johnny was a rockin, goin' round and round

An almost literal spin off from the recent tidying of the garage was the unearthing of an old record player that can be hooked up to a computer.

There were also some boxes of 45rpm vinyl singles, which look as if they are mainly still spinnable

I decided to try copying a few of the labels onto a camera and then uploading them against tracks in iTunes, to get the old style label to pop up when the track plays.

There’s some old gold amongst it with well known Beatles and Rolling Stones tracks nestling alongside the Captain Beefheart, Incredible String Band and Roy Harper.

Link to the progressively extending collection here.

London Bloggers' Meetup

I dropped in on the London Bloggers’ Meetup yesterday evening. It is the first one I’ve attended in ages but I’m glad I made the diversion to the Long Acre pub and found the gathering downstairs.

I’d estimate around 60 people attending so it is now at the level where most folk including me wore little handwritten badges with both real names and blognames.

A good mix of presentations and chatter and some interesting new contacts for me in the process.

Recommended to other London Bloggers to give the mainly monthly meetings a go. And thanks to excellent organiser Andy Bargery

in which the garage becomes a space freighter

The picture is before the upstairs landing started to look like the loading dock for a space freighter from an episode of Alien.

The technology those films don't explain quite so well is how people know what is in which pod. I suppose its all digitalised?

In my case the secret is to have slightly transparent crates, so you can see what is inside without needing to open them again. Some might say that once stuff reaches the 'crate' stage it is very much a one-way trip and the next appearance will be at a car-boot sale, on eBay or into the next arriving skip.

I've decided that it might be good to have some rules like they do with space ships. The current bulk cost to ship a kilo to geosynchronous orbit is around $20,000. Assuming it arrives safely of course.

My tariff for the trip to the garage could be a little less, but it would certainly focus the mind on what is really worth keeping.

wave theory

Thursday afternoon and I'd been driving through the rain on the M25. Part of my mission involved getting keys to a new destination, so they could be used to unlock a door at the weekend.

My sat nav was lit up with little yellow and red cars on most of the route I was taking, but close inspection showed most of them to be on the other side of the road.

As I traversed the Dartford Tunnel I could see a shimmer of blue hope to my right. The darkest clouds were over London and there was the merest hint of playful sunshine to the East.

So as I dropped the keys, there was a moment to consider the next option. Shall we stay or shall we go? We decided to point the car even further east and to head for some coastline. Just for a quick peek, to check that it was not raining everywhere.

The sun may have been shy, but it was in our hearts as we stood on the sand and watched the waves.

I add a wifi hot spot to the car

Let's face it, most of the time we all have pretty good access to wifi these days. The various cloud and free to air offerings around London keep a pretty good signal without needing to remember the warchalk inscriptions.

But what about that inconvenient moment when you are a passenger in a car and the only available iPad doesn't have 3G? Or the laptop doesn't have its own SIM card?

Shock horror.

But easily solved.

I recently switched the car's phone cradle from Blackberry to iPhone (that's part of another story).

Whilst arranging it so that the car's two separate bluetooth nodes don't compete, I thought I might as well add the hotspot facility. My car dealership tells me the official option for a wifi hotspot to be added is £1016.


Actually, it was easy to hang on to the cash and simply enable the iPhone hotspot. With it plugged into the cradle it has a good antenna and power.

Its quite a change from the days when cars came with instructions about not using the phone unless in a caddy, in case it messed with other car electronics or blew up the airbags.

Fly's in the buttermilk, Shoo, fly, shoo

INT. A DIMLY LIT ROOM.

A light bulb flickers. A shaft of dusty light enters from an open area at one end. The light is mainly obscured by a steep pile of building rubble.

There's discarded sinks, doors, a wardrobe, several piles from remnants of MDF furniture.

A gentle hum from ancient electronics, cables snaking through the debris. Spiders, scuttling sounds from the roof.

Our hero enters.

