Ever Shambling Onwards...

My new TV turned up today, huzzah!

Free (slightly unreliable, slightly battered but generally functional) 21" telly going to anybody who can make it not be here... It should be fine if operated with care, and not operated inside an unventilated cupboard... which is the only place I can fit a TV in my room, hence replacing it.

Looks like BBC4 is doing a stream of programming celebrating British SF. There's some good stuff in there.

Details here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/features/sfb.shtml

Listings here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/features/sfb-listings.shtml

Here's a photo of the new-look cybermen for the new series of Dr. Who. Is it just me, or does it look very much like it was inspired by the artwork of majic13?

So, if I was to bung on the Global Frequency TV pilot tonight before the pub (computer quirks permitting, that is), who would be interested in seeing it? Basically, I'll wait until people who've declared their interest appear before starting it. Unless you're much too late and I want to get to the pub, that is.

Express interest by commenting please...

Well, I'm back at work again after a week away.

Last week I was off on training from Tuesday to Friday - learning how PHP works, as well as playing with Apache and MySQL a bit. So now I have a basic understanding of those... More good stuff for a CV, and it might even be useful here at work with off the shelf components, which is the reason they sent me.

Just to get on my nerves, I've had a headache since about last wednesday night, which I think is down to something bad and wrong happening in my sinuses. This is a theory that's backed up by my having had an odd taste in the back of my mouth (with accompanying odd almost-smell in the back of my nose, odd as that sounds). Which means I'll probably have to go to the Doctor at some point in the near future.

Still, I refuse to let a mere sinus problem get the better of me (except on thursday, where I was crap and failed to make it to the pub), so I made it to barty's party on Friday, although I fled in time for the last train due to being dead enough that waiting for a lift would have resulted in people having to carry me home...

Saturday was mostly a lazy day, with small breaks from being lazy to do things like taking the old folding sofa to the tip (the one with the big hole that ate people). In it's old spot in the front room we now have what I shall call The Sofa of Hidden Depths, recently acquired from anonymous_james. There was also TV watching in the evening - Doctor Who (Daleks = Harsh!) and CSI:New York... Both good.

Sunday began with a Picnic in Windsor Great Park, which took a fair while to get off the ground, but when it did it was good. Post party, there was lounging and the first (somewhat abortive) attempt at Linux-ifying the Toaster. Abortive as the Suse FTP install boot CD seems to insist on setting up a RAMdisk that's larger than the Toaster's memory, so it wouldn't even start. The Floppy Based version doesn't do that, but it also doesn't seem to want to work with the PCMCIA network card, so that got abandonned. Re-linuxifying will recommence when CD install ISOs can be found (as opposed to the DVD install ISO which they seem to insist on using now - Toaster has no DVD capability, oddly enough).

Monday then consisted of me committing surgery on my main PC upstairs. I flashed the BIOS on it, putting a newer version on. The version I had before had claimed to support large drives, but it appears that this was only for a given value of "large" (namely up to 40gig), which is why I never got my 80gig drive to work properly. The new version now supports large drives (for a given value of large... up to 125gig, apparently), so I now have my 80gig HD working at proper speed (fast) as opposed to WinXP controlling it without the bios speed (slow as a one legged donkey with it's leg chained to the wall).

This lead me to try the Suse install CD on that machine to try and set up a WinXP / Linux Dual Boot. Alas, the FTP installer widget doesn't want to play with the network card here either. So far I am underwhelmed by Suse, but FTP installs are always going to be more hassle than doing it from CDs, so I'm prepared to wait and see what a "from the CDs" install is like before passing judgement. Which reminds me... themadone - consider yourself reminded with regard to grabbing said CDs!

But... These events all took place on Monday morning. The afternoon was somewhat different, and activities were very varied. First, izzy_stradlin and I went and saw HHGttG - not as good as the other flavours, but I thought it did a pretty decent job of it.

Next we frivolously wasted money in the Trocadero for an hour or two. Just for the fun of it. We had planned to go for a walk in the park, too, but by this point it was about 8pm, so we didn't. We went and had moroccan food instead, which was good. Also, there was a belly dancer.

This morning, I got up at stupid o'clock and headed in to work. So far I have only once been astounded by stupidity that occured whilst I was away. This is a good thing.