Tom Fotherby’s Blog

Fiction, 4/10 - June 2008

Perhaps this book was a bit too clever for me? I found following the several different characters hard and always assumed the relationship between them would either be explained or inter whine at the end. I was also aware of some more complex literature techniques being used that I’m sure my old English teachers would love - I got a bit of the symbolism and metaphor but probably missed the “greatness” of it. Anyway, I found it hard work to read. I enjoyed learning a bit about old Chinese customs and also a bit about how older people might view younger people.

Fiction, 8/10 - June 2008

Firstly, I realised with a shock that this book wasn’t going to have a hint of mathematics in it but I got over the disappointment because I liked learning about Zoo keeping and I found a boy wanting to be in 3 religions funny.

The extreme situation that the boy found himself in was an interesting read and a powerful story but because it wasn’t a true story I felt the factual nature of the book could be deceiving - a tiger would not necessarily behave as described in the book! It’s like a adult fairy tale. The make-believe island comforted me because it reminded me this was a work of fiction - I wonder if this is what the author intended?

I liked the ending an awful lot - Which version was the truth? It puts another spin on the potential fictional aspects of the tiger.

We’ve finally finished the living room:

Before:
After:

It is much more laptop and console friendly. It used to have 1 socket, now it’s got 10. It used to have 1 storage heater, now it’s got 2 central heating radiators. It used to have nicotine coloured wall-paper, now it’s got new plaster and fresh paint. Other work includes a soft carpet, dimmable lights, DVD storage space, gas & electric meter relocation, TV socket, Telephone socket - It’s much more comfortable now.

I had to replace a rotten floor joist:

Sci-Fi, 7/10 - Apr/May 2008

I didn’t know anything about US politics until I read this book. I’m not much interested in politics let alone US politics but the book did an excellent job of hiding any potential boringness in character descriptions, a fast plot and a single super interesting sci-fi concept which any cyberpunk fan would enjoy thinking about (e.g. Imagine Google in your head).

It was quite topical because there is a US political fight going on for real at the moment, Hillary Clinton vs Barack Obama for the democratic candidate and I think it helped me enjoy the book. The book focuses on media manipulation tricks that politicians try - puppet mastery I guess. The book wasn’t particularly about computers and didn’t have a broad sci-fi scope, it was more focused on a single sci-fi idea which was explored in depth. I enjoyed it quite a bit (I enjoy anything with powerful characters that demonstrate a strong will).

This quality half-terrabyte Western Digital external hard drive is to replace our now broken NAS drive. Instead of using a NAS drive we have created a Samba share on our server which we find more convenient.

This 2nd drive is for backing up our files using rsync to mirror our primary hard disk.

We map the USB hard disk on our Ubuntu 8.04 machine by putting the following in /etc/fstab:

/dev/sdb1   /home/fotherby/Bitbucket    ext3    user,rw 0       0

We call our backup drive “Bitbucket” which is a name we learnt from the IC DOC labs. We do a nightly backup by putting the following script in /etc/cron.daily/ourBackup:

#!/bin/sh

rsync -a --delete /home/fotherby/OurStuff /home/fotherby/Bitbucket/CharmeleonMirror/
rsync -a --delete /var/www/tomfotherby /home/fotherby/Bitbucket/CharmeleonMirror/

• -a: Archive. This causes rsync to maintain things like file permissions and ownerships (same as -rlptgoD).
• –delete: This tells rsync to delete files that are no longer on the server from the backup. The delete is done BEFORE any of the new data is transferred.

We are having the dining room and sitting room re-wired and re-plastered:

Before Plastering:
During Plastering:
After Plastering:
After Painting:

It’ll be nice to not have to look at the bare brickwork any more. Plus having more than one socket in the room will be a real luxury.

Since we are having our dining room re-plastered and have stripped the wallpaper, it is the right time to have our window replaced with French doors. We have planned to do it ever since we were looking round the house when it was still on the market:

Before:
After:

It has made the room much brighter. A big improvement which I guess won’t be fully realised till the rest of the room is done.

