Coffeehouse.co.nz

For a while now I’ve had a weird PC issue on one of the Windows XP computers I use. JPG files on the desktop wouldn’t open to view when double clicked. Double clicking in an ordinary Explorer window opened them fine, but from the desktop the Picture and Fax viewer would flash up and then disappear straight away.

Annoying, but not life threatening!

Tried everything I could think of to fix it, but no luck. Every now and then I search the net for an answer and there is always a bit of really dumb advice from people that haven’t really understood the issue. But today I finally found a proper answer here. A corrupt link to another program on the desktop. Work out which one it is, delete that, and all back to normal again.

Why on earth a corrupt link should make any difference to how an image file opens, I’m not sure. Seems pretty dumb to me!

Big thanks to whoever found the answer though!

We took the plunge and joined the new gaming generation by purchasing a Wii.

I enjoyed playing when staying at Meg and Michael’s and decided it would be a fun thing to have. It arrived yesterday so I managed to get a few games in before having to entertain visitors. And I am sure I don’t have to mirror real life by dancing all over the place when playing things like tennis and golf,  but it does seem a lot more fun, and I guess it could be more prone to injuries (who’d of thought an electronic game could do that)! Mike is constantly reminding me to put the remote strap around my wrist as he is worried about it flying through the TV.

I’m convinced it will give me hours of fun and entertainment – now I just have to not get addicted!

For the second time now the web server decides to sulk and turn itself off as soon as I’ve left on holiday!!! ARRRGGGHHHHH!!! Why? Absolutely no idea! At least this time all I had to do to fix it was turn it back on again, rather than a full rebuild like last time.

Sorry if you missed your usual exercise of checking to see if we’d put anything new up, only to find that we hadn’t. But now we’re back from the hols, we’ve got a few things to write about. We’ll probably backdate the entries to when things actually happened, so make sure you go back a bit to see the new stories if you’re checking the site in the next wee while!

But at least it shows that at least it must miss me being around. We’ll just have to see if it happens a third time next time we’re away. If it does, there’s going to be trouble, and it will get a good talking to!

You might have noticed that we’ve been away off line for a few days now. In fact, a couple of weeks at least! It’s been a bit of a mission, but we’re back!

Most of the delay can probably be blamed on the last tenants of this place deciding for some strange reason not to get their old internet cut off for a week and a bit after they’d left, and some on the strange way this all seems to work here in that we were able to get a new phone number here, but that still doesn’t automatically cut their old net off.. Sigh.

And then another few delays of a day or so here and there as things bounce around the system, and then, whoopie!, net access again!

The good news is (and this almost makes it worth the wait) is that the signs all point to this being a much, much, much, much faster connection. Over 4 times as fast as the last one. Yipppee! Just have to wait to see if it settles down at that speed over the next week or so.

The bad news is now we have to try to remember all the interesting stuff (to us, at least) that we need to write up! We’ll see what we can do…

I was reading a random entry on Slashdot which was talking about a new submarine cable between SE Asia and the US and one of the posts there mentioned a Wired story/article on the topic of cabling by Neal Stephenson who’s written a whole heap of books that I really, really liked. So I just had to have a look.

The article is here (print version, which I find a lot easier to read), and it’s suberb! You’d think that this could/should be a really dry kind of topic, but the way he tells it all is great. So much history and politics that I haven’t really thought of before. It is quite a long piece, and a little old (not that it dates, I think), but I just had to keep reading. Must have been a fantastic fact finding trip!

If you do read it, let me know what you thought. Or maybe it’s just an interesting to a geek type of thing….

For all of you that keep asking me “have you still got that old phone”, no I haven’t.  Finally. Got a new whizzy one that does far too much to take in at once.
But getting it has made me even more confused about the stupidity cell phone companies.  The only way I could get a new phone before November was to change networks and get my number transferred across.  If I’d wanted to stay with the same company and get a new phone I’d have had to have got a new number.

Dumb.  Really dumb.

One less customer for them, not that they’d notice or care.

You might have noticed that this blog has been off the air (or wires, or pipes, or however you want the think of it) for a little while. Seems like the day after we left to go on hols the server decided that it had had enough and threw a bit of a wobbly. Actully, I think the hard drive died. Bugger. It would happen then, wouldn’t it!

I’d kind of been expecting it for a while really, as that disk was an old one before I put it in that box, and it’s been on pretty much 24/7 for a long, long time. So I had been doing a few random backups of various bits and pieces on in, including the blog. The last one I did was on the 15th of March, so I think we only lost one entry, and a few of the books I took on holiday. But if you registered after that date, you’ll need to do that again. Sorry!

But hopefully we’re back up and running now… I hope!
And I’ll be taking more regular backups now!

For those (few) of you who may be interested in some more techy stuff, I’ve ditched the Gentoo install on this server, and done with the latest Debian distro. I just couldn’t face another 4 weeks of compliing everything again if I’d reinstalled Gentoo. I’m sure there are still lots of things missing on the box, but at least the webserver is up and running again…

Moving on from the Hello World stage, I now have 2 way comms between the PC and the mess of bits below! Now as well as saying Hello World, the little chip will listen for me to press keys on the PC and, um, turn lights on based on what key is pressed!

Amazing, riveting stuff, aye?!

But keeps me amused, entertained, and certainly taxes my brain a bit in problem solving. Just what I need after another day at the office…

Right, enough of cutesy animals! Back to the geeky stuff for a minute!

Today I finally stopped reading electronic component datasheets etc. all the time and actually got around to putting together a bit of hardware to see if I’d actully learnt anything practical. I thought I’d see if I could get the little Microchip Pic microcontrollers to talk to the PC through a serial connection.

And it worked! When it’s turned on it prints out This is bought to you by a MIcrochip Pic and then Hello World! every 2 seconds in a terminal on the PC until I get sick of it and turn it off. Then turn it back on again to make sure it still works!

Oh, and of course it’s got a couple of flashing lights, just to show it’s actually working…

Bec wasn’t that impressed. She tried. But I was a lot more enthusiastic about her toys, I think. I’ll have to do something much more impressive, I suspect, before I’ll get more than a “that’s nice dear”. Oh well. We’ll see.

I’m just relieved it actaully worked!  Now to work out something useful for it to do.

Once again someone has randomly stumbled upon this site. This time they were searching for “planting chilli plants” and on a very well known search engine this site came up 15th of 7,943. If you plug that in with the tick box for search NZ sites only, I’m top of the search!

Well how about that! Firms pay good money to try to get that to happen!