Oh, what a day this has turned into.

Got the new harddrive, no problems with installation, system booted up fine, diagnosics reported okay, shut it down again in order to reboot and create the partitions on the new drive, but before I had a chance to do that the system started refusing to boot, instead displaying a message "Boot from CD" (which it normally displays while it checks to see if a CD is in the drive which it can boot from, it normally then proceeds to the Windows XP start-up screen -- not now).

For some reason now it will only boot if a bootable CD, such as the Windows XP CD-ROM is in the drive, and I select no to the prompt "Start from CD-ROM Drive (Y/N)?", which follows the "Boot from CD" message if a disc is there. No CD-ROM disc and boot up hangs.

According to FixBoot and FixMBR commands in the XP recovery console the boot sector is "Non Standard" and the "MBR is possibly corrupt".

Thankfully the thing boots if there is a CD in the drive, so I was able to prep and format the new drive and copy the system partition and existing data partition over -- just to make sure I have copies of all the latest data.

Does anybody know if the Windows XP CD-ROM Setup program modifies the boot partition on the C: drive, since set-up tried to run and was aborted, and that's when the problems started?

BIOS is correctly reporting that the original drive is the master and the new drive is the slave on the primary IDE.

Need to do another couple of things for work (saving all new data to the new drive), but I think otherwise I'll try fixing the boot sector (and if that doesn't work the MBR -- not convinced it is corrupt, since the drives access fine in the recovery console and Windows Explorer, and the old FDisk command doesn't find anything wrong) at the weekend. At least then, if everything goes pair-shaped I can scratch the drive and start again with a clean install without having to worry about loss of data (might do that anyway so I can increase the size of the C: partition from 20GB to 30/40GB) -- guess we'll see.

Mood: annoyed
What is on: Sinead O'Connor: Silent Night, Holy Night

Well that's Wednesday done.

Don't have to work tomorrow (que: muted cheer) 'cause of my midday doctor's appointment.

Going to go into town tomorrow morning, my new hard disk is in so I'm going to go and pick it up -- look out Osiris here comes another 160GB of storage! :-) (Osiris is the name I gave to this computer when I built it -- it's where my LJ name comes from).

I think I'm also going to ask about flat-panel monitors, since the Iiyama's being acting up lately, the display keeps 'poping' -- suddenly going dark and expanding, then shinking back to normal, accompanied by an audible click. Since it's already five years old, and most monitors only have a three-year life expectancy it would probably be uneconomical to repair, besides, usually end up fault chasing, once you repair one fault another developes a few months later, least that's been the case with the previous two monitors.

Apart from the main computer box, most of the kit is around five-seven years old now, the printer's been acting up for some time (suddenly gets it into it's head that there is no paper in the tray, even when full). The scanner still works well, but it's slow and only has a 600dpi resolution. So, I'm thinking that I need to start saving for new monitor and printer too. *sigh*

It's kind of amazing to me to think that I've had a personal computer in my life for the last twenty-two years and in that time I've gone from a sound-less black-and-white machine to a machine on which I can watch my DVDs and listen to most of my music, from 1K of RAM to half a gigabyte. From storing programs on a portable (often iffy) personal cassette recorder to a machine with (from tomorrow) 240GB of internal harddisk storage. The machines I'm running now, I couldn't even imagine ever owning back then.

My first machine (which I still have, and still worked at the last test) was a Sinclair ZX81. A simple beast, Zilog Z80 microprocessor running at 3.5Mhz (amazing how we used to think that was so fast), with 8K ROM containing the operating system and Sinclair BASIC programming language, a massive 1K of RAM (expandable to an 'increadible' 16K using a plug in RAM pack that wobbled and crashed the machine if you got within two metres of it -- made progamming interesting. Mine was stuck on with blu-tack, rubber bands and a woodern 'harness' that my dad made, stopped most crashes, except when I got frustrated and pounded the keys).

Oh, those keys. Touch sensitive the manual said. Ask most ZX80/81 owners and you'll find out that this is a definition of the word sensitive that isn't in the dictionary. This is sensitive as in, pound them hard, until your figure tips are bruised! Since the machine's heat sink was immediately below the keyboard, the longer it was on, the less sensitive they got.

