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peterbirksI had an excellent view of the lunar eclipse last night, but the vaunted promise of "like Mars, but a hundred times closer", wasn't really true. Viewed through binoculars what I saw was a dull brown full moon, not "copper red" (as was advertised). Since you get a much better view of the full moon when the earth isn't so inconsiderate as to get in the way, this was a bit like watching a cricket match at night without floodlights. You could still pick out what was going on, but you did kind of wonder, what was the point.
However, the build-up to the eclipse and the move away from it (which basically took all evening into the early hours) was more interesting. I've appended a couple of pictures.
++++++++++
I cleaned the office yesterday. Dust was removed from all surfaces. I felt noble.
Then, this morning, the computer went crazy. Uh-oh, I wondered, has the hard drive (a sturdy warrior for many years) finally given up the ghost?
A restart simply caused the computer to fire up okay (apparently) but then move into an epileptic fit. The good news was that this didn't look like a hard drive failure, although it might have been something in the boot-up partition.
I finally got the machine working by pressing the f12 button or something similar when booting. But the mouse was now acting as if I had clicked on anything which the pointer rolled over. Ah-hah, I thought, perhaps it's the mouse? I looked round the back and, of course, my cleaning-up yesterday had generated a great deal of dust in the air. This had in turn found its way into the USB port for the mouse. I quick blast of air and, voila, functioning PC again.
Some sad geeks spend their entire life in front of a computer monitor. Not me. I spend some of my time looking at the back of a computer monitor.
But I think the machine not only needs replacing, but also needs opening up and cleaning before I do replace it. Fun, fun, fun.
The "getting things done" part of the weekend has actually been rather good. I finally got round to getting one of the superfluous televisions to the Council Skip. I counted about a dozen old computer monitors and at least half a dozen TVs, most of them considerably newer than the one I was throwing away. This is the flipside of the flat-screen revolution. What looked like perfectly functioning five-year old sets being sent to the tip.
And, continuing the TV/electrical/DIY theme, I actually managed to install an extension lead from the TV set-up in the front room to a TV in here. This involved cutting of cables correctly, installation of wires into odd looking connectors, plugging in of a "booster", retuning of a TV, and all the other fun things which come with matters electrical. But, well, it's working. My office TV now functions as if it has an external aerial (which, of course it has) and I can watch the digital channels from the digibox in the other room. Rock on. The only worrisome thing now is that I will never leave the office.
++++++
I am told that Tribeca has merged into the IPoker network (of which Noble is a part). I hadn't noticed much difference at the Limit tables on Noble, so I'm not fully au fait with what is going on here. Anyway, I thought that Noble was migrating over to Party? All very confusing.
On the plus side, after a few dodgy session, I murdered the full ring games on Noble over a couple of hours, clocking up 100 big bets while two tabling. Saturday night is the new Saturday morning when it comes to finding loose games where people will call you down all the time. If you happen to hit a few cards, you clean up. Historically, I've been noted for hitting crap cards at just these times, but last night was different.
Good.
The Eclipse begins
Heading towards main eclipse
Shadow moves away (about four hours after first picture)
However, the build-up to the eclipse and the move away from it (which basically took all evening into the early hours) was more interesting. I've appended a couple of pictures.
++++++++++
I cleaned the office yesterday. Dust was removed from all surfaces. I felt noble.
Then, this morning, the computer went crazy. Uh-oh, I wondered, has the hard drive (a sturdy warrior for many years) finally given up the ghost?
A restart simply caused the computer to fire up okay (apparently) but then move into an epileptic fit. The good news was that this didn't look like a hard drive failure, although it might have been something in the boot-up partition.
I finally got the machine working by pressing the f12 button or something similar when booting. But the mouse was now acting as if I had clicked on anything which the pointer rolled over. Ah-hah, I thought, perhaps it's the mouse? I looked round the back and, of course, my cleaning-up yesterday had generated a great deal of dust in the air. This had in turn found its way into the USB port for the mouse. I quick blast of air and, voila, functioning PC again.
Some sad geeks spend their entire life in front of a computer monitor. Not me. I spend some of my time looking at the back of a computer monitor.
But I think the machine not only needs replacing, but also needs opening up and cleaning before I do replace it. Fun, fun, fun.
The "getting things done" part of the weekend has actually been rather good. I finally got round to getting one of the superfluous televisions to the Council Skip. I counted about a dozen old computer monitors and at least half a dozen TVs, most of them considerably newer than the one I was throwing away. This is the flipside of the flat-screen revolution. What looked like perfectly functioning five-year old sets being sent to the tip.
