Tag: Old Site

“Arse”

Yes, Arse. Anyway. I popped down to Donna’s for a day and a half, the call of Bath proving sucessful once again. Anyway, I had a really good time, just chatting and so on….but today. Today we went into Bath and shopped. I simply got a skirt – she went insane on tops ;-)

Well, okay she bought 2….Anyway. We then went to 1015 Music Exchange (again <g>) where I saw a rather nice Yamaha A-520 Amp. Which, I thought, would do nicely as a replacement for my amp which has started to crackle which is the fault it displayed last time. However the only reason I could even consider affording this amp was the simple fact that it did not work.

However I’ve always had a fair amount of luck with things electronic and my magic plan of looking, prodding, guessing and fixing has worked a surprisingly high percentage of times.

Unfortunately today it was not to be. In quite a bad way. For I located the obvious fault – but the alarm bells did not ring when they should have. For the amp had clearly been inexpertly repaired before – and my presumption was that it had simply failed again and the owner, being fed up had decided to be rid of it. However….Rather unfortunately I was wrong. Oh so wrong….

For there was the broken pair of wires, with their connector severed from the circuit board….Br+/- leading to Br+/-….

In a moment of madness (I’d already checked, no, it didn’t work…) I grabbed my trusty soldering iron. Connected the wires. Checked…Br+ went to Br+, Br- to Br-. A matching pair when to Bl+ and Bl- from the same place – so I thought – okay it must be providing roughly the right volts/amps – so it should all be fine…

[Click] *Flash* *Fizzle* “Eeep” [Click].

Oh dear. One of the transistors is now minus a leg…and I’m not sure what else is fried. I have no idea why – perhaps attacking it at 2300 was a bad idea…but never mind. So it’s currently located under my bed….I will (probably) get a quote for fixing it at some point in the future- although I’m tempted to get the service manual and try myself….

But rather a shame….for though I love my trusty Eagle amplifier it seems rather sickly again…and it would be nice to have an amp with a front panel….

Anyway, I’m shattered….so….bed…

—
Kate

Hmm. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m not suffering from some sort of low level depression. Although I sometimes feel quite cheery, there’s this kind of underlying “I feel shit” thing going on.

I’ve sadly sobered up – and woken up rather, after my minor drinking fest (although 3 drinks is hardly a drinking fest)….And I feel this kind of essentially misery sitting there. Just being there. And nothing I do, or think about seems to shift it.

Even when I’m enjoying myself with friend/s I find that if it goes quiet I can find myself drifting into depression. I’m not quite sure what’s caused this. Perhaps it’s the feeling (as I’ve said before) of being stuck at home. Seeing no possibility of getting out in the near future….The fact that it took almost all my willpower to just get out of bed today.

I don’t know where my energy has gone. I don’t know why I’m so down – maybe the “sir” thing took more out of me than I expected….and I wasn’t wildly cheerful before that (*This is not that I didn’t enjoy the meet, just I had this low level misery before the meet, during it and after it….*).

I’m more or less okay when I’m with people. It’s when I’m alone that I start getting more flakey….and I have no idea what to do about it….

Anyway, I think 4 updates is a little excessive for one day, so I’ll stop now….

—
Kate

Okay, things not to do number 1: Ring me up, ask me to make dinner (pref with a desert) and then not appear. My dad’s now an hour late and I actually bothered to produce Yorkshire pudding, vegetables and some sort of gravy-esq substance….

I’m not happy…I’m not happy ‘cos he’d never have asked me to do desert back when I was male (at least I can’t think of a single incident when he did) – and also if I’d have actually bothered. Well…..

Anyway, I’m now also closing on drunk, ‘cos while I was waiting for the food to cook I had a glass of red….then another glass of red with my dinner and I’m currently working my way through a “Red Bull and Vodka” – although a point for future reference – my family doesn’t appear to have any vodka in the drinks “cabinet” (shelf).

I suspect this is a reliance on my being at home for family holidays and the knowledge that I tend to have vodka…actually I normally have vodka and martini (substitute <g>). It’s probably not doing the Androcur, or hormones much good, but it’s nice to be slightly numb mentally for once.

