Car Sold!!!

After my car died, I was advsed to try to sell it through Autotrader. I hadn't thought anyone would be interested in a car without an engine, but I can honestly say that of all the cars I ever sold, I have had the most interest in this one. Over 10 calls on Thursday, about 6 on Friday, none Sat/Sun (Christmas/Boxing Day) and a few more Monday.

A man came from Newry to pick it up today, and thats it gone ;)

New Car

I had a friend go out and buy me a car. Its a Rover 45, and I'm not really sure about it. But anyhow its cheap, and according to the specs, pretty fast.

Notting Hill (1999)

I was surprised by Notting Hill. I've seen this before, and remember it in the same category as 4 weddings... but it's really not there. There are several side splitting scenes, not to mention the SWMBO factor too.

"The life of a simple bookshop owner changes when the most famous star in the world walks in his shop and buys a book"

S.W.A.T. (2003)

S.W.A.T. (2003) a film about the Special Weapons and Tactics team in LA (everything exciting seems to be happening in LA)

An interesting watch, a few punches to pull, worth a watch, but really just a standard action film, with a better than average story.

The Pianist (2002)

I've just finished watching The Pianist (2002). Its about a Polish Jewish musician who struggles to survive the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto of World War II.

Very graphic in its portrayal of the German treatment of the Jews in the war. Not a brilliant film, a few extra points because it is true, but I would recommend a watch, just to see how good we've got it!

It makes me appreciate my freedom.

Car is dead :(

Coming home today I pulled out to overtake, and bang, I had to pull in again.

Upon inspection the bottom pulley which drives all the belts (inc timing) had come off - not good!

The AA towed me home, and it looks like I'm going to need a new car :(

Showcenter AC3 Downmix

Definitely the best £3.49 I ever spent :)

Downmix to sterio from AC3 means I can play a couple of DVD Rips I got from a friend, great!

Using Neuston software on Showcenter

From http://www.geocities.com/dasbacgl/: "

Using the Neuston Software with Pinnacle ShowCenter

Until version 1.82, the Neuston application was a worthy alternative to Pinnacle's ShowCenter application. Unfortunately, after 1.82, Neuston began including hardware checks in their application to make sure the Neuston application could not be used with hardware other than Neuston's.

Fortunately, the check is easy to bypass. I have only verified this fix on the Neuston Media Center version 2.5 for Windows. But this fix should work on Neuston Media Center 2.5 for any OS.

1. First, download the latest version of the Neuston Media Center, available here:
Windows version: http://www.neuston.com/en/mc500download_win.asp

2. Install the Neuston Media Center, and restart your computer.

3. After the restart, stop the Neuston Media Center (if it's running), and open the directory where the NMC is installed. Located in the 'Program Files/Neuston Media Centre' directory on Windows.

4. From the installation directory, open the 'webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/' directory.

5. Edit the web.xml file and remove the following lines (near the top of the file, the value of XXX is not important, just look for the fwname text)


fwname
XXX



6. Save the changes and start the Neuston Media Center. You should now be able to connect to the Neuston Media Center software from your Pinnacle ShowCenter hardware.

Happy Surfing!!

Starfire94"

My next Freeview Set Top Box.....

Found this thread on the forums entitled Freeview Set Top Box - No red dot ever. Interested? - TiVo Community Forum which lists a couple of good set top boxes


Quote:
"Also, the SetPal-based STBs (Labgear DTT-100, Daewoo-DS608P, Triax DVB2000T) have a very strong tuner, so are useful in weak/marginal signal areas where other STBs give picture break-up."

BIOS bug killed

I have sorted the power on "Fan Failure - press F1 to continue..." problem. A bit of a sledgehammer solution, not a *nice* solution.

I had a look in dells forums for information on the GX110, and came up with this post which gives a workaround for the BIOS warning problem.

It seems that the third wire just gives feedback about the state of the fan where 12v = fan turning, and 0v = fan stopped. The solution is just to connect the 12v red cable directly to the pin where the which cable was.


http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_bios&message.id=31560

New Kitchen PC arrives

The PIII 733 I ordered from eBay arrived today, and I got it up and running tonight. It is a lot faster than its predecessor, the K6-2 machine, although it is a lot noisier.

