Category: Personal

Lack of Updates!?

Alright, so the sudden flurry of posts at the start of the month soon died out! Lol!

But why the sudden activity, and then nothing?

I was going to try and start posting more often, not long posts, just short ones, little snippets of information and short stories about nothing in particular.

Well, I had two in mind, but as always, I just never got around to it! Lol!

Not much has happened, the only two things that I can think of is that my girlfriends oldest brother became a dad, they called him Liam and he was born on the 6th of August.

The other is that I have started working on a new site style, and seeing as I have a week off I haven’t touched it! Lol!

It’s in the same style as the current style, but I’m going to rearrange where the sub menu’s appear, and the layout of posts and comments. This will mainly affect the blog side of my site, but I might bring some of the changes into other areas of my site.

New Phone!!!

I’ve got a new phone! It’s not the best or the latest, but it doesn’t need to be, I only text and make the occasional call.

It’s got bluetooth, FM radio, music player and a camera, four more things than my last one did! Lol!

It’s the Samsung E250, it is a slide action phone with a nice big clear screen on it, at least bigger than my old one! Lol!

But I’m not to sure about the keypad, it’s recessed inside the phone and is hidden when the phone is closed. This makes the keypad small, especially for typing texts!

It’s still new, so I’m still getting use to it!

Speed Camera’s

The other day when I saw a car drive straight through the red light on a pedestrian crossing, I had a brain wave!

Why not put speed camera’s on every traffic light, and pedestrian controlled light’s!?

My reasoning is thus:

  1. They will prevent more accidents occurring from drivers jumping red lights.
  2. They well cause less accidents from drivers suddenly slowing down when they spot a speed camera.
  3. They might probably generate more money!

Of course, with the numbers needed to cover every traffic light the money generated would be less per camera than it currently is.

Yes, this is the crazy kind of thoughts that run through my head!

Failed MOT!

My car went in for its MOT in Monday, and failed!

It failed on two things:

  1. The offside constant velocity joint gaiter is split
  2. And the nearside MacPherson strut has excessive movement

There was also an advisory saying that the offside MacPherson strut has slight movement.

Luckily she passed the emissions!

I’ve now got 10 days to get the faults fixed and take the car back in for a free retest.

Kung Fu Panda

* * * Spoiler Alert! * * *

We managed to get to the cinema in time at 20:25, but the queues were long and we thought we would miss the beginning!

Luckily when we got the front of the queue the film hadn’t started, even though it was 20 minutes after the advertised start time!

Most of the people there was to see Mamma Mia, the previous viewing sold out, so some of them had come back. When we got to the front one of the staff came out and said that that viewing of Mamma Mia was now sold out!

Back to Kung Fu Panda…

You know those old Kung Fu films? With those seemingly impossible moves?
Yeah? Well this film has loads of them although animated though!

The story is about a lazy panda, named Po, that accidentally becomes the chosen “Dragon Warrior”. Despite having no real life experience of Kung Fu, Master Shifu must find a way to train Po and make him a Kung Fu Master

He must then fight Tai Lung, a snow leopard.

I’ve read reviews about Kung Fu Panda, saying that with the big names doing the voices in the film, we don’t get to see (hear?) them often. For example, Jackie Chan is the voice of Monkey, but I don’t remember ever hearing Monkey speak!

It’s a funny film, great for kids, but also for the adults.

Off to the Cinema

I’m going to the cinema tonight to watch Kung Fu Panda with my girlfriend

We’ll be using the free cinema tickets I got from eating a load of chocolates!

The only thing is, it’s only valid at Cineworld Cinemas
And the only one in Bristol is in Hengrove, the other side of the city!
Still, it should only take us about 20 minutes to get there.

If we don’t get lost!!!

Fire at The Grand Pier in Weston-super-Mare

Some breaking news!

The Grand Pier in Weston-Super-Mare has been destroyed by fire!

It started about 7am this morning and looks to have started at the base of the west tower.
It seems to only be the pavilion part that has been destroyed

Read more at the following news sites:
BBC News
The Guardian
Sky News

Three Week Update!

Its been three weeks since I last blogged!!?? Whats going on!!!??? Lol!

For a start I’ve been back from holiday for just over a week now, I was going to post before leaving, but to be honest on the day it was too hectic that I just didn’t have any time to post!

My Flickr photos are up for viewing on Flickr and from the photo section!

The holiday, like last years was a week in Jersey. The ferry left Weymouth at 10am on Sunday 29th June, and arrived back in Weymouth at 23:45 on Sunday 6th July, seven hours late!

This year we drove down the night before and slept (read: closed eyes and pretended to sleep!) in a lay-by outside Weymouth and drove down to the harbour in the morning.

The holiday went fast! This year, instead of going around visiting loads of attractions we spent most of our time on a beach! But we did visit the Lavender Farm again!

Friday evening and during the later part of Saturday the wind picked up! On Sunday, after we had packed up the car and ready to leave, we were told that the ferry had been delayed for six hours and would not be due in until 18:20.

We spent the rest of the day driving around the north coast of Jersey stopping at some the beaches and looking at the rough seas! I also took that opportunity to fill the car’s tank up.

