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

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. 

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.

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!

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.

Ok, done.

Now plug in the power, Here goes.

Nothing. Oh wait I need to turn the plug on! Right. One solid light. Now the others are flashing.
“Check the internet light is flashing” – It is on. and flickring

Now connect to Fon. Right. Airport menu. I should see FON_AP and MyPlace. Lets see. I have MyPlace. Nothing else.

Lets look in iStumbler. Nope. (Weirdly the default channel on this is 2)

Still no FON_AP. It says to check the config. OK. Will do. Umm..how do I do that?

Right. Connecting to MyPlace. Password: Umm…oh its the serial number by default (need to change that!)
Waiting….Timeout. Try again. Not working.

Damn. Oh connected! Yes!

Right. How do I configure this? Not sure at all. No software, no router login config.

Back to my DG834G network to look stuff up. Lets check the FON has an IP from my router (Attached Devices on the web interface).

Right, router login. Yep it has an IP address via DHCP. Thats good. Lets see if I can do some configuration on the Fon website.

OH! FON_AP is showing. Guess its running ok now.

Back on Fon.com, looking in the Profile settings. It thinks I live near Woolwich. Thats not right. Not by a mile!

Ok. reconnected to MyPlace wifi and trying to login to register. Getting straight to Google. Trying wifi.fon.com

Nothings happening. Timeout again. The CD is useless. Trying MMUG Google Groups.

OK, tried 192.168.1.1 in Safari. SUCCESS! Logged in. Now I can finally register my FON WAP. Entered my address. Need to choose Linus or Bill (Linus for free wifi, Bill for charging – I get a share). How do I choose this? Ok, I went round in circles. Turns out there are radio boxes that were hidden by the Google Map. Thanks Google(!)
Registered! Woo!

Now I can configure my Fon I think. Done. Changes the secure SSID and WPA password. Lovely!

Rebooting (see: pulling the plug). Lets see how we go.

Back online. Names changed. Reconnecting…Secure network seems fine. Trying public. Redirecting to login page for Fon.
Perfect.

——————————————————–
OK. So a few comments to make.

It seemed to take about a solid minute for the open and secure networks to show up to Airport so be patient.

I have DHCP running on my DG834G. That handed off an IP to the Fon router. I presume if you don’t have DHCP, you’d need to assign an IP at the router as there is no configuration to do this on the Fon.

Updates to the Fon made online (wifi name, passwords etc) take 30 mins to replicate down to the Fon, or you can reboot it. From this i gather that it calls home every time it boots to check for new firmware or settings. As such, you may see your old setting still in place while the settings are updated (I saw MyPlace at first after rebooting, then SecureFON came up)

I haven’t tried this stuff with Bonjour but I imagine that any devices connected to the Fon AP would not be able to do any Bonjour stuff with any other computers on the DG834G due to the different network segment being used.

So thats it. I have Fon going. I registered mine to be a pay for one. I may change this in the future though.
And finally, I hope that has proved useful to at least one person. If not, then try somewhere else.

One last point. Apparently Fon users can login to BTOpenZone hotspots and get online for free. Hope to try this tomorrow.

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.

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.

I’m gonna try and keep this up to date as best I can, and use it as much as possible. At first I felt bad about using it for such reasons but then I saw some photos on flickr of peoples piles of Moleskines and just thought “Well I can get another one a year down the line”.

I went to ikea the other day and bought this:
 

I may have mentioned iBoughtAMac.com - Its a website run by Brent. Well he had a daughter recently, Cadie Spore (lovely name) and it looks like she’s going to be a geek baby. Why is this important? Well because you can get some fantastic onesie’s from his shop at CafePress. If I had a kid, or was going to, I would be buying about 10 of these. They are great. I love the TCP/IP, Beta, and I’m Cute.So if you’re having a kid, like Merlin Mann, and Alex Lindsay did recently, then head on over and buy a few of these. I know I will be when that time comes. iBoughtAMac at CafePress 

I had planned to do this for a while, and the other day I went for it and bought myself a domain.

