The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

I will soon be down in Plymouth, at ArmadaCon. And hasn’t it come around quickly. I will have to take my case with me down to Anthrobotics. A slightly later start on my journey down to the South West (or earlier with a three hour interruption, if you think of the trip down to the University in Trefforest for my lecture as the start of the weekend). The frightening thing is, after ArmadaCon, the downhill slope to Christmas gets even steeper, and it will be here in a flash.

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TECHNOTOYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
On Friday, my new DECT phones arrived whilst I was in my lecture. I thought I was quite restrained, waiting until after I had had my food before tearing open the box and setting them up. I have installed the base-station in my Study, and the second handset in my bedroom, this is only a temporary measure, once Gary fixes the phone socket up there, then it can go somewhere else. This system can handle upto six handsets and has a value of one REN, so all those handsets is equal to just one normal extension. So, there are four other locations in the house where I can put a phone. Lets see, one in the attic, one in the back porch, one in my garage/shed, as it will be in the range of the base-station, one in the back bedroom. Maybe replace the fixed phone in my living room with another base-station, that would mean that nearly every room in my house would be within easy reach of a telephone, or is that being a bit silly.

On the subjects of telephones, I have downloaded a Java version of Tomb Raider onto my mobile. Addictive isn’t the word for it. The only problem is, it eats batteries, as do all Java games. Oh well, something to keep me occupied on the train journey down to Plymouth, if I can stop myself from finishing it between now and next Friday.

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Also, the bookcases for my study arrived. Looming in their flatpacks in my Mother’s hallway, waiting to be taken down to my house for assembly. Something else that has to be moved from my old bedroom down to my study is my blue TARDIS shaped video cabinet that I had for Christmas back in 1988. It holds about 80 videos. I filled it around about the time that the BBC started talking about releasing the series on DVD. I have not bought a Doctor Who story on VHS since that day. I knew that I would be able to fit the whole of the surviving Doctor Who back catalogue (when it was eventually all gets released on DVD) into it, and relegate the VHS tapes to a box elsewhere.

Saturday, I went and ordered my desk. This is the final piece of furniture for my Study. It will be a pine desk, there is a cupboard at the side for my computer to sit in, whilst the draw in the front slides out, with front folding down to reveal the keyboard. My sister Janet has something similar in her house. It will be a great improvement on the old kitchen table I am currently using for my computer. For starters it has a large surface, so I will be able to have my Printer and scanner on it, either side of my monitor.

In the same building as the pine furniture showroom in Ewenny, there is a small café. After I had bought the desk, I was rather peckish, so I suggested going into the café and having a cake and a cup of tea. I decided to have a cream tea, as there were chunky scones on display, which looked absolutely delicious. So up to the counter I toddled, and ordered a cream tea for my self and trifle for my mother. When I got back to the table I knew something was amiss. I had broken off a small piece of scone and dipped it into the “cream”. It tasted vinegary. More like mayonnaise than cream. So I asked my mother if it tasted right to her. She confirmed my suspicions. It was a good job I had not spread it onto the scone.

Less than a fortnight ago, the bridge of my glasses snapped, and I had to go down to Specsavers in Pontypridd to have them repaired. So I was less than pleased when the damn thing snapped again on the other side of the bridge. This time, to hell with a train journey down to Pontypridd, I went over to the local opticians, to see if they could solder it, but they advised against it, due to the age of the frames. Instead, they suggested getting a new pair of frames, and then putting the lens in them. A bit of a pain, but it seemed like the only option. Also, there were stunning frames sitting on the rack, saying buy me. Narrow frames are fashionable again, and they suit my face a lot better than the fuller rounder ones. These glasses, frames and fitting were considerably cheaper than I was expecting, so how could I resist.

After much pushing and pulling of heavy rolls of carpet and underlay down two flights of stairs from my attic. After the actual effort of unrolling it and sticking it on the floor, I now have a lovely warm floor in my study. Wall paper, carpet and lampshade all contribute to making it somewhere that I want to spend my time in. I will be getting my shelves today. They will have to be assembled as they will arrive in flat-pack boxes, but that should not be much of a problem.

The only thing that is missing now is a tidy desk for my computer, the grotty old kitchen table that I am currently using just isn’t good enough. I will be going to get the new desk on Saturday, probably from the pine furniture shop in Ewenny, outside Bridgend, where my sister Janet got her computer desk. Unfortunately, as I had to move my computer to get the carpet down, I am once again temporarily without Internet access at home. This time, it will not be a massive problem, as with the ASDL connection, even a few megabytes of email will simply whiz into my system.

Second week of Module, and we were given the first task and split up into groups of four. The first challenge involves the historic bridge at Pontypridd. Built in 1756 by William Edwards, a Minister of Religion and self taught architect. It was designed to carry road traffic from the valleys across the Taff, and down to Cardiff. At the time it was considered an engineering marvel, as it had three failed attempts at building the bridge had preceded it. Edwards placed three graduated cylindrical holes at either side of the bridge. Normally, holes in a structure weaken it, however, the size and arrangement of these holes add to the strength and stability. When the Victorians built their own road bridge next to the Old Bridge in 1853, steps were added to the structure, converting it to a footbridge. These Victorian steps are the foundation of the challenge. The team I am a member of has to build a robot that can walk up these steps, which are on average 5 inches tall, over the top of the arch and back down the other side. It should be an interesting challenge.

