Backups

Now that the NAS device is on the network, and contains a set of Documents, Music, Pictures and Video’s with over 700GB still fee, I have freed up 120GB on my 2nd hard drive.

Call me paranoid, but I am still keeping an occasional backup of Music and Pictures on this drive in addition to the network backup…  Well, both the laptop and Amy’s computer have full access to the backup, so I can’t be 100% sure that they won’t delete something accidentally…

But then just to confirm my paranoia, I have just signed up for a 15 day free trial with Carbonite, who offer “unlimited online storage” for $49.95 per year, which even with the terrible exchange rate at present is only 67p  per week.  The initial backup may actually take most (or more!) of the 15 day trial to complete: My ‘user’ folder is 192 GB, well it will certainly test their “unlimited” claim ;-)

Twitter

I now have an account on twitter, you can see the last 5 updates over to the side of my blog page, but why not get your own twitter account and follow me, then tell all your friends to get a twitter account and follow you etc.

See the “Getting Started” FAQ at twitter.com

Strictly Come Dancing - Live

Today was the day to take the Girls to the NEC to see the penultimate SCD Live Tour show (last one is this evening).  The travel arrangements were complicated slightly by the car window issue, but we arrived, by train, at the NEC in plenty of time for a ‘Danish and Coffee’ at BB’s before getting to our seats some 5 minutes before the main event started.

The show was excellent, the dancing was fantastic, and the entertainment value was thro’ the roof! Julian insulted the judges magnificently, and after telling everyone that “Dancing is my life”, then proceed to claim that he was in fact a local but from the Lozzells area of Birmingham, and the fact that he has been know as a ‘Brum Bum’ for years was just more proof!!

Judges Scores for Ballroom
Tom 40
Gethin 39
Jill 39
Rachel 38
Cherie 37
Jodie 36
Kenny 32
Julian 29

Judges Scores for Latin
Tom 39
Cherie 38
Kenny 24
Jodie 34
Rachel 39
Gethin 37
Julian 23
Jill 40

Total Score:
Tom 79
Jill 79
Rachel 77
Gethin 76
Cherie 75
Jodie 70
Kenny 56
Julian 52

Result of Audience Vote, and therefore Winner:
Julian and Lilia
Runner Up
Tom and Camilla

After arriving back at Brindleyplace to collect the car, we visited the “Mash House” and had Sausage and Mash… fantastic!!  Finally arrived back home at about 18:10, only for the car window to decide to close itself!!

Damn!

Out this afternoon, parked up, locked the car – rear window opened!!

Seems the rear nearside electric window has decided it wants to stay down in the door all the time.  Unable to leave the car, I had to drive around to try and find a mechanic – at 16:00 on a Saturday??  The man at Halfords did have a look, but was not able to do anything in the available time (they close at 16:30).

So tonight, the car has a black bin liner taped over the opening, and the car is parked on next doors drive, really close to their wall. Good job they are away tonight!

Worst part of it is, that we are going to the NEC tomorrow afternoon (Strictly Come dancing – live), and won’t be able to take the car, as I am not happy about parking it up with an open window, so we have to go out even earlier and try to catch the train from New Street to Birmingham International, and then walk.  At least I can drive into Birmingham and park in the secure underground car park at work – otherwise we would have had to caught the bus into town and back!!

NAS Drive – Soon!

Had an e-mail this morning… The NAS drive is back in stock and was despatched Friday.

It is currently in the DHL depot at Sandwell, that's only about 5 miles from home, so with luck should be delivered Monday ;-) Just hope I'm actually in when they try!!

Back Massage

I spent a very enjoyable hour in a Chinese  herbalist store today having acupuncture. Massage and ‘Hot Cupping’ on my back in an attempt to relieve some of the pain in my back, neck and shoulder.

All in it cost £40, and not sure how much good the acupuncture has done (yep, I am a bit of a sceptic) but it was damn relaxing!!  The hot cupping was ‘weird’ and has left a number of circular bruises on my back, but was not unpleasant.  The massage, however, was to die for!!  Really deep powerful work on a couple of really tight muscle groups left me feeling great afterwards.

Overall verdict: Well worth the cash! (I really want my new mattress!!)

The Credit Crunch explained

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

OK, back to XP…

Had to concede defeat on the laptop running Windows 7.  Don’t get me wrong, loved the OS, but just could not handle to pathetic video performance.

Even games like Solitaire were unplayable, utube vids were 1 fps (or slower) etc.  in short the machine was close to unusable in any meaningful definition.  Problem is the video hardware was obsolete even before Vista came out, and no  drivers have been produced for anything newer than XP, and they failed to load correctly in Vista.

Re-formatted the HDD last night and reloaded the original ACER factory build from the recovery CD’s.  Tonight I need to connect it to the interweb and download a shed full of updates, but I think I will download the ‘offline’ XP SP3 to the thumb drive, and at least install that first…!

Audio Book Update

Finished Kathy Reich’s Cross Bones It was all a little confusing at times – keeping track of all the Jewish names etc. but pretty good: 6.5/10

Started Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress, read this one before, but fancied another listen as I can’t really remember the details of the plot.  I have remembered getting rather annoyed at the authors mixing of 64 bit and 64 character keys as being the same thing… but have decided to ignore that fairly major technicality and pretend that it is the same thing, just to let me concentrate on the story a bit more this time…

Summer Break booked

Nothing too exotic, The RedHouse Hotel in Torquay for a week at the end of August.

