Flops' Friday mini blog

[floppybootstomp]

We've recently had a mini-Sainsburys open locally where the motor cycle shop used to be, it will probably put the local Co-op store out of business cos they is really crap. Last Wednesday I was perusing the deserts in the new Sainsburys when a lady standing next to me said 'Try those yoghurts, they're lovely'. I replied 'You talked me into it' and reached for the cherry flavour. She said 'Oh no, you must have the lemon curd flavour, they're divine'. 'Matter of opinion' said I, smiling, with inner thoughts bleeping 'Uh oh, nutter alert'.

I looked at this lady for the first time properly, never know, mightta been a contender, but no. She was younger than me by about 5 to 10 years, stout and had fair hair swept up from her forehead. She reminded me of the queen in that new Alice In Wonderland film. I scurried off.

The next day I was queuing in the Post Office and took a swig of water from an Evian mineral water bottle. A female voice behind me remarked 'Only the British would pay good money for bottled water when the tap water is perfectly acceptable'.

I thought about this and figured 'She's having a pop ain't she?' so turned round and looked at her. She said, 'Yes, that was me, it's that stroppy Scandinavian again'. 'Oh really' said I 'Well as it happens lady this is filtered tap water and the only reason I drink it regularly is because I suffer from a dry mouth'

Ha! Thought I, that'll shut her up. But she just said 'I had a boyfriend who had a dry mouth' to which I replied 'I'm not surprised he ain't around anymore'. She rabbited on but I didn't really take any more in, whilst she garbled on in a strange cross accent of Swedish and cockney I gave her the once over. Almost as tall as me, forties, long platinum hair, almost slim, short black skirt, black tights.

I wondered if I had perhaps made a mistake alienating her but then I looked at her boatrace and noted she closely resembled Ronnie Barker and her eyes were somewhere else. Nutter. Sometimes I seem to be a loony magnet.

Last August I decided to change all my music on my media machine from mp3 to FLAC. So I backed up all the mp3 files - around 1800 albums that took up 140Gb - to an external 160Gb Disk and started converting CD's and WAV files to FLAC. So far I'm almost half way through.

I realised that my current internal 1Tb disk wasn't going to be big enough to take all the FLAC files (lottsa movies and photos on there as well) so bought a 2Tb Hard Disk. £58.45 from Scan (I get free postage) ordered Saturday, arrived today.

Took out the 1Tb disk, replaced with 2Tb disk and formatted. Before formatting it should be noted you have to right click on the disk title (shown on left) and initialise the disk.

Top off of media computer, hard disks top left of pic:

New disk ready to go in:

Data transfer begins:

The 1Tb disk now becomes an external storage hard disk and the 160Gb HDD that had the mp3 files on is destined to end up in an empty hard disk caddy and have Linux Mint 10 slapped on it.

Transferred all content on 1Tb disk to 2Tb disk - this took 7 hours and 20 minutes to transfer around 800Gb.

Currently doing large data file transfers between new internal disk and 4 external disks of 1Tb; 500Gb; 250Gb & 250Gb.

Bought 7 vinyl albums from bargain basement of local record shop today for a quid each, including The Shadows 20 Golden Greats. Stop laughing at the back there, first record I ever bought was The Shadows' Wonderful land. Have played four and so far none of them jump, get stuck or are scratchy, sometimes you get lucky.

On the Games front, bought Painkiller: Redemption on Steam for £4.49 as I've played all the other Painkiller games and am loving it. It's not exactly testing of the grey matter but if fps's where you shoot up hordes of monsters in a kind of intense and mindless way is your thing then this game is for you, I love it and well worth the money.

Have almost completed Lara Croft: Guardian Of Light, also from Steam for around £6.50 and can thoroughly recommend it. Quite difficult in parts and I'm usually one of those who give up if a game's too hard but I've kept coming back to this one. Actually stuck on around level 8 atm, lol, but I'll be going back there, will just take a little determination and patience. Recommended.

