Mainframeguy Chyrps

Top Secret

2011-12-08T23:50:00.000-08:00

I had never expected to be considering this as a dilemma presented within my urrent employment, but here it is...

Due to work that came, ironically, from a contact I introduced myself, with a client in the field of "Conflict Management", and this in combination that the majority of their work is with the Metropolitan Police force, we are being asked to consider vetting of our profiles as they require it.

It's unlikely to be to home office levels, though the relevant documents are labeled Top Secret" and no doubt I should not talk about the contents of the form - even writing this blog post could in theory jeopardise my position, but that's a risk I am very prepared to take.

The subject had already been raised at a recent ADISA conference I attended so I am probably predisposed towards going ahead - but the fact is upon reflection I should much prefer it if I had someone working alongside me who could go through this themselves...... A suspicion of "the man" and selling out as part of "the system" remains a hard thing to shake....

The Jury's out which way this may go at the moment.

Richard Stallman

2011-11-03T21:01:00.000-07:00

Alan met him! this had to be recorded for posterity - this and the fact he is so DOWN Ubuntu and actually so RIGHT to be so.... the troubles I have had with DRM for Ebooks alone means I cannot but agree and am so ashamed to be posting this from an Ubuntu box...

Must unearth my debian P3 and press it into service as my one of my remoting in boxen - then boot it when out of office and so give myself option for power down and use less on electricity bill... suggest we should have communal remote in box?

Other brain stormed ideas for work are how-to (pictorial) on using not standed screens as way to use up Eizos

a template for time wasting potential orders aftercare to provoke a put up or shut up but do not just say nothing!

Alan to ours for those pictures?

Take in my digital video cam as gift to comm-tech to keep this laptop by exchange

make links on this profile for my really neat nanowrimo site and new eclectic blogging - my profile update was a fail

2011-07-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

my personal nightmare is in progress... see below.....

Rubbish, evidence, L proceedings
28 July 2011 04:47
To:
Bcc:
Folks, S especially,

you know you have to sleep on something sometimes to remember what matters?

you know how you have to be told what the issue is before you can work that out?

WELLLllllll this morning I remember something

I remember coming in to work and I remember moving THREE recycle bags
out of the way to park my bike - I think this was the weekend before
A1 got back - do you remember A2?.

BTW I have not copied in Ilane on this email at this time having
nearly made her cry at work on Wednesday with the challenging nature
of her learning curve and my brusque and macho manner....

BUT - and this goes out to S and A especially I believe it is
ESSENTIAL this matter is shared in full with all staff. I had no
proper awareness until after you had left with the SWEEEP evidences of
the specifics of the allegations - I think we all realise now how
serious this is!

I have asked A specifically and he agrees we shall arrange all staff
meetings in future where something we do not want interns "in on" to
happen early or late so that we can cover VITAL stuff like this.

S - bon chance mate - keep me informed please - those evidence
notes and the fact you are not staff means it is my cojones and rep on
the line out there (so don't fuck this one up)

over and out - they say knowledge is power so now you know the picture
you are looking for and the three bags in question.....

sigh - if only the shredding issue had been discussed at a
meeting, ah well - easy after the event

... names and identifying features removed to protect the innocent

My other present (birthday)

2011-01-23T19:40:00.000-08:00

Just before Christmas I was registered as the owner of this site - what a nice present, though I had no idea it could be done, thought ICANN had issues....

What a good Christmas!

2011-01-22T00:46:00.000-08:00

A Bebook2 is not to be sniffed at, and I can read about it here (too busy to play with it so far, this will help encourage me!)

Yes, we have no computers!

2010-11-29T20:40:00.000-08:00

... and so it came to pass, that I extracted the last of the tested to boot boxen from the warehouse, and there were.... no more....

Well, that's not quite true, since the flow is pretty constant. But the fact is there was a stock of two or three hundred, and all of those have been shifted over the year. This is helped by the fact I recently "homed" about sixty off lower spec. boxen with a project to equip the homeless with computing skills and, at the end, send them away with a computer!

I love the idea of that project and am hoping to follow it and do what I am able to make it a success...

I shall aim to post on the subject as and when...

But for now I am left to contemplate the almost impossible to imaging possibility that we BUY some computers!

php hacking and quotes

2010-09-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

SOOOoooo the latest news on the Comm-Tech front is that we should be sitting pretty to help with the local councils IT refresh this year. And to that end I have found myself hacking a piece of php half way to death for an applet to quote the price and email us when they give us the numbers and details to collect.

I have almost hacked it back into life - it's a shame it was nice clean code until I came along!

I shall be emailing them with a data destruct invoice an at the same time I shall let them know about the web-app and we shall see if the orders come rolling in, it would be really good if they do and especially gratifying if my App works and helps with the process (esp. since it means they can raise the PO when they make the request, so we should have no delayed invoices and payments will help with our cash flow!)

Email Ettiquette

2010-09-17T22:52:00.000-07:00

Uh Oh:- I just finished a website complete with new domain based email address.... and during the process I sent a number of emails to the addie which were, how to put it, less than tactful regarding the site ownership and development.

And now the person who I assumed would be in sole charge of the mailbox, to whom the comments I made were appropriate, has left. The mailbox, however, remains and has been turned over to a rota of people to maintain, any one of whom would be perhaps upset by what I had to say (albeit mildly) I have no idea if she deleted the emails or not.

Although I have the power to go in and remove them myself that is simply not right.

There's a lesson here - and I thought I'd post it not just for the benefit of others but also to remind myself to watch what I email sometimes!

Some big stuff...

2010-09-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

I am hoping we'll be involved in the annual IT refresh for our local council....

There was a fifty off order recently which I thought would clear all our most venerable boxen.... but I am chasing screens at less than £20 a pop to make it....

Last but not least I am really hoping a mate secures a tender for many metric tons of REEE - and if he does that we can take a slice of the action....

For my next trick...

2010-05-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

It has been a productive time at work, and now I am taking a weeks holiday.

To earn it there were a few jobs I had to complete last week, and the upshot was I had to put together around thirty computer systems and repair about six. It was hard work to complete, but ultimately rewarding. At the same time the recycle side of things is picking up and there is a very good take up for our cycling collection trailer service, which I intend to place prominently on the website soon.

But for now.... Holiday is the thing. I even shutdown my desktop so there could be no temptation to remote in and do a little more! I guess for the REAL guarantee of not doing so I should have to leave the data key with my work SSH encryption code behind, and that's not going to happen!

OK, I shall only post from the weeks holiday if it is relevant to tech stuff, who knows, there amy not even be wi-fi at the Beadnell Towers!

Silver Surfers and Comm-Tech

2010-05-19T22:06:00.000-07:00

A lesser known event is the upcoming "Silver Surfer's Day" on Friday. I thought Comm-Tech were sitting pretty with an invite to the local library where we could help and give some level of presentation or at least a presence. But on Wednesday morning I find an email from the librarian which indicates we are not actually invited! This is bad news since we cannot really host an event and it is too short notice now for me to find another organisation we can piggy back on - though I shall try.

But we have still managed to come up with something. I have a one page leaflet linked from our website and the unique offering which we are hoping will appeal is not only that we offer a very affordable computer but that we shall deliver and do a basic install for £40, using our new "cycle person". I'm pretty excited about our having a cycle delivery/collection option anyway, apparently they are tech enough to do the basic install "light" option and it means I can offer them a little more for those than the measley £20 for collections.

I need to find out where we are sourcing them, but the idea is we supply these models complete with preconfigured pay-as-you go dongles so that they are online right off without the hassle of finding and ISP and doing things with their telephone or cable, and no standing bills if they do not take to it or stay a very light user. I guess the only downside would be someone with problematic mobile signal, but in our urban catchment hopefully this will not come up - and if it does we shall just have to deal with it then.

I have taken the idea a little further and am wondering if we can come up with a "Silver Surfer Special" that is preconfigured to take them to the Archers listen again site and has bookmarks for SAGA holidays and discounted insurance etc. This does seem a little like taking the mick - but to really get that right I need the input of actual Silver Surfers groups, which is now hard to get, unless I gatecrash the library event. Or maybe I shall indeed find something at the last minute - watch this space....

