The Musings of the Kat

Posted by Kat Crichton Mon, 17 Oct 2005 07:07:00 GMT

It was inevitable really. Having climbed the large cherry tree and cut off five or six large branches with a hand saw, some chopping and cutting would ensue.

The first tool I chose for the job - the Black & Decker Scorpion electric saw - endured two branches of defoliating before falling to bits.

So, off to the the DIY store I went, planning to buy a replacement Scorpion. Then I noticed the garden tools section and within about two minutes went from looking at 50 quid electric toys to this...

McCulloch Mac 438 petrol driven 14 inch chainsaw.

I had no idea how much fun these things could be. It's like an extreme sport, dangerous and adrenalin pumping. Obviously real-man, phallic-symbol stuff, but all stereotypes have their basis in reality.

From the moment you open the packaging and fill up the petrol tank, you know you're dealing with a proper grown-up tool.

I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone with a lust for life - and who can read and follow the frightening instruction book.

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 05 Oct 2005 19:36:00 GMT

It's always tricky performing maintenance on hardware that is central to the family's computing/entertainment life, but this change could take out all the TV's in the house for days or even weeks.

I have a projector in the living room, attached to a Linux PC running MythTV, an open source personal video recorder project similar to Sky+ or TiVo.

At the moment it can only record one channel at a time from an NTL digital cable tuner and the big plan is to add a Freeview DTV card to it so that we can watch one live channel while recording another (or record two channels simultaneously).

It's a bit scary though, as these things have a habit of needing a fair amount of Linux hacking to get working correctly and that could knock out the entire house (6 people)'s TV and video.

Wish me luck ;)

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 05 Oct 2005 18:11:00 GMT

Windoze just doesn't seem to be capable of it.

You want to upgrade a PC's processor; so inevitably, the motherboard and memory have to follow suite. You try to boot the PC and it goes into a reboot-loop.

This has happened a few times recently and each time I end up reinstalling Windows. Not that I mind too much, Windows seems to need regular reinstalls to stop it from seizing up altogether.

Linux seems to handle new hardware a lot better, although it's always possible to boot into a low run level (a rather extreme equivalent of Windows Safe Mode!). You just don't get the Windows clog-up problems with Linux, as applications' settings aren't all installed into one bloated registry file.

Posted by Kat Crichton Tue, 04 Oct 2005 06:17:00 GMT

I found the option in Typo to enable 43 Things and 43 Places to my blog. Nice idea as it ties two Web2.0 technologies together.

Should help to give a better idea of what I'm about, although I'm some way off the number 43 (or 86) just yet, clearly need to be more interesting and make some more plans ;)

Would be nice if there was an option to show 43 posts on your Typo blog.

Posted by Kat Crichton Mon, 03 Oct 2005 04:41:00 GMT

Much as I love MythTV, it's web interface for anything other than TV recordings leaves a little to be desired.

So, I'm considering writing an interface to MythMusic in Ruby-on-Rails.

It should be ajax enabled so that you can do iTunes style search constraining and it should have a decent artist/album/song type browser.

I think I'll add this to the end of the project list after Mad Margaret's e-commerce.

If anyone else thinks this is a good idea, reply to this post.

Posted by Kat Crichton Sun, 02 Oct 2005 07:27:00 GMT

Well, the start of October seems like the right time to start a proper blog. A bit late for the term-start, but it's been a fair few years since I had a decent length summer holiday anyway.

I've had a news/diary section on klaws.org for a while, but I just never quite got around to updating it. Hopefully being able to edit on line will help.

What's this all going to be about then? Current projects include...

• Ruby-on-rails (web framework behind this site)
• MythTV (Linux based PVR)
• Extreme Programming
• Sorting out home bandwidth contention with a Linux firewall
• Getting my loft converted
• Writing and recording some music

So, glad you could make the grand opening. Hang around for a while, and help yourself to a cocktail and some canapés.

God bless this blog and all who sail in her!