Today I mostly .....

[Neil Chowney]

killed my second Krups coffee grinder... second one in two years.....not happy.

Having to chew the beans into small peices so I can put them in the Gaggia expresso machine.

Time for a Rancilio Rocky methinks.....

[Zelandeth]

My Niva used to kill track rod ends for a passtime. Never did find out why, but as they got changed every six months or so they never had time to seize on and cost so little I never really did too much digging for the cause...

Last few days have involved changing the Xantia's glow plugs when another one failed leaving me with only two working ones. Well...changed three of them. Couldn't for the life of me get to no 4. Need to pick up some spanners to mutilate into the right shape. Would be so much easier to do if the engine and fuel pump weren't there! Starts instantly now though without blanketing half of the town in a grey haze!

Also seem to have finally stopped the water ingress problem, was due to the seam sealer around the bootlid hinges shrinking and cracking. Solution was to slather the area in Tigerseal. Seems to have worked!

[Zelandeth]

It was just the outer two. Think I'd got changing them down to about ten minutes!

I did look into it a bit and couldn't honestly see any reason for the wear. Tried several brands too without any difference...ended up going back to genuine because they were so cheap!

[Zelandeth]

...established that the Xantia really needs a new battery. Left the lights on by mistake for about 20 minutes...and that got me to the point that the dash lights were barely glowing.

It's on the charger in "recovery" mode now, will see if that does anything. Will take it over to Halfrauds tomorrow and get it on their fancy tester and see what it says. Don't worry, I wouldn't even entertain the idea of buying a battery from them at their prices!

[GvidoR]

Been a while since I last posted so some things have happened to the Escort.

* 3 more LED's behind the dash
* Replaced licence plate bulb
* New oil and oil filter
* 4 new tyres - Kumho KU31

[Zelandeth]

...have continued my quest to figure out how to use Blender.

So far I have come to the conclusion that it is quite possibly the most aggressively user-unfriendly piece of software I have ever used. I'm sure it works fine once you know your way around, but as a first timer it's absolutely baffling. All I want is to freehand sculpt something really then create a mesh out of it and spit out a .STL file (Standard Triangulation Language - basically what 3D printers for the most part speak). I don't need a lot of the more advanced features, but a decent idiot's guide is something I have yet to find.

Seriously considering admitting defeat at this point and falling back to Sculptris...though that's a headache as I would need Windows 7 for the recent enough versions with STL capabilities to run, and it won't work under Virtualbox (I've tried). Sadly my desktop PC has run out of ports for drives...so I either need to disconnect one or get a PCI Sata card...I do have one spare IDE port but sadly all the drives I have kicking around (that aren't 20mb to a few gig anyway!) are Sata. Grr...

Guess I could sacrifice the XP drive...but I'd rather not as XP is handy sometimes!

...Will spend another few hours on this tomorrow then decide whether to persevere any longer or just run away back to Sculptris. ...even then I've still got to make the actual 3D model, though that's ironically starting to feel like the easy part by this point!

[Hannesb]

Hi Zelandeth

I have a practically-brand-new 500 and a bit GB laptop drive (SATA) lying around that you are welcome to have if it will help you? It would probably only cost me a couple of Pounds to post it to you if you want it...

Regards
Hannes

[Zelandeth]

Hi Zelandeth

I have a practically-brand-new 500 and a bit GB laptop drive (SATA) lying around that you are welcome to have if it will help you? It would probably only cost me a couple of Pounds to post it to you if you want it...

Grateful as I am, that wouldn't help me a huge amount. Have several SATA drives floating around, but nothing to plug them into! Just need to get me an extra controller card methinks! Have a 320Gb drive sitting on the desk for this purpose already. Interface ports are the headache rather than physical drives.

...not that I would mind more drives of sensible sizes if that one is looking for a home. The standardised interface between 2.5" and 3.5" drives is a major SATA advantage.

