| When | Mood | Music |
| 2012-11-05 13:55:00 | crying | A billion balconies facing the sun – Manic Street Preachers |
In tears from these two songs: postcards from a young man, some kind of nothingness, especially the former. I think early- to mid-20s Bruce would not be pleased with me.
| When | Mood | Music |
| 2012-11-05 11:08:00 | amused | The post-war dream – Pink Floyd |
I’m very needle-phobic. Usually I have to have my cuddly pig with me, and I go through a lot of mental anguish, before anyone else sticks a needle into me. This is despite knowing that the pain will be minimal – I just get into an almost panic-stricken state.
However, Dr Scotland of the West End Medical Practice may just have broken through the needle-phobia. She’s just administered my annual flu injection. I didn’t feel a thing! No pain, no worries at all.
Thank you Dr S!
| When | Mood | Music |
| 2012-11-03 23:28:00 | pissed off | Amused to death – Roger Waters |
I lost three days this week to a hardware failure: Iggy’s SSD became cranky such that Iggy would freeze after 30 or 40 minutes. I spent a day proving it was the SSD and not the IcyDock 2·5″ to 3·5″ adaptor it nestles in, the drive bay that takes the adaptor or any other part of Iggy. Then I spent another day reconditioning the SSD – there’s an 8-hour/overnight process, followed by a 4-hour process, followed by updating firmware. The final day was spent reinstalling and configuring apps, then copying back data. The upshot is that Iggy feels faster, there’s at least 30GB more free space on the SSD and Iggy’s now rocking Mountain Lion.
Many votes for CarbonCopyCloner, so that I had a full, immediately bootable copy of the SSD (and hence accessible backups of all my data and keychains), and a whispered thank-you to Crucial for calmly providing reconditioning methods and being ready to replace the SSD without quibbles if the reconditioning had failed.
No thanks to my endocrine system for waking me during Wednesday and Thursday nights: I sleepwalked through my lectures on Thursday morning, actually slept through the Angus Millar lecture on Thursday evening, then couldn’t get to sleep once I’d gone to bed and so slept through my alarm on Friday morning.
No thanks too to my digestive system for some very unpleasant episodes on Friday afternoon. I’m also less than grateful for the single toilet near the Uni canteen not having any toilet paper when I desparately needed some. (I sacrificed the spare underwear that was nestling in my pannier and a ziplock bag I use for preventing shampoo and pain-cream from escaping.)
And a huge FUCK OFF to the driver who backed out of his parking space and hit me, when I’d been stationary at least 2 metres behind him long before he started his manouvre. I was wearing my very visible cycling jacket and helmet cover. Obviously this driver doesn’t know when or how to use his mirrors. Bah!
| When | Mood | Music |
| 2012-11-02 22:36:00 | pissed off | Amused to death – Roger Waters |
It’s Friday afternoon, I’m in Napier supposedly to do some research work before going to a ‘how to do your MSc dissertation’ lecture. However, I’m in no fit state to work, so I’m going to try to blog some bile out. You have been warned.
Towards the end of last week, Iggy started hanging randomly every 30 minutes or so. There was no detectable set of circumstances to the hangs, so I began to fear the OS was hosed. The system logs mentioned some issues with fonts, so I removed all the fonts in my user library. Still lots of hanging. Eventually, I decided to nuke and pave Iggy’s boot SSD – if there was a software problem, reinstallation from scratch would remove it. If there was a hardware problem, it would presumably continue to manifest itself.
It may help to know that Iggy has 4 storage devices:
So with all backups (local backups via TimeMachine to a TimeCapsule and a NAS, CarbonCopyCloner to HD in bay 1, Crashplan offsite) refreshed, I erased, overwrote with zeros and repartitioned Iggy’s SSD, then installed Lion. (The erase and over-write stage to a few hours.) The hangs recurred, so I definitely had a hardware issue. The system logs were very unpleasant reading indeed.