Open sorcery and a conceptual idea

2010-04-24T22:03:00.000-07:00

This weekend saw the first Comm-Tech event which unfortunately I could not participate in due to double booking and child care issues. I'll find out how it went on Monday - hopefully the Ubuntu live CD's flew out and brought in £1 donations to cover their costs and the dozen or so computers and laptops we took down flew out at their knock down prices of £60 to £50 quids.

We are hoping to have two or three people joining us on a more than voluntary basis for six months under a government work placement scheme (though this seems to have been put on hold for the election which is really annoying!) and one of the roles I am keen to explore with them is getting a blog and a little social networking going for Comm-Tech.

Unfortunately I did not succeed in getting a recycling awareness leaflet ready in time after being defeated by the intricacies of "Scribus" for desktop publishing. I feel a little more inspired in that direction this morning, but with other commitments for my time - wanted to mention as an aide mémoire in my blog though that I must remember to emphasise the values of comm-tech in the closing page of such a thing and mention how we strive for maximum reuse and sometimes place items for artists or blogs.

Speaking of aide mémoire and artists - I felt inspired in one other way. Thinking of the crate of archaic RAM we have in the warehouse it occurred to me that an artist could really create something with that perhaps? It is perhaps a little trite and I am not sure how it would look as a work (needs an artist to do that part?) but the fact that all this stuff could hold memories would give you an obvious title and I liked the idea that it was memories to be and yet that would never be because the format of the stuff is unusable now - with enough dedication ROM chips could be added or boards used that carried them and these would actually HOLD memories - old programs and code no longer in use.

Anyway, I am going to email an artist who contacted us working on a sculpture and needing fifty odd old format tower alu. chassis. Eventually he went elsewhere when I told him we needed donations around a pound a pop to cover costs. But who knows, perhaps he can take that idea and run with it and we can see some unusual reuse of those memory sticks?

The need for code - work blog and server thoughts

2010-03-29T22:35:00.000-07:00

From time to time I almost feel a physical addiction to the "need for coding" similar to the driver or motorcyclists "need for speed" (though less alliterative!) and this has been with me for a week or two now.

At the same time I may have the chance to build a new computer soon which is no doubt part of the mix. The itch gets strongest when it comes to wanting to upgrade and make my literary blog more "accessible" and at the same time I am painfully aware of the need for more marketting and a few website updates at work.

So I have come to the decision that comm-tech should have a newsletter mailing list and a blog and just maybe a portal to our customers' sites. I can see a few advantages to this although I have to admit to being uncertain how effective a marketting tool it may be. But better to try it and see than be suspicious of it and never know. Plus there is an added benefit that I shall be able to call on the resources of the Comm-Tech volunteers in a "safe" way and have them do the legwork. Rather that than set them loose on things like the hardware repairs - last week one of them managed to break an Apple G4 in for a new optical drive and it was pure luck we still had one in stock to offer replacement.

How useful it shall be getting the experience of Chyrp! version 2 from an intital setup rather than an upgrade remains to be seen - a lot of the work of upgrading my own blog is the upgrade of the tools and preservation of the data.

Moving house also presents it's own geeky challenges and I am working on those - my bright idea there is to locate a server at work and SSH Tunnel to it for access. I am taking that a step further and thinking about putting a beige tower PIII there too which was my debian box and dual boot just for photoshop - which I never seem to have used.

Anyway - between all that hopefully the "need for code" I have been feeling will be satisfied!

Disposable income beckons - thoughts on blogging

2010-03-11T21:35:00.000-08:00

OK, this is a slight variance from the geeky theme maybe.

But I am moving out of my rennted accomodation and into a shared house situation. this means I shall, after at least four years without it, actually have MONEY to spend on STUFF. After too long without being able to build a current computer I shall be able to indulge myself with a laptop update and a new desktop... It makes me feel pretty geeky how excited I get at the prospect!

And I am thinking, having discovered other blogs in the arena, that maybe I or me and my colleagues, ought to have some sort of blog on the topic of reuse and recycling of technology to help raise the profiile of Comm-Tech where I work. then there is finding the time - this would be tough. And I know it is dumb to ask here since I am not convinced anyone much reads this blog, but the big question is whether anyone would read it, and, if so, whether it would serve Comm-Tech to good effect?

Any feedback appreciated - mainly on the latter point (but if you have any recommendations for current technology that too, since I am woefully out of date.

streamline

2009-12-24T03:12:00.000-08:00

it happened - all tested to boot at Big Yellow!

this place marker for reuse of blog as genuine tool for comm-tech.org

all change at comm-tech!

2009-09-20T21:04:00.000-07:00

Well, believe it or not I have now found myself sort of "promoted" at my place of work!

When I say that it actually means my boss has resigned, but the consequence is that I both do his job and my own and that I also have his authority, more or less. Which means I have a say in what is actually kept at the Big Yellow among other things!

I shall post on that once I am on top of things... hopefully before too long! Right now I need to busy myself with the building of a number of linux systems and an Optiplex 280 with XP for a custom order...

Big Yellow SPAM! and working in a warehouse of geekiness

2009-06-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

so... another month gone by and it's been interesting on the work front.

I have lost track of the number of machines Ihave put together, suffice to say over a hundred; which averages out as perhaps five a day when I'm at work. But there's so much moreby way of geeky pleasures to be had that I feel really quite spoilt in that respect - as an example I have to assemble a tower with SCSI soon to wipe a server rack of 19 SCSI 36 GB drives. But the best bit is that every day is different.

And why the title? Well if you look at the previous post you'll see there's a comment (SPAM). BUT the weird thing is that, unbecknownst to BYTWITTERINGSPAMBOT then in my new work I spend about a third of my time working on bulk stocks of geekiness (from thousands of Optiplex P4's through to XEON servers, a host of laserjets, and even oddities like a dozen Emacs, which is a heavy item, believe me!). So I shall leave the big yellow ad spam there... it is a new kind of targetted twitter SPAM and it gives me something to chat with the lovely people at West Norwood about in the imagined idle moment(which never comes of course).

Oh yeah - and another good thing happened... I got paid! And that is not something to sniff at or take for granted. The real rewards are wanting to go to work when I wake and the sheer quantity of geeky goodness for reuse - far more than I can handle personally (so if you have an interest in any of it feelfree to comment and indicate what it might be!)

HAVE JOB! (also Elonex and Twitter fail)

2009-04-23T17:02:00.001-07:00

Following on from my work placement I'm starting work on Tuesday.

I'm working at the place where BLAG grew and I expect I'll be spending half my time at least during the first three months in a Big Yellow storage unit going through about two thousand machines sorting those that will post from those that will not and generally inventorying....

I'll be a bit of an authority on the Dell Optiplex range in no time

The other sides to the job should get real interesting once we get the incoming backlog under control....

The Elonex, now received after previous post) has turned out to ba a slight fail, but not in the way I expected.... Battery is fine and life is as expected for a netbook (around three hours casual use). However wifi is a pain in the ass and reception is far weaker than I expected. This is key for netbook technology.... Also the linux on there is locked down.... it's OK so far as it goes and can at least be used as a very low power way to check email, make casual internet queries, and leave an IM client up if I want one.... But I think I am going to have to invest again for my mobile computing requirments (luckily I can maybe afford to now!).

Also I removed Twitter from this blog 'cause it started asking for a log-in, pain in the ass and if you ask me Twitter is a bit up your ass anyway! I'm only using it extremely occasionally (which is not what it's meant for) Sometimes I like to browse the Jack Schofield twitters, so I'll probably keep the account on - though I suspect you do not need an account to browse others - must look into that...

bye bye HP2133 - hello ElonexT1!

2009-04-07T23:01:00.000-07:00

OK - long time no post. But an update of sorts...

The HP netbook was let down by the SUSE on there - turned out that a KDE rollout when applying all updates broke the wi-fi! Being a netbook recovery was no simple matter - although I ordered the DVD from support when I saw them reduced another £20 in Curry's that was it - I returned it for a refund. At least I had something for three weeks.

Recently I won an eBay Elonex T1 netbook for under £100 and since that is half the price and older I shall not expect so much (esp. with 256 MB ram!). But we shall see when the delivery comes (I just paid).

