Sleepypete's Pillow

Friday I headed up to the Mall to do some checking out of the sales … and to acquire the replacement for my old laptop that’s done well but put up the “I retire” flag when it lost the ability to talk to the wifi router.

I didn’t actually buy anything on Friday – the main Mall shops didn’t have anything really interesting (although I get the feeling I’ll get a Goldfraap cd sometime soon) and the traffic was so bad that I aborted the run to the computer shops I was going to do. So the main target (new laptop) had to wait for today.

I have a couple of changes to make cos the new lappy is somewhat wider than the old one … So I’ll be heading off to the Mall again for a bigger bag. It’s also a Vista machine, which is an operating system I’ve never used before. Looks like it’s more user orientated but I’ll miss the special keys on my old laptop that I used to open Email, Firefox and Messenger. What I am noticing at the moment is that it is utterly silent, which won’t last long cos in 4 minutes my iTunes library will finish transferring from my old lappy 🙂

If an iTunes library takes over an hour to copy over, then you’ve probably got too much in it. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to preserve the old settings cos I don’t fancy rating over 2200 songs again.

The keyboard is taking some getting used to, as it’s a full size keyboard design. So my usual reference point on the right hand side of the case is being disrupted by there being a number pad there. Looks like I’m getting used to it cos I javem#t mistyped much in this post so far.

Right – 1 minute to go until I dig into iTunes, I’ve been watching old Star Trek Next Generation episodes while it’s been copying. Got a bit more setting up to do – email, Messenger, Firefox and some of the other regular apps I use are done. Others will wait (buying Kaspersky antivirus now would cost £30, waiting until it expires on my desktop will cost £40 for the pair, with AV for my dad’s machine coming free!).

And … a little bit later – I have my iTunes music playing over the wifi network to remote speakers – result :-). Current track – Some Journey off Suzanne Vega’s self titled album. Sounds good 🙂

(Techie bit to finish – iTunes 8 appears to have a critical bug re: Airtunes. There’s periodic breakup occurring every 30s-60s where the sound disappears. Going back to iTunes 7.6 is showing flawless playback so far – extensive research coming after I have some dinner 🙂

Yep – heard all sorts of good things about Inkheart 🙂 There’s about one film critic who seems to like the same films as me (Mark Kermode – Radio 5) and he liked it too.

PS I learned something new about New Years Day yesterday – PCWorld £10 vouchers that start on 1st Jan don’t necessarily mean that you can spend it on 1st Jan … 😉

Happy New Year Pete, to you and yours. All the best for 2009!

Happy New Year, my sweet boy, and all best wishes for 2009! 🙂

cq

Happy New Year! Unlike you I am not looking forward to going back to work! Glad you enjoyed Twilight. If you haven’t seen it I recommend Inkheart.CQ and I loved it 🙂

Not much left of the old year now, time to look forwards to the next one.

I spent a fair bit of 2008 looking backwards and reacting to events, I went backwards a few steps (shoulder) but I’ve hopefully gone forwards a few too. I appear to have mostly broken the games addiction, although maybe that’s been replaced by an addiction that has me listening to music off iTunes ? 🙂

Not much cricket again for me, will have to see if I can do better next season. I think I’ll have to settle for batting only, as my shoulder won’t support me bowling any more. Badminton is definitely a bad idea – that’s how I aggravated the shoulder injury this summer. Or is that my conservative side thinking ?

The Crazie Boys (inc me) watched the film Twilight today. Best way to describe this one is a Chick Flick Teen Vampire movie. We enjoyed it and were pleasantly surprised. Different film to the no-brain action movies we usually go for, a good change. I’d recommend it 🙂 Not sure if I’ll be going for the dvd though. One impression I definitely got was that one of the characters was definitely a fan of Tom Cruise’s Lestat.

