Tuesday, March 23, 2004
This has got to be a joke, right?! Nadia, don't read it—if Louis Theroux and a bunch of swingers gives you nightmares, this will be ten times worse...
How to install Linux on a dead badger...
Hurrah for Firefox! Read this article and abandon Internet Explorer immediately!
The end of March is in sight. It's been an exceptionally busy month, mainly taken up with house-moving stuff—next month is looking like a vision of happy tranquility.
How to install Linux on a dead badger...
Hurrah for Firefox! Read this article and abandon Internet Explorer immediately!
The end of March is in sight. It's been an exceptionally busy month, mainly taken up with house-moving stuff—next month is looking like a vision of happy tranquility.
Friday, March 19, 2004
Jeepers. Had the weirdest dream just before wakening this morning. Was about to enter it in my dream diary, when I thought, 'Nay! I shall inflict this unheimlich gallimaufrey upon my readership.' Well, something like that...
I was working in a version of my work office, that was actually in a house, and my dad was my boss. He was annoying me and I was arguing with him, when something moved me to look out of the window. My view was of a tree-lined track running between a railway line and a river. I saw the tail end of an enormous furry animal. It was light grey and had a tail which was a big, diamond-shaped flap. It's arse was about a metre wide. The creature shuffled off rapidly, and I ran out after it. There was no sign of it when I got outside, but I asked various people about it, and some of them said they'd seen it before. The railway turned out to be a funicular, and I got on with Leila and a group of vague friends, and as we went up I was looking out over the river for any sign of the strange beast. In the river there were some naked children playing. Our carriage reached the top of the hill and then started to slip back down. Something about it's acceleration made me nervous that it might be broken, so I jumped out and pulled Leila with me.
And then I woke up, and about a minute later Leila rang me. Weird. It occurred to me just now that maybe the creature was a giant wombat... I believe there were giant wombats in prehistoric times. I'll look.
Yup! Here're some sites with pictures (the proper name of the critter is 'diprotodon'): 1, 2, 3, 4.
I was working in a version of my work office, that was actually in a house, and my dad was my boss. He was annoying me and I was arguing with him, when something moved me to look out of the window. My view was of a tree-lined track running between a railway line and a river. I saw the tail end of an enormous furry animal. It was light grey and had a tail which was a big, diamond-shaped flap. It's arse was about a metre wide. The creature shuffled off rapidly, and I ran out after it. There was no sign of it when I got outside, but I asked various people about it, and some of them said they'd seen it before. The railway turned out to be a funicular, and I got on with Leila and a group of vague friends, and as we went up I was looking out over the river for any sign of the strange beast. In the river there were some naked children playing. Our carriage reached the top of the hill and then started to slip back down. Something about it's acceleration made me nervous that it might be broken, so I jumped out and pulled Leila with me.
And then I woke up, and about a minute later Leila rang me. Weird. It occurred to me just now that maybe the creature was a giant wombat... I believe there were giant wombats in prehistoric times. I'll look.
Yup! Here're some sites with pictures (the proper name of the critter is 'diprotodon'): 1, 2, 3, 4.
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Feeling very pleased with my comments box. 
Oooh. Look, a proper smiley gif thing! Something else to be smug about. Huzzah!
Saw this CNN article on how news aggregators (i.e. applications that read RSS and Atom feeds) are the future of the Web. It's definitely true that this method of browsing has completely changed my 'Internet experience'. It gives you a sort of quality control, in that you can go straight to the items you're interested in, and it means that you no longer need to keep checking infrequently updated sites, because the software will alert you if there's anything new. It got me thinking about my own news feed, so I had a trawl to see what was out there by way of free aggregators for Atom + RSS. BottomFeeder took my fancy (and not just on account of the name...), because it's available for most operating systems, so those of you who use more than one can use the same software in each! Other decent-looking apps (Windows-only) are SharpReader and SauceReader.
Other news: finger's healing nicely—you'll be overjoyed to hear—but I'm worried about whence the next attack of the cutlery might emanate; also take a look at this story on the change in the 'Shopping Basket' on which inflation is calculated. I'm distressed that they've taken gin off the list!
Oooh. Look, a proper smiley gif thing! Something else to be smug about. Huzzah!
