Another Casualty

Seems that my external 250GB external USB drive got damaged too with the Power supply/rebooting type issues recently.

Ah well, it’s an excuse to get rid of it – it was just too bloody noisy in normal use to leave switched on/connect all the time, and did have an habit of not coming back on line if the PC had been suspended for any length of time.

So today I have ordered a LaCie 1TB NAS from the BT shop, for about £120 (delivered) I get a 1TB store, with a Gigabit Ethernet connection.  Should be enough to hold everything several times over… for now at least.  Not in stock at present, so that should be about 3 or 4 weeks.

IE8 RC1

I installed Internet Explorer 8, Release Candidate 1 last night, you can get a copy at www.microsoft.com/ie8.

So far, nothing really to report, it feels similar to IE7, a bit prettier, but most importantly – nothing is broken this time.  Last time I tried IE8, too many pages just didn’t work.

So far, so good!

£1.12

The cost per day in fuel to travel to work and back on the Bandit 650 is approximately £1.12.

The interesting fact that can be extracted from this snippet of information is that with the heated grips on, I get about 20 miles less to  a tank of fuel, which mean that the cost of running the grips in cold weather is approximately 14p per day.

New Monitor

Today I took delivery of my new BenQ G2400WT 24” Wide screen monitor (1920x1200) from CCL, and it is completely magnificent!

My ‘old’ 20” Monitor is now in Amy’s room, and here 19” CRT Monitor with the dodgy red gun has been taken to the local tip.

Basically, since the PC is running so much better now after new MotherBoard, HDD and Power Supply I have decided to hold off on the new PC till much later in the year, so now seemed like a good time to get a new monitor.

Audible.co.uk

I have today started a membership at Audible.co.uk, for approx £8 per month you get one free book per month, and – it seems - a free book for joining.

I have just downloaded “Children of Dune” by Frank Herbert, (17 Hours – None Member price £17) and “CrossBones” by Kathy Reichs (Unfortunately the abridges version at 6 hours – Non member price £11.70)

So… First month: £28.70 worth of books for £8.

Back Working (Again!)

I am getting much quicker at this re-installing Windows lark, from start to working system , all common utilities loaded, all major apps loaded, and probably 90% of all my normal ‘tweaks’ completed – a fraction under 5 hours!

Lets see how long it runs for this time!

And so it goes on…

Got a 570Watt supply from Maplin’s this morning, 1p under £40, but with all the connections I need – 4xSATA 4xAUX etc.

Took it home and fitted it, and that’s when I found that the HDD was not even spinning up!  Took it out for a look, and saw that some component on the controller card was blown out!!

A trip to PCWorld at Birmingham, resulted in an Hitachi 750GB SATA drive (£90!!!!), It is bloody fast tho’  Copying 81GB of MP3’s across from the backup drive was an impressive 45 to 51 MB/Sec, the previous Samsung drive was 28 to 32 MB/Sec, and I had been impressed with that!

Ah well, lets re-install windows again :-(

Oh Crap!!

Afetr running really well for a number of days, yesterday, my PC rebooted in mid use, and on powering back up - Invalid Boot device etc.!

After several failed attempts to reboot, removal of the 2nd SATA HDD, removal of the ATA DVD ROM drive - still nothing... Then Bang/Flash/Smell of burning.

I am assuming that the power supply is the problem, and will replace it today with one from PC World - I just hope no damage has been done to the Motherboard :-(

Woot!

Motherboard arrived (well was collected from CityLink) last night, and after a hour of intensive surgery, the machine powered back up.

Vista 64 is running quite well on one of the partitions at the moment, and a ‘Windows Rating’ test show that my memory speed has increased from 4.2 to 5.3 for the same DIMMS!  Looks like the new Mobo is an improvement!

The Vista install took from about 22:00 to 00:00 last night, but most of the ‘Utility’ class apps are now on, and the first two waves of windows updates.  Bit more ‘Tweaking’ to do, and then get down to installing  Office, Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

Argggggggh!

The Desktop PC is pretty well toast again at the moment. It keeps locking up whilst in use, reboot by itself, and losing contact with the Disks... Looks like the 500 GB drive may not have died after all!

Spoke to CCL Tech suppprt line yesterday, and we came to the conclusion that the Motherboard is faulty. Bearing in mind I want a complete new machine soon, I really don't want to spend too much cash on getting this one working again, but it does need to be a worker, so that Amy can have it.

Turns out that for £25+VAT I can get a suitable replacment Abit MoBo, that will support up to 2.4 GHz CPUs, only support 4GB RAM (DDR2 533 max), only take two SATA drives, only has 1 ATA port - but guess what? That is exactly what I need to fit back onto it!

Ordered it yesterday, should be delivered on Monday, so yet another Windows rebuild to look forward to next week.

Oh Bugger!

Yesterday I finally conceded defeat, the 240GB HDD I have been using with Vista 64 is just too small and too slow.  I need to replace the drive.

I purchased a 750 GB Samsung drive (7200 rpm, 32 MB Buffer, SATA II) for £65 from PC World, and when I got home installed it into the PC.

I then downloaded a trial copy of Acronis True Image 2009, as it is supposed to be a fully working version for 14 days, and has the capability to ‘clone drives’

After I installed it, a reboot was required – BSOD Boot Loop!!

After a lot of messing about, I have started re-installing Vista (32 bit this time) on the new drive.  Last night was a late one, but I am almost back up and working, OS updates, Office, most of the Music, Pictures and Video files are back over.