Chloe’s company, Panasonic, have made the whole Thatcham mobile phone development site redundant and are giving the staff their PCs which I’m thinking of as a leaving present.

It is a Dell Optiplex GX270 which is a good upgrade but exactly the same form factor as the previous GX260 : CPU: Pentium 4 3GHz RAM: 1GB DDR SDRAM.

Northern Lights

Children’s Fiction, 8/10 - Dec/Jan 07/08

I love reading children’s books, you know you’re in for an adventure. I watched the movie at the cinema the same day that I finished the book - I can understand why they sweetened the ending because it’s horrible in the book. I find doing the comparisons interesting, for example for me, Iorek Byrnison was a much stronger character in the book but Lee Scoresby was a stronger character in the film.

My Thoughts:

• I found the companionship of the daemons a lovely idea.
• It was brilliantly eerie in the Arctic experimentation centre.
• Excitingly dark ending

The Subtle Knife

Children’s Fiction, 7/10 - Jan 2008

The magical world that was created now gets rationalised a little with science (dark matter) and, as expected from the beginning, our own world is linked with the world from the first book with a new character, Will Parry.

My Thoughts:

• I thought the soul-eating Spectres were a bit weak (certainly not as chilling as the Dementors from Harry Potter).
• It turns out the golden compass is programmable on a computer and it’s possible to write a speech-to-dust-to-text plugin in one evening. P! Technology these days is so advanced.
• There’s a funny section of sexual innuendo between Mrs Coulter and Sir Charles.
• There’s a gruesome fight with the kids on the stone tower. Kid’s fighting other kids to the death is disturbing.
• The ending is completely disappointing. It’s a cliff-hanger like an episode of Eastenders - not a fully rounded story!

The Amber Spyglass

Children’s Fiction, 6/10 - Jan 2008

For me, the Trilogy has weakened and is not so hard to put down anymore. The land of the dead and the Harpies didn’t work too well in my opinion but I guess “Live life to the full” is a nice message to give kids.

My Thoughts:

• I liked the concept of the Mulefa even though it’s really hard to imagine an animal on wheels. They are good green role-models for the kids.
• I liked the gruesome part where Iorek Byrnison feasted on his friend, Lee Scoresby’s dead body.
• Childhood love is hard to pull off. “Their just teenagers, what do they know about love?”
• The ending is sad. It’s also an anti-climax because Lyra should be treated as a queen now? and won’t Will just go to prison?

All in all, a wonderful trilogy, something I’ll be reading my kids along with Narnia and Harry Potter.

We have a charging area in our house where the chargers for our phones, camera, Gameboy and Bluetooth stuff live. It’s always a mess of cables and adaptors so I decided to tidy it up.

A bit blue peter - But it’s better than before:

Before:

After:

1) I bought a box from B&Q that seemed the right size to fit a 6 socket power extension inside and felt quite sturdy.
2) I used a dremel to cut a plug-sized hole in the side of the box so I could fit the adaptor inside.
3) I used a drill to make a hole in the top of the box for each device I wanted to have a charger for.
4) I used sellotape on the inside of the box around the holes to stop the cables slipping back into the box.

The inside of the box can be as messy as you like:

I crashed poor Lance in a nasty high speed collision. I was driving down a duel-carriageway, came round the corner and saw the road was blocked with cars from a previous accident, couldn’t stop in time, went into a skid, spun 180 and crashed going backwards into a stationary van. There were 8 cars involved but no-one was hurt.

I got a Peugeot 206 which has a smaller engine but still feels like an upgrade. It cost £4000, was registered in 2003 but has only 25000 miles on the clock.

These are the things I like about it:

1) It has a “clicky thing” (remote central locking). Magic.
2) There’s more room on the window sill to rest my elbow while driving.
3) The seat belts actually roll up into the car when you get out (rather than flopping around and getting in the way of the door)
4) You can open the boot without using the key (i.e. don’t have to turn the engine off to open the boot like I did with the Ford Ka).

