Category Archives: Tech

Techy probs

Well, it’s been an interesting day techy-wise.

For a brief period, the server this is hosted in had its time set back to Jan 3, 2005, which meant that the blog program decided that the posts were in the future and didn’t display them.

And I finally worked out what was going on with my host.

About a month ago they wrote to me to tell me that the IP address for configuration and and upload would change. I changed the IP address for the config utility, but forgot to change it in my FTP client. Unhelpfully, there’s a ghost version of the site still at the old IP address, so I’ve been uploading podcast folders, MP3s and my amended .htaccess to the ghost site, and not to the live one that http://www.alexfoster.me.uk points to.

Now that I’ve figured out que pasa, the ‘Memberships’ link at the top finally works. Not that it’s completed. It’s as much for me as for you. Just a link of all the various websites and institutions I’ve pledged my various allegiances to.

So much for an early night.

You can't shoot straight, you big-titted bitch

Ages ago, and I’m talking about *ages* ago, I played a borrowed copy of Tombraider, which I sat up for hours, days playing. I’m hopeless at computer games. They take me weeks and I usually have to download a cheat sheet to tell me what to do because I can’t figure it out on my own.

What made me gave up on Tombraider was an evil room where you had to do everything at once: jump accurately in different directions within a tight time limit. I kept either falling off into some sort of shark infested water, or still being in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting burnt alive.

I threw everything at that room, and never quite got through. How, I thought to myself, can I survive all those wild animals, even dinosaurs, for Pete’s sake, and get stumped by flames, sharks, and boxes at awkward angles. Now I’ve found Stella I know how to do it. And if I still can’t actually manage it, I could even download a ‘savegame’ to get me past it. Bless.

Still, that was years ago. I’ve long since lost my saved game, and my copy of Tombraider.

Now, thanks to the miracle of Amazon Shops, I have a new copy of Tombraider for under a pahnd.

I just fired it up. I can’t believe the graphics were that bad! It really must have been ages ago. I’ve been running around shooting things (an ex’s comment when we went to see the first Tombraider movie was something along the lines that hardly any bears, bats, wolves, lions, tigers or other protected species got unceremoniously shot dead. That and sarcastic comments about the backpack being full of rocks just to counterweigh the frontage) but otherwise not getting very far. Still in Caves II. Bah.

Two other things of note. First, I’m really glad I got to practice changing a tyre in the dry and daylight because tonight I had to do it again in the dark and rain–with the added frisson of having to do it at top speed before the bingo closed and locked up the carpark. Evidently the wheel needed replacing not repairing earlier in the week.

It was quite scary. I hadn’t clocked the fact that the tyre was flat again on the way into the car, and reversing and turning out of the space, the car handled like normal But when I came to go forward, it felt just awful. It didn’t feel like a wheel problem, it felt like the engine wasn’t connected properly. It felt very similar to the time the drive shaft dropped out of the Rover. I gingerly went around the carpark a few times trying to figure out what was wrong — was it just first gear, just second? No it does it in all forward gears, but not in reverse. Hmmm… I eventually got out to see if I was dragging something under the car, and immediately clocked the front tyre was not really properly attached to the wheel any more. Far worse than before, when it was just flat.

So, I changed it for the spare for the second time this week. Only this time, as I said, in the dark and wet, kneeling in a puddle, unable to see whether the nuts were hitting home or not. Somehow, I’ve managed to bend the tool you use to take the nuts out. (Tyre iron? Spanner?) But I eventually got home safely.

Secondly, I’ve had to replace my router again. I don’t know what I do to them to kill them so fast. Firstly a cheap but well specced USR router used to overheat and then fail to route unless you turned it off for an hour. Finally stopped using that in favour of a Sweex G wireless router, generously donated by a friend who somehow found himself with two. That died suddenly last night. So now, I have a Sitecom G wireless router instead, and a slap on the wrist from Visa who told me to pay down the balance on my credit card, not spend even more on kit. Well, it was an emergency. I can’t have half the network unable to see the outside world! And Sitecom have a 10 year warranty. I must keep the details safe, I’ve a feeling I’ll be needing them.

You can’t shoot straight, you big-titted bitch

Ages ago, and I’m talking about *ages* ago, I played a borrowed copy of Tombraider, which I sat up for hours, days playing. I’m hopeless at computer games. They take me weeks and I usually have to download a cheat sheet to tell me what to do because I can’t figure it out on my own.

