Enabling RAID 1 on a Dell Vostro 220

by Ian Posted on March 13, 2009

Over Christmas, the main hard disc on our 5.5 year old Dell mini tower failed, causing us to replace the computer with a new one. We could have replaced the disc, but we had had other components in it fail in the past year, so its time was up. We didn’t really loose any data, as the majority was already stored on our server and backed up regularly. What was more of a problem was the assortment of programs that had been installed and configured over the years. The thought of