The early Sinclairs were intersting beasts though. Cheap, cheerful and for the most part usable. My American cousins will probably know the ZX81 by it's other name which I think was Timex 1000.

Oh, and then there was my first printer, the ZX Printer (goes with the ZX81 obviously). Made the memory expansion even more wobbly than before, and required special silver coated paper which it literally burnt the image onto -- by disolving the silver coating to the reveal the black backing -- now I remember that odd burning smell when printing a long listing! *laugh* Explaining to the parents that the smoke detector went off because I was printing out a program listing. ;-)

The ZX81 had no colour, black-and-white image, no display chip (amazining the processor draw the image on the screen by changing a register in a logic array), and "hi-res" graphics, 64x44 (try running Windows on that ;-) and no sound chip, although some clever bugger worked out how to get it to play music through the cassette tape ports.

Moved on from that to a Commodore VIC-20. Amazing to think I used to program a computer with only a 22 column display and 3.5K. Had that until one day it just stopped working, powered up and nothing, black screen.

Took it to a local repair shop for an estimate, decided not to get it repaired, but although it was the same case, the fault it came back with was different, checked the motherboard and the serial number was different, the buggers nicked the board! :-(

From there to the Commodore 128 (big-brother to the older Commodore 64). Basically the same machine, but with 128K and better BASIC -- also it had built in hardware emulation of the C64, ran all the same software as well as running C/PM (forerunner to MS-DOS) because it had both 8502 (6510 compatible) and Z80 microprocessors (duel).

Still have that, it's up in my parents loft -- probably dead from years of non-use). It was with that machine that I got my first disk-drive, wow 320K of storage, and my first experience with a graphical point and click interface, GEOS (and you think Windows is slow!).

Also had a Commodore 16 and Commodore Plus/4 during that time, swapped the C16 for the Plus/4, had the Plus/4 till it died a couple of years later.

And from the Commodore 128 to an Amiga 1200 and 4000 computers, if you used to have an Amiga and want to re-live those days checkout Colanto's Amiga Forever package (http://www.amigaforever.com), I have this and it's very good -- computer in a box, runs faster than a real Amiga on my Pentium 4 (2.4Ghz).

Actually I have all my old machines running as emulators on the PC, and even a few I didn't have but friends did, like the ZX Spectrum, Atari 800XL, TI99/4A, VCS, and BBC Microcomputer.

And from there to the PC (after Commodore Computer went bankrupt, parts and accessories for the Amiga got expensive and difficult to obtain) and I was needing to use the same software as at work, so a PC was the only choice at the time (I like Macs as well, excellent machines, I use iTunes as my music player, so I don't want to be flamed by Apple fans, Apple certainly seem to know how to design a user interface) -- Microsoft why not hire the guys at Apple to design the next Windows interface! ;-)

Wouldn't mind a MAC to go with the PC.

So add three PC's to that list and there is a brief twenty-two year history of my computing life. :-)

You can wake up now and read someone else's post. ;-)

Mood: contemplative
What is on: The Smiths: How Soon Is Now

While it is old news to many, I'm finally getting the chance to see the first and second seasons of 24 -- the third season is currently running here in the UK on the cable/satellite channel Sky One.

Unfortunately, first and second seasons had their first run on the BBC's channel 2, and as usual with the BBC and it's purchases of hi-profile US shows, it didn't really bother to much in the way of promoting the series (I didn't find out about season one until after the conculsion, and missed the first half of season two, so didn't figure it was worth watching the second half).

The non-promotion of hi-profile shows is certainly the norm with the BBC, and it's difficult to understand why.

The BBC is funded by the UK TV Licence fee (in the UK it is necessary to hold a valid licence for operating any type of equipment which is capable of receiving television (not radio) signals (this includes computers with TV cards and video recorders) -- this not a per TV, but per residency (see TV Licensing's web-site for further information if your outside the UK and are interested -- for US residents, think of it as a compulsory PBS service with a very big fine if you don't pay, even if you don't watch PBS).