Have also been playing Just Cause 2; Mafia 2: Jimmy's Vendetta and the original Crysis again. Got Crysis/Crysis Warhead/Crysis Wars for 8 quid recently on a whim from a GAME store. Now past the bit where I got stuck first time around and am on last level, on the warship. It is, uh, intense.

Haven't played anything online for weeks and haven't played Xbox for weeks.

I have decided to build a pair of what they call Frugel horn loudspeaker cabinets for my Fostex 4" FE126en loudspeaker cones. have attached pdf file of plans if you're interested. Edit: PDF file is too big to attach to this post but if anyone's interested I'll host on my web space and link.

Clocks go forward soon. On Facebook I've listed an event for a drink on my next birthday which is probably a landmark, lol, my daughter Sophie put me up to it, I was hoping to quietly ignore it

And that's it for now.

 

[bootneck02]

Sounds like you have found a fan, I bet you will meet her again in another shop and have a little chat

 

[bootneck02]

By the way very impressed with your amps and other kit under the desk, and the amount of music stored makes my library of just over 400 discs 214 gig look rather moribund

 

[muckshifter]

tick-rock the big 6 0 approaches

 

[floppybootstomp]

Well I am now 60 years old. My girls think I should be proud but me, I just feel kinda depressed about it, lol.

Last few days, manual work, up and down step-ladder laying cable. I think I am, at last, starting to notice a tiring effect, I'm now ready to quit after six hours instead of twelve hours, I guess that's age for ya.

Currently reading a book named Brick Lane, also made into a movie but I haven't seen the film.

The book's location is Bethnal Green, East London and quite by chance I've been working in Old Bethnal Green Road. This book, mixed views, it is at turns depressing and then it makes me laugh out loud. But most of all it makes me annoyed. Silly Bangladeshi girl, do not put up with that crap. Arranged marriages and subservience, annoys me.

Talented author is Monica Ali.

Finished my second audio switcher a coupla days ago, made another one cos existing one, made with kit, only had five inputs and no rec out. My new one, not built with kit but on veroboard, has six inputs and rec out sockets should I ever need them. This means I can now plug the I-Pod in.

This project was built on the cheap and the finished project ain't gonna win no style prizes. It's made from some left over pine furniture board and some scrap metal I found in a skip. And spray paint.

Most expensive part was the phono sockets.

Switching is done via relays using the 0V to activate relays, this means no noise switching. Construction was not without problems, one stray solder blob on vero board totally ruined good working, took me a while to find that and rectify fault.

But in the end it worked, pix, like I said, not pristine but functional:

Coupla pix taken during assembly, it's a little tidier than that now:

 

[nivrip]

Looks good to me.

And it matches in well with the existing set up.

I'd say very good as it came from some bits and pieces and other parts from a skip.

 

[bootneck02]

Know what you mean about aches and pains floppy during and after manual work I worked up to my 66th birthday and I was feeling it and you are working in schools where you have to get work done in a time line. As far as the kit you have built I take my hat off to you sirI could not have done anything like that and have look so neat and tidy and works

 

[floppybootstomp]

Howdy doody boys and girls it's Friday! And it seems summer has come early. Sitting here with patio doors wide open and from smells assailing my nostrils it seems somebody has a barbecue going and somebody else appears to be burning poppadums in some very hot oil. I just hope they don't set fire to their home. Which in turn could spread to my home

I've just had a munch of some Danish Blue smelly cheese on some crinkle cut steak flavour crisps - taste bud heaven Cos of me dry mouth had to have little sips of Guinness here and there but I've been getting a little more adventurous in what I've been eating.

This has been prompted as it appears that my taste buds have now more or less fully returned to normal some four years and four months after my tongue was assaulted with some intense gamma rays. It's taken a long time but I've gone from lots of food tasting of cardboard or downright weird to almost normality.

This makes me feel good.

