New Blog, New URL, New Home

I alluded to this a few months ago, and I feel finally ready to move this blog. WordPress.com has served me well for the past year but I feel that I now want more control so I’ve bought a domain, and got me some hosting. The blog is set up, I’ve transferred all the content from this site, and imported it to the new blog. So please, update your bookmarks to the following, wonderous address.

http://dombarnes.com

How on earth did I think of that one eh?

I’ll be adding more stuff to it over the coming weeks, a few extra bits and pieces to the sidebars, and hopefully changing that header. But you’ll see them appear as and when they are ready.

I’ve also transferred the feed to Feedburner. I thought that it’d be good to host that somewhere else, and I can get some more info on you wonderous readers.

So hop on over and read the new post. I’ll no longer be posting here, I’m afraid. So to catch all the new stuff, dombarnes.com

MythTV: Day 2/3

Day twoGot a keyboard and USB adapter. Plugged in and boot. Blank screen. Lovely. Need to check boot order. F2 to launch BIOS  - no effect. Pulled out CMOS battery and boot. We’re in. OK, hard drive detected, cd drive detected. Check boot order.  Floppy, CD, Hard disk. Good. Reboot. Problem with CD drive. Change BIOS to ignore and swap cd to other drive. Works. Install Ubuntu. Loading screen.  SQUASHFS error: Unable to read page, block 15df9320 Google. Reboot and check disc. (This may take some time) - Errors found in 1 files Tried CD in different drive. ”Cannot operate in Low Graphics Mode” - Now I need to select my monitor.  Well its a TV, so I’ll just try a monitor at 800×600. OK. Blank screen. Damn, Reboot.  Try again.  Different resolution.  Blank screen.  Damn. This isn’t looking good.So maybe the disk is bad. Heaven forgive me, I’ll install XP. 1 hour later and I’m downloading the first of 88 software patches, but I’m installed.  I guess the disk is fine. Day 3I think that my issue is running it through a TV for install.  Maybe the X11 engine can’t load properly.  So I’ll download the alternative CD without the LiveCD and do a text based install. CD is inserted and I boot.  Install in text mode please.And now my screen is flickering like crazy. Its trying to display the image but its not got the right frequency. So I’m stuck. I tried frantically hitting Enter in the hopes that an installation would eventually start up. Not so true.  Solution: Friday I’m going to my gf’s parents house to borrow their monitor so I can get Ubuntu installed and get the necessary drivers for my ATI Radeon 7000 card. Hopefully it will work when I come back here. 

MythTV: Day 1

Today I picked up my box which will soon become my MythTV box. I decided to build a PVR for myself a few months back but just needed the supplies.

So far I have the TV tuner card, an Hauppage Win-TV PCI card, a graphic card, Radeon ATI AGP. I just needed the box. Well today I picked up a Dell Optiplex GX300 which will become the nervecenter of the whole operation.

I started by removing the old SCSI drives, and SCSI card from the motherboard. Then stuck in the Ubuntu CD and booted the system up. And what did I see? Keyboard error. So of course I need a keyboard to boot.  So I went round to borrow a keyboard from my gf’s dad. Just my luck, he only had a USB keyboard, and this PC doesn’t seem to play well with USB keyboards. So I need to get a USB to PS/2 adapter from work tomorrow. I might get a keyboard too just in case.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get ubuntu installed and MythTV setup. If not, then I might have to look at another base pc to build from.

CreateSouth – A New Media Event to attend!

I just saw this pop up online from Dave Slusher who does the fantastic Evil Genius Chronicles blog and podcast. He’s got together with a group of locals to pull together their own new media event, to bring similar style activities you see at SXSW. In his own words, “the Grand Strand Bloggers are throwing themselves a party and seeing who dances.”

So I wanna spread the work about CreateSouth and urge you to attend if you’re nearby.

