Some breaking news!
The Grand Pier in Weston-Super-Mare has been destroyed by fire!
It started about 7am this morning and looks to have started at the base of the west tower.
It seems to only be the pavilion part that has been destroyed
Read more at the following news sites:
BBC News
The Guardian
Sky News
Its been three weeks since I last blogged!!?? Whats going on!!!??? Lol!
For a start I’ve been back from holiday for just over a week now, I was going to post before leaving, but to be honest on the day it was too hectic that I just didn’t have any time to post!
My Flickr photos are up for viewing on Flickr and from the photo section!
The holiday, like last years was a week in Jersey. The ferry left Weymouth at 10am on Sunday 29th June, and arrived back in Weymouth at 23:45 on Sunday 6th July, seven hours late!
This year we drove down the night before and slept (read: closed eyes and pretended to sleep!) in a lay-by outside Weymouth and drove down to the harbour in the morning.
The holiday went fast! This year, instead of going around visiting loads of attractions we spent most of our time on a beach! But we did visit the Lavender Farm again!
Friday evening and during the later part of Saturday the wind picked up! On Sunday, after we had packed up the car and ready to leave, we were told that the ferry had been delayed for six hours and would not be due in until 18:20.
We spent the rest of the day driving around the north coast of Jersey stopping at some the beaches and looking at the rough seas! I also took that opportunity to fill the car’s tank up.
We found a garage that was selling petrol for 89.99 pence a litre. I picked up the pump and it read 99.99 pence a litre. When I went in to pay there was 10% off the price of petrol!
I only managed to put 25.53 litres in, but it only cost me £22.95!
We got to the ferry terminal for six, and the ferry did not turn up until seven.
I think we didn’t set off for Guernsey until about half past seven. And boy was it rough! We was going slow because of the sea, and nothing was open! At times all you could see out of the windows was the sea on one side, and the sky on the other!
During that leg of the journey the duty free shop was only open for five minutes before we got to Guernsey for people departing at Guernsey.
We stayed in Guernsey harbour for an hour to let the seas die down a bit. We left at half past nine.
We brought our stuff from the duty free shop as soon as it was open. We didn’t really have any time to look around as we were all holding onto the shelving just to stay upright!
I spent about an hour up on deck facing the way we had just come trying to settle my stomach and not be sick. It was quite interesting watching the horizon, it would raise up and the sink down, and at the same time it would be moving diagonally first sloping off to the right, and then the left.
After five minutes of me going back inside I filled up one and a half sick bags!
We docked in Weymouth at about 23:45. We found the lay-by we slept in the week before and attempted to sleep!
We set off in the morning at about six and got home about half past eight!
My Flickr photos are up for viewing on Flickr and from the photo section!
My last post was about me playing about with old computers, the update is that I have reverted back to Puppy Linux as Zenwalk Linux kept throwing up “Disabling IRQ #10 – Nobody cares” and that was the IRQ the network card was using so I would lose the network!
This post is about me playing with new computers, or more specifically, I was building a new computer for my mum.
The computer I built is loosely based around my computer, its got a similar motherboard, the same memory and power supply, and its got my processor!
I brought myself a faster processor and a heat sink and I put my old processor in my mums computer!
Here’s a handy hint for trying to remove the heat sink from a processor, make sure the processor and heat sink is warm, because when the thermal paste is cold, it sticks like super glue!
Yes, I did manage to pull the processor out of its socket just by trying to get the heat sink off 😳 lol!
I also had trouble putting the new heat sink on to the new processor, I applied the thermal paste alright, I just could not get the clips to clip into place! And I swear all of the thermal paste has squeezed out of the sides!
I’ll find out when I next try to remove the heat sink! 😀
Till next time
Happy building!
These past two weeks since I last posted I’ve been showing some old computers the “free” way!
I sent Windows 98SE to the recycle bin, and installed Linux! Or more specifically I first installed Puppy Linux, and then Zenwalk Linux
I got Puppy running on one, but the x windows system wouldn’t start up, so I switched to a second computer, and got it installed and running! The wireless network worked straight out of the box, except that it I had to unhide the network SSID for it to connect!
I ditched Puppy because I just couldn’t get the wireless started on boot-up!
So I went with Zenwalk Linux. It installed without a hitch, the desktop runs a little slow but I’m going to see if I can get another one installed instead.
But wireless didn’t work, so I had no connection to the internet, and the kernel module for the wireless card wasn’t installed by default. I managed to get the files needed onto the computer, but it stopped compiling with an error.
Luckily the NDIS wrapper program was installed so I could use the Windows driver provided with the network card on Linux.
I downloaded the install program from the Belkin website
~ $ cd Download/f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0
f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0 $ ls -l
total 23796
-rw-rw-r-- 1 anthony anthony 24333824 2008-06-01 20:26 f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0.exe
f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0 $ unzip -a f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0.exe
Archive: f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0.exe
inflating: start.exe [binary]
inflating: files/._setup.exe [binary]
inflating: files/rt2500.cat [binary]
inflating: files/Rt2500.inf [text]
inflating: files/Rt2500.sys [binary]
inflating: files/Rt25009x.sys [binary]
inflating: files/setup.exe [binary]
inflating: manual/._manual.pdf [binary]
inflating: manual/manual.pdf [binary]
inflating: other/.DS_Store [binary]
inflating: other/._.DS_Store [binary]
inflating: other/._ar500enu.exe [binary]
inflating: other/._flashmain.swf [binary]
inflating: other/._icon.ico [binary]
inflating: other/ar500enu.exe [binary]
inflating: other/flashmain.swf [binary]
inflating: other/icon.ico [binary]
inflating: AUTORUN.INF [text]
f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0 $ ls -l
total 27104
-rw-rw-r-- 1 anthony anthony 45 2004-10-25 18:45 AUTORUN.INF
-rw-rw-r-- 1 anthony anthony 24333824 2008-06-01 20:26 f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0.exe
drwxrwxr-x 2 anthony anthony 4096 2008-06-03 12:43 files
drwxrwxr-x 2 anthony anthony 4096 2008-06-03 12:43 manual
drwxrwxr-x 2 anthony anthony 4096 2008-06-03 12:43 other
-rw-rw-r-- 1 anthony anthony 3343706 2004-08-24 10:41 start.exe
f5d7000v3_2.2.7.0 $
And it worked! I got it connected and onto the internet in no time at all, and the best bit, it connects to the network while its booting up!