Saw this CNN article on how news aggregators (i.e. applications that read RSS and Atom feeds) are the future of the Web. It's definitely true that this method of browsing has completely changed my 'Internet experience'. It gives you a sort of quality control, in that you can go straight to the items you're interested in, and it means that you no longer need to keep checking infrequently updated sites, because the software will alert you if there's anything new. It got me thinking about my own news feed, so I had a trawl to see what was out there by way of free aggregators for Atom + RSS. BottomFeeder took my fancy (and not just on account of the name...), because it's available for most operating systems, so those of you who use more than one can use the same software in each! Other decent-looking apps (Windows-only) are SharpReader and SauceReader.
Other news: finger's healing nicely—you'll be overjoyed to hear—but I'm worried about whence the next attack of the cutlery might emanate; also take a look at this story on the change in the 'Shopping Basket' on which inflation is calculated. I'm distressed that they've taken gin off the list!
Monday, March 15, 2004
Yay! The Mortal Wombat is now commentable.
Other news: the knife has struck again. I already think of it as The Subtle Knife. It's scary and out to get me. I must tame it as one would tame a fire or a raging stallion. My little finger is currently a mass of congealed blood, but I'm being a brave little soldier.
Other news: the knife has struck again. I already think of it as The Subtle Knife. It's scary and out to get me. I must tame it as one would tame a fire or a raging stallion. My little finger is currently a mass of congealed blood, but I'm being a brave little soldier.
'Lo peeps!
Computer still running happily—I'm sure you're all overjoyed to hear.
Jon still running happily too (in a not literallyrunning sense). :)
Still haven't sorted out the emoticons. Dang. But I am planning to make this thing commentable. Maybe even this evening.
Random stuff:
Wow! This bloke really knows the way to a girl's heart! Think I prefer my case mods a bit more discreet...
Nokia's working on software to turn its phones into life recording machines. I'm not that keen on the idea of capturing that much of my life. It's possible to spend so much time recording an experience that you forget to actuallyexperience it. For the same reason I prefer to leave my camera at home sometimes. Life is for spending not hoarding!
This was a nice surprise: I'd already pre-ordered my copy of Crusader Kings from Paradox anyway, but then I saw afterwards that they were going to enter me in a competition to win a sword! Apparently these swords are crap, and liable to fall apart if swung around too much, but it'd make a lovely decoration. ;)
Time for tea. Comments later, if I have time.
Computer still running happily—I'm sure you're all overjoyed to hear.
Jon still running happily too (in a not literally
Still haven't sorted out the emoticons. Dang. But I am planning to make this thing commentable. Maybe even this evening.
Random stuff:
Wow! This bloke really knows the way to a girl's heart! Think I prefer my case mods a bit more discreet...
Nokia's working on software to turn its phones into life recording machines. I'm not that keen on the idea of capturing that much of my life. It's possible to spend so much time recording an experience that you forget to actually
This was a nice surprise: I'd already pre-ordered my copy of Crusader Kings from Paradox anyway, but then I saw afterwards that they were going to enter me in a competition to win a sword! Apparently these swords are crap, and liable to fall apart if swung around too much, but it'd make a lovely decoration. ;)
Time for tea. Comments later, if I have time.
Sunday, March 07, 2004
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Very, very pleased with myself. :) After a weekend of toil, I have got exactly the system configuration I wanted. And nothing really awful happened. I have to admit I had significant problems with Linux and booting. The Linux boot menu (I used Lilo, but I don't think it would've been any different with Grub) wasn't able to overwrite the Windows one (or that was my take on the situation anyway), so I ended up with a situation where I had a perfectly good installation of Linux but no way of booting into it! Somewhat bizarrely the Mandrake installation CD didn't give me an option of booting into an existing installation, so I ended up having to reinstall and tell it to create the boot menu on a floppy... Thus enabled to boot into Linux I then edited lilo.conf (the Lilo booter) and saved it to another floppy as 'linux.bin', booted back into WinXP, saved linux.bin to C:\ and added a line to boot.ini to tell it to go to linux.bin for Linux. A bit round the houses, and not exactly what you'd call user-friendly but it all works perfectly sweetly now.
