Week of 11th April, 2016

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Monday, 11th April

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Tuesday, 12th April

It's that time of year, again - the time when I have to get my car serviced and roadworthiness tested. I booked an appointment last week, for today. So roll out of bed, have breakfast, and then drive to the garage - an independent, hence cheaper. Leave the car there, and walk home.

Somewhat later, it's time to attempt to get Dee's new-to-her, gifted laptop fired up and configured. First thing - does it wake up? Yes, it does. So configure wifi - for which I need Dee's wifi credentials. They have BT Infinity, just like me - but using the 2-box solution, an Openreach-branded (made by Huawei) VDSL modem, and a HomeHub3. The HomeHub has a pop-out tab with the wifi credentials on it, so the laptop was soon online. But the fans are running continuously, which isn't right.

OK, let's see when this beast was last used. Window$ Update shows a last update in March 2013 - 3 years ago. But I can't get a list of needed updates. "The Windows Update Service is not running. Please restart". So I did.

Now there's no wifi - BlueTooth, yes, wifi, no. "Wireless device not installed. Please restart, and check the BIOS"

After restart, hit <F10> for BIOS. And there's an option in there for continuous fan operation, set to ON. So turn that off. But there's nothing about wifi adaptors. And now the keyboard doesn't. And within a few minutes the machine crashed, hard. It wouldn't come back up, either, due to the dead keyboard, and a prompt about "No wireless device. Hit Enter to continue."

It's dead, Jim. So I gave up, with Dee's agreement. But she has her iPad, so she's not bereft. I'll keep her files safe, until she decides whether to get another full-fat laptop, or go with the iPad.

In the middle of all that, comes the phone call from the garage. "Your car is done." Wow, tht's fast - I was expecting late afternoon. Not that I'm complaining. Once done with Dee's (now-dead) laptop, I toddled off back to the garage, a couple of miles away. There's a Tesco on the route, and it has a Costa cafe in it, so, it being lunchtime, I stopped off to feed my face.

Once I'd collected the car, complete with the magic piece of paper (which, nowadays, is just a receipt to say your car has passed as roadworthy on the date of the test, and that official confirmation is available at <url>) It also has a list of recorded mileages at the last several tests - which revealed that Ulysses has only done about 1,200 miles since last year, rather than the 4,000-odd that was normal when I drove to work at the old site.

Now, all I need to do is tax him. That's an online activity these days - and you no longer get a paper tax disc to confirm you've done it.

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Wednesday, 13th April

Vehicle Excise Duty paid for Ulysses. UKP185 on debit card. So now he's road-legal for a year - until the end of April 2017. Next up, Nyree, in a month or so.

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Thursday, 14th April

I've created the order for, and costed, the new speakers and other goodies for May Day, and the full set of 3, with all the bits properly appertaining thereto, runs out at just under UKP600, including tax. This is lots more than I was expecting. A large part is the prefabricated cables - 3no 50 metre lengths, terminated in Neutrik Speakon NC4 connectors. In the alternative, I can cut back to 2 speakers, and save about UKP180-ish. I'll see what the May Day Committee say - first rehearsal for this year's festivities is this afternoon.

Note - this is just the speakers and whatnot. I already have mixer, power amplifiers, etc. I may get a new 50 metre mains cable drum as well, to replace the one that I inherited when I took over the task, and which is inconvenient to use. I need 3 of these drums, since the dancing square is in excess of 100 metres from mains power. And the square is now known to be 30 metres by 20 metres - hence the need for 50 metre speaker cables.

<pause>

I have approval - even unto UKP600-worth of kit. Which, of course, is a one-off payment. The new gear should last for years - the speakers we borrow/hire from the local school have been used for at least the last 20 years, to my certain knowledge. Probably 30+ years, so UKP600 over 30 years is UKP20/year - peanuts. And I can get the new mains cable drum as well. Tomorrow.

Since the BBC changed BBC Three to an online-only programme source, the BBC Three schedule pages have been blank. Now Auntie has ceased posting even the metadata, which means I get 6 "Cannot download" error lines for each refreshing invocation of get_iplayer. I find myself irritated by this - only "irritated", because it's a non-fatal error - so I'd like to get rid of it. There is an "ignore channels" option, but the syntax for the channel names to be ignored is obscure. There are at least 2 ways that option parameters can be called out -

--modes=best

--pid <comma-separated list of PIDs>

but which of these is applicable is obscure. Furthermore there is no guidance on the exact spelling of the channel names. Is it -

"BBC Three"

or

bbcthree

or some variation on either of these.

<pause>

Oops. It's --exclude-channel=

<another pause>

And it's "BBC Alba" (that's the Scots Gaelic channel, which carries a couple of language-dubbed cartoons that I collect in their English versions) "BBC Three" still doesn't work, though.

So the full option is

--exclude-channel="BBC Alba","BBC Three"

although the "BBC Three" doesn't do anything, possibly because the relevant files do not exist at Auntie. So, although the proximate cause of this little battle is a loss, I've fixed something else, which is a win.

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Friday, 15th April

I've got the mains extension cable drum, from B&Q. It's a 45 metre one, 4 outlets, 13 amp rated, so 3kW throughput. It was a couple of UKP more expensive than doing an online buy from CPC, but I need to make sure my account is online-enabled, to avoid the UKP45 minimum charge for free shipping, before I do that. I'll order the other bits from Canford on Monday, if so be as they remember that I am a previous customer, since they now claim to only deal with industry companies - the which I am not.

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Saturday, 16th April

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Sunday, 17th April

West London Radio and Electronics Fair

aka the Kempton rally, because it's held at Kempton Park Racecourse, in South-West London.

Jane has a tasking to help supervise a Guide/Brownie walk somewhere west of here, so she disappeared in good time for that. I  followed a bit later, driving down past Kew and Richmond to Kempton. UKP5 to get in. And lunch onsite is larcenously priced, as usual.

And there's not much there that I need, or want. But it's a good outing. I do need a new antenna (the YHA-64) for the Yaesu VX-8 - I've mislaid the 6 metre add-on dongle for that antenna, and the screw-on end-cap has unscrewed itself and got lost. Yaesu UK don't sell to the public, even though they have stalls at all the big rallies - you have to go through a dealer. Historically, my choice (due to mere proximity) has been Martin Lynch, whose emporium is now down in Staines, and none-too-easy to find. But one of Lynchy's salesmen claimed that they have stock of the antenna, despite it not being listed on the customer-facing website. "Call us tomorrow, and we'll confirm." So I will. Cost claimed to be "less than UKP20".

The FT-817 uses a similar, but not identical, trick with the bundled antenna (the YHA-63) that comes with it. I haven't lost any bits of that, I hope.

<pause to check>

No problem, FT-817 antenna all present and correct. And that's a BNC base connector, so I can't use it with the VX-8, which takes an SMA antenna.

I also bought another DVB-T USB dongle, colloquially known as an "rtl-sdr", because it's based on the RTL2832 chip. I already have one, which is dedicated to ADS-B reception, using dump1090 software on a Raspberry Pi 2B. And I need to troubleshoot that RasPi, because it no longer works, since one of the cats knocked it off the dresser in the back bedroom. It also does duty as the house ntp server, GPS-referenced.

I left Kempton shortly after 14:00, for the drive home, which took about half-an-hour. And I got home only a few minutes before Jane, which rather put the kybosh on setting up on the dining room table to rebuild ads-pi - Jane is decidedly not in favour of me doing this, because she thinks I should confine myself to the study. Which, despite her opinion, is not big enough for the task.

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