Older blog entries for pjdowner (starting at number 31)

I finally got fed up with my machine crashing/hanging every 2 hours (bad enough that there was no ping response) and trashing the filesystem. So I've upgraded from 2.4.8 to 2.4.9-ac14 and converted my filesystem to ext3 (which totally rules) and not only has system performance increased, but the hangs have apparently stopped.

with regards to devel I've just been playing around with libsdl for the past few days.

Been staying at davej's place for the last 2 days, went to a job fair which was highly profiled as an IT fair in an advert in computer weekly. It turned out that the "Science and Technology" section had been made/merged into the "corporate" section, which meant 0 people I'd be interested in meeting. So I spent the time battling through people in suits looking for anything interesting, left after having fun on the Army climbing wall and taking 2 squeezy phones from the One 2 One stand.

Ireland: I arrived home at about 5am this morning, the main event of the trip (Slayer/Pantera/Satic-X/Cradle Of Filth Concert) was postponed due to the tragedies in America. I was on the boat to Ireland at the time of the attack otherwise I might have abandoned the trip. All things aside though I did have a goot time in Ireland, making the best of the local pubs.

SWLUG: The Swansea meeting was yet another success, once again there was a good turn out. As an added bonus I also got to see the Swansea University Computer Societies computer room, which I was amazed to find out they use Tesco Club cards to gain access to.

Over the last week I've been playing with various things, been looking over the gnome-core and libs code as well as signed up to several devel mailing lists.

Managed to make the Visor dial out via the nokia last night, but found out that Orange doesn't seem to recognise BTInternet's number...

I'm now just getting ready to go shopping in Newport, then Cardiff and then finally ending up in Swansea for tonight's South Wales LUG meeting. From which I doubt I'll get back earlier than midnight to pack my stuff, get some sleep and then get a train to Fishguard and a Ferry to Rosslaire where I'm staying at a friends for a few days.

My Digital camera was returned this week, everythings been repaired and they even threw in some batteries :) I am a bit suspicous of the fact that the box has now been crushed completely out of shape and sealed up with 'DHL For X-Ray' tape, but everything seems to work and the batteries actually hold in place now.

Stopped contemplating the hardware project and got on with it, I now have a midi sized k62 tower instead of the full size tower. This makes it more useful as it now fits in a small space under one of my desks all thats left to do is decide what to run on it.

Have been contemplating a hardware project over the last few days, it involves moving the k6-2 into a smaller case with the only problem being that the case has the wrong type of power switch for the mobo (4 pin instead of 2) although I now have a solution which involves ripping the redundant sleep switch out of the athlon case. This would then mean that the k6-2 would become usable once again and give me another machine to experiment with.

Once thats over perhaps I can get on with installing Debian on the laptops and finally look at getting the Sun, thats been sat in a corner for a few months, up and running.

Looked at smoothwall last night, went through all the scripts finding out how it works etc. It was quite interesting and has given me a few ideas for future projects.

Going out to get a new mobile phone tommorow, the current one has 25 quid on it and has just been barred (as in I can now only recieve calls) because I didn't put any money on it within 40 days or summat. The new phone will probably be a high bandwidth nokia but I'll wait and see what offers I get. I've given up on looking for jobs atm because I'm hopefully going over to Ireland in a weeks time to see Slayer with a friend from University. I'll then probably be going to a job fair in London when I get back, oh and I'm still not getting any job seekers benefit and it's been 2 months since I put my claim in.

Been playing around with some web pages over the last few days, nothing to do with my own stuff all of it's been for Kosh so far.

Parents returned today which meant heaving the K62 (fullsize tower) back upstairs and into it's corner in my room where I doubt it'll get switched on for another 2 months or longer. Hooray DHL have found my camera! Apparently it was delivered to kodak on the 6th of August but something went wrong somewhere and the system just wasn't updated to say delivered. Kodak have now confirmed that the camera will be returned to me by next wednesday.

Went to the South Wales Linux User Group meeting in Cardiff yesterday which was fun. Although I did seem to take on the roll of Smoothall expert because I use it for my current firewall :). I was also surprised at how many people turned up that I hadn't met before which means the group has more active members than I first thought.

DHL appear to have lost my digital camera that I was sending to Kodak for repair, apparently it's been with the Belgium delivery driver since the 6th August but hasn't been delivered. They've put out a trace on it but I haven't heard anything yet.

Discovered Galeon today and it has now become my browser of choice.

GTK programming has been the theme of the last two days, getting through the book quite quickly now although I am having to correct mistakes in the programming examples. I have also discovered something that doesn't do what the book says it should so I'm going to have to chase that up later.

The Debian install on the laptops hasn't gone well so far, it freezes after unpacking the root image. I haven't delved into finding the solution yet as I have no immediate desire for a laptop, I will however want to get it working by November in time for a Linux conference in Dublin that I was told about on Saturday.

Bought a 10/100mbs Lan + modem 3com card for the laptops today, it looks okay, hopefully shouldn't cause too many problems when I install Debian tommorrow. I also picked up a cheap optical Logitech mouse today for my Dad, it's quite nice to use and was surprisingly cheap.

I have also discovered that the next time my parents are away I will stop the milk being delivered. I have 4 pints left in the fridge and more is coming on Monday. Wonder if I can Milk Cool my Athlon.....

Went out for drinks and food with some of the South Wales Linux Users Group tonight. Ended up on a guided tour of Swansea calling at several pubs before settling at an Indian Restaurant. I suppose that I should mention that this was supposed to have celebrated Linux turning 10, however we seemed to have accidently held it this weekend by accident, I did originally intend it to be on the 25th but I didn't actually relise until I was at the meeting that it was the wrong date. Still I enjoyed myself and everyone else seemed to enjoy it too, I'm just looking forward to the next meeting on Monday now :)

Unfortunately it's now late and I need to get up early in the morning to go to a computer fair. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up a pcmcia net card for one of the 486 laptops that I have lying around.