The sony Ereader on the other hand is a great little gadget and even has an SD slot to go with the flash memory, so you can carry pictures and not exactly view them, but get a sketch idea of what is on there - this is very useful to me since my daughter has a digital camera and I have to manage her picture filing - I used the (stolen) laptop for an SD slot before but now use this.

I have taken my terrabyte Exchange server out of mothballs and am making good use of that to secore and archive now (after the theft). Only thing is I am worried about the electricity bill - so it is not on 24/7. Working on building a low power one or maybe using a G3 I could get... also on building a computer for my father - which will be a mammoth task as I want accessibility options for his limited vision...

More soon on that I hope!

Retail therapy

2009-02-22T15:37:00.000-08:00

Ok so now I have an HP netbook 2133 to replace the laptop - graphics and CPU are modest as could be anticipated, no optical drive ditto... But what to expect for £200? Anyway, battery life is adequate unmodified and it gets me online... A neat sort of gadget

Another gadget added to my set is a Sony E-book I could not resist. Again £200 lighter, but I am hopeful this may effectively pay for itself over the course of four years in terms of E-books costing about 20% less than books at list price... now if only that reduced further I could be quids in. Let's just hope it outlasts four years heavy use!

At least the retauil therapy makes me feel less awful about the stuff I lost in the burglary.

Then again what with the replacement DS and the hotel and associate bills I seem to be facing a day of reckoning in excess of a grand... on the credit card.... and energy bills plus water rates are looming not to mention the car service....

Man, i need work!

Oh bugger it - I got burgled

2009-02-14T17:50:00.001-08:00

lost three laptops and a webbook... but what hurts most - the DS I bought my daughter for Christmas....

not going to mention all the non-geeky stuff they took (this IS the geek blog!).

My own lappie was totally insecure - I hope they are decent crooks and wipe it and I am not about to have my identity stolen!

But still - all I care about is my daughter's DS - what utter bastards :(

The other kind of samba

2009-01-26T19:33:00.000-08:00

well today I saw marmite lover posted about activists samba in Gaza

At the same time I am doing some voluntary work to sort out the IT for Mosac and my current plan is to retire one of their low end PC's (a PIII), wipe it, install Debian, and turn it into a Samba Server!

laptop glut

2009-01-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

Full geek post alert!

On Sunday I was given three laptops and led to believe on might work. Two HP Omnibook Xe3's and a Toshiba Satellite pro. This added to my own laptop and the Dell XPS M1210 which I fitted a new hard drive to around September and have had use of ever since pending payment (hoping to keep the iMac G4 they also gave me to repair in lieu of payment since my sister WILL pay cash to have that fixed).

Anyway, one of the HP's was completely dead. Neither had power supplies (but I had a generic that enabled me to test them). Swapping hard drives has confirmed both HP's have dead drives. The Tosh seems to have a dead hard drive also, and the supplied recovery disc is only one of a two disc set and gave Win 98! Insertion of an XP disc an attempts to repair gave rise to an error code 4 on a file - so flat Xp install fails too. Three Linux distro installs also fail (damn small, Ubuntu, and Suse).

These laptops were given me for renovation or use as able - great shame there is not one working hard drive between them. Have yet to track down where the Satellites hard drive is also - it was mildly overwhelming (making me doubt my true geek status). Best part of the gift, (I hope!) was some sodim which if I am REALLY LUCKY will fit the iMac!

They were a gift from another member of the Quaker meeting I belong to and I am hoping the Meeting will give me a small fighting fund to try buying a hard drive and getting the Tosh functional - but I can tell it is going to be a struggle - that fact the BIOS screen does not come easily or consistently makes me worry it is not just HD trouble - there was a CMOS checksum error at one point, and errors seem to throw from the optical drive also.

But... It keeps me busy! Must not grumble... it is weird that these were given me saying they were going in the skip otherwise, yet still I shall feel bad about having to dispose of any of them to garbage. I am hoping to save two out of three and even if it is only the Tosh I should not feel bad.

Frustration

2009-01-16T22:19:00.000-08:00

semi-geek post alert!

Well - the new blog is there, and it took it's time, BUT it is not yet stable, nor as I want it. This is very frustrating for two reasons:-

My (un)friendly server guy takes it upon himself to tell me he is implementing at the weekend, then proceed to do so without warning on a Wednesday evening, which partially gives rise to the second frustration. This means that I did some small tweaking and then lost it. Worse still I have just found updates (luckily only a test post) that I made last night have seemingly vanished into thin air. I cannot speak to him until tonight, but no doubt he took it upon himself to perform some sort of site restore, again with no warning. It's hard for me to take any firm line or action on this because he provides the service free (though I do sometimes send him paypal donations for extra domains and hosting, which are usually generous).

The final Chyrp extension I wish to add worked once, before the sudden server move. It is just adding a readmore link into posts, but I can see how that will enhance the blog and really want to get it working. All attempts to get it to work again have failed - worse yet it feels like updates I make are not reliably going through. I found a bad .htaccess readwrite entry and fixed that, but I think something else is amiss serverside after the move. I cannot control this directly and am at the mercy of server guy (see above)!

It leaves me powerless and unable to go ahead with my primary blogging. Also unable to make headway in the coding tweaking of the blog, which should be quite minor but is turning into a major trial.

I find it interesting when I try to detach myself how upset I get about this and how I cannot seem to detach and say "it's only a blog" and get on with my "real life"!

Then again I am having a minor swing into a depression, which I think is just partly January blues and the pressures of financial peril with my ongoing long-term unemployment. Hopefully it is just a hypomanic depression and not a major one. hopefully I canmanage it and get through it without majoy colateral damage.

And hopefully I can talk to server guy and we can come to a more friendly understanding!

Resolution of the remaining tweak to the blog may fall out of that, I need to try to take a cool logical approach and not let it annoy me so. Also to be very methodical in how I work to debug it and stay focussed - perhaps interleaving work on the technical side with a little blogging once I have ensured there's some assurance anything I do will not get vaporised unexpectedly! (Note to self, take backups of updates independent of server!).

Time will tell.

state of blog

2009-01-13T19:15:00.000-08:00

So - the latest news, they finished the backup so far, and recovered everything EXCEPT the database!

Although I have a backup I made on the fifth January this misses my last two posts. My mate has a ticket in asking for the databases, but as he said "I shouldn't get my hopes up". I'm just grateful I do have a backup in the new database format, since the database holds all my users log-ins for returning registered readers as well as blogroll etc.

Also my mate is planning to move to the new server at the weekend, so even if it does get recovered (which would be nice) I shall have to wait to do any more blogging there or updating to the blog engine until he's finished - hopefully some time over the weekend.

It's about as I feared - so it seems I was not pessimistic but realistic. I find it interesting that I am so attached to blogging - perhaps I should try to take that energy and direct it more to writing "creatively"?

[edit] database restored, my pessimism unfounded, but site still relocating server at weekend, so I should inhibit my blogging impulses until after that, then hopefully normal service is resumed ;) [/edit]

Lest any Didactic followers find this...

2009-01-12T10:15:00.000-08:00

I somehow doubt this will be read by anyone who wanted to view my primary blog at didactic.me but in any case, there's been a disc crash at the server end of things apparently. Their support is not 24/7 and they are likely skimping on support staff, but they are digging aroung for the backup and maybe they'll be in touch tomorrow.

Whenever they do my friendly hosting guy will swing into action and use the backups to populate a new server he is directly in control of at a data centre he used to work at and we will be back in business. My most optimistic guess is for tomorrow afternoon/evening (GMT) and my most pesimistic is before the weekend.

Worst case scenario would be there's no backup and I have to rebuild my sites from my own files, but fortunately I have a database backup in the new release format. Unfortunately it is from the fourth of January, so it misses a post or two. I'm off to see if the Google cache and a little pasting can help me salvage that, anticipating disaster....

I feel the need...

2009-01-10T00:15:00.000-08:00

... not for speed, no, but for a blog extensioon. Below from #Chyrp IRC just now;

[08:14] oh dear... I feel the need to blog a poll - now I shall have to fiddle in another extension...
[08:14] (that's irony, I think)

Anyway, the thing is it just occured to me (with my new literature based focus) that it would be interesting to know how many people read more than one book at a time and of those how many are male/female and whether they feel comfortable doing so as a natural way to read or not.

So, as you see, a poll.