I had some freelance work to do, so I did that while running Iggy from the CarbonCopyClone on the HD in bay 1. During this time, the SSD disappeared from the Finder, prompting a message not to improperly remove drives. The SSD didn’t reappear in the Finder, and was invisible to DiskUtility.
The next step was to find what bit of Iggy was ill. It could have been
To eliminate the last option, I removed the SSD and IcyDock, and ran Iggy from the CarbonCopyClone in bay 1 for an hour, including booting and doing some stuff in all the VMs that live in bay 3. No problems occurred, so all of Iggy, apart from possibly drive bay 4, was OK.
To check drive bay 4, I put the HD containing the VMs into it. I then ran the Windows 7 VM, installed iTunes in it, downloaded a 30-minute podcast and played it twice over. No problems occurred, so drive bay 4 was OK.
To check the IcyDock, I put the HD containing the VMs into it, the repeated the ‘podcast’ test. No problems occurred, so the IcyDock was OK. This meant that the SSD was the culprit. It was under a year old, and had a 3-year warranty. I also had the email confirming the order for the SSD, so I was fairly confident I’d be able to obtain a replacement.
Crucial, the SSD’s manufacturer, said they would be willing to replace the SSD but first I’d need to try reconditioning it. To do this, I needed to connect the SSD to a shut-down mac, restart it as far as the EFI boot-device selector and then leave it in this state overnight. I duly did so, over Monday night.
The next day, I put the SSD back into Iggy. The SSD appeared in the Finder as normal, and I was able to install Mac OS. However, another hang occurred when updating from MacOS 10·8 to 10·8·2, and again when copying back my data. Obviously the SSD wasn’t fixed. I called Crucial again: they advised a process of
The latter step involved downloading an ISO from Crucial, burning it to a CD, booting Iggy from that and letting the firmware software work its magic. After this, the SSD seemed stable, so I began the long haul of reinstalling OS and apps, copying back data, configuring apps (especially setting up Creative Suite 5 to produce print-ready PDFs to the format that my freelance work requires).
A day later, Iggy was back in action, now running MacOS 10·8·2 (‘Mountain Lion’) and running sweet and smart. SSDs are so much faster than rotating HDs! There is 30GB more unused space on the SSD than before – I guess this is due to not reinstalling some apps I just don’t use, and other apps not having gone through so many update stages. Here ended Wednesday.
I woke up during Wednesday night due to a severe hypo – I guess I’d not eaten enough after Wednesday evening’s spinning. So I staggered through Thursday’s lectures and a meeting about publishing my Community Council research. I then did some reading about the style of report I’d need to produce, then headed home via Boots to collect some medication I needed. On the way, Lev Davidovitch’s pannier fell off, thus giving me palpitations about the health of my MacBook Air. (My fears weren’t realised – I’m typing this dreary prose on it.)
At Boots, It turned out that my doctor hadn’t returned the renewed prescription to the store, so they contacted the surgery to get them to fax it over. I also went to the surgery to try to arrange an appointment to discuss some other issues. The surgery’s appointment system is weird: the next available pre-bookable appointment would be 12th November, but if I phoned the following morning (2nd November) at 8am, I’d be able to get an appointment that day.
I then went to the Angus Millar lecture but slept through most of it. After the lecture, I realised I was very hungry, and wasn’t surprised that my my blood sugar level was under 3 mmol l–1. A quick curry at the Mosque Kitchen fixed that. However, this wasn’t the end of blood-sugar issues.
Because I’d slept earlier, I didn’t get to sleep until about 2am, only to wake an hour later due to another hypo. I also woke at 6 with yet another hypo. So I then missed waking up in time to call the surgery for a same-day appointment. I had a fairly unpleasant headache, so I swallowed some ibuprofens, made breakfast and bimbled about until my head was clear enough to venture into the day.
