Tim Crumpton

11:02 pm: CDs on a turntable
A mad idea from welshlad: have any of you ever seen a Compact Disc which has been cut in such a way that you can play it on a record player? With a groove cut into the top surface? No practical purpose, just a bit of fun.

07:16 pm: Poorly car
The standard Berlingo Electrique has developed a fault such that it no longer has the battery capacity to get to Manchester and back along the M56 (~50mph). This was its primary use, and so is effectively defunct :-(

I can still do 30 miles at 30mph, but that's no use for actually going places in a hurry.

I need to make faster progress on the long-range conversion using LiFePO4 cells. Presently waiting for a Battery Management System which will tell me when any one of the 51 series cells has reached its critical low voltage, so I don't destroy it as I drive along. I am not going anywhere without that.

07:59 pm: Where will it end...?
I now have a twitter account. Don't expect great wisdom from it.

https://twitter.com/timpootle

07:08 am: The universal pentatonic scale
In lieu of an actual entry, here is a video my sister pointed me at. Bobby McFerrin demonstrating that the pentatonic scale is in-built in the human brain at the World Science Festival neuroscience talk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk

01:25 pm: Facebook
Well, I finally gave in and signed up to Facebook. I intend to use it just as much as this LJ :-P
My name is Timothy Crumpton.

08:06 am: Late again
Mary, Stuart and me were invited to MattP's birthday bash last month. Pootle was at the vet's (more on this in another post) and Mary wanted to be close at hand, so I ended up driving to London on my own.

Mary had booked a hotel room at Latimer Place, so I drove there and tried to catch an underground train into London, but the Metropolitan line was closed for signal work so I drove further in and caught the tube at Harrow-on-the-Hill. This meant I arrived late at the Royal Institution, but not too late to have a very enjoyable evening.

I have finally got around to friending the people I met there. Hello!

Today I am expecting friends from Scotland to turn up and take my Landrover away. I have finally given up on the restoration project. The long-range electric car is my current top priority.

12:34 pm: Go go go
Most of my free time of late has been taken up with the Battery Vehicle Society, my own electric car project, or joining Mary on various social engagements.

Last night, for a change, I went on my own to the Manchester Go Club in central Manchester. Ccooke had introduced me to the game, but I have not played it often enough to get a good grip on the moves, mistakes, and particularly when to stop playing, so it was good to have a game with another beginner while an experienced player looked on, commenting as we went.

I hope I can afford the time to go regularly, but I am notoriously bad at keeping to engagements (and updating diaries, for instance) so we will see what happens.

This afternoon I am heading north to scatter Granny's ashes in Balintore, where Grandad was scattered 15 years ago. See you all next week.

11:51 pm: Jellyandicecream
Thursday will be my 35th birthday. To celebrate, I will be serving jelly and ice-cream from 19.45 at my house. Comment here or ring me or Mary if you're coming, so I'll know how much jelly to make.

01:24 am: Bloatware
I have been uploading CiviCRM for *checks* 2 HOURS now. What does it do with all those files?

Oh, hai. Happy new year

03:33 pm: Address book
I am trying to organise my address book in an electronic way that I (with my plain text mindset) and Mary (with her Windows Vista-Outlook outlook) will both be happy to use.

Vcard seems to be the standard I need, so I have just installed rolo to try out. Any other suggestions out there?

02:43 pm: NetworkManager on Intrepid Ibex
I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 earlier this month, and I discovered that autodetection of wireless networks had disappeared. This was quite disappointing as I was unable to use my laptop on recent trips to Kensington and Cardiff.

I have now learned that it was my own silly fault for leaving the following in my /etc/network/interfaces file:( Read more... )I shouldn't be allowed to use computers...

10:44 pm: keeping cron happy
I've been getting an email every week for 6 months saying:-
/etc/cron.daily/logrotate:
apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name,
using 192.168.0.4 for ServerName

I finally got around to Googling the answer, and did this:-
sudo vi /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

add the line:
ServerName localhost

then
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Hopefully that will fix it. Thank you ubuntuforums.

05:59 pm: Whoniversal appeal
I'm just back from a weekend in Cardiff with saintmaryuk, welshlad and tiggerbrasilf. We met lots of lovely people and heard many academic papers on various aspects of the Doctor Who universe. I even got to see a bit of the city. Big thanks to Melissa and her committee for organising the conference.

Back to work tomorrow for a one-day week, then I will be attempting to stuff 1.5 metric tonnes of Lithium into a Berlingo, in order to make it travel 300 miles between charges. Wish me luck.

11:35 pm: Next week
I will be rebuilding the Battery Vehicle Society website and forum on a new server.
This post is for me to hang notes on while I'm at it, in case they get lost.
Hello World!

08:37 am: Hardy heron
I did get back from Belize, in case you were wondering.

This weekend I finally got around to the big install I promised a year ago.

Now searching the repositories for cool stuff. Any suggestions?

So far I've picked ( Read more... )

09:09 pm: Hippo crypticism
MAN-GLA-YYC-YVR-BZE-BHX
See you all on Tuesday, all being well.

01:18 pm: Out and about
LTNP. Hello all. I took the train to Portsmouth via London on Saturday morning, to attend a Battery Vehicle Society meeting especially about Berlingos. It was a good weekend and I talked and listened in equal measure, and put faces to the names I see on the BVS webforum.

Yesterday brought me back to London. I walked from Waterloo to Walthamstow carrying ten days of clothes, seeing many interesting things on the way. I met up with Ruthi, who allowed me to rest my feet at her house until ccooke returned when I made my way to Stoke Newington where my sister lives, and from where I write this now.

This evening I plan to join the cookes again in their weekly social outing, and on Thursday I catch a train to Bordeaux from the Biennial seaplane meeting at Biscarosse, then back to work for my first day shift in over a year on Tuesday 6th May

03:16 pm: Elephant on a bicycle

Is it just me? No one in this house can see the elephant, wearing a woollen jumper, cycling away from me. They all say I'm mad.

03:01 pm: Birthday wishlist
Amazon, it turns out, do not sell everything. Various people have asked me to add to my wishlist, so anything not on my Amazon wishlist will be added here in comments.

Usual disclaimer- I do not expect anything from anyone. This list is to give you ideas about things I might like, if you insist. Also, for reference, I have no objection to receiving second hand stuff.

My birthday is the 5th of March.

10:51 pm: Mediaserver client
Kevin has been playing with his new PS3, and installed Tversity on his desktop PC as a media server, so he can then play the media downstairs.
( More boring linux struggles )