Brummie Blogger

Luck - or the lack of it

I'm not having much luck on Ebay at the moment. I have some books that just aren't Bookcrossing material so I thought I'd Ebay them having had success with similar books in the past. I spent a fair bit of time last weekend photographing them and typing them into Turbolister. 42 of them to be precise. I love selling on Ebay. It's the thrill of seeing when people have viewed your listing, if it's being watched and of course - when you get bids. Not so exciting when with one day to go you have 42 listings with no bids and nothing being watched. Sigh.

I ended up with one book selling. Hardly worth it, was it. I'll relist them at some point but not just yet. Maybe it's not a good time for books at the moment.

I had a bit of bad luck with buying on there too. I may have mentioned that Stephen has killed the CD/DVD drive on his laptop. I can't fix it. It's still in guarantee, allegedly but as the company that made it are no longer in existence thanks to a certain PM, there's no chance of getting it fixed. So, the next best thing, to keep it functional until a replacement can be afforded, is an external drive. And, where better to get one than Ebay? I found a beauty. Just what I wanted. Used twice, the seller had a perfect rating and good feedback and answered a query quickly. I worked out the max I'd want to pay, deducted the postage and placed my bid. With five minutes to go I was the only bidder. I know that many people only bid in the last few minutes so I walked away so as not to be tempted to bid more. It wouldn't have mattered. I was outbid with two seconds to spare. Two seconds! Gah!

Problem is, I think I've got the Ebay bug again. I've started looking round the house for stuff to sell. I'm eyeing up some rather twee Swarovski at the moment. I wonder...

Finally!

Yup, finally I'm back after another marathon migraine, and finally I have my DS fully pimped.

These were the ingredients

  

These plus a load of software. It was the software that gave me the problems. One of the sites that I needed to access had been attacked and was temporarily down. I managed to source the software download at an alternative site, after some searching, but after loading it all on, the DS would not work. Something was obviously missing. I think the problem is that they assume a higher level of techy competence than I possess so it took me longer to figure it all out. But, I hate to admit that something is beyond me so I persevered.

Once I realised that there was a key piece of software missing, and then tracked it down and downloaded it, I came across another snag. It was zipped with Winrar. I don't have Winrar but I did have a trial of it once. As that had expired I was a bit stumped, as it wouldn't, of course, let me download another trial. I didn't particularly want to shell out thirty euros for the licence, as I only wanted it for one file and still wasn't completely sure that I'd be able to get it all to work. 

I came up with a cunning plan, which is probably rather naughty so I won't go into details but after some fiddling I got the unzipped files onto the micro SD and into the DS. 

Hooray! It loaded. Ah, but still not quite right. The SD card went back into the PC and I spent some time fiddling with the files. It was a case of getting the right folders set up in the right places. Eventually I got there and this is the result.

 

If you click on the above picture, you should be able to see that I'm about to start reading Vanity fair. How cool is that!

The following sites were very useful:

Pimping your DS
R4DS
Readmore
Project Gutenberg

Pimping my DS

I'm currently in the process of pimping my DS. That's what it's called according to the website whose instructions I'm following, anyway. I saw this ad on TV, you see, for a DS cart with 100 classic books on it. With that you could use the DS as an e-book reader to read said classic books. It sounded good so I investigated only to find out that I'd either read or have on my TBR pile, all but ten of the books.

Hmm, so I was still looking at it and following a few links, as you do, and found out that you can pimp your DS to make it into an e-book reader to use with the free books that are available to download. This sounded very good so I did yet more research. It didn't sound too techy so I ordered the gadgets I needed for about £20 and waited impatiently for them to arrive. I also downloaded a couple of books and the required homebrew software

I have the gadgets in front of me now and have put the software and books in the required folders on the micro SD card. The next step is to insert the SD card in the R4, put it in the DS and turn it on. This is where I hit a snag. I've been so wrapped up in reading lately that my poor DS has been neglected. It needs charging.

In hindsight I should have made sure it was charged up and ready to rock before the gadgets arrived but no, here I am, all my gadgets and gizmos laid out on the desk with my DS sitting upstairs charging.

I'll update tomorrow and let you know if project Pimp my DS has worked.

In the meantime I'll go and start a new book, having just finished The ragged trousered philanthropists. That was a very good book indeedy. It did get slightly tedious towards the end when the 'causes of poverty' and the 'way to eliminate poverty' were gone over in detail for the umpteenth time, but all in all it was as enjoyable as such a book can be.

I survived!

Or more importantly, my computer did. I've had my hands in its innards today and it lived to tell the tale.

