Today I mostly .....

[Zelandeth]

Xantia this evening passed a nice little milestone.



Just nicely run in now!

[Zelandeth]

Have to confess to saying only nice things. Only thing not working is the light in the boot!

Even the climate control is working perfectly.

Comment this morning was that the car is "like new" from my husband's parents who I picked up from the airport...that's got to be high praise at 17 years and 200K miles.

...as for comfort, they were out like a light in less than 10 mins...if that doesn't say the car is comfortable I don't know what does!

Even the Americans like Gabrielle (as my Xantia has been named).

[Zelandeth]

206 was a pretty good little workhorse to be honest. We had a 2002 one in van form at the garage and it never gave us a bit of trouble despite going all over the country. Have to admit though that where PSA vehicles are concerned, if it doesn't have green blood at its heart I am not hugely likely to be interested. Well...unless you were to offer me a Pug 309 or 509 anyway as I have a soft spot for them that I can't explain with any sort of logic.

Today I mostly bodged the front exhaust silencer on the Saab, hopefully it will hold together until I can find someone to make me a front section (with deleted deresonator box) in stainless for sensible money.

[Zelandeth]

Today I mostly...

Attempted to move the server to a different room in the house, and ended up having to abandon the idea due to still patchy wireless coverage in there. As far as the web serving side of things is concerned it's fine enough given the relative simplicity of my site - however the NAS side of things is another story. Streaming video doesn't work so well when your wireless randomly decides to drop down to 1 meg a second.

So then had to haul the whole mess back up the stairs and put it back together again.

Then spent a significant chunk of the afternoon fighting with Google's webmaster console which was reporting a whole slew of errors. Most of which I eventually managed to sort out (the call for a style sheet on the homepage still has me baffled given that I've never even experimented with CSS and took me a while to find).

It's still complaining that the site isn't optimised for mobile devices...and that's not likely to change in the near future as I'll need to learn a heck of a lot more about web design before I can get my head around that side of things.

[Zelandeth]

Picked up a huge pile of Amiga Format Cover CDs from our local secondhand shop (about 35 of them I think). Given that I didn't have a CD-ROM back in the day, I got the floppy disc version of the mag so missed out on a lot of the software.

Given that my A1200 is still in storage up in Aberdeenshire, spent a bit of time this afternoon getting an emulator up and running properly here. Have OS3.9 etc running pretty stable now, and will start having a rummage around tomorrow to see what I've actually got.

Somewhere I have a CD floating around which contains most of the utilities and such I used to use, but goodness only knows where it's got to! ...Though thinking about it, I think I might actually have had a brief (and rare) fit of common sense and put it in the box the A1200 is stored in...

[Neil Chowney]

..well yesterday actually... completed a 55 mile off road cycle run from Tadley (Hants) to Pewsey (Wilts) and back.

six hours in the saddle.....

Everyone had a full suspension mountain bike, except me.... I did it on my Trek Hybrid city bike.

I am hoping to be able to sit down again on Wednesday......

[Zelandeth]

Well done, that's quite the trek!

Today I mostly changed the coolant in the Xantia (once I figured how the heck to get at the drain plug which is buried down at the offside front corner of the engine bay, obstructed by the AC compressor and the associated pipework). What came out was a lot cleaner than expected, but at least I know it's been done now, as XUD engines are very much not fond of being run hot.

Also did the first change of the LHM, which clearly hasn't been done in ages. What came out was no longer green, but had decayed to the colour of cider. I'll be changing it again in a couple of weeks given how horrible it was. Also plan to take the tank out for cleaning at the same time and clean the internal filters.

[Zelandeth]

Finally got around to poking one of my elderly laptops which had been sitting in a corner witha "will not boot" problem for about a year. Have ascertained that aside from a dead BIOS battery that the hardware is fine. Something odd has happened though in software and it will not boot from the hard drive as it stands. It just tries then hangs with a blinking cursor. I reckon it's something to do with the Drivespace system that's in use. Anyhow, gives me a good excuse to do a fresh OS install. It had Win95 on it, which isn't ideal on a 50MHz 486DX2 with 16MB of RAM and a 360Mb hard drive. Win 3.11 will however be perfectly happy on there (and doesn't need to install from 29 floppy discs!), and will suit its intended role just fine. That role basically being to run many of my old DOS games and Word 2.0 for writing purposes - if writing I prefer old machines like this as there's less to distract you. The main one I use for that purpose being a Toshiba T5200/200 (386/15MHz, 24Mb Ram, 200Mb hard drive and 640*480 pixel gas plasma display showing the world in 16 shades of orange). This little ThinkPad 755Cs is a bit more portable though...

Having dug another machine out that has both network access and a floppy drive means I should now be able to make replacement install discs and get things sorted tomorrow (mould has sadly got at my Win 3.11 discs, but I sensibly knowing their age and my parent's house back then having damp issues, backed up images of them in case this happened).

[Zelandeth]

So go on GB, spill the beans and tell us what it was?

Today I mostly...

Finally managed to sign up a contractor to sort our roof. Has only taken me about eight months. Fingers crossed the Atrium will actually be properly weatherproof again in a few days!

Had planned to be more productive this afternoon, however got sniped by opening a link a friend sent me, and then lost far more time than I would like to admit playing an utterly simple side scrolling jumping game by the name of Ridiculous Glitching. It is an utterly evil sod of a game, yet is strangely compelling.

I have sworn not to touch it tomorrow...or the computer at all for that matter as I've far too many things to get done.

[Neil Chowney]

ah, you may be waiting for a while for that answer.......

... today I mostly... watched the last flying Vulcan come over the top of the house at about 500 feet, and then make the return journey a couple of hours later.

[Zelandeth]

Lucky sods the both of you! Both for having the opportunity to take nice journeys and spend time around horses (let's face it, I may live in the town now, but spent most of my life on or within a mile of a farm), and was good friends with several horse owners from before I could walk. They're big, occasionally stubborn and somewhat daft creatures but I do very much miss being around them. Nothing can possibly be as stubborn as a Shetland pony though - I used to help keep a pair of them, and they could be a handful. Clever little fluffballs as well. Also, you Neil for seeing (and hearing) the Vulcan from home. Really glad I got to Waddington last year to see her in the air, surely there is not another aircraft that is as graceful in the sky? Concorde came damn close though I will admit...

[Zelandeth]

...and hopefully we now have a leak free roof...it is now raining so we will see...

[Gwtaylor]

Lied to the wife about popping to the shops, mams, walk the dog just so I can secretly go over lockup to tinker with lada

[Hannesb]

...spent the ENTIRE day replacing my clutch master cylinder, slave hydraulic hose and accelerator cable. Every single nut, bolt and clip fought for dear life to stay put where they were.

Won in the end. Clutch feels great and the petrol pedal is far smoother than before. Typical Niva; persevere and it will eventually work out, no matter what the job is...

[excossack]

Well yesterday, with assistance, we installed a SQBM1000N Tri-Band antenna to the side of the house. So now have 50mhz, 144mhz and 433mhz within one antenna.....Just need a radio capable of doing 50mhz now.

So that's now, Tri-band antenna, scanner antenna, HF end fed long wire.