2012 — 15 September: Saturday
Today's fly — if I'm to go for a hat-trick of the things — would be merely the fact that it's only 06:48 and all of 20.5C down here1 at the moment. But the music is mighty fine. And the grapefruit was ditto tasty.
I need a new name...
... for my tiny new webserver. Unless I paint the (clear) case white and re-use "Wee Whitey". The next revision of the board is being made in the UK, I gather (by Sony in Welsh Wales) and the new case (which I already have and which took me several minutes to crack open without damaging it) is even dinkier than the existing one that Len and Brian both use. I am officially impressed.
In the dawn of Time...
... I loved fairy tales, and was most disappointed not to be able to persuade Peter to try them. He was always a lot more interested in juvenile SF though he did go through an (expensive, for me) "Elfquest" phase. (In the summer of 1989 he wanted all six titles, and [because they were then about £9 each] I told him to earn them by doing some work. In a two-day period, during which he stoutly eschewed all offers of TV, other chums, tickles, and all other normal activities, he slogged his way through an entire book of maths assessment papers designed for 10-11 year olds, and finished all the reasoning and English papers at the same level. I took him up to London on our first "book run" together to buy2 all six.)
... the very term "fairy tale" comes from the contes de fées of Madame d'Aulnoy, published in 1697 and soon translated into English. The name stuck even though most of the stories we think of as fairy tales do not contain any actual fairies...
I can think of at least one reason for that.
Some people...
... wonder why I won't touch a certain well-known social networking site with the proverbial bargepole:
"Hell is other people" :-)
Onward
Two agenda items for today: a walk, starting in a few minutes. Then nip over to Brian to pick up my own Raspberry Pi and set about preparing it for its new life as my devoted 24x7 web slave. The sun is shining.
A "not insignificant" pause...
... while:
- a walk is walked
- a packed lunch is unpacked and consumed with gusto
- I returned home
- a cup of tea is promptly taken over in the bungalow while assessing the state of Sheila after an unpleasant gallstone episode last week
- the Pi's SD card is trotted round to Brian to see if automatic upgrade has worked (it hasn't, so he manually updated a few packages that had been tweaked in the last couple of days)
- my new Pi (which was delivered to Brian this morning) is slotted into its new case (even smaller than the ones that Len and Brian have)
- then back to Technology Towers, to set its new MAC address on my router
After that, I simply plugged it into the network (this time, upstairs), plugged in the power, watched its startup LEDs sequence (no screen or keyboard, remember), strolled downstairs, noted (by the time I got there) that it had been detected by my Network Magic software, confirmed its TCP/IP address, opened up a web browser at that address and — bingo — web pages served left right and centre with no sign of latency.
Result! Time (17:06) for a celebratory cuppa to the musical accompaniment of Miles Davis (an unbelievable 21 years since he died) with Mr Shipton.
How ironic. My external web server is now in full-on castors-up mode. Grrr. [Pause] And the Pi runs somewhat warmer in its new case which, unlike the earlier variant, is not open to the weather (as it were) but almost fully enclosed.
SPL
Mike very kindly lent me his Radio Shack sound level meter3 as I was mildly curious to see what sort of sound pressure levels I actually get from the latest combination of the 250 watt Class D Rotel amplifier and the PMC stereo loudspeakers. Recall (to my horror) I managed to trigger the thermal or current overload cut-out (macht nichts!) on the previous multi-channel Audiolab power amp (with the front stereo pair nominally being fed up to 150 watts). The Rotel has 100 watts in reserve, though I admit the system can get a bit loud. I therefore decided to restrict the pre-amp to a nominal 0dB (with, therefore, +15dB 'in reserve').
Personally, I find this delivers a perfectly tolerable sound level though it caused Peter's g/f to frown and protest when she was lying on the floor rather closer to the speakers a couple of weeks ago. I rarely run it at this level; -20dB is more than adequate for most of my listening. But if you've got a full orchestra banging away, well, you need a little extra "oomph", don't you agree?
I used one of my standard test tracks — "Private Investigations" by Dire Straits from the "Love over Gold" album of 1982 — since it never wears out its welcome. The climactic drum riffs near the end were coming in (loud and clear, of course) at a measured 96dB while the majority of the track was registering around the 84 to 90dB mark. Of course, I'm now left wondering what my beloved ancient Celestion Ditton 66 studio monitors would have managed. Had I not destroyed them with the "Top Gun" soundtrack...