Really, where the hell is Matt? – look just go watch it…
Upgrade of server
That was a traumatic few hours – I have just upgraded the little old server that provides all these pages to a nice new shiny Ubuntu LAMP distribution. It was previously running a very old distro of RedHat, with apache 1 and very old MySQL and PHP, and the time had come to move to a new infrastructure – not least because Claire, who is developing the museum database had said that she would not do any more work on it until I upgraded to a version of MySQL that actually supported relational integrity.
Well I’ve done that now, and she has no excuse, and neither do I in the future, as Ubuntu is very easy to keep up to date.
If you do find anything that is not quite working as it should, then please let me know and I’ll try to fix it. It should be fairly transparent to the average user though – but it does leave me in a better position to upgrade WordPress and Gallery at some time in the near(ish) future.
Museum updates
I’ve been a bit busy on the museum over the last couple of days – I took the CBM 4032 apart, and cleaned and serviced the keyboard, and now all the keys work most of the time. I then proceeded to type in a copy of TIC TAC ARITH in Basic, and saved it to tape, so I now have at least one program that works on it. I’ve also managed to convert some .prg files to .wav files, so next time I remember to bring in my dummy cassette adapter, I’ll be able to test out space invaders on the PET, and that’ll bring back soe real memories.
I also managed to locate the speakers and 3D glasses with emitter for the SGI Octane, so I now have to find where the 3D rendering software is on the machine. (H)
New addition to the Museum
I now have an SGI Octane dual 300MHz processor workstation, complete with original SGI monitor, keyboard and mouse – no speakers though, or 3D glasses 🙁
I’m slowly getting to grips with administering it, and have managed to get it running some of the demo programs as can be seen from the photo. I think it would be better with a little more RAM, so ebay here we come…
We really don’t need one of these dept…
No really, I don’t want a USB powered air conditioned shirt, I think I preferred the home made air conditioner
But I have thought about a device for the back of the car to relay messages to drivers behind you, but the more I think about it, the more I would use it to anger following drivers. Actually, what is really annoying me at the moment is the number of drivers that I follow that have one brake light not working, or have their fog lamps on incorrectly, so the device would have to work to drivers in front, rather than behind.
This digital photo frame from Samsung looks very nice, but I’d rather have a big one to go on the wall, but when the 7 inch version is over $300 in Korea, I think it’s a little pricey.
Now for something cute – the new Macbook Pros have a backlight for the keyboard, so thhat you can type in the dark, and someone has now written a little plugin called iSpazz which pulses the backlight in time with the currently playing iTune.
Finally, I really don’t know what to say about this nasty looking thing
“Don’t refer to Wikipedia”: Founder
Jimmy Wales, the founder of the Wikipedia is apparently fed up with students complaining that the referenced Wikipedia, and then got Fail grades on their papers.
Yellow Chairs
This sounds like a more sociable alternative to warchalking – you place a Yellow chair outside your house and invite others to sit on it to share your wireless network.
This is an interesting art project, its worth reading the background story
The person who set this up appears to have found that theiir network became too slow to continue with the fully open service, but it does offer some interesting insights into social interaction.
There is another article about this on http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/
Scrapheap Challenge Roadshow
We got back last night very tired from the filming of the Scrapheap Challenge Roadshow down a Beaulieu.
We all had a really great weekend, thanks to all the Scrapheapers down there – there was a really good atmosphere, and we got to meet some really nice people.
There are a number of galleries of photos uploading at the moment, some may be of interest to some people. I will write a longer article (or get Clairey to) as we have to write something for the newsletter later, but for now you’ll have to make to with pictures of all the wacky vehicles that were there.
Robert Llewellyn was really friendly, even though he appeared to be besieged by autograph hunters all day, Edd China was great, showing a lot of interest in all the vehicles as part of his judging duties. I didn’t get to meet Lisa Rogers, but she looked blooming – if you don’t know what I mean you’ll have to watch the show.
Bike photos
I’ve been riding the bike for a few days now, since I got the MOT and tax, and fiinally got some photos of it the other day, then forgot to put a link to them here.
Scrapheap Roadshow
Well I spent most of the weekend building the Scrapheap vehicle, and tonight we took it out for it’s first real road test, which was competely successful.
We did break a couple of bits, but far better to break them now and be able to repair and strengthen them before the Sofa Speedway next Sunday down at Beaulieu Palace.
It’s been a somewhat tiring few days, and we’re all looking forward to being down there on Sunday, but are not really relishing the drive down there towing an unusual vehicle on a trailer.
Of course there are some photos – do you know what it is yet?