What made me gave up on Tombraider was an evil room where you had to do everything at once: jump accurately in different directions within a tight time limit. I kept either falling off into some sort of shark infested water, or still being in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting burnt alive.

I threw everything at that room, and never quite got through. How, I thought to myself, can I survive all those wild animals, even dinosaurs, for Pete’s sake, and get stumped by flames, sharks, and boxes at awkward angles. Now I’ve found Stella I know how to do it. And if I still can’t actually manage it, I could even download a ‘savegame’ to get me past it. Bless.

Still, that was years ago. I’ve long since lost my saved game, and my copy of Tombraider.

Now, thanks to the miracle of Amazon Shops, I have a new copy of Tombraider for under a pahnd.

I just fired it up. I can’t believe the graphics were that bad! It really must have been ages ago. I’ve been running around shooting things (an ex’s comment when we went to see the first Tombraider movie was something along the lines that hardly any bears, bats, wolves, lions, tigers or other protected species got unceremoniously shot dead. That and sarcastic comments about the backpack being full of rocks just to counterweigh the frontage) but otherwise not getting very far. Still in Caves II. Bah.

Two other things of note. First, I’m really glad I got to practice changing a tyre in the dry and daylight because tonight I had to do it again in the dark and rain–with the added frisson of having to do it at top speed before the bingo closed and locked up the carpark. Evidently the wheel needed replacing not repairing earlier in the week.

It was quite scary. I hadn’t clocked the fact that the tyre was flat again on the way into the car, and reversing and turning out of the space, the car handled like normal But when I came to go forward, it felt just awful. It didn’t feel like a wheel problem, it felt like the engine wasn’t connected properly. It felt very similar to the time the drive shaft dropped out of the Rover. I gingerly went around the carpark a few times trying to figure out what was wrong — was it just first gear, just second? No it does it in all forward gears, but not in reverse. Hmmm… I eventually got out to see if I was dragging something under the car, and immediately clocked the front tyre was not really properly attached to the wheel any more. Far worse than before, when it was just flat.

So, I changed it for the spare for the second time this week. Only this time, as I said, in the dark and wet, kneeling in a puddle, unable to see whether the nuts were hitting home or not. Somehow, I’ve managed to bend the tool you use to take the nuts out. (Tyre iron? Spanner?) But I eventually got home safely.

Secondly, I’ve had to replace my router again. I don’t know what I do to them to kill them so fast. Firstly a cheap but well specced USR router used to overheat and then fail to route unless you turned it off for an hour. Finally stopped using that in favour of a Sweex G wireless router, generously donated by a friend who somehow found himself with two. That died suddenly last night. So now, I have a Sitecom G wireless router instead, and a slap on the wrist from Visa who told me to pay down the balance on my credit card, not spend even more on kit. Well, it was an emergency. I can’t have half the network unable to see the outside world! And Sitecom have a 10 year warranty. I must keep the details safe, I’ve a feeling I’ll be needing them.

Audioscrobbler

So, this is clever.

A little program sits in your MP3 player and reports what you listen to a website, where it puts up charts and info about what you listen to.

Then it creates a personalised radio station playing the sort of music you listen to.

And then it tells you what people who listen to music like you listen to are listening to — Amazon-style recommendations based on usage.

I’m going to cheat a little and leave iTunes telling it about my favourite music whilst I sleep.

http://www.last.fm/user/nilexuk/ is my personal page. You can sign up from there if you’ve a mind to.

Techy dilemma

I’ve managed to change the photos at the head of this page from generic to my own, but I’m not 100% convinced it’s actually an improvement.

In other tech news, I’ve volunteered to take over the SAS choir website, given that the ones that we’ve had in the last few years aren’t great. We did have an excellent one a few years ago, but unfortunately a great parting of ways has happened since then.

The first thought was to try and find a CMS that would do the job. The website is going to be quite simple. A few static pages of explanatory notes and a members’ section with details about the next tour. I thought it would be nice if it could have an interactive ‘e-mail me when it changes’ function, and there might also be a use for a members’ bulletin board.

Dataflame has a widget that can instal various different CMSes for you so I spent an afternoon playing with variety of different ones to see if I could get what I wanted. I couldn’t. They were all a bit too much for me. They all had hundreds of features that would take hours to turn off, or clunky funky designs that shout script kiddy rather than anglican choir.

Back to the drawing board. This might be a hand-written website. That’s going to take a little more time.