Not quite drunk. But nicely inebrated. I can now say that the Placebo album is cool (cooler when heard through speakers with base…..(the speakers that I took to Aoife’s really need the batteries in)).

As indeed is the TMBG album and the TD album….yes. So in the end I’m glad I bought them…..it’s ages since I listened to a placebo album (the only one I have is a copy on tape…and tape is not popular here)….

Yes. So. There we go….

—
Kate

So…what did I get up to today? Well…planned my route to go see Donna (yay! :-), I’ve checked the oil on my car (which much to my pleasure shows no sign of burning any oil….). I also finally got around to doing the photos for the driving licence. Unfortunately you don’t get to see them. Well, I might scan one of the three “rejects”, but unfortunately I’ve demonstrated the fine art of building a partially complete and yet almost totally useless network.

What makes me say this? Well, neither Samba nor NFS has been configured…Samba was my original choice, cos then Windows could see the network (if I were in windows), and so could the RiscPC….

Then when someone said, well, if you don’t worry about windows you could use NFS – which’d be much better – I though, yes. Actually, the RiscPC can do NFS too (I think I had a bit of software which did both NFS and SMB).

Anyway, essentially my network allows me to control the music server, and that’s about it atm. Which is rather a shame ‘cos if I scan stuff it’ll be on the RiscPC….oh well….(gah!)

So, that wasn’t entirely wonderful – nor was the realisation that the printer is no longer connected to the RiscPC and so I ended up retyping my letter to the DVLA just so I could print it….I then spent a long and rather tedious period of time trying to work out why my printer wasn’t printing straight, before realising that the paper guide had moved *mutter*

Anyway, while I was in town I decided to treat myself – so the 20UKP I found under my car finally went towards another Tangerine Dream CD (Force Majeure), and an ex-rental DVD of “East is East”.

So that was kinda fun – and I didn’t get any odd looks so I presume I passed reasonably well :)

However things went a little pear shaped…not very, but one of those nagging “oooh, that’s p*ssed me off” sort of levels. I decided to have a quick looksie at my Rocky Horror Show DVD and was rather upset to discover that it is actually a “region 1” region 1, as opposed to all my other “region 0” region 1 disks….

Not only that but the quality just didn’t seem quite up to other DVD’s of mine….which is rather annoying….And then we get on to the real annoyance…

About half way through East is East (which incidentally, unlike the authors of the cover I wouldn’t describe as “hilarious” – some of it’s funny, a lot of it is very dark humour wise….) the DVD drive started to do the traditional “Your windows install is fseked, please reinstall it before watching any more DVD’s”.

Yes, my untouched install – apart from the SCSI card drivers has gone down the pan!

Sometimes I’m driven to want to destroy all of microsoft. These days it seems to be whenever I’m near an MS “operating system” for more than about 30 seconds. At least linux has only been screwed up by my own ineptitude so far – and it’s yet to have required me to reset it….

Hell, even the old RM P75 seems to be soldiering on (9:15pm up 8 days, 9:52, 1 user) – although it’s only running on 16 of it’s 24 Megs….so I should really reset it – but it’s not like it really needs the ram atm….

So, it can just build up a good uptime!

Anyway, I need to sort out stuff for tomorrow….So…

Well, I’m being prolific this month aren’t I!

Anyway, pre me actually developing talent, and ‘cos I’ve been saying I’d do various things for ages….first of all, and I’ve been having some problems with this, so this is the current development version….

 

Since Dr P seems to be the choice of the TS youth (not all I’ll grant but an oddly high percentage compared to the non-ts people I know)….Anyway, yes, so there’s the ad, which I quite like (and we pray we don’t get our arses sued off for this <g>). By the way, the fullsize image is 288K

Next up is some programming….yes. I’ve actually done some. Not much I’ll grant – but I may make available my fine coding to the masses. But I must add the quit on close window code before I do so! I was going to upload it (infact I have) but I’m not going to link to it ‘cos I realised I’d forgotten to add that…and a ‘lil text file to say which of the classes to run!