Finally – Snow gone

After what seems forever (about two weeks) the estate roads will be safe for motorcycle riding in the morning…  No more Public Transport WOOOOOT!  Bloody buses were costing me a fortune: £3.40 per day.

The only good side of catching the bus is, I have been getting thro’ the Audio Books quite well.  Finished Frank Herbert’s “Children of Dune” – Unabridged at 17 Hours, and I am currently 4 hours into the 6  hours of Kathy Reich’s “Cross Bones” Abridged, but still a damn good read.  Back to listening for an hour a day at lunchtime for a while again.  I still have over 30 hours of ‘un-read’ Audio books on the iPod, so no panic about running out just yet!!

New mattress

After *waaay* too many years on the current mattress, we have taken the plunge today and ordered a replacement.  it is a “Reactaform Deluxe”.

Sales Blurb: A luxury combination of foams, with an EXTRA deep top layer of the finest Reactaform, exclusive to Bensons. This model features air-zone Reactaform to aid air-flow for cool comfort throughout the night. Reactaform Memory Foam responds to heat and weight to conform perfectly to your body contours for optimum levels of comfort and support.

£499.99 Ordered from “Bensons beds” with delivery of next Saturday.  At the same time I finally found a pillow that is *exactly* the right height for me – Typically it’s not cheap!  £40!!!

Sales Blurb: “The Serenity Pillow”, A luxury latex pillow providing shallow gentle support. It always keeps its shape, stays cool and fresh and is beneficial to allergy sufferers. Complete with a zipped, removable washable cover.

Ah well, doing my bit to boost the economy, and hopefully get rid of the back/neck/shoulder pain that I have suffered every morning for the last 6 months!

Windows 7

Today I installed Windows 7 Beta on the Acer Laptop, in the past I have had issues with this laptop’s wireless adaptor, so have left it running XP.

After initial install, the WiFi was not recognised, but a wired connection back to the HomeHub, and several downloads later all the hardware (except the video card) is recognised. I have now managed to download the XP driver and persuaded Windows 7 to load it, but the Experience Score (See Below) performance really seems to be no better afterwards!

Once I removed the network cable, I managed to connect successfully to my Wireless network, with only minimal fuss… so another positive result for Windows 7.

The Windows Experience Score is a rather disappointing 1.0, but that is down to the VideoCard, and I don’t seem to be able to find a Vista/Windows 7 driver.  The CPU is 2.5, RAM is 3.1 and HDD is 1.9  Having said that, the PC itself does boot up quickly, and is generally running “better” under 7 than XP.

Alex is pleased, as he finally gets access to Mahjong and Purble Place ;-)

JMJ – In Concert 2009

I have Tickets to see Jean Michel Jarre in concert at the NIA Birmingham on 24th May 2009

From http://www.jeanmicheljarre.com/

With his forthcoming "IN-DOORS" World Arena Tour, Jean Michel Jarre invites the audience to journey into his singular universe; to immerse themselves totally in his world of timeless music and vision, in place and time. He promises with this unique and brand new super production to share the energy of his macro concerts with the emotions of an arena experience.

With the fusion of analogue synthesisers, cutting-edge digital technology, oversize HD video projections, spectacular lasers design and lighting choreography, Jarre has conceived a show that encapsulates his signature expression and talent for creating milestone events.

Jean Michel Jarre is an innovative artist who has entertained and thrilled millions of people live and has broken several world records with attendance figures. His electronic music and singular performances have travelled the globe and left their imprint on major landmarks from Houston's Skyline, to China, to London's Docklands to the Pyramids of Egypt, to Moscow and...

He has just concluded a sell-out tour of Europe celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the release of his break-through multi-million selling album, Oxygene.

For his upcoming "IN-DOORS", World Arena Tour, he has conceived a spectacular high-tech production especially tailor made for arenas where he will perform music from all of his best selling albums.

Jarre revolutionised the out-door concert format with his city-scale events. For this "IN-DOORS", World Arena Tour he aims to break new ground and deliver yet again a unique concert experience.

Back to British Gas

After 18 months of getting billed for my Gas and Electric by Eon, I am switching back to British Gas.

One of their guys phoned me up last week, and after running thro the costs etc. based on my last four bills, we determined that there was less than £30 per year between them, with British Gas actually being the more expensive, but I switched anyway!

Why, I pretend, I can hear you call?  because I will save in the region of £30 per month on my Direct Debit payments!  Eon have grossly overestimated my fuel usage, and demand £170 per month leaving me currently at £341.08 in credit for the year.  There is no offer to return the balance, or to reduce the payments for the next year.  British Gas on the other hand review your payments 6 monthly, and automatically return any positive balance to your bank account after the January bill.

Working From Home

After the snow yesterday, with the forecast of more overnight, it was suggested that we take laptops home last night, and work from home today.

It’s been nice to have some background music on all day, but it seems like a very long time since 8:30 this morning!!  God it’s boring sat on your own all day.  Work has not been to busy, mainly because many customers have stayed closed, and those that were open couldn’t always get an engineer to site!

The technology worked quite well, softphone (Nortel i2050) on the PC with a USB headset, connecting via VPN over the home wireless network and out over broadband. Voice quality was good, and network speed was almost as fast as being in the office… mind you, I think that says more about our servers than the quality of the BB connection!

The weather has actually been quite good today and a lot of the snow has cleared, but I doubt our road will be clear enough for me to take the bike tomorrow, so it looks like it will be the bus again.  On the plus side – gives me another hour+ with “Children of Dune” audio book ;-)