Unfortunately oftentimes it seems implementing a seemingly small change to my primary blog will entail a gap in my actual blogging while I do so. Watch this space (or that space)...

New Blog traffic...

2009-01-08T00:36:00.000-08:00

This is interesting.

My new blog has far lower traffic. Yet my comments have increased many fold and are good ones!

I guess the moral of the story is that it is not about quantity, but more about quality. It is highly gratifying though, since the driving force of my redesign was making comments both easier and more likely. On the technical side the upgrade makes my spam filter (Defensio) effective and thereby enabled me to remove the requirement even to give name and email (never mind implementing Captcha, which I shall hold in reserve if spam ever does become a problem). On the content side I am hopeful that the new literary theme will be more provocative for comments to come.

One niggle I can mention in this blog, being on blogger, was that I had to really frig with the profile blog setting (which annoyingly insists on ftp etc to try to trap you into posting from blogger; needless to say I do not do that). Basically it is totally Blogger-centric, with an insistence on an address and page , defaulting to "http://anyblog/blankpost" or something. Luckily for me the kind and considerate Lydia at Writerquake made a comment alerting me to the 404!

Shiney Chyrpie Blog Newness

2009-01-05T17:12:00.000-08:00

I have just completed the migration of my primary blog to the latest greatest release of the Chyrp blogging engine and redesigned the look. Comments should finally be working with no problams whatsoever (waiting to see if DEFENSIO is sufficient to keep spam at bay or if I have to implement a TXTCAPTCHA extension.

Better yet I have put in categories and this has helped me refine the blogging platform and how I use it - see here for details. I also acquired an ancient Word Processing machine - early predecessor of the computer. I might put a picture onto this blog, I think the acceptance of this outmoded ancient machinery confirms that I may, indeed, actually be a geek!

perhaps I am NOT a Geek!

2008-12-12T04:31:00.000-08:00

OK, so I today is my Birthday and leading up to that I have once or twice thought of things I would like - if I had the money to spoil myself with my own present....

One thing I have thought of is the ASUS eeePC or possibly the small format Acer (both seem to be getting knocked out very cheaply and since I recently had use of a Dell XPS 1100 I fixed for someone I got a hankering for a small format machine to go portable with).

Then yesterday I was in a queue for the checkout at Marks and Sparks and I saw they had the exact kind of leather jacket I would like to replace the one I have that is falling apart... But is costs £200 even after they knocked fifty quid off! Anyway, the admission I have to make is that although I have bought neither I was MORE tempted by the jacket than either of the small format computers!

Can I still count myself a geek? Maybe, but definitely NOT an Anorak!

Unsticking part deux

2008-12-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

Further to my last post, I just want to mention portable apps and link it here. I have a feeling it might be a superior resource (and I am sad to see the linux OS is pending addition to the suite - that would be a clincher for me!).

Must unstick my memory stick

2008-12-04T18:20:00.000-08:00

The humble memory stick can often be forgotten as a geek asset and tool of choice.

I found myself recently copying firefox and filezilla to my stick only to find they were already there and I had just forgotten to make use of them.

There are basic sets of programs we would all choose to have available wherever we go, and until we are all "cloud" users I reckon the memory stick is the way to go.

I found this was linked from a blog when I was catching up on my feeds tonight and thought I would make this post and share it.

typealyzer

2008-12-02T18:24:00.000-08:00

So I fed this blog to the thinger and this is what I get:-

ESTP - The Doers

The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

And (to complete NaBloPoMo) futureme.org

2008-11-30T08:44:00.000-08:00

I reckon I should use futureme.org to remind myself not to enter NaBloPoMo next year! Or, if I insist on doing so then not to enter more than one Blog to it.

What is futureme.org? It is a very simple idea, a site where you register your email address and can enter messages in email format which will be emailed to your chosen account at some future date. The date must be more than six months in the future, it is not a reminder or diary site after all. I find it a good exampleof a very simple idea which has a simple, but popular appeal.

All the best ideas probably are simple ones, and this is a good example.

This post is also the last I have to make for this blog to successfully complete NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) which I have ambitiously undertaken for two blogs at the same time as doing NaNoWriMo (National Noven Writing Month). It's been fun, but (unless there is a massive outcry of comments insiting otherwise and offering bribes) from here on in posts will be less often than daily!

Information textbooks

2008-11-29T10:55:00.000-08:00

Information textbooks - heard on R4 Home Service 29/10

I actually wanted to blog about this in more detail and a more considered approach, but it has, as you see, been on my "to blog" list since late October and we are nearly into December now. So there it is, I was really impressed by the little I heard about it - it is like taking textbooks and wikipedia and extrapolating. If I were working in a research or academic environment or studying it would really excite me. Well actually it really excites me anyway, but hey, call me a geek!

A new fiasco every day!

2008-11-28T03:48:00.000-08:00

And todays is that I have been able to report a viral infection on the network drive here at the training centre.

The IT managers response?

Can I call you back... (he didn't even ask for the number though!).

The virus? Gadcom trojan - not too dangerous, but should never happen.

The antivirus? Symantec - and it is set to log the virus and do nothing more!

The location? A network drive accessed by all the people on the course, who are asked to use their USB drives... I'd hate to think about how easy it would be to infect all the drives coming along here, given the expertise of the users.

Interestingly the company (twinuk.com) have a policy on their site complete with a disclaimer, I think the disclaimer would not stand up in court though, especially given the seeming incompetence here!

A geek networks (with people!)

2008-11-27T01:23:00.000-08:00

Well... as a follow on from yesterdays post this is worth noting for posterity.

After discovering the insecurity of the network and the personal data and a myriad other issues on the computer systems at Twin Training. After also attending to three or four sick machines, half of which I rescued and half of which I decomissioned (failed hard drive and borked W2K installation).

Well, after that and then making use of a day when my access enabled me to "relax" the only way a geek does after that (a spell of blogging, surfing, email etc). After that I returned from a coffee break and just on impulse I tracked down the IT department hidden in the farthest recesses of the offices.

I introduced myself as a computer consultant on the Gateway to Work new deal program and enquired if they ever engaged people on voluntary work. It was clear to me this would be the best use of my time there, but I was not sure if they could handle it. I also felt I should tell the person who would come across the machines I had tended to, especially those I had decommisioned.

His first reaction was "Have you got a CV?" Which was fair enough, but I am not sure is the best one, I foresee "issues" ahead. Howver the manager did give me his business card, and I shall make it my sample application for the process to apply to him, initially for voluntary work. I am very unsure if this might not be the job from hell if I were to work there, but it could be a means to an end. One cannot be fussy when one is out of work.

I asked if they had a data protection policy and he said they did and it is available online, so I'll take a look at that and suspect the trainers on the course are breaking it in many ways. A fellow course attendee took the address since thay have a great idea about how to resolve the issue with a simple solution (simple to me anyway!).

I also arranged to talk informally with his colleague Rob, who is the person directly responsible for the computers I worked on and the likely colleague if I did work there. We can only get together next Friday, which is actually directly after I finish the course so I guess that is good timing.

So - watch this space! The networking may not be CAT5, and it is not something I am necessarily good at, but it could be a start.

Things are looking up...

2008-11-26T06:04:00.001-08:00

Gateway to work...

And I am blogging as a break from writing my novel during the "CV surgery" (I came on this course with five CV variations all ready to go).

It is interesting to note that I can blog and access my personal sites... But if Iwere, say, to attempt to browse the Gumtree jobs category then my internet browsing would be blocked!

The IT department (cue laughter) are in hiding and they have cunningly made sure there is no identifiable office or signage to find them. But I know they exist (and I know they are thick) because I disabled a borked Windoze 2000 box with a BIOS password - and when I came back the next day the IT department had equiped said box with a mouse (it had none the day before)!!

there is more - but I want to get back to my novel writing inbetween providing IT support at varying levels to all the other people in here fighting the system!

When Wi-Fi is not your friend

2008-11-25T16:27:00.000-08:00

I made an interesting observation to someone today.

Wi-Fi can be highly undesirable. When? Well today for example I wanted to get on with writing something on my laptop. I had a lot of typing to do. I had very little time to do it in.

As it happens I sat at a table, with no Wifi connectivity (see previous post) and found I achieved far more in the limited time available than if I had connected and checked emails or found other distractions available to me.

