Michael's Meanderings

I don't normally make New Year resolutions, but I feel that I really ought to be able to post at least once a month!

I finally realised I hadn't posted in over two months and if I don't do so today, I won't have my diary to refer to!

So back at the end of October....

I took some training in Powerpoint, which allowed me to take the final module of the ECDL, which I passed! It's not too technical a qualification, but it's the only the second IT related one I've got (3rd if you count an "OA" level taken in 1978!)

In mid November I went to the Hawth theatre twice. First to see Cirque du Glace - circus on ice. The whole stage was iced over, and most of the performers were on skates. There was ice dancing as well as the usual circus performances. The second was to see Shades of Brown, a one woman show, high lighting issues of skin colour. A tour du force, the writer / performer (Rani Moorthy) was on stage all the time (even when costume changing).

I started watching "Sanctuary" on ITV4 using ITVPlayer as my sky+ box had finally died! Last in the series is going to be on TV this Monday (sky+ box replaced over Christmas). Also have been watching "Merlin" and "Strictly Come Dancing" on BBC1, both now finished and "Fringe" on Sky1 also on my PC with SkyPlayer, but when I tried to view the last episode (ep10) it wouldn't work, so I'll have to find it elsewhere.

Finally booked my flight to Atlanta and hotel for Gafilk, though with the exchange rates and petrol prices it was a bit higher than in previous years. I look forward to seeing friends again, and hearing good music.

I've bought a new camera, as the old one fell apart when I was in Denver last year. It uses an SD card and can record video (but the sound isn't so good). It's smaller and made of metal, rather than plastic, so I hope it lasts better.

Jugging class finished a few weeks back, for this term. It will restart in the New Year, but due to Gafilk I'll miss the first 2 weeks. (previously it was on Monday so with the plane schedules I only missed one week, now it's later so I miss two!) We have been doing quite a lot of passing, with both balls and clubs. I used the new camera to take some video I may post them some time.

December 12th was our staff Christmas party / dinner. It was in the evening and I though the meal was quite good, some how I managed to have two christmas pudding, though I decided not to drink, so that may have balanced out.

I've finally managed to get Ubuntu to run on my eeepc from an SD card, as if it were a writable Live CD and with the wireless function working! I'm using the Eeebuntu Netbook Remix which works like a charm. But it still takes twice as long to boot as Puppy Linux which is also now working from SD Card.

And so I'm nearly up to date. Two weeks ago I saw a double bill of "The Tale of Despereaux" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" at the local cinema. Then we get to Christmas which I spent with my parents, and sister and her family. Oh yes my niece has just past her driving test, only three month after her 17th birthday, when she first started driving.

On Christmas day we watched the traditional "Doctor Who Christmas Special", followed by "the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special", back home on Sunday afternoon, when I had to go out in the freezing cold to buy my Annual Season Ticket (so I can travel in 2009 at 2008 prices) then back to work on Monday. We did get New Years day off work, and I spent it, as expected reading.

The book list meme has been going around at this time, so I extracted the data from LibraryThing and determined that I read 343 books during 2008. I'm not going to post them all due to space considerations, but it would be really cool if there were a widget which could be set to show the books you'd read over a certain period. A week, a month or even a year.

I really should have posted sooner, it's 3 weeks since my last post and this included my birthday!

I've rejoined as a Hawth friend, giving me advances news and discounts at the theatre. I've had a number of books from amazon, and I've also got a few SD Cards to allow me to install alternative Operating Systems for my eeePC without overwriting the original.

Before joining Charityshare I started on the ECDL course. my details unfortunately got lost so I've been persuaded to start again by a member of our in house training team. On Thursday the 10th I took and passed 5 of the 7 modules, without any revision! In the afternoon while eating a jelly bear part of a tooth/filling cracked off, not painful but I did phone my dentist for repair. He was unfortunately on holiday so it had to wait.

The following day was my birthday and a colleague had her birthday on Saturday so cakes were available at work and a number of people wished me well.

Since Saturday was also my sister's birthday I was collected by my Dad, so I could visit. But first he took me shopping so I was able to buy an extension ladder,which only just fitted. Then back to Horsham. We had a delightful fondue supper and I finally joined the 21st century when I got a mobile phone(PAYG)as a present.

On Sunday we went to church and Dad celebrated for the first time in months. Mum and I took up the bread and wine (which was cool) and at the end the congregation sang Happy Birthday to me (which was less so.

After dinner my Mum took me home (and was nicely surprised at the lack of clutter due to my room mate!).

Next installment hopefully later today.

I've been looking at alternatives to the installed Xandros Linux. One of the smallest and simplest is a version of Puppy Linux that has been customised for the EeePC called Pupeee. It was actually fairly simple to get working, by installing on a small 256MB SD Card I had knocking around. (I intend to re-install on a new 2GB card, one is on order)

First download the Pupeee iso and burn it to a CD.

Then boot from this live CD on a normal WinTel PC

Puppy has a built in script to create a bootable copy of Puppy Linux on a USB stick / SD Card. It may be possible to use this tool to create the bootable SD Card, but I created one on a USB stick and used this to install to the SD Card (Other versions of Linux have to go this route so...)

The entry is found under "Setup" Puppy universal installer (menu is found by right clicking)

Using all the default setting I was able to create a bootable USB stick. After ejecting the CD I rebooted using the USB stick, to prove it worked!

The next bit took some trial and error but I managed to boot off the USB stick on the EeePC. I later discovered that pressing the Esc key a boot time allows a selection of boot devices, SDD, Card Reader or USB. The universal installer failed this time when all the defaults were selected. i.e. the SD Card created wouldn't boot. However when the wizard was re-run and the syslinux MBR package mbr.bin was selected everything worked like a dream. When I re-booted and selected the CardReader as the boot device everything seem to just work.

I haven't tried everything yet, but the screen and wireless connection work fine. Further testing will ensue!

Now that I know the reason the SD Card didn't work originally I'll try to install directly to the SD card and miss out the use of the USB stick.

I'd read about this in Linux Format magazine and thought cool but... Then at Eastercon a number of them were in use, and I managed to hold one and talk about using one. The Eee PC is a bit smaller than a hardback book and a tad heaver. It uses a customised Xandros Linux and includes WiFi and an SD Card slot. Other distributions can be used, but the default one seems to work fairly well.

When I got back I did some online searching and discovered that ebuyer was selling the Eee PC 2G Surf at only £220inc P&P. So I placed an order last Wednesday and I arrived earlier than expected, on Friday.

So over the weekend I been tying it out, (this post was written using it).
I'm very pleased with it so far, and the power supply morphs into a US plug so I'll be able to take it to Worldcon!

Now I have to see how I can install other software (LJ Client etc)