dormouse1953 | Entries tagged with technology

When I got out of hospital a year ago I discovered that my notebook PC was giving problems. Within days it failed completely. So I ordered a new one on Amazon. (A Jumper Ezpad Pro8. No, I've never heard of that make either.)

Now, for the first few months after getting home, I was so tired I was going to bed early most nights. So it's possible that I'd not been downstairs at midnight before seeing in the new year. And as the chimes of Big Ben started on the TV my computer started beeping. Slowly at first, but speeding up and stopping after two minutes. I did wonder if it was some sort of happy new year message.

Feeling a lot better these days, there were other occasions when I was still downstairs at midnight, and there was more beeping, on one one occasion drowning out the music I was listening to. What's more, I'd shut the computer down.

I asked on Cix if anyone could suggest what was going on. One suggestion was that I had a nearby smoke detector and that was giving a low-battery alarm. Well, there is an old smoke detector in a drawer in the kitchen, but it's been sitting there unused since I moved in in 1995, and the sound was louder in living room and the door to the kitchen was closed.

Finally last night, I took the computer up to my bedroom before going to bed. The computer did not beep. I hurried downstairs and could still here the beeping in the living room. It is difficult to get the origin of high-pitched sounds, something to do with the way our ears work. But then I noticed the weather station base unit on the mantelpiece. It has alarms built into it and it appeared there was an alarm set for midnight which was switched on. Possibly when resetting the recorded temperatures I'd switched it on. I've switched it off. Let's see what happens next time up at midnight.

Current Mood: relieved
Current Location: Guildford

I went to a couple of concerts at King's Place near King's Cross in London yesterday. I'd booked the tickets over the internet some weeks ago and thought they were going to post them to me but when they hadn't arrived on Friday I phoned the box office and was told to pick them up before the concert. That's the second time in a row that this has happened with the King's Place box office.

There were engineering works on the line from Guildford to Waterloo yesterday so I set of early to get there in good time, but then got into Waterloo so early I had a full hour to get across London. Feeling like I needed the exercise, I set off walking, thinking if time got tight I could hop on a tube, but then lost track of time. I picked up my tickets at the box office, looked at my watch, and there was about five minutes to the start of the concert and I needed the loo.

I found the ticket for the first concert at the end of the strip of tickets they'd given me but when I got into the concert hall there was a woman sitting in my seat. I pointed this out to the attendant, who was very confused. We had identical tickets. At this point someone who had a ticket but needed to leave early gave me her ticket as she had found a spare seat at the back. When I sat down the seat on this ticket I then I had time to look more closely at the tickets I'd been given. There were two sets of tickets all in one strip as they'd come off the ticket printer. One set was mine and the other I presume was for the woman in what I thought was my seat. My seat was actually somewhere else.

After the concert, I pointed this out to the attendant and the woman in question was coming past at the same time. It turned out that when she had turned up at the box office, they had been unable to find her tickets and printed a new set off. Now they knew what had happened to the missing tickets.

They could have least have offered e-tickets instead of making me collect them at the box office. Both the South Bank centre and the Barbican do that now. I just wish that the Barbican, when I book more than one concert, wouldn't send me a separate pdf for each ticket. The actual ticket covers just 7cm of a side of A4, the rest blank, and there is a second page with the terms and conditions. And I always forget to print off just the first page of each ticket.

Current Mood: confused
Current Location: United Kingdom, Guildford

I've just arrived in Cologne, the first stage in my journey to Archipelicon this weekend.

When I was on the Eurostar this afternoon, the guy sitting next to me was trying to find out where he could plug his laptop in and what type of socket it was. (The answers are, between the two seats in front, and European.)

At which point I remembered I'd forgotten to pack my mains adaptor. I got checked into my hotel by 19:30 so I went wandering and found a German equivalent of Currys PC World that stayed open till 20:00 and bought a Reisestecker for ten euros.

I always forget at least one thing when travelling. (One Eastercon I discovered I had no clean underpants and had to make a shopping expedition to Hinkley.) I hope this is the only thing I've forgotten this time.

UPdate: Well, I've just discovered what else I'd forgotten to pack - toothpaste!

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: Germany, Cologne

So I was chopping back the vegetation that was encroaching on the path in my back garden when something thin and black moved beneath my shears. I had just chopped through a cable connecting my Sky satellite dish to the box.

For those that don't know, there are usually two cables connecting the dish to the box so that you can record two programmes simultaneously, or record one whilst watching another, so I can still get Sky, just not as conveniently as usual. The other cable is stapled to the wall at about waist height, so it was well away from my shears.

Fortunately, I have a Sky Protect repair contract. Surprisingly, they say they'll send an engineer out Sunday to fix it.

UPDATE

The other feed from the dish failed last night. I can't think why. And it turns out you can't reboot a Sky box without a satellite signal, so now I can't even see my previously recorded programmes.