In truth, back at the beginning of the eighties when we only had the two BBC channels, and two independant channels (funded by advertising) the idea of the license fee was at least understandable, now in the 21st century, when we have over one hundred channels on our cable, and all of them (but the BBC channels) are funded by a combination of subscription and advertising, the need for the license fee system (which is 100% exclusive to the BBC, no other channels get a look in) sees very out-dated and largely unfair, especially to couples like my wife and I, who listen to a commerial radio station and only very, very, very rarely ever watch the BBC channels.

Which brings me back to the BBC and 24.

Like I said, the first and second seasons of this show ran on the BBC (and have yet not been repeated as far as I am aware) with very little advertising. The other channels here actually advertise on each other, taking commercial ad slots in the breaks, but the BBC is exclusive, with each BBC channel, for the most part, only promoting the programs on it's own channel -- BBC1 for the most part only promotes BBC1 programs and the same for BBC2 promoting only BBC2 programs. The upshot of this being that unless you watch the BBC all the time, your not likely to find out about what's running.

They did the same for the first three/four seasons of The X-Files, running them on BBC2 (which some call 'the backwater channel') at odd times (like 11pm, 'cause they started to realise that it was 'detracting' from and taking viewers from the BBC1 programming at the same time), before finally moving that show to BBC1, when they suddenly started making a big fan-fair about it (phrases like 'surprise hit', but being careful to avoid any mention of Sci-Fi, calling it a 'detective drama'. I'm thinking right now that I don't want to get started on the BBC and the word Sci-Fi, except to say that they avoid the phrase like the plauge (to them Sci-Fi and Children's TV are the same), they'll probably refer to the new Doctor Who series as a 'medical drama'.

They force me to pay for their existence (the BBC carries no commercial advertising), then spend the money and don't bother to tell me what or when.

MMMMmmm... okay, where's me weggi-board? Seem to be a little off track here... oh, okay there's the track over there, excuse me a moment while I get back over there, on the track...

While it is old news to many, I'm finally getting the chance to see the first and second seasons of 24 -- the third season is currently running here in the UK on the cable/satellite channel Sky One.

Can I just say... WOW! This is fantastic TV. I really would like to know why we can't make TV like this in the UK. What is wrong with the UK film industry that it can only make productions that feature Hugh Grant or a bunch of depressed people (or both if I'm really unlucky).

The wife and I, have been watching this since 8 o'clock last night, and am now up to hour sixteen on season one. Keifer Sutherland just does such a great job with Jack Bauer, the mood swings, the expressions, the body count -- er, no, strike that last one from the record your honour!

I have to admit though, I did find it exceedingly funny than within the first hour of the show he'd shot his boss with a tranc-dart -- how many of us can honestly deny that we haven't at least at one time or another really wanted to do that!

The quality of the writing is something that, well in truth the wife is more qualified to comment on that I, but it certainly impresses me.

To many shows treat the viewer like idiots, showing you the traitor of the piece doing traitor like things early on that the other characters don't witness to make sure you as the viewer know who is the bad guy and who is the good guy, but not this show. Yes you have those characters who are the villians of the piece from the out set, but others who your lead to believe can be trusted who then turn on you and betray you -- just as we have all experienced in real life.

I like shows where you're constently having to revise your opinions of characters as it progresses, one minute they are the good-guys, the next the bad-guys, then your not sure. For me it's so much more interesting than shows where we have our heroes and are villians (shows like Lois and Clark for example, where we all knew Superman would 'do the right thing' even if it meant that the 'bad' guy got a chance to double-cross him and escape -- for all it supposeded faults that is at least one thing to be said for Smallville's Clark Kent character, he is more 'grey' than previous pure-white interpritations of the character).

I don't think you can view Jack Bauer as your whiter-than-white hero of the piece, he's dirty, he's suspicious, your not 100% sure you could trust him, he does what he thinks he needs to do to get the job done, to quote from a recent third season episode, "you'll tell what I want to know, or I'll let you bleed to death on this stairwell", but you do know that what's important to him above anything else is succeeding in what he assigned to do -- you can trust him to get the job done, although you might like the way it's done. The character is certainly not a 'yes' man.

I'm looking forward to seeing the conclusion of this season, which will actually be today since we're past midnight, but a few hours sleep sit between me and then -- and some laundry as well probably.

