Friday, August 27, 2004
Excellent football game last night! I must control my tendency to over-exuberance, though—I get carried away and forget that I'm not supposed to run into the other players. Adrian leant me a very useful-looking guide to to XML, and I repaid him with a hefty shoulder barge. Bad me. :( I also diddled the chippie out of a penny on the way home.
Came home to find that L had finished painting the living room, and had distressed the two dining table chairs. Probably by threatening to convert them into shelving for the new kitchen. She's pretty handy with a paintbrush, that girl!
The unusable graphics card is back in Dabs' hands by now. Hoping they'll be reasonable. I am a good customer, after all...
Came home to find that L had finished painting the living room, and had distressed the two dining table chairs. Probably by threatening to convert them into shelving for the new kitchen. She's pretty handy with a paintbrush, that girl!
The unusable graphics card is back in Dabs' hands by now. Hoping they'll be reasonable. I am a good customer, after all...
Monday, August 23, 2004
Well. All my efforts with the graphics card failed to get it to work. I discovered that just leaving the machine running (with the annoying POST message repeating over and over) for a couple of minutes would eventually bring up the BIOS setup screen—so it wasn't that there was no signal. Examining the hardware monitor in the BIOS showed something seriously wrong with the motherboard power supply—all the voltages showed at 1% of what they were supposed to be (i.e. '0.12' instead of 12, and '0.03' instead of 3.3). Among other things, I tried flashing the BIOS (successful insofar as my motherboard still works, but no dice with the graphics), resetting the CMOS, and supplying more power to the motherboard (via an extra connector for a 12-volt dongle). I'm still waiting for a response to my email to the graphics card support people, but I'm not holding my breath there. Various fora on the Net seem to reveal that Asustek's P4S333 motherboard does not cope well with some higher-powered cards—a shame because otherwise it's a good board (got great reviews when I bought it in January 2002). I reckon I'll have to persuade Dabs to take it back, and try a different card...
Apart from the above, it was a great weekend. L's sister's birthday, and she and her bloke came to stay.
I've started a weather journal. I'm not expecting anyone else to be very interested—it's more for my own use. I'd noticed how hard it was to remember exactly when particular spells of weather were, or how long they lasted (like I can remember that we've had two long hot and sunny periods this summer, but I find it hard to recall even when the most recent one ended). Be thankful that I'm recording it in a separate blog!
Apart from the above, it was a great weekend. L's sister's birthday, and she and her bloke came to stay.
I've started a weather journal. I'm not expecting anyone else to be very interested—it's more for my own use. I'd noticed how hard it was to remember exactly when particular spells of weather were, or how long they lasted (like I can remember that we've had two long hot and sunny periods this summer, but I find it hard to recall even when the most recent one ended). Be thankful that I'm recording it in a separate blog!
Friday, August 20, 2004
I might be on the telly soon! Time Commanders (first series last autumn) is one of my favourite ever TV programmes. Ages ago I inquired about getting a team together to appear on it, but was told that they weren't sure it'd go to a second series. Well, on Monday I got an email from them, with an application form, saying that there would be second series, and filming will take place at the beginning of October. My team will consist of me as General, Charles as Lieutenant General, Matthias and Levi as majors. The first series was all Classical battles, but apparently they're going to do some Mediæval ones too this time. Hopefully the fact that we're all current or ex-students of the Dept. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic should make us more attractive to them.
What else? Well, I've finally got round to getting the new bits I want for my PC. I ordered another 512MB of RAM (taking it up to a stonking 1GB!), an NVidia GeForce FX5700 (256MB) graphics card, a 350W PSU, and a new (unnecessarily colourful) case fan. So far, I'm peeved to admit, all this new kit has only proved a partial success. The fan and PSU certainly work, but with no perceptible noise reduction. Perhaps it's the CPU fan that's making all the noise... I reckon I can slow the case fan down a fair bit one way or another, so hopefull that'll make some difference. No probs with the memory. I couldn't get the graphics card to work at all, however—it's getting power OK (its fan worked), but I couldn't get any signal (digital or analogue) from it. I was on the verge of sending it back to Dabs as faulty, when it occurred to me that it might be worth flashing the motherboard's BIOS. The BIOS must be late 2001 in vintage, so perhaps it needs to be updated to deal with a newer graphics card. Any thoughts?
