OK! On Friday I picked up my new specs and bought a new monitor (NEC Multisync 2080UX+ TFT). My new Gigabyte Geforce 6600 also arrived on Friday to complete my visual treat.
Since then, I've been mostly enjoying having the ability to see (after wearing no glasses for a month or so due to one pair breaking and me misplacing the others) and playing Doom 3. I say that I have been playing Doom 3, more precisely, I've been playing Last Man Standing which is an awesome co-op multiplayer mod for Doom 3.
My new graphics card and monitor really do make playing LMS a treat. The performance is truly amazing and I now just need a bit more RAM and a faster CPU to bump the performance another couple of notches :-)
Bundled with the card was also a game called Thief - Deadly Shadows but I'm yet to install that. I'll update on that and Earth 2160 (when it arrives) as soon as I've had chance to 'test' them.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
The new graphics card
My shiny new graphics card with possibly the biggest heatsink I've ever seen - it's mounted on both sides of the card with a heatpipe between the two halves!
Saturday, October 22, 2005
The League of Gentlemen - Live!
On Wednesday, we went to the Apollo again - this time for the League of Gentlemen. A very good (and rather funny) show.
The first half of the show was open auditions for the 'Communitivity' that the Legs Akimbo Theatre Company were to perofrm. The idea was that members of the Royston Vasey community would perform in a nativity play.
The second half was a pantomime featuring all the characters that hadn't featured so far.
It was great how they managed to get all the characters in and I would definately recommend it if you like the TV show.
The first half of the show was open auditions for the 'Communitivity' that the Legs Akimbo Theatre Company were to perofrm. The idea was that members of the Royston Vasey community would perform in a nativity play.
The second half was a pantomime featuring all the characters that hadn't featured so far.
It was great how they managed to get all the characters in and I would definately recommend it if you like the TV show.
Monday, October 17, 2005
A fun-filled weekend!
Well a busy and enjoyable weekend was had.
On Friday I went to watch the quarter-finals of the snooker at the Guild Hall. We watched Steven Hendry play David Gray - Hendry won - and we could clearly be seen on the TV. :-)
On Saturday I then went to the Apollo in Manchester to watch the Kaiser Chiefs. Not a bad gig. Supporting were the Cribs (appauling!) and Maximo Parks (not bad - although Caoline thought that they were rubbish). The Kaiser Chiefs performed well though - since I'm not a huge fan I didn't enjoy it as much as Caroline but they were good.
I was a little dubious about the parking, however. We parked down some street where we paid a guy in a yellow jacket £5 to look after the car. Sounds even more dodgy than it seemed at the time - if that's possible. At least my car was still there and unharmed when we got back to it so all was good. Caroline's a little concerned about leaving her car there on Wednesday when we go to see the League of Gentlemen (more about that after the event).
Sunday was then spent at home stripping wallpaper in my bedroom. I now have 4 walls and a window so the end is nearly in sight - there is a lot still to do before the house will be finished though.
On Friday I went to watch the quarter-finals of the snooker at the Guild Hall. We watched Steven Hendry play David Gray - Hendry won - and we could clearly be seen on the TV. :-)
On Saturday I then went to the Apollo in Manchester to watch the Kaiser Chiefs. Not a bad gig. Supporting were the Cribs (appauling!) and Maximo Parks (not bad - although Caoline thought that they were rubbish). The Kaiser Chiefs performed well though - since I'm not a huge fan I didn't enjoy it as much as Caroline but they were good.
I was a little dubious about the parking, however. We parked down some street where we paid a guy in a yellow jacket £5 to look after the car. Sounds even more dodgy than it seemed at the time - if that's possible. At least my car was still there and unharmed when we got back to it so all was good. Caroline's a little concerned about leaving her car there on Wednesday when we go to see the League of Gentlemen (more about that after the event).
Sunday was then spent at home stripping wallpaper in my bedroom. I now have 4 walls and a window so the end is nearly in sight - there is a lot still to do before the house will be finished though.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
The keyboard & mouse arrived!
