Mostly lemon based

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  • Sometimes it’s not the fault you think it is

    So, I just spent ages finding an appropriate resistor to tweak the voltage output of a John’s Special Power Supply to 5 volts. Theoretically, if the two resistors you change in it are the same value it should produce a nice, healthy, 5 volts. It produced ~4.9 (4.92-4.96 ish, according to my meter). Having tried the two squeezeboxen in the kitchen with the power supply both of them failed. Putting them in the lounge with the other 5 V supply I made last time (which produces 4.97-4.99 volts) they both seemed happy. Joyous even.

    Now I knew* my shiny floodwiring worked, because I’ve used it to transfer data. I’ve transferred data to-and-from my media server using the craptastic android tablet and the problems it had were the same whether it was plugged directly in to the router or into the floodwired point.

    So, given that knowledge I just spent a little while routing around in my resistor collection and managed to wind the new supply up to 5.06 volts. I reckoned that was close enough for jazz, so brought it down and tried it.

    Unfortunately, what this proved is that the problem lies elsewhere. I don’t entirely know if it’s the floodwiring, or the last meter between the box and the craptastic switch, or what is causing the grief, but the poor squeezebox can’t connect. In a good moment it finds the squeezebox server, but then fails. In a bad, it just wails that it can’t find it at all.

    It also takes an inordinately long time to obtain an IP address. Trying ‘em in the lounge reveals no problems at all. I think I’m going to have to spend some time prodding it, but I have absolutely no network diagnostic kit.

    * For, apparently, quite limited values of ‘knew’

  • Some days, no matter how much I achieve I’m not satisfied with myself. Which is quite frustrating as I quietly nibble away at my self confidence despite having done everything I could have achieved.

    I’d wanted to do some gardening but it’s been hacking with rain pretty much all day; so I don’t think that’s really a sensible plan.

    Instead I’ve moved the new gearbox (for the minor) into the garage from the front garden (where it was delivered); I’ve put a coat of paint on a section of the trim that was on its third coat (so it’s now had four and looks lovely) and filled, sanded and painted with a first coat the last upstairs doorframe. Oh, and filled a section of skirting that got damaged way back when they lifted the carpets and sanded the floors.

    I stripped down and reassembled the (third) Slim Devices squeezebox*, made up a new power supply for it*** and configured it.

    And still I’m not feeling like I’ve achieved anything with my day off. Although I suspect it boils down to having listened to BBC news all day and having had the ‘UKIP HAVE WON THE WORLD’ version of the UK elections, which is just depressing, even if it’s not exactly true.

    * I may have bought another one**
    ** Which turned out just to need a new power supply and a case that’s less glue-like
    *** Which needs tweaking because it only produces 4.9 volts which, it seems, is insufficient for the poor thing.

  • Amazon Escalates Its Battle Against Hachette – NYTimes.com

    Amazon Escalates Its Battle Against Hachette – NYTimes.com

    blood-and-vitriol:

    jewess-ex-machina:

    fatmanatee:

    don’t buy from amazon don’t buy from amazon don’t buy from amazon

    This would be gross even if Hachette weren’t my biggest client. That just makes it personally gross.

    What the actual bloody fuck, Amazon.

    Seconded.

    Unfortunately, since back when Amazon bought Abebooks, which is where I like to get my second hand fix from; it’s got much harder. 

    And for online order freaks, like me, hive.co.uk’s pretty cool. Also you can opt to have it delivered to your local bookstore which means you can err…have an excuse to go into the bookstore and buy other books :)

  • Tumblr and WordPress do not seem to be friends, entirely. WordPress, I think, when it autosaves draft posts seems to send them to tumblr – as drafts – and then become unhappy.

    Meh.

  • Can I just pause for a moment in my fangirling about Orphan Black to comment on the astonishing skills of Tatiana Maslany. It’s the subtlety of her acting that gets me. It’s not (just) the normal sort-of straight up level of acting skills, but the nuance of her acting as one clone-being another where I just am left speechless.

  • cockleshells:

    nothingbutthedreams:

    deathorthetoypiano:

    nothingbutthedreams:

    notquiteluke:

    if any of my non-uk followers were wondering what the deal with UKIP is, here is a handy 7-point guide to get you started into this wonderland of racist classist bullshit 

    They’re so ridiculous it’s a wonder that anyone takes them seriously but the fact that people do and actually vote for them is scary to me.

    People think they’re an alternative because he’s got the bumbling silly thing down pat, while somehow also getting the mainstream media to give him LOADS OF ATTENTION, meaning that people go “ooh I like him, he’s not like the others” and vote for UKIP because they just don’t realise.

    Even the silly thing usually involves being incredibly racist or generally bigoted somehow that the fact that works on people is worrying to me too. I think it’s mainly due to their hatred of immigrants that they get most people, or at least the members of my family who would actually consider voting for them.

    DON’T FORGET they also want to halve paid maternity leave, and get rid of anti-discrimination laws. Hope you enjoy being a woman who could potentially have babies, because Farage’s party have said several times that employers would be fools to employ us!

    …and privatise the NHS. 

    And don’t say ‘it doesn’t say that in their manifesto’ because their ‘manifesto’ is the lightest piece of pseudopolitical fluff I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve written more specific political policies in my blog than they’ve got in that bloody thing.

