(Thursday 10th August 2006)This has been a bit of a frustrating period with the various computers. I've been trying to install the MSDN libraries for VS 2003 on the second PC for what seems like weeks now. Burning what I thought would be a collection to keep on 3 CDs, CD2 didn't verify. After a second go, another download and eventually burning CD2 at the slowest speed, I had a set. When I came to install them, I discovered I'd downloaded an Italian version (visual studio is quite difficult enough without the help files in a foreign language!). The next copy I downloaded from a different source, I decided not to waste CDs on and used daemon tools to mount the images. Just as well, as this copy of the MSDN library was in Spanish! So I'm once again waiting for shareaza to complete yet another download, currently stuck on 95%.
Vista is as annoying as ever. Installing the latest build, I now find MS have stopped handing out activation keys. After trying to find one for my copy which I was told would deactivate in 3 days, I gave up as all that seemed to be out there were viruses. I booted into Vista a couple of days ago, to be told the copy couldn't activate, which was what I was expecting. However it then continued to load as usual, installed an Avast update and a couple of windows security fixes. Everything still works .... apart from Biostar fan control, which never has and will continue to mean I'll never use it as a main OS until either Biostar release vista drivers or I replace that motherboard.
Ubuntu, which I'm currently trying to install as a second boot option on my old laptop, continues to be a study in frustration. Having progressed from the "nobody cared" message by adding some text to the boot options, I finally got the live CD working. As this would be far too slow an option to be practical, I needed to install it in place of Suse. The laptop partitions, to put it mildly, were a mess. The XP partition seems to have lost half a GB which is annoying as I don't have much space to play with, and there are two mysterious partitions (3 and 4) which I can't identify. Linux has created a main partition and a swap space, but has mapped /home to the windows partition, therefore appearing to add another 4 GB to the hard drive. 7.84 MB of unallocated space seems determined to remain that way. Anyway, out of this mess I've formatted two partitions for Ubuntu (swap space and main partition) which I hoped would allow Ubuntu to finally install. Currently it's stuck at the first hurdle, ie choosing which language I want.
Finally, I enjoyed reading this tale of WGA and Microsoft stupidity. They didn't exactly enhance their reputation for competence when they decided to introduce this spyware. Ridiculously easy to circumvent at first, and easy to avoid now, this user had problems of a different sort.
(Sunday 6th August 2006)A very Happy Birthday to Lucy, our cat who is 10 years old today. A birthday comb, a tin of gourmet cat food (which next door's ginger tom will no doubt enjoy), and a card were all part of her treats.
(Saturday 5th August 2006)Finally, some pictures of Shetland from our latest holiday there. The first day was the only real one to give us a taste of the long daylight hours this far north, after that we were mainly in fog by midday at the latest, and the sun hardly appeared at all. Still, the picture of Voe was taken about 9.15pm at night, and apart from the overcast, rather misty appearance it is still perfect daylight. The conditions when we left Lerwick on the ship put paid to any ideas of watching the Shetland coastline as we sailed back to Aberdeen and the ferry was full of BA passengers as Sumburgh airport had been closed all week.
(Wednesday 26th July 2006)Back from a great holiday in Shetland. It was a blessed relief to get away from the sweltering temperatures back home, which are nothing like as bad in Newcastle as they are in more southerly cities, or indeed other countries, so I suppose I shouldn't complain. In due course I'll post some photographs of the (mainly foggy) holiday we had. After the gale force winds earlier that had prevented the ferry sailing, the airport at Sumburgh was closed for days on end so our ferry journeys ended up accommodating a lot of BA passengers too. It was a bit irritating that after looking forward to long hours of sunshine well into the evening (even in late July the sun doesn't set until around 10.15pm) there was precisely one evening when conditions were like that. But that's what happens when you choose a more northerly latitude for your holiday - there are lots of ifs and buts in Shetland. It *can* produce spectacular sights, but it can also just produce mediocre, cloudy, wet and cool weather even in summer. I'd give anything to be back there though - the entire lifestyle and everything about the place just grows on me with each visit!
(Monday 17th July 2006)Well, at the moment it's so windy in Shetland that the ferry cannot sail ..... brilliant! Spending an extra day of our holiday in Aberdeen wasn't quite what I'd had in mind. The whole of the UK swelters in a heat wave while Shetland seems to be experiencing winter weather! On another note, AVG has started viewing my visual basic projects as viruses, and each daily test finds several "infected files" it moves to the virus vault. Highly annoying .... especially as my VB programs are about as dangerous as a soft toy!
(Sunday 16th July 2006)Off to Shetland in three days with Anne - can't wait!! If nothing else, it will be nice to step out of this current heatwave (which they are certainly not having in Shetland right now), having talked to various people there and seen weather conditions on the net. Today it was 14.8°C with a force 8 gale and no sun. In fact the average temperature in July which is their hottest month, is 16°C. As the sun stays above the horizon for so long at this time of year, it doesn't cool off much in the evenings, and looking just now, the temperature had risen a degree, but it had started to rain heavily and the wind had risen to force 9. The ferry journey overnight on Wednesday is going to be - err - interesting!
