So, our media server is, hopefully, back from the brink of extinction. It was pretty close to being replaced with a pile of removable hard drives, a Pi and a USB hub. However, given the application of various sticks, the help of John and Nikki and these blog posts:
Ubuntu login takes you back to login screen
Broken .gvfs file
I’m hoping that I can log in as myself again. It seems a succession of foolish actions lead me to a path of minor disaster where my own user login was broken, although now we’ve got VNC up and running and I’ve managed to persuade it to let me boot headless we’re on the path to joy.
The guy in the shop managed to annoy me, because whilst I’m sure he’s very pleased that his fans are ‘ultra quiet’ my gentle explanation that I didn’t really need them to be as the server lives in a cupboard met a long explanation from him about how everyone else cares.
I’m supporting your shop already. I’m paying over the odds for parts to support a local business and not buying the bits on ebay. P’raps now is not the moment to make me debate whether I should say sod it and go and spend 2 quid on it on ebay for a cheaper, noiser fan, than 6 quid from you. *feh*.
Still, it’s handy having a PC shop around, for those ‘oh hell’ moments.
Although I’m increasingly realising that the server is getting a little long in the tooth. But does that warrant replacing it? Not at the moment, since it’s just had nearly 20 quids worth of low-noise fans in it. But when we go to the States, I think it’ll be time.
Oh, on ‘The States’, we’ve now got a new possibility. Astoria, OR. It looks like our kind of town, it says it’s queer friendly, so that’s all good. It’ll be a while yet, but we’ve been watching houses go past, and looking at some of the sites as a ‘we could buy that outright’ (we’ll have to build our own house on it, but hey). Anyhow. It’s a possibility.
In other news, I’ve splashed out a few quid on some crappy clip-on lenses for the iPhone, just to see how they pan out. This is because I want to do some filming for The Electric Minor Project, and thought I might want to do something with alternate camera angles. The quality will undoubtably be poor, but if I want to take really good quality video I’ve got my Micro 4/3s camera. I looked at the nicer ones, but they mostly seem to be phone specific, and since I’m hoping to trade the iPhone for something less… appley… well.
Anyhow, not much else has happened, it’s that quiet postchristmas getting back in to the year kind of time.
I did, however, walk 10.25 miles yesterday, just on a whim. None of it was particularly pleasant or exciting, but it was interesting and I saw bits of Bristol I don’t know that well, which is always interesting :)
