Digital Fun

Since I’ve been on holiday for a while I’m starting to get the urge to actually do stuff and mend things. Today I thought I’d start small by sorting out the aerial wire to a TV that, since the digital TV signal was “upgraded”, fails to play half the channels it used to. I attempted to solve this by improving the signal a bit. This turns out to be a multi-step process:

1. Replace nearly working connection with disconnected wire. Discover that there is now no picture at all.
2. Connect input to disconnected wire. But there is still no picture.
3. Search for and install antenna amplifier that has been lying around for a while and insert into signal chain to provide much needed boost.
4. Find that there is still no picture.
5. Discover that output is now being sent down wrong wire.
6. Connect to right wire and note that picture returns and mostly works. But not as well as before we started.
7. Discover that antenna amplifier is not actually plugged in. Plug it all the way into the socket. Now the picture is watchable, and we are just about back to where we were six months ago.

While I was up in the loft I got down an old computer from way back, just to see if it still works. It does, and so we recorded some old music files from it. Some of them go back to 1991. This was a ground breaking machine at the time, and it does boot fast from its 80MB disk. Any ideas which machine?

Sale Hunting

Went out today to get some things in the sale. Note to self, if you need to use a pound coin to get a trolley to fetch stuff from the store it is best if you actually have such a coin with you. Otherwise you can’t get what you want.

Actually, I could have solved this problem quite easily, but I reasoned that if I bought anything I’d have to carry it home and fit it (we were in a DIY store) and so this worked out quite well. Did manage to get a 10 metre rope light for only 10 pounds though, which struck me as good value. No idea what I’ll use it for, but it looks nice even coiled up.

Back in Hull

Drove back to Hull today. Again the roads were very friendly and the journey was smooth.

Christmas Cheer

Had a great Christmas. Got my Chumby, which even as I write is cycling through a bunch of widgets. I’m going to have a go at writing some widgets of my own when I get back to Hull.

I also got some eggs with surprises in, some books, slippers and of course socks. But nice ones.  I hope you all got what you wanted as well.

We went for a walk after lunch. Number one son took the best picture.

Driving Off for Christmas

Today we drove the length of the country (or a substantial part of it) to meet up for our Christmas celebrations. The weather has been dodgy to say the least, and last night the radio waves were full of dire warnings about dangerous roads, sheet ice and fog. There was no mention of a plague of locusts, but they were forecasting pretty much everything else.

We set off anyway. The direction we were going was away from the bad stuff, and things are supposed to be warming up. And so it turned out. The drive was actually quite boring and we arrived (with all our presents) in good time.