I tell ya folks, you really really don't apreciate all of your bodily functions until you've maybe lost one, even if the loss is temporary. Ever broke a limb and not had use of it for a while? Well, it's something like that.

I can now taste the aforementioned Danish Blue cheese, curries, peaches now taste like peaches, even a simple serving of sliced boiled egg with ham has to be missed then tasted again to be apreciated. Most excellent, as they say

As our Joni (Mitchell) once sang 'You don't know what you got til it's gone'

Last Saturday/Sunday I slept with the curtains pulled back and the patio door open as it was nice and warm. I think one night I may actually sleep on the patio in a sleeping bag just for the hell of it. If I get rained on, well, it will be an experience.

When I awoke to a gorgeous Sunday morning I heard the noise of loads of people talking away and some folk seeming to talk louder than the rest. 'What the hell is going on?' thought I. So I stumbled out of bed and made my way to the patio to have a look, on the way unconcioulsy scratching my uniquely male attachments (that's what blokes do, just observe them in any given situation) and looked out.

There were people everywhere and some people had banners, buckets and megaphones. Aha, I thought, the London Marathon. Later I walked to the local shop and observed that there seemed to more people shouting through loudhailers and waving buckets about than there were actual spectators.

The London Marathon, feelgood factor, lots of people running for charity, good thing. But it sure do bring the charity muggers out in force though. I don't like charity muggers. Walking through Greenwich town centre last week one (rather attractive) young lady was so persistent I actually looked her in the eye and said 'F*** Off'. Sorry folks, but I did, and that's the truth. And she did. Hmm, who's bad? Me or her?

Tomorrow I have to do a St Georges Day Disco. In a Paddy pub. Now there's a paradox. Oh well, Vera Lynn, land of Hope and Glory, Chas and Dave and Doing The Lambeth walk. Ever noticed how all cockneys, when singing, punctuate their songs frequently with shouts of 'Oi'? And we think Ecky thump is daft, we're just as bad.

But, for the disco, just made two CD's up, twenty songs each, of chart stuff, I think there's some good stuff out atm.

Games. Either they're getting harder or I'm getting older. Or both. I dunno. Crysis 2 single player. There are 19 levels and I'm exactly half way through on the level 'Semper Fi Or Die' and I keep getting killed, I'm stuck, too hard for me. So I've given up. That was thirty quid wasted then.

Do these game makers think I enjoy fiendishly difficult levels? Well I don't. Recently have been playing lots of older games, Doom II, all the Quake series, Devastation, both Unreal single players and more. They are quite difficult but I can get through and most importantly of all - I'm enjoying them.

Maybe I should now stick to RPG's. Can't wait for the next Oblivion - Skyrim.

And what is all this 'Achievment unlocked' crap? That seems to be a console thing to stroke game player's egos now ported over to some PC games. What a whole pile of hoo-ha. I don't need that, just give me some good gameplay not a scripted movie fest with a cut scene every ten minutes, Pah!

Is it me becoming old farty or have game makers lost the plot and now concentrate more on presentation and ego stroking than actual gameplay?

Have been enjoying the Xbox 360 but lately haven't played games quite so much, have been watching some movies and simply listening to vinyl whilst sipping wine.

Picked up two vinyl albums recently I'd been after for some time - Magazine's Real Life and Talking Heads' 77. Superb.

No work in the pipeline atm but have issued enough invoices that, assuming they pay up, should keep my nose above water until early July. I suppose you could call that semi-retirement.

As Jim Morrison once sung 'The future's uncertain and the end is always near'

And from that same Doors song (Roadhouse Blues) for years I thought he sung 'Woke up this morning and got myself a beard'.

But no, what he actually sung was 'Woke up this morning and got myself a beer'

Quite a difference.

I don't honestly think I've ever done that, had a beer for breakfast, but I suppose there's always a first time

 

[muckshifter]

Entertaining as always Flopps.

and yes, you is getting old now ... well, as old as you feel.