Only minor tweaking left to do now. Absolutely shattered, but very satisfied! Leila'll be round tomorrow—I'm sure she'll be impressed with my handiwork ;)
Very, very pleased with myself. :) After a weekend of toil, I have got exactly the system configuration I wanted. And nothing really awful happened. I have to admit I had significant problems with Linux and booting. The Linux boot menu (I used Lilo, but I don't think it would've been any different with Grub) wasn't able to overwrite the Windows one (or that was my take on the situation anyway), so I ended up with a situation where I had a perfectly good installation of Linux but no way of booting into it! Somewhat bizarrely the Mandrake installation CD didn't give me an option of booting into an existing installation, so I ended up having to reinstall and tell it to create the boot menu on a floppy... Thus enabled to boot into Linux I then edited lilo.conf (the Lilo booter) and saved it to another floppy as 'linux.bin', booted back into WinXP, saved linux.bin to C:\ and added a line to boot.ini to tell it to go to linux.bin for Linux. A bit round the houses, and not exactly what you'd call user-friendly but it all works perfectly sweetly now.
Only minor tweaking left to do now. Absolutely shattered, but very satisfied! Leila'll be round tomorrow—I'm sure she'll be impressed with my handiwork ;)
Going well so far! :)
My first attempt at installing XP on the second disk failed (bizarre message at the logon screen about inability to connect to the right domain). I thought it was something to do with my configuration, but decided it was worth having another go, so I reformatted the partition and reinstalled, and, hey presto!, it worked fine, so must've just been a temporary glitch.
Anyway, I now have two functioning installations of XP and a boot menu to choose between them. I had to edit the boot.ini file myself—I'd got the idea from somewhere that the XP CD offered a boot menu wizard, but it didn't.
Installed the Zip drive OK too.
Next up is Linux. Still plenty of potential for horrors, so keep things crossed!
My first attempt at installing XP on the second disk failed (bizarre message at the logon screen about inability to connect to the right domain). I thought it was something to do with my configuration, but decided it was worth having another go, so I reformatted the partition and reinstalled, and, hey presto!, it worked fine, so must've just been a temporary glitch.
Anyway, I now have two functioning installations of XP and a boot menu to choose between them. I had to edit the boot.ini file myself—I'd got the idea from somewhere that the XP CD offered a boot menu wizard, but it didn't.
Installed the Zip drive OK too.
Next up is Linux. Still plenty of potential for horrors, so keep things crossed!
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Eeep. Today's the big day. New hard disk is in, and 25gig of it is DOS formatted. Projects for today:
Here're some links I've been saving up:
This game looks totally cool (but not as good as Crusader Kings—out at the beginning of April, and I've got my copy pre-ordered). I love setting traps, and being able to set up a chain of giant fans to blow a government agent along corridors and into a fiery pit would certainly make my day. :) Setting traps was my favourite thing in Dungeon Keeper.
Hey, look! Tenacious D merchandise.
Anyone who hates RealPlayer will find this rant rather amusing. Here's a site whence one can download some software called 'Real Alternative', which plays RealPlayer format files, without all the associated crap. I've not tried it yet, but I plan to. Mine's set up to the absolute minimum level of invasiveness, but it still rears its ugly head uninvited from time to time.
Oh, and a nice follow up to that giant life-saving fen bunny story.
Suddenly everyone's blogging or Live Journaling! I discovered in the wee hours that me old mucker Charles has a Live Journal, and now Tara has one too. They'll get permanent links, oi reckon.
Get dressed now, fortify myself with a cup of coffee, and begin operating on my computer. Fingers crossed!
- install XP (I think it'll cope with the fact that XP's already also installed on the other disk...) and try to get a boot menu sorted out
- install Mandrake Linux 9.2 on the remaining 15gig of the new disk, and pray that i don't cock things up with the boot menu...
- take the internal zip drive out of my other case and stick it in my main one
Here're some links I've been saving up:
This game looks totally cool (but not as good as Crusader Kings—out at the beginning of April, and I've got my copy pre-ordered). I love setting traps, and being able to set up a chain of giant fans to blow a government agent along corridors and into a fiery pit would certainly make my day. :) Setting traps was my favourite thing in Dungeon Keeper.
Hey, look! Tenacious D merchandise.
Anyone who hates RealPlayer will find this rant rather amusing. Here's a site whence one can download some software called 'Real Alternative', which plays RealPlayer format files, without all the associated crap. I've not tried it yet, but I plan to. Mine's set up to the absolute minimum level of invasiveness, but it still rears its ugly head uninvited from time to time.
Oh, and a nice follow up to that giant life-saving fen bunny story.
Suddenly everyone's blogging or Live Journaling! I discovered in the wee hours that me old mucker Charles has a Live Journal, and now Tara has one too. They'll get permanent links, oi reckon.
Get dressed now, fortify myself with a cup of coffee, and begin operating on my computer. Fingers crossed!