But, I got the screwdriver and snips out, and removed the fans from the PSU and the CPU, and replaced them with a couple of old fans, an old PSU fan for the CPU, and an old 486 fan for the PSU. I then wired these two fans in series, which slows them down considerably, and makes them an aweful lot quieter.

The heatsink on the PSU is a lot hotter now, but it has been running for some time, and it seems fine. By fine I mean no fire.

The only problem which remains is a BIOS warning. When I disconnected the origonal CPU fan it had 3 pins, black, red and white, but my new fan only has 2, black and red. The white is obviously some kind of monitor to allow the motherboard to panic if the fan stops. So now on startup it tells me there is a fan failure, and press F1 to continue. There is nowhere in the stone age BIOS to configure this alarm, so we may have to live with it.... bit annoying, no remote reboots.....

Bluetooth working

After fighting with my old bluetooth dongle for a whole night I bought a new one. It arrived today, and I got it all setup and working with my palm tonight.

Windows XP make it pretty simple to set up networking across a bluetooth serial link, just add a bluetooth com port, and set up an incoming connection from that com port.

I was hoping that it may work in the living room, which is adjacent to the kitchen, but it seems that it is the Palm that is the problem, not the dongle.

Well, at least I can read the tech news at brekkie time without having to synch my palm:)

New PC for kitchen ordered

The PC in the kitchen is a bigger hit than I could have hoped for, always on because of the low power consumption, online banking and weather just one click away, its a CD player and internet radio / mp3 player etc etc...

Anyhow, it is clear that it just isn't powerful enough, so I've ordered a PIII 733 to replace it. Hopefully it will be almost as quiet, but much more powerful - we'll wait and see....

Kitchen PC

I had intended to install a small PC in the kitchen as soon as my ADSL was installed. So I ordered a 12" TFT screen second hand from eBay, as soon as my ADSL was working [12-Sep]

I am using an old PC for proof of concept in this case, a AMD K6-2-500 CPU, etc, etc, and it is a big hit with SWMBO!!!

So much of a hit in fact that she considered authorising a £200 spend on an ITX based computer. Wow. But I didn't do it, I think I will try to stick with the machine I have, its a bit slow, but seems to be working well at the minute

ADSL Faceplate installed

My ADSL Faceplate arrived today, and I just finished getting it installed. Now ADSL and all extensions are working 100% :)

The router reports an impressive Signal to noise ratio of 8.5, and a Loop Attenuation of 69.5dB

But at least it works :)

I got the router re-routed into the attic, and made my old 10Mbit hub redundant, so now we have a proper network in the house

ADSL Router working

Well, that was more tricky than I had hoped...

I spent a long time working with different versions of firmware for the router, it wouldn't pick up the ADSL signal at all without *all* the phones unplugged. It came with version 2.5.3UK which didn't pick up the ADSL at all.

I had to fight for some time with the firmware upgrade process, before I eventually admitted defeat and read the manual.

I installed version 2.5.2 which came on the CD with an auto-installer, and this picked up the signal.

I noticed in the manual that it stated that you should plug the ADSL router directly into the main socket, without using the filter. So I filtered the phone, and plugged the router directly, and it all worked!

Just need to get the extensions working now.... the saga continues.

Router Ordered

So now that the ADSL is working its time to buy a router. After the usual in-depth research I managed to find out that the Draytek Vigor 2600Plus is the one most people seem to recommend for poor quality lines.

It has some firmware updates for people with poor quality lines.

YAPC::Europe - Day 3

The final day - and just when I was beginning to get used to it :(

Oh well - another day of good talks, and meeting interesting people. I had lunch with the two guys who headed up the development for The Register - that was interesting.

Throughout the conference I met lots of interesting people, guys from France, USA, Switzerland, England, and many others. I have to say that the people were overall friendly, although not one of the Belfast crowd spoke to me voulentarily :(

ADSL Working!!!

Unbelievably I came home this evening, and found that the ADSL LED was on constantly!!!

The service is working - web pages at a sensible speed. However, there is still a bit of a problem - I've had to disconnect all my extensions, or the ADSL doesnt work.

But at least that part time ADSL!!

YAPC::Europe - Day 2

Back for another days learning, some good talks today. I love the lightening talks - 10 5 minute talks in a row, some excellent information shared.

Lunch today was in Robinsons, and with noe American and a guy from Switzerland.