So the next time you have something urgent to get done - consider turning off your wi-fi or internet connection, it can work wonders for your productivity and powers of concentration!

Wi Fi Monday blues

2008-11-24T09:33:00.000-08:00

So it is a Monday, but not any old Monday; oh no, this is the Monday i have to go on a New Deal Jobseekers mandatory two week training course.

Now your average Joe Blogs who knows no better might think this leads to a decent two weeks in a warm office environment with desks and computer access and facilities to hunt out the job you can nail.

Well, I hate to disillusion you, but think again. The reality (and this is just the highlights, I could rant for england on this!) includes:-

- A cold office with only chairs and no desks (When I say cold I mean around the 14oC mark, cold enough for it to be a health and safety matter).

- No access to any wi-fi whatsoever, use of laptop may be restricted and any networking is expressly forbidden (not sure how they would feel if I had a card or dongle, but I can't afford roaming broadband so the issue does not arise).

- A total of about twelve computers (two of which broken) between about sixty job seekers.

- Access to said computers severely restricted and I have yet to test it, but will not be surprised to find some job search sites and my email are barred.

- No policy on cookie and personal data clean up (inexpert users beware! click remember me and have the rest of the job seekers reading your own emails!).

- They actually stated they "TRY to comply" with data protection regulations! I think that tells you all you need to know. I did not let my memory stick out of my site when they wanted to take my CV from it!

- access to any job searching facilities or computers barred during break and lunchtimes.

- the guy running the first group I was in started his address to the group (and I kid you not) with statements like "I hate this f***ing job, I ain't gonna be here long, it is so f***ing cold in this s***hold you should all walk out..... .... they promise me the young jobseekers and they gave me you lot..." It went on, but I walked out highly offended to report him to management at this point. To my knowledge he has had no reprimand or sacking (which is what he deserves). His group did indeed walk out that very afternoon.

Sooooo I survived, but as expected it had demoralised me and put me right off searching for a job in the niow very limited time I have to do so during my evenings at home! My days are busy doing a course the government insists upon which will demoralise me progressively and intensively, remove me from the facilities to search for a job, expose me to foul language and abuse, etc etc. I spent my lunch break checking out the wi-fi possibilities in the area, which are basically limited to the library and that is a good tenminute walk away, so I'd only get ten minutes to eat and a half hour on the internet.

One positive, I was not sanctioned for using my laptop to take notes.

I have told them the IT department are incompetent and it should be a management priority to allow laptop users to have wi-fi for job searching. They are basically a bunch of incompetent idiots who are overpaid (the government funds them at a rate of some £379 per capita for the jobseekers).

Some enterprising documentary maker should expose this - it would make fun viewing for me!

Comments welcome.

And if my jobseeker gateway advisor reads this, then sorry david, it is nothing personal!

Net result

Not exactly a geek out day, but one highlight...

2008-11-23T13:04:00.000-08:00

Well, hardly surprising that the course of the day varied from my plans. And pizza box builds are not top of my priority list, just that I do want to get my daughter a box to go with the CRT I recently reclaimed from the street for her and the keyboard and mouse she has already chosen.

But there was one blogworthy moment in the day that has a geeky side to it.

Occasionally I accept the randome marketing research calls that come my way for one reasn or another. I was being nice to everyone today, so I took a call that turned out being even longer than the average. But I managed to find my entertainment in it and I'll try to give a flavour of the best part:-

Lots of questions about TV and HD-readiness....

prompting answers based around the fact that my only TV set is a 5 1/2" Black and White portable!

How many TV's in the house? One

Where is the TV? Living room

How likely to buy another TV? No chance

Interested in Cable, HD, Satellite? No way.

... and so on...

Then they turn to another aspect:-

How many computers in the house? Eight, no six, no maybe seven and three other peoples... Lots (I'm a geek)

Are you connected to the internet? Hell yes!

How long have you been connected? Since the 'net was born, an early user of the Prestel predecessor.

So, more than five years? Yes!

You have email? Yes, how many would be more the question

How often do you check email, daily, weekly, monthly? Hourly at least!

Do you join forums or sites or use chat? Yes, I run them and build them!

You get the idea. I imagine I skewed a few stats for them, since I have every intention to live with no TV whatsoever after they turn the old UHF signals off in 2012. After all... it will leave that little space for one more computer!

And I am serious about not knowing how many computers I have - it is a toughie for a geek; because do you count those CPU's you have stranded in dead mobos or without a hard drive? Are you going to count the fileserver not plugged in to keep the electricity bill down? What about the bozen in the house friends left with you to fix? The list goes on and on... it gets much worse if you take the old school view as to what a computer really is, because you average boiler, microwave, washing machine etc etc all have microprocessors that I could easily consider to be computers.

I was glad to give the researcher the odd laught though... And I felt quite proud to be a geek who does not watch a lot of TV!

Today I was so not a geek

2008-11-22T13:32:00.000-08:00

I guess you could sum it up by saying that my main achievement of the day was not any hardware assembly or software coding.

No, today I baked a couple of cakes. Tomorrow my daughter and I shall take them to Meeting for Worship, where we will sell slices with the tea after meeting to raise funds for a garden which has been reclaimed from derelict land for people with mental health issues to use.

So I feel all worthy.

And tomorrow I am hoping to really geek out with a selection of motherboard pizza builds in my continued attempts to put together a scratch system for my daughter.

My nanowrimo novel is half finished, but the month is more than half gone so that's a bit daunting.

But onwards and upwards, as they say.

Freecycling and geeks

2008-11-21T22:27:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if I am atypical of the geek population at large, or if freecycling is a separate thing from being a geek (or not).

But two or three years back I built an entire computer from roadside discards - well the total cost of the Suse P3 build with CRT and 4GB hard drive was.... £2 (for the keyboard!).

That remains my most fun and proudest build.

Recently I picked up (yet another) CRT monitor from the pavement. In this case it was pretty annoying that hey had dumped it screen down, scratching the glass, otherwise the screen is perfect and has no signs of browning out so is likely not even that old, or has been subject to no heavy usage.

It bewilders me how people discard entire systems when by and large everything is in working order!

I know no one has ever commented on this blog - but if any geeks or recyclers should pass by here - well I would be interested to hear what YOU think!

On Monday - wi-fi or no?

2008-11-21T09:51:00.000-08:00

Watch this space on Monday.

I have to goon a JMA course (it's a UK bureaucratic nightmare) for two weeks with a 13 week renewal option (four months all told more or less, worse case scenario). This puts me in a government funded training centre for my weekday daytimes.

I shall be taking my laptop(s). The questions are;

- will I even be allowed to use my laptop (other than at lunch time)?

- will there be wi-fi access?

My betting is no on both counts - to get any positive answer there will be quite the win for me. As I said, watch this space.

Fact of the day

2008-11-20T05:37:00.000-08:00

I had to disable my Webcam software to enable my Thunderbird upgrade/install to work.

Weird, but true.

Apparently it is well known on Tbird support forums, but it was a new one to me.

Barely blogworthy - cost me two hours of my life so if this post saves even one person the trouble then it was worth it!

What a geek wants (for Christmas)

2008-11-19T08:36:00.000-08:00

If you're a guy how often do you hear the line "What can I get you for Christmas, you seem to have everything a man needs?" and how often do you find you have plenty of things you think you need?

For me at least I always find plenty of gadgets and gizmos, especially around this time of year. And what self-respecting geek could ever not want just one more boxen? Or find an add on like a UPS, or a SCSI drive attractive propositions?

Anyway, this is my latest obscure object of desire for Christmas and with my birthday approaching.

Sometimes you wish you had not opened your email...

2008-11-18T05:25:00.000-08:00

Oh dear. Unlike snail mail, when you open your email you seldome have a way of filtering the "good" from the "bad" messages so easily (who cannot spot the bills in their post!).

Today I got a sad message from a recycling centre where I did some voluntary work a couple of years back. It was a really cool and forward looking project, they had a massive wormery helping compost etc. I fixed up the Access database they had paid someone for to make it useful, or at least the report from it. It was a fun assignment, not just seeing the place and what they were doing, but having to use a backwards compatible Office 2000 install for the database. Access was not exactly "fun" I have to say, but I am always up for a challenge.

