Another one? So soon?
Feb. 21st, 2002 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zotzI came to the worrying conclusion the other day that I am turning into James Greenhalgh. Back when we shared a house, I used to mock him occasionally for a) always having some supposedly nifty piece of trick hardware that meant he had to install some buttock-clenchingly scary set of bleeding-edge system software to have any chance of it working even vaguely, and b) always having his car off the road because of some daft fault.
For most of the last week, that's been me. I'm worried.
I've got this new soundcard, you see, and I think I'm only inches from getting it working. Inches . . . but it might as well be miles, for the moment. It doesn't actually do a lot - MIDI, which I won't use, and A/D & D/A, which I will (no onboard synthesisers, sample banks, DSPs, toastracks, his'n'hers cuddly fondue sets or anything like that) - but what it does it apparently does astonishingly well. So I'm going to have to break the rule of a lifetime and work out how to actually use a computer properly to get it going. This will involve [FX: hushed tone] recompiling a driver.
I'm not looking forward to it.
The other end is the car, which is now back on the road at only moderately painful expense, following my unpleasant and somewhat smoky brakes experience. To be honest, I've had worse brakes experiences, although these have tended to involve travelling down a main road at about fifty with at least two wheels locked (for the record, I don't recommend this particularly) or travelling down steep Yorkshire hills without any (ditto). Actually, now that I think about it, those all happened on the way to Edinburgh to spin some disks also. Maybe I should reconsider this . . .
In other news . . . there isn't really much other news. I did some major system surgery, bringing one of the machines up to the current stable release and this one I'm on now up to the current Testing. Not entirely free of scary moments, such as when I realised that the automated version of the really cunning and complicated new boot setup (that I'd never previously heard of) had failed and I was going to have to set it up by hand. Overall it went well, though. My desktop's looking frighteningly professional. I have gnugo back as well, which could be a bit of a time sink. I used to be able to kick its arse (not that you needed to be any good to do that) but it thrashed me the other day. I Need More Practice. I've got Abiword as well, which I'm currently using. It seems quite nice. I've been meaning to install it for ages, and it does rather look like I should have done it years ago. Oddly, its spellchecker is suspicious of both "Abiword" and "spellchecker".
Work toddles onwards much as before. Pressure is building on chromosome 10 projects, which I can regard with equanimity as I'm pretty sure I don't have any left. I've been given another mouse today, and a zebrafish which looks like it's going to be really strange. You always know you're going to have an interesting time of it when you get given a clone without any known location. Both have a fairly small contig number, though, which always helps. Things are getting a bit strange on the lab front, too - we've been told to use a k suffix rather than a c for the new version 3 big-dye terms, which is vitally important because we're abandoning the version 2 bigdyes mondo pronto. This is very strange, because it seems like we've only been using them for a few months (although to be honest i suspect that it's between a year and two). We also seem to be going back to using DMSO a lot, which gave me various deja vu moments. We used to use it in our PCRs, but it slipped out when we started getting various prepackaged kits. Now it's back, and being advocated for straightoforward sequencing reactions too. All very odd, and it means that laying out plates is a lot more complex than it was a few weeks ago when we were all encouraged to stop doing our own reactions. Also, as if this wasn't enough, we're getting moved from our comfy first floor office and lab down to the ground floor of the West Lido^H^H^H^HPavilion at the end of next week.. As you've all been paying attention to the minutiae of life at the Sanger Cantre (sorry, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, donchaknow), you'll all be aware already that this is the bit of the building that flooded this winter and last winter and that we're therefore all very happe and confortable and optimistic about being moved down to the ground floor office by the lake on the flood plain of the river Granta. I was off on Wednesday, so I didn't ask for any specific seat. I've been given the one furthest from the door, which makes me think that the boss is worried that I'll leave without paying. Still, AFAICT it's by the window with a view of the lake, which is infested with carp and gets regular blue-green blooms during the summer because of all the fertiliser in the local water table. This might make it a bit smelly at times, but as long as the window's closed it just means I'll have a colourful view.
Tuesday, of course, was the second Calling at the new venue, the Kambar in the town centre right by the Corn Exchange. It was a bit quiet. Really we could have done with a few more people, and possibly we (or rather, I) messed up on the set allocation. The original idea was that Emma would kick off, then Kate from Tightlaced would to the second set and I'd finish it. Emma and kate suggested to me that I do the first, Emma do the second and Kate finish. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it being a somewhat quiet night, Kate in the middle and Emma last might have worked better. OTOH, Emma was knackered by the end and left early, so maybe it was best as it was anyway. Kate's set was very bleepy and flagged a bit at the end (because there were so few people left) in spite of the fact that bleepy final sets (including, I think, by Kate, although I could be wrong) have worked before. Anyway, I think it all went fairly well and apart from the attendance I'm happy with it. The setlist will be up on the Calling website very soon. It did involve Joey Ramone's version of What A Wonderful World, Blyth Power, the Palast Orchester (mit seinem Sanger Max Raabe) and other such famous genre-goth classics. If I keep this up I'll make it to Whitby and nobody'll be prepared to talk to me, rather than very few as is currently the case.
