Wednesday 25 July 2012

Communication breakdown

Getting hot don't you think?
The day got off to good start when my digital set top box that thing that feeds my old school tv decided to expire. I mean I woke up earlier with it still being warm at 4:30AM putting on the BBC's news channel to catch up with the latest G4S disasters, dozed back of to sleep only to wake up at 5:15 to an alternating black screen and white noise from the old built in analogue tuner in the TV itself!
I bought this around late October 2006 when my old STB a Nokia left by ONdigital, the worlds first Digital tv via an antenna company, was liquidated in 2002 and I've a fair idea of what happened. It's most likely to be  power supply issue involved a couple of capacitors that have gone short circuit having leaked. It's a very common problem in consumer electronics as to keep costs down, they use underrated components assuming by time they've failed, you'll sent it to landfill and buy another. I just might unscrew it and have a go fixing it although I found a dirt cheap replacement in a local charity store that's a deadringer for it using the same chassis but just different switches and a marginally different remote.
I'm tempted to look for a FreeviewHD USB adapter for the laptop instead as it can handle 720P pictures. 
Sunday saw a big fibre trunk outage that made using the internet for chat rooms a pain as it was taking over a minute for a few words you typed to come back. From what I read while at work, it covered Devon up to Manchester via Birmingham as as somehow they internet things I'm in Wolverhampton of all places and they'd get their feed from Brum, that's what happened running through midnight Sunday. It's been fine afterwards but after  over a week of well nigh perfect broadband and darn quick uploading, it left me a bit down.
This afternoon I'll watch the Women's soccer on the BBC the first pre Olympic event.

Wednesday 18 July 2012

Olympic blues

This week here in the UK, we've been getting ready for the upcoming Olympics and what an interest week it has been for some of our companies providing services starting with the missing  or otherwise lost bus drivers who are meant to take the incoming sports stars to their accommodation. Like how does it happen in a Capital that prides itself on driver knowledge for its Taxis can people get so lost for four hours or more? Every modern bus has satellite navigation aids, most of the drivers are experienced and the Olympic lanes are marked on the asphalt.
Then there's the great G4S fowl up who were given the job of providing security both at the stadia and also at the accommodation effectively placing them in lockdown only to find less than a quarter of those selected show up, those who want to haven't been told when they're wanted, the senior execs are very late founding out what is really happening and the Taxpayer pays twice providing the Army and Police to fill the gaps. The Home Secretary knows nothing and her opposite number is more interested in political point scoring when these contracts go back to when they were in office, a period I'm regretting with every month of fresh disclosures. Then there's the small matter of the M4 Highway cracking up that links London Heathrow and the venues that wasn't picked upon regular inspection.
It's such a pity when everything else was carefully checked and rechecked months ago with everyone looking forward to the opening day.

Saturday 14 July 2012

Sunshine girl

Downpours, eh? We sure had them in the last few days here with me doing a drown rat impression while catching the bus to walk or strolling down toward the corner store and as I commented to the Nurse a week back, it sure gets me down not being able to go out.
Still, today at long last we have sunshine so much so that my idea of great stuff to put and and sit out in is more like this:
Exactly! Modest, comfortable, and ideal should you still have a mania for jumping around water be it a pool or playing with water pistols as that sure would cool you off.

The internet got changed over this week without incident and so far I've only had a one minute dropout which is so much better than what I was experiencing before and that's before you take into account  the radical improvements in download and upload speeds which makes watching or listening to streamed service a much better experience. So much so I was able to listen to the HD streamed audio of the First Night of the Proms classical music concert in better than FM quality last night.

I'm streamlining some of the programs on my old desktop before it inevitable makes it way to the scrapyard in the sky as some like Thunderbird while being an excellent Email program, is something I haven't used since switching to webmail in 2008, I no longer use the sector to sector cd copying program EAC and I no longer have many office documents to deal with so I've replaced OpenOffice.org with AbiWord that just does word based documents. Having a Google account, I have web access to Google Docs for more if I really need a spreadsheet or database.
I may try installing and running CCCleaner to remove the rubbish that gets stick in the registry over the years.

Saturday 7 July 2012

Downpours!

I don't know what happened to "Flaming June" but July sure isn't shaping up into anything better having gotten drenched from visiting my Doctors yesterday. Fortunately most of this district hasn't been subject to flooding although some twenty miles south of here some people have been flooded out of their houses when the rivers overflowed and the back roads here need to be treated with a bit of caution as the fields do flood frequently.
As it was sunny when I got up first thing, I decided to get my long walks in early as the forecast for the afternoon wasn't good at all and nothing but nothing is gonna stop me from exercising! And as my blood pressure is a tidgy bit high it's as well to continue with it as I've lost so far over 1 stone and 2 pounds.