There’s such a concept as overdoing the geek thing.
What Jessie Did Next...
...being the inane ramblings of a mundane Yorkshire bird.
Author: Jess (page 12 of 26)
As documented recently, my Macbook Pro had a bit of an accident with a glass of beer the other week and I’m awaiting a replacement keyboard. The MacBook itself is out of warranty and I can do the switch myself for roughly £50. However, at the same time I thought I’d upgrade the internal drive, so I bought a larger SATA drive to fit.
I had some spare time last weekend so wanted to do the reinstall while life is a little quieter. However, the keyboard hadn’t arrived and I didn’t want to have to pull the MBP apart twice. I thus hit upon the idea of using the SATA drive with an external interface (this one from Maplin).
I connected it up to the MacBook (running 10.5.4) and it detected fine. Partitioned it for system installation and commenced a Leopard install from DVD media. So far so good. Once completed, I installed iWork ’08 and Logic Pro (the latter taking 6 hours to install – it does come on 7 DVDs!). Then came Apple System Update which attempted to install lots of things including the combo 10.5.4 update. Bear in mind the drive is running on USB still.
Reboot time. It sits, spinning its cog and showing the grey apple for, ooh, 3 hours. No response from the disk. Must have done something wrong, so I disconnect and reboot back to the internal disk. I download the 10.5.4 combo update and install manually to the SATA drive (still on USB, still recognising from my MacBook Pro running 10.5.4).
Reboot. Sits spinning again.
I start it into verbose mode (command-V on boot), which shows me that it ‘forgets’ the USB interface a little way into the boot sequence. Bugger. So it seems I have found a bug in 10.5.4 which happens only when booting from an external USB drive (if I plug it in when it’s booted from the internal disk it’s fine, and I can do what I want to the disk!).
There’s images documenting it here. If anyone with a little more Apple boot-fu than I have can offer advice that would be good. I’ve attempted without any other USB devices present and still get the same effect. I’ve not tried the disk internally yet, although it does check out fine under Disk Utility.
My mother’s next-door neighbour has been chucked out of Westgate railway station. He’s not that much of a spotter, just likes watching the trains going past, apparently…
I’ve just been to empty the bin, and it occurred to me that it’s almost 3 weeks since our dustbin was emptied thanks to Wakefield Council’s policy of only collecting “real” refuse every fortnight coupled with the council strike. That’s assuming they stick to doing an “emergency” collection this week of all the refuse (which I’m doubting – they’re astonishingly anal about extra bags and things).
I’m beginning to wonder why I’m paying my council tax.
It’s been a bugger of a week, so I’ve gone in for a little retail therapy after being caught short without a login on Wednesday afternoon (theoretically time off but you know how it is).
One Asus Eee PC 901 with 20G SSD on the way. It’s in white, but beggars can’t be choosers. If you’re hunting one yourself this site is useful.
Update: I ordered from purelygadgets.co.uk. A brief Google suggests this was a bad idea, but I will post further information as and when something happens.
The next chapter in ‘End Of An Era’ seems upon us – Wood’s Music Shop which has been in Wakefield for 60 years are at the end of their lease on the Cross Street/Wood Street premises. They haven’t identified any new premises yet so it’s looking like they will close for good at the end of July. It’s the last Wood’s shop in existence – once upon a time there were branches everywhere.
So, they’re having a 30%-off-everything sale at the moment. Although the instruments tend to be more school-level than anything really pro (and quite overpriced in comparison to Trad Music and such) you can find some bargains. I’ve picked up a couple of lighting controllers and PAR64/PAR56 stuff, and Nicky has already bought some sheet music. It would not surprise me if there were better bargains to be had as time trots on either.
My Palm TX started causing me issues on the digitiser a month or two back: namely it doesn’t work, or it only senses at the bottom of the digitiser thinking it’s the top of the screen.
Despite some rather useful links, cleaning around it, installing ‘fix software’, etc. it’s refusing to work although I haven’t had the back off yet (need a torx 5 and the smallest I have is an 8).
Does anyone have a Palm TX which the digitiser works on please, and which they wouldn’t mind parting with? The annoying thing is that the Palm runs my TomTom install, and has the extra maps on which I can’t transfer… thus if it’s properly broken, it will be an expensive outing to sort out!
Edit: I took the back off, and it appears to be something pressing on the back of the digitiser. Whether that means it’s a loose connection or just the digitiser being too compressed I don’t know, but at least it’s a temporary fix.
It’s only two weeks late and probably over-budget, but Wakefield’s new market hall opened for business this morning.
Good to see that among the stalls which are there are Cryer & Stott (the cheesemongers, who frequently take vast amounts of money from me for cheesey goodness), Mark the Greengrocer who used to be outside on the north entrance to the old market hall, and a fishmonger who doesn’t open on Mondays although I’ll probably pay a trip tomorrow. It was good to be recognised by some of the traders – I’m a big proponent of supporting your local market and doing at least some of your weekly shopping there.
