Peter's Blog 2003/12

Took my wedding ring back to the jeweller to be ..

Took my wedding ring back to the jeweller to be reduced by half a size . They did it while we shopped and even polished it. It's a much better fit now.

Found I could log into web site if I gave mb ftp..

Found I could log into web site if I gave mb ftp user name and password. Emailed their technical support to see why that is needed.

Knee was painful all night but it's ok now.

Knee was painful all night but it's ok now.

I haven't mentioned christmas but it was memorable..

I haven't mentioned christmas but it was memorable for a headache that lasted for 4 days. Not alcohol related. It was joined by nausea which I now attibute to taking two paracetamol at a time. This may have been happening for years.

After a week with no gym I had terrible withdawl cramps in my legs. Went today and now the cramps are gone but my right knee is sore from what feels like overuse of weights. Gym: just say no.

Re-enabled VIA on-board sound and it Just Worked.

Re-enabled VIA on-board sound and it Just Worked. Find myself listening to Windows Media Player. I'm just going with the flow these days.

Spent a few hours trying to set up www.bisiand.me.uk but now it's screwed, looks like I've lost access control to the server, www.bisiand.me.uk gives a login box for "hosting.xp". WTF. Dunno if it was me messing about or coincidentally the server snuffed.

After eulogising about my new Hotsync cable the FT stopped hotsyncing, however much I waggle the connector. It still charges the palm but ARGH. Addendum, after study under a bright light, I can get it to work by pushing it sideways. The alignment of the pins f.s not great. Also the latch that is supposed to hold it in place is not wonderful.

After quite a while now of constant use the PC..

After quite a while now of constant use the PC locked up again. I'll turn the h/w acceleration down.

Whoopee, palm cable works.

Whoopee, palm cable works. In some ways I think I prefer it to the cradle:

• Don't have to take leather cover off

• Can write on the palm much more easily (like I am now)

• No need for seperate PSU

Downside:

• No hotsync button

I'll keep using the cradle at home, the cable can be based at work.

Bought a sync/charge cable for palm, £20 at..

Bought a sync/charge cable for palm, £20 at Staples. It should be good for 3 things:

1. Charging palm in car with car adapter. Now I can leave home with no worries

2. Charging palm at work via USB. It is a pain when it needs charging there

3. Syncing at work without messing with bluetooth.

The packet says it is for a M500 series so here's hoping it will work with a Tungsten.

PC still up but no 3D on screensaver, just a..

PC still up but no 3D on screensaver, just a floating box moaning about a lack of DirectX. Increased the acceleration by 1.

Ran PC on a screensaver all night with no problems.

Ran PC on a screensaver all night with no problems. Turned up the acceleration to about half way so DirectX is disabled.

Laptop is running fine under Windows 98. Get 50k/sec transfers so internet is quite usable. Mozilla refuses to run. Firebird gave an error about missing function in an OLE library so installed IE6 to upgrade everything and firebird ran fine. Ironic, using IE6 as a patch to get another browser going.

ToDo:

• Set up windows networking

• Try VNC

• Give laptop a swap partition

• Investigate wakeup from standby: timed or network event.

Tunde predicted that we are going to have twins, a..

Tunde predicted that we are going to have twins, a boy and a girl.

BTW, Left PC in standby mode all day and it didn't..

BTW, Left PC in standby mode all day and it didn't crash.

• Could be useful

• Screens off so could hang be screen related ?

Laptop just started playing music. Could be working.

Bouncing exploding ball screensaver is still ok even with hardware acceleration turned off.

Damn, mozilla still won't boot. It has been quite fussy since V1.4 or so.

PC still hanging so decided it may be the video..

PC still hanging so decided it may be the video cards. Turned off the hardware acceleration on main gforce, I'll see if that fixes it and try increasing it if it is ok or disabling the v330's acceleration if it is not.

Found 'Network Bridging' in XP. This seems to treat all bridged network cards as a single IP address and it Just Worked. Set Laptop to auto IP and it was away.

Mozilla won't run on Windows 95 on laptop so I'm upping it to 98, only 6 years behind the times.

XP does not stop the PC locking up and it does not..

XP does not stop the PC locking up and it does not boot remarkably quickly either :-(

Nice:

• The built-in zip

• Hibernate from the power button

The big news today is that I finally succombed to..

The big news today is that I finally succombed to buying Windows XP. I did this because:

1. It might stop it crashing

2. It might boot faster

3. It's a new toy

4. It might be easier for Bisi to use

5. It miqht be better

6. It's christmas

Installed it over linux on half the disk, leaving Win2k intact, just in case. Installed it like this:

1. Tried running setup from Win2k but it said something about an unsupported upgrade path and kicked me out.

2. Set PC to boot from CD and booted XP disk

3. Set it to install over linux

4. Followed dialogs

5. Activated it

It Just Worked. It had to install 20 minutes worth of updates but it still booted.

Thoughts:

• What's the difference?

• Installed Intellimail and set it. Somehow it found most of the account settings. It is a nice piece of software

• IE6 seemed very quick. Is it because of XP ?

• Installed Mozilla, no time left to play with it

• XP set up all the networking (and everything else). Got to love the simplicity of the networked router.