End of entry.
Signing off.
2003-02-29 02:10

Mood: enthralled
What is on: Nothing.

I was recently e-mailed the following at work, and finally remembered to print it off so it could be shared with you all:

* * * * *

Cast of Characters:
Geoffrey: Show's host and 'father' figure
Bungle: A large six-foot teddy bear with a nudity problem
George: A pink Hippo!
Zippy: An, er, mmmm, orange, er, rebel, maybe an alien...
Rod, Jane and Freddy: The show's singing group

For those of you who don't have kids or are far too young to remember the splendid children's TV programme "Rainbow", this may be a little lost on you... but it must have been a great episode to watch!

Almost too ridiculous to believe... this is taken from an original Rainbow script and there's no way this could have been done by accident.

Innuendo all the way!


** The sketch opens with Zippy peeling a banana

Zippy: "One skin, two skin, three skin, four"
George: "Zippy, where is Bungle?"
Zippy: "I think Geoffrey is trying to get him up"

** We see a view of the door and hear Bungle moaning from behind it.

Bungle: "Geoffrey, I can't get it in"
Geoffrey: "You managed it last night"
Bungle: "I know, lets try it round the other way. Ooooooh, I've got it in"

** Bungle and Geoffrey enter the studio with Bungle carrying a hammer and peg

Bungle: "Would you stick this on the shelf, George"
George: "I can't reach, you'll have to stick it up yourself."
Geoffrey (to camera): "Hello everyone, today we are talking about playing"
Bungle: "Playing with each other, Geoffrey?"
Geoffrey: "Yes Bungle, do you have a special friend that you like to play with?"
George: "Yesterday we played with each other's balls. Are we going to play with our friend's balls today?"
Bungle: "Yes, and we can play with our twangers as well."
Geoffrey (to camera): "Have you seen Bungle's twanger?"
Zippy: "Oh I have, I showed him how to pluck with it."
Bungle: "It's my plucking instrument."

** Geoffrey asks the audience if they can pluck like Bungle

Zippy: "I can, I'm the best plucker here."
George: "And I'm good at banging. My peg's hard isn't it Zippy?"
Zippy: "Well of course it is, your peg wouldn't go in if it was soft."
Geoffrey: "Let's get back to Bungle's twanger."
Bungle (excited): "Oooooh Geoffrey, we could all play with our twangers couldn't we? Let's play the plucking song. Rod and Freddy can get their instruments out and Jane has got two lovely Maracas."

** Singers Rod, Freddy and Jane enter.

Freddy: "We could hear you all banging away"
Rod: "Banging can be fun."
Jane: "Ooooh yes, and I was banging away all last night with Rod and Freddy."
Freddy (looking sad): "Yes, but it broke my plucking instrument."
Rod (to Jane): "Do you want to blow on my pipe while I'm twanging away?"
Jane: "Oh no, I was banging away with Freddy last night. But would you like to play with my maracas?"
Zippy; "No, let's just pluck away with our twangers."
George: "Yes, it doesn't matter what size our twanger is."
Zippy: "I've got a big red one."
George: "I've only got a tiny twanger. But it works well and I like to play with it."
Geoffrey (to viewers): "Well, have you got your twangers out? And remember, you can bang your balls at the same time. If you haven't got any, ask a friend if you can play with his. Now, let's all play the plucking song."

Everyone in studio: "Pluck, pluck, pluck along, we're going to pluck all day."

* * * * *

When I first read this I thought that this must be a wind-up, that this couldn't possibly be true, like the fictional, never existed, characters of Master Bates & Seaman Stains in the animated show "Captain Pugwash"!

However, some of the above can be heard via the following two links:

• Twangers (Real Video)


• Rude Rainbow (Wave File)

The main URL for this site is: http://www.widdy.demon.co.uk/rainbow/main.htm

Oh, the joy of children's television in the 70's and 80's, there's nothing quite like it today!

Mood: amused
What is on: (Music) Martin Galway's - Wizball Highscore! (C64 SID Tune)

Recently found this review in a copy of PC Format magazine:

* * * * *
USB Noodlatron
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/20030607/etc_soumen.html
12,800 yen

We have to be completely honest: we're not entirely sure quite what this is, our Japanese being a little rusty.