FURTHER UPDATE

Somebody on Cix suggested swapping the input connectors around on the back of the box. Seems that input 1 was the one that was cut and if that is not available it eventually fails to detect the other input. And that has solved the problem for now.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: United Kingdom, Guildford
Current Music: Busoni Piano music

I like this:

http://doonesbury.washingtonpost.com/strip/archive/2014/6/8

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: United Kingdom, Guildford
Current Music: Atterberg 6th Symphony

Last week, the man who invented the computer mouse, this week, the man who designed the Trabant:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/doctor-werner-lang-engineer-who-designed-the-trabant-car-8693630.html

Back in the nineties, when I first had satellite TV, you could receive a number of German TV channels for free and I find German TV fascinating. One night I noticed a film about an East German family who, when the wall comes down, decide to take a foreign holiday, driving their Trabant to Naples. Well, I couldn't understand the German, but I could get the gist of the story.

The curious thing is, the next day I was walking through Guildford, and a Trabant drove past. I don't think I've seen a Trabant in Guildford before or since.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Location: United Kingdom, Guildford
Current Music: Hanson Fantasy Variations

So I ordered a new fridge freezer on Wednesday, and for a few extra
pounds they said they could deliver it today, and it arrived 11:30

Trouble is, the previous fridge had obviously had the kitchen built round
it.  The power lead had been threaded through a hole only wide enough to
take the cord and the plug then added.  Well, they could take the old
fridge by snipping the cord but didn't have the tools to make a hole to
put a plug through (which is what happened when I got a new tumble dryer
some years ago - that was Comet, this was Currys) and they weren't
prepared to wait for me to cut a hole.  They left, and the fridge was in
its box in the hall.

Well, I thought about starting to make a hole and it wasn't difficult,
although I nearly sawed through the fuse box.  Then I thought about
phoning my brother to see if he was free tonight.  However, the thing was blocking
the hall so I could either go up stairs or go to the front door, but not
both, so I thought about trying to move it.

I had already removed part of the box to see where the plug was so I
tried moving it off the supports.  The guy had said, "It's not heavy"
when he left, and it turns out he was right.  I was able to manhandle it
into the kitchen and lift it onto the step the old fridge was on.

I'm sure I wouldn't have had this problem if I had been a young woman.

I have to leave it to settle for 6-8 hours before I can switch it on,
which will be the next test.  Just as well it's been so cold the last few
days, as the outhouse has been almost as cool as a fridge: 10C.

Current Mood: anticipatory
Current Location: United Kingdom, Guildford
Current Music: Maxwell Davies Piano concerto

Having breakfast this morning and the milk on my cereal was not cold. Checked the fridge and it's at room temperature.

I got the fridge-freezer with the house when I moved in 17 years ago and thought it might be time to buy a new one. Checked in Currys just now (Comet now no longer being an option) and they don't stock them the same size as the one I've got. Mine is 50cm wide and 176cm tall, and fits snugly into the space between two cupboards. They do stock 50cm wide fridge-freezers but they are much shorter. (I had a similar problem when buying a new tumble dryer a few years ago, but settled one shorter than the old one.)

What's more, the fridge is sitting on a wooden shelf and that is beginning to buckle. I asked at Currys if they'd fix this and instead they won't install it if the installer believes the set up unstable.

So it looks as if I can't get a new fridge until I get that fixed, and even then I can only get one smaller than my current model.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: United Kingdom, Guildford
Current Music: Samuel Be

My main computer wouldn't boot up this morning. Looks like a power supply problem, but phoned the service company and it won't be fixed till next week. Have to make do with the laptop till then.

And I'd just got off the phone when the washing machine started making a terrible noise. Fortunately, that proved easy to fix. Took the drain trap out and found a pyjama button in it.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: United Kingdom, Guildford
Current Music: Herrmann Film music

Received a letter from Thames Water today suggesting it might be worth my while having a water meter fitted. Based on the figures in a table in the letter - one occupant of the house, occasional use of washing machine (well, twice a week), baths etc., I should save £100-£150 a year on my current £330 annual bill.

Anyone else done this? My fear is that I'm such a profligate water user, my bill will go up.

Current Mood: curious
Current Location: United Kingdom, Guildford
Current Music: Pfitzner's Palestrina

I was listening to the radio this morning but the TV was on with the sound off showing the BBC news channel as I'd been looking at the headlines. A home video clip caught my attention. Not wanting a voice speaking over the extract from Mahler's 2nd symphony that was playing, I switched on the subtitles for the deaf and wound the programme back to watch the clip.

The clip shows a strange animal in someone's garden in Lyme Regis in Dorset. The subtitles at the end stated, "They are not sure if it's a kangaroo or a wannabe."

The BBC had been providing live subtitling now for at least 30 years. I remember hearing (but not seeing at the time) that they'd tried it out for their coverage of the royal wedding back in 1981, when there were several references to the duck of Edinburgh. Looks like the technology still isn't perfect.

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: United Kingdom, Guildford
Current Music: Urlicht