Week of 10th May, 2010

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Monday, 10th May

Comes now Simon, to say he has upgraded his ADSL contract, to a "fastest we can give you" deal with his existing supplier. This includes a new wireless router, free. But he's nervous about the upgrade, so he wants me to set it up. Tonight's the night.

The new box is a Sagem Gigaset. It has ADSL2+ capability, 802.11g wireless, and 1 (count it! One!) 10/100 Ethernet.

But it works, once I got past the logon credentials - typos and bad memory. Currently downlink speed is only 2400-odd kbit/sec, but that may improve. The deal is also UKP3 a month cheaper, so he's ahead anyway.

Wireless also works, and the XBox360 isn't deadly poison to it - everything connects, XBox, Miles' iTouch, the Fujitsu laptop, and probably Luke's Dell laptop. But he's not here at the moment, so that's unproven. But with only one ethernet on the router, the Belkin network hub has to be disconnected, so Simon's HP Photosmart printer is wired into the Dell desktop. Maybe I should set up printer sharing. Or add an ethernet switch. I have a Netgear FS108 going spare at the moment, or maybe a new one, if Simon so decides.

That's a result, and I've recovered the Zyxel, and my spare Linksys WRT54GS - you never know when such hardware may be of use.

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Tuesday, 11th May

Katy's upgrade bits are here, ahead of her birthday tomorrow.

Later: I've groused before about the default colour scheme in M$ Office 2007. There is a way to change it: go here and follow the instructions.

In the matter of memory for stinker, he needs PC2-5300 SODIMM - and I don't have any in my spares box. Rats! That's more spends - another UKP43 from Crucial, methinks.

And I've got to get the Ubiquiti Routerstation, as the core of the CarPC - the Huawei D100 doesn't cut it: I can't get the SBS-1 visible via the wireless. So it's off to WiFi Stock for a Routerstation, a Wistron CM9 wireless card (Atheros-based) and relevant pigtail cables. I'd have preferred a Routerstation Pro, but that needs 40-48V DC power - which I don't have in the car.

And the order is in - courier delivery in 1 to 2 days. Remarkably, that's cheaper than Royal Mail.

When Katy got home from school, she ranted at me for not pre-installing her laptop. Er, excuse me? Your birthday is tomorrow, isn't it? But for peace in the house, let's see...

The licence upgrade from Win7 Starter is a Win7-styled box, containing a card with the licence key printed on it - no media. And the upgrade takes upwards of 10 minutes, plus patch time if there are any updates to apply. For a licence code? What is it doing??? And there isn't even a progress bar.

OK, 2 restarts later, it's come back to a login prompt. Now for the memory...

That's done. It boots up, so I'll call that a result. That leaves a 1GB stick of PC2-6400 spare. And Crucial say that such will work in a Lenovo. Let's try it...

</me removes stinker's palmrest to get at memory slots>

And that works - stinker now sees 1.99GB of memory

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Wednesday, 12th May

I didn't hear the doorbell this morning, so there was a "Sorry we missed you" card through the door from a courier. Parcel for Sarah - which it turns out is needed for this evening. So on my way to work I tried to collect it. "Sorry, the van is still out on his round. Should be back for 6.30 or so." No use - I need to be in work for 6 p.m.

But another courier delivered the Routerstation in the afternoon. Well done, Wifi-Stock - that's less than 24 hour turnaround. But no time to work on it, as yet.

Jane wanted to shop for toys for her minded kids, so I was deputed to play chauffeur. I ended up parked outside the local independent computer shop. And he had USB backplates, 2 separate outlets connected to individual 5-pin headers, which will serve ideally for the USB connection of the Routerstation. So that's a result.

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Thursday, 13th May

That's the night shifts finished for a month or so, which is good. And the swaps away from earlies continue, which is also good, albeit it means that I don't do as much Final Cut work as perhaps I should.

Talking of Final Cut, and particularly the sending of material to and from it, everything has slowed down. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility to build up a queue of work that is so long that it doesn't finish until mid-afternoon - and if one of the last things you do is the overnight recording that needs edited as soon as possible... But there are 2 paths, so judicious use of the second path speeds that up.

The reason this data movement is so slow is that we normally work with a package that has separate files for video and audios. But Final Cut uses a container format (Quicktime) which has all the components inside one file, so the sending to requires wrapping up all the components inside a Quicktime container, and the return trip involves the corresponding extraction. The way this is currently done is slow, but it's a background task, so it doesn't normally slow us up.

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Friday, 14th May

Today I need to collect the speakers and stands from the local school we borrow them from, ready for tomorrow. This will be a slight problem, since I'm on nights, and the best time to collect is in the morning.

But I was well tired, so I didn't even stir until nearly lunchtime. Never mind, collection will work in the afternoon, if so be as I time things so that the pupils are in class when I pitch up. 2 p.m. or so should work.

<pause>

And it did - speakers are now in the back of Hopalong, ready for tomorrow.

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Saturday, 15th May

May Day Celebrations

And yes, I know we're 2 weeks late, but that's another tradition. This year is the 104th anniversary, although the celebrations have not been held every year since 1906. Your prayers for good weather gratefully accepted.

Later: A successful May day celebration - fine weather, a good parade and lots of good dancing. The considered opinion of those whose task it is to teach the children the rudiments of maypole dancing was "Very good." There seems to be a trend - a fine day this year sees increased enrolment the following year, rain this year sees fewer enrolments next.

I experimented a little - given the rain of the last few years I put the mixer and power amplifiers in the back of Hopalong, on the basis that, if it did rain, I wouldn't have to rush to keep things dry. The idea still seems good, but I need some extra leads to make it all work properly.

And I need to get some tent pegs, to fix down the tarpaulins the children sit on while they wait for their turn.

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Sunday, 16th May

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