[Hannesb]

Hi Zel

Sorry, I understand now. I thought you would need to reinstall over you XP drive rather than just swap it out. I will have a dig through my bits to see if there are any PCI interfaces for SATA, but I don't recall having any left. I got rid of all my desktops a while ago and now only have some Mac minis, a handful of laptops, MacBooks and a couple of tablets. Even that is too much...

If you want the drive I can post it to you, otherwise it is going into my PS3.

Regards
Hannes

[Zelandeth]

I wouldn't worry too much over it, this isn't really a high priority. For the time being I'll just pull the optical drive (can't remember the last time I used it!) once I've got Windows installed - obviously can unplug the ones with Linux/XP on while installing 7 anyway so not a huge issue. If you've got a use for the drive hold onto it. The 320Gb one I've got here should be more than sufficient for this purpose and I've got a stack of laptop ones up to around half a gig floating around as well. They usually live in little USB powered portable caddies and generally serve as effectively uber-large USB sticks, but can be extracted and stuffed in a computer if I actually need them.

Having wasted most of an evening trying to get the blasted thing to install from a USB stick - including using the images and tools from MS own website - without getting anywhere I've given up on that and will just dig around until I track down some recordable DVDs and do that the old fashioned way (after shuffling connections around so the optical drive is connected again). Really is just being a task here that seems determined to fight me at every turn!

Hopefully I will actually have it up and running tomorrow. Will take some time out to do some cable management as well I think given that it's getting a bit cramped in there now with five hard drives, a floppy drive, Zip drive and the currently disconnected optical drive, some optimisation is in order I think...I got the biggest case I could find locally at the time given my knowledge of how my PCs usually tend to evolve over time, but it still isn't really big enough! That said...I did manage to pretty much completely fill the old AT tower my old PC was in too, and that was a good couple of feet tall...ended up with castors fitted that thing as it was otherwise just about impossible to move because of the weight. The full height 5.25" SCSI hard drive (2.1Gb circa 1991) didn't really help with the portability either mind you. Rarely endeared itself to me when it decided to do a virus scan at 3 in the morning either and started making the floor shake...

[Zelandeth]

Finished clearing my late father's house.

Pretty uneventful really, managed (just) to get everything we wanted to keep in the van, and will be driving home tomorrow.

Moment of the day though was during the last trip to the recycling centre, when in amongst the junk in tbe E-waste container I spotted something distinctly older, solid metal front etc...and a few moments later managed to pick out some more details. At that point the "I'm having that" instinct was well underway and I nearly gave myself a hernia yanking the thing out of the bin and into the back of the car. In and gone well before anyone saw anything.

Apologies for the horrendous photo - brushed aluminium and direct sunlight and phone cameras are a bad combo.





Aside from the slightly mangled trim on the volume control I can't see any damage at first glance...won't know if it works until a couple of days from now most likely...but kit from this era is generally pretty easy to resurrect.

Seriously though...who tosses a bit of B&O kit in the trash?!?

[rid54]

Finished clearing my late father's house.

Pretty uneventful really, managed (just) to get everything we wanted to keep in the van, and will be driving home tomorrow.

Moment of the day though was during the last trip to the recycling centre, when in amongst the junk in tbe E-waste container I spotted something distinctly older, solid metal front etc...and a few moments later managed to pick out some more details. At that point the "I'm having that" instinct was well underway and I nearly gave myself a hernia yanking the thing out of the bin and into the back of the car. In and gone well before anyone saw anything.
Seriously though...who tosses a bit of B&O kit in the trash?!?

Good question!

I suppose it's solid state equipment, but nevertheless a pretty serious kit. If it is in working condition - lucky you!

[Zelandeth]

It is working indeed. One scratchy channel on the tape deck I've not had a chance to investigate yet, but everhthing else seems to be absolutely perfect. Not even any noisy slider controls.

I'll call that a win I think!

[mutewitness]

I got some more forks for my 59 s1 lambretta, the ones that came with the scooter were bent, found out after powdercoating and rebuilding them

[mt500]

Gave up the lada search and bought a land rover and a shogun.