01-Aug-2003
Older files: July 2003
New Diary format...lets see if this clarifies things etc. Ditched sendmail
(finally!) from my FreeBSD box. Using EXIM instead..thanks to Paul for extra
help with FreeBSD queries and a couple of EXIM things. EXIM is good.
02-Aug-2003
Realised , again, that I already have too many things to play with...
Still only 20% of the way through Zelda-WindWaker, MetroidPrime, GTA3-Vicecity,
Payback, freespace, QuakeII (these last 3 on Amiga). That said, it was my birthday
2 weeks back and I've got money waiting to be spent. :-) Bought the PS2 Eyecam,
Exile (Myst III), GTA3, MGS2, was going to get other bits....but decided thats
enough for some time! Spent the rest of the day happily playing games...ah bliss..
03-Aug-2003
DIY day. make up for yesterdays bliss ;-) More gloss paintwork, floor beading
and curtain rod hanging... 2 of those jobs have been hanging around for a very
long time. Followed this work with some gaming, LEGO building and CD burning
Re-introduced myself to the GP32 (Gamepark handheld system)....maybe I *DO* have
some gadgets to buy real soon ;-) Went out for a wonderful dinner with Bobbies
parents...ate way too much , stuffed! a few beers and the evening was perfect
04-Aug-2003
Overslept my alarm...first time in ages. Heatwave seems to have reached the UK.
very hot. department ran out of water and drink machine was on the blink.
A few long walks across campus to fix things...nice weather for such jobs though
At home, put Amiga into OS4 mode and upgraded to the latest modules. Finally
installed Poseidon USB key and got a 'PenCam' to xfer images through my Spider
USB card. Nice. downloaded and deleted about 1,500 SPAM emails from my Freeserve
account
05-Aug-2003 - 08-Aug-2003
Working...theres nothing to report when doing the 9-5 with nothing else
09-Aug-2003
Travelled down to London for a wedding on thew sunday. spent the day in the
city centre. visited Hamleys, tottenham court road, leicester square, picadilly
Some nice new toys in Hamleys...a great camera, Casio Exilim in all the tech stores
almost watch Pirates of the Carribean...but the Cinema didnt have air-con..and all
the other places were too expensive. Had frozen yoghurt instead! mmmmm! :-)
went to 'Sega World' (as i'll always know it) in the Torcadero centre and watched
some real steppers action on the Konami Dacning StageII game. also saw the new one
game from Japan visit
10-Aug-2003
Went to the wedding. Ever been to a Hindu wedding? well, I now have..and it was fantastic!
the atmosphere was great...it was all happy, yet casual...it was a long, ornate, steeped in
traditions ceremony with great visuals and feelings. I'm wondering if i can throw some
of the mix into a plain western one...ah, but the warm forest glade idea is still around :-)
The food was also gorgeous...and all vegetarian..so i didnt have to worry about what was going
onto my plate...always a bonus! Oh, did I say how hot this weekend was? hot! over 37C in the UK
and with our culture, heritige and lack of things like cooling stations, air-con etc things
get quite stifled...temp went from 37C in London, 35C by the time we got to M25, 28C at Northampton
and a basic 27C back home
11-Aug-2003
Back to work. I think if theres days when work and basic homelife is involved, I'll justi
do as i did 3 entries above and skip through the days...might even make some codeword for
it. I dont want to make this boring or difficult for myself...makes it easier to parse and
recover ideas and info...if i get around to recording such stuff..and if anyone is reading
this, it'll make is more readable
12-Aug-2003
Alan is tour guide again. The 2nd batch of external companies coming to look at wiring work
were taken around. that was the morning gone. back at my desk I upgraded my system with a
second disk (thanks Matt). we're only talking 6Gb..but thats ample for my home space and for
local development work...i only had 150Mb left on the other disk!.
made it with ext3 fs, sparse-superblocks. didnt play with blocksize , but its got journalling
with less wastage. used 'rsync' to move the whole of my old /home area to the new disk..i was
going to use the old tar -czvf....blah blah | tar -xzvf incantation..but Paul happened to pop
into my office, saw that i was struggling to recall my archaic commands and reminded me that
rsync isnt just for remote syncing of directories! :-) thanks. rsync -auvz /home/ /mnt/new_home
then I moved /home to /old_home, mounted the new disk as home...put /etc/fstab entry and ..yes,
unmounted the /mnt/new_home entry before the system went all funny
13-Aug-2003
Final tour day. after several of these the whole system and engine seems to glide smoother
we all knew our places, times and movements perfectly. neat. we also knew the usual questions
its a bit unfair on the first groups in a way...but i think they all got told, at some point
and in some way, the things they needed to know. either at beginning, during tour or at final QA
we, of course, now have a few more buildings to prepare for..... after the visitors, returned to
office to do more FreeRADIUS things..its getting there, but i think the wired world and wireless
seem to operate in subtley different paradigms. Alan (DeKok) gave some useful pointers to me...