Anyway, I’m off to do not much, and maybe add that code…

I will learn java. I may have missed the deadline for producing this code by a bit, but it was only 1 hour to add the stuff and get it working – and being as I’d not coded for a month, and the only thing I’d coded for before then was this program I’m fairly happy :)

—
Kate

PS. Here’s the program….anagram.tar.gz….it’s really funky, really it is….

Well, as the traditional “please connect at some point tonight” battle begins, how’s my day been? Well, as I said I troddled off to see Nikki today, and (despite her vommish behaviour with her SO (Zoe) ;-) I had an excellent time….

Those behavioral issues aside, and the rather unfortunate Anime incident anyway <g> – actually, the most unfortunate thing about the evil one, sorry, Nikki, forcing me to watch “Oh my Goddess!” was that I’m actually rather keen on this one and may be forced to watch more of it….grrr….

Anyway, that I feel has managed to get me back to levels of “argh!ness” I can cope with…..for a while. Although I’m intrigued to know what the people in Safeway giving out biscuits thought….the actual biscuit-giver-outer gave a bit of an odd look, and the weather on the way back was pretty awful. Didn’t quite reach the levels of my least favourite experience (driving back from work – crested a hill on the M4 only to discover the wind had lifted the car, removed all grip and I was going distinctly rightwards….).

Sorry, being disjointed….well, not literally….Erm, yes. What I was going to say was that I was glad to finally see Nikki smiling. I’ve not seen a great deal of it, and I hope that I’ll see rather more from now on….

So, good luck to Nikki with all that goeth on…

And that’s about it….not feeling terribly cerebral today so….

Addendum, 2027

(Still haven’t managed to connect, grr).

Anyway, I was thinking about what’s made me think more about relationships recently, and there’s a few things (that was going to be a number, but I realised I’d probably end up turning into Monty Python (“There’s Two things that made me think about relationships, X, Y and Z…..Three things, The three things that…..”)).

Anyway, yes, One was obviously the Zoe/Nikki thing – where I was just reminded of the absense of a partner….

But before that, oh yes, someone – infact several people mentioned that the drugs I’m on (their words:) “Make you horny”. Now I don’t know I’d go as far as horny (!), but they have distinctly put thoughts in my mind that weren’t there before….although the other thing they appear to have done is given me my dreams back…

From the fact that people say I sometimes talk in my sleep I presume that I used to dream – but could never remember them at all; now I can sometimes remember them when I wake up – which is cool – it also says some interesting things are going on my psychie….

On a totally unrelated note, to those of us with modem connections – does anyone else go “urk” when they change modem connection – cos the dial sounds wrong? (“Eeek, it’s meant to go up there, not down….”)

Okay, so I’m sad….

What else was there, well, in a blatant advert for another writer I respect I started reading the Tuck stories again. Now this is one of the few series I got into pre-everything. I read this avidly, having stumbled across it on “Fictionmania” back when I actually read fictionmania. Actually, if I’m honest I used to devour the stuff – hoping for the odd realistic story – of which there were a few….

Most of them didn’t really appeal – but there were a few good ones. Unfortunately I never sorted the “good” ones out – but I do still have all the ones I downloaded (except those where I went “Urgh” which tended to get deleted. Those which were crap were just not read again….) on backup disks….

Anyway, yes Ellen Hayes’ Tuck stories still remain as one of the few stories which kept me still, reading, so long that I actually went numb….(others in this catagory: James’ Angels and Vampires story (Sorry, I can’t remember what it is called – but it’s in the dark library) and Ben Elton’s Gridlock – which I red from end to end in one day – not putting it down from the moment I got it to the moment I finished it….).

Anyway, enough advertising….

Actually, I thought I might get a bit more exposure </innuendo> and add myself to a diary writers webring…..

Mmmmm…well, we’ll see…

—

Argh!

There are several problems, many of which are Java related, and the other ones are “being stuck at home” related. First of all, I’m trying to learn Java…the fact that I’ve not done anything for a month makes it hard enough, but the first problem is being at home. Over the period of time from when I start reading/trying to program I slowly get more and more infuriated by the complete lack of space. I have no deskspace, so I end up stretched between the chair and the bed with books and keyboard on my legs (this incidentally also makes my legs hurt which is hardly a mood enhancer).