I’ll be up at the Mall again tomorrow and I get the feeling I’ll be spending a bit of cash up there 🙂 One of the casualties of the Xmas period has been the wifi capability on this laptop, which is likely to be the Final Straw that means this lappy needs replacing. It has various other faults and I’ve been very surprised on my couple of Kick-The-Power-Lead moments this week it hasn’t turned off … Almost no battery left in it. I’ll also be looking to acquire some more cd’s to feed iTunes with 🙂

Last thing to do is to wish everyone a Happy New Year and I’ve attached a Youtube link to one of the songs I look forward to appearing on the iTunes Party Shuffle.

PS I think I’m eerily starting to look forward to work. One of the things I do on an extended leave period is not shave … And my scabrous imitation of a beard started itching on Thursday last week. It’ll be removed before I get back 🙂

I’ve been back for an hour or so now, so my fingers have warmed up enough for me to be able to type.

Been at my mum’s, dad’s and sister’s places for a few days over Xmas. Tuesday was getting to mum’s & dad’s place, just in time for dinner too. Convenient 🙂 Wednesday saw us battling the Lincoln traffic, which typically for this time of year was pretty savage. Lincoln’s roads aren’t too well laid out, so getting anyway in Lincoln can be a nightmare. Thursday and Friday had us at my sister’s place. She keeps a horse, so needs to be able to get to the field it’s at to make sure its comfortable (stable, bringing in from field).

I think my sister liked what she got – a Satnav widget plus her internet has been upgraded to Wireless now. That was Thursday evening’s job and was scarily smooth too … I did the typical techy macho-geek thing of taking one look at the instruction book and going “humph” before chucking instructions over my shoulder and setting the thing up on my own. Kinda sounds like being a “know-it-all” there but it was part of a careful plan 🙂 There’s lots of wifi-widgets out there and I’ve got experience of two … One is my Philips thing and I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone. Sister has a Linksys (aka Cisco) router now, the newer version of my dad’s. The first one we got has been almost faultless for over a year. It just sits there behind a chair and works. Which is all you can ask of electronics. So my sister got the newer version of the same device.

Bit different for my electronics – I’ve picked up an Apple Airport Express which should let me send the iTunes music to my decent speakers without having tripwires. Just one problem … my laptop took a tumble on Thursday evening and one thing that broke was the hole that the wifi card goes in. So I’m now tapping this out on a laptop that’s hooked up by a wire going over the back of the sofa and listening to iTunes with the rubbish lappy speakers because that Airport thing needs wireless. Sometime next week I’ll be hunting a new laptop from the PCWorld places, which will get me doing the wireless thing again.

I’ve got me another graphics card too now 🙂 So I’ll be crossing my fingers that my main PC can supply it with enough juice to work. Checking that out will be tomorrow’s job after wrapping a few things up and I’ll be hoping for prettier pictures from World of Warcraft, Mass Effect and Fallout 3.

Oh ! I also have a couple more dwagons for the clan 🙂 Here they are :

Time to sign off now. I had a couple of bright ideas before I disappeared up norf … One was to turn the heating off to appease the Green Lobby. The fridge magnet temperature currently has it as 15 degrees C, so a little more to go before things get cosy here. I have my main PC turning and burning on medical research, a bit of Seti, some Large Hadron Collider number crunching and climate research, so that’s helping things warm up too. (The other bright idea was to leave my Laptop->TV lead here, so Wallace & Gromit couldn’t get watched via iPlayer)

PS This may be my last blog entry. One of the presents that my Secret Santa victim is getting may get me killed. I’m sure the other people at the party will arrange something as a posthumous posting, although I think I’ll get protection from CQ and CK cos I’m giving them a lift home tomorrow.
PS2 (addon) Still here ! Not been strangled with a cardigan.

Merry Xmas BobKat 🙂

Just popped by to wish you a very Merry Christmas. Give CQ a hug from me when you see her 🙂

BTE – the word verification was atingles? Sounds like a new word to describe that Christmas Eve excitement, LoL!

Aye – should be an interesting new year 🙂

PS You won’t be seeing any Beefcake Pete pics like the Beefcake Obama pics that have been coming out lately. Unless I fake ’em 🙂