Something very weird about sister’s PC: there are two accounts

1. Hers, a user account with 2 Gb of stuff
2. mine, the admin account, with 0 Gb of stuff

Other folders (Windows, etc) take up a few more Gb. So why is the 134 GB C drive almost completely full?

I’ve stumbled across an iDevice trap for the novice. I’d set both phone and pad to automatically sync music, apps and books with each other, so that if I installed or obtained something one one device, it would automagically appear on the other. I then dumped Numbers (Apple’s spreadsheet app) and Pages (Apple’s word processing app) from the phone because experience with QuickOffice suggests that office-type apps need more screen than the phone offers. It’s disappeared from the pad too. If I want it back, I’ll have to pay for it again (or wait until I can put pad and Iggy back in contact). No chance!

QuickOffice is on the pad but it’s the phone version, working in a phone-sized window in the middle of the screen. I don’t want to pay £13 for the pad version so I’m currently iOfficeless. Bah!

So my sister’s laptop had been unable to connect to the internet for a couple of weeks. It’s a 2-year-old Dell Inspiron 1545 running Vista Home Basic.Before I arrived here, I’d established that the PC could connect to the router via ethernet. (I’ve always made sure there’s a spare ethernet cable plugged into the router so I can jump into it without relying on potentially-flaky wireless or needing to use someone else’s computer in case it’s the cause of issues.)

Despite knowing a wired connection worked, I’d been unable to guide folk here into making this slaptop the target of VNC and hence letting me see what the system-tray connection icon had to say. It turns out that Dell have made their F2 keys’ primary function to be toggling wireless on and off. It’s far too easy to hit it, especially if you’re a fat-fingered hunt-and-peck typist like me. (I’ve done so at least twice while typing this post.) Bah – shouldn’t this tool have been built into software or made far less accessible?

Being bereft of a real computer, I’m blogging using the iPad. Results so far:

• I don’t like the LJ app – no facility for entering HTML tags, no other formatting tools that I can find.
• Typing screeds of Bruce-wibblings is greatly facilitated by a bluetooth keyboard.
• It still takes me several attempts to get a post to my liking.
• My prose is as turgid as ever: even the magical iDevice can’t improve that.

Perhaps I shouldn’t use the keyboard: it might help me be more concise!

Until yesterday, I’d been hoping that Lev would be stolen and that insurance would pay out so I could buy a different bike. However, yesterday’s cycle from Birmingham to Worcester has changed my mind. Lev isn’t a fast bike but he kept going, despite carrying 2 full panniers, a below-saddle wedge bag full of tools and a rucsac strapped on top of the panniers. The journey took just over two and a half hours.

I cycled almost the same route in April on Vilior, taking over 3 hours. When I arrived yesterday, I felt ready for far more distance. In April, I arrived fit to drop and lay on the sofa for an hour quietly moaning as my shoulder throbbed. (It didn’t hurt while I was cycling but began to be painful almost as soon as I arrived.) So what’s made the difference?

• I don’t think I’m fitter: it’s possible I’m fatter than in April. In fact on Saturday, I was overtaken by a Brompton!
• The weather yesterday was almost perfect for cycling: bright, no wind, cool, warm enough for me not to wear gloves. (I recall April being significantly warmer.)
• The streets were fairly empty this time, but that shouldn’t have made much difference. It seems that most traffic lights turned green as I approached them: that will have made some difference because it’s tiring to stop and start continually.
• I knew the route better:
  • there’s a potentially confusing turn in Selly Oak (a district of Birmingham) where the main route rejoins the A38, having diverged to avoid the town centre;
  • there’s a potentially horrendous roundabout north of Bromsgrove (get the approach to this wrong and you’ll be on a slip-road leading to the M42).
  • I enjoyed doing over 24mph on the Rubery bypass (around mile 10 on the Google map). In April I laboured along here being somewhat scared. If my memory of a previous Birmingham to Worcester cycle is real, that time I was too afraid to use a bypass, instead meandering through Rubery itself.
• I knew I could do this route: it’s only 30 miles and I’d done it at least once before. (I know I did it in April and I have a sneaking feeling I’d done it once before then.)