Anyway. So, I find some stuff I want to use – I then have to turn to use the mouse, and after a very short period of time I’m screaming in anguish as I’ve dropped a book – or lost the page, again, and I can’t have the book near me when I’m typing which makes referring to it very difficult.

The amount of deskspace available – if it were avilable is roughly the width of a keyboard plus the thinnest width of a mousemat. Infact it’s 2’1 and a bit inches…and front to back? 1’11”.

Unfortunately in that space are two keyboards, a scanner, two mice a desk lamp and my penholder. None of which can live anywhere else. I can’t actually put my feet under the desk, becuase there are two PC’s under there.

Being at home also means a complete lack of privacy. My mother insists on coming in and staring at the computer and attempting to read what I’m doing (well, what she gets is a minimised-windowed, plain desktop). If I complain about privacy then she makes some irritating comment before wandering off, making as much noise as possible….

This is it must be said, infuriating. And it’s driving me nuts (I’ve been at home, what 3 days?). And since she’s not working anymore she’s here all the bloody time.

So, the working environment isn’t exactly condusive to success, but then there’s Java. Java with it’s shit documentation, the “oh so helpful” Bad Magic Number error message, which they conveniently don’t actually explain, except in the context of Applets, which this is not. And you see, having got thoroughly pissed off with everything (thanks to being at home, lack of space, etc). I’m really not in the mood to try and find what’s wrong.

I think I’ll give up for now and come back to it later, or on wednesday, as I’m off out tomorrow to see Nikki.

—
Kate

Arse. Arse, arse, arse. Someone pointed out to me yesterday that one of my previous entrys (the one for the 23^rd September) could be read in entirely a way I didn’t intend. It just goes to show how stupid I can be when I’m in a good mood – because once they’d said it I could see it – it was blindingly obvious.

And I really didn’t mean it that way. Not at all….infact I was sat in tears talking to Martin ‘cos I fear that I may have irreprably damaged the relationship I have with some of my closest friends.

So, here, with Martin’s help is what I was trying to say. And I’d like to thank the person who told me, who also took the time to sit and talk to me as I started to think “oh my god what have I done”….

What I wanted to say was that…I am finally myself, I don’t put on an act anymore – people like me – not the act….

What I was trying to say with the bit about my university friends is much harder to explain. That is that – they got to know me when I put on this act – they didn’t (back then) have to put up with my neurotic, low self esteem, self-depracating behaviour. Now they do – and that speaks wonders for them – because not only do they put up with that – they put up with the fact I decieved them like everyone else for years….And yes, I have an emense guilt complex about that. I wish I’d come right out and told everyone.

What I’m amazed at is the fact people seem like me without me having to hide these bits about myself – the fact that I fall apart at regular intervals, and that I get depressed and all the things that I really don’t like about myself.

I’m worried because I may be digging myself into a bigger hole, but as I’ve often said I’m not very good at expressing myself – not that I don’t try – but that what I want to say I can’t explain.

I hope this explains what I want to say. I hope I’ve not made it worse, see the first bit I went over with Martin, but at the time I couldn’t work out how to explain the second bit at all…

I think I’ve done a better job than last time….I’m really sorry if I insulted anyone with that entry – I didn’t mean that at all…. :(

—
Kate

Hmmm, well….

First I’ll write about why I’m currently feeling a little down…, then I’ll say the amusing thing that was driving me nuts earlier (hopefully, that’ll cheer me back up….

Why’m I down…well, I finally put my CD-RW in my computer, and I thought, ah, for the sake of tidyness I’ll go put these boxes (my modem one and the CD-RW one) with the rest of the hardware boxes, out in the garage – and I’ll fetch in my ISA network one….

But, on wandering out of my room I found my dad had the attic open – and I realised that this was a convenient moment to go and find the pictures I used to have on my wall….

But there’s something special about one of these pictures which makes it important to me, it’s the first, surviving photo of me as myself. There were two photos taken of me – by other people, with me being myself – due to a situation I didn’t actually engineer (since I was waaaay to scared to engineer situations back then). One was a school trip – where we were put into teams – and one of the final competitions, worth some ridculous amount was to get one of your “male” team members to dress as a girl – and whoever looked the best would get these points.

