Random burblings since 1999
Friday night. Comic Relief. Laughing at the Prime Minister, not laughing at Gervais, bed at 10pm.
Saturday. Rugby. Apologies to Ireland (but they did beat Pakistan at cricket). Bed by 10pm.
Sunday. Mother’s Day. Made Mum cry (in a good way). Visited Gran. Bed by 10pm.
Today. Can finally breath through nose. Just.
I’m still hunting for a solution to my miniblog woes. Miniposts2 plugin doesn’t work, and I really don’t want to/shouldn’t HAVE to hack at PHP code. It can’t be THAT frigging hard, can it? I’m holding out for an update to Miniposts2 in the hope some of the bugs are solved as it’s my best option. I think.
The other blog is still being designed, but I have a few plans for it already.
Unfortunately I’ve been struck down by another bout of killer man-flu and I’m popping antibiotics and decongestants like, um, pills. Motivation to do ANYTHING about ANYTHING is very very low. Add in an afternoon of rugby today and well I’m resigned to being unproductive.
New PC is going fine, but I need to find a small piece of thin rubber to stick to the bottom of this keyboard as it’s bouncing a little.
Musically I’ve just bought an album by Tracey Thorn, and have ‘rediscovered’ “Fix Up, Look Sharp” by Dizzee Rascal. Eagles of Death Metal came on stage to it and it’s WELL BANGIN’ played at that kind of volume. The speakers on my PC aren’t loud enough though… yet. My soundcard does support a 7.1 system (which is an awful lot of cables so I didn’t bother).
The Big One on TV last night wasn’t too bad, and my gob was suitably smacked at our Prime Minister declaring that he’s not “bovverred”. Brilliant stuff. I’m warming to Ms. Tate. Slowly.
And, of course, it’s Mother’s Day tomorrow. A mixed day in our house, and we will take some time to remember my mother-in-law.
Right. Next round of pills is due and I’m off to lie on the sofa. For the rest of the day.
Don’t just sit there, GO BUY IT (it’s fer charideee, mate..).
Press Release follows
Continue reading “Shaggy Blog Stories”
I’m posting this in the vague hope it’ll help others, save them a few bob, and at the very least it’ll mean I have this info stored somewhere when I need to look it up again.
The problem
My cable modem was connecting, but dropping the connection after a few minutes. Rebooting the modem gave me the same result, as did rebooting the PC AND the modem. Annoying.
So I bit the bullet and phoned Virgin Media technical support.
Three minutes into the call (at 50p a minute I might add) I finally got put through to a young lady. After confirming that I had tried rebooting my PC, and switching the cable modem on and off again (with at least a 30 sec gap in between), she asked me to type open a web browser.
The solution
Open a web browser and go to – http://192.168.100.1/gscan.htm
Having done so (and I’ve NO idea what that’ll get you if you don’t have a Scientific-Atlanta WebStar Cable Modem) I was presented with a web page with some large numbers on it.
The downstream frequency and starting frequency were both set to 333250000, this is wrong so I needed to enter the proper value – 331000000.
So, enter 331000000 as the starting frequency, bash the “Click here to restart your cable modem” button and bob’s the brother of your mother.
You can reload the page to check the values ‘took’.
And no, I’m not entirely sure WHAT the values are but it worked a treat for me.
I also suspect it’s more to do with the switch from BlueYonder to Virgin Media than anything to do with my lovely, fast and shiny PC.
My new PC has arrived!
I spent a fair chunk of time last night un-installing the supplied software, and installing my preferred choices and all in all it’s pretty darn sleek, fast and quiet. Still a few things to tweak and tinker with but, by and large, it’s all setup how I like it.
I’m still using Windows, XP not Vista, and I’m still with DELL as the past 5 and half years have been largely hassle free. Of course I’ve future proofed things as much as I could (plus they had a double RAM offer, although that now seems a little ludicrous..).
For the geeks then:
It’s Vista capable but given the widespread issues that seem to be multiplying daily, I’m holding off until later before, maybe, upgrading. It’s also the first PC I’ve owned that didn’t have a floppy drive.
Now all I need to do is get my cable modem to keep a connection for more than 5 minutes and I’m sorted… vaguely recollect that I need to supply the MAC address of the new PC to my ISP…??
So, as soon as I get my connection sorted I’ll be able to get on with the two site designs I need to get finished this month, and kick off some Scottish Blogs activities. And, of course, I’ll finally be able to catch up with all my favourite blogs.
“Leave your jacket in the car” they said. And so, that is how you find the author, standing underneath the flashing neon facade which slowly cycles through the word Barrowland, dressed in a t-shirt and jeans. He is cold.
When his friends finally turn up, replete with jumpers and jackets, the buggers, they troop in and head upstairs. Before they reach the main ‘ballroom’ music starts pulsing through the building. The support act, Patrick Wolf, is on stage. As we head out into the gathered crowd we catch glimpses of the man himself, and after a brief discussion we agree that, whilst the gold sequinned leggings are NOT a good look they do at least match his eye makeup.
The author pauses at this point and decides, fuck it, and returns to his normal writing style.
So yes, Patrick Wolf was pretty good and went down well. Not a huge surprise really, his stuff is pretty catchy and most of the audience probably have his albums as he sits alongside (underneath?) Arcade Fire in the musical genre tree.
Now, at this point I’ll pause and confess that I’ve only listened to the new Arcade Fire album a couple of times and have yet to be fully won over. This seems to be the pattern though as it took me some months to fully appreciate their first album. However, as their new album was only released a matter of days before the gig last night, well it didn’t leave me much time to ‘fall in love’ with Neon Bible.
That said, the band are a fairly awesome site on stage. With most of the 10 members chopping and changing instruments in a, frankly, insulting manner. How dare they be so talented!
And it was on stage that the new album was really sold to me. It may be a production issue, but to me the album sounds awfully flat, not so live. Pounding drums set most songs to a frantic pace, and provided the heartbeat of the gig. However, it was when they headed to their first album that things really got going, with some rousing performances of Power Out, and Tunnels soon transforming the audience into one huge singing, yelling, clapping and bouncing mass. My friends and I weren’t even that near the front but still got swept along as the songs crashed over us.
Arcade Fire are a very accomplished band but unfortunately were let down a little last night. The PA wasn’t that well balanced which reduced some songs to little more than a noise and a beat, and whilst the energy the band expel is palpable, they lack a true frontman or anyone who will grab the crowd, involve them, and haul them along for the ride. At times it did seem a bit like it was ‘another performance’, which I guess is understandable.
That makes it sound like it was a bad gig, it most certainly wasn’t.
The music lends itself mass participation, and the closing song (Wake Up) includes a crowd friendly chant during which the lead singer gave up trying to wrestle with his microphone and dove headlong into the audience. It’s possible that it was simply an act of frustration, or perhaps, just maybe, he thought it would help cement the gig in the hearts of the fans.
He needn’t have bothered, we were already lost in the moment with him.