Well the keyboard and mouse arrived a couple of weeks ago now and they're are brilliant - at least the mouse is. I'm not sure that the keyboard is wirth it but the bundle only coat £10 more than just buying the mouse and a cordless keyboard may come in handy at some point.
I'm yet to really test the kit since Doom 3 has been playing up - I keep getting jittery graphics. This could be due to only having a GeForce FX 5200 but it has worked fine in the past so it must be somthing I've done recently - I've been playing about with Omega drivers and they may have cocked something up.
The proper test can wait until I get a new machine - I'm just biding my time until I can get a cheap dual Xeon workstation. I'll then do a fresh install and see what happens. :-)
I'm yet to really test the kit since Doom 3 has been playing up - I keep getting jittery graphics. This could be due to only having a GeForce FX 5200 but it has worked fine in the past so it must be somthing I've done recently - I've been playing about with Omega drivers and they may have cocked something up.
The proper test can wait until I get a new machine - I'm just biding my time until I can get a cheap dual Xeon workstation. I'll then do a fresh install and see what happens. :-)
Thursday, October 13, 2005
The singles pool tournament
I participated in my singles pool match at the Queens arms in Kirkham on Wenesday. As I feared I didn't make it past the first round. I made several silly mistakes - one costing me the second match. In fairness, my opponent was rather good and went on to win the second round aginst an excellent young player from the Wrea Green Institute.
Vikki faired better on Thursday at the Huntsman in Kirkham. She won 2-1 in the first round and then lost 2-1 in the second round. She was rather unforunate but played impressively.
Vikki faired better on Thursday at the Huntsman in Kirkham. She won 2-1 in the first round and then lost 2-1 in the second round. She was rather unforunate but played impressively.
Monday, October 03, 2005
My uneventful life
Well... other than ordering (and not receiving) my new mouse, I haven't really been up to a great deal.
Things are slowly getting better at work and the light at the end of the tunnel can now be seen - hope it's not a train ;-) My server room is nearly finished too so I'll soon be able to move them into their very own air-conditioned room which will be nice.
I'm off to uni on Thursday too - should give me a rest from the nagging.
Things are slowly getting better at work and the light at the end of the tunnel can now be seen - hope it's not a train ;-) My server room is nearly finished too so I'll soon be able to move them into their very own air-conditioned room which will be nice.
I'm off to uni on Thursday too - should give me a rest from the nagging.
Will it ever arrive?
I decided over a week ago to take the plunge and splash out on a new keyboard and mouse since I've never spent any money on either for many years. I decided that I may as well get one of the best available and plumped for the Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 3100 Laser.
Anyway, Ebuyer have totally pissed about with my order and I am still waiting. :-( How upset am I? Very!
I was hoping to have had a good play with it by now to let the world know whether it was worth the £65 but alas we shall all have to wait.
Anyway, Ebuyer have totally pissed about with my order and I am still waiting. :-( How upset am I? Very!
I was hoping to have had a good play with it by now to let the world know whether it was worth the £65 but alas we shall all have to wait.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Another Ebay Bargain
I have received my new camera lens - another Ebay bargain. For £45 I have bought a 70-210mm AF lens (not a Canon one unfortunately but still quite good).
I will just need to go somewhere to take a couple of pics with it so that I can show off its splendar. Check back soon for an update.
I will just need to go somewhere to take a couple of pics with it so that I can show off its splendar. Check back soon for an update.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Some good news!
I've finally started to receive good news about my network migration...
I today received several boxes of second-user thin client terminals (Compaq T20s) to replace all the machines in the sixth form ILC which simply refused to boot Thinstation (I think it's some wiered implementation of the embedded i810 graphics). I will also liberally scatter these around some of the other rooms.
Tomorrow, I should be receiving 30 brand spanking HP thin client terminals to replace the room of machines that refuse to allow Etherboot to run from the hard disk (God knows why this is!).
