quiet in there. That made the shopping
experience more pleasant.
I tried an experiment on my cough yesterday. I treated it with theobromine. To quote from this page :-
"The study showed that an ingredient of chocolate called theobromine was
more effective at stopping persistent coughs than the leading cough
medicine codeine."
While shopping in Tesco I bought a couple of bars of chocolate. One of
them was just a bar of ordinary milk chocolate that was loaded with fat
and sugar, and the other was an 86% cocoa version. I do like those dark
and bitter chocolates, but I wanted an instant boost to my morale and
went for the milk chocolate. The dry greasiness of it caught in my
throat a few times, inducing even more coughing, but after that it did
really start to work. My cough became lighter, and more infrequent. It
stayed that way until the evening when I ate the dark chocolate as a
sort of booster (plus I was feeling gluttonous). Despite chocolate
overload I did not eat all that much yesterday. It is some sort of
indicator as to just how bad I was feeling that on Sunday, and to a
lesser extent on Saturday too, I partially lost my appetite. I did have
plans for a grand takeaway on Saturday, but when evening came I just
roasted some potato segments (or whatever they were called). Yesterday,
apart from the chocolate, all I had to eat was a baked potato with
cheese and beans (and I only ate half the tin of beans !). This morning
I do feel hungry, but don't really fancy eating (although I could be
tempted by a bar of chocolate). |
Sunday 3rd February 2008
06:16 GMT |
After being outside for a few hours, Smudge came
in dry. So I assume it is dry outside, and I know it is damn chilly !
There was lots of glorious sunshine yesterday. It looked nice,
but did little to warm the day up. Well I suppose it must have done
really, but I didn't go out yesterday, and so I wouldn't have noticed
it. It would be nice to think that today will have some sunshine too.
Maybe my cold is really starting to do something now. Since
waking up this morning my nose has been producing copious amounts of
snot. I think this is a good sign, although it is pretty unpleasant. At
the same time I find my cough seems to have diminished a bit, but my
bones feel stiff and creaky. Overall it is hard to tell which bits of
me are the worst bits, and what bits are the best bits, but I now know
when I felt my best, and when I felt my worst.
Yesterday afternoon I went to bed after drinking a small tumbler
of scotch. It should not have been enough scotch to do any more than
slightly relax me. As I lay in bed relaxing I fell asleep several times
while listening to several Pink Floyd albums. (Pink Floyd being
excellent to chill out to). At that time I felt the best I had for
several days. When I woke up for the last time I decided to get up. As
I got out of my warm bed into the cold I felt my very worst ! It took
as much as fifteen minutes for my brain to reintegrate with reality.
Until then I felt like I was profoundly drunk. My head was pounding and
I felt distinctly wobbly. It was most unpleasant.
During sleep, both yesterday afternoon, and during last night, my
brain seems to have been particularly creative. This morning I was
dreaming about computers. I know there exists at least one computer
that has got a small Linux based operating system held on a ROM chip
that can be invoked for the simple task of playing media files without
booting into the main operating system (Linux or Windows installed
conventionally onto a hard disk). During my dream I invented a variant
on this idea. I didn't produce the software, or the hardware, but
before I woke up I had the privelege of seeing my idea finally work
after several failures. On the box I saw there seemed to be options to
run either Linux or Windows. I don't know how the Windows variant
worked, but I did have some fancy ideas about how the Linux variant
worked. The idea was that you would run Linux normally and then select
an application that you wanted to use as soon as possible mthe next
time you turned on the PC. Some sort of clever script would work out
the bare minimum of the operating system that would be needed to run
that application, and bring that to the fore when booting up. So for
instance if you wanted to run Open Office Write (the word processor)
you would not initially need a network connection, nor the full
desktop, and you would not need write priveleges to the hard disk. In
fact everything not neccesary to running Open Office would be ignored
until after Open Office was actually running. Then all the other bits
would load in the background. Only when you were ready to save your
work would you actually log in to get write priveleges to the hard
disk, and have the rest of the operating system available to you. I
don't know how this would work under Windows, but I do know that it
would only work if Microsoft dictated it would work (and claimed the
idea for themselves !). Using Linux, some clever hacker could actually
make this idea a reality. So if you ever see such an idea actually
working you will know that you read it here first !