None of these seem significant. What does seem significant is that I could use Lev’s momentum (he’s noticeably heavier than Vilior) and gears to achieve a tolerably constant cadence and hence just keep going!

So Lev has finally won himself a place in my heart and I’m looking forward to more distances with him. He’s not a fast bike: standing starts are slow (and nigh-impossible in top gear) but once he’s up to speed on reasonable tarmac, he’ll do the miles with little effort by me. I don’t think I could ask for more. So long as we don’t encounter Stalinists with ice-axes, this could be the long-awaited start of a beautiful friendship.

So I brought my TiBook to Worcester, thinking that the 15″ screen would be better than Hexie’s 1024 by 600 pixel tininess, even though TiBook (1Ghz G4, 768MB) is much slower than Hexie (1·6GHz Intel atom, 2GB). However, I dropped Tibook when I was about to put him into into his protective case! That and the jolting from cycling from Birmingham to Worcester has stuck his screen at minimal brightness: I can just see the vague outlines of windows but nothing usable.

TiBook has a DVI output but all the monitors here are VGA. I’ve not brought my DVI to VGA adaptor. Bah!

Meanwhile I need to retrieve something from Iggy’s time machine or Crashplan backup. I have a VNC app on the ipad but it’s being abominably slow. Oh well, good job it’s not urgent.

Update, 20 minutes later

I love TimeMachine and VNC. Despite long delays between screen refreshes, even over a supposedly fast broadband connection to the house and supposedly reasonable wifi to the iPad, I’ve got the stuff back onto Iggy’s desktop, ZIPped and emailed here.

Why

• did I spend an hour compiling a list of IP addresses in this flat?
• doesn’t the DHCP server in the modem/router assign IP addresses from a base address upwards? Here’s a list:
  

  IP address	Device	Port
  xxx.xxx.xxx.65	TimeCapsule	ethernet
  xxx.xxx.xxx.66	TV	ethernet
  xxx.xxx.xxx.67	DVD player	ethernet
  xxx.xxx.xxx.68
  xxx.xxx.xxx.69
  xxx.xxx.xxx.70	MacPro	ethernet
  xxx.xxx.xxx.71	netbook	airport
  xxx.xxx.xxx.72	jPhone-3GS	airport
  xxx.xxx.xxx.73	AppleTV	ethernet
  xxx.xxx.xxx.74	AirportExpress	ethernet
  xxx.xxx.xxx.75	iPad 1	ethernet
  xxx.xxx.xxx.76	iMac	airport
  xxx.xxx.xxx.77	Netbook	ethernet
  xxx.xxx.xxx.78	Powerbook G3	ethernet
  xxx.xxx.xxx.79
  xxx.xxx.xxx.80	TiBook	ethernet
  xxx.xxx.xxx.81
  xxx.xxx.xxx.82
  xxx.xxx.xxx.83	TiBook	airport
  xxx.xxx.xxx.84
  xxx.xxx.xxx.85
  xxx.xxx.xxx.86
  xxx.xxx.xxx.87
  xxx.xxx.xxx.88
  xxx.xxx.xxx.89	printer	ethernet
  xxx.xxx.xxx.90
  xxx.xxx.xxx.91
  xxx.xxx.xxx.92	Xserve	ethernet 1
  xxx.xxx.xxx.93
  xxx.xxx.xxx.94
  xxx.xxx.xxx.95
  xxx.xxx.xxx.96
  xxx.xxx.xxx.97
  xxx.xxx.xxx.98
  xxx.xxx.xxx.99
  xxx.xxx.xxx.100
  xxx.xxx.xxx.101
  xxx.xxx.xxx.102
  xxx.xxx.xxx.103	iPad 3	airport
  xxx.xxx.xxx.104	jPhone-4	airport
  xxx.xxx.xxx.105
  xxx.xxx.xxx.106
  xxx.xxx.xxx.107
  xxx.xxx.xxx.108	iPhone-4	airport
  xxx.xxx.xxx.109	kindle	airport
  xxx.xxx.xxx.110
  xxx.xxx.xxx.111
  xxx.xxx.xxx.112
  xxx.xxx.xxx.113	NAS	ethernet