Last week, every time I turned the computer on, I got a message informing me that the system battery needed replacing. I ignored it for a couple of days, in the hope that it'd go away. It didn't. So, then I Googled the error message to see what on earth it was all about. I found out that there is a wee battery attached to the motherboard that remembers the BIOS settings. Then I Googled BIOS, as I had no idea what that was either. Having found out what the problem was, I then used Google to find out how to fix it.

What on earth did I do before Google, eh?

I printed out loads of instructions and once I'd figured out what needed to be done, I went into setup and wrote down all the BIOS settings. They'd be lost when I took the old battery out, apparently.

Next step was to find out what battery I needed and for that I had to open the case.

I didn't want to do that. I'm full of static, and I've read too many warnings about frying motherboards to be comfortable with the idea of going into the case. This morning I bit the bullet, turned off all the sockets and crawled under the desk. At this point I realised that I didn't know how to open the case, and it's a bit cramped under there so I unplugged all the peripherals and got the tower out and onto my desk.

Then I realised that not only did I still not have a clue how to open it up, but I couldn't Google it as the computer was no longer connected to anything. ~sigh~

So, I ran upstairs, got the laptop, plugged the router and cable modem back into the mains and found out how to open the case. Good old Google! The reason I couldn't figure out how to open the thing is that there are two catches, one on the top and one on the bottom. As I hadn't inspected the underside I'd only been pressing one catch. It all opens out like a book. Very clever.

So, now I have the case open and can see the battery. I'm not about to go to all the bother of wiring it all back up until I have the new battery in it, so I used the laptop for my morning surf. It was having on of its sulking fits and refused to recognise most of my favourite haunts. It let me on Google, thank goodness or I'd still be wrestling with the case now, and BookCrossing. Oh, and it briefly let me access my webmail.

When Stephen got in from work we went to Tesco, got my battery and then I had to put my hands in there and take out the old battery. I'd read on one site that you should touch the metal bit of the case first to earth yourself and keep touching it occasionally. I changed the battery one-handed as the other hand had a death grip on the metal bit. Did I mention I was a tad worried about frying the motherboard? I'd also removed any nylon clothing, just in case...

I got all its bits plugged back in, and turned it on. It refused to boot up and came up with some bizarre error message. But, I was prepared for that and went into setup where I changed the BIOS settings back to how they were. Then it booted up quite happily and now seems to be functioning normally.

Phew!

Technology, eh. Great till it needs fixing.

Wordle

Ha, something new to keep me sitting in front of the PC. Bev found this great website called Wordle. You can give it the URL of your blog, or anything else for that matter and it'll make word clouds with it. I've had fun playing with it, changing colours, font, style etc.

Not surprisingly, the words that came up on the ones I did using my blog were mostly book related. I've saved my favourite creation into their gallery and this is a link to it.

Isn't that cool! It'd make a brilliant background for a layout, and there's a print option on the site too so it'd be easy enough. Perhaps I should do a layout about my blog for my Book of Me...

When I've finished my Vegas album, of course. Only one single layout plus a title on an otherwise completed double, and it is done. Whoo hoo! Then there's just the several thousand Disney photos from that trip, two other Disney holidays, plus countless other unfinished projects and I've almost caught up. I hope that day never comes, though. I can't think of anything worse than not having a huge choice of what to scrap next.

Be careful what you wish for...

I mentioned on Wednesday afternoon's post that I needed to go to bed early in order to start reading a book that I was having difficulty in getting started on. That was so I'd be able to concentrate on it with no distractions such as the TV or the internet. Well, I got what I wished for, as shortly afterwards my broadband stopped working so I got my early night and did indeed get started on the book.

That would have been fine. I'm not so addicted to the internet that I can't manage without it for one night. Unfortunately it was still not working when I got home from work on Thursday. A strange amount of housework got done on Thursday afternoon. By Thursday evening I was getting decidedly snarky and found the bit of paper with the free helpline number for Virgin Media. There was a message waffling on about some MS update that was causing connection problems, followed by another stating that customers in the B** area may be experiencing a loss of broadband. As that happened to be my postcode area I assumed that I had found the problem and went and did some more tidying up followed by more reading of A tree grows in Brooklyn.

This morning I got up bright and early and checked the computer to see if my internet was back. Nope. Nada. Not a sign of it. By now I was getting very snarky indeed and was getting ready to march down to Virgin Media HQ and start shouting at people.

Stephen came home from work just after 10am and we went straight out to the new Tesco down in Aston as they'd been kind enough to put some very generous coupons in The Metro. We did two separate shops to make the most use of them and managed to save £22 on a £70 shop and get 250 extra points. That did cheer me up quite a bit, as I am quite fond of saving money. I have more coupons to use as Stephen managed to find another copy of yesterday's Metro so we'll be going back next week.

