furnished with blue lights, baby

I've still got to clear half an apartment's worth of 'why?' to make some building space.

There's less than four weeks until more things arrive and there needs to be somewhere intermediate.

Old stuff out. New stuff in.

Then more old stuff out.

And that's just the holding space.

It's a good theory.

i smoke my friends down to the filter

Sometimes you have to pick a corner so when the bar fills you can still spot the friendly faces. The smile that might not be complete recognition but you know its the right person. The one that tells you the dreams are still alive and they don't all belong to someone else.

So yesterday, we'd picked to meet in a barroom I'd never visited and I arrived so early that the barman was kneeling, lighting log fires in the hearths.

I'd already checked my overcoat pockets for burned out ferris wheel lights or other tell-tale signs of recent misdemeanours. My hands came out clean and ready to wave in the candle-light.

We were both forward lookers so after only a glance or two over our shoulders we moved it right along - fun going forward. Of course there were secrets but none that the wine won't protect or another day can't provide for a slow reveal.


Picture : Anders Petersen - Cafe Lehmitz - 1960

shilling installments

It's been both a cold and foggy evening with shapes melting away after about 20 feet* of distance.

It all seems right and appropriate on the eve of Charles Dicken's 200th Anniversary and I'll celebrate the various cliches about London Town and fogs for the occasion.

Like many, I studied Dickens back in school, with the text of Hard Times as a set piece along with Shakespeare, Chaucer and George Orwell. The names of Thomas Gradgrind, steeped in Facts, Sleary the lisping circus owner, Bitzer and Bounderby are enough to conjure plot lines even before the first pages are turned.

Everyone knows 'Oliver Twist' and 'A Christmas Carol' but there's plenty more of Dicken's stories out there, written as serials, the affordable soap operas of the day.

Weird then, to be asked a couple of days ago about whether I had any use for a set of Dicken's novels. They are one set that I'd happily make a space to enjoy in shilling installments.


* non metric in context with the rest of the post

a thin kind of snow

We were walking around the low-water Thames tide at Ransome's Dock yesterday, just before the snow arrived. We'd already pressed our noses to the windows of The Albert, but decided instead to make our way back across the almost deserted park.

The pub was jam-packed as if everyone had decided to go somewhere ahead of the ever more excited weather forecasts.

So maybe today invites a chance to contemplate. This morning's few footprints can tell stories but it's mainly that everyone and their cats are adjusting plans.

And this snow without flurries is already fast melting. A freeze frame moment just before hitting Play.

in which I am offered a Lear Jet

Oh well, I suppose it makes a change from the mail-shots about moving money and treasure from various African states. Oh, and those pharma solutions which intriguingly have recently been Millibanded with all the 'a's turned into 'o's.

Yep, today's mail shot was offering me a share of a Lear Jet. The all new carbon-composite Type 85 actually.

I'm not sure though. If the plane is based in America it may prove a trifle inconvenient for flights around Europe. I've had a look at the convenient flight planning ready reckoner and will admit I'm now slightly confused about the differences between Super-Light and Midsize, when the Super-Light seems to have a higher capacity. Maybe its the quality of the upholstery and the improved selection of beverages?

I expect I'm getting all this new attention since the recent spike in the traffic through rashbre central. Admittedly it was my wild speculation about some new technology a few days ago, but the daily stats jumped to 4,500 hits in a single day for just one item. Maybe I could use some new transportation to stay connected.

Or maybe I'll just stay with my carbon-composite bicycle for a bit longer.

in which I discover my bike's inadvertent blog

I had a slight surprise today when I found that my bike seemed to have it's own blog.

Well, not exactly a blog, but at least an RSS stream which I'd picked up on my RSS reader.

It's my own fault that it happened. I've written about it before, but I use the ANT + system to allow the various speedometers and such-like to communicate on my bicycle. ANT + is a bit like a mini Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for use over short distances and mainly used for counting things like speed, cadence and heart-rate.

Of course, these things can be counted whilst pedalling the bike, but also saved as statistics. And that's what happened to the numbers from my bike. They were offloaded to another system, stored away and quietly published into the cloud.