Anyway, back to the email - apparently they have not got funding to progress with the scheme towards getting it self-funding. So they are closing. Just the sort of thing this economic climate should NOT be forcing, but obviously is. Big shout out to Nico at the Pepys Estate for his work (it was the setting for the documentary about "The Tower", life in a high rise council estate in London, which had a slight cult viewing too).

Don't degauss your Hard Drive!

2008-11-17T02:14:00.001-08:00

If you look at the picture you can see I have a highly unusual two "heads up" display configuration, with the primary screen ABOVE the other, rather than the more usual "landscape" choice for extending the desktop (side by side).

There is one consideration to this that did not occur to me at first, but may be worth mentioning for anyone tempted to follow my example (it means I can be highly individual and have my taskbar in THE MIDDLE and neither top/bottom/left/right!). This also explains the angle I took the shot from. You realise the leptop hard drive is at the front of the machine commonly? Well - IF that part is close to the coils that emit RF during the "degaus" process (which also happens at power up) then there is a slight possibility you could KILL the drive, because the magnetic field could cause a "head crash"! I thought it worthy of a post as a caution since a friend mentioned the danger. And I wanted to show off my middle of screen task bar.

Reasons to take multiple backups

2008-11-16T16:11:00.000-08:00

earlier today I was about to leave a friends place, where I had been working on my novel.

Before I left my host caught me and passed my my USB stick, saying you might have forgotten this. Now in fact I had forgotten it, and thanked them for their thoughtfulness.

What they did not realise was that I had written a thousand or so words and they had not "safely removed" the device.

I suspect the cache was written anyway.

But fortunately I had posted the written content to a blog anyway, so it would be possible to recover if I needed to.

Just one example - there are many - basically one backup leaves you a bit open - you need multiple stratgies and you still hope you never need to call on any of them!

When family visits

2008-11-15T11:44:00.000-08:00

I seem to allow matters geeky to take a slide, and to be honest it does not bother me. I admit as me and my stepmother tucked into a fish supper last night I heard the laptop drive chatter and got a bit nervous about the state of the nation, but I think all was well.

I tidied away a bit, but was still very conscious of the number of computers on display and that it might intimidate some people... Of course, as I pointed out, some were being repaired for friends and not all of them were mine. I guess the naked pizza box builds on my desk were a bit of a give away though ;)

Perhaps I am not a fully commited hard core geek - when other people are about I seem to adjust accordingly.

Or maybe it is just because I am trying to chill out about that website nonsense!

Website design woes

2008-11-14T06:09:00.000-08:00

Oh woe is me for I volunteered to do a website for a good cause (again!).

How familiar is this tale?

You offer to do something that you think you are good at - you know your offer is a veritable gift horse. Then the person in receipt of said offer takes it and abuses it (and thereby you) in one way or another. This happened to me with http://www.agnetamills.net some years back.

You'd think once bitten twice shy. But no, I have been and gone and volunteered again. This time for my local Quaker Meeting. I am nervous, but surely it CANNOT go wrong in the same way again, after all the Highest Authority is involved at some level! And I do not mean ICANN!

Anyway, going to stop talking about it now in case this blog post gets me into deep water with someone who is involved, you never know, do you? Anyone could read it so best I shut up in proper Quaker fashion!

Are you a gamer?

2008-11-13T08:06:00.000-08:00

Because if so then you must check this out! I hope the link works - just grabbed it from my blog!

my oh my the tangled web

2008-11-12T17:10:00.000-08:00

so I have another "secret" domain - and then I get one for an old chap I help out who grapples with email and has decided he can use a website...

I develop his site on my secret one...

I copy across...

All SEEMS good - so I delete the old.

then and ONLY then his trial site borks out on me! I spend an hour trying to fix it - then realise it takes maybe half an hour to put on a fresh install.

Most annoying - what should have taken one hour took three and a half and another day goes by with no owrds added to my novel! GGGgggrrrr

Comment "Luv" (sic)

2008-11-11T14:48:00.000-08:00

Yes well - there is this thing called "comment luv" (cues old Queen track in head!)...

You may observe there is a "badge" icon lurking in the sidebar. That is because I am registered there, with this blog too. Fact is I gave them feedback that a Java script to use the thing on my Chyrp blog over at didactic.me would not go amiss... so then I get the subscription emails and they have a contest... I search their site for a contact button... it throws up a post about putting the thing on Blogger (claims it is a fifteen minute job).

One hour later (and after correcting didgey badge HTML from them and "expanding my widgets" (Damn that sounds SO BAD!) )... Well after all that I have THIS blog registered (not the one I wanted) and I have the badge (a favour for them, obviously), but do I have the thing working here?

NOOOoooo!

The offending code snippet I am pasting below (broken up so it will post I guess, blogger has no code quote block!!):-

< src="http://jqueryjs.googlecode.com/files/jquery-1.2.6.min.js" type="text/javascript">< /script> < language="javascript" type="text/javascript">< !--//-->< ![cdata[//> < /script>

Now if anyone cares to comment and enable me to complete that process to improve my proficiency with blogger HTML and just maybe get a working java script onto my Chyrp blog someday (another favour to them).... Well then all they have to do is leave a comment with the answer.

It would be a first!

And I would LOVE it!

Are four domains too many?

2008-11-10T17:09:00.000-08:00

well - I seem to have another one now - making four anyway.

Not sure if it was laziness gone mad - but I bought a fourth to test stuff with - and ideally I would like it search engine DEoptimized or "stealthed" but the nature of the internet is such that whatever you do it is likely to get random hits.

Just no one link to it please! Ever! and of course I am not able to tell you what it is! It feels like even talking about it will have those bots crawling it.... sometimes I do not like them spiders - just wanted that domain to be my own private site where no one goes...

Ah well - it would not be the internet without it I guess...

Are three blogs too many?

2008-11-09T23:18:00.000-08:00

Some of you will be aware that although this blog links to one other, that in turn actually links to a third "blog", though technically this could be described as a site and not a blog. The third one is called "Fred Blogs" and is an adaptation of Chyrp I happily made in a few days to use as a tool to" "publish" my NaNoWriMo scribblings online as I write them. I find this a useful tool to spur me on in my writings on the one hand. On the other I believe it caused me two or three days delay in starting my NaNo efforts, because I had to do geeky fiddlings to get it just so in order that the book not only be online but be (in my view) legible.

I can tell from this experience that, for me at least, the addition of a third blog long term would be a blog too far! But I know there are some who have this many. I know I have yet to see a single comment on this Blogger blog - but it would be interesting to hear other opinions if anyone should comment now.

Incidentally, I have no tool for monitoring views on this blog, unlike the Didactic one. Didactic view counts have grown to over a thousand daily perhaps - I suspect this is more in the lower hundreds at best. Visitors are likely a tenth of this - so could one of the dozen or so readers here perhaps venture an opinion?

on being a (proud) geek....

2008-11-08T23:12:00.000-08:00

It just occurred to me as I sit in the hotel lounge (with my two laptops spread before me ;) ) that I may have given a bad impression with that remark in my last post... The one about considering hacking the WEP for wifi access in my room.

In fact I am no "black hat" hacker. No way would I do this just for the heck of it to show I can (as I imagine an inverterate hacker might). BUT I do know it is possible given the time and inclination. So IF I were to do it it would purely be for my convenience and I would be "ethical" and take no liberties of exploration to see my hotel bill or adjust it or anything like that!

I just wanted to clarify that small point. Now - back to my main clog and a little light googling to increase the fun of our returning journey (there is a cafe I want Daniel to set his satnav for!).

You know you need the internet when...

2008-11-08T09:22:00.000-08:00

you find the hotel you are checked into has wi-fi... You even bought two laptops.... But the wifi is only in the hotel lounge and not in the room.... And it matters to you....

I have thought even about hacking the key for the wifi that DOES reach my room (it is their office signal) but I do not have time :(

Yes - I guess that makes me an internet addict!

But I am geek and I am proud of it. No appologies!

Dark Matter

2008-11-07T07:34:00.001-08:00

I should really "DIGG" this news - check it out!

For me this is sexeh science ;)

I cracked something

2008-11-06T22:33:00.000-08:00

leaving the iMac matters to one side...

the XPS 1210 has been done and I will hopefully get paid something for that.