After that we detoured to Costco to get a pack of that scrapbook paper for Ang. Seven of the Eight layouts I did at the weekend were done using that paper and I think we were all quite impressed with it. Shame my internet's back now, I might have got a few more layouts done...

So, we got home and I ran straight to the PC, convinced that the internet would be back. It wasn't so I reverted to being sulky and snarky. Stephen got his laptop out and found that he. had. internet. I got a bit cross then, and after taking a torch to the back of the PC to check that all the wires were in the right place, I remembered that message about the MS update. I thought the easiest way to sort that out would be to first disable automatic updates and then use system restore to last Tuesday. Guess what? It worked and I now have my internet back. I barely know what to do first, there are so many things I need to do that need internet access.

I cannot believe how dependant I am on the internet. It seems like every ten minutes I'd go to do something that needed internet access, such as pay bills, send an email or get information. Still, my desk is a lot tidier now, and my paperwork is up to date. And next time my broadband fails, I won't belive messages on a phone line but will try system restore instead.

Another one bites the dust

Another hard drive, that is. I seem to have issues with my hard drives. I'd only had this PC a couple of years and the main drive, the only drive in fact, failed quite spectacularly. Dell had to send out a chap to replace it. Lucky for me I had the on site warranty. The computer place round the corner managed to retrieve most of my data so all was not lost. For a while I backed up frequently.

After a few months, the backing up got less frequent as I got complaisant. Then, a year or so after the first drive failure, disaster struck again. I hadn't backed up for four months and although Dell came out with a shiny new drive again, this time a bigger and better one, the nice man round the corner was unable to retrieve my data. Four months of photos lost. I was gutted, but obviously had only myself to blame.

So, determined not to let that happen again, I purchased and set up an external hard drive to backup and synchronise my drive on a daily schedule. Ha! I thought. My drive can fail all it wants now, I'll have it backed up. Thirteen months later, just outside its warranty, my new external drive failed. It just ceased to function. So, back to square one.

That was a couple of months ago, but yesterday a parcel arrived from Maplins and I now have a lovely new drive linked to my PC. My drive is now backed up again. The new one is 500GB, which is twice the size of my internal hard drive, but it was on special offer and only a bit more than the 250GB one I was eyeing up, and as my next PC will no doubt have a bigger drive, it'll come in handy. That's always supposing it lasts that long. Did I mention I had issues with hard drives???

I had another parcel arrive yesterday. From Amazon. I'd had a book on pre-order for a while and it arrived right on schedule. It's the latest from Mary Janice Davidson - Undead and uneasy. I love her books, they're sort of chicklit meets vampires. I was quite keen to read it, so as I hadn't started the Tanya Huff I was planning to read next, I started, (and finished), that instead. It was excellent and well worth the wait. Wonder how long it'll be until the next one...

Nineteen minutes

I've finished my book. Nineteen minutes by Jodi Picoult. It was a struggle to make it last three days, but it was so good I had to ration myself so it would last that little bit longer. I think it's probably her best book to date, and is one of those books that you keep thinking about even when you're not actually reading it. I did see the twist coming, perhaps because she usually puts one in and I was looking for it this time. She did drop a couple of hints of what was to come, as well. JP is fast becoming one of my favourite authors, alongside Tolkien and Ian Banks.

I had quite a lot of things that I wanted to do today. Finishing my book was one of them, but playing The Sims for four hours wasn't. I just felt like it, so I did. Unfortunately the family that I was playing had a bit of a mishap two hours in to the game but as I hadn't saved since I started,I let them suffer. I'm so cruel to them sometimes.

I've been having a bit of bother with the new Photobox site. Uploading the photos has been fairly trouble free but once they're in the album, I can't see the check boxes on the portrait photos. Makes it a bit tricky to select them without the checkboxes so I contacted customer support. I've been having an interesting conversation with them along the lines of them wanting me to download and use Firefox, as the problem I'm getting is caused by my browser not being compatable, apparently. I'm using IE7, so I'm finding that a bit bizarre, to be honest. I'm waiting for them to come back to me on that so we'll see if they can resolve this without me having to abandon a browser that has been working just fine on their site until they updated it.

Here's another of the layouts from the last crop. This was the first one that I did as I was eager to use my new In Stitchz templates and floss. I added some felt buttons and used some Basic Grey Periphery. That's about it. Very simple but I'm pleased with it. The photo is another Disney Photopass pic and I like it as you can see the very red/pink streaks in my hair LOL