Thursday, February 24, 2005Web server stuffRecent occurrences: I've been visiting Woolacombe again. Yesterday it was cold and it snowed. Today it was warmer and I was rained on a lot. Each day, I visited The Red Barn Restaurant, which is fortunately nice and warm and comfortable compared to the harsh cold wind and rain outside. I love walking on the beach, but I have a habit of not noting what the weather is doing, and it has been cold lately. The snow was okay and I fed crumbs to a blackbird. Today it rained and there was a rook instead. To visitors to this website and viewers of the blog, I would like to say 'sorry!' for recent troubles: the site's been off and ssh has not been available. The reason is due to me having replaced my main webserver and having not restored the old server to the new box yet. For certain reasons, I now have a new box and the original one, which I was replacing but which I am in the process of fixing. Because the old one was not reliable, I felt that it would be wise to replace it as soon as possible, so of course I did that without considering the fact that Windows XP might not like having a change of hardware foisted upon it. From now on, I'll have XP and Linux on separate disks, or maybe not have XP at all, as it's a bother: the same Linux will boot on anything from a 386 up, though it depends on HD geometry and processor options. If you keep the processor the same and swap the motherboard, Windows goes bonkers. I presume that this is because it renumerates the devices when you install it and if you swap individual items of hardware, but if you swap the entire motherboard, it doesn't like it one nybble. To summarise: blog entries on this server are temporary and should not be relied upon to stay here. Server options done so far: 1. Bought new motherboard, CPU (AMD 'Sempron'), RAM (512MB) To do: 1. Buy new case for new motherboard, move old motherboard to old case 2. Get old system fixed 3. Allocate new hostname to new system (host number '19') The web server will then run on the new system, and it may still be called 'Winter', or it may have a new host name - I don't know as I am just randomly doing this stuff and have not decided exactly what it is that I'm doing, anyway. posted @ 05:31 PM GMT [link] [1 Comment] [more] Friday, December 10, 2004Hardware, againPeeps, I messed it up today - didn't go into town because once again (here we go..) my sleep pattern is out-of-sync and I was very tired this morning, so I went to bed instead of going into town. I'm going to try again tomorrow. Ben suggested I run a diagnostic CD to pinpoint the computer's problem - I'll be doing that later. But first, this: RANT! RANT! RANT!: I am in the process of moving Cranefly's OS to a UML, which will be running on another of my computers, 'Winter'. Having trouble with the compilation, I visited the UML IRC channel (#uml on irc.usermodelinux.org) and said 'Hi, I'm having trouble compiling UML. Can anyone help?'. There was no response - just a stony silence. I listed the channel ('/who *') and it was full of people - yet, my cries for help went unheeded. Finally, 'jdike' (Jeff Dike, the author of the UML project) answered. I explained the problem, and after I'd gone into meticulous detail regarding the errors I was getting, he said "Well, why didn't you just say that you can't compile UML?". I had - it was the first thing that I'd said. Evidently the second mistake I made was to mention Gentoo. "Gentoo.", he said. "Yes," I replied, "is that a problem?" "Why, oh why, is everyone using Gentoo?" he said. I then began to feel that I was dealing with someone who had maybe been answering a bunch of newbies' questions all day and was just about 'FAQed out'. I tried talking to another guy on the channel, but he was compiling a 2.6 kernel and had evidently not encountered the problems that I was having. In the end, I sorted it myself: 'make linux ARCH=um' instead of 'make ARCH=um'. "Why is it different?" I asked. "It just is," was the answer. To conclude: I went into this chat with what I thought was a helpful, open and friendly attitude. I was greeted by surly, unco-operative 'experts' who seemed to resent my intrusion into their territory. I've seen this kind of thing before with Linux, and it makes me wonder how it can possibly be so successful when 'newbies' are not welcomed and are treated with such contempt. Having said that, I'm glad that I have the freedom to download source code and mess with it, although if the result of asking for help is to be shot down in flames, why do I bother? P.S. I'm sticking with Linux in spite of this, and am especially interested in compiling classic Linux apps for the Zaurus. A Qt version of UAE is on the list (after I've read a few thick books) and as silly as it sounds, I'd like to compile UML for the Zaurus. Now, if I could compile it for the iPAQ, it'd be genuinely useful, as the iPAQ runs Windows. posted @ 08:15 PM GMT [link] [No Comments] [more] Thursday, December 9, 2004Hardware stuffOh no - it's another HD problem! Cranefly's hard drive is on the way out: while doing a backup earlier, there were a number of serious HD errors, followed by the usual DMA timeouts and a lot of serious-looking messages on the console. The PSU is failing as well: it didn't like being switched