Dom Barnes’s Blog

After a long drive (including a slow move around Market Harborough) I’m finally back at my parents house. It wasn’t a great drive. I was stuck between feeling warm and slightly sleepy and having the window open and it being breezy which kept me awake.

Anyway, I’m here and my role as tech support has begun. My mum has been given a very old Sony Vaio which had been forgotten about. She wanted to do a Powerpoint presentation on a budget at this meeting and was given this and a Epson projector to use. I started it up and after battling with the awkward WiFi finally got it online. So I went to update it first and got told to check the time. So I did and it thought it was 15 October 2006 and 10.10am. Blimey. It really hadn’t been used in a while. So I updated that, then syncd it to the NTS. Finally good to roll. First up got 62 updates. then XPSP2 update. which is now running. In the mean time I got the projector working and showed my mum how to get it working. But since this laptop doesn’t have powerpoint she can’t edit her presentations. So she might just use the other one.

Anyway this laptop is a monster. The power brick is twice the size of the one for my Powerbook, its really thick and heafty. I would hate to carry it around.

Anyway, the Christmas tree is loaded with presents, the freezer is full and Christmas starts monday. So fingers crossed tomorrow will go ok. I’m planning on doing some study for my A+ but that might not happen so much. Good intensions and all that.

Happy Holidays everyone!

So I woke up this morning at about 6.40. However I didn’t know it was then because my clock wasn’t working which was strange. So I sat up, tried my lamp which didn’t work either. My girlfriend went to turn the bathroom light on and it didn’t work. So I checked the fuse box and it was all on. So I soon realised there must’ve been a powercut. It was pretty dark outside, and hard to tell if any lights were off since I don’t really look outside at night.

I stuck some clothes on and went down towards the front desk. Luckily, I ran into a woman only 2 floors down who told me the news. There had been a fire at a power station and had cut power to the entire city. It was possibly going to be out until the afternoon. I walked back to my apartment and got out a radio to see if there was anything being said about it when the power came back on (and with it running water).

The strangest thing is its now been about an hour since it came back on, and about 4 since it went off and I can’t seem to find any mention of it on the news or the internet. Why hasn’t this been reported? Surely someone has realised and thought it worthy of mentioning. I mean the power goes out to the second largest city in the UK and not even a whisper?

Well I claim to be the first (as far as I know) to report this. Its 8.13am. Power is back (obviously since I can get online) and the city is coming back into action.

Just saw this story on Digg. Its about an HP Analyists meeting and the happy occurance of 4 Macbooks/Macbook Pro’s. Apparently these meetings are often plagued with Dells and Thinkpads all politely running Windows. But the 4 Macbooks caused some disturbance. Mark Hurd, CEO, said “That notebook you’ve got there is a challenge to us” before later sending down an HP exec to drop off some business cards. Its good to see people realising that Mac’s are just as capable of running the day-to-day software you need to work and live in most industries, and even better when it ruffles some feathers in the process. All the PC makers need to sit down and think why Apple’s computers are so popular on design and work with that, innovate, rather than replicating them with cheaper materials.

Somehow I can’t imagine anyone sitting at an Apple meeting with a Dell. Even if they did, I don’t expect Steve Jobs would see it as competition, or a “challenge”.

So I went shopping this afternoon for my girlfriend and came across two cards in two different shops. The first made me cringe and sigh dissapointedly, the second pointed out how far some companies and organisations go to be “PC”.

This first card spouts the wonderful heartwarming sentiment, “Tinsel Tits”. Now I’ve seen plenty of cards in my life, funny cards, slightly adult humour cards, innuendos with cartoon pictures and potentially rude comments, but then you get some that are just plain demeaning and disgraceful. This is the latter. I can’t think of anyone I know who would appreciate a card calling them Tinsel Tits, let alone appreciate the picture of the semi-naked surgically enhanced woman on the front. Can’t exactly put it on your mantle piece, unless you don’t get visitors. But then this is a card for a woman isn’t it? Would you call your footie mates Tinsel Tits? So why would yor girlfriend want a card calling them that, with a semi-naked woman on the front? Would she want you staring at it when you were at home?

The second card is less harmless, but makes me smile that they are beginning to make cards for all relationship situations. There’s boyfriend, girlfriend, sister and brother in law, sister and husband, and now, since divorce seems to be so high in this country, or single parenthood, there is now parent and partner, in this case, dad and girlfriend. How sweet. There was also brother and “partner”. Why not put boyfriend? I didn’t see any sister and partner so Hallmark obviously aren’t catering to the lesbian society yet. I worry that it might only be another year before we see “dad and mail-order-bride” appear, or for mormen, “For my wives at Christmas”. Why buy 6 when 1 will do?

Date: 13 December 2006
Venue: Rich Bitch, Selly Oak

Midweek practice this week since the weekend has posed some problems, one of which being Fake-Christmas. So we went for a afterwork session. Not so easy when your work is so fussy about leaving 15 minutes earlier that I had to take a shorter lunch. Not that anyone actually checked up on me. So I got there about 20 mins late, which wasn’t too bad but I worry.

Played the usual Russia and then moved on to working on the new song, the two chord special created out of fear of being too complex. James has some lyrics and a name Sequoia (might need to check spelling). Not sure what its about since I don’t get a chance to listen to the lyrics but its coming together well. Had a brief debate over whether to go Intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, bridge, outro; or Intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, outro. I think we’re going the for the second one. But either way, we finally have two songs to call our own! Thats halfway to an EP, almost a repertoire.