And finally, I'm going to be really really sad and include the result of one of those annoying "Which kneejerk formfiller are you?" tests. Actually, I'm going to lie and put in the answer I'd prefer to have got :
For most of the last week, that's been me. I'm worried.
I've got this new soundcard, you see, and I think I'm only inches from getting it working. Inches . . . but it might as well be miles, for the moment. It doesn't actually do a lot - MIDI, which I won't use, and A/D & D/A, which I will (no onboard synthesisers, sample banks, DSPs, toastracks, his'n'hers cuddly fondue sets or anything like that) - but what it does it apparently does astonishingly well. So I'm going to have to break the rule of a lifetime and work out how to actually use a computer properly to get it going. This will involve [FX: hushed tone] recompiling a driver.
I'm not looking forward to it.
The other end is the car, which is now back on the road at only moderately painful expense, following my unpleasant and somewhat smoky brakes experience. To be honest, I've had worse brakes experiences, although these have tended to involve travelling down a main road at about fifty with at least two wheels locked (for the record, I don't recommend this particularly) or travelling down steep Yorkshire hills without any (ditto). Actually, now that I think about it, those all happened on the way to Edinburgh to spin some disks also. Maybe I should reconsider this . . .
In other news . . . there isn't really much other news. I did some major system surgery, bringing one of the machines up to the current stable release and this one I'm on now up to the current Testing. Not entirely free of scary moments, such as when I realised that the automated version of the really cunning and complicated new boot setup (that I'd never previously heard of) had failed and I was going to have to set it up by hand. Overall it went well, though. My desktop's looking frighteningly professional. I have gnugo back as well, which could be a bit of a time sink. I used to be able to kick its arse (not that you needed to be any good to do that) but it thrashed me the other day. I Need More Practice. I've got Abiword as well, which I'm currently using. It seems quite nice. I've been meaning to install it for ages, and it does rather look like I should have done it years ago. Oddly, its spellchecker is suspicious of both "Abiword" and "spellchecker".
Work toddles onwards much as before. Pressure is building on chromosome 10 projects, which I can regard with equanimity as I'm pretty sure I don't have any left. I've been given another mouse today, and a zebrafish which looks like it's going to be really strange. You always know you're going to have an interesting time of it when you get given a clone without any known location. Both have a fairly small contig number, though, which always helps. Things are getting a bit strange on the lab front, too - we've been told to use a k suffix rather than a c for the new version 3 big-dye terms, which is vitally important because we're abandoning the version 2 bigdyes mondo pronto. This is very strange, because it seems like we've only been using them for a few months (although to be honest i suspect that it's between a year and two). We also seem to be going back to using DMSO a lot, which gave me various deja vu moments. We used to use it in our PCRs, but it slipped out when we started getting various prepackaged kits. Now it's back, and being advocated for straightoforward sequencing reactions too. All very odd, and it means that laying out plates is a lot more complex than it was a few weeks ago when we were all encouraged to stop doing our own reactions. Also, as if this wasn't enough, we're getting moved from our comfy first floor office and lab down to the ground floor of the West Lido^H^H^H^HPavilion at the end of next week.. As you've all been paying attention to the minutiae of life at the Sanger Cantre (sorry, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, donchaknow), you'll all be aware already that this is the bit of the building that flooded this winter and last winter and that we're therefore all very happe and confortable and optimistic about being moved down to the ground floor office by the lake on the flood plain of the river Granta. I was off on Wednesday, so I didn't ask for any specific seat. I've been given the one furthest from the door, which makes me think that the boss is worried that I'll leave without paying. Still, AFAICT it's by the window with a view of the lake, which is infested with carp and gets regular blue-green blooms during the summer because of all the fertiliser in the local water table. This might make it a bit smelly at times, but as long as the window's closed it just means I'll have a colourful view.
