Week of 2nd June, 2008

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Monday, 2nd June

A fortnight of night shifts starts today - that's the 6:00 p.m. start. Yech!

Quite a bit done, mostly lo-res .mpegs for subtitling. And a couple of movies packaged - both of which are already mpegged. Which is lucky, because another capture station has blown it's zap - same fault, coolant leak onto the power supply. Last time, someone had lost the licence key for the installed copy of Final Cut Pro, so we had to wait weeks while the accountants dithered over buying a new licence. And that's a new version of the software, which behaves differently, in some ways. But this time, no problem - the licence key is to hand.

And in spare moments, I had the Acer plugged into the work network, for a bit of Bittorrenting.

In computing news, the car power adaptor works with the Acer. It's a Minwa MW2172 - 11-16 volts in and a variety of voltages out, including the Acer's 19 volts at 3.5 amp. And when set up in the outdoor car park, I was seeing over a hundred aircraft on the SBS-1 display. I had a bit of a blind spot to the east, because I was parked on the west side of the hill, some hundreds of feet below the summit, but 100+ aircraft is a record. And with the Bearcat UBC3500 going, tuned to the Heathrow Approach frequency, I could hear the radio traffic from the aircraft I could see processing down the glide-path. I definitely need an outdoor antenna at home, iffen an providen I can convince Jane to let me drill holes in the wall.

Of course, that stint at the car park depleted the Bearcat's batteries, and since I couldn't find the pukka mains brick, I had to improvise. The Tekkeon battery pack seemed to be appropriate, and so it was - for a while. Then, as I was driving to work, I smelt smoke. But where from? In the work car park I picked up the Bearcat, to be greeted by a wisp of smoke. Oops! But the rig still works - maybe I've just cooked the charger, which is livable with, albeit inconvenient. Although it did charge...

But why did this happen? I'd set the Tekkeon to 6 volt output, all same the specified external power voltage for the Bearcat. Maybe the charger has to be current limited - which the Tekkeon most definitely isn't, at least not to 500 mA.

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Tuesday, 3rd June

Not enough sleep last night, and punctuated by incoming 'phone calls. I made the mistake of not moving the bedroom cordless 'phone handset, so every ring disturbed me. But when I rolled out, about 11 a.m. I found some incoming post - "Babylon 5: Other Voices Vol.1", and the replacement Acer keyboard.

Luckily, I'd found a copy of the service manual for the machine, complete with disassembly instructions. And to change the keyboard, you need to remove 3 screws, one on the back of each screen hinge assembly. Then, with the machine opened out flat, you can pry up the case cover between the keyboard and screen. There are a number of plastic clips that will require a degree of persuasion, but the cover will lift off. This will reveal 2 screws that hold the top edge of the keyboard down. Remove those, and hinge up the keyboard towards the front of the machine - there are several locating tabs and sticky pads that hold it down. Then unclip the ribbon cable and remove the keyboard complete. Reassembly is the reverse process. And it worked - I have a working down arrow key again!

I've wondered whether I could get a wifi connection back the the house from that hilltop car park. Given line-of-sight, plus a high-gain Yagi on the hill, it might be doable, but there's no line-of-sight - there's a house in the way.

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Wednesday, 4th June

Last night went fairly well, but was long and tiring. More tonight, on overtime.

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Thursday, 5th June

Same old, same old...

In the afternoon, I went shopping for some things, and found a wireless doorbell for Jane's Mum - she doesn't hear the outside doorbell very well. This will allow the bell to ring beside her, without running wires.

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Friday, 6th June

64th Anniversary of the D-Day Landings

The audio mixer for the Youth \club disco trolley has failed again - probably the same intermittent fault. So this time, I'll swap it out. I bought a new unit last time this happened, but didn't need to fit it. I will now.

And I need to get some play sand for the kiddie's sandpit. I tried yesterday, but couldn't find any. Different shops today.

And then it'll be a weekend of nights.

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Saturday, 7th June

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Sunday, 8th June

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