Student Union bars are naff, but it does make me appreciate proper grown up pubs. However, as I am trying to fit in as much as possible, it means that I am going to be drinking in the Union quite a bit this year. The third year Science and Science Fiction students are a much nicer group of people this time than two years ago when I did the two Level III pure SF modules. This can only be a good thing. And this time around, I am actually remembering names and faces. This is quite remarkable, considering the amount of Strongbow I consumed in a three-hour period last night, on a virtually empty stomach as well. Also there was the cocktail, roughly half a pint of larger, cider and blackcurrent, of questionable strength. I was challenged to down it in one, which I succeeded in doing. Sometimes I doubt I will ever grow up.

I got my ASDL to work last night.  I am now a happy bunny.  And doesn’t it just whiz.  Pages that used to take forever to download do it in seconds.  Now that I have broadband via Pipex, I will have to cancel my Freeserve narrowband account; oh dear, what a shame, never mind. 

I have yet to put the carpet down in my study, but it looks so much better with the wallpaper hiding the horrible green distemper on the walls.

I could wait no longer, carpet or no carpet, my computer was going back up. After a week without Internet access at home I had to set my computer back up. I knew I had a large amount of email waiting for me, as via Yahoo! I was regularly checking the contents of my Feathermail inbox. It took 45 minutes for it all to down load, and about 20 minutes for all the various newsgroup articles to come from the Usenet.

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For the first time since I started working towards my degree, I have been down on Campus, at a lecture during normal teaching hours. Whilst the place is brimming with life and activity. All my previous modules have been part-time evening classes. Yesterday was the first lecture on the “SP3S04: Anthrobotics” module. This is a workshop module, lots of practical hands on stuff, mostly with the LEGO Mindstorm robot kits. Over the course of the year, there will be a number of challenges, which I will complete as part of a group; these are worth 80% of the marks for this module. The remaining 20% come from the completion of a series of Learning Logs over the course of the year. This shouldn’t really be a problem for me, as I have got into the habit of diary writing via this blog.

The first task was to get into a group of three, and to find out what we all understood by the word Robot, and then to make a display for the rest of the class. The second task involved the LEGO; first part of the task was building the tallest structure, the second part was a strength test, when Mike Reddy, the Lecturer tipped the structures up to see how far they would lean before they fell over. The tower that the group I was in constructed was the third tallest, but it by far and away was the most stable, as it almost touched the desk before the structure fell apart.

After the lecture, I went for a drink with some of the people doing the module. My initial sensation was one of decrepitude, as the thought struck me that the last time I had sat in Students Union Bar, with a group of my fellow students, the people I was drinking with would all have been six years old. Time marches on.

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And today’s lesson is “if something looks to good to be true, it probably is.” I bought myself a cheap second hand Ethernet router off eBay for use with my Iyonix PC and the new ASDL service I have subscribed to. I thought I was saving myself a packet, as it was only £20 and the cheapest I saw for a RISC OS machine was £105. What I didn’t know was it was built for the USA’s DSL standard, and therefore will not work with the UK’s ASDL standard. So I have now had to buy the £105 Ethernet router from RComp, and I won’t be able to hit the broadband until that arrives.

What a difference a few bits of polystyrene make. Got a message yesterday that the decorator would be able to start work this morning. He was there on the dot of 8am. First thing he did was put the coving up around the ceiling in my study. I bought that particular design as it matched the polystyrene ceiling rose Gary put up on Tuesday. As I was leaving for work, he was pasting the wall in the hallway that needed re-papering after the work done in that part of the house. On Monday he will paper my study.

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After the SKY+ set-top box burped for a fourth time and wiped everything on the disk, including the Season 7 premiere of Stargate SG-1, I phoned SKY to ask for a replacement set-top box, as this one was obviously defective. The Engineer arrived yesterday afternoon, and did the job. I was in work whilst he did it, but my Mother and baby William were down there to let him in. This box appears to be working properly. Then again, so did the old box. It wasn’t until all the recorded material was wiped that I knew there was a problem.

It is a good job that the set-top box is there. I am going out tonight, so I will be missing the final of Fame Academy. How did I survive before the invention of videos, whether tape based or digital? I doubt if any of the children in the Library at the moment could imagine a world without the VCR.

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Naturally, now that there are enough books on France to go around the children doing their Year IX Geography project on Italy. Why don’t their teachers liase with the Library Service, we are all part of the same Directorate within the County Borough Council. Then there would be enough books to go around.

Yesterday went well. I spent the afternoon down in Treforest, at the University of Glamorgan, where I re-enrolled for my last year as a student on the BSc Combined Studies degree. One more module, with lectures on Wednesday Afternoons and Friday Mornings. The bit I really didn’t like about registering was handing over £187 tuition fees. Still, all done now. Ready for my first lecture next Wednesday.I decided that I was going to have to get myself an NUS card, after all, I was entitled to one, so why not. I went up to the Student Union Building, got myself a set of passport style photos from one of those booths. Considering its source, it isn’t that bad. I suppose the fact that these machines are all digital with dry wax sublimation printers is a great improvement on the dodgy old chemical and potluck system they used to have. I had a fit of the giggles whilst the machine was taking the photos, which is why I have a decent smile in them. The photo on this NUS card could not possibly be worse than the one I had when I was in Coventry Polytechnic. That one won a prize for being an ugly photo. When did they start letting children go to university? It must be that I am getting old. I have to say that being amongst all these young people should help to keep me young myself.

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On the not so positive side of things, the decorator is unwell, so there was no work done on my study. He says that cannot make it until Monday at the earliest. Another weekend with everything looking bare. Still, it should look good when it is finished.

Which means that my computer will have to stay in its box for a lot longer than I originally intended. The practical upshot of this is that I don’t have Internet access at home at the moment. No way of checking my emails after I finish work. There is no point setting up the modem on the old RiscPC in my Mother’s house, as I had the line in my old bedroom disconnected last weekend. I think I am going to go mad.