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It’s been quite a while since I bought myself a new toy.  There’s really been nothing that we’d needed, or has appealed enough to make me think I’d really must have one.  But there have been a few tech related recurring issues lurking around.  Such as someone else trying to muscle in and take over the laptop when she gets home from work!To solve that issue, and a few more, I’ve been thinking of getting a “netbook” for a while, and finally one has come along that I’ve liked the looks, specs and reviews enough to actually shell out the cash: a Toshiba NB200. It arrived about a week ago. YAY!

First day with a PC that comes with Windows preloaded I always find quite painful. Firstly applying all the updates that are required to Windows and all the other software, and the reboots required when doing that.  Then there’s getting rid of all the rubbish that gets installed that I don’t want. Then there’s installing all the stuff that I do want. Then cleaning up all the Start menu items (especially important as the screen’s a bit shorter).

My list of what gets instantly put on an XP system now is:

• Firefox (with Adblock Plus, Flashblock, and NoScript extensions) for browsing
• Skype for instant messaging and voip
• 7-Zip for dealing with archives
• ImgBurn for CD related stuff (though this PC doesn’t come with a CD drive)
• VLC for media watching/listening
• Notepad++ for text and web page editing

So far it’s pretty much been a joy to use.  Took a little to get used to the smaller resolution screen, but it’s more than fine for browsing etc. I’m still getting used to the keyboard and the placement of some keys, but no doubt that will come in time… Assuming I get to use it! Bec seems to think it’s all hers. I guess if it leaves me in peace on the laptop at night it just might be worth it… And it’s going to be much easier to cart around places than a full laptop when we just want to browse and check emails (the battery lasts longer too!).

The Register tech news site has been a great saviour for me, getting me through many a dull hour at home and work, but I think it has now indirectly made my brain explode.

One of the running stories on the site has been the continuing saga of the International Space Station urine recycling plant, and how it hasn’t been working that well so far. One thing they keep mentioning in the stories is how the station can obtain fresh water at the moment from the space shuttle’s fuel cells while it’s visiting.  My curiosity finally got the better of me tonight (might have something to do with having worked at home all day, in combination with Bec beign out tonight for a work function) so I thought I’d do a bit of internet research into this.

The first link I visited,  “Fuel Cell Power Plants On The Space Shuttle Orbiter” was more than enough, I think.  By the time I got half way through the second page, “For redundancy, there are two thermostatically activated heaters wrapped around the discharge and relief lines to prevent blockage caused by the formation of ice in the lines. Two switches on panel R12, fuel cell H 2 O line htr and H2O relief htr , provide the flight crew with the capability to select either auto A or auto B for the fuel cell water discharge line heaters and the water relief line and vent heaters, respectively”… I knew I was in trouble. Brain. Exploded.

I did keep reading though to see if it changed gear again to something slightly more… er… accessable, but no. I’m not quite sure why I put myself through the last 2 pages at all, except sometimes when you start something you’ve just got to finish, no matter what the pain.

So now I think I knew more than I did earlier in the evening, but I’m not quite sure what, and what use it is unless I get stuck on a shuttle and the yellow fuel stack temp C/W and the backup C/W alarm lights on panel F7 start lighting up.

Kids, you might want to think the whole astronaut thing through a bit more…

P.S. To give you some idea about why I follow the Register, their related headline was: New ISS piss-recycler still troublesome – Sweat and tears only for parched astronauts. Class!

For the last few weeks I’ve been trialling internet life using a “feed aggregator”.  What’s that?  It’s where a little utility runs away to all the web sites I look at regularly and grabs the headlines from them and alerts me to the fact there’s new stuff there and what it is.  It’s related to the Firefox live bookmarks I blogged about way back in 2006 (?!).

Now that’s great, and very useful, but it’s also made me realise just how much time I used to “waste” going to sites to look for new stuff when there’s actually nothing new.  Possibly like a few of you regular readers do with this site!

I have no idea what to do with that time! Well, that’s not true.  There’s a lot I could do , but browsing was a good way to aviod it.  No excuses now, I guess!

Or maybe just one fewer…

Yesterday I had a second call from an Indian sounding gentleman trying to tell me that he knew that my computer was running slowly and needed to be fixed. And he had something to do with providing “Microsoft services” (huh?!)…

“Oh yeah, right”, I thought,  “I’ve got nothing to do at the moment, so let’s see where this goes….”

Turns out he know my surname and address, but nothing else that would make his story even remotely plausible to me as something of a relative computer expert, but I could imagine others that don’t quite know as much being suckered in. He spoke in kind of technobabble that made no actual technical sense but might have almost sounded right to an untrained person. But he was very persistent in talking absolute rubbish. Long past where I thought he would have realised that I’d made him as a very dodgy caller indeed.

I dug around on the net afterwards, and the only references to the outfit, apart from their own website (which I wasn’t prepared to visit for safety reasons) were either on a whole lot of self-published press release sites, or on tech forums telling of how people had been ripped off by them.  And they seem to target anywhere around the world. Aussie, UK, Canada, the US. Anywhere.

