Now that the person who was not to know about it is safely home, I can finally reveal the home improvement I recently had carried out:
Esse 100 SE
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Archive for the ‘me’ Category
The Embargo is Lifted
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009(more…)
Thing done
Friday, August 28th, 2009I have had a home improvement carried out.
Unfortunately, it’s meant to be a surprise for someone, so I can’t mention what it is until that person returns from where they are. I can’t even mention who that person is, or where they might be coming back from, in case they are reading this and work out who I mean and what I’ve had done. In fact, I think I’d better stop now.
Knocked Sideways by the ‘Flu
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009I have just recovered from a dose of the ‘flu.
Well, when I say “recovered”, I mean (1) I think I am going to live and (2) I find that outcome desirable.
By the way, anyone thinking of taking Night Nurse for recreational purposes: Just because it contains dextromethorphan, which is an opioid, doesn’t mean it’s any good. It belongs squarely in the NOWTTSFK category — No-One Would Take This Shit For Kicks.
I’d have recommended Benylin 4 Flu, except these ones don’t seem to have the good stuff in them anymore. You can still get the liquid form here and this does have it.
Found Sat-Nav
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009The other day, I found a satellite navigation system in the street, complete with in-car recharger. Sheer merionesian curiosity forced me to switch it on and try it out. Nothing happened, because it was flat out of juice.
I did not have a suitable 12V power supply at work, but fortunately the charger ends in a standard mini-USB connector (like the one on a digital camera) and I was able to charge it from my computer.
Now, this thing belongs to somebody. I shouldn’t just keep it, even though it’s a Tom Tom One and eminently hackable (it’s running Linux underneath). So what am I going to do with it?
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Better Late than Never
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009Well, my local council have finally got around to including my street in the door-to-door recycling collection scheme. Which they have been promising for about 4 years. Better late than never. I should save a fortune in shoe-l**th*r from not having to make a special trek to the recycling centre every so often.
I have had my blue bin (for cans and bottles) delivered yesterday, along with bags for paper and textiles. The brown bin (for organic matter: kitchen and garden waste and cardboard) should be arriving today.
First recycling collection will be next week, then alternating week-to-week with rubbish collections. It takes me a lot longer than two weeks to fill a rubbish bin, though …..
*** UPDATE *** The brown bin has indeed arrived. Can’t help noticing that it and the blue bin are rather slimmer than my black bin!
And another light!
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008This is the LED cluster light I was thinking of building before I went ahead with the inverter lamp, and have now completed:
24-LED cluster with 14mm. screw fit base
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Stuff that Doesn’t Work
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008Behind every great inventor, goes the saying, is a pile of failed experiments. Here I’m going to document some of my cases of finding out the hard way what doesn’t work.
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Compiling Kernels on Debian
Friday, April 4th, 2008You probably know this. But I didn’t, and it took me a lot of swearing and cursing and poking about in murky areas of the Internet and my own file system to discover what was up with it.
Debian has always had a nice system for compiling kernels: from pristine kernel.org source, you can produce a .deb package, which you can install as normal. Easy. And safe, because no third party has had a chance to muck with it: the source you downloaded came straight from Linus himself.
Only this time, booting stalled with the dreaded Kernel Panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block error. So what did I do wrong?
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