My first port of call was the surgery, to drop off a full sharps bin. I was waiting for a gap in the traffic so I could cycle away from the surgery when a car reversed along the kerb and pushed into me. It had been stationary, about 2 metres away from me and I’d been waiting in the same position for a couple of minutes for a suitable gap in the traffic. So during all that time, the driver hadn’t checked his or her path was clear! I wear a very bright cycling jacket and helmet cover, so I should be visible to anyone who actually looks.
I don’t claim to be perfect in any way but my lapses aren’t potentially fatal, certainly not to anyone else. (The approved order is (1) check behind before signalling, (2) signal while facing forward, (3) get both hands back on handlebars, (4) lifesaver-check behind, (5) manoeuvre; with rules about which side you should check. My signalling technique is adequate but not perfect, mostly due to my shoulder-mobility issues, and I tend to check behind while signalling. [This does not mean I don’t check in front of me before manoeuvring!])
A few other errands later, I arrived at Napier. By now it was lunchtime. While eating, I suddenly felt nature call me from behind, very urgently. I’ve yet to understand why there is only male toilet near the canteen – I didn’t feel confident about the extra 30 metres to the bigger set of toilets in the computer centre. As it was, I leaked a bit on the way to the nearby toilet. A few unpleasantly long, liquid events later, I made two discoveries:
I wiped with a pair of underpants that happened to be lurking in the bottom of my pannier. By the end of this, they were in a state I don’t want to recall, let alone try to describe. I didn’t dare try to flush them away, and there was no bin in the toilet area. Fortunately, I had a ziplock bag in my pannier, so I used that to bag up the moist smelly item, and then gingerly waddled away to find a last resting place for my pants.
I would have gone home to change but I was due at a lecture about doing MSc dissertations an hour later. If I’d gone home, I’d not have returned for the lecture. This lecture was informative but somewhat frightening. Afterwards, I was chatting with a classmate when I passed wind – and followed through, in an unpleasantly liquid manner. I can’t be more grateful for the noise- and liquid-absorbance of cycle-shorts.
Some cleaning later, I hesitantly mounted Lev and cycled home. There’s something quite nasty about cycling in soiled shorts. After a shower and a bath, and washing all the clothes I’d been wearing, my hunger was thwarted by rather high blood sugar (17 mmol l–1). I’m now lying in bed with my MacBook Air, feeling my stomach churn, not daring to go to sleep in case I soil the bed.
| When | Mood | Music |
| 2012-11-01 22:34:00 | amused | Afrika Shox – Leftfield |
From the left:
| When | Mood | Music |
| 2012-10-14 23:48:00 | Anti-Christ Dub – Yabby U |
I’m too much of a magpie – the kit that routinely adorns Lev consists of:
(Items 1 to 4 came with the bag. It also came with light plastic tyre levers but they’re not strong enough to move Lev’s heavy-duty tyres, so I carry old-school metal levers.)
This barely leaves room in the pannier for the water-bottles, small towel and shirt I need for spinning. Advice on what to omit would be appreciated!
| When | Mood | Music |
| 2012-10-14 23:15:00 | awake | Balls out – the Bloodhound Gang |
Relatively early this morning, I ran water to do washing up, then left it for a while to do something else. A few minutes later, I wanted to start soaking porridge remnants from a saucepan. However, no water came out of the tap – in fact no water came out of any of our taps.
I heard a pneumatic drill from the front of the house and guessed that a leak was being fixed – I’d noticed water on the surface of the corner of Drumsheugh Gardens and Queensferry Street even when it wasn’t raining over the past few days. Indeed, some Scottish Water folk were digging up that bit of road and told me they had turned off the water. I asked them why we hadn’t been told – apparently SW don’t do this ‘for emergencies’ – they find too many people don’t answer the door. A slip of paper through the letter box would have been nice, boys and girls!