I’m not willing to put the company name here, as I’m pretty sure they have related people searching the net for references to them and bizarrely trying to post a “oh wow this company helped me oh so much they were just great” message right in the middle of a whole stream of people proving just how much of a scam it all is.

So if you get a call like that, ignore it.  Or ask me first!! Don’t visit any site they ask you to, don’t give them your credit card details (duh!), and don’t type anything into your computer.

It’s all just a scam, but a clever, worrying one.

When we were in the States, Michael introduced me to a game that he’d got for the Wii – The World of Goo.  I didn’t play it all that much when I was there, but the other week I realised that I still had a heap of Wii points (i.e. paid for credit) sitting there from when we installed the web browser on the Wii*, and they were just enough for me to download a copy.

I’ve had fun playing it so far, but what’s been surprising is that a couple of  weekends ago, Bec sat for over an hour and a half playing it. That’s pretty unusual for her, so it must be pretty good!

It is a pretty cool game.  More of a mental challenge than anything. Hits the right balance of addiction and frustration.

It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux as well as the Wii.  Worth a look if you’re bored!

* A side note here.  On any other platform web browsers are being given away left right and centre, but you have to pay for one for the Wii? Hmmmm. Sucks!

No, not like these crazy guys on this site who see if they can get stuff to reduce to small particles, I’m talking about using some cool free software, Blender,  to make 3d models to visualise some rooms.

My first effort has been a snooker room.  Partly because it’s got some interesting stuff in it that has been really useful in terms of learning the tools, and partly because it’s an easy room to model as there are some pretty firm dimensions required for a given size snooker table.

I have to admit to cheating and using someone else’s chairs and bookcases, but the hard work in terms of the snooker table etc. is all mine.

A couple of pics here (clicky for big uns).  Not 100% happy with the colours, lighting and shadows, but it’s a start.

A huge thanks has to go those that put their models up for download. Cheers!

Another little tech chore that I’ve not got around to for far too long has been completed.  The server can now send you an email to help you reset your password for the blog if you’ve forgotten it.

Of course you still have to remember the username and email that you used when you first registered, but if your memory’s like mine and you can’t even remember that, let me know and I can reset it for you.

I guess now we’ll just have to write some posts that are actually worth commenting on!

Hiya again.

Yes, we’re back on the air again now.  Apologies for the delay.  We would have been back sooner but the UPS for the server decided that it was going to sulk as we’d moved so I had to wait until a replacement arrived.  That was over a week ago now, so the only thing that’s been holding me back was the thought that as soon as the blog was back up everyone would want to see some actual news!

There have been a few things that have gone on, including the move itself, so we’ll try to get motivated and tap some up in the next few, errrr, weeks?…

Anyway, welcome back!

I finally managed to get a working “system” together after months of playing around and trying to learn far, far too many things at once. Not that it really does much at this stage, but as a proof of concept and a confidence booster it’s been very helpful.

The system is made up of 4 parts:

• An “echoserver” on a pc that waits for clients to connect, and sends anything that any connected client sends to it to all other connected clients. (I actually have 2 versions of this one: a “quiet” version that just does it’s job in the background; and a second version that shows all the stuff that comes through in a nice window so I could see what was being transferred  through it and work out why it wasn’t quite what I expected).
• A graphical client that has some button on it that send commands to change some outputs through the echoserver.  It also listens for responses to the command and changes the image and state of the buttons depending on the response. There could be as many of these clients as needed. The next stage for this client is to try to re-build it for my N800 touchscreen tablet.  (If I can control the lights wirelessly  from across the room then all of this might actually impress Bec!)
• A PC client that listens for relevant commands, and when it’s got one it like the look of it forwards it to a Microchip Pic microcontroller attached to a serial port.  It also relays back the responses from the Pic to the network.
• The microcontroller unit itself.  This does the fun stuff of… Ta Da!  Turning some leds on and off! 8 individually controllable outputs at this stage, though it could easily be more or less… Excellent!  Of course the microcontroller could really control anything,  but leds will do for now until the system’s fully tested and debugged.

All in all it’s been fun, challenging, frustrating and rewarding to get all this together.  A lot of thanks should go to a heap of people that take the time and effort to write tutorials on web sites, author clear books, and answer questions in internet forums.  But there’s too many to thank, or even remember!

Now the hard bit.  Working out what could potentially go wrong and seeing if I can break things, working out how to avoid those things, fixing them, then testing to see if I can still break it in new and exciting ways. Then rinse and repeat…..

Luckily winter’s coming!

I’ve been managing to resist posting the results of my electronics experiments. Mostly because there’s really not that much to see generally, except a few wires and black chips etc. But this one is possibly just entertaining enough for anyone that has done any sort of computer programming training.

And there’s actually something to see this time! Maybe even Bec will be impressed (this time) when she gets home.

But I somehow suspect it will be the standard “that’s very nice, dear” response.