Not So Splendid Isolation

Came in to work today and none of the machines in my office had a network connection. Wah. Anyone walking past my office and glancing in through the window in the door will have seen me sitting scratching my head and looking forlorn. It looked like my little box had broken.

The little box in question provides a nicely isolated link to the campus LAN. It is how I manage to connect my varied and disparate systems to the outside world. I love the idea of a physical firewall between my stuff and everyone else's. Except when it breaks.

Essentially, the lights came on but there was nobody at home. All the network ports were lit up, but not showing any traffic. Trying to ping the device didn't work, and neither did the web configuration. So I tried to reset it. That didn't work either. Double wah.

I was all set to bin the thing, and try to get by with actual links to the real network (which scared me a bit), when it occurred to me that this was a DLink device, and therefore it had a lousy power supply. I opened my "magic cupboard of bits" and, what do you know, there was a spare 5 volt 2 amp power adapter which I'd put aside for no good reason ages ago.

And it works. And I can type this. And you can read it.  Go me.

Good Weather

I love it when we have good weather at the start of the semester.

The New Session

Today brings the start of a new Academic Year at Hull. There are of course lots of things to worry about. Sorting out all the paperwork that a new session brings, Finding all the lectures on the sprawling campus. Getting on with all the new people that are bound to be there. Keeping up with the material in the courses.  And worrying about fitting in.

But that's enough of my problems.

Welcome to all our new (and returning) students.

Abseil in London

Today was the day for number one's daughter to dangle from a rope in a good cause (actually the day was a few weeks back, but it was cancelled due to inclement weather). I was actually quite pleased when it was put off, it gave us another excuse for a trip to London.

Today the weather seemed anxious to pay us back for last time, it was the best we've had in ages. After the early morning mist the day was an absolute belter. We had a walk round Oxford Street before the off.

I liked these reflections.

Then it was time to go up to Guy's Hospital and the main event. The building looked even higher than last time we were there, but daughter gamely went off to do the deed.

Well, would you abseil down this?

This time there were no hitches, and they even had a height immune cameraman at the top to record things properly.

View from the top

If you want to sponsor number one daughter retrospectively, (and after seeing this picture you must think she has earned it) then visit here.

Last Call for Collectormaina

This might be the last hurrah for our trips to Milton Keynes. We've found out that after today the whole shebang is moving to a football stadium. We've been going for a while, and the mix of celebrities and interesting stands has held our attention up to now and  because there is also a Lego shop (and an Apple store) at the shopping centre where it is held we've seen it as worth the trip.

Anyhoo,  we got up at an early hour and set off. Number one son was meeting us there and wanted to snag one of the Serenity cast.

Morena puts pen to paper..

So, who is this cool gentleman?

..and this chap (a clue, his part is going to get a lot bigger in the future..)

Not sure if we'll do this again, but it has been fun while it lasted. I bought another watch, and then we retired to a Travelodge to watch "Strictly Come Dancing" (although I was more pre-occupied with checking the score in the Hull City match - which we won. Yay!).

London tomorrow.