    It also doesn’t say ‘We want all foreigners out of the country’, but it’s pretty damn obvious from their behaviour. Mind, if they want to pay me to leave they’re most welcome to. 

  • The red tide

    *More sleep deprived posting*

    So, I seem to have finally found a way through the incredible inertia which seemed to be preventing me from actually painting the wood trim upstairs. Well, prepping and painting it.

    The main problem was that it seemed like an insurmountably large job. If you’ve ever looked at a 1930’s house, a fairly trad one (not a modernist beastie) there’s more wood in them than you can shake a stick at. Entire forests of carefully turned, shaped and profiled pine cover joints, door frames, skirting and panelwork. It’s fairly fearsome how much trim there is.

    In fact, every time I contemplated the job, or starting it, I felt that sort of sinking ‘how many years is it going to take me to sand that whole thing’.

    But now, now I’ve come up with a plan. I’m doing it a bit at a time. I make a blendable end at the end of each section but have now made it to the second door frame. Sadly there was a bit of a run in my paint on the previous section (gah) and a bit of a run that I didn’t manage to sand smooth enough in the old paint – so I sanded that this afternoon and then redid that section.

    It’s not the ideal way to go about it, but I’m just pleased to be making progress again. And I really like the red upstairs; it adds some definition to what was otherwise a slightly bland space. I love our paint choices but they only really work when the contrasting colours are added :)

    Untitled

  • More Obsolesence

    * This post is sleep deprived, my apologies for any insanity *

    So I finally laid my hands on a Squeezebox. Actually a Squeezebox 2*, and actually two** of them but one of them is dead (shall be taking it to see if John can poke it into submission with test equipment at some point, but currently it’s stone-cold dead. They are getting on in terms of consumer equipment, but I’m not sure why they die and it’s all surface mount teeny tiny components that make me sad).

    Anyhow, for those who don’t know, the Squeezebox series is an out of production, limited support item from Logitech – currently they’re still running the servers that mean it’ll not only play local music, but also stream radio too. One day they’ll switch them off, and I’ll be sad-faced. But since I mainly intend to use it for listening to music from our own collection that’s fine.

    It delights me because it has a vacuum fluorescent display which, whilst it’s less efficient and theoretically less long lasting than LCD, is way is prettier. It also plays FLAC and lots of other nice formats. And you can control it from a laptop, android or iOS, or a remote control. It was also designed to do high-quality audio. It’s musical happyness in a small black box.

    However, despite being archaic and obsolete and all the commentary I’d seen being ‘oh, Logitech’s UE family is not as versatile but way easier to set up’ I have to say, setting it up was piddlingly easy and fell into the category so far of ‘just working’.

    I installed the software on the Linux server – ran through it’s configuration stuff and lo, it was set up. The Squeezebox 2 has the unfortunate fault that it’s wifi card is dead. Apparently, that’s not particularly unusual. Fortunately, it has onboard ethernet and unplugging the card allows it to boot up just fine. One wifiless boot later and plugged in to our network and up it came. It got itself an IP address, found the server, and was ready to play music. Once connected to the amplifier it, well, it just worked. It played music and I tweaked it’s configuration options so it was set up to display the things I wanted.

    Err, and that was it.

    For an old piece of consumer kit that’s not supported anymore the whole thing was easy and pleasant and it made me very happy.

    Thankfully I’m the kind of person who really doesn’t object to running an older linux box as a music server (and in our case as a video server too). Currently, the machine that’s running as our media server won’t run any newer versions of Ubuntu than the one currently on it (it gets various odd problems like no keyboard, or no display, depending on which updated version I try), so it just get security patches and plods along.

    I’m sure eventually this will be problematic, but for the moment, it’s a happy solution, and I’m a happy bunny (although I still really, really want an original Slimp3).

    *I wish I’d bid more on the squeezebox now, because it went for £14 quid. But I’d bid £10 on some faulty Squeezebox 2s, and won them, so didn’t feel I could spend more on a working Slimp3 which is the original and the one I truly desire. It’s so pretty.

    ** May have won an auction for a third***

    *** By which I mean I have. But I shouldn’t have bid on it. Bad e-bay****.

    **** Naughty e-bay, stole a biscuit*****.

    ***** Who are you to judge me! (points for correct attribution).

  • I just laid my hands on a Squeezebox 2 (actually two, but one of them’s dead, this one just the WiFi card is dead). It’s quite delightful. As in, gleeful clapping of hands as I went ‘No, play that’ on my laptop and it went

    “Yes Mistress”

    Then I tapped around on the remote and went, ‘no, play that’ and it went 

    “Yes m’lady”

    And so far no hassle. Yeah, my messy fileserver’s led to some interesting track titles, but when I eventually sort this out (ha) then it should be quite perfect.

    Now I just need to get the other one working.

  • I think all the night shifts are catching up with me. Every week for the last five I’ve done a mix of day and night shifts. Each time swinging my body clock around, loosing hours of sleep, staying up for 24 hours at a time at each end of the block of nights.

    I’ve regained a couple of minor ailments I tend to get when I’m tired and today I feel like I’ve been runover by a truck, at least energy wise. Every so often I joke about how nightshifts are knocking years  off my life. Today I’m really, really feeling it.