 

[Taffycat]

I enjoyed it too, but the very best part, is the news about your taste buds functioning again. Hope you are thoroughly enjoying all your old favourite foods, along with a few new ones too.

Good luck with the Disco, sounds like it will be a good night.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Win 98SE. Oh boy, why do I bother?

It all started when an Antec PSU went belly up on me, see this thread Here

This was when a nice DFI Socket-A motherboard-based system got killed by the PSU. It was running Win 98 and I had lots of old games installed that worked well.

I then discovered I had a Socket A Asus A7V8X motherboard with XP2600 cpu (2.1Ghz); Zalman cooler; 2 x 256Mb RAM and it even had a Hercules 3D Prophet 8500 128Mb AGP Graphics card with it.

So I rebuiilt the machine with these parts, a Jeantwch 350W PSU and I used an ATI X850 AGP Graphics card as that was more powerful than the Hercules.

So,downloaded relevant drivers and attempted to install Win 98. I'll just list the sequence of events from hereon:

Boot from floppy, install Win 98, load 4-in-1 drivers for VIA chipset, install sound drivers (downloaded from Realtek site as Asus din't list them).

Was prompted for a whole bunch of files from the Win 98 CD which it couldn't find, so no sound. Found about 4 out of 8 of these files residing in Win 7 so tried a reinstall and pointed to these files (had to save on a CDRW as Win 98 wouldn't recognise the USB bus at this stage).

Still no sound.

Nevermind, I'll use this Audigy 2 soundcard I have but in the meantime let's load the video drivers. I think it's V3.5 of the ATI drivers, it was the last but one (the last one was a beta) set of drivers ATI issued for Win 98.

Up pops a window 'No video driver found, inf error, try installing an ordinary VGA driver first. But a VGA driver was installed. D/l the beta driver from Guru 3D via another machine/CDRW but still no go.

Ok, we'll come back to that let's try the Audigy 2 soundcard. I got the Creative drivers from C-Net who had them listed as Win98 drivers. Oh no they weren't, as Win98 was so quick to tell me.

It's worth mentioning that this install was onto a 160Gb PATA drive and I had another 40Gb PATA drive on the same cable for storage. BIOS saw both disks, Win98 did not see the 40Gb disk.

At this stage I gave up and decided to install XP instead and try DOS-Box and some virtual OS software.

The XP install went flawlessly but it was whilst watching the start screen as POST commenced that I noticed my Asus A7V8X motherboard wasn't. It was an A7V8X-X motherboard. There is a difference. Oh bugger, I was using the wrong drivers then. The final 'X' is actually easy to miss on the POST splash screen, I noticed.

I now had Win XP installed now though so done all the usual, downloaded and installed the correct motherboard drivers, the Creative drivers for the Audigy 2 and the legacy ATI drivers for the X850. In less than an hour I had a perfect working machine that flew along quite niftily, considering, probably because it hadn't been cluttered up yet.

Had a look at the VM_Ware site and couldn't see any free versions, only trial versions. I swear they used to have a freebie, oh well. Wasn't tempted to try the trial as it's quite expensive software, imo.

Came across Virtual Box, free open source software and installed that. Started to install Win 98. Virtual Box will handle most any OS, including the Mac OS, but it doesn't like Win 98 apparently. It isn't the most intuitive software to get to grips with either but I started to install Win 98 anyway.

Booted within the virtual software with the floppy but that's as far as it got, couldn't type anything at the DOS prompt. I had a notion I had a bootable Win98 CD somewhere so found it, tried it and it worked. Hurrah! After quite a long time I had Win 98 running within XP.

But. It's crippingly slow and the graphics are poor, hardly ideal for playing games. Realising that previously I'd tried to install Win 98 with the wrong motherboard drivers I went back to the Asus site and downloaded all the relevant Win98 drivers for the Asus A7V8X-X and burnt these and other software for Win98 to a CD, which used 600Mb of it's 700Mb up.