I've also heard good news about my new power supplies to the temporary and new server rooms so I will soon have a 50A supply for my UPS and I will be able to turn everything on!!! :)
To round things off nicely, I have found that my problem receiving email may not be at my end and Chris is going to be working with me next week to help me tweak and fine tune some stuff so that all will be completed! (Now I just have to get out of making Nedap cards)
I today received several boxes of second-user thin client terminals (Compaq T20s) to replace all the machines in the sixth form ILC which simply refused to boot Thinstation (I think it's some wiered implementation of the embedded i810 graphics). I will also liberally scatter these around some of the other rooms.
Tomorrow, I should be receiving 30 brand spanking HP thin client terminals to replace the room of machines that refuse to allow Etherboot to run from the hard disk (God knows why this is!).
I've also heard good news about my new power supplies to the temporary and new server rooms so I will soon have a 50A supply for my UPS and I will be able to turn everything on!!! :)
To round things off nicely, I have found that my problem receiving email may not be at my end and Chris is going to be working with me next week to help me tweak and fine tune some stuff so that all will be completed! (Now I just have to get out of making Nedap cards)
Monday, September 12, 2005
The Saga Continues...
Well the network migration is continuing to go wrong. I still have no server room, although a temporary space has been found next door to where the server room will eventually end up. Unfortunately, there is not enough power to turn all my equipment on and I need a 50A feed for my UPS!
Incoming email is screwed - I can�t see any reason for this being the case and can only assume that something is going wrong upstream. Outlook Web Access and IIS in general on that server is also screwed though so hey ho!
Once I get the new server room and build my final 2 Citrix servers things should start to look up. Then I�ll just need to tweak the Citrix servers to iron out the remaining problems, retrieve the old shared areas from the old servers and fix Exchange.
Anyhoo - it does look pretty cool already!
Southport Airshow
Yesterday I went to the Southport Airshow with Caroline. I was a little reluctant at first, due to the ridiculously early hour that I had to rise (8am no less!). I�m glad that I went though because it gave me a chance to try out my new camera.There was lots to see � including helicopters, model planes (look at the size of some of them!) and the Red Arrows. I think you can agree that some of the pictures look superb.
There was one slight drawback, however, in that we forgot to take any sun screen and I now look like a lobster (after it has been boiled to the end of time!).
Thursday, September 08, 2005
My New Toy
I’ve finally found myself a new camera to help me take up my new hobby of photography.
I decided that it might be quite fun to get some gear that will let me do something more artistic than my Canon IXUS 700 (a damn good camera in its own right!) could manage.
Just in case I didn’t like the hobby as much as I thought, I decided to go for a 2nd hand Canon EOS 300D – a digital SLR. I found one for an incredibly good price on Ebay, complete with the 18-55mm lens kit, a 2GB compact flash card and a little bag to keep it in.
I’m rather impressed. Stay tuned to see some of the shots that it produces.
I decided that it might be quite fun to get some gear that will let me do something more artistic than my Canon IXUS 700 (a damn good camera in its own right!) could manage.
Just in case I didn’t like the hobby as much as I thought, I decided to go for a 2nd hand Canon EOS 300D – a digital SLR. I found one for an incredibly good price on Ebay, complete with the 18-55mm lens kit, a 2GB compact flash card and a little bag to keep it in.
I’m rather impressed. Stay tuned to see some of the shots that it produces.
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Blackpool Illuminations
The obligatory Illuminations walk had to be performed at some point.As always, it was just a bunch of lights above the prom. Due to my laziness we missed the fireworks which were set off from a barge between Central Pier and North Pier but we did see hundreds of biker-types on Goldwings with flashing lights and crazy horns and the like.
We also had a quick walk along the beach in the dark. I do not recommend this - particularly since the tide came in ridiculously quickly just after we came off the beach! All in all, not a bad night out and all this walking must be doing me some good! :-)
Monday, August 29, 2005
A sensible set of signs...
I spotted this on the walk back from Povpool. Remind me what you use to play bowls. :D
The Bank Holiday Weekend
In order to take advantage of the bank holiday weekend, Caroline came 'round last night. We had a fun-filled evening watching some more episodes of Most Haunted - a genius show, with Derek Accura cracking us up more and more with every word he uttered!
Anyway, one of the places that the Most Haunted team visited was Blackpool Pleasure beach - the Ghost Train to be exact. Caroline had the great idea that we should go to the Pleasure Beach today and for some bizzarre reason I agreed - the Pleasure Beach is somewhere I would never normally go!
