Archive for March 2006

Rally

March 21, 2006, 12:07 pm

Tabs arrived back from the vet on Wednesday after being spayed. Given that she’s about half the weight of Tummy, her she only had two tiny stitches. She’s not bothered by them at all
We left on Friday night to go down to Galashiels for the Border Counties Rally. The rally was actually on Saturday in Jedburgh, but Skip had booked us in at a nice B&B in Galashiels so we could get to Jedburgh for our 0730 start. The B&B (Watson Lodge) didn’t normally serve food at the time we needed, but they left out a jug of milk in a lovely little mini-fridge in the dining room. Just that little bit of thought that made it nice :-)
My tasks were SS2 and SS9, Ogre Hill and Byrness Hill. SS9 is the same as SS2, but in reverse. SS2 was called off at the last minute due to snow and sheet ice that was preventing marshalls and emergency crew from reaching their stations. The end result was that Charlotte and I could head off to the Rochester Cafe for a large lunch, and then for a snooze before SS9 at 1612 :-) Delays on SS8 meant that SS9 started over an hour late, and with only 19 cars due through from a starting batch of 75 National A entrants. Fun moments including almost sliding the car into a ditch whilst parking it, getting lost next to the Army Training Range during an excercise (well, the explosions were coming from that direction…), getting stuck in the snow twice at the start of SS9, and the sudden departure of our Officials sticker from the windscreen at 70mph (and subsequent retrieval). The recovery teams were well prepared, with a barbecue going in amongst the mounds of snow. Next time we’ll bring something :-)

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Trains

March 15, 2006, 12:30 am

I couldn’t help myself. A DSB Regionaltog from Denmark. And some more APT carriages. The APT carriage completes the pair that I need to make the missing R705 APT Intermediate, and the Class MR fills my need for something from Denmark.
There’s a lot of nice kit floating around, but I can only ever justify something that has value to me. It could be an APT from the early 80′s, a Sud Est or Atlantique TGV, or a Regionaltog, but I still can’t see myself going out and buying a Battle of Britain or West Country just for the hell of it. They may (or may not) retain their value better, but I’d still rather have something that has some sort of link with me. Even though this has already meant spending far too long trawling the web and spending over the odds on items :-)

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Wireless

March 9, 2006, 10:29 pm

Huzza! After some mild discombobulation with PCMCIA support on Ubuntu Dapper, my trusty old Cabletron 802.11b wireless card sprang into life. Just the other day I splashed out on Linksys WAP54G to replace my failing SMC 2652W, so it’s good to have it all working as planned now. Just for fun, I plugged in my Canyon CN-WF513 wireless card to see how it worked. Lo and behold it sprang into life as well :-)
I bought two of these Canyon cards about 3 years ago for about 12 pounds each. I expected them to be Windows only, and I discovered that there was a fledgling Open Source project to support them. Now after getting them out of storage, not only do I discover that they are 802.11g cards, but that the chipset manufacturer, Ralink, has warmed to Open Source, and has released GPL drivers that are being feverishly developed upon by the community.
Aaaah, it warms the cockles of my cold heart.

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Cats

March 9, 2006, 9:49 am

Tummy is back from the vet, after being spayed. She was rather groggy when we let her out the cage, and tended to stagger around the place with her big collar on. Other than a wee accident on the parquet, she adjusted quite well. Her appetite returned by the end of the evening, and she was able to jump on and off the bed without a problem. This morning she was eager to eat more (as always), and able to jump from the windowsill to the bed and then run out to the hallway – so all is good :-) She has to keep the collar on for a week, so that’ll be fun and games as she tries to rip it off.

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Life

March 6, 2006, 12:02 am

I’ve not updated this blog on over a month, just due to the things that have been happening. Charlotte and I have settled into our new flat, and are busy flooring the loft, redecorating, rewiring, re-everything :-)
We’ve just had our new dishwasher and washing machine delivered, and I’ve just finished wiring up Cat5e to all the necessary places. There’s only a few cable drops to specific locations, and then wireless coverage of the whole flat.
Tabs has a mild bladder infection, so she’s been to the vet yesterday and is already a bit more lively. Hopefully this trend continues.

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Wireless

March 5, 2006, 11:58 pm

Thanks to some sterling work by Gordon, we now have a wireless link from the front of my flat to Malcolm two miles away on Lincoln Avenue. The signal strength is a bit low, so he’s going to try a different antenna. This is providing internet access to Malcolm, who can then, from the 9th floor, relay it to anyone else that’s needing a link as well :-)

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