Techie Turmoil

I baked some bread

JT — Sat, 15 May 2010 21:47:46 +0000

Here is my first attempt at home-made bread. We used to have a bread maker, but it conked out. So I thought I’d have a go at doing it by hand. Not bad eh?

Time for a new phone

JT — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 21:20:56 +0000

It’s time for me to get a new phone. I’ve had my beloved G1 for 18 months now. It doesn’t seem that long. Normally by this time I’m desperate to get rid of the phone and get a new one, rueing the day I signed up for the contract. But not this one. It has been the best phone I’ve ever had, by a mile. In fact I would go so far as to say it has been life-changing! The only reason I’m getting a new phone is because I can get a cheaper contract now and the newer Android phones are much faster. I’m glad I’ve been an early adopter of the platform though (I got the phone the day it came out in this country). It has been a fun journey and a real pleasure to see loads of others follow suit and enjoy the freedom of a real smartphone.

This will mean a change in theme for this much neglected blog of course. Since the theme is based on the G1, it won’t really be relevant anymore. I think I’ll go for a different vibe this time. Gotta keep moving.

Can’t wait ’til my HTC Desire comes on Saturday. Super fast and slinky!

Canon iP1500 Ubuntu Driver

JT — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:53:15 +0000

The iP1500 is a cheap, reliable little printer, but Canon didn’t bother with Linux drivers until recently. They now publish a driver for this printer, but it is a bit old and compatible with RHEL 3 and Suse 9.1, so in rpm format. Even after converting the packages with alien, there is still some fiddling required, so I’ve made a package that depends on the three Canon packages and does the necessary tweaks after. You can get it here. I’ve included all three Canon packages and mine in the compressed archive. Just extract it to a new folder and install all the packages. Either click on them in your file manager to install with your packaging tool, in which case install them in the order: bjfilter-common, bjfilter-pxmaip1500, bjfilter-pcmaip1500-lprng, canon-ip1500; or on the command line, cd to the folder and type dpkg -i *.deb (if you are using 64bit, you will need dpkg -i –force-architecture *.deb). Then plug in your printer. You will then need to add it manually via the printer configuration tool. Be sure to select the HiRes driver version.

Leckhampton Hill

JT — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:35:35 +0000

We went for a quick wander up “Leccy”. There are such amazing trees up there. We took some photos this time too. Just on Nai’s iPhone. I think I’ll take the little Canon next time.

Cleeve Hill Golf Course

JT — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:28:10 +0000

Nai and I have started walking. We are going to try to go as regularly as possible. Both to get fit and to see more of the beautiful countryside around us. We are so privileged to live in such a beautiful part of the world and yet we so rarely take the time to enjoy it.

Our first walk was up good old Cleeve Hill. We parked in the quarry car park by the golf course, which had a lake in it, due to lots of recent rain. We charged on through in our little Yaris, but it was quite funny to see the dog walkers in their 4x4s gingerly going through the water, trying not get them dirty!

We walked round the back of the golf course and saw some Aberdeen Angus cows. Then we carried on round to the front, where the view over Cheltenham and Bishops Cleeve is spectacular. No piccies of this one, as I hadn’t thought about blogging our walks yet.

Nice rack!

JT — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:19:26 +0000

After battling with my server rack for most of Sunday, trying to put some sliding rails in, I gave up. I got everything working again, having stripped the lot down, for 1:30AM. EUUGGHH! Tim Beaumont helped me have another crack yesterday, but we got no further. The stupid things just wouldn’t fit. Anyway, today I had success! Bit of a bodge job, but it works. So now I have nice slidey servers, ready for my new server room, which will be much smaller.

My little brother got married

JT — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:11:09 +0000

Finally my brother Simon got married, at the tender age of 30! It was a really nice day at Cowley Manor. Just a few people there, but it was great to catch up with Olly and others I haven’t seen for ages. Well done bro and congrats to Sam. She looked great. And there was a nice bit of snow, for a finishing touch. Nai took some great photos, which are about to land on Facebook.

A triumph for authenticity

JT — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 22:01:38 +0000

So Rage Against the Machine got Christmas number one ahead of X-Factor Joe’s dull effort. What a result for fans of real, authentic music. I think a lot of people backed the campaign just to vote against X-Factor, but it was a double bonus for me as I really like Rage’s music. I bought their self-titled album (with the No.1 song Killing in the Name) back in 1992 when it first came out – on tape! So this was a good opportunity for me to not only buy the single to support the bid for Christmas No. 1, but to buy the album again – this time on CD. What a cracking album it is. Superb musicianship with raw energy and, yes, lots of rage. But that’s a good thing to let out in rock.

New location

JT — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:03:47 +0000

So we decided to ditch http://jtandnait.co.uk/. It was just a place for our blogs and the site itself was a load of old junk. So I have moved my blog here – to http://techieturmoil.co.uk/. Update your links everyone… I know I have millions of readers out there!

From my phone

JT — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:32:59 +0000

So I thought, since I’ve got a spangly new G1 blog theme, I ought to blog from my G1. It’s really easy, thanks to the wpToGo app. Go Android and WordPress!