pault

functioning computer!

I posted a quick note—linux box built—early this morning. Here’s a fuller report.

After scrabbling together the other bits, I bit the bullet and went down to A1 Computer Solutions, cheque book in hand. Michael was very helpful and I came out with: a floppy drive, 48-speed CD-ROM, keyboard [new], mouse [new], 16Mb ATI graphic card, 19-inch Dell/Trintron monitor, floppy cable and two IDE leads—grand total £100.00 exactly.

With a medium-size pile of computer bits in front of me, I feel it’s time to call in help—in circumstances like this the guy to call is tso. While Ceilidh cooked a fantastic tuna, olive and sweetcorn pizza [from scratch] around us, we built the box on the kitchen floor.

The only slight hitch is the mounting plate on the graphics card [a problem to be solved at a later date], but soon fixed with an ATI Mach64 replacement from tso’s box of bits.

Installation of RedHat 9 was trivial and quick and hey presto, by midnight we had a functioning box. The fact that the temporary graphics card only has 1Mb of RAM, means that I’m restricted to 256 colours at 800x600—but hey, the damn thing works!

I I set myself the task. I’ve come in on budget, eleven days ahead of schedule and having gained a lot of faith in my friends. Thanks a lot folks.

roll of honour
tso | aland | bill | chris | bruno

linux box built

It’s early in the morning and I’ll write a longer report tomorrow—but the linux box is built, running RedHat and at a cost of £100.00 exactly.

links page dilemma

I’ve been thinking about what do with my links page. My existing links page has been a bit dormant of late while I’ve been doing the MT stuff. I’ve added a few links to the left column, but I’m afraid the length will get unwieldy very quickly. So what to do?

One of the rss feeds I subscribe to is LaughingMeme—whose byline i have measured out my life in coffee cups made me smile. I like this blog, though a lot of the techie stuff is over my head. Fiddling about with the site yesterday I ended up at MLP. MLP is described as: mindless link propagation, with the occasional witty and very short commentary, bringing blogging back to its root. I really like the way that kellan’s done this.

So the plan is: try and see if I can work out how to set up a separate link blog [with its own rss feed] and have a short essential list on the main page, or a most recently added links list [analogous to the most recent posts list].

NASN and Barry

Being a UK-based baseball fan I have tried for the last five years to build my life around the twice-weekly live EPSN broadcasts via Channel 5 [UK terrestrial channel]. We have TeleWest digital TV at home and I was thrilled to find NASN earlier this month—they have a live baseball game on every day [and another retransmitted the next day]. Also Baseball Tonight every day. I’m in heaven!

So my baseball week:
Sunday Atlanta @ St Louis [2–3] on Channel 5 [ie: ESPN Sunday Night Baseball] including Rafael Furcal’s unassisted triple play.
Monday St Louis @ Pitsburgh [6–4] on NASN.
Tuesday San Francisco @ New York. Which brings me to Barry [Bonds for the non-baseball minded].

I’ve watched sport all my life—football, cricket, rugby league and anything on Grandstand, World of Sport and Trans-World Sport. I’ve been seriously into baseball since 1995. In all my sport watching I have never seen [with possible exception of Michael Jordan] anyone who is as gob-smackingly good at what they do.

After being intentionally walked in the first, Barry just came up none on and hit a screamer [2003: #36, career: #649] into the right-centre seating… and you just knew it was coming.

—
Barry PA update
5th inning, runner on second. RBI single down right-field line. Run scored.
7th inning. Leading off inning. Strikeout swinging on 2–2 pitch [only strikeout 49 against 111 walks this season].
9th inning. None on. Second screamer to right-centre field [2003: #37, career: #650].

final
San Francisco Giants 4 New York Mets 5

showing Oggi

Showing Oggi how to put a new entry on my site.

unassisted triple play

Just seen Rafael Furcal turn an unassisted triple play for the Braves in the bottom of the fifth [against the Cardinals]. Horacio Ramirez pitching, runners on first and second. Woody Williams lines to short on a hit and run play, Furcal steps on second for second out [Mike Matheny trying to get back], and then tags Orlando Palmiero who was returning to first.