So, despite me being less than pristine after yesterday’s exertions, Elly and I set off toward Tiso’s to buy some waterproof stuffsacks for her panniers. We ended up buying these, some hideously expensive overtrousers for Elly, neoprene cycling overshoes for me, electrolyte tablets, special gunk for washing waterproof gear and even more special gunk for re-waterproofing said gear. We then took Fidel, Elly’s bike up to the bike co-op for his 6-weeks-after-purchase service. I also asked about the creak in Lev’s pedal I’d heard yesterday. However, the creak had stopped. Ah well, I frequently pass the co-op on my way to and from Napier, so it’ll not be hard to drop him in if it recurs.
We then had lunch at a new venture called the Purple Pig Café before meandering home via Real Foods and settling in for an afternoon of happy idleness with our restored water supply.
| When | Mood | Music |
| 2012-10-14 20:51:00 | Neon Knights – Black Sabbath |
About a month ago, I realised that decent distance-cycling days would be few and far between for the rest of this year, so if I wanted to achieve my ambition of cycling to Glasgow and back the same day I’d need to get on with it. After two days of torrential rain towards the end of last week, yesterday looked clear enough to attempt this 88-mile jaunt.
So after seeing Elly off to her piano lesson and a prolonged Bruce-faff, I loaded up Lev Davidovitch Bikestein and left the warmth of Servants’ Quarters. After about a minute of walking Lev up to the road, I realised I needed to wear another layer, grabbed the winter jacket from Lev’s pannier and pondered going back for another layer. However, I’d faffed enough for today and so just set off along my my almost traditional route A8 and A89 westwards. I have no idea why the cyclemeter map shows me going through the Apex European hotel on Haymarket Terrace – I promise you I didn’t!
The wind was in my face as I left Edinburgh. I was almost glad of this – if there has to be wind, I prefer it to be helping me in the later, more tired stages of any ride. However, I felt slow and clunky as I passed through Corstorphine and on to the outskirts of Edinburgh. I wimped out of staying on the road and using Gogar roundabout’s high-speed underpass, taking the cycle path that starts at Maybury Road and lead over the RBS squinty bridge at Gogarburn. However, as soon as possible, Lev and I rejoined the road. As I continue to opine, the A8 is a dual carriageway but has no ‘no bike’ signs so it’s legal for us to be there and there should be plenty of room for bikes and cars to co-exist.
This route also gave me an opportunity to try out different approaches to entry and exit lanes. The textbook for my ‘teaching cycle-skills’ course recommends pulling into an exit lane, then signalling right and pulling out again to reduce exposure. I think this is insane: you’ll be moving across the path of 4WWs who aren’t expecting this, then rejoining the main carriageway from an even more unexpected direction. I think this is just begging to become strawberry jam and another SMIDSY statistic. Instead, I’d recommend just dropping the hammer and sprinting, in the primary road position, in the main carriageway until you’ve safely passed the exit lane. If necessary, you can wait before the start of the exit lane for a suitable gap in the traffic.
I agree more with the textbook’s recommendation for passing entry-lanes. Drivers on the main carriageway should be looking out for traffic coming out of entry lanes, while 4WWs coming up an entry lane may not see (or may just not care) a bike on the main carriageway. I guess this is especially true of entry-lanes from airports, where the drivers are likely to be jet-lagged and tired from a couple of weeks of chemical stimulation in Ibiza. Indeed during my return to Edinburgh, I did have to slow to avoid being hit by some speed-freak knob-end 4WW who didn’t know the meaning of the give-way road markings.
This danger passed, Newbridge roundabout posed no problems apart from the wind and rain. I reached Broxburn after just over an hour of cycling. As ever, I cursed whoever who decided that 20-meter slabs of concrete, separated by 4-inch gaps across the carriageway were a good idea. Even more idiot was filling these gaps with frogspawn or whatever: the filling is long gone and regular groin-bashing bumps are the result. Not a good thing when cycling uphill into the wind.
