Tidying

Posted on September 23, 2006 by Ponder

I tidied up the computer corner today. Now I know that a tidy desk is the sign of a disturbed mind but it had to be done! Honestly!

It was so bad I couldn’t even see the printer 😉

At least I can actually find stuff again now, and I also took the opportunity to get the kids to round up all my Dr Who DVDs they’d “borrowed” over the last few weeks and not put back.

Jane’s PDA has a damaged connector and hasn’t been charging for a while so while I was on a roll I decided to go on a hunt, found the part I needed online and tried to disassemble it to see if I could replace it myself. I can. When I put it back together again I was pleasantly surprised to see the charge light blinking when I plugged it in!

It could still do with the part so it can sync via the cable but there’s no rush now. A good day all around 🙂

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SuSE and POP3

Posted on September 22, 2006 by Ponder

I was asked by a friend of mine to help his get POP3 working on his server. No problems, I think, takes 5 mins. I was wrong.

I knew it was going to take some thought when I noticed it was running SuSE. I’ve never so much as played with that distro before so it was going to be trial and error.

I finally sorted out the fact that a decent enough imap/pop3 server was already installed, so I changed the xinet configs and tried to connect.

Connection was successful, but entering a user gave a dreaded error that meant is was not going to allow plaintext connections. Some googling later and we deduced this has been deliberately block hard by SuSE so had to go down the SSL route.

The biggest problem was finding out where the ssl certificates go, which I found by checking the logs. Once there imap worked but not pop3. A quick look at the logs and a resulting copy of the imap.pem to pop3d.pem and finally it was working! An hour and a half for that, most of it searching for clues!

All I can say here is it’s a good job I’m now using Linux as my primary system and have previously worked with ssl or I’d still be there now 😉

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Earlies

Posted on September 17, 2006 by Ponder

Just finished a week of really early shifts and am just starting to recover. I’m actually getting fed up of pre 5am starts. Although I never oversleep I feel completely frelled by the weekend which is why I haven’t put anything in here for the last few days even though I have more thoughts on the traffic lights in Cardiff. I guess I’ll do that tomorrow 😉

I now have three days off and looking forward to rearranging the living room. Ah well, can’t have everything I suppose 😉

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Run Rabbit Run

Posted on September 17, 2006 by Ponder

Misty found a gap in the fence the other day. We were all sarching the hidden nooks and crannies out our garden when Ceri, from the upstairs window, spotted her in next door’s garden.

Anyway, we called in and got to their garden, followed the rabbit through the back gate into another garden and as I tried to “cut her off at the pass” Haryy decided to make a grab for her and she shot off into the street!

5 minutes of heckiticty (is that a word?) later and a neighbour is the one to be closest to her when she realises she’s trapped.

Gap since patched 😉

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Phew, That Was Close!

Posted on September 13, 2006 by Ponder

My mother-in-law has trouble walking any distance so when her local Post Office closed she was unable to get to the next nearest so I get her weekly pension for her and take it to her house.

Yesterday I had 3 hours in Crewe so I thought it’d be a good idea to get her money, and electric meter tokens from the Post Office near the station; big mistake, BIG mistake!

The money was no problem of course, but the tokens were a different matter entirely. “WRONG AREA CODE” – Bollocks! I called Swalec and was told I could either post the tokens to them and wait for valid ones to be sent back or go to the office for a swap. Well as she only had 91p left I decided to visit in person.

Now my mother-in-law lives about 1 mile West of where I start work, I live about 6 miles East and the Swalec office is about 4 miles North of me and 8 miles from my MiL. Lots of hills in between too, it certainly built up a sweat cycling those 12 miles I can tell you.

Today I took the tokens to her and when I checked the meter there was only 3p left! Ok, there’s emergency credit but that can’t be activated until the power actually gets cut off. I don’t think I could have timed that closer if I tried 😉

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Cardiff – City of Lights?

Posted on September 13, 2006 by Ponder

I’ve often wondered why the traffic lights in Cardiff are so poorly synchronised that more time is spent at a stand than on the move but I think I now know the reason: there’re so many of the damned things!
On my regular route into work there are 20 sets (including 3 pedestrian crossings) in the last 3 miles, 8 of those in the last mile. Are they satisfied with that? Are they hell! Another 2 sets in the last half mile are ready to be commissioned.
From sighting the first set there’s only one short section, where there’s a bend immediately after one set, where I can’t see any. Am I alone in thinking this is a bit excessive?
I’m also sure some of them are set to deliberately annoy road users. You can be approaching some on green which will change just in time so you cannot get through before they’re red with nothing else around, then they’ll change back just as something approaches from the other direction and just it time to stop that poor sod. This situation, I’m sure, can and should be improved.
It’s these observations that lead me to conclude that Cardiff should be nominated as “The City of Lights”.

Posted in Negatives, Observations | Leave a comment

Cycling on Pavements

Posted on September 11, 2006 by Ponder

It’s not a habit of mine, in fact about the only thing that’ll get me to ride on the pavement is when some ignorant Newport Bus driver decides to pull past me and pull as close to the kerb as possible (at a safe distance ahead, I’ll give him that much) so I can’t pass. Well HA to you sucker, I’m not that easily stopped! 😉
For the record, it’s ok for a cycle or motorcycle to overtake on the inside provided it’s safe to do so in a queue of traffic, and as traffic is supposed to keep 3′ from the kerb if possible (and it was) he was just being an arrogant arsehole 😉

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Wronglish

Posted on September 10, 2006 by Ponder

Well from some word that just occurred to me while I was driving a train a couple of weeks ago, to a conversation on IRC during my break to lots of work by Shell and wronglish.com has been launched. I hope you all enjoy it 🙂

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Thumbnails

Posted on September 10, 2006 by Ponder

I saw thumbnails in action on another WordPress based site I now help to admin and wondered why mine didn’t have the option. A bit of digging and I found out it was all to do with libgd, so I installed the libraries and enabled them and now I have thumbnail support. See my previous post titled Mud for an example. Future images will be larger via the linked thumbnails now I no longer have to miniaturise them 🙂

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Roll of Tosserdom – Part 1

Posted on September 10, 2006 by Ponder

Although there have been a few previous, this is the first since I started this blog so the driver of a silver Ford Focus, registration number FY06 ZSG gets the dubious ‘honour’ of being the first recorded tosser on my list.

This idiot decided he needed to get as close to the kerb as he could possibly get while negotiating the roundabout at the bottom of Rumney Hill as I was cycling into work today; the trouble being the twat hadn’t yet passed me, and only stopped getting closer (about 2 inches from my pedals) as the loud “OI!” permeated his tiny brain.

This is a thankfully rare occurrence so my reactions were more instinct than thought but in future I hope to be able to keep some presense of mind enough to kick the bastard’s door or, when I get even more malicious and confident, to put a few nice circle marks on his/her paintwork via my pedals. That’d certainly make twats like that think twice before cutting up a cyclist in future!

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