And more fun was had with me getting my other blog sorted - not the Didactic one but the one i made brand new for RC3 and linked off it - this is to hold a book I am writing this month so I had to tweak the theme to make it more readable. I think I have it right now, you can check it out if you want an idle read - it is here

SODIMM is the word!

2008-11-06T04:59:00.000-08:00

GRRRRrrr the iMac is so dim it needs the 184 pin and can only go to 512 added to the 512 to make 1GB. I am wondering though if that will be enough for OSX Leopard or if I have to run panther now - watch this space. Also the owner has balked at cost.

So maybe I'll try password recovery to get to angle to retain it just for fun to play with ;)

Fireworks, Chyrp!, FORTH, and Sodimm

2008-11-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

it may have been bonfire night and I may have had a stellar one which was fabulous for mydaughter and the select friends we had around.... BUT I did not neglect matters geeky!

I set up a Chyrp! RC3 blog to use for my NaNoWriMo book.

I populated it and adjusted it so that it displays in the order to read (fifo not lifo!).

I entered Open Firmware on the iMac G4 which was a trip down memory lane, FORTH and Assembler - like meat and veg to me! The vocab seemed to be words but it all came flooding back.... AHHhhh memories! I may have forgotten more programming than many young blades of the internet generation have learned!

And I badgered the iMac owner to authorise me to purchase Sodimm for it to take it from half to whole gig so that it can enjoy the OSX I am getting FTP'd I hope!

I think that is stellar too!

Do you know how long...

2008-11-04T12:03:00.000-08:00

...it would take to format a 320GB external USB IDE drive? Well I after several attempt with jumper settings on older drives I resorted to this mammoth beast since I had to make on on a promise for a friend... I started formatting around eleven or twelve and thought I would stay up until formatting was done....

later around 6:30 am the job was done!

I was annoyed to discover the drive (purchased new from Amazon) came with a MBR and several other partitions (no data). So it had obviously been used and returned - I may complain to them - feel I have been sold misrepresented goods.

But the long night was highly productive - I interleaved it with configuring a laptop i recovered (all those drivers to donwload!). I blogged a little and messed about. I tidied to ridiculous extremes and found myself going through old boxes - found a Win98SE Cd from days gone by! A load of crap to throw out... Then came the truly great find....

One of the reasons I had been going through external caddies and drives was to try to get back a picture from old data drives etc. I could not find it and like I said the last two drives i tried seemed to have finally curled up and died.

Then I was tidying through old CD's looking for PowerDVD for the laptop. i came across one I had burnt with pics on - the title was not one that made me think of the pic I was after - but i popped it in and LO AND BEHOLD - the pic I sought! It dovetailed nicely since it was for the person I formatted the drive for - formatting ocmpleted wshortly after and I was able to put the pic there as a present also with the drive (I like to do such things, the personal touch - also when data is precious not only back it up but spread it far and wide if it is of this sort - makes a handy other form of backup!).

Just goes to show - best to look at what is in front of your nose before you search and get elaborate. A similar thing - i went back to a shop thinking I mislaid the Torx15 kit - only to find it was in my BACK POCKET! Must be losing my marbles!

I shall leave my tale of iMac woe for another post!

One day...

2008-11-03T19:07:00.000-08:00

Maybe I'll get my desk back!

Meanwhile I guess it is a form of geek heaven - what makes me realise I am fully Geek realised is that I actually get attached to things when I am mending them and feel a sense of loss when my little "babies" return to the outside world... I'm especially attached to the PowerPC chip in the G4 iMac, the last of it's kind and a great architecture!

Piccies ....

2008-11-02T21:19:00.000-08:00

Of the Apple iMac G4 with the baseplate off - revealing four Torx 15 anti-tamper screwheads! the scredrivers are not onersouly expensive, asked a friend to borrow if he has one, but in both cases realising the recipient of my work may be a late or slow "payer" I am not proceeding without an advance to at least cover my costs!

Of the Dell M1210 when I have cracked the case (discovered the HD is dead, was fun though had to crack the password etc and it only just died during me recovering it!).

Hope they shell out - be criminal to let these not so old pieces of kit be junked for such relatively small system failures (esp. the iMac!).

Geek heaven or hell?

2008-11-02T01:03:00.001-07:00

Recently I was dropping my daughter and a friend back after a sleepover and I spotted in the house a laptop and an old style iMac. I mentioned them in passing and it transpires they are both borken. Being borrasic I mentioned I could fix them. No sooner said than I left with them stowed in my boot and now have them parked in my kitchen for my attention...

I'm sort of looking forward to it and not - the iMac seems to have a dodgey mains lead so it hardware, the PC gives a BSOD after windows boot - so a Knoppix candidate (now WHERE did I put that CD?!)....

RC3 out!

2008-11-01T09:38:00.000-07:00

... and I never even made it to RC2!

Information textbooks

2008-10-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

In the wee small hours this morning I heard "Digital Planet" on the BBC World Service (excellent geek listening!) and they featured something called "Information textbooks". At first I was "set to stunned" and only vaguely listening because I had assumed it was some sort of e-book thing. Well, turns out it is and it isn't. It got me to thinking how much the world has changed.

For those too lazy to click the link yet, an extract;

"Intelligent books are different, because the information they present is only partly composed by the authors: most of an intelligent book is dynamically constructed and accumulated through conversations with its readers. More concretely, an intelligent book understands the principles and strategies of the subject matter, and uses those to answer questions, to fill in details, and to accumulate new examples as suggested by the conversations with its readers."

This is subtly but significantly different from both Wikkipedia and from e-books. I thought how clever and potentially useful this could be for students and for research in general. It is a bit like then I have seen notes in Library books or review slips which they sometimes put in, but it is also so much more with the way it can dynamically link in from many sources. Truly this must make a text book "come alive" for the reader!

2008-10-28T16:12:00.000-07:00

GitHub is the new cool thing for me! If you code or even document, have any open source leanings, or even the mildest interest then check it out! Needless to say I am mainframeguy over there also ;)

WOOOOoooo HOOOoooo - and on the 7th day there was BLOG!

2008-10-27T18:21:00.000-07:00

OK, so persistence is a great thing. Especially when rewarded. I knew that in theory and with a clear headed approach all the goodness of my old blog could be rebuilt. And it has!

But it is better than that, because I kept alive the evil new broken blog too. Why you may ask? Well, next time I go for the upgrade I shall have copies of everything and shall see it working for myself and only then "switch" between the two. A simple idea, but it was a right pain to execute... I had to get to grips with the fact that my .htaccess files were being over written by the Cpanel redirecting - that was good to discover. Then I needed to introduce a one liner skeleton index.php at the domain level to point to the relevant Chyrp directory, last but not least I had to get the config.yaml files right. I think that was all? Oh no - yeah - had to have a RewriteRule in the htaccess and point it the right way from Cpanel too.

Invaluable in me finding my way was MisterBrandt over in the Chyrp! support forums. He wrote this minimalist guide which proved invaluable in enabling me to puzzle things out for myself. Now I am sorting and squaring away backups and deleting redundant tables etc - so all whall be ship shape and Bristol fashion for whatever I decide to do next (likely selective sidebar for registered users only)... I need to get to grips with theming too...

Well anyway, I have the infrastructure there now to facilitate this kind of thing. So we'll see.

Site traffic at didactic.me

2008-10-24T23:47:00.001-07:00

this is odd, but I just checked stats and the visits to my site have NOT dropped off dramatically, yet the bandwidth has! Maybe some people even like it better this way?

Well - on another check the visits are tailing slightly now too... In either case my present strategy is to persist with the slightly broken blog, not to use the site level backup except as a very last resort (largely due to the fact it is almost a week before the event). More significantly, there is no reason I can see why it SHOULD not be possible to rebuild an RC1 environment at the same time as keeping the diodgey RC2 I have there now... then when I get it working right move contents back to it.

From there I get to have a go at moving to RC2 again - but this time I shall do it in a manner where I keep the existing stuff live (I hope!). This would make the changeover like flicking a switch - you'll only notice because of the new goodies!

However, I seem terribly busy with *sigh* just LIFE stuff - and after what I went through blogging seems a luxury... so watch this space (again!)