Anyway, we had quite a fun day with a ride on the tram down to the Pleasure Beach and not reasonable lunch in Yates' - I have a pie-type thing and Caroline had pasta. We paid an extortionate amount of money at the Pleasure Beach and went on several rides including the Big One (which wasn't all that it was cracked up to be IMHO), the Grand National (that thing is unsafe) and another roller coaster which didn't even have safety bars (a good job that we were wedged into the tiny carriages cos that thing was insane!).
Incidentally, we didn't see the ghost of 'Cloggy' which Derek was rabbiting on about, or any other ghosts for that matter!
As can be seen, I managed to get Caroline lovely and wet ;)
Saturday, August 27, 2005
The Wonderful World of Driving
I took my car for its MOT today - £40 well spent!
Due to the LPG-ness of the car there is no emissions test so the test was done in double quick time. We then had to wait half an hour before the stupid computer system would accept the results from the test. I mean... the mechanic had enough time to make a phone call, have brew and perform half of the MOT checks on another car (including the emissions test).
Anyway all was well cos the car passed with flying colours - just need to spend £100-odd on tax plus get the cam-belt changed and a service done.
As if all this wawsn't bad enough, i received my new license today. The stupid medical boffins at the DVLA have now decided that a 3-year license wasn't short enough. Despite the fact that I haven't had any epilepsy-related problems for over 7-years, I now have to have a review of my license after a year!
Due to the LPG-ness of the car there is no emissions test so the test was done in double quick time. We then had to wait half an hour before the stupid computer system would accept the results from the test. I mean... the mechanic had enough time to make a phone call, have brew and perform half of the MOT checks on another car (including the emissions test).
Anyway all was well cos the car passed with flying colours - just need to spend £100-odd on tax plus get the cam-belt changed and a service done.
As if all this wawsn't bad enough, i received my new license today. The stupid medical boffins at the DVLA have now decided that a 3-year license wasn't short enough. Despite the fact that I haven't had any epilepsy-related problems for over 7-years, I now have to have a review of my license after a year!
Friday, August 26, 2005
Looks like NASA control!
This is my desk at work with the fancy twin 17" Neovo flat panels. I thought I�d post a pic to show how cool it looks before I cover it in trash (the classroom next door currently contains all the trash!).
Now I just need to work on the computer - an Athlon XP 2400 with 700-odd meg of RAM and a 32MB graphics card is just a bit lame.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
The saga of the network upgrade
OK – a brief synopsis of the original plan…
The network I manage in a school was still running NT4 on the servers and 9x on the desktops with the wonderful software that is RM Connect locking it down to prevent the little darlings running amok. With MS support for NT being officially dead 8 months ago and the hardware getting no younger an upgrade was called for. In order to do this in a cost effective and easily manageable fashion I opted for the wonders of Citrix – which those that know me will know I love.
The Summer break began and the upgrade commenced…
I’d already placed the order for the new servers, etc. and they had arrived. I bought 10 Sun Fire v20z Opteron-based servers with 4GB RAM in the 6 Citrix servers. There’s also an EMC SAN and Tanberg LTO2 autoloader. My intention was to convert all the curriculum machines so that they would run as Citrix clients – the client OS would be XP where the licenses were available and a special Linux distro called Thinstation where the boxes only had 98 on them. I proceeded to set up the first new DC and the new mail server.
I got some instructions off msexchange.org which led me through the process of moving all the mailboxes from the old Exchange server to the new one. I then set up the new DC and began setting up some of the other servers and services. At this point Chris arrived for a week to give me a hand – he really didn’t know what he’d let himself in for! We tried to remove the old mail server (also a DC) but things stopped working. Exchange fell over, RIS stopped working, DNS went mental… God only knows what had happened.