I am not sure if I was being creative yesterday afternoon, while listening to Pink Floyd,
or whether I was just thinking of a long felt want. I was enjoying all
those early Pink Floyd albums so much that I wished there was more
music about like that. Although there other "prog rock" bands around in
that era, few ever really managed a fairly consistent product that was
as distinct as Pink Floyd despite Pink Floyd themselves experimenting
with several styles. Maybe some of the early works by Uriah Heep
came closest in part (unless you know different). The obvious answer,
though it would horrify many people, would be for someone to dissect
early Pink Floyd music, and then make new music in the same style. It
would need a real clever bastard to do this, and there are very few of
them around. I realise that there are several Pink Floyd tribute groups
around, I have even seen "Think Floyd"
myself, but they are just copy cats with no creative juices of their
own. What is needed is a true artist in the same way that a painter and
decorator is not Michealangelo no matter how well he paints your living
room doors. One such artist is Neil Innes. His work on producing authentic sounding psuedo Beatles songs for the Rutles
"Mockumentary" was an absolute masterpiece, but I don't think he could
extend himself to psuedo Pink Floyd songs. Current music is awash with
"songs" made by sampling other songs. Some of these are quite clever,
but generally are done in a music style that I find offensive. However
maybe one of those creative types could suddenly have some sort of
brain siezure and come out liking real music. Maybe someone exists who
even has a sense of humour. It would cause an outrage, but I would be
curious to hear something like Michael Jacksons "Thriller" done in the
style of, say, Interstellar Overdrive. Now that would be most curious
!! (I have just added the link to Think Floyd. Having read that link it
would seem that Think Floyd have indeed recorded some original
compositions. I'll have to check them out sometime).
Today I don't think I am going to be very creative. I ought to
start limbering myself up in readiness to go to work tomorrow. One such
bit of practice exercise will be to go out and do some shopping. I
might even do some tidying up. I am going to try and get to bed very
early tonight. If possible I am going to get up extra early tomorrow
morning, and perhaps try and get an even earlier train into work. It is
my belief that a train around 6.30 am will be less crowded than the
6.54 am train that I would normally get, and where getting a seat is
often tricky. If I feel even a quarter as bad as I do now, it would be
a bit of a luxury not to be crammed into a crowded train. |
Saturday 2nd February 2008
07:57 GMT |
It
seems to be a fine start to the day. It is very cold and clear. The sky
looks blue, and once the sun has creaked it's way over the horizon it
could be be a very nice sunny day. Yesterday was not bad. There
was a lot of sunshine, but the wind, often light, but sometimes strong,
made it feel a lot cooler than it really was. As far as I can tell,
from inside the house, the air seems fairly still at the moment. If the
wind has abated then it could potentially feel almost mild outside
later today.
Even if it was actually hot outside I doubt I
would be taking advantage of it. I still feel tired from fighting this
cold. I think the problem is that it is not really doing much. If my
nose had just gushed one day, and my cough brought up bits of kidney
and liver (as well as lung !) then I would know that I had reached the
bottom, and the only way from then onwards was up. Instead my nose only
got a bit wet and stuffy, and my cough is just slightly worse than a
smokers cough. It is all just bad enough to want to make me stay in the
warm taking it relatively easy, and not go gallivanting about outside.
While I am sitting in a warm room, with a handy drink to stop my throat
from drying out, I can sometimes almost forget that I have a cold (or
other such deadly disease). It is only when I do things like I am doing
at the moment, sitting in a cold room typing, that I am strongly
reminded that I do not feel all that wonderful. (I do have a heater on,
and the room is slowly warming up, but right now it still feels very
chilly in here).
I did end going out for some fresh air
yesterday. It is not that I really wanted to, but as I said to a
friends mum who I bumped into, "someone has to but the cat food" !
Before I bought the cat food I went into the building society to pay in
a cheque. In a fit of bedevilment I also paid in some cash. For a long
time now I have been thinking I ought to start increasing my savings
incase I ever need a lot of emergency money. At the moment my savings
account is looking quite frugal, but perhaps this could be the year
when I start to make regular top ups to it (but then again.........)
After
the building society I went to Tesco. I was surprised at how busy it
was for a late Friday afternoon. It seemed to be full of people who had
no idea what they wanted, or where they were going. That made my
shopping slightly irritating, but the worst was yet to come. Like most
supermarkets, and maybe it is required by law, my local Tesco employs a
checkout woman who should have retired 137 years ago. I believe her
name is Mavis, but I commonly refer to her as Doris. She always has the
shortest checkout queue because everyone knows to avoid her. She is
slow witted and as blind as a bat. Woe to anyone she serves who has
bought anything where the barcode is indistinct and she has to key in
the numbers by hand !!! I selected a queue that I thought would
move quite quickly. There were two people in front of me. One was
already being served, and the other seemed to be getting her shopping
from the trolley, and onto the conveyor, in a fast and competent
manner. At that point I was optimistic that I would be out of there
reasonably quickly. As the person who was being served finished their
transaction the dark clouds of doom began to gather. The checkout woman
finished her shift and was replaced by DORIS !!!!!!!!! Several weeks
passed before I finally paid my bill and was out of there into the cool
fresh air.