I backed up my XP install using Acronis True Image to the 40Gb storage Disk (3.5Gb then compressed), formatted the C drive and started to install Win 98 from the bootable CD.

All went well so I started to transfer the files from the CD I'd burnt to My Documents. It's best to leave the Win 98 CD in an optical drive when installing Win98 because it will frequently prompt you to insert the CD.

Midway through the file transfer the machine froze. The led on the second optical drive (a plain DVD-ROM as drive E, Drive D is a DVDRW) was flashing like mad so I hit the reboot button and the POST screen said the secondary slave drive had failed. And it had, as the machine would now not boot into Windows.

Removed drive (Asus manufacted 2003) and machine fired up again. Transferred CD contents of CD to My Documents from D Drive. Installed 4-in-1's - perfect. Installed LAN driver - perfect. Installed USB 2 driver....

....not perfect. Please reboot your machine. (Using both USB Mouse & keyboard btw, both of which had worked fine up until this point) 'Windows 98 does not detect a mouse'.

Insert choice stream of cuss words just here >>>

So, time to format C: again and start all over again.

One good thing about this though is I have two machines working in close proximity here (in me bedroom) and had used both the VGA & DVI inputs on the monitor (works ok providing you don't try and switch both computers on at once) plus two keyboards, two mice and two line inputs on my Pioneer A400 amplifier. This is because the KVM switch I have didn't agree with the DFI motherboard for some odd reason.

But the KVM switch does like these two Asus board (AvV8X-X and M2-Sli) so now I'm using the KVM switch which is working well.

But I've had enough for now, this is driving me bonkers, I'm going for a ride on me bike.

I also have Linux Mint V10.0 lined up for install but, right now, enough is enough, fresh air beckons...

 

[muckshifter]

I'm going for a ride on me bike.

don't drink & drive.

 

[Rush]

Oh Flops..you got nothing better to do ??lol

 

[floppybootstomp]

Oh Flops..you got nothing better to do ??lol

Um, nope, not really No frickin' work, I do have a hundred and one things to do, we always do, don't we? but I usually, given the choice, just do the things I want to do. And today what I wanted to do was win 98

The bike ride was refreshing, no alcohol at that time of day Mr Mucks and so I returned home, ate, and started all over again. And Win 98 is now running


The last CPU platform that Win 98 would work in was AMD Socket A. And whatever the Intel equivalent was at the time, I don't know what that is, first Intel CPU I bought that wasn't embedded in the motherboard was my Core 2 Duo 6600, before that all AMD. I thought maybe I was just a retro geek but I seriously do love the gameplay of older games compared to all the games now that seem determined only to provide really long cut scenes and award achievments. Gimme Quake any day of the week.

At 21:26 I had Win 98 running. The last ATI driver I had for an X850 within Win 98 was V4.3. I checked on the ATI website and they do actually supply a newer driver for Win 98, released 2005, V6.5. So, unusually, kudos to ATI/AMD. This driver worked and it does make the card give some very nice graphics. Sound driver installed without a hitch. Also have cordless Logi Gamepad working plugged into a usb port.

I did not install the USB2 driver as this disabled my mouse on a previous install attempt and I didn't install the LAN driver as all I want this machine for is playing old Win 98 games, don't want network or internet access.

Have installed two games so far - American McGhee's Alice and Nocturne. Both are working fine and fortunately I was able to gather my savegames from my previous setup, using just a mouse as the keyboard was killed by the PSU.

It took a long time and quite a bit of hair-pulling/gnashing of teeth but I'm now back in business for them retro games again.

Now then, time to consider when I'm going to get an i5 or i7 based system to replace my ageing core 2 duo...

 

[Abarbarian]

http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=505&game=American McGees Alice 2

Did you know there is a American McGees Alice 2

 

[floppybootstomp]

http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=505&game=American McGees Alice 2

Did you know there is a American McGees Alice 2

Of course I did

Estimated release date 17th June. Initial estimated price - £30.00

I'll definitely be getting it but will probably wait a month or two and hope for a price reduction, have bought too many rubbish games for full price so I'm wary now.