Next session to be next thursday before a break for Christmas or whatever holiday you may choose to celebrate.

I’ve entered the world of GPS a.k.a. sat nav. I recently got a HP iPaq 5450 PDA (partly GTD reasons), a 2GB SD memory card and a Holux GPSlim 240 Bluetooth GPS receiver. And with the magic of some navigation software, I now have the ability to get from A to B with little or no stress. Great. All I really need is a reason to use it, apart from to drive back to my parents for christmas (and I already know the way having driven it countless times).

Ever wonder why you bought something? I often find myself getting really into something (like getting a PDA) from a blog post, or website, and then spending loads to occomplish my task, which may not actually have a purpose. Hopefully when I change jobs (sooner rather than later) I will have a decent reason to use one. Until then, guide me home oh sat nav lady!

Been to see two films this week. Stranger Than Fiction and The Holiday. I would recommend them both.

Its been ages since I went to the cinema (and I need to go lots since I have a unlimited entry card) and I was really pleased with these two. Stranger Than Fiction is a great story of Harold (Will Ferrell) who suddenly hears someone narrating his life, and mentions he will inevitably die.
The Holiday is a nice story about 4 people, cominig together, falling into and out of love with others. I thought Jack Black was really good in this. He wasn’t crazy, he was a charismatic guy who I’d like to meet.

If you wanna see two feel good films, go see these. Soundtracks on both were great too. I think the music can make the film.

The Holiday - Official Site

Stranger Than Fiction - Official Site

I’ve been following this story since I saw it appear on Digg the other week. A news reporter from CNET was missing with his family after they were coming home from a holiday. The family were last seen at a diner near Roseburg before heading off on the last leg of their journey. Unfortunatly they never arrived and their family notified the police.

A search began and on Monday, the wife, Kati, and his two daughters were found by their car, after Kati waved an umbrella at a passing helicopter. The search then continued for James.

Unfortunately, he was found 11 days after heading off into the wilderness on wednesday 6th December. He hadn’t made it. The story of his braveness, his efforts to save his family, who were so important to his life, has rippled accross the internet. Stories and thanks have been pouring in, as well as messages for his wife and kids, Penelope and Sabine.

My thoughts go out to his family and friends who will surely miss him.

CNET - James Kim found deceased
CNET - Kati Kim and daugters found alive

I’ve been wanting for ages to give Ubuntu a try. Since Dapper Drake came out, and it hit the tech headlines, I’ve been curious to see what the open source community has to offer. Unfortunately, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my Powerbook to experimentation so I waited. And finally today I thought “hey, my girlfriend’s old laptop hard drive will do. I’ll go for it”. So I took one last look at the contents of the drive, and said good bye for ever. It took about 30 mins to install everything, entering a few details, username, password, etc. Then I updated which took a while. In the mean time I went looking for how to install a 3Com OfficeConnect 11g PC card which I was using. I plugged it in and nothing. Not a flicker. It wasn’t until I rebooted after the update when I suddenly flicked into life. I was seconds away from firing up the Terminal and installing ndiswrapper and doing stuff when I saw this.

So I checked the network settings and saw my wireless card there. “Great!” I thought. The prospect of using a wire on a laptop with a dodgy LAN port wasn’t good but its working now.

I’m just waiting for the upgrade to Edgy Eft to download and install although its getting late so I might have to leave it overnight. Or maybe 24 minutes if the current speed holds out (132kbps on a 8Mb line. Not great but not bad)

Its not ideal having XP Pro on one hard drive and Ubuntu on another but I wasn’t up to doing a dual boot now. Plus the laptop is old. If anyone out there has a spare laptop, not doing much, that they wish to donate, please let me know. I’d love to give it a good home.

Date: 2 December 2006
Place: Rich Bitch, Selly Oak

Good two hours this week. A bit more productive. Usual warm up, ate some food, tuned, fiddled with the knobs to get a good sound come out although it was a bit crunchy. Changed the bass and treble but didn’t help much. Got on with it and played anyway.

We went through the usual routine. Russia, some messing around with it, a few mess ups (by all of us). Had a bit of a jam time, when we went through a bit of a blues moment. Chris and I were playing a funky blues rythem and Nick and James were playing something different altogether. It was good fun though. Not what we’re going for but cool to jam. Jammed some more though. Just playing rythms with Chris and seeing what we sounds good. Did some really cool beats and tunes but as with all our good stuff, if we stop it we forget it so we can’t play it again. Lead me to think we need a tape recorder to record jams on so we play them back and see what exactly we were playing.

Not much else to say. Got a shit Kinder Surprise. It was some lame stickers. Wow(!). About on par with the crappy “paint set” I got last time.

Went out to the pub afterwards for Nick’s birthday. Has a good time taking about all manor of subjects including religion, films, ABBA. Then we went to listen to some music upstairs at the pub. We went in and were greated by screaming goth metal that sounded very slipknot/Creed/Nickelback. Weird. Then some random band came on, that consisted of a singing drummer, a guy with a plastic fork in his dreads and a guitarist in a 1930’s Zulu-esque safari hat. James and Savage found similarities with other songs and proceeded to sing Hotel California and a Beatles track very loudly over the top of the band. Oh and some girl came on to sing Silent Night. What more do I need to say? Same time next week is all.