I haven’t decided yet, but I might either go back to Puppy, or install a different distro, maybe DSL or Vector Linux
After three weeks of not having a car, my little car is finally mended and back up and running!
It was all down to the cam belt breaking, the pistons hit the valves, and six out of eight valves got bent!
I got the new valves and head gasket set off eBay for £51.50 including postage, and dad fitted it this weekend!
And here’s my car parked outside my house
I’m getting old now, I’m going to start drawing a pension soon if I carry on like this! Lol!
Yep, as you may of guessed from the title, I have recently had a birthday, it was on Saturday, and I am now 23!
The day started off alright, I opened my presents, and then I got a phone call from my mum, who was on holiday at the time in Cyprus.
Then my girlfriend came over and took me out for the day for a picnic on the Cheddar downs.
Boy was that some trek! First we had to walk up the road to a path, and then we had to walk up a load of steps, which would of been alright, but we were carrying all the food, and my presents!
Luckily it didn’t rain, and, even though the sun wasn’t out, it was warm, and it wasn’t all that windy either!
After the picnic we spent an hour or two in the gorge going in and out of all the shops.
And here’s the mandatory present list:
And now some news on my car.
On Sunday dad took me on a guided tour of the innards of my cars engine, we had towed the car to his work Friday evening, and he was working on it all Saturday. The photos can be seen in the usual places, on my website, and on flickr.
From what dad can see at the moment, it just looks like the valves need replacing, and because its been taken off, so does the head gasket.
But first dads got to make sure the cylinder head hasn’t been warped.
That’s it for now
Till next time!
The timing belt on my car broke on the way to work this morning, it happened just as I was going on to the slip road off the motorway.
I managed to get the car on to a lay-by, and then I had walk the rest of the way to work – it wasn’t that far.
Dad then towed my car to his work place to have a look at it, he phoned me to tell me what was wrong.
He got a new belt and fitted it, but the engine won’t start again, it’s knackered.
Thats the end of the road for my car, and I don’t have any photo’s of it!
Todays St George’s Day, the patron saint of England, and the guy’s at English Heritage has launched a campaign to dispel the apathy surrounding St George’s Day and encourage more people to celebrate their patron saint.
You can read more of this article on the Telegraph’s website
The English Heritage’s St George’s Events page can be found here
Brian Patten, a Liverpoolian poet was asked by the English Heritage to write a poem, the poem is called The True Dragon
And here’s an excerpt from the poem:
St George was in awe of it [The Dragon]
It was a thing apart
He hid the sleeping dragon
Inside every English heart[…]
Let’s celebrate St George’s Day,
The dragon in repose;
The brilliant lark ascending,
The yew, the oak, the rose
How are you celebrating today? All comments are welcome
Ok, this post is going back to Saturday, but I didn’t have anytime left to post anything!
All day I made two updates to Linux-Links.co.uk, the first update is the Linux-Links.co.uk feed!
It took me most of the day to set up and get working properly, I then set up a FeedBurner account for people to subscribe to the feed from.
The second update is a proper external links format. Instead of linking directly to the website, there is a (hopefully) unique code that corresponds to the site, and when clicked leads straight to the website requested!
If you’re unsure about what I’m trying to explain, head over to Linux-Links.co.uk, and have a browse around!
The code creation is interesting, it is three separate functions.
The first function accepts a string, creates an hd5 hash of that string and then passes that string to the second function which splits that string into four pieces and passes it back to the first function.
The first function then does some wizardry, and passes four numbers to the third function which then does some more wizardry and returns four alphanumeric characters back to the first function.
The first function then returns those four alphanumeric characters back as a single string
Maybe I should setup a URL shortening site!? Lol!
If you are interested in seeing the code that is used, then you can either leave a comment or email me, the email address is at the bottom of the page.
That all for this post
Till next time,
Happy browsing!
I must start this post with an apology to anyone who is subscribed to my feed!
Earlier today I finally upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.5. At the same time I took the opportunity to clean out my database, quite literally I reformatted my blog!
This involved me exporting all my posts, and blogroll, deleting all WordPress files, apart from my theme and wp-config.php, and then deleting all the WordPress tables from the database!
Then I installed the new version of WordPress and ran through the install. I then deleted the test post, and updated some of the options. I then imported all of my old posts into the fresh install.
That was only this morning, now what have I been doing for the past two weeks since my last post?
The answer, nothing much!
The only notable exception is that I have finally got my new computer up and running!
I installed both Fedora 7 and Windows XP onto the first hard drive, Linux on 100Gb, and Windows on 60Gb.
I am using the 500Gb hard drive for all of my files, on Linux this is mounted as /home
The new computer is working brilliantly, and its so much quieter than my previous computers!
I’ve just got to get a set of speakers, and possibly a new heat sink/fan for the processor, and that will be it sorted!
It’s getting quite late now, so thats it for this post
Till next week!