If there was one game that needed remaking or a second version, it was Alice, wonderfully warped, twisted and bizarre.

 

[floppybootstomp]

I had some good news today.

I have three daughters Faye is aged 24 lives with me and works as a team leader at a posh pub not far from me.

And I have twin daughters aged 22, Sophie & Lucy.

When Lucy started University she chose Biology as her subject with a view to becoming a paramedic after gaining her degree. The ambulance services assured her that a degree in this subject would guarantee her an admission to their service.

But during the three years she was studying the ambulance services changed the rules and so after gaining her degree it proved worthless as an aid for to pursue her chosen career. Another year's study to gain an extra qualification was now required.

These days going to University either costs a lot of money or runs up a huge debt so you could say she was dealt a bad card. Whilst she mused on what to do, living with her mother in Frome, she became employed as a full time postperson with Royal Mail and also works three evenings a week in MacDonalds in an effort to save up enough money to get through another 12 months of Uni.

She applied to a University for the course and for a while it looked to be touch and go whether she would be accepted or not.

And that's the first bit of good news for me, I found out today Lucy has been accepted for the course. She did suffer a slight setback to her savings, pranged her mother's car which cost her £400 to have fixed but at least now she's in and on course for what she wants to do. Let's hope they don't change the rules again. She starts Uni in September.

The other twin daughter, Sophie, spent three years at Bristol Uni studying History with a view to becoming a teacher. She completed the years and gained a degree.There was the option to do a supplemental extra years course consisting of coursework and actual teaching which would help her chances of gaing employment so she decided to take it.

This course was held at several UK universities and one of them was Cambridge so Sophie applied to Cambridge. There were 57 vacancies and over 300 applicants and Sophie gained a place. For the past 8 or 9 months she has been teaching and learning at Cambridge Univeristy and Cambridge local secondary schools.

A vacancy for a teacher came up at a small town about 8 miles outside of Bath and she applied for the position. She was one of 70 applicants. She was interviewed by the Head teacher and two other teachers and had to take a class for a lesson under observation.

They offered her the job on the same day as the interview, at the school and she has accepted.

So that's my second bit of good news

I'm beginning to doubt my fatherhood here as I ain't that bright, lol

You could say Dad is a teensy bit proud of his offspring.

And on top of that a cheque arrived today for works rendered which will enable me to pay the final outstanding invoice I have to one of my suppliers, an audio equipment company in Derbyshire. This means the couple of outstanding cheques due are now just for me and my bills and stuff. I need a new washing machine now, so please hurry and arrive, you cheques

Had to share this good news with somebody so I did, will probably wander down the pub tomorrow and waffle on about it.

Games: Been playing Bulletstorm, Dragon Age II and X-Blades (which I picked up for £13; £13; & £2 respectively). Bulletstorm is a thoroughly enjoyable game, mucho fun, best two games I've played this year have been Bulletstorm and Mafia II with CoD Black Ops single player a close third for the game played before those two. I'm now about three quarters of the way through Bulletstorm. Dragon Age II is fair, I am still playing it, but a helluva lot of cut scenes and the controls are quite odd. X-Blades is a little bit fun, definitely worth two quid, definitely a console port, but haven't reached a verdict yet, only played first level.

The weather is warm, my patio plants are showing vigorous new Spring growth (pix update to thread soon) and that's about all I can think of to say.

Dentist on Monday

Think I'll have me's another Guinness....

 

[muckshifter]

Good news Flopps, seems the young-uns these days do realize they need to knuckle down to get anywhere. Girls are good at that.

 

[Taffycat]

Wow Flopps, congrats to your three daughters for doing so very well (and making their Dad so proud .) We wish them all the best, and much deserved too!

 

[Abarbarian]

Super news mate bet you are well chuffed.