Why I am happy with Blogger

2008-10-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

this is almost a more considered and also expanded version of the previous post. I feel the need for blogging, of course! and also feel a need to justify having a blog here at all when my main blogging should be "elsewhere"!

firstly - it has high availability and seems reliable (even if the outages to my prime blog are of mine own making currently sometimes that may be out of my control entirely, as was the case in the timescale and confusion of this outage!).

secondly - the secondary blog has found a place to host my tech content and (as we see) give "backup blog" when required.

thirdly - I have a friend here and can help them with widget and the like for their own blog

lastly - I can link back and forth between the blogs.

Perhaps I am essentially schizoid in my blog personae! Who knows. It is good as it has turned out, made a positive from quite a negative scenario. Also has made me reconsider the timing of my upgrading, since I know most of my (admitedly small audience) is Stateside I shall perform my site editting during daytime GMT, making it the wee small hours and early AM stateside.

I think that is all on the reasons front. To drift a little from the topic... my latest strategem for the upgrading of my site is to try a rolling back to the very first Chyrp! RC1 (which will likely NOT have video, music, or pictures!) then, add the things I did to make it "cool" so getting back to where I was on October 20th. THEN TAKE FULL BACKUP! then and only then try going to RC2 again, after first ascertaining how much of my extended functionality is available to me. And to try to do this on a basis where I keep both releases and databases available to me. I think I have a better understanding of what is going on here now and with the table changes and so on understood may be able to do this.

It is impossible for me to say WHEN I can do this - mainly due to a very busy "real" life with half-term and choral performances and writing a novel in November. However, all of those subjects are not for this blog, but for the others one which, sadly, I like to write on less whilst it looks somewhat sad and does not support comments. I should do something - postwise there now but I find I cannot manage both (I feel "blogged out" after one post!). I'll try to backlink when I do and am ever hopefull that some of my posts there which link here may attract comments here for me - because this commenting will work. That could be a fifth reason! Which neatly brings me back on topic to close the post!

belay that order!

2008-10-23T22:55:00.000-07:00

GOING TO PERSEVER A LITTLE BEFORE i TAKE SUCH DRASTIC ACTION AS LOSING MAYBE A WEEKS POSTS IF i HAVE TROUBLE PULLING THEM BACK

backup ahoy!

2008-10-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

I have decided to roll back to a tar I made on the 14th October - just taken my database down, ignoring the RC2 posts and so should in theory be able to get things back close to where I had them - of course there will be a bit of development I have to redo for sure - but hopefully it will not take me so long doing things I already did before. So long as I can remember what they were!

We'll see - I feel relaxed about it now.

At the risk of repeating myself

2008-10-23T11:24:00.000-07:00

I still feel the need to say this again. I cannot quite believe it- but you have to laugh at the end of the day!:-

"...and - the latest update in the saga is that the backups are taken daily but not archived… I am in a peculiar limbo because I have made my own backup but cannot use it to recover. Going to explore whether my hosting guy can take it and supply it to the real hosting company - it must be the same format (a little large for my bandwidth - but not for theirs - could always post a DVD or something as last resort even a CD ISO would take it I think maybe…

anyway - like I say - all bets are off for recovery and life shall be very busy what with half term and so on. But I may blog a little and EVENTUALLY this blog will start to look half decent again!"

I need to save this!

2008-10-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

Due to the credit crunch my father and I had an arguement - so I want to save this so that I can tell him we were both right!

Quadrillion is the right name, but the number of zeroes is a bit of a contentious issue - the more common version gives billion = 10^9, trillion = 10^12 then quadrillion = 10^15, a one thousandfold increase each time. The older,'English' version is billion = 10^12 (a million million instead of a thousand million) with trillion =10^18 (a million million million instead of a thousand thousand million) and quadrillion = 10^24 (which is fairly obviously derived). Very few people use the latter version now, as the newer 'American' version has replaced it pretty much everywhere except in old books. So you could possibly both be right. Hope this helps!

Didactic update (lack of) CAPS LOCK DAY and mIRC chyrping

2008-10-22T22:26:00.000-07:00

You may find this blog appars quite busy during the time I am waiting for my own blog to come back - than it will suddenly go quiet until such time as some tech issue hits me.

OK - I could be paranoid and be thinking along the lines of, “if you build it they will come”…. leading me to the feeling of “if you destroy it they will all run away”!

But I prefer to think that anyone who has been interested enough to visit the site might have a level of patience or possibly even a sharpened interest in what happens when my didactic site is recovered. I’ve been waiting over 48 hours now… so I am no longer going to make any forecasts.

PS excuse me for ensuing notifiction - IT WAS INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY YESTERDA! HONEST TO GOODNESS IT WAS!!

enough silliness - below is a copy paste of an idea I want to remind myself which the StarDust theme author and I bounced around in Chyrp IRC - it will give me something to write up in the forums if I ever have an idle moment.

[05:28] yea, i run the latest git revision whenever possible

[05:28] i've been on hold over the past couple days

[05:28] due to the tag changes

[05:28] and BTW - you picked a neat IRC nick - keeps you way down the googling (unlike moi!)

[05:29] * Mainframeguy nods

[05:29] fixed now - you must be happy bunny

[05:29] but i usually crash test his releases as soon as they come out

[05:29] thanks

[05:29] not entirely fixed, i need to run the upgrader

[05:29] ah

[05:29] which isn't fixed yet

[05:29] ah

[05:30] you're making me nervous

[05:30] about attempting upgrade again

[05:30] i'd hold off until he completes the tagginator migration

[05:30] I see a few others looking good on RC2 no probs though

[05:31] yeah - so first visibility of that would be on download page? (I am quite the n00b)

[05:31] rc2 is probably fine

[05:31] git is even newer

[05:31] sorry, i misread from the beginning

[05:31] sure - but that is source level, right?

[05:31] yea, git is what he changes from day to day

[05:31] rc2 came out on oct 12

[05:31] I am pending on unix boxen

[05:32] so the one on chyrp.net is from oct 12

[05:32] remote host makes me avoid git

[05:32] I know I should get over that

[05:32] how long is it from git to downloads page?

[05:32] i just download the zip from github and use winscp to overwrite files

[05:32] I need to change my ways

Chyrp RC2 fail

2008-10-21T14:44:00.001-07:00

Today I was asked "are there stairs in your house" in #Chyrp on Freenode.

'nuff said on THAT score.

Memes aside - I seem to have become a blogaholic to the extent that when my Chyrp upgrade from RC1 to RC2 failed and I had to ask for a site backup (bit drastic for a restor, I know - but I am keen to be a "useful" beta for Alex Suraci and help others suffer less pain on the upgrade.

The waiting on the backup has dragged on a bit, and seven hours or so is about my limit for IRC so, with my Chyrp! blog at didactic.me out of action I gradually gestated the idea to have a "vanilla" blog here in which I shall talk exclusively of Chyrp and matters, shall we say, gravitating towards the geeky.

If you are wondering what Chyrp does - well it blogs... and it can be used in many and varied ways - but it is young code and unbloated (which I tend to find Wordpress blogs to be). I like it because I can code a bit and it gives me scope to do that in combination with writing (on the blog of course!) Which I also enjoy. I'm not pimping my blog as the best example of what you can do with Chyrp! - in fact right now it is possibly the WORST! Then again it IS broken right now.

I shall try to remember to post here if I find a site which I regard as a stunning example of it being used in a way that may not be to my exact tastes (hopefully that will be mine own). The closest I can come to that right off the bat MIGHT be AlisonW's so take a look if you like. She is pretty cool in herself - made a couple of extensions and might have more in the pipeline (that's how we came to be in contact).

This is probably enough for an openning post. Because the next thing I am going to do is see just how much I get tied down by Blogger (probably QUITE a lot by comparison with the freedom I am used to). This is in large part due to the wonderful Marmite Lover - who asked me to see if she could do a few things emulating my blog (before I borked it).

Got to find something to do when I cannot blog or tweak my site pending the backup! And frankly starting this blog is a cheap way for me to have a secondary blog and try to keep any "geek creep" from infecting my blog... reminds me of the term future creep I just heard - a whole new take on creeping elegance!

PS - the dark theme is not entirely to my tastes, but is in tribute to the Chyrp! site, given the subject matter of the blog's inception.