I haven’t had my own site since I 199-something and I built a very web 0.5 site and hosted it on Freeserve’s space. Now I have my own dot-com domain and hosting space thanks to GoDaddy. I’m in the process of building the site (still stuck on picking a base wordpress theme) but once thats finished and uploaded, I’ll be loading all the content onto it.

I’ll be moving all this stuff over there and will cease to update this blog. There is no point running two duplicates after all.

For now, as I said I need to find a good wordpress theme to start with. If you want to help I’d welcome the assistance.
I’m looking for a two column theme, two tone, black background with a light back to the blog content with rounded border edges, a section for a header image, a date button/box on blog post titles, a button style background on those titles, and widget ready.

Not too much is it? I also need a header logo. I am not much of a designer really, and don’t have the software for it (should’ve bought the MacHeist bundle – support isn’t an issue as I never ask for it) but since this is often a tech-themed blog something like that, with my name in it or the domain name.
I like Brent’s blog over at iBoughtAMac.com and DaringFireball.net. I like the really simple designs, nothing to busy.

So if you fancy helping out with design, or can point me towards some good themes, then it would be grately apprecaited, of course with adequate publicity. drop me an email. My address is on the right in the About section.

Other than that, look out for the new website launch hopefully not too far away.

So back at the start of January, I wrote about my mini-365 project, and we’ve now gone past the 1 month banner. So check out the flickr set for the full photos.

You’ll be able to see the ever changing hair length, and notice when I got my hair cut, and the varying facial hair choices I make. Its fun to see (at least to me)

Having done it this far, someone said why not carry on. So I’ve decided to continue and do this, but not every day, (partly because I forget), but I’ll try and do one or two a week. I also want to start a new project.

I think that my next photo project will be the home. I plan to take photos of something in my house, a bit odd or interesting, for 30 days. So check out the new flickr set here to see them as the get added.

Leave me your thoughts on the photos or here on the blog.

Today I received a bit of bad news. My company has decided to close all its sales offices in the UK, and centralise the work in Manchester. This, as you can guess from the title, means bad news for me. My office, along with a few more from around the country will be closing in the next few months. We’ve entered a consultation period at the moment, and that will finish on 5th March. Then notice periods will be issued, or at least begin to be issued.

For me, this means that I will get my 1 month notice either in March or April. During that time, we’ll have to pass on our group schemes to Manchester as they all get centralised up there. And then we will probably have to clear out the office, so relocate files, remove the literature supplies we have, the desks, computers, switches and servers, phones, chairs, and everything else. Everyone else in the office is in the same boat, so we’ll all be looking for new jobs.

I guess I’m in a slightly better position as I’m already looking for new jobs in IT. But everyone else will have to adjust to the fact that we’re being fired, and then get into job searching mode.

In terms of redundancy pay, since I’ve been there for 19 months, I should get about 5 weeks pay, which isn’t fab, but its better than nothing and it should tide me over till I can get another job.

In the mean time, I’m sure business will dry up, and the attitude in the office will be low. No one is going to have the spirit to work particularly hard, which will make things more difficult.

So over the next few months I’ll be blogging a bit more about my job, and keeping you reader(s) up to date with the comings and goings of my job. And of course my hunt for a new job. For now, I’m just dealing with it, and thinking about my trip to Athens that I will probably never get.

Don’t worry, its not actual Leopards. Monday was pay day and my treat for the month was to get Leopard. Obviously its been out since October 29th but I wanted to save getting it till later. I had two main reasons.

Well its now Day 25 (of January at least) of my 31 days of photographing myself. So far I’ve managed to miss a few days in rush/laziness. So far I’ve taken and uploaded 19 photos in the 25 I’ve been doing this.  To make it to 31, I’ll just extend it to February.For  the rest of the year I want to do other mini-projects so I’m looking for ideas. Maybe photos of buildings around the town, flora and fauna, things like that. If you have any suggestions, please leave me a comment here. So stay tuned for more photo projects on Flickr and check out my Self Portrait set here 

As per my previous post, I’m not a certified A+ IT Technician. And as a A+ Certified IT Technician I am now entitled to use the CompTIA A+ Certified IT Technician logo. It can be used on business cards, Resumes, CV’s, applications, letters, and some other stuff. Not a bad way to remind your clients or potential employers that you have formal qualifications that are recognise globally.