Had my 5th driving lesson yesterday. I feel a lot more confident behind the wheel now, and when there's not too much going on I'm fine, but I still make idiotic mistakes when I have to do several things at the same time (like steer and change gear...). The lesson took me from outside the library back home, where I then had to do a quick change and cycle back into town for football. Was knackered by the end of the evening!
Just a couple of amusing stories:
What else? Well, I've finally got round to getting the new bits I want for my PC. I ordered another 512MB of RAM (taking it up to a stonking 1GB!), an NVidia GeForce FX5700 (256MB) graphics card, a 350W PSU, and a new (unnecessarily colourful) case fan. So far, I'm peeved to admit, all this new kit has only proved a partial success. The fan and PSU certainly work, but with no perceptible noise reduction. Perhaps it's the CPU fan that's making all the noise... I reckon I can slow the case fan down a fair bit one way or another, so hopefull that'll make some difference. No probs with the memory. I couldn't get the graphics card to work at all, however—it's getting power OK (its fan worked), but I couldn't get any signal (digital or analogue) from it. I was on the verge of sending it back to Dabs as faulty, when it occurred to me that it might be worth flashing the motherboard's BIOS. The BIOS must be late 2001 in vintage, so perhaps it needs to be updated to deal with a newer graphics card. Any thoughts?
Had my 5th driving lesson yesterday. I feel a lot more confident behind the wheel now, and when there's not too much going on I'm fine, but I still make idiotic mistakes when I have to do several things at the same time (like steer and change gear...). The lesson took me from outside the library back home, where I then had to do a quick change and cycle back into town for football. Was knackered by the end of the evening!
Just a couple of amusing stories:
- Burning rabbit destroys cricket clubhouse!
- MMORPGS (massively multi-player online role-playing games) now have a combined economy greater than Namibia's, and nearly as large as Jamaica's
- One of the new komodo dragons at London Zoo (see my post of 14th July) has died trying to climb over a wall to reach her mate
Monday, August 09, 2004
Sooooo tired...
Party at the London branch of Toad Hall on Saturday, left me at 7 on Sunday morning with a worse hangover than I've had in a very long while. I begged Alex for Nurofen, but instead she handed me a glass of Alka-Seltzer XS. The stuff is magic! With Nurofen, it would've been touch and go whether I'd have kept it down, and it would only really have sorted out my pounding head, but, sipping the Alka-Seltzer, I found that after half an hour I was feeling merely uncomfortable (instead of like an experiment in pain tolerance), and after an hour I just felt a bit tired.
L's away in Barcelona now, so I'm left to my own devices till Thursday night. This means my evenings will be a debauch of chorizo and Crusader Kings. One of my favourite meals is chorizos fried with onion and peppers and served with pasta and a sauce of sun-dried tomatoes. One of the few things I cook that wouldn't be characterised as 'student food'...
I've finally got round to doing something about my plans to become a qualified geek (as opposed to my current status of 'unqualified trainee geek') and registered with the Open University to do their BSc in Computing.
Party at the London branch of Toad Hall on Saturday, left me at 7 on Sunday morning with a worse hangover than I've had in a very long while. I begged Alex for Nurofen, but instead she handed me a glass of Alka-Seltzer XS. The stuff is magic! With Nurofen, it would've been touch and go whether I'd have kept it down, and it would only really have sorted out my pounding head, but, sipping the Alka-Seltzer, I found that after half an hour I was feeling merely uncomfortable (instead of like an experiment in pain tolerance), and after an hour I just felt a bit tired.
L's away in Barcelona now, so I'm left to my own devices till Thursday night. This means my evenings will be a debauch of chorizo and Crusader Kings. One of my favourite meals is chorizos fried with onion and peppers and served with pasta and a sauce of sun-dried tomatoes. One of the few things I cook that wouldn't be characterised as 'student food'...
I've finally got round to doing something about my plans to become a qualified geek (as opposed to my current status of 'unqualified trainee geek') and registered with the Open University to do their BSc in Computing.