So what of the building? It’s a lot more airy than the old market, although I’m not sure of the wisdom of the higgledy-piggledy way that the stalls have been arranged to make it look more busy than it actually is; also the food market is woefully small – I counted 5 stalls, with another 4 pitches left empty. Wakefield Council stated in a press release that all the inside stalls had been let but it does seem a bit sparse. The cynic in me would suggest that maybe it’s like that to prevent it looking smaller than the old market hall, which it most certainly is.
There’s bugger all recent coverage over at Wakefield Express save for a “coming soon” type article, but the council’s own web announcement is here, which also has opening times and details of “specialist days”. There’ll be an official opening in a few weeks presumably when everyone’s moved in and the place is actually finished.
[ On that note, chatting to the traders it seems that they’ve only been allowed in this morning. The café owner told me that there was quite an issue regarding getting access for builders and electricians recently, and several outdoor traders were on temporary pitches as their permanent ones were inaccessible. Mark mentioned that the place was still gated with the protective builders’ barriers when he arrived this morning! ].
However, it shows promise. It’s an airy place to do your shopping and definitely needs to be supported by the community. Might have just been the curiosity of the first day, the place being smaller and more warren-like, or just the time of day, but it did seem a lot busier this morning.
Previous photos of the move from the old market and construction of the new market here.
Odd timing that should have happened today – just last night we introduced the kids to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
I have today dealt with three separate telecommunication companies. Large companies, who you’d have thought could get it right.
Without exception all three have been sluggish, faceless and monolithic, and have finished either making less out of the deal by the end of the conversation, or ended up without the business altogether. Especially silly when you consider I’ve been ready to sign contracts and things, and finished the discussion wishing I’d never bothered to make the call to sales or support in the first place. In one case, I ended up going round in circles for 2 hours (presumably in Bangalore) before finding an operative who actually knew what they were on about – and even then had to phone 5 separate departments to get information before I could do anything else.
My experience over the past 15 years of dealing with telcos is that there aren’t any out there who are competent or refrain from pigeonholing customers – maybe one day though. However, I’m not holding my breath.
From Berrys’ Future of Wine:
Recent developments in biotechnology have shown honeybees have a finely developed sense of smell. This sense of smell can be harnessed and honeybees trained to recognise particular odours, such as corked wine, and associate that smell with food.
When they detect a corked bottle, a trained honeybee will extend its proboscis. This reaction can be easily detected by software (and incorporated into a small personal device carried by a sommelier) – ensuring the corked bottle never reaches the customer.
By 2058, every sommelier could have their own personal bee.
Oh my goodness, the original WOPR model from the 1983 Matthew Broderick film WarGames is on eBay. That, right, is utterly fantastic, especially if you could pop a speech synth inside it 😛
In looking around for something to link to, I did find this:
In November 2006, pre-production began on a sequel, titled WarGames: The Dead Code. It is directed by Stuart Gillard, and stars Matt Lanter as a hacker named Will Farmer facing off with a government supercomputer called Ripley. MGM will be releasing the sequel directly to DVD on June 10, 2008.
That’s got “SUCK” written all over it.
(Sigh. How the hell I’d get it from LA I don’t know, and Nicky would kill me anyway… she’s not forgiven me for the dancefloor yet.)
Just seen that more post office closures have been announced.
Sadly our local post office round the corner (Sally the Sub-Postmistress at 275 Bradford Road) is on the list. We stopped using them as much when we started doing franked post but I guess they’ve lost to Wrenthorpe PO at one side and Bar Lane PO at the other (which is closer to the office).
Interesting to see Outwood’s going too, but hardly surprising – they’re rarely pleased to see you in there which is why we didn’t use them!
As I stated a couple of weeks back, UKnot is leaving my custody after 10 years (almost to the day – I started work at Mailbox on 12th May 1998).
So the time has come, and on Friday it will be moving to a new server outside my remit, complete with a new mailman installation – so don’t come pestering me about subscriptions, talk to Maulkin!
(Although this has been long overdue, sadly it’ll mean the end of the ‘X-Conspiracy’ and ‘X-Cunt: Yes’ headers. Boo!)
Yorkshire lass, born-and-bred. Photographs stuff, writes software, makes music, cooks, dances round the kitchen. Happy lesbinum, wife, and parent to three. Proud to have a rainbow family.
Musician, composer and producer, under the monicker of The Bleeding Obvious.
Regularly seen performing live – gig list here. Been on TV and radio in various capacities.
I’m on Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon
By day I work as a systems architect for a marine technology company. More details about all that on LinkedIn.
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