off for two weeks. I am thinking that the HD errs may have occurred because the PSU could not supply enough current to the HD; the current demand must have been quite high while I was doing the backup, due to the high disk activity. I'll get another hard drive tomorrow and will fit the new PSU. I have not written much this week because I've been in Woolacombe and shopping in Barnstaple. I'd been waking up early (04:30'ish) each day and today I got up completely late and decided to just be lazy and not go out. Tomorrow will be another early day and I will be shopping and possibly going to Woolacombe again. There will be more sporadic outages tomorrow when I replace the HD and PSU. posted @ 07:47 PM GMT [link] [2 Comments] [more] Monday, December 6, 2004BarnstapleHaving spent a number of days in the flat suffering with uncontrollable diarrhoea (sorry if you're eating as you read this), I fled the house today and went to Barnstaple. My digestion is soooo much better that I was able to shop and walk around without fear of an 'accident'. I'll stop going on about it now. Before going to Barnstaple, I had my head shaved (#2) at Zig Zags, and I prattled on to the young lady who did my hair about all sorts of rummage. Barnstaple was seriously busy. I had a few things to do: buy a DVD that I'd ordered, collect some new noise-reducing headphones. As always, I did something unexpected and got a taxi to Woolacombe - I'd missed the last bus before dark. The taxi cost me £25 but I knew it'd be worth it: the sun cast golden beams of dust-speckled light through the ominous anvil-gray rainclouds. I walked along the sand, took my shoes off and walked around, following footprints. At 15:30 it got colder and began to get dark, so I headed off to The Red Barn restaurant, where I had a couple of pots of tea and a slice of fruitcake. The guys behind the counter were quite easy-going and they let me stay for around 40 minutes without buying anything (other than the initial purchases). I got the bus back to Ilfracombe at 16:25 and realised that I'd been reading the bus timetable completely incorrectly: it says I can get one bus from Barnstaple to Woolacombe and back, but I did not check to see whether any buses go from Ilfracombe. I could've saved myself 25 quid but it would have taken me too long to go from Barnstaple to Ilfracombe, then to Woolacombe. I'm currently transferring a lot of pics and videos of my Woolacombe trip to this computer. I am so pleased that I can just catch a bus there, as I've always liked the place - it's a totally wide stretch of brilliantly-gold sand, and no-one gets in anyone else's way - unless it's the height of summer, when the beach is usually packed (in the winter, there aren't many folks about). Tomorrow I'll be helping Paul C. with his broadband 'net connection - it currently doesn't work and he's hoping that I'll be able to sort it. posted @ 06:54 PM GMT [link] [2 Comments] [more] Thursday, December 2, 2004WebcamI'm happy to say that the webcam is back, and it is available here: http://brooknet.no-ip.com:8080/freeserve/webcam.html That's the index page: from there, you can choose a refresh method, which varies depending on your browser's capabilities. The index page shows a still image and if you hit the reload button on your browser, it will update. The automatic refresh interval is currently set to 20 seconds. The current view shows the lights of the harbour and the pier. posted @ 04:56 AM GMT [link] [No Comments] [more] Wednesday, December 1, 2004Hillsborough Terrace videosIf anyone's interested in the view from the front windows, they might like to download the following MPEG1 (system) videos: Video 1 (26M) Video 2 (197M) Being 'MPEG1 system', the videos have sound. They should be at a resolution of 640x480. Note: the upload rate from my broadband connection is 256kbits/sec (32kbytes/sec), so it'll take a few minutes to download 'Video 2'. Should more than one person be trying to download something (unlikely, but you never know), the bandwidth will be shared - if you're using Linux, I'd advise using wget to fetch the files, and running it as a batch process with 'batch' or 'at'. In the videos, I pan the camera around a bit and stop the video when the camera's battery warning indicator appears. Things that happened today: I got up at 03:15 and waited for the delivery of an Atari ST, which I got from a bloke on EBay. The computer was surprisingly heavy. I wonder if Ben's got his laptop yet? posted @ 02:14 PM GMT [link] [No Comments] [more] Monday, November 29, 2004Out of the loopYesterday (Sunday) I visited Spar at around 07:00, when it opens. I bought some meals, milk and bread. I am now convinced that I am out of the annoying loop that I've been in all week, and I am gradually staying awake later and later. I've got more important stuff to do today and will probably be quite tired at the end of it (it's 14:35 LST, 04:35 UTC, so I am either 14 hours ahead or 10 hours behind). Finally, I've ditched Internet Explorer in favour of Firefox. Things I like about Firefox: tabs. There's a pop-up blocker but IE has that as well now. I still prefer Firefox cos' I have it on my Linux systems. posted @ 04:38 AM GMT [link] [1 Comment] [more] [more] [more] |
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