Now I don't particularly mind, but I was slightly surprised to see them appearing as a stream of messages on my Newsreader - even back to before my slippy-slidey ride from over a year ago. It was like a little history trip, but without all of the detail.

And I realised that some of the other things that ANT + can count include weight, body mass...the list goes on.

I've decided it might be best to switch off that particular social stream. My bike will have to be blog-less.

Olympus OM-D

I got sent one of those notes about the upcoming new Olympus camera a couple of days ago. To be truthful I've only just got around to reading it, and it was only when I noticed that the O and M in the wording had been slightly emboldened that I paid more attention.

Anyone that reads my rather occasional photography blog rashbre snapped will know I'm quite a fan of the Olympus OM SLRs, which were a range of film cameras. The original cameras were created back in the 1970s and are something of a design classic with simple controls in just the right place and a huge selection of good quality prime lenses to accompany.

I've tried fixing the OM Zuiko lenses to modern Canon bodies, with good effect and still take an Olympus OM-2 out for walks sometimes.

So the recent Olympus note is quite intriguing, although my suspicion is that the rumoured new camera will be somewhat different from the original form of the Olympus. I doubt they will use a mirror, more likely an electronic view finder and probably micro 4/3rds format, something like the Lumix GF-1 example I show in the picture above.

So ahead of any formal announcement of the new camera, I'll review a few design pointers from the original.

1. The pyramid shaped prism area
2. The shutter speed ring around the lens
3. Full Frame (it was 35 mm)
4. An aperture ring on the lenses
5. Compatibility with the OM lens system
6. Largely (simple) manual controls

Beyond the overly silvered-up and strangely copy-written 'artists impressions' like below, it will be interesting to see how much of this could be preserved in a commercially viable update for the 21st century?

update on updating the updates with more updates

My PC saga continues. Luckily it's a secondary machine and it is really for a single purpose. I suppose I should come clean and admit I bought the (inexpensive) computer in a supermarket along with the weekly groceries.

Anyhow, after I'd fixed the Wi-Fi connection that didn't work on the brand new machine, I decided to load the software I'd bought the machine to use.

Actually before that, Windows asked me to tarry a while to allow it to do 32 systems updates. I decided it best to leave it overnight to burble away.

Then to load in the DVD containing the main software. A further problem. The brand new software required an update before it would work properly.

"Open the pod bay doors, Hal"

"Sorry, (Dave), I can't do that *"

Something to do with Windows 7 and x64. Then a couple more re-boots.

Then the newly uploaded software said it also needed an upgrade.

This one took a long time because it decided it needed to re-download the entire software suite from the internet. It was less than 2 GB but still took a while. Except it failed part way through the first couple of times.

I plugged the machine back into an ethernet connection and reran the download.

Another overnight process to install the new version.

Except...It said it needed to do a further upgrade. Just a small one this time.

Oh and then one more.

Another day passed.

But hooray all the bits have now been installed, plus a couple of other drivers.

Four days from purchase to first proper use.

I suspect many would have surrendered long before the end of this process.

The PC equivalent of "It just works" seems to be "It finally works" although judging from Windows 8's new 'BSOD Blue Screen of Death' error message, there's going to be an attempt to make errors look like fun.
* tangentially, have you noticed that if you ask an iPhone Siri to sing you a song it will choose "Daisy, Daisy"?

a day on the tiles

Another target alongside the cycling and writing for the first part of the year is the great bathroom renovation. Today involved looking at taps and tiles. It'll take months to get everything organised with the first part of the plan involving the garage.

It'll be simply an interim storage area for the incoming bits and pieces. It wasn't that many months ago that I cleared some space, but I think I'll need even more for (a) the incoming materials and (b) the outgoing rubble.

less bait and more switch?

I had a sort of flashback to ye olden days of Windows computing today.

The situation was simple enough. I'd unpacked a fresh new laptop to be used for a specific purpose and naively plugged it in to get it working.

This was straight from the carton and the only taxing thing I wanted it to do was be able to connect with the internet. I won't go into the background use here, suffice to say it wouldn't work.

"No wi-fi connection," announced the shiny Windows 7 interface.