I feel sad that I’ve finally replaced my old PC which my dad gave me as a 21st birthday present. It was just too sluggish, even for browsing the web.

I bought a widescreen Sony Vaio. It’s interesting to compare the specs because it shows how much technology has advanced in the last 7 years:

Kix also bought a Sony. She chose one quite a lot smaller and lighter so it wouldn’t be uncomfortable on her lap (VGN-FZ21S). It only weights 2.8Kg’s but she has a smaller screen (15.4″ instead of 17″). Hers has a Blu-ray drive, bluetooth, Wireless N, faster HDD, extra 0.2GHz CPU and a extra 128MB of Video memory.

Old PC:

New Laptop:

I was very impressed at how well Ubuntu 7.10 runs on the laptop. The webcam doesn’t work but the wireless and battery indicator work fine.

One problem with the Ameo is that the webbrowser doesn’t open at your homepage, it opens with a useless T-Mobile page. To change this do the following:

1. Install “PHM Registry Editor” (smartphone edition). This is a free program that allows you to edit the registry values. Get it from http://www.phm.lu/Products/PocketPC/RegEdit.
2. Once installed, Run it and go to the root of the registry keys: Select Menu -> “Go to my Device”
3. Then drill down to the value we want. Go: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> HTC -> PIEplug (NOTE: You have to select with the touchscreen, then press Enter on the keyboard to drill down)
4. Select “Values” and you should see 3 items (home, Launch, WebStub).
5. Rename “home” to “homeBK” (to make a backup)
6. Select Menu -> New Value -> String. Then enter the URL of your start page. I suggest “about:blank” which will mean the browser starts with a blank page (nice and fast). When you have entered, select “Done”.
7. A value called “New Value #1″ will have been created. Rename it to “home”.
8. That should be it. Exit PHM and open the browser to check it worked.

One of the reasons for getting my Ameo instead of a normal mobile phone was so I could write my journal whilst on the coach to work. But the keyboard that comes with it turned out to be inadequate. So I got a replacement:

The HTC website for the Ameo has a link to a list of suggested accessories which includes the “Freedom Universal Bluetooth Keyboard for HTC (QWERTY)”

To get the “Freedom Universal Keyboard” working with the Ameo, follow these steps:

1. Download a file called “WM05SP.exe” from
   www.freedominput.com (The page is titled “Windows Mobile Smartphone 05″).

2. Make sure your Ameo is attached to your Windows PC and that ActiveSync is running. When you double-click “WM05SP.exe” it will install a progrm in C:\Program Files\Freedom Universal Keyboard. The install.bat file in this program didn’t work for me so I manually moved “bthkeyb.ARM.CAB” (a file that was included in the install) onto the Ameo via ActiveSync and installed the CAB directly from the Ameo.
3. After installation, a new icon will have appeared in “Programs” called “Bthkeyb”. The first time you click it, you will be given a “Device Code” and asked for a passcode.
4. To get the passcode, go to www.freedominput/unlock.html and fill in the form including the “Device code” and a 7 digit number on a sticker from the back of the instruction book that came with the keyboard. The form asked whether I was sure before continuing - Press the “Confirm” button to get a passcode which you enter using the Ameo onscreen keyboard.
5. The keyboard program shows a almost blank info screen except the bottom-right corner has a button labled “Main”. Select “Main”, then choose “General”.
6. On the keyboard, move the switch to “HID mode” so the LED flashes green, then press and hold the “B” button. On the Ameo, click the “Bluetooth keyboard” checkbox.
7. The connection is automatically made in a few seconds and a message “Keyboard was connected” pops up - it’s then safe to release the “B” button. Test the keyboard works in MS Word Mobile.

Problems:

• The connection isn’t permanent - You have to reconnect the keyboard every time you want to use it.
• The backspace key doesn’t seem to work (delete does though). The home and end keys don’t seem to work either.
• You can’t seem to hold down shift and then use the arrow keys to create a text selection area (vital for cut&paste).
• The keyboard doesn’t work in every program. It works in Word and Text Messages though.