Michael's Meanderings

Continued watching iZombie (only a few days after US broadcast), also new Thunderbirds are go, saw Last episode of The Mentalist and 200th episode of Bones (gave up on both series a while back)
For Free Comic Book Day I visited Dave's Comics in Brighton and got goodie bag of comics
Decided to continue the series started by one - so visiting Uncanny Comics near work. Also ordered some from Forbidden planet (cheaper than amazon even with postage)
Bought a new Acer Aspire ES1512 from Tesco for only £179, comes with Windows 8.1 ;-( (and free one year license for Windows 10!)
After collecting from local store (ordered online) had to configure and removed unwanted buyware, downloaded Windows 8 updates and then installed then (total time over 6 hours!)
A number of trains delayed, so was able to claim a tiny delay refund!
Saw Avengers: Age of Ultron at local cinema (Sunday matinee in 2D)
Dance classes on Tuesday with J revised foxtrot, waltz, tango
General and local elections didn't effect me as I voted postally before canvassing started in earnest!
Finally got around to adding £10 to my iPhone account, got £20 free credit in addition - was unable to use it all up, within 1 month!
Listened to The Master Magician (via audible) last in trilogy and finished in one day!
Got my eyes tested at Specsavers (with work voucher test and glasses were free) but could only get single VDU lenses for free. Eyes hadn't changed enough to justify replacing varifocals
Started watching new dramatisation of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell on BBC1, I may finally get the the end of the story having failed to finish both the original book and the audio edition.
Binged on Castle series 6, repeated prior to series 7, missed due to sky box crash last year.
Re-watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries series 2
Reserved Uprooted by Naomi Novik from library and read in one day
Started new Coursera class - An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python (Part 1)
Last Saturday in the month si social dance nigh BUT this month was the annual Loraine Barry lecture and tea dance.
Loraine is a World, European, British Open, International, US & Irish Champion, and friend of my Dance Teacher! Gave a workshop on posture and footwork in foxtrot, waltz and tango
Last Sunday in the month saw Tomorrowland, which was better than it might have been if a bit parasitic at the end.
So a pretty busy month, not least - first full month back at work.

This month's book club was "The Two Pound Tram" by William Newton, for the first time I completed the book, it was a shorter book, so was an easy read. Set in Sussex during World Word II it managed to feel almost documentary even though it was almost entirely fictional.

Then I got a student discounted haircut at Boomerang in Burgess Hill

The next few Business Admin courses were shorter and got first test at the beginning of the month and the final one at the end of the month, passed both. This completed "EDI Technical Certificate in Principles of Business & Administration Level 2". Got a new ID card that will be valid for next year as I got funding to take the Level 23 course in the new year.

I upgraded Lucid Puppy Linux on my eeePC, all the advantages of the Ubuntu repository with a smaller footprint Linux.

I also finally upgraded my iPod Touch 2G to iOS 4.2.1 (which is the last version of iOS which will work on this older device). This means that iBooks is now available, up to 20 apps were updated after the upgrade. The actual upgrade process took nearly a week! possibly due to the age of the PC I was using to do the upgrade. I haven't got around to jailbreaking the iPod yet as the only feature that I really miss is the option to stop rotation, and some apps have this as an option.

I subscribe to Audible.co.uk and buy at least one audio book each month. This isn't too expensive at £7.99 each month, which if it's a reading of a hardback is cheaper than getting the book.

I have been borrowing more books from the library and have therefore managed to reduce my book purchasing by a significant amount, I've tried to reduce it to less than 2 books a week!

Had to pay my TV License which was a fairly large chunk of change. But it's worth it just for Doctor Who and David Attenborough!

First Friday in the month I took the day off. I spent a selection of the day at the Hawth. First Friday lunch gave a talk on making a documentary on the Hawth. This was followed by an audience with Rachel Caine.

I've also been borrowing books from the library of late. Until recently I'd only borrowed 2 books this year then in the last 2 weeks I'd got 5 books out.

Also over the last few days my wireless ADSL router had started to flake out, So today I went to PC World and got myself a Belkin G Wireless Modem Router for £44.99. I've just finished setting it up, and it was fairly straight forward. Even though I couldn't use the Windows setup program (I'm using linux now). I've setup access limited via WPA2 and MAC Address, so far only my Dell Laptop and iPod Touch have access. I'll have to add D's equipment when he gets back.

My brother in law installed the last two shelves for my floor to ceiling bookcase on Tuesday. I now have 43 new shelves, most of which are already full!

However double stacking will give me enough space for about seven thousand books.

Photos should follow shortly.

I've been meaning to catalog my book collection for over twenty years and haven't got around to it (until now).

The first attempt used a database on a BBC Micro with the data on 5 1/2 inch floppy disks!

It was such a time consuming solution that only added a few books before giving up.

The next attempt occurred only a few years ago, when I was told about ReaderWare, which uses the Internet to grab data, allowing a bar-code reader to turn bar-codes into info on the book. I even bought a cuecat and got it to work (mostly).

Unfortunately my laptop PC at the time didn't work with the cuecat so once again I gave up....

Then a few weeks ago three different occurences combined to force me to really start on cataloging.

First my brother in law started building me floor to ceiling book cases (photos to follow).
Second I discovered LibraryThing and purchased a lifetime subscription for only $25. Finally on eBay I discovered a proper bar code reader for only £30, (usually they are over £100) which arrived last Saturday, so no more excuses.

So far I've added 44 books to LibraryThing.