test weblog

this journal is now defunct. My new one is at http://kae.verens.com/.

One of my bosses handed my an iPod with about 15GB of music on it, so I brought it home and started working on getting it mounted on my machine.

I was hoping it was going to be as simple as mounting my camera (just plug it into a USB port, and KDE takes care of the rest).

I had an AIC-5800 firewire card lying around (Adaptec), so restarted the computer, and stuck that in.

Mandrake’s “harddrake” recognised it as an “unknown” card, but knew that it used the aic7xxx module. That was the first sign of trouble…

I connected the iPod to the card, and waited for the magic. Nothing happened.

After scouring the net for hours (I’ve been sitting here four hours trying to do this), and following lots of instructions, I’ve managed a big fat zero percent of success.

I’ll keep trying… I think it might be the firewire card, so will concentrate on that for the next four hours.

Terrible news. I heard about this earlier today and was in shock. Mostly at the young 18 month old girl who had her throat cut by some stray string (in a different news article about the same event – can’t find the URL). I couldn’t help but imagine how I would react if that happened to my son in front of me. I was in shock just thinking about it.

Jareth actually had a narrow getaway today. I had placed him down on a couch to sleep, and a guitar which was standing at the other end of the couch fell on him. The head of the guitar hit the side of his head, and he now has a nasty lump and a small cut. Luckily, it was a graze, and did not do any permanent damage. It took me a few minutes to convince myself that he was fine.

Maybe the US isn’t so stuck up after all. “Dozens of same-sex couples marry in SF“

My favourite quote:

“This is a couple that’s been together 14 years,” Katz said moments later. “They’re one of the most extraordinary couples I know.”
Yet they couldn’t get married, she said.
“And then you see someone like Britney Spears, someone who takes it with so little respect,” Katz added, referring to the pop singer’s recent short-lived Las Vegas marriage.

Nice to see the merkins treating same-sex couples in a non-biblical, human way.

I get online using an ADSL line provided by Eircom.net. I use a Netopia Cayman 3341 as a router for my home network, and as a newbie to the world of in-depth networking, I’m completely lost.

I bought a block of for IP addresses from the same company (I think a block of four is called a /27 block?).

My problem is that every time there’s a power shortage, a machine crash, or even someone sneezes, my router resets and is given another IP address.

That plays havoc with my DNS. I try to run an IRC server, and use it as a test server for some new projects.

Every time my IP resets, I have to change the A record of my domain, and wait 8 hours for Eircom’s domain servers to update.

What’s bloody frustrating about this is that I have the technology! I own the IP block I want to link to my router!

At first glance, the Eircom.net support page is pretty complete.

When I dig a little deeper, though, suddenly everything’s fucked. I don’t use Windows or Mac, and the router is OS agnostic anyway.

My question is – how do I set up my router to have a static IP address? Even calling Eircom.net’s help line doesn’t help – they readily admit that they don’t know!

I got this from Simon Willison‘s blog, and had a good chuckle.

lynx -mime_header http://slashdot.org/ | head -n 6 | tail -1

Had my first driving lesson today. It was interesting trying to figure out what I was nervous about – I can skate, bike, and rollerblade, so what’s the big deal?

Turns out, what I’m nervous of is teacher patience. I’m a slow but steady learner. The key problem, though, is “slow” – while I learn, and learn steadily, I am always aware that I have little patience in others when I am trying to teach them – so why should a teacher have patience in me?

Anyway – it went off without too many problems. Stalled once or twice until it was explained to me a bit more about how the engine and car fit together.

I must find out how exactly a clutch works – the description didn’t seem to gel with me – I need a good physical understanding of it to be confidant that I won’t break anything.

9° in the house today. I should get some oil. thankfully, i’ve wrangled a pay-day change from da bosses, so I can order it today.

I was admiring the subliminal background image of Kevin Lyda‘s homepage. Made me chuckle.

central heating packed it in a few days ago, so I woke up, 7am, shivering to a freezing house. the thermometer said 10° celsius. I think it was lying.

I discussed the idea of moving to Belturbet with Bronwyn yesterday – her parents are offering the house to us on a low-rent basis. after a little thought, we both agreed it was ridiculous. no broadband, no prospect of broadband, and the only way I could get to work is with a bus which leave to Monaghan at 12:30.

better off where I am.

we’ll keep on looking

typing is difficult when there’s a three month old nipper screaming and wriggling on your lap.