Twisted Kites

A vital piece of advice: when finished charging a techy gadgety gizmo, don’t just take out the cable and flick it aside. It might land in a mug of recently finished coffee or something. Which is precisely what happened to my Macbook Magsafe charger, it started to elecroplate itself with coffee grinds I think. After drying and cleaning it still powered the laptop but wouldn’t charge it. But to be sure I stopped using it as I don’t want to risk knackering the Macbook itself.

60 quid and a trip to KRCS a few days later, I am finally able to use my laptop again. And I’ve ordered a spare charger to which should be here in the next few days (cheaper off ebay), just in case.

I know I’ve not been posting much lately. (But then again not many do, my RSS feed blog updates hardly differ these days!)

I’ll try to try harder. Maybe if I can find a Mac OS widget or something for Wordpress it might help.

I’m sitting at Preston depot (got 4 hours here in the middle of the night), plugged the Macbook into the WWW with my 3 dongle, sorting my blog, listening to the iPod. I’ll have to use these lulls to blog more often if I’m struggling.

Anyway work has been busier than usual, my relationship is going beautifully (we’re both going to Ireland for a 5-night break next week, can’t wait), car is running well.

Also recovering from a cold, quite annoying but not tragic.

Regular readers (if there are any left that haven’t disappeared into the void themselves), keep on at me to keep updating. How is everyone doing?

Finally Windows Vista is back on and back working. At least the system is entirely clean now, and I’m not going to try and dual-boot anything again! Making good progress setting it up again, and at least now my important files are now on a separate drive they are no bother (moving them around is so time consuming).

Just ordered myself a USB modem so I can get my Macbook online easier. I have been using my Nokia N73 as a modem for months, which works fine, although there are a few probs with that. 1; the T-Mobile network is not the strongest (downstairs at home is poor, upstairs is top notch, same at Nicola’s house) and it’s easy for signal to drop. 2; obviously using the bluetooth modem on the phone draws lots of power out of the battery. 3; if I get a call or something the connection can drop. 4; as it’s bluetooth, if I leave the phone in my pouch and walk too far away the connection will drop.

So went to the Three (3) website and ordered a free USB modem, which is the best deal of the three that offer it (3, T-Mobile and Vodafone). 3GB allowance for £15 a month (the other networks charge £20 and £30 plus possible modem fee), which I think is brilliant. Would also be a good back up for at home if Be Internet ever goes down (although they’re very reliable).

I know that Three aren’t the best network in the world, but at least their 3G signal is strong and the Turbo 3G sounds good. Wouldn’t use it for my phone network again though, nobody out there can beat T-Mobile’s Flext for value. Speaking of which I’m due an upgrade shortly so need to decide on a nice shiny new phone to ask for.

Windows and Ubuntu were working perfectly until this morning. But now I’m having to type this on my Macbook…

Turned the machine on and Grub wouldn’t load so couldn’t do anything, Error 22. So followed instructions to repair Grub using the Ubuntu disc.

Did that and rebooted, Grub worked. Clicked on the Vista entry and another error. So followed instructions to fix MBR using Vista disc. It worked.

Rebooted again. “Missing operating system”. FFS…Rebooted yet again into Vista disc’s repair console. “Unable to repair automatically”. Ever so useful that, eh.

So now have to reinstall Vista (twice, as it’s an upgrade disc). Not much fun. At least my files are nice and safe on the second HD, and I’ve managed to finally get rid of that silly initial 4Gb partition, so just splitting each HD into 2 partitions each, putting Vista in the first half of no.1 and my files remain in the first part of no.2 (where’s the Macbook’s hash key?!), other 2 are spare for now, and probably will NOT be having Linux on again.

Reinstallation is under way, many more reboots to go through now I expect. Oh well, I’ll stick to what I know, and what works, Windows Vista on it’s own!

Having a night in tonight; 1, I need to get to sleep at a decent hour as I’m off camping tomorrow leaving about 8am (on the Brum M6 at rush hour, ho hum lol) and 2, N needs to get an early night as she’s up at 3am so we can’t go out tonight, had another nice night out last night though

Yep off camping tomorrow until Saturday at Llyn Gwynant Campsite in Snowdonia. Inside a valley right next to a lake at the foot of Snowdon, 2 miles from civilisation (well a little village, also 5 miles from Beddgelert), went there a few years ago and it’s truly stunning. Hope it’s not full! Well with the latest weather forecast we may well have the site to ourselves… The car is pretty much loaded, just need to chuck my personal stuff and my Ikea bag full of food (big and strong, perfect for it) onto the back seat in the morning (cos the boot is almost full).

No I’m not taking my Macbook and the phone signal will be non existent on site so no blog entries til the weekend.

Take care everyone.

Yes I’m back from my week in Baile Atha Cliath. I kept a little journal journal thing while I was away, which I will post over the next few days hopefully after I’ve transferred it to my PC and finished it off. The journal isbasically  just some notes for myself really, and also a sort of offline blog entry, something I did when I had those little bits of time to relax in my hotel room. I could have used wireless internet (Wifi by the Liffey?) while I was away to blog, but decided not to as a week without the WWW would be rare, although it felt weird, I was strong.

I also need to transfer the photos over from my Macbook, then I might pick out a few to share. Took hundreds in total, that’s the beauty of digital, so easy to get carried away. But deleted all obvious rubbish ones on the camera, and at the end of the day I uploaded them to the laptop and went through removing more. Not sure how many I have to choose from now, I’ll get them across tomorrow.

Well now I’m back after the worst flight ever! No it wasn’t bad at all, actually pretty turbulant, great fun, and with one heck of a low sharp bank coming into the far end of Birmingham on approach, I could almost see down people’s chimneys! Stunning stuff. No it was just ‘worst’ because of the weather, too many clouds I could hardly see a thing out the window. A quick glimpse of Ireland whilst rising, that was it until a glimpse of Merseyside, decent view over West Midlands then as we shot out past Solihull and did the low level sweep over west Warwickshire. As soon as I got through Arrivals, the clouds returned and i was welcomed back to heavy rain and a thunderstorm.

The airport at Dublin cost me too much money too. Bargains = simply buy more of. Oops.

Hope everyone had a good week.