This entry is as long as Voyager‘s journey home…

Well, a lot of stuff has happened since I last posted. I’ll wibble about most it later (like when I’ve slept) but I’m pretty pleased to have my Pismo up and running – mostly.

You may recall that I bought the Pismo at the beginning of the year for £200. This seemed a bargain because they tend to sell for over £300. However, the vendor posted it with a CD in the CD/DVD-ROM drive. This may well be the cause of this drive ceasing to function within an hour of receipt. Emails to the vendor proved fruitless and so I was stuck until gave me a suitable CD-ROM drive which at least allowed me to install OS9 and other software. I was also able to use an external CD-RW via a SCSI/PC card I’d bought ages ago in preparation for when I’d be able to obtain a Pismo.

I then bought a wireless card which turned out only to work under OSX (or Windows) and a new power cable because the cable that came with my Pismo was broken. I also bought a docking station on eBay and a second-hand 30GB hard disk, a bit more RAM and a second-hand CD/DVD-ROM drive from Powerbook Fanatic.

However a couple of misfortunes occurred: I couldn’t take the housing off the dead CD/DVD-ROM drive to fit it on the new one and something stopped the battery from charging. The new power lead was giving out the right voltage so I became quite concerned that I’d fried something when installing the RAM and hard disk. At this point my boiler died: arranging to borrow money, getting quotes and other related impedimenta took far longer than desirable.

One result of having to borrow an exact number of thousands of pounds meant I had a little spare to sort the Pismo. So I sent her off to Powerbook Fanatic. More delay because electronic funds transfer took a week rather than the day both of us expected. (The funds were transferred to his account but his bank wouldn’t let him access the cash!) The week before last he got hold of the cash and so was able to buy the needed bits… My Pismo rejected several CD/DVD-ROM drives before he found one that behaved. I also bought an 80GB 5200 RPM hard drive (so I could use the 30GB as a back-up), more RAM and a real Apple wireless card that would work under OS9 and OSX.

So last Friday my baby came back to me. The wireless card works as expected (I’m sat in bed typing this, unplugged from everything but a power socket), the gigabyte of RAM is very welcome and the 30GB backup disk works fine (if a little slowly through the Pismo’s USB 1.1 ports). However, the CD/DVD-ROM drive is not fixed! It plays DVDs (apart from Being John Malkovich) but doesn’t mount music, original data or burnt data CDs.

Then a few crashes under OS9 messed up the hard disk so that I had to format and reinstall from scratch. I found that installing any OS via the CD drive doesn’t install DVD software. I could install OS9 with DVD software via ethernet from my desktop Mac but the OSX installer CDs have to be run from the machine they’re installing.

I’ve copied the DVD software from my desktop Mac and it seems to work. However I can’t play CDs in the CD/DVD-ROM drive and OSX doesn’t support hot-swapping of drive modules. (OS9 does!) Instead swapping over the drives necessitates a shut-down. This is rather annoying so the drive is going back to Powerbook Fanatic for a final try. It behaved in his powerbooks so I suspect that either my Pismo or I are doing something wrong.

In the meantime, I can revel in the following:

Upgrade steps left:

1. Get the CD/DVD-ROM drive repaired.
2. If it can’t be repaired, replace it urgently with a brand-new CD/DVD-RW drive.
3. If it can be repaired, the replacement will happen after 31st December 2005.
4. Move up to OSX Tiger (MacOS 10.4)
5. Upgrade the processor to 900MHz.
6. Sell my desktop Mac to retro-fund some of this.

Even without these, my Pismo rocks: enough RAM and a big enough disk never to choke and I finally get to watch Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii in bed.

• I can’t stop being unpleasant
• MakePovertyHistory rally
• yearning to fly
• filing my flight plans
• on the runway

Take off due 31st December!

Many things happened today. Some, such as a pleasant conversation with my boss and being given some rice, were pleasant and fulfilling.

However, others were not good. For example, I had to pass on some news today. The recipient will have been very disappointed and saddened. I took no pleasure from it.

One, in particular, was utterly terrible: the London bombings. I haven’t heard that anyone I know has been directly affected. My cousin works for the London ambulance service in a co-ordination/dispatch role – no news from her so far but hopefully no news is good news.

I had thought my species might grow up…

… so I’ve spent the time I would have prefered to spend sleeping putting up a few photos from the last few months. Go here and then scroll down to Random Gruntings.

Further details of why my body-clock is knackered to go up this week, once I’ve had a chance to put my thoughts in order. On Monday, I have Community Council; Tuesday Fairtrade meeting; Wednesday sorting a mate’s mac; so this may not be until Thursday.

Canada is cool – but this isn’t news

However, they appear to have homo milk

Blogged simply as examples of life’s rich travesty, and the amusing thought that bus tribulations, just like buses themselves, don’t occur for ages, then several occur at once.

1. The air-conditioning failed on the bus taking and I to Glenrothes this afternoon. and fellow passengers travelling further on this route were transferred to another vehicle and went on their merry way.
2. After visiting a friend in Glenrothes, I got back to Glenrothes bus station and found that the toilets had closed at 7·. I was in dire need of a toilet and by the time I’d found one and returned to the bus station, my bus to St Andrews had departed.
3. An hour later, the next bus to St Andrews appeared to arrive. However, this bus’ fan-belt had broken en route from Dunfermline and so this bus was going no further. The driver contacted his depot to arrange a replacement bus. It arrived a few minutes later, allowing resumption of the journey without further delay…
4. …until a ticket inspector boarded at Cupar, causing a few minute’s more delay as passengers scrabbled for their screwed-up, tossed-away tickets

Was this blog-entry really worth my time spent typing it or your time spent reading it?

Just had an email in from my brother who is doing military things in Iraq. Among other things he says

It’s strangely enough quite a bit more relaxed than the last time I was here. Boiling my bum off is definately one way of describing what I’m up to. We have broken 50°C and it could get as hot as 60, which apparently is fookin warm!

For those of you who still lament the demise of the florin and guinea, 50°C = 122°F and 60°C = 140°F.

After some chat about an impending family event, he says

Anyway – basically I’m safe and well and enjoying being all healthy as we are eating well and we are decidely alcohol free…

My brother’s current safety doesn’t stop a Pink Floyd song and a Kate Bush song going round and round my head.