We found a garage that was selling petrol for 89.99 pence a litre. I picked up the pump and it read 99.99 pence a litre. When I went in to pay there was 10% off the price of petrol!
I only managed to put 25.53 litres in, but it only cost me £22.95!

We got to the ferry terminal for six, and the ferry did not turn up until seven.

I think we didn’t set off for Guernsey until about half past seven. And boy was it rough! We was going slow because of the sea, and nothing was open! At times all you could see out of the windows was the sea on one side, and the sky on the other!

During that leg of the journey the duty free shop was only open for five minutes before we got to Guernsey for people departing at Guernsey.
We stayed in Guernsey harbour for an hour to let the seas die down a bit. We left at half past nine.

We brought our stuff from the duty free shop as soon as it was open. We didn’t really have any time to look around as we were all holding onto the shelving just to stay upright!

I spent about an hour up on deck facing the way we had just come trying to settle my stomach and not be sick. It was quite interesting watching the horizon, it would raise up and the sink down, and at the same time it would be moving diagonally first sloping off to the right, and then the left.

After five minutes of me going back inside I filled up one and a half sick bags!

We docked in Weymouth at about 23:45. We found the lay-by we slept in the week before and attempted to sleep!
We set off in the morning at about six and got home about half past eight!

My Flickr photos are up for viewing on Flickr and from the photo section!

Playing with new Computers!

My last post was about me playing about with old computers, the update is that I have reverted back to Puppy Linux as Zenwalk Linux kept throwing up “Disabling IRQ #10 – Nobody cares” and that was the IRQ the network card was using so I would lose the network!

This post is about me playing with new computers, or more specifically, I was building a new computer for my mum.
The computer I built is loosely based around my computer, its got a similar motherboard, the same memory and power supply, and its got my processor!

I brought myself a faster processor and a heat sink and I put my old processor in my mums computer!

Here’s a handy hint for trying to remove the heat sink from a processor, make sure the processor and heat sink is warm, because when the thermal paste is cold, it sticks like super glue!

Yes, I did manage to pull the processor out of its socket just by trying to get the heat sink off 😳 lol!
I also had trouble putting the new heat sink on to the new processor, I applied the thermal paste alright, I just could not get the clips to clip into place! And I swear all of the thermal paste has squeezed out of the sides!
I’ll find out when I next try to remove the heat sink! 😀

Till next time
Happy building!

Playing with old Computers!

These past two weeks since I last posted I’ve been showing some old computers the “free” way!
I sent Windows 98SE to the recycle bin, and installed Linux! Or more specifically I first installed Puppy Linux, and then Zenwalk Linux

I got Puppy running on one, but the x windows system wouldn’t start up, so I switched to a second computer, and got it installed and running! The wireless network worked straight out of the box, except that it I had to unhide the network SSID for it to connect!
I ditched Puppy because I just couldn’t get the wireless started on boot-up!

So I went with Zenwalk Linux. It installed without a hitch, the desktop runs a little slow but I’m going to see if I can get another one installed instead.
But wireless didn’t work, so I had no connection to the internet, and the kernel module for the wireless card wasn’t installed by default. I managed to get the files needed onto the computer, but it stopped compiling with an error.
Luckily the NDIS wrapper program was installed so I could use the Windows driver provided with the network card on Linux.
I downloaded the install program from the Belkin website
~ $ cd Download/f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0
f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0 $ ls -l
total 23796
-rw-rw-r-- 1 anthony anthony 24333824 2008-06-01 20:26 f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0.exe
f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0 $ unzip -a f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0.exe
Archive: f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0.exe
inflating: start.exe [binary]
inflating: files/._setup.exe [binary]
inflating: files/rt2500.cat [binary]
inflating: files/Rt2500.inf [text]
inflating: files/Rt2500.sys [binary]
inflating: files/Rt25009x.sys [binary]
inflating: files/setup.exe [binary]
inflating: manual/._manual.pdf [binary]
inflating: manual/manual.pdf [binary]
inflating: other/.DS_Store [binary]
inflating: other/._.DS_Store [binary]
inflating: other/._ar500enu.exe [binary]
inflating: other/._flashmain.swf [binary]
inflating: other/._icon.ico [binary]
inflating: other/ar500enu.exe [binary]
inflating: other/flashmain.swf [binary]
inflating: other/icon.ico [binary]
inflating: AUTORUN.INF [text]
f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0 $ ls -l
total 27104
-rw-rw-r-- 1 anthony anthony 45 2004-10-25 18:45 AUTORUN.INF
-rw-rw-r-- 1 anthony anthony 24333824 2008-06-01 20:26 f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0.exe
drwxrwxr-x 2 anthony anthony 4096 2008-06-03 12:43 files
drwxrwxr-x 2 anthony anthony 4096 2008-06-03 12:43 manual
drwxrwxr-x 2 anthony anthony 4096 2008-06-03 12:43 other
-rw-rw-r-- 1 anthony anthony 3343706 2004-08-24 10:41 start.exe
f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0 $
And it worked! I got it connected and onto the internet in no time at all, and the best bit, it connects to the network while its booting up!

I haven’t decided yet, but I might either go back to Puppy, or install a different distro, maybe DSL or Vector Linux