Tuesday, of course, was the second Calling at the new venue, the Kambar in the town centre right by the Corn Exchange. It was a bit quiet. Really we could have done with a few more people, and possibly we (or rather, I) messed up on the set allocation. The original idea was that Emma would kick off, then Kate from Tightlaced would to the second set and I'd finish it. Emma and kate suggested to me that I do the first, Emma do the second and Kate finish. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it being a somewhat quiet night, Kate in the middle and Emma last might have worked better. OTOH, Emma was knackered by the end and left early, so maybe it was best as it was anyway. Kate's set was very bleepy and flagged a bit at the end (because there were so few people left) in spite of the fact that bleepy final sets (including, I think, by Kate, although I could be wrong) have worked before. Anyway, I think it all went fairly well and apart from the attendance I'm happy with it. The setlist will be up on the Calling website very soon. It did involve Joey Ramone's version of What A Wonderful World, Blyth Power, the Palast Orchester (mit seinem Sanger Max Raabe) and other such famous genre-goth classics. If I keep this up I'll make it to Whitby and nobody'll be prepared to talk to me, rather than very few as is currently the case.
And finally, I'm going to be really really sad and include the result of one of those annoying "Which kneejerk formfiller are you?" tests. Actually, I'm going to lie and put in the answer I'd prefer to have got :
 |
Which Firearm are you?>/FONT> |
[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<stan ryker</i>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]
I came to the worrying conclusion the other day that I am turning into James Greenhalgh. <lj-cut text="But without the pinball table"> Back when we shared a house, I used to mock him occasionally for a) always having some supposedly nifty piece of trick hardware that meant he had to install some buttock-clenchingly scary set of bleeding-edge system software to have any chance of it working even vaguely, and b) always having his car off the road because of some daft fault.
For most of the last week, that's been me. I'm worried.
I've got this new soundcard, you see, and I think I'm only inches from getting it working. Inches . . . but it might as well be miles, for the moment. It doesn't actually do a lot - MIDI, which I won't use, and A/D & D/A, which I will (no onboard synthesisers, sample banks, DSPs, toastracks, his'n'hers cuddly fondue sets or anything like that) - but what it does it apparently does astonishingly well. So I'm going to have to break the rule of a lifetime and work out how to actually use a computer properly to get it going. This will involve [FX: hushed tone] recompiling a driver.
I'm not looking forward to it.
The other end is the car, which is now back on the road at only moderately painful expense, following my unpleasant and somewhat smoky brakes experience. To be honest, I've had worse brakes experiences, although these have tended to involve travelling down a main road at about fifty with at least two wheels locked (for the record, I don't recommend this particularly) or travelling down steep Yorkshire hills without any (ditto). Actually, now that I think about it, those all happened on the way to Edinburgh to spin some disks also. Maybe I should reconsider this . . .
In other news . . . there isn't really much other news. I did some major system surgery, bringing one of the machines up to the current stable release and this one I'm on now up to the current Testing. Not entirely free of scary moments, such as when I realised that the automated version of the really cunning and complicated new boot setup (that I'd never previously heard of) had failed and I was going to have to set it up by hand. Overall it went well, though. My desktop's looking frighteningly professional. I have gnugo back as well, which could be a bit of a time sink. I used to be able to kick its arse (not that you needed to be any good to do that) but it thrashed me the other day. I Need More Practice. I've got Abiword as well, which I'm currently using. It seems quite nice. I've been meaning to install it for ages, and it does rather look like I should have done it years ago. Oddly, its spellchecker is suspicious of both "Abiword" and "spellchecker".
Work toddles onwards much as before. Pressure is building on chromosome 10 projects, which I can regard with equanimity as I'm pretty sure I don't have any left. I've been given another mouse today, and a zebrafish which looks like it's going to be really strange. You always know you're going to have an interesting time of it when you get given a clone without any known location. Both have a fairly small contig number, though, which always helps. Things are getting a bit strange on the lab front, too - we've been told to use a k suffix rather than a c for the new version 3 big-dye terms, which is vitally important because we're abandoning the version 2 bigdyes mondo pronto. This is very strange, because it seems like we've only been using them for a few months (although to be honest i suspect that it's between a year and two). We also seem to be going back to using DMSO a lot, which gave me various deja vu moments. We used to use it in our PCRs, but it slipped out when we started getting various prepackaged kits. Now it's back, and being advocated for straightoforward sequencing reactions too. All very odd, and it means that laying out plates is a lot more complex than it was a few weeks ago when we were all encouraged to stop doing our own reactions. Also, as if this wasn't enough, we're getting moved from our comfy first floor office and lab down to the ground floor of the West Lido^H^H^H^HPavilion at the end of next week.. As you've all been paying attention to the minutiae of life at the Sanger Cantre (sorry, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, donchaknow), you'll all be aware already that this is the bit of the building that flooded this winter and last winter and that we're therefore all very happe and confortable and optimistic about being moved down to the ground floor office by the lake on the flood plain of the river Granta. I was off on Wednesday, so I didn't ask for any specific seat. I've been given the one furthest from the door, which makes me think that the boss is worried that I'll leave without paying. Still, AFAICT it's by the window with a view of the lake, which is infested with carp and gets regular blue-green blooms during the summer because of all the fertiliser in the local water table. This might make it a bit smelly at times, but as long as the window's closed it just means I'll have a colourful view.