Uphall was the usual uphill struggle, followed by a continued uphill drag through Dechmont. After this began the part I’d most dreaded, the horrible tarmac on the A89 between Dechmont and the Tesco depot at Livingstone. To a 4WW driver, the tarmac might look smooth. However, to a cyclist it’s not – it’s speed-sappingly rough. By the end of this stretch, the wind, cold and bum-bashing tarmac had my tinter and right testicle in severe pain. Despite this, Lev and I carried on towards out first ‘scheduled’ stopping point at Bathgate station. This was 18 miles in 1 hour 46 minutes: an average of 10·2 mph. Also my feet were freezing – light ‘summer’ cycling shoes aren’t enough for Scottish wind and rain so today (Sunday) I bought some neoprene overshoes. By the way, Endura are a Scottish company (based in Livingston).
A quick energy bar and half a banana later, Lev and I pushed on through the wind towards the gloom of western West Lothian and eastern North Lanarkshire. There was a traffic jam in Armadale but this was a revelation – a polite driver warned me he was about to pull out to reverse into a parking space, so that I should get in front of him to avoid being splatted. The pull up from Blackridge station into the town was painfully slow – I was considering giving up. However, realising I’d taken under 3 hours to reach Caldercruix (average speed 11·1 mph) and hadn’t noticed the transition to North Lanarkshire was heartening. The next few miles to Airdrie passed without event. I took another short break at Airdrie station and then pushed on. By now, the weather was lifting and the road was dropping – I achieved 14mph in the 5 miles between Coatbridge and Shettleston. After this, the few miles from Glasgow’s eastern ghettos to the city centre went smoothly – the only hold-ups were traffic-lights. My total cycling time to Queen Street was around 4 hours, hence average speed of 11mph. (I’m not too pleased with that.)
At Queen Street I stopped to munch a bag of fries and down a diet coke – a pleasant change from the cold water from my camelbak. Thanks to the left-luggage folk at Queen Street for looking after Lev while I found a tiled tree. I also replaced the batteries in a couple of Lev’s lights and realised that one of Lev’s rear lights was missing. The internet told me that there was a bike shop north of Queen Street station. It didn’t tell me that the staff at Dales Cycles would be friendly and helpful – thanks indeed folks for warnings and hints on how to handle some of the junctions in Airdrie. So Lev was fitted with two orange skullies and now has lots of lights.
By now it was 4:30, so I knew I’d be cycling the last 15-20 miles in the dark. I don’t mind night-cycling – in fact it can be preferable because there’s less traffic and 4WWs have no excuse to miss Lev’s multiple bright-flashing LEDs. Also, the rain held off and the wind was now behind me. Despite feeling much faster, the return journey still took just under 4 hours cycling-time. I had brief breaks in Blackridge (mainly to ease my bruised backside) and Bathgate. Apart from the long drag up and out of Airdrie, the return journey from felt mostly downhill. I wasn’t able to enjoy as much as I’d hoped the descent from Dechmont via Uphall to Broxburn because by now my lower thighs were stiffening up. The rain came back with a vengeance just as I got back into Edinburgh but went away fairly quickly.
I got home at 8:46, so my total trip time for the 88 miles was 9 hours and 43 minutes. However, actual pedalling time was under 8 hours. The ever-wonderful Elly was waiting with a tofu stir-fry and a big mug of tea – I can’t tell you how much I appreciated these! Thanks also to the spinning folk – without their help there’s no way I’d have been fit enough to do an 88 mile trip. I was proud to wear a Lifescycle top [link to image on Facebook] – shame it was too cold to keep it uncovered.
