2011 — 17 September: Saturday
After quite heavy rain earlier, the now-sunny morning seems to have made its excuses and left1 before I even turned to my diary. "It all started"... with a notification from AMD of an updated graphics card driver package for the super-duper Radeon HD5670 I recently fitted into BlackBeast. The only error message during the upgrade regarded the (unspecified) failure on the part of the Visual C++ 2010 redistributable package from Microsoft, but its absence, or failure to do whatever it does, doesn't actually seem to have made any visible difference to things a reboot or two later. I wasn't very impressed, however, to see that almost all the "improvements" were relating to recent PC games, none of which gets house room hereabouts.
I've also been answering some of Big Bro's questions (to the extent that one can 'advise' one's elder brother) about TIFF v JPEG v RAW format for his photographic library in the digital age. I shall now have to stop trying to get dear Mama to remember his planned visit in the next week or two as the plan has, as it were, slipped on to a back burner as he fancies a summer downunder (his word) for a change. I suspected as much when the silence from NZ was becoming as deafening as that from Battersea. I hesitate to claim the crown as "world's worst communicator" while the 50% of my genes in Big Bro and the 50% in Junior are still around :-)
The time has come...
... the walrus said, to decommission the HP MPC Ubuntu 10.4 server and turn it back into a Linux desktop machine. I'm going to load Ubuntu 11.4 on it and see how I get on. The still rather inchoate game plan is to site it up in the reading room, possibly as a MythTV system alongside the audio system already up there. Task #1 is simply to see if I can crack open the relatively small case and replace its existing system drive by a 1TB drive — this latter drive already has an Ubuntu 11.4 system on it2 from a couple of months ago, but I don't expect to escape without having to reload it.
[Pause]
Breaking off from the breaking in for some lunch to stem the trembling of the fingers, I've been listening to the weasel words pouring out of "Any Questions". So far, I've identified the well-buried location of the system drive. I've yet to identify the precise access route to whatever is firmly holding in place whatever has to be moved out of the way. I'm hoping, of course, to find a standard 3.5" form factor drive in there somewhere...
Well, the gathering clouds seemed entirely appropriate as I resumed my wrestling with bits of metal and cunningly concealed plastic catches, swearing regularly as one does in this sort of situation. However, the sun seems to be on its way back out.
I eventually unearthed and extracted what turned out to be a 500GB Western Digital Caviar SATA drive3 manufactured on the same day I passed my driving test in December 2007. I've replaced it with the newer 1TB drive, put (almost) everything back together again — and now have the usual complement of extra screws and stuff left over to add to my ever-growing little heap of potentially useful PC bits'n'bobs.
It's now 15:13 and the new Ubuntu 11.04 claims to be installing itself back on top of the earlier Ubuntu 11.4 desktop. It apparently intends to try to keep as much of the user data and applications I'd already installed as it can. (Not that I recall putting anything particularly useful on it in the couple of days when I was last playing around with it.) To give it its due, the system did actually try to start up straight away inside its new home (as it were) but I thought it more expedient to head it off at the pass by popping in a bootable DVD and going back to basics. Instead of logging in, therefore, I opted for a restart. I suppose this could be classed as a form of "repair installation". It's now been chugging away quite contentedly for a little over 45 minutes and the progress bar suggests it's about 75% done. We shall see.
I shall be fascinated to see how it gets on with both the wireless network card and the TV tuner. This little HP box did begin its career as a Vista-based Media PC, after all.
Success!
Well, if we politely pretend not to notice that the Installer crashed on its way out of the door on exit — an hour after it had begun its instally thing — one power cycle later, and all seems to be sweetness and Unity desktop light. All my music and graphics files are still intact. Firefox even remembers my Googlemail login. The only thing I had to change was its startup home page, as since this Ubuntu last ran around Technology Towers there's been a comprehensive change of network TCP/IP addresses in the wake of the new ADSL2 modem. Excellent! Next step: MythTV, though not before a fresh cuppa.
Well, I've just scoffed my first bunch of grapes from my annual crop. There's some blue sky and clouds at the back of the house, and dark clouds plus thunder rumbles at the front. Some wind, and a distinct impression (from the lack of lumens) that we're about to be treated to some serious rainfall.
Quite a while ago...
... in February 2007 in fact, I mentioned that the Guardian had just published a wonderfully clever photo by David Levene of the once-wobbly Millennium Bridge. It can be bought, it seems. Indeed, I may yet succumb to temptation. Or perhaps I could remind Junior that my 60th birthday is thundering rapidly towards me?
Going, going...
This is a fascinating piece, coming unexpectedly from a televangelist. (Link.)