Tuesday, of course, was the second Calling at the new venue, the Kambar in the town centre right by the Corn Exchange. It was a bit quiet. Really we could have done with a few more people, and possibly we (or rather, I) messed up on the set allocation. The original idea was that Emma would kick off, then Kate from Tightlaced would to the second set and I'd finish it. Emma and kate suggested to me that I do the first, Emma do the second and Kate finish. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it being a somewhat quiet night, Kate in the middle and Emma last might have worked better. OTOH, Emma was knackered by the end and left early, so maybe it was best as it was anyway. Kate's set was very bleepy and flagged a bit at the end (because there were so few people left) in spite of the fact that bleepy final sets (including, I think, by Kate, although I could be wrong) have worked before. Anyway, I think it all went fairly well and apart from the attendance I'm happy with it. The setlist will be up on the <A HREF="www.thecalling.darkwave.org.uk">Calling website</A> very soon. It did involve Joey Ramone's version of What A Wonderful World, Blyth Power, the Palast Orchester (mit seinem Sanger Max Raabe) and other such famous genre-goth classics. If I keep this up I'll make it to Whitby and nobody'll be prepared to talk to me, rather than very few as is currently the case.
And finally, I'm going to be really really sad and include the result of one of those annoying "Which kneejerk formfiller are you?" tests. Actually, I'm going to lie and put in the answer I'd prefer to have got :
<CENTER><TABLE BORDER=0 BGCOLOR="#000000" COLOR="#FFFFFF" LINK="#FF0000" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 WIDTH=280><TR><TD><A HREF="http://selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client=test01" target="_blank"><IMG SRC="http://members.shaw.ca/stanryker/test01/test01g11.jpg" WIDTH=280 HEIGHT=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=bottom></A></P></TD></TR><TR><TD><CENTER><P><A HREF="http://selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client=test01" target="_blank"><FONT SIZE="-1" COLOR="#FF0000">Which Firearm are you?>/FONT></A><FONT SIZE="-1" COLOR="#FFFFFF"><BR></FONT><FONT SIZE="-2" COLOR="#FFFFFF">brought to you by</FONT><A HREF="http://www.livejournal.com/users/stanryker/" target="_blank"><FONT SIZE="-2" COLOR="#FF0000"><Stan Ryker</I>/FONT></A></CENTER></TD></TR></TABLE></CENTER></TEXTAREA><BR>
Actually it told me I was some weird Dragunov, with a couple of sniper rifles after that. If I was going to be a sniper rifle, though, I'd want to be a Wa-2000 or a barret light fifty. Sad? Me? Perish the thought.
For most of the last week, that's been me. I'm worried.
I've got this new soundcard, you see, and I think I'm only inches from getting it working. Inches . . . but it might as well be miles, for the moment. It doesn't actually do a lot - MIDI, which I won't use, and A/D & D/A, which I will (no onboard synthesisers, sample banks, DSPs, toastracks, his'n'hers cuddly fondue sets or anything like that) - but what it does it apparently does astonishingly well. So I'm going to have to break the rule of a lifetime and work out how to actually use a computer properly to get it going. This will involve [FX: hushed tone] recompiling a driver.
I'm not looking forward to it.
The other end is the car, which is now back on the road at only moderately painful expense, following my unpleasant and somewhat smoky brakes experience. To be honest, I've had worse brakes experiences, although these have tended to involve travelling down a main road at about fifty with at least two wheels locked (for the record, I don't recommend this particularly) or travelling down steep Yorkshire hills without any (ditto). Actually, now that I think about it, those all happened on the way to Edinburgh to spin some disks also. Maybe I should reconsider this . . .
In other news . . . there isn't really much other news. I did some major system surgery, bringing one of the machines up to the current stable release and this one I'm on now up to the current Testing. Not entirely free of scary moments, such as when I realised that the automated version of the really cunning and complicated new boot setup (that I'd never previously heard of) had failed and I was going to have to set it up by hand. Overall it went well, though. My desktop's looking frighteningly professional. I have gnugo back as well, which could be a bit of a time sink. I used to be able to kick its arse (not that you needed to be any good to do that) but it thrashed me the other day. I Need More Practice. I've got Abiword as well, which I'm currently using. It seems quite nice. I've been meaning to install it for ages, and it does rather look like I should have done it years ago. Oddly, its spellchecker is suspicious of both "Abiword" and "spellchecker".