And so now I have my challenges for 2013:
Timings
These are based on some texts I sent.
| time | place | distance (miles) |
time taken (minutes) |
average speed (mph) |
cumulative distance (miles) |
cumulative time minutes) |
cumulative average speed (mph) |
| 10:56 | Start | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 11:57 | Broxburn | 10·4 | 61 | 10·2 | 10·4 | 61 | 10·2 |
| 12:46 | Bathgate station | 7·4 | 49 | 9·1 | 17·8 | 110 | 9·7 |
| 13:20 | Blackridge | 5·9 | 24 (assuming 10-minute break at Bathgate) |
14·7 | 23·7 | 134 | 10·6 |
| 13:45 | Caldercruix | 4·2 | 25 | 10·1 | 27·9 | 159 | 10·5 |
| 14:09 | Airdrie station | 4·6 | 24 | 11·5 | 32·5 | 183 | 10·7 |
| 14:37 | Glasgow border | 4·5 | 18 (assuming 10-minute break at Airdrie) |
15·0 | 37·0 | 201 | 11·0 |
| 15:14 | Saltmarket | 6·4 | 37 | 10·4 | 43·4 | 238 | 10·9 |
| 15:21 | Queen Street station | 0·6 | 7 | 5·1 | 44·0 | 245 | 10·8 |
Door-to-door average speed was 10·0 mph.
| time | place | distance (miles) |
time taken (minutes) |
average speed (mph) |
cumulative distance (miles) |
cumulative time minutes) |
cumulative average speed (mph) |
| 16:53 | Gallowgate | 1·0 | 8 (assuming I set off from Queen Street at 16:45) |
7·5 | 1·0 | 8 | 7·5 |
| 17:32 | Exiting Glasgow | 6·1 | 39 | 9·4 | 7·1 | 47 | 9·1 |
| 17:42 | Coatbridge | 3·2 | 10 | 19·2 No, I don’t believe this either! |
10·3 | 57 | 10·8 |
| 17:57 | Airdrie | 1·6 | 15 | 6·4 | 11·9 | 72 | 9·9 |
| 18:20 | Caldercruix | 4·5 | 23 | 11·7 | 16·4 | 95 | 10·4 |
| 18:31 | Re-enter West Lothian | 2·6 | 11 | 14·2 | 19·0 | 106 | 10·7 |
| 18:39 | Blackridge break | 1·9 | 8 | 14·2 | 20·9 | 114 | 11·0 |
| 18:45 | On my way again. | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20·9 | 114 | 11·0 |
| 19:00 | Bathgate station break | 6·0 | 15 | 24 Unbelieveable! |
26·9 | 129 | 12·5 |
| 19:13 | restart | 0 | 0 | 0 | 26·9 | 129 | 12·5 |
| 19:38 | Dechmont | 4·8 | 25 | 11·5 | 31·7 | 154 | 12·3 |
| 19:59 | Edinburgh border. Rain | 3·9 | 21 | 11·1 | 35·6 | 175 | 12·2 |
| 20:22 | Marriott hotel. Rain stopped | 4·8 | 23 | 12·5 | 40·4 | 198 | 12·2 |
| 20:39 | Roseburn | 3·1 | 17 | 10·9 | 43·5 | 215 | 12·1 |
| 20:47 | Home | 1·1 | 8 | 8·2 | 44·6 | 223 | 12·0 |
Door-to-door average speed was 11·1 mph.
How to carry too much stuff
(Items 1 to 4 came with the bag. It also came with light plastic tyre levers but they’re not strong enough to move Lev’s heavy-duty tyres, so I carry old-school metal levers.)
Illumination
| When | Mood | Music |
| 2012-10-12 03:26:00 | bitchy | optical drive grunting |
It’s taken me the better part of three hours (time when I really should have been sleeping) to persuade Iggy to not boot into Windows 7.
You may recall that Iggy is a 2009 Mac Pro with 4 hard disks:
I also have a MacBook Air called MIA, which can boot into either MacOS 10.8..2 (‘Mountain Lion’) or Windows 7 – thanks to the magic of BootCamp. It seems I’m likely to need Win7 and Office 2010 because the current module requires a lot of grubbing in MS Access. While the Win7 VM on Iggy works well, it doesn’t make full use of Iggy’s firepower. A virtual machine is, very roughly speaking, just a program running on top of a host OS, competing with all other programs for RAM, processor time, etc. BootCamp should have allowed me to run Win7 natively, just as it does on MIA.