SOUND FX. A metallic scraping. Heavy chains.

Our hero smiles.

The skip has arrived. Now he can reclaim the space.

MONTAGE. (acc. busy music)
Manual labour. Mugs of tea. A flurry of polystyrene packaging caught in the wind. Dust. Cans of beer. Bicycles falling over. A bright orange lawnmower. More tea.

EXT. DRIVEWAY.
Zoom onto metal container. 8 cubic yards. Full.

Hero is dialling on phone "Send another."

FADE TO WHITE.

something for desert?

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night

That Eagles' song has been riffling through my brain over the last day or so, now we've found a large map of the deserts west of L.A.

It was on a road trip that I discovered the album cover for Hotel California is the Beverley Hills Hotel in Hollywood. Although in my mind I transfer it's geography to Furnace Creek in Death Valley.

And now I'm thinking it's time to hit another dusty road.

I checked with the airline yesterday and have decided to drop into the middle of Arizona.

But not for a few more days.

dawn rushes

I'm away from home at the moment and surviving on hotel food.

It's turned into one of those evenings where the night runs into the morning. That point where the next day rushes in over the top of the previous one.

I'm never sure quite what happens between about 3am and 6am, when, if you are still awake the whole of Time operates at a different speed.

Might as well watch the sun come up now. I don't think I'll be the only one.

crossing the bridge

There’s a ford as well as a bridge and a swing rope at this point on the mill stream.

It covers most eventualities although someone has decided to remove their flip-flops before traversing the way.

I’ve been using the spot as a waymarker on my cycling recently.

If the weather is good then its a great place to pause for a few minutes before deciding the next part of the route.

moving a Wordpress site

This is one of my occasional geeky technical posts (use at your own risk etc.)

It will save me time if I have to do this again.

Simply put, I needed to move a Wordpress site from one directory and url to another. Ideally without having to export it all, rebuild the database and re-import it.

My steps were as follows:

1) Go to the current directory and download the wp-config.php file

2) Add two 'define' lines to it as follows:

/** Temporary lines to redirect the site to the new directory */
define('WP_HOME','http://www.mynewsite.com/newplace');
define('WP_SITEURL','http://www.mynewsite.com/newplace');

3) Copy the existing web site folder to the new place using ftp. I use Yummy FTP for this.

4) Copy the edited wp-config.php file to the new place using FTP.

5) Try the new location. It should now work. Look carefully at the browser to ensure it is actually going to the new location. Also try the Wordpress dashboard. If they work then I suggest using FTP to rename the old web site directory and trying again. If it still works then leave the old directory intact for a few days until certain that everything is functioning.

6) If it's all working, re-edit the wp-config.php and remove the temporary lines and re-upload. Don't try to make this change from within the Wordpress dashboard. It will all go horribly wrong. Trust me.

7) If the new site location doesn't work, it is likely the website root directory index.html (or Welcome) may need to be re-edited to point to the new folder. Download it with FTP. It's only a couple of lines. Look to see if there is a pointer to the oldplace and if so, edit it for the newplace.

8) Time taken to do the transfer (keeping the same SQL database) = 10 minutes plus the FTP copy time of the Wordpress directory (in my case about 15 minutes).

And all happy happy smile smile again at the end.

unpacking the sunshine

A delightful weekend near Cheltenham, mixing city restaurants with countryside walks and spectacular barbecues.

We were with friends and comparing stories from our last year or so. There’d been plenty happening for all of us and the leisure and luxury of a full weekend gave us a chance to unpack each others’ adventures in episodes.

wish you were

Time to meet a few friends for an evening beer at one of our arch destinations by Waterloo.

I successfully turned early into punctual by being waylaid at the seaside scenes along the South Bank.

The sandy shoreline, funfair and beach huts create a mini Southend-on-Sea or Jaywick Sands between the skate board area and the Jubilee Pier.

Doughnuts, anyone?