One of the low energy indoor pursuits I did
yesterday was to have a play with one of my ancient laptops. It is an
NEC 6030 "Versa". Inside it has a 133 MHz Pentium One processor and a
mere 40 MB of arm. It runs Windows 98SE. For some time now I have
wanted to connect it to my wireless network. Not for any valid reason,
but just for completeness. To that end I sought out a fairly old
hardware based wireless PCMCIA card. The previous times I had tried it
I got nowhere. Changing anything to do with networking on a Windows 98
machine is a nightmare. Everytime you change anything it wants to
reboot, and it keeps wanting files from the Windows installation CD
that are already installed anyway. It is all rather pathetic. My
problem with this wireless card was that it was easy to find the access
point, and to connect to it, but I could never get access to the
outside world. I tried loads of things, but yesterday I tried something
new. I turned off all encryption on my access point and reconnected.
This time it worked ! I had full internet access. The only problem was
that so would anyone else who happened to connect to my access point.
So turning off encryption was not the answer. At least it proved that
the wireless card actually worked, but why could I not establish an
encrypted connection ? I can only conclude that some dll file for
encryption protocols is missing in my windows installation. So this
morning I have downloaded the cumulative updates for Windows 98SE, and
I will see if installing those makes any difference. I may also try
updating Internet Explorer because that incorporates encryption
technology that might be shared with other applications. One final
option, although it will be very hard to do, is to delete Windows 98
and install Windows NT4 (the Wireless card drivers CD do not actually
directly support Windows 98, but they do support Windows NT4 ).
One
thing I didn't do last night was to go to the pub. I assume Kevin was
too busy, and maybe he might have even warned me that he was not
available when we were drinking the previous Friday. Some beers might
have been nice, but I am not too bothered about it. I had some nice
food, and stayed warm until it was time for bed.
I don't
know when, and even if, I will get that laptop out again today. I am
not seeing Aleemah today so I have plenty of time on my hands, but I
think I fancy "vegging out" in front of the TV for some time today. I
have a couple of films I would like to see, and maybe today is the day
to watch them. |
Friday 1st February 2008
14:32 GMT
|
Despite
the forecast for a really terrible day it is actually rather nice at
the moment. The last forecast I saw was for icy winds to be blowing
down from the arctic bringing sleet or snow to the north of the
country. Right now it is a bit windy, but the sun is shining and it
does not feel that cold outside. The weather defied the forecasts
yesterday too. The morning was most definitely very wet and very windy,
but I was rather surprised when there were a few sunny intervals during
the afternoon.
Once again I am off work feeling ill. I am not very
ill, but I feel bad enough that I am glad I am not at work. Like
yesterday, the morning commute on hot stuffy crowded trains would have
been very unpleasant, and I doubt my condition would have improved by
standing around on cold damp draughty platforms. Last night, despite
feeling very tired, I could not seem to get to sleep. Sometime I would
feel too hot and uncomfortable under the duvet, and even if I did find
the right balance between covered and uncovered, my throat would start
to tickle and I would have a coughing fit. I ended up listening to some
audio books until almost 1 am. By then I was so tired that I fell
asleep almost instantly once I really tried to get to sleep again.
My
cough is not nearly as bad as that which I suffered sometime last
November. This time it is more like an irritation that starts at
inopportune moments (like when I am just about to fall asleep). I would
describe it as a wet tickle at the back of the throat rather than the
dry tickle that is just a normal smokers cough, and totally unlike the
deep chesty "coughing up lumps of lung" cough that I suffered from last
November. It will definitely be nice when Spring has fully sprung and
all the winter illnesses go away.
I spent most of
yesterday just relaxing. Some of that relaxation was keeping an eye on
my laptop. Since fitting my extra (bodged) charging switch I have been
cycling the batteries, and every time I do this I seem to be able to
get more charge in. On the last attempt, earlier this morning, I got
the charge up to (a reported) 92%. This should be sufficient if it
should happen that I go to the pub this evening, and take the laptop
with me (which I may well do). Despite being too ill to go to work I do
think that several pints of beer tonight would actually be therapeutic
Hopefully it will be an early session, and I can get home again. just
sufficiently drunk to make sleeping easy, but not so drunk that I wake
up several times in the night for a pee, and each time I wake up I find
I have a hangover. If I were a doctor I reckon I would prescribe about
three pints of medium strength ale ! |
|