Still on the ToDo list:

Photoshop & Dreamweaver, restore ‘My Documents’ and configure Outlook.

No doublt I will find other stuff to put back on over the next few days, but for now it’s looking pretty useful.

Windows 7 Beta

I have downloaded the .iso image, but given the recent problems with my desktop PC, I am not prepared to risk it on there, and not too sure if it will work properly on the laptop – Vista fails to load working drivers for the wireless!

May have to wait till I get new PC and I can try it on the newly designated “old PC” ;-)

Warming up

I thought the external temperature gauge in the car was broken this morning… the – sign was missing from the front of the number! 

In fact I will be turning the central heating back to ‘timed’, it has been on 24x7 for well over a week now.  I have found from previous winters, that it is actually cheaper to have it on continuous but with the thermostat turned really low, than on timed with the stat turned up.

But sods law looks to be in force again, I was hoping to go golfing tomorrow, but the forecast is for heavy rain and 20 mph winds!

Interesting software…

If you have a Canon compact digital camera.

Ever waned to be able to save in RAW format from your compact, or have a live histogram?  What about exposures up to 64 seconds, flash sync at 1/60000th or exposure bracketing !  Then you need “Canon Hack Development Kit”  You can even script your camera to fire on motion detection!!

Check http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK for full details, of features and supported models.

Unfortunately, my “IXUS 85 is” isn’t supported yet, but development is proceeding apace, and there should be a functional port within a week or two.

Getting there

As the week progressed, call volumes have gently increased, and the boredom level has dropped and the temperatures, whilst still low are now at least higher than zero.

The one thing that has not got better is the traffic.  The road works on the Hagley Road have re-opened after their xmas break, and it is complete chaos again.  Even on the bike, the ride home is terrible, and a good 5 minutes longer than ‘Normal’, I just hope they finish soon.

Today is my first ‘Long Weekend’ of the year, and due to the remaining frost, the golf course is mostly closed, and it is forecast heavy rain for Monday!

Amy’s new handset arrived on Tuesday evening, and I requested the old number be ported, that is due for completion today, but the 3 PAYG SIMS that were supposed to be sent, were in fact SIM only Monthly contracts.  I had to call Orange and cancel those, and an now awaiting delivery of the re-ordered PAYG SIMS.

So Much for Normal!

I had hopes that Monday would mark the return to ‘Normality’ – traffic, meal, work etc.  No Such Luck!!

Monday morning was –4C with almost an inch of snow, and whilst the mains roads would not be a problem, as usual the estate was not a good place to try riding a powerful motorbike.  So with great reluctance I used the bus.

It took 40 minutes to travel the 5.5 miles to work, and then we had no work!!!  Only 5 calls between 7 people all day.  I watched Rambo (2008) and Hancock to pass the time!

The journey home was equally great, 55 minutes for the 5.5 miles, stood up for the first 20 minutes.

No wonder there is a reluctance to leave the car at home, and use public transport – 105 minutes for an 11 mile round trip (6.3MPH!!!) and to add insult to injury, the prices have just been increased by 12%. £3.40 return!!!!

This morning is still frozen over, but I am going to risk the bike for the 200 yards to the main road.

Panto

Yesterday (Saturday) afternoon we went to the Hippodrome in Birmingham to see Robin Hood starring John Barrowman (Capt Jack from Torchwood / Dr Who)…

Verdict – Excellent.  Apart from JB, the only other well known (to me at least) face was Don Maclean (Friar Tuck), but everyone was pretty darn good, and Titan the Amazing Giant Robot was fantastic!

It seems that the exact same show will be running in Cardiff this Christmas, so if you are in the are, check it out ;-)

2009 already!

Well the year has started off rather chilly, and I have not done much today, apart from top up the bird feeder in the garden, I hope it is a little warmer in the morning, negative temperatures on the bike are not fun, even with heated grips!

After a rather late night out at Jackie & Pete’s, I had a rare ‘lie in’ this morning – 10:30!! and even so, am still rather tired, so it will be an early(ish) night tonight… back at work in the morning.  Meals have been a bit random again today – a combined lunch and breakfast at 11:30, a piece of cake at 13:00 and finally tea at 19:00…  Not much chance of things improving tomorrow either – We have a 40th birthday party at 19:30!

On Saturday, we have a couple of missions to accomplish in the morning – Latin dance shoes and a bus pass for Amy – before heading off to the Hippodrome in Birmingham for the Panto.

I am almost looking forwards to next Monday, with normal traffic, a reasonable workload to pass the time, and proper meals at my normal times!  And yes, you did read that right, I am at work on a Monday!!!  I have gone more for the Friday to Monday 4 day weekends every other week for the start of the year.

The next thing I have to get sorted out is the mobile phones, Amy has been nagging me for a while to replace the Samsung D600 with a Samsung U900 ‘Soul’ in pink, and as my BT Mobile contract has now expired, I can do something about it. Looks like we will be going to Orange, where I can get a Soul in pink for free on sub £20 per month contract (200 minutes, unlimited texts) and two PAYG SIM’s with a bonus 300 text messages for free.  Even if I take out the ‘insurance’ on the phone (£6 per month – covering damage, loss, theft etc) it is still a saving of £20 to £25 per month on what I am paying now!

Still been sorting out little bits of PC config etc., and have made sure that I have backed up again after every single change!!  Nothing like bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted eh?