After several days we decided that it was royally screwed so I decided to give up on retrieving the mail (incidentally, a previous network manager - probably the one who set the mail server and AD up - hadn't been backing mail up correctly!) and we re-created AD and started again. This left us about 4 days behind schedule and has had a knock on effect ever since. I have nearly finished configuring the clients now though :)
Talking about clients... one room contained 30 RM desktops of one particular model not found elsewhere in the school. These are nothing fancy - Intel mainboards with Celeron processors - but they refuse to boot via Etherboot when it is installed to the hard disk. Why the hell this is I don't know.
What's left to do?
I've configured Citrix on 3 out 6 of the servers with the fourth one only needing its baseline updates and Presentation Server installing. The Citrix farm, however, has only 2 applications installed at the moment - Office 2003 and Studio MX 2004. This leaves what seems like billions of apps still to install and configure - thank God for the easy application deployment in Citrix! :)
However, I also have a handful of colour printers to get Jetdirect boxes for and configure plus I need to complete the client configuration and tidy up the user configs. It all then has to be documented too!
Adding insult to injury
I found out today that my new server room is definately not going to be ready in time! I will be finding out tomorrow what I will have to do with all my servers since they currently occupy half a classroom - I know where I'd like to put them... bloody contractors! I'm also not sure where I'm going to put my 7' rack and 2 pallets-worth of UPS until the server room is ready.
Oh well... no point stressing out. Time to go and play pool!
Will update soon. :)
The network I manage in a school was still running NT4 on the servers and 9x on the desktops with the wonderful software that is RM Connect locking it down to prevent the little darlings running amok. With MS support for NT being officially dead 8 months ago and the hardware getting no younger an upgrade was called for. In order to do this in a cost effective and easily manageable fashion I opted for the wonders of Citrix – which those that know me will know I love.
The Summer break began and the upgrade commenced…
I’d already placed the order for the new servers, etc. and they had arrived. I bought 10 Sun Fire v20z Opteron-based servers with 4GB RAM in the 6 Citrix servers. There’s also an EMC SAN and Tanberg LTO2 autoloader. My intention was to convert all the curriculum machines so that they would run as Citrix clients – the client OS would be XP where the licenses were available and a special Linux distro called Thinstation where the boxes only had 98 on them. I proceeded to set up the first new DC and the new mail server.
I got some instructions off msexchange.org which led me through the process of moving all the mailboxes from the old Exchange server to the new one. I then set up the new DC and began setting up some of the other servers and services. At this point Chris arrived for a week to give me a hand – he really didn’t know what he’d let himself in for! We tried to remove the old mail server (also a DC) but things stopped working. Exchange fell over, RIS stopped working, DNS went mental… God only knows what had happened.
After several days we decided that it was royally screwed so I decided to give up on retrieving the mail (incidentally, a previous network manager - probably the one who set the mail server and AD up - hadn't been backing mail up correctly!) and we re-created AD and started again. This left us about 4 days behind schedule and has had a knock on effect ever since. I have nearly finished configuring the clients now though :)
Talking about clients... one room contained 30 RM desktops of one particular model not found elsewhere in the school. These are nothing fancy - Intel mainboards with Celeron processors - but they refuse to boot via Etherboot when it is installed to the hard disk. Why the hell this is I don't know.
What's left to do?
I've configured Citrix on 3 out 6 of the servers with the fourth one only needing its baseline updates and Presentation Server installing. The Citrix farm, however, has only 2 applications installed at the moment - Office 2003 and Studio MX 2004. This leaves what seems like billions of apps still to install and configure - thank God for the easy application deployment in Citrix! :)
However, I also have a handful of colour printers to get Jetdirect boxes for and configure plus I need to complete the client configuration and tidy up the user configs. It all then has to be documented too!
Adding insult to injury
I found out today that my new server room is definately not going to be ready in time! I will be finding out tomorrow what I will have to do with all my servers since they currently occupy half a classroom - I know where I'd like to put them... bloody contractors! I'm also not sure where I'm going to put my 7' rack and 2 pallets-worth of UPS until the server room is ready.
Oh well... no point stressing out. Time to go and play pool!
Will update soon. :)
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
My new blog...
Well... Kath finally persuaded me to have a blog so here it is on Blogger (the home of the Blog). I will add some more later when I've finished tweaking the settings.
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