9th May 2005 - Beep - didn't go the PC
A few weekends ago, Luke helped me to move all my stuff from A to B thanks in part to his ability to own a car, which is very handy and for which we are greatly thankful. This included repatriating my PC from Dom's front room to my new front room. Things are Good.
4 days later. Boom went the PC. Well to be precise it froze, playing the same note of music over again (The Yo-yo's 'keep on keeping on' natch...) and with no screen movement. A quick reboot attempt showed this wasn't any ordinary crash. This was for good. Fans whirred, LEDs flashed, but the damn thing wouldn't go beep and start booting up.
Much research later, I found that Bad Capacitors were the culprit. This seems to be a fairly widespread problem after a whole batch of Bad Electrolyte got onto the market, read this article for full details. And for the record, here's what my bad capacitors looked like :(
For reference, this is what capacitors should normally look like.
For those concerned about the demise of my PC, it has since had a messiah-like resurrection following a painstaking motherboard transplant. Things are once again Good.
18th April 2005 - What were they thinking?
Some bright spark at Conservative central thought it would be a great idea to put this advert in Brixton, opposite the 'Reggae Jerk Centre'.
Just have another look and muse on it a second. Pretty dumb given Brixton's history?
Personally I'd change the oh-so-smug tagline (Are you thinking what we're thinking), to 'What were we thinking?'...
Also note the ubiquitous Clear Channel logo beneath, but that's a different rant...
14th March 2004 - Way too distracting!
How to waste time: flash sports games. Smack the Pingu is particularly addictive / hilarious.
19th December 2003 - An outbreak of common sense?
A rare oasis of common sense around file-sharing. I'd have really expected record companies to have started to get a handle on filesharing by now and give up on the pointless kneejerk...
16th November 2003 - An Update!
It's been a long time coming, but I've finally got my photos online to remind me of the Summer!
11th July 2003 - Mad Science
Just found this site: MadSci.org. It's a little crazy, but the question and answer session is very interesting; a couple of examples: Dawn of the Universe and Hole in the Triangle
30th June 2003 - Hurry Sickness
Skimming the paper on the way to work I spotted the following ailment: Hurry Sickness. As someone who struggles to stand in a queue for 5 minutes without fidgeting out of all control this rang a bell. One thing it advised was taking short breaks from work throughout the day. And remarkably I got far more things done today than usual. I'm always busy, but today I got important things done rather than simply flapping at everything at once. Wow. At this productivity rate they'll never let me have my holiday to Canada...
28th June 2003 - Hungover - So Hungover
This site is best viewed with a hangover.
I read the following cure from hangover.net too: "KEEP DRINKING - You've heard it before but guess what? It works. See alcohol contains ethanol and methanol. Methanol makes your head sore, ethanol stops it working its evil magic. New drink = new ethanol = delayed pain. And more fun now."
16th March 2003 - The Beginning
Well this has been put off for long enough, but hey, got there in the end! My assembled ramblings which currently pollute the internet now assembled in one place for the first time. Gosh the excitement never stops round here does it?
For the moment this is a centralisation attempt, with the by-products of coding up an XHTML site for the first time, and we're already on version 2 of the css having thrown away the sparten black and white design this afternoon :)