However, it appears to be some sort of small cooker or noodle cooler/softener (well, you work it out then). The delightful and entirely pointless aspect is that the whole doohickey is powered by USB, presumably in case you get peckish on the train. And before you ask, the lead is 5m long, to avoid a nasty noodle/keyboard interface.

* * * * *

What next? Huh?

Mood: amused
What is on: (TV) Queer Eye For The Straight Guy

Well, the first release candidate is now ready for public display, and after a week and a half of JavaScript coding, I'm putting up the Jack Bauer advice page!

It can be found on my homepage at: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ambianet/askjack/

Just answer truthfully a couple of simple questions and Jack will advise you on what he'd do in your situation!

Tested with IE 6.0, Netscape 7.1 & Opera 6.xx
Release Candidate: 1 - There may be some bugs!

Mood: happy
What is on: (Music) Zucchero (with Pavarotti) - Misererre

One word... AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, had to get that out.

First, we set the scene:

The computer picked up a couple of viruses at the weekend, not sure where they came from or why the virus scanner didn't pick them up, at least not until they were running, but they won't really bad ones, just wanting to annoyingly pop up adverts on my screen at five-minute intervals (although one was declaring that it was going to do an impression of an LJ user I've heard of going by the name of "Fandom_Scruples" in so far as it wanted to monitor me and everything else for 'inappropriate content'!!).

Well, five hours of poking around in the system registry, running scans on the drives and a few reboots and they appear to now be gone (at least from the live enviroment, although the scanner is still picking one of them up in amongst the files Windows has stored for the Windows Restore Points, which Windows won't let me delete either because it's a protected file, doh!).

Anyway, after taking out these pesky critters, I decided that it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to upgrade the virus scanner software anyway, last bought a new one in 2001, although the virus definitions where up to date for 29th January 2004.

So, since I use the McAfee product (had problems with the Norton program -- seems to conflict with something else on this system resulting in boot times of fifteen minutes, arg), off I clicked to McAfee's online store, selected my location in the UK and clicked the link for VirusScan. Up comes the information screen for the basic product, and an link to the 'Professional' version.

Deciding to see what the difference was, I found out that the pro-edition comes with a couple of extra utilities for cleaning up after an un-install and a secure file 'shreading' program for personal documents -- all for an extra £5.

Paid for, download, install, register and within two hours get a dialog box on the screen (which has kept appearing for the last two days) telling me that the software (not the virus definitions but the actual product) is 'out of date'!!!! What??!?!?

Having now completed some investigation I've discovered that the software is right -- it is out of date.

McAfee sells three levels of it's Virus Scan software, Virus Scan, Virus Scan Pro and Internet Security Suite (adds spam protection and a firewall -- which I already had anyway).

Now it would be reasonable to assume that the three flavours would all contain the same version of the Virus Scanner software, just adding different additional programs, right?

No.

Following my investigation, Virus Scan (Basic Version) contains version 8.0 of the Virus software, same with the Internet Security Suite, but the Pro version is Version 7.0! What??!?!?

Whats more, if you look at the same range of products on the US region of the site you get version 8.0 of the Virus Scan product in the Pro version, not version 7.0 as included in the UK edition -- although I see that for US customers the product is advertised on the site for $39.99, but if you click to purchase your invoice reads $59.99, and to get the cheaper price you have to fill in a form and mail it to the company -- then they credit you $20.00 back!

Having done some more research, having checked the German, French and Canadian (just over the border folks) regions, they have the same product line as the UK. It appears that the only people buying the professional edition to get version 8.0 and the only country to have a consistant product line is the US.

What is going on?

To add insult to injury, the McAfee web-site tells me that the only people entitled to a free upgrade from 7.0 to 8.0 under the 90 day upgrade policy are those people who purchased a retail boxed copy, on-line purchases do not qualify!

So, within two hours of paying £30+ for new software I'm told rather too cheerfully by the software and web-site that I now have to fork out another £25 to get version 8.0 (which was out and available, but not included in the pro version).

So, anyone wanting to buy from this site should be very careful to look at what your going to get, it might not be what you expected!