Recabling house

If the new house does need rewiring, I’m thinking about having an ethernet backbone put in with sockets in every room. This quite elaborate fantasy now extends to having a Media PC connected to the telly and a SAMBA fileserver in the attic, with all my large storage in one place (getting on, now, for over a terabyte spread over 5 different machines, if you also count Paul’s.) Unfortunately, money is going to be quite tight over the first few months of the mortgage, so this is probably pipe-dream.

Latest new hard drive hasn’t been an unmitigated success. After a few days of working fine, suddenly the machine seized up and wouldn’t work properly until I took it back out. Still, at least I’ve moved some of the files around and there’s less pressure on the existing hard drives now. Maybe I should get around to fixing the drives in the machines properly rather than just letting them float around at strange angles.

Murdering Orange B*stards

When they killed Wildfire a couple of months ago, it would appear they also nuked the personal fax number I’ve had with them for the last six years. I don’t use it very much, but I thought it would be a helpful thing to be using whilst trying to get my mortgage application sorted. Goodness only knows where that fax ended up. The number goes adrift every time I change my handset, but has always been retrievable in the past. Now, it’s gone for good. They’ve had to allocate me a new number.

The house purchase is coming along: mortgage chosen, and nearly applied for, solicitors instructed, now the waiting game.

OMFG!

B3ta is down.

How will we cope?

oOo

I’ve spent the evening techily occupied finding a new web host that will run WordPress for me. I’ve outgrown blogger. I’ll be moving a spare domain to a new host for experimental purposes and will be migrating www.niles.org.uk in the fullness of time. The ageing content of the site is a little bit embarrassing now.

It’s been a techy few days. I spent Sunday evening upgrading a computer in the office. It now has a network card and an extra ISA parellel port and has been transformed into a print server. It’s been ages since I’ve had to do anything ISA and I’d forgotten what life was like pre-PnP.

This is Libby, our neighbour’s cat who came in through our open back door earlier today. I shot a ‘reel’ of film of her before we escorted her off the premises in accordance with the terms of our lease. She’s looks very much like my parents’ cat Ellie except that where Ellie is grey-only, Libby has warmer colours in her fur.

I’ve just started watching tapes of 24 Season 4, even though we’ve not finished Season 3. Paul has Kiefer Fatigue and has decided three seasons of high tension cliffhangers is quite enough for him. Me, I’m a glutton for punishment. “Looks like someone’s trying to corrupt the internet!” Techy bloggers the world over are up in arms.

A few new things

It’s been weeks, and I haven’t mentioned, I don’t think, my new car.

After the Fiesta crash, I wasn’t certain if I wanted to carry on driving, but I do think it’s an important lifeskill that I’d be foolish not to practice.

Getting a new car was problematic, but I happened to talk about it with ringing friends who had a car they didn’t want — a large Skoda Favorit GLXie estate — just sitting on their drive rotting. Unfotunately, it wasn’t even drivable, so I’ve had to get a garage to pick it up and get it going again. It needed its immobiliser removed, a new battery, several new tires, brakes fixing and an entire suspension thingy replaced. And hopefully all that will be done by Monday and I can pick it up.

It’s an even bigger car than I’m used to and I’m a bit anxious at the prospect of driving it away from the garage for the first time. And it doesn’t seem terribly environmentally conscious to drive a whacking great estate car to Leicester with just me in it. So I will still be using public transport quite frequently. The cost in petrol for the Fiesta wasn’t all that different from the rail fare, and whilst it’s actually quite tricky to park in central Leicester, one of the offices I work in is just two minutes from the railway station.

Oh… also since the new computer arrived, I took the opportunity to put in a cheapy webcam in the parcel from eBuyer. Results are at www.niles.org.uk/cam It’s a little fragile, and sometimes it doesn’t wake up for a day or two before suddenly being there again. I’m still looking at where I can dot about the various 80p ‘lazer’ case-moding LEDs. The new LCD screen is in place, and I’m not certain whether it’s better than the CRT monitor it replaces. The new printer, however, is great 🙂

Something just clicked

Blogger can e-mail-to-blog automatically, can’t it?

So, what happens if I subscribe an e-mail-to-blog address to my pre-existing yahoogroup — I get an automatic website based on the contents of the yahoogroup. Since it’s configured so that only I can post, it should be reasonably secure. The only slight concern is the format of the post — adverts top and tail the messages, and something a bit screwy is happening with linefeeds.

But hey, it’s better than nowt.

And is now available here: www.niles.org.uk/jokes

Oh, and you’ll have seen the blogrolling thingy on the sidebar — now I can put links on my blog simply by clicking a toolbar. Cor. Wow.