which I take as a good sign..because usually on the list, if you ask questions which are clearly
known and documented, you get very terse answers. I like that. I like that a lot. some users dont 8-)
Back at home, the 2md PC I am fixing for friend-of-friend, is looking more healthy. The setup isnt
the best...but with all latest patches, installation of viruschecker, Spybot, latest drivers
for gfx, snd and motherboard chipsets (ABIT BE6 in this case) the beast is far more useable
a few minor quirks left...but thats what the weekends for. Watched an episode of the new series
of Teachers (channel 4, UK) in bed. its funny. sharp(er) as previous series. a cool night
14-Aug-2003
Re-Aquainted with systemimager...thanks to a nice article i read on train.
Started enthusing in my mind about how useful this could be..must look into it
16-Aug-02003
Major DIY weekend...looks like no computer stuff will happen at all. Spent
the day painting gloss onto woodwork (toilet, bathroom) then removing
rotting woodwork from external 1st floor master bedroom...then replacing
the gaping hole with new wood. glossing that and then using filler ..finally
finishing the job by putting new putty around window edges where it no
longer existed. Some time with polyfilla on stripped bedroom walls
17-Aug-2003
the DIY continues....Bobbie started stripping skirting in the bedroom, I
did light switch insertion into Hasleys room (which is coming along well)
He helped design the base which allowed the socket to be sunk into the
oldstyle plaster+beading rubbish wall. lifted guest room floorboards
and rewired the socket/pullcord. lots of old rubber wiring to remove still
Then the carpets came up. good boards underneath. great news. extra
coat of gloss on the main handrail. cannot continue bedroom as no more
filla or wallpaper
18-Aug-2003
New week...same problems. Blaster virus hitting hard. taking up most
of our time...annoying really. cant do any other work. though i spent
a few minutes with SystemImager. looks like this could be useful
Got home and sawed lots of wood to make a new lightswitch location
In master bedroom. good progress. should finish it tommorrow
Took a few before and after photos. maybe will have a DIY section
22-Aug-2003
Bank holiday weekend starts. We're going to hire a couple of floor
sanders to do the two main bedrooms this weekend.
23-Aug-2003
Sanded the main/master bedroom. Flooring looks good. Most of the day,
however, was filled with making a light-switch fitting and joinery in the
bedroom, followed by using the aforementioned joinery as a conduit for
the installation of CAT5e cabling . Finished this cable installing late
in the evening..its not terminated or socketed at each end...but its in!
A LOT of extra woodworking to cover the old fireplace concrete and remove
some broken boards in Haseleys room
24-Aug-2003
Finished the sanding job. equipment given to Haseley for his room. Fitted 2
more electrical sockets to master bedroom. we now have 3 double sockets
which should be enough! rewired them into a loop circuit rather than
a single track.
25-Aug-2003
Woodstaining day. Dark oak staining of the floor and stripped skirting. my!
the room looks quite elegant/comfortable now! the walls also got a nice coat
of paint/colouring. "Modern Chic" could be its name. It is rather relaxing
and comfortable now...unlike the stress caused when hasley put a nail through
very familiar with the system..so a quick drain of it ensued.
26-Aug-2003
Back at work...reading up on 2.6 Linux kernel. must get it to work on my
systems some day. Repaired the heating pipe with some special putty/mix
27-Aug-2003
Took bobbie and holly down to heathrow for their girly trip to NewYork
as it was down by my old workplace, i popped in to see the old place..and
catch up with old friends...hadnt been down their since the christmas dinner!
looks like the place is keeping up with the technology..finally getting
wireless in. and managed switches. good to see my old work colleagues too!
The only disappointment was no footy game!
28-Aug-2003
very tired after late arrival home last night. caught up with a few things
at work..its amazing what 1 day away can do for your work backlog!
Also was able to get 2.6-test4 working on my desktop box! yeah! and wow!
You really can feel it! big recommendation to anyone! install it now! :-)
29-Aug-2003
Friday at work was okay ...but being alone in the house was a bit freaky..
large place for just one person to bounce around. had a couple of beers
and watched a film
30-Aug-2003
re-wired the bedroom light switch. now uses the new switch. removed the old
pullcord one. both 1st floor bedrooms now have sensible lighting
Upgraded my Amiga to latest OS4 beta files. things are getting along
really nicely there.
had the misfortune to watch England play a
terrible game of football against Macedonia...forunately they actually won
the few beers I had took some of the mundane play away
31-Aug-2003
Did some gardening and exterior woodwork tasks. also tidied the house
up. Bobbie is back tommorrow and so's Haseley (he + Kirsty went away for weekend)
31-Aug-2003