(Sunday 9th July 2006)A great day yesterday, celebrating Dad's 80th birthday, wth the whole family gathered round, including two of his oldest friends, Muriel and Ken and Emily's boyfriend, Ryan. A few photos here.
(Friday 7th July 2006)A picture of Rosie with the new bike, which has forced a complete overhaul of the back yard to first of all build secure housing for it and secondly to drastically reduce the size of the back garden so she can manoeuvre the bike in and out. A bit different to the choreographed photo she had taken some years ago on the photopage!
(Wednesday 5th July 2006)Quick update because I don't seem to have written much for a while. Congrats to Rosie on passing her motorbike test on Monday, which is yet another category of road vehicle she is now fully licenced to drive. Congratulations to Dad for this coming Sunday when he celebrates his 80th birthday, and we are all looking forward to the party being held at his house, where we will no doubt watch the World Cup final before the mini bus takes us home. Not long now till Anne and I go off to Shetland again, and I can hardly wait! It will be nice to have the family gathered together over the weekend, when Emily and Ryan arrive from Belfast and Louise flies up from Bristol a couple of days later. I know Jenny and Emily are looking forward to seeing each other again and spending some time at the bungalow.
Completed the Chevy Chase on Saturday, comfortably within the time allotted. Apart from the intense heat and humidity it was the usual enjoyable event and a great chance to get out into the hills again. As it was the 50th anniversary, the event was being filmed for local TV, to be shown in October.
And finally, my last Visual Basic.NET class this Thursday, until September when I know the tutor has plans to run more than one class, as some of us have now gone beyond the complete beginner stage, and since visual Studio 2005, VB has become a more "acceptable" language among the ranks of serious programmers, so courses are tending to attract people who already have a fairly good grasp of some kind of programming.
(Monday 14th June 2006)Vista is now working nicely and I have to say beta 2 is a huge improvement on past builds. I've got a few programs installed even, and the bcedit file sorted out so it isn't the default boot option.
(Saturday 10th June 2006)England's first World Cup match today, and we're still waiting to see which section at work has won the best decorated area with the country they've drawn. There are also prizes if the drawn team do well in the tournament, so we've not done badly to have got Germany (currently second favourite). There was a last minute panic when the German flag I was designated to buy didn't turn up, but thankfully it did arrive in time in the end.
It's been a busy week otherwise. I decided to replace Suse with Ubuntu on the laptop, but gave up after seeing this message repeat over and over at the start of the install:
Nobody cared ??? I sometimes think these developers have a warped sense of humour! In fact, it seems likely the slower CDRW on the laptop can't cope with the ISO image burnt by my much faster DVDRW - I've had this issue before, although commercial CDs seem to be OK. When I get time I'll have another go, burning a copy at a slower speed. Vista has also been problematic (as ever). I'm currently installing Beta2 for the second time, my aim being to get the boot.ini file in XP set so that Vista is not the default boot option. Attempts to alter this first time round lead to XP refusing to boot at all, and I had to restore the C drive with an acronis image taken around a month ago. As I still can't see how to set boot options with one OS on a SATA drive and one on an IDE drive, my only option appears to be to install it again, accept that it will set itself as default, and take a good look at the boot path for vista, which is what it currently can't find.
And lastly, I would like to strongly recommend that nobody opens an account with Alliance and Leicester. This shoddy organisation failed a direct debit and charged me £34 - even though the money was in the account by 9.30 am on the morning of the day the payment was to go out. Further, I had already phoned the bank to explain that funds coming into my account had by mistake been paid into the wrong bank. I've since read that they've come under a lot of criticism for their charging policies, and worse, any customer who complains receives a letter giving the statutory 30 days notice that their account will be closed. Read some of the stories here and here.
(Sunday 4th June 2006)Just look at the time :( 5.05 am and I've been up 24 hours having started work at 6 am this morning. Spent the last part of this day rearranging the photopage to include an official photo of Louise from her graduation. A larger photo can be viewed on its own here.
(Wednesday 31st May 2006)Well, the week at Embleton might not have seen the best weather I've ever known in late May, and having taken up a telescope the moon might have decided to disappear for the entire week, but there were compensations - among them these two wonderful glimpses of sunrise (taken around 4.30 am), with nothing more than my phone camera.
(Monday 22nd May 2006)Had a fantastic day on Saturday, watching Louise's graduation at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, then having lunch back in Formal Hall at Univ college, which brought back some happy memories of our many trips down there while she was a student. It was good to see Dusty (the head porter, whose house we stayed in on one trip) and talk to some of her friends again. It feels like the end of an era, as I don't suppose we'll have any reason to go back to Oxford and if we do, we won't have access to anything within the college, or attend any more Formal Hall meals. It was a pity the weather was cold and wet and I wouldn't have minded not having to get up at 4.15 am to fly down to Heathrow, but overall it was a superb day. There are some preliminary photos here, although I'll be getting some rather better official ones.
To read more archive weblogs, click here which will take you to the previous archive, which in turn contains a link to the one before that.