And, continuing the TV/electrical/DIY theme, I actually managed to install an extension lead from the TV set-up in the front room to a TV in here. This involved cutting of cables correctly, installation of wires into odd looking connectors, plugging in of a "booster", retuning of a TV, and all the other fun things which come with matters electrical. But, well, it's working. My office TV now functions as if it has an external aerial (which, of course it has) and I can watch the digital channels from the digibox in the other room. Rock on. The only worrisome thing now is that I will never leave the office.
++++++
I am told that Tribeca has merged into the IPoker network (of which Noble is a part). I hadn't noticed much difference at the Limit tables on Noble, so I'm not fully au fait with what is going on here. Anyway, I thought that Noble was migrating over to Party? All very confusing.
On the plus side, after a few dodgy session, I murdered the full ring games on Noble over a couple of hours, clocking up 100 big bets while two tabling. Saturday night is the new Saturday morning when it comes to finding loose games where people will call you down all the time. If you happen to hit a few cards, you clean up. Historically, I've been noted for hitting crap cards at just these times, but last night was different.
Good.
The Eclipse begins
Heading towards main eclipse
Shadow moves away (about four hours after first picture)
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tribeca
Date: 2007-03-04 11:00 am (UTC)iPoker says it will now be biggest non-US network.
Thanks for the entertaining blog, BTW!
Scavenge, why buy?
Date: 2007-03-04 05:15 pm (UTC)-- Jonathan
Re: tribeca
Date: 2007-03-05 08:40 am (UTC)Might be on the hunt for a decent IPoker rakeback scheme if the liquidity there is set to increase.
PJ
Re: Scavenge, why buy?
Date: 2007-03-05 08:41 am (UTC)PJ
Re: Scavenge, why buy?
Date: 2007-03-05 04:51 pm (UTC)The almost equivalent of scavenging on a tip for a PC is buying a broken one from someone on Ebay who does not know anything about computers. I bought a HP Pavilion 666mhz PC and printer for a tenner a couple of years back - I only wanted the printer and to ransack the RAM. The seller said the PC was no longer working and he could not be arsed to find out why. When I opened up the case, it looked like how I imagine Miss Haversham's PC would look, were Great Expectations ever to be updated to the digital age. A quick blast with some compressed air, especially around the CPU fan, and bob's your wossname.
Interesting stuff, compressed air. I've now got almost a whole can of it. I suppose I should periodically use it to blast dust out of the many PCs in the Fiendish household.
If it is just a faster machine you are looking for, I'd recommend the barebones PCs from Novatech. These come with the CPU and RAM already fitted - all you have to do is transfer over your hard drive(s) and it is becoming increasingly difficult to feck that up these days since they started colour coding the connectors on the cables and the motherboard. They are totally destroying the enthusiast's knowledge with their constant drive towards improved usability! What bloody price my immense knowledge of DOS batch commands now, eh?
Not that I have an immense knowledge of DOS batch commands but the point still stands.
Here, talking of the onward march of technolgy, do you remember that riff you used to do on reverse inventions, round about the time of the unfathomable popularity of the Filofax? You know, tired of constantly having to recharge your PDA? There's this fantastic new invention called a diary and pencil.
I was particularly struck by your notion that had the match been invented after the lighter, it would have been marketed as a technological advance: use it once, and throw it away! Well, it turns out the match was invented after the lighter, Fancy that. We really must get the old quiz team together again in order to mingle with people who give a stuff about information like this.
John H.
Re: Scavenge, why buy?
Date: 2007-03-05 08:33 pm (UTC)You want me to buy a computer without a hard drive? But it's the hard drive (a mere 15gb in size, I added a 40gb dive and another 256k of RAM a year or so later) that I think is going to pack up.
I am as much an enthusiast about the inner workings of computers as I am about the inner workings of cars. If I have to deal with it (and can save a few hundred quid and many hours waiting by so doing) then I will. But I'm certainly not an enthusiast about it.
No. Buy a newish HP from wherever it is that sells HPs, that's what I reckon. Time saved, a few hours, frustration saved. Priceless.
PJ
Re: Scavenge, why buy?
Date: 2007-03-07 12:51 pm (UTC)Either way, back your hard drive up now, if you can. You can get external USB drives relatively cheaply these days and disk imaging software is also fairly cheap, so backing up your stuff is relatively easy but because of big disk sizes, incredibly long (we're talking hours for an 80 gig drive).
John H.