"Silly me," I thought - "I need to press Fn 8 to switch on the Wi-fi."

But it didn't work. It said I needed to flick the hardware switch "on the surface of the computer - or underneath it" - to make the Wi-fi work.

I looked around the unit. No switch. I pressed the Fn 8 a few more times. Still nothing.

A moment of mild panic as I wondered bizarrely if this shiny new 2012 device didn't have Wi-fi included.

I read the carton and even the user instructions. Yes, of course there was Wi-fi included.

So I found an ethernet cable and plugged it in to get internet access via a direct connection instead. Yes, that worked - but is not so useful on a laptop computer, which is supposed to be portable.

Then I accessed the supplier website - and guess what - I'm not the only one with this problem. There's plenty of other people playing 'hunt the switch'. And there isn't a switch.

Then I remembered this was a Windows computer. Inevitably there would be new drivers to replace the factory installed ones.

Sure enough, I found a long set of instructions which were not for the faint-hearted. It explained I needed to download three new sets of drivers. I must make sure they are the 64 bit ones, not the 32 bit variants. Then uninstall the WLAN driver, reboot, uninstall the TVAP drivers and programs, re-boot, run a registry cleaner called CCregistry. Reinstall the replacement WLAN driver. Reinstall the dozen or so utilities included in the 175Mb download of the TVAP drivers. Reboot. Test the WLAN driver and it should all work.

It did.

I now had a Windows laptop with Wifi. Like the one I thought was in the carton I'd opened, several hours earlier.

I reminded myself that I must really, really, really want to use the particular Windows program that this PC will support. And I hope that someone re-examines the meaning of 'Plug and Play' before Windows 8 gets released.

reset

My voicemail mysteriously went wrong today. I didn't notice it initially because the visual voicemail was still working but just not adding any new messages. Then, whilst sitting on a train, I received a text from the service provider telling me that my pin number had been reset.

It's a sign of the times now that instead of automatically believing the message, I was initially wondering if it was the SMS equivalent of those fishy emails that turn up. The ones telling us about new bank accounts that have been opened in our name or 'please reset password'.

Invariably they are some kind of hoax message and fortunately most of them get filtered away.

It turned out that this text message was genuine and I needed to phone the 'Customer Care' to get things fixed.

"Did I mind losing all my voicemails as part of the reset process?"

I agreed, on the basis that I really needed it working again. They gave me a special set of codes to write down and then type into my phone and then another number to call to restart my voicemail.

I followed the instructions and am now back in business.

A casual chat to someone about it later revealed that when they had called me earlier they had accidentally pressed the speed dial on their phone for another number.

Hmm...

cycling with a statistical edge

I seem to be keeping up with my bicycling plans and have managed to avoid revising my targets downward as well. The biggest change to my original plan was to move the start of the week from Monday to Sunday for cycling.

That gives an encouragement to cycle on Sunday at the 'start' of the week, when I can get ahead of the plan. I still have a Saturday at the end for any last minute catchup miles as well.

This week, it's only Tuesday and I notice I only have 9 miles left to finish the target I set for the week.

I shall hesitate to increase the target number though, because I'm sure there are weeks when I'm away and then it can be more difficult to find the relevant slots.

To make the counting simpler, I upload the miles from the bike speedo gadget (its a Garmin Edge 800) and the system I use lets me set the targets and will monitor them for me. Actually it monitors a wild range of things well beyond those that I currently use.

I think it's better than me trying to remember to keep notes and I only have to clip the little unit onto my bike to be fully wired and counted. Ant+ Personal Area Networks are a good idea.

I discovered that the Garmin Connect system will also let me set up all kinds of other targets too, so I've been adding some such as monthly targets and moving away from just miles to other things as well. I've included some deliberately easy ones in the set too, so that I get some positive feedback and encouragement along the way. The longest ones I've set up are for the whole year, in miles and in calories.

Update : and as I've also been for a spin today, here's the 'after' from the 'before' version shown above. Those targets with 4 days and 7 days left will scroll away at the end of the week into a history section, but a new set will then appear to replace them.

So far, so good!