Mood: angry
What is on: Perez 'Prez' Prado - Guaglione

So, would you really want to live forever?

To live, so that you could never die?

Living beyond all those around you that you care about?

The idea of immortality is something that all of us consider from time to time, but I have come to think that may be it wouldn't be what it seems. After all, as the saying goes, you should be careful what you wish for, you might get it!

Imagine finding out one day that you where immortal, and could never die. No accident, no decease could kill you. You would live to see all those you care about die, you would out live your lover, your children, may be even your whole species. Imagine an immortality where you have out lived the entire human race, where you stand watching alone as the very sun in the sky expands towards you vapourising the earth beneaith your feet, knowing that you'd out live even this! Imagine out living the universe itself...

To any rational person those ideas should be terrifying.

Consider this, if you lived forever while all around you the human race continued, evolution would take them forward and leave you behind to watch -- evolution can only occur though the cycle of life and death. Immortal beings would be outside of it, unable to physcally improve.

That's not to mention of course that you would eventually become a curiosity to them, a living example of their past, a living museum piece, eventually left behind to live alone for ever.

Immortality would be very lonely, isolated and apart -- it would have to be.

If anything, it's probably infinitely better to wish to be able to live long enough to make the world a better place than when you found it. That's true immortality, the idea that your time was well spent, and your actions will be appreciated by those that follow, not despised.

Mood: thoughtful
What is on: (Music) Genesis - Calling All Stations

I love you larakailyn!!!

Thank you for my early Valentines Day present: My very own paid LJ account! :-)

<3

Mood: happy
What is on: General TV

A question for everyone:

Am I the only person in the world who thinks that software prices today are often unreasonable, if not absurd?

I was looking today at the Adobe web-site for information on the current releases of Acrobat and Photoshop.

Acrobat 6.0, standard package, is retailing at their site for $299.00 for the full program. I have used the previous version of this package. What do you get for your three-hundred bucks, mmmm, basically a fancy printer-driver and program to import and trim your pages and save them back out (I did once find a free PDF printer-driver released under the GNU license (with source code)).

I really can't see how they can justify three-hundred bucks for this thing!

I understand that there are software development costs to recoup, but the core of this software was developed years ago and those initial development costs would have been got back already by now. And, yes, I understand that with each new version they add some new features, but version 5 from version 4 certainly didn't add anything hugely significant and the upgrade from version 5 to 6 is still $99.00.

I won't mention the $449.00 they want for the so called "Professional" edition (£149 upgrade fee).

While not advocating piracy, I can understand why so many copies of their apps get distributed by people passing copies to friends either on disk or via P2P networks.

These sort of prices are okay for businesses, who can often claim back tax breaks, but what about the home users? Today's software companies seem to be hell-bent on pricing out from the market the average home user, the person who has other things that they need to spend their money on (like food, power and other household bills).

For some apps we do get offered so called "Lite" or "Essentials" versions at far more reasonable prices, but these are always cut-down versions, lacking the features that make the standard packages (often called the "Standard" or "Professional" editions) stand out, often they are actually a previous version (may be a rebadged version 4 when version 6 is out).

So we get to use those more expensive versions at work, need to take home a document to work on over the weekend only to find our "Lite" version doesn't include support for half the features included in the version produced by the program on the office PC, meaning it's useless to us.

Why should home users be forced to work with inferior versions of software?

I think the terms, "Lite" or "Essentials" should be reserved for freeware (no cost) versions of commercial software, not for older rebadged versions of a few years ago that you have to pay for.

Let's look at the new version of Photoshop, version 8.0 or "CS" as they call it (putting letters at the end of software names seems to be the new "in" thing now since Microsoft released Windows XP -- kind of sad really). Retail price on the Adobe web-site $649.00 -- bye, bye Mr and Mrs home-user you can use Microsoft Paint.

You can now buy a reasonably spec'd PC from one of the big computer stores, like PC World, here in the UK for around the £300.00 mark, but thanks to today's software companies, expect to re-mortgage your home if you want to actually buy a decent selection of application software to run on it, especially if you want to use your new computer as it was meant to be used, to do several different and varied things with it.

Mood: cranky
What is on: (Music) Bond - Duel