My team chose me – with my (at the time) dead long brown hair and whatever as being the best choice – and I (complaining bitterly (but not quite enough to persuade them not to do it… <g>)) ended up being dressed by two of the girls as a girl :-)

Anyway, we went outside – and one of my other “team mates” took a photo….that was the first….(By the way we won – the bloke judging said if I’d shaved my legs then he’d have dated me!)….

Unfortunately, Ben – the person with the camera was as hated by the school populous as myself (how did we end up in a team together…?)….and his camera was smashed – destroying the film :-(((

The photo I’m after dates from a few years later – when I was a member of (don’t laugh) the “Woodcraft Folk” – this very 60’s style movement was founded by someone who didn’t believe in separating boys and girls a’la Scouts/Guides. So – it was essentially the same – but was also a non-religous non-state group (so we didn’t pledge aligence to god and the Queen)….

Anyway, at one camp I was in a group – doing a “performance” of Stan Freeburg’s version of “Day-oh”. This we mimed to with a variety of instruments (okay, I was so nervous I barely mimed – more opened and close my mouth fish-wise). One of the girls (Claire I think) – suggested that some of us lads should wear skirts.

Unfortunately she approached each of us separately to say this and my first reaction was “NO WAY!” – I was terrified that she had sussed me….Anyway – she sort of said…”But x is doing it”. And in what must be the fastest turn around ever I changed my mind and agreed. And the photo I want to find – which used to hang on my wall is a group of people, standing by a (unlit) fire – with me as one of them.

And it’s dissapeared. Infact they’ve all dissapeared. And it makes me feel dreadfully sad – becuase I know the things I did in my youth as myself – shopping and whatever – and none of them are documented. There’s no photos of how I used to look when I was being myself – except this one. And no-one in my family knows where it is…. :-(

Anyway, to cheer myself up I’ll tell you about the “amusing” situation I managed to get myself into.

I decided that I’d clear up a bit – and I also decided that having 100 UKP of equipment sat on my floor, waiting for me to drop things on it – or kick it – wasn’t the best plan in the world – so I thought, “Hell, I’ll put it in, configure the SCSI card, and also swap the IDE cable for a UDMA66 capable cable” (although having done it I’m not sure that my motherboard does UDMA 66!).

Anyway, so I shut down, whipped the case off (again), stuck the drive in, swapped the cables (got the PC speaker working) re-routed the audio cables – with less than mm to spare)…and fired up…and went into windows – hoping it would do autodetect and thus tell me what my SCSI card was set to….

See, the card is jumpered (good, I can tell it exactly what to do), but I had only printed out a smallish chunk of the documentation at work (bad, it was on a CD-RW which I couldn’t read on the DVD drive in the PC). Howver, some of you may see where this is going….I couldn’t autodetect the card – and I couldn’t read the manual on how to configure it – because the only drive in the machine which can read the CD was the SCSI cd-writer. See where I’m going?

After a bit I thought “Ha ha! I can stick the old CD-Rom in and read it with that” however connecting it as a slave on the harddisk channel (the only bit of cable that would reach the drive) brought up a display from the BIOS somewhat like this:

ATAPI DEVICE: LKJHASD(*Y RBD &*W JKHCB UASGD*&AWYJBCZSkjb;

Which I felt was a “bad sign”. Eventually I removed the DVD and put the drive in as master – which seemed to work…

I have no idea why it wouldn’t work as slave on the primary IDE channel….but never mind.

The only odd thing is that my SCSI card used to display all the settings and exactly what it was doing when it was initalised. Now it doesn’t – and I can’t see how to configure this in the manual. Which is odd…..’cos I know what I changed and none of it was “Display useful info instead of a blank screen”….

Anyway it seems to work now – although I’m yet to set it up under linux…..which will actually be the first device I’ve added to Linux since setting it up…apart from my printer, which has moved (again) to this machine….

Leaving the music machine to just play music atm….

Right, I think it’s time for a cup of tea :)

And I am feeling a bit happier for that…..

—
Kate