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I 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.
( astropix )
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.
( astropix )