Work toddles onwards much as before. Pressure is building on chromosome 10 projects, which I can regard with equanimity as I'm pretty sure I don't have any left. I've been given another mouse today, and a zebrafish which looks like it's going to be really strange. You always know you're going to have an interesting time of it when you get given a clone without any known location. Both have a fairly small contig number, though, which always helps. Things are getting a bit strange on the lab front, too - we've been told to use a k suffix rather than a c for the new version 3 big-dye terms, which is vitally important because we're abandoning the version 2 bigdyes mondo pronto. This is very strange, because it seems like we've only been using them for a few months (although to be honest i suspect that it's between a year and two). We also seem to be going back to using DMSO a lot, which gave me various deja vu moments. We used to use it in our PCRs, but it slipped out when we started getting various prepackaged kits. Now it's back, and being advocated for straightoforward sequencing reactions too. All very odd, and it means that laying out plates is a lot more complex than it was a few weeks ago when we were all encouraged to stop doing our own reactions. Also, as if this wasn't enough, we're getting moved from our comfy first floor office and lab down to the ground floor of the West Lido^H^H^H^HPavilion at the end of next week.. As you've all been paying attention to the minutiae of life at the Sanger Cantre (sorry, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, donchaknow), you'll all be aware already that this is the bit of the building that flooded this winter and last winter and that we're therefore all very happe and confortable and optimistic about being moved down to the ground floor office by the lake on the flood plain of the river Granta. I was off on Wednesday, so I didn't ask for any specific seat. I've been given the one furthest from the door, which makes me think that the boss is worried that I'll leave without paying. Still, AFAICT it's by the window with a view of the lake, which is infested with carp and gets regular blue-green blooms during the summer because of all the fertiliser in the local water table. This might make it a bit smelly at times, but as long as the window's closed it just means I'll have a colourful view.
Tuesday, of course, was the second Calling at the new venue, the Kambar in the town centre right by the Corn Exchange. It was a bit quiet. Really we could have done with a few more people, and possibly we (or rather, I) messed up on the set allocation. The original idea was that Emma would kick off, then Kate from Tightlaced would to the second set and I'd finish it. Emma and kate suggested to me that I do the first, Emma do the second and Kate finish. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it being a somewhat quiet night, Kate in the middle and Emma last might have worked better. OTOH, Emma was knackered by the end and left early, so maybe it was best as it was anyway. Kate's set was very bleepy and flagged a bit at the end (because there were so few people left) in spite of the fact that bleepy final sets (including, I think, by Kate, although I could be wrong) have worked before. Anyway, I think it all went fairly well and apart from the attendance I'm happy with it. The setlist will be up on the <A HREF="www.thecalling.darkwave.org.uk">Calling website</A> very soon. It did involve Joey Ramone's version of What A Wonderful World, Blyth Power, the Palast Orchester (mit seinem Sanger Max Raabe) and other such famous genre-goth classics. If I keep this up I'll make it to Whitby and nobody'll be prepared to talk to me, rather than very few as is currently the case.
And finally, I'm going to be really really sad and include the result of one of those annoying "Which kneejerk formfiller are you?" tests. Actually, I'm going to lie and put in the answer I'd prefer to have got :
<CENTER><TABLE BORDER=0 BGCOLOR="#000000" COLOR="#FFFFFF" LINK="#FF0000" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 WIDTH=280><TR><TD><A HREF="http://selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client=test01" target="_blank"><IMG SRC="http://members.shaw.ca/stanryker/test01/test01g11.jpg" WIDTH=280 HEIGHT=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=bottom></A></P></TD></TR><TR><TD><CENTER><P><A HREF="http://selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client=test01" target="_blank"><FONT SIZE="-1" COLOR="#FF0000">Which Firearm are you?>/FONT></A><FONT SIZE="-1" COLOR="#FFFFFF"><BR></FONT><FONT SIZE="-2" COLOR="#FFFFFF">brought to you by</FONT><A HREF="http://www.livejournal.com/users/stanryker/" target="_blank"><FONT SIZE="-2" COLOR="#FF0000"><Stan Ryker</I>/FONT></A></CENTER></TD></TR></TABLE></CENTER></TEXTAREA><BR>
Actually it told me I was some weird Dragunov, with a couple of sniper rifles after that. If I was going to be a sniper rifle, though, I'd want to be a Wa-2000 or a barret light fifty. Sad? Me? Perish the thought.