Because I didn’t want to risk Iggy’s boot SSD, I chose to install windows on a 60GB partition on disk 4. Installation seemed to go smoothly, at least as far as installing MS Security Essentials. However, installation of MS Office failed, so I thought I should can the Windows stuff for the night, reboot Iggy in MacOS for his nightly CCC clones and other housekeeping and go to bed.
Imagine my joy when Iggy stubbornly kept rebooting into Windows, each time installing a fresh set of updates. Even when the update process appeared to have finished, Iggy seemed stuck in Redmond. Using the BootCamp control panel to tell Iggy to restart in MacOS didn’t work, nor did holding down alt at restart to get a choice of boot devices – Iggy just hung until force-restarted. Booting into mac safe mode and single-user mode didn’t work – more hanging. Booting into firewire target mode: nada. (All these were tried several times, with the keyboard plugged into different USB ports.) Pulling out the HD with windows got me occasionally the message that there was ‘no boot device’ but mostly just more hanging. Removing and reinstalling the BootCamp software from windows didn’t help either – and I had to spend a lot of time finding how to do that. Booting from Lion and SnowLeopard USB installers: yet more hanging. I was beginning to run out of hemp by this stage.
I was convinced that the other HDs were OK – using a naked hard drive adaptor (every hardware munchkin should have one) I could boot MIA from Iggy’s normal boot SSD, the CCC clone thereof and the CCC clone of SnowLeopard. (Incidentally, this was proof of how much faster SSDs are than hard disks: under a minute to boot from SSD, several minutes to boot from HD). Also all the disks appeared in Iggy’s incarnation of Windows as they should have done.
I began to fear that some bit of firmware within Iggy (probably the EFI gubbins) was hosed so that it could no longer recognise Mac boot partitions, and began reading up on that. I don’t advise going anywhere near this subject unless you’re a seriously masochistic hardware munchkin. I soon realised I didn’t want to try anything – everything I read advised ‘if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t even begin because it WILL go wrong and you WILL end up crying’ or words to that effect.
I began to realise that the external CD/DVD drive I use with MIA wasn’t showing up in Windows when plugged into Iggy – presumably due to lack of drivers. However it struck me I’d not tried anything using Iggy’s built-in optical drive. I popped a SnowLeopard installer DVD into that drive and, as it should have, it appeared in Windows and gave me the options of sharing Iggy’s optical drive to MIA or reinstalling (again) BootCamp drivers. What I’d forgotten, in my gibbering-wreckness, was that I should be able to boot Iggy from this DVD.
While all the other variations of ‘hold down this key to boot that way’ hadn’t worked, holding down the C key to boot from the optical drive worked, but only after what felt like hours of optical-drive grunting noises. At long last, the prelude to installing MacOS screen appeared. As soon as I could, I legitimately got out of the installation prelude and hence to the ‘choose your startup disk’, chose the normal boot disk and restarted Iggy, yet again cursing myself for trying this Windows-on-Iggy’s-bare-metal approach. Iggy properly booted into Lion and appears to be working fine. I’ve dumped the Windows partition and will stick with the VMs – they just work and can be dumped and reinstalled with no loss to anything else.
Here endeth the tale of woe, at least until I find that I’ve truly hosed something else.
| When | Mood | Music |
| 2012-10-07 22:43:00 |
This is a track Andy frequently uses to finish the warm-up section of his rides. Totally storming, with standing surges to the chorus.
If you can’t dance to this, you are six feet under.
This is the artiste’s site.
a back-up of https://friends-ssct.org
wibbelwobble
Good governance and leadership
Participatory Budgeting for the Leith Neighbourhood Network
Maximising the impact and value of library and information science research
News, funding opportunities, and support from Research, Innovation & Enterprise
Digital evidence that Bruce might have a life 