   

  There has never been (113 − 64 =) 49 devices attached to this router.

Inheritance and anti-bork steps in progress

I appear to have inherited a digital TV that is also a VGA monitor. So I wanted to try it with Hexie, my laptop with the smallest built-in screen (1024 by 600 pixels). There is a fairly well-known trick here to stop screen-borkage when external monitors are plugged into hackintoshed netbooks. Even better, there’s an app for that.

However, it appears not to work under MacOS 10·6·7. I recall it working under 10·6·3, so I’m waiting for CarbonCopyCloner to safeguard Hexie’s current full install. Then I’ll put 10·6·3 back onto Hexie and see if the anti-bork app still works.

Resolution mismatch

Meanwhile, I note that the digital TV has 1440 × 900 (= 8 × 5) resolution. This doesn’t really suit a normal mac’s range of resolutions. For example, Pismo can supply the following:

• 640 × 480 (= 4 × 3)
• 800 × 600 (= 4 × 3)
• 1024 × 768 (= 4 × 3)
• 1152 × 870 (= 4 × 3·02)
• 1280 × 768 (= 5 × 3)
• **1280 × 960 (= 4 × 3)
• **1280 × 1024 (= 5 × 4)
• **1344 × 1008 (= 4 × 3)
• **1400 × 1050 (= 4 × 3)
• **1600 × 1200 (= 4 × 3)
• **1792 × 1344 (= 4 × 3)
• *1856 × 1352 (= 4 × 3)
• *1920 × 1440 (= 4 × 3)

The asterisked resolutions aren’t accepted by this monitor. The double-asterisked resolutions don’t use the full depth of this monitor. (None use the fill width.)

Last term’s marks have been confirmed: D1 (lowest level of ‘distinction’, 75 to 70%) for Software Development 2 and P5 (highest level of ‘mere pass’, 70 to 74%). I feel disappointed now but was amazed and pleased when the unconfirmed marks were first published.

Marks infographic remains unchanged.

So we’ve finally got around to upgrading the kitchen:

• There’s lots of sawing and banging from the kitchen.
• Most of the kitchen stuff is in the spare room, so that’s unusable as a bedroom. We’re cooking on a wee electric ‘camping’ hotplate.
• The kitchen table and new units (which arrived assembled, not flat-packed) are filling the lounge.
• Washing up is being done in the shower.
• Today a new dishwasher arrived, so that’s also in the lounge.
• Also, a new fridge-freezer arrived, so that’s in the spare room too. The food that should be in it is in a cardboard box in the spare room because the new appliance can’t be used for 24 hours after delivery.

Meanwhile, I’ve set up a blog, twitter feed and Facebook page for my summer project. So I can try to be professional there and keep my personal, opinionated guff here!

Oh and tomorrow we’re off to Arran to take the last stuff from my hostess’ parents house. She’s picking up a van at 7am and then going to work, then driving to Kilmarnock so she can go on the early ferry (because there’s no space on later ferries on Saturday). I’ll help her load packing materials into the van before she goes to work, then will go to see a potential employer (part-time mac IT support), then will cycle as far west as I can be bothered with, then go by train and ferry to Arran so I’m ready to help with the clearance. (Also, it allows me to avoid having a restless night in a hotel in Kilmarnock and setting off at stupidly-early o’clock on Saturday morning for Ardrossan.)

Progress, I guess!