Tuesday 23nd June

I have finally returned to Xandros on the main memory, but have now managed to configure other OPs on two 16Gb memory cards. One provides Fedora 12 with a dual boot including Xandros. The other memory card has Debian 5.

So the little Eeepc900 can now host 3 ops. Fedora has also been updated using Yum.

I intend to leave the Asus noteook alone for a while now!

My Eeepc900

I have been a bit unsatisfied with my notebook recently. So I bought a memory card with 16G to try and install another distro. I have gone back to Xandros for various reasons and wanted to get back to Ubuntu. I had two attempt to make it dual boot and both failed.

So I then installed Ubunto 9.10 and immediately upgraded it to 9.20. It seemed excellent and I noticed that the grub file picked up the new 16Gb memory card.

I was temped io install something else but decided to stay with a single boot and try things out on Ubuntu first.

Eldy works fine on XP, I had some problems with linux since it found the Italian version and not being fluent in Italian decided to abandon that for the moment. I have made a few friends on Eldy and chat to them when I can.

We had the Club open Day last Thursday and 2 ladies came from the Pulborough club. I demonstrated Eldy to them and they will take the message back to Jim Noble who is their teacher.

Ekiga still works fine on Fedora, I spoke with Brian the other day. Sadly he had been burgled and lost all his woodcarving tools!

I might have gone to the Surrey LUG BBQ tomorrow but could not find out where it is being held.

That is enough for now!

June 15th 2010

Much has happened since the last post election blog. We are now at Helena's house, really to see Jack our new great grandson for the first time. He is now 7 weeks old, a bonny boy. We also saw his mum, Susie, and her daughter, our great granddaughter Hollie.


Over the week end we had Anthony Long to stay, with his wife Julie and daughter Lizzie. She was "having a look"at Sussex University. She might read Chemistry.

I haven't had much luck in persuading people to use Ekiga. I had not been in touch with Brian in NZ for a while and when I did, I had very bad news. He had been burgled and all his woodwork tools had been taken.He had insurance so only the Insurance company will lose outy. But what a hassle! I am depressed to learn that such things could happen in such a Christian Country.

My sister remains cool after our trip to Dore, it seems difficult to get her to write or telephone except by prodding. She seems OK and she certainly gets out and about.

Christina is off with her friend Penny to Matthew in Budapest. We leave for interlaken and Geneva in July, so holiday time is nearly here.

I have spent hours in the garden and things are almost tamed. The soft fruit should be good.

It is very pleasant to rest here with Helena, it is so nice to do absolutely nothing at all apart from using the Eeepc900 and ordering sm memory so that I can put other linux distros on it apart from Xandros!

The Election Result

I really feel pleased to see the spin merchants leaving Downing Street at last. Probably they were only doing what was asked of them, but "Lord" Mandelson had been dropped twice from the Cabinet and was in my opinion (not worth much) brought back to steady the Labour rocking boat, which he did of course. Alistair was very unpleasant with the BBC and the incidents at that time reflect very badly on the Government.

The clock has been turned back 70 years and we now have an interesting coalition set up. It has started well with denial of airport extension which must be a godsend to those who live near them.

Again in my opinion a full inclusion of all parties in Government would be better still. As it is we have too many Scots, when they want to be independent of England what right have they to help govern us? I really have trouble understanding their thick accents and as for the Irish contingent who take the money and the office space and expenses but refuse to sit....well it beggars belief.

What with Health and Safety and the Data protection stuff we have been clobbered by New Europe thinking and spin. Heath must have been out of his mind to get us into Europe, Norway was much wiser. His house in Salisbury is nice and he had wonderful Lunch Parties with Royalty present. So he was a very good pianist, conductor and yachtsman. We have visited his old home as it was opened to public gaze.

Good bye to New Labour and especially to all those crook MP's. They really took us for a ride!

Perhaps the BBC will be reformed and the Today Program people who hang on long after they should be retired get the push they deserve!

To Hulavington and Serendipity

Left home at 9.50 went to Guilford and on to the M3, Rain all the way Came off the motorway near Wooton Basset and wrogly went to Wroughton. Managed to turn, retrace our steps and find a £5 a head linch at the Prince of Wales pub at Coped Hall nearby. Met a talkative couple qho told us about the heros and also wartime aces like Galland.

To Alisom's for coffee and biscuits and a rest until Kate came home. Met up with Kate and Jennifer. Phoned my sister and chatted a bit. Chis appeared and after a light collattion of in Kates VW to Box for a cncert at the Methodist Church. Very pleasant, back to Kate fort a goodnight drink and then back to Serendipity for a good night's rest.

Up at 8.30 to go for the paper and then breakfast. Then to Kates. Picked up David Long's latest blog from Chateau David, phoned Margaret and told her about it. To rthe concert in the evening, Ursula thought it was wonderful. Back to Kate for a goodnight drink and then ack to Alisons. This morning good breakfast,compimented Alison on her marmalade and was presented with a pot to take home. Church at Hullavington, met someone who was in Harare andsaw him later in th pub where we took Kate for lunch.

eft Kate ar 2 pm and home for 5 pm. Exhausted,,,,,!

Network Connection

For some time I have tried wireless connection to the network using whatever is on the computer or even an Asus usb "dongle". Some computers are fine some are not, some "disros" are fine and some are not. It depends on the kernel, on the device and on the patience that you can afford to display.

Tony Martin at our club told me about the mains wiring connection, and it is superb. I bought 2 devices from DLink and they are simply wonderful. Furthermore they run at 100Gb instead of 50 or so. Until something else comes along I will use them unless the wireless connection on the computer that I am using comes on immediately.

I have sent hours on many ditros trying out wireless and frankly it is a waste of time unless you learn something from enjoying yourself on the terminal or console.

If I had enough knowledge about unix and linux I could probably achieve everything. But the learning curve is long for many things, although very short for most. So I have spent all the time that I want on wireless connecting for the moment.

Saturday 6th February

A confession

I am told by my wife that I don't listen hard enough to give a good sensible answer to a question. She also tells me that I need a deaf aid! Well I gon't agree with her.

Recently I have become interested in ip cameras. In fact I bought one, made it work and then took it to my son as a Christmas present. It needed a local network and as he hadn't one I took a surplus sky router and used it off line to provide the network. It worked ok but we were unable to incorporate it in a system there.

Subsquently I had a tip from the LUG and found cheaper version. By a slip of the fingers I ordered 2 not 1. So having made it function I asked my grandson to try it out and produce an instruction sheet in English instead of Taiwnese. So far he cannot make it work wirelessly.

I din't find it easy, but made it work, took it to the club last Thursday and teased the members with it. Alas when I took it home I had some problems getting it going again! It works now, but I am convinced that my IT skills are equivalent to those of a monkey. If a monkey has enough time he will suceed in playing The Blue Danube, just by bashing away at the piano keys. So it seems to me that often I have some know how but miss a few important steps.

The same goes for Apache2, it is fine on Linux but a pain on Macintosh!

The learning curve gets steeper with age I fear!