First one I’ve ever seen. Wow.

tea at Claire’s

On Friday evening, went to Claire’s for tea. Happened to have a digital camera in my bag. So what follows is a little gallery of shots from the evening. Just me mucking about really.

We had a lovely evening sat out in the sun and warm at the end of one of the hottest days of the summer. Good strong coffee, a lovely warm bottle of rioja, rocket and water cress salad and loads of veg roasted in olive oil. All accompanied with chatting and laughing and star gazing. Summer in the city at its best. Claire’s got an interesting garden with some funky plants and other stuff in it. I hope this apparent from the photos—if it’s not it’s the photographer’s fault.

For another good looking garden in Burngreave [just down the road in fact], visit markmedic’s garden.

This little exercise also gave me the chance to have a look at MT’s file upload capabilities. [This particular blog entry will therefore get updated a few times while I get to grips with it—apologies in advance to those who subscribe to the rss feed for this site].

To make full use MT’s facilities, we were missing the Perl module Image::Magick—which gives the option of creating thumbnails on the fly—very handy. This gave me the opportunity to go through the installation of the module with aland.

So here’s the gallery [click on thumbnail to see bigger version [in a popup window]]:

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The Wish List

The Wish List—Eoin Colfer
Recommended to me by my daughter Ceilidh. From the same author as the excellent Artemis Fowl.

This is an enjoyable romp of a book. Preferably to be read at a single sitting [out in the sun]. Good lol bits, heroes and anti-heroes, fab baddies and an appeal to the geek in me.

As with all the best kid/young person/teenager books there’s a healthy dose of anti-authoritarianism in there too. The TV studio scenes are the most enjoyable in the book for this reason.

Though this is a good book, you’re better off reading Artemis Fowl. I dare say a few thoughts on the second in the Fowl series before too long, as soon as I pry it out of Orfhlaith’s hands.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude—Gabriel García Márquez [translation from es—Gregory Rabassa]

I’ve had this particular tome on my shelf for years and somehow never quite got round to reading it. It’s odd because I knew it was going to be good. In my head García Márquez has always been linked to Salman Rushdie and I’ve devoured [and for the most part loved] what he’s written, coupled with my love of things Spanish/Latin, it’s inexplicable to me that I haven’t got round to it before.

What did I think? I absolutely loved it. If the cliché about translation is true this must be one of the all-time greats in Spanish [I’ll let you know in about four years when mine is good enough].

As with Rushdie, García Márquez writes the unbelievable as the most natural thing in the world. The transition from descriptions of normal, everyday behaviour in the blinding sun to fantastic, bizarre scenes is seamless. I found my self rereading passages to try to work out where things starting going odd, but never quite managed it.

The pace and breadth of the thing is one of its delights. From the monstrously long broad-ranging paragraphs to the bending and stretching of time through the narrative, the experience is a distortion of the real.

Definitely one to reread, I’m sure it’s one of those that reveals more of itself on subsequent readings. I’m going to start hunting round for second-hand copies of his other books.

sad story and a project

In May this year my trusty PowerMac 5500/275’s power supply died. At £115 for a replacement, it didn’t make sense to spend that much money to repair a machine that’s only worth £250–300 overall.

Friends have helped me out—manDA has lent me her [second gen] iBook and Claire her Titanium G4 at various times. Love and thanks to you both.

But the fact remains that the most powerful computer in the house is now my daughter’s PM 7600/132. Now this is a great machine [as was the 5500], but there’s no way to run Mac OS X on it. Having a G4 Dual 1.25GHz at work now I’m very spoilt and a lot of the things I now do are based on the unix underpinnings of OS X.

So I need another machine. I whip out my no limit platinum credit card… Meanwhile back in the real world: I can’t afford a new Mac, no way no how. Second-hand Macs hold their price very well, so they are really out of my price range—I can’t come up with £400–500 straight off.

In an email conversation with aland he mentioned how little money was spent on building some very servicable BITPart machines for Abbeyfield Multicultural Festival.

So I’m thinking I’m going to build a Linux machine for home for as little money as possible. The task: an up and running Mandrake Linux 9.1 box by 01 September 2003 for less than £100. I’m looking for bits people!

I’ll let you know how it goes.