I’ve also requested my IT Technician Kit. I presume this includes my certificate, but it certainly sounds like I get something else. I’m looking forward to seeing what other gems I get sent, and I’ll be sure to let y’all know.

That makes no sense but I just wanted to share my knowledge that today I passed bmy 220-602 IT Technician Exam and am now fully A+ qualified. So I have something extra to put on my CV/application forms now.

For information, it took me abotu 25 mins to go through the 90 multiple-choice questions, and then another 20 to review them. I passed with a 875/900 so a whopping 97%! Pretty good eh!

Well thanks to New Horizons on Edmund Street for putting up with me. Or at least taking my money for the exam!

From here, its job searches. But all thats gonna wait till the weekend.

Its been done time and time and time again. I could do it again myself, but I’m lazy, so I’ve decided to do a 365 project of myself over 31 days, or at least January alone.

So check out my Flickr set for my photos. I’ll probably post them every few days so don’t bother checking daily! Plus am I really that interesting?

Windows fails to sell tickets

Originally uploaded by domster83.

Here’s a photo I took the other night at the Cineworld in Birmingham. i walked past the ticket machine where you pick up your advance booked tickets.
Seeing this makes me less happy to book online.
Not only did the machine crash, but its running Windows 95? Holy christ.

Ok, well I failed and didn’t do this over Christmas. Had too much to do giving advice to my parents about their own PC’s to worry about mine. But here it is, the fourth and final part of my Great Mac Apps segment.

GimmeSomeTune – This is the most useful iTunes plugin I use (and the only but thats beside the point). What it does is simple. It does loads. I will give you on-screen displays (like Growl) of your currently playing tracks, add hotkeys to control iTunes globally. It will fetch album art from Amazon, it will even fetch song lyrics from Leo’s Lyrics (which I find particularly useful). Basically, its a nice little plugin to have running. Only downside is upgrading it isn’t the easiest thing to do.

Missing Sync for Windows – I won’t say much about this since I don’t use it now. I was using it to sync my iPaq 5450 PDA with Address Book, and iCal. Its still really useful, but since I got my iPhone, I don’t use it. Still worth checking out if you own a PDA.

Miro (Formerly Democracy) -Its like TV on your computer, from the internet, like IPTV almost. Its a massively useful program that will let you watch video and audio from the web. There is a built in directory for videos, and you can subscribe to podcast feeds and (here is the best bit) you can subscribe to bit torrent RSS feeds and get your fave shows as soon as they are released. I tend to use it for any shows I don’t wanna watch on my iPhone, like Command-N, Webnation, Unwired, Diggnation (sometimes) and so on. Check. It. Out.

Microsoft Office – Now we all love our Macs, how could we not, but the fact is, there is a large amount of people who don’t know about them, so use Windows, and they are likely to have Office (99% for Word) so to help them in their niche little world, we can get Microsoft Office for Mac. And guess what? It’s actually better than the Windows version. I could tell you why, but why don’t you just try out the 30-day trial and see for yourself.
If you’re not bothered about the tracking features, and other advanced stuff, try iWork ‘08 from Apple. Its lurvly.

Onxy – Another little utility which you can use to keep your Mac running smoothly. Great for laptop users. The most useful tools are clearing caches (to free up some much needed free space) and running the cron jobs that should run to help maintain your disk which usually run at 3am.

Original List, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Well thats your lot. I’m done with this. I might put up some more suggestions as I think of them, but for now, I can close this chapter of my blog.

It just occured to me that I never did part 4 of my Great Mac Apps list (see part 1, 2, and 3). So my objective for this weekend is to do just that.