Dave’s done what I have recently though I would like to see in the UK as well. There are loads of these conferences in the US, SXSW, PodCamp, Bar Camp, Twitter Meetups, ConvergeSouth, and so many bloggers, podcasters, content creaters in the UK just don’t get to attend. This morning I thought it’d be good to see a WestByWestMidlands start up here, in the same suit as SXSW and CreateSouth that Dave has helped to get rolling. An event with something for everyone. Music, films, sociology, education, the whole works. Just somewhere you can come and listen to people speak about their industry, ask them how to get started them selves, get ideas and tips for improving your own business, blog, podcast or other. Somewhere to go and learn how to make a short video for Youtube or Viddler, to learn about digital photography from the beginning, to learn how to get blogging and podcasting, and generally share knowledge and have a good time.

I’m hoping one year I’ll have enough time and money to go to SXSW perhaps but for now, I’ll watch from afar and support Dave who’s bringing some of this to the South east.

So if you fancy it, go and get registered!

HOWTO: Set up your Fon, or My adventures with a little white box

So tonight at the Midlands Mac User Group Richard, Ben and I were talking about the Fon AP that Ben had at Trilby. For some reason he (and others) were having trouble setting up their Fon router to work.
I bought one too for €8 and never got around to setting it up. So I figured I’d give it a try.

Firstly, my current setup. I have ADSL broadband from Virgin (not the cable service, the over the BT service). I have a Netgear DG834G Wireless ADSL Modem Router serving up wifi to my house (protected of course). I can also connect to one of the 4 10/100Mbps ports if needed. My DG834G currently serves up IP’s via DHCP all within one range. I have no other routers, switches, or anything else in the house. Oh but I do have a Airport Express which connects as a client to the DG834G to stream audio to my Hifi.

So here we go. I’ve taken every thing out of the box. I have my Fon AP (access point), power supply, installation guide, and network cable if needed.

According to the install guide I start by connnecting my ethernet cable from the adsl router to the Fon WAP.

Look out fire, just reached the frying pan. You’re next!

That title may not make much sense, and thats cos its a really far off simily (look it up) to my current work situation.

As I said before, I’m currently impending redundancy, and this week, we reached the end of the consultancy period. What does that mean? Well they are now at free liberty to give us our 30 days notice at any point. There has to be some formal dismissal hearing, and then 48 hours, but basically we’ll be going soon.

What does that mean for me? Well of course I’m looking for a new job. I wanna take this as an opportunity to get out of my industry and into IT. So I’m spending my time looking at IT Technician, Help desk jobs, anything that I can get for a good starting job, where I can do hardware and software repairs, and if possible, some travel.

I think I wanna get into network admin. At least that’s what I feel like I wanna do so I’ll follow that path unless my heart says otherwise.

So if you’re interested in hiring an aspiring IT Technician, who is A+ certified and working on his Network+, then please drop me a note and make me an offer.

Otherwise, I’ll keep trawling those online job search sites, and watching the hours tick away at work, as the share price drops, as well as my level of concentration and focus.

Until then, I’ll be working more on the new site, perfecting the theme for launch. Which hopefully won’t be too many more weeks away.

And speaking of that, is there anyway of getting my posts on the old blog to auto-forward to the new blog? Maybe not but worth asking. I’d just like to drive traffic away from the old, and make sure I’m still getting visitors to the new one for the same searches. Leave me a note in the comments.

work, redundancy, new job, it technician

Busy doing Nothing

So ever since the news came out at work about there being redundancies, the office has been really quiet. Consultants and IFA’s alike are staying clear of the office, only coming in when they really have to. And work wise, its been dead. So much so that I have spend a large portion of the last three days sitting around staring at my empty inbox and todo list seeing that there is nothing I can do right that moment.

So what did I do today? Well besides checking my account to see that I had been paid, I read some of Getting Things Done by David Allen. I also looked on Flickr and on some blogs for Moleskine ideas.

I got my first Moleskine at Christmas and haven’t actually done anything with it yet. But today I started on that. I printed out  a handy year planner, as well as setting up some pages. To keep in line with GTD ideas, I’ve got my Next Actions page, Someday/Maybe lists, as well as a Douglas Furs page where I have made some notes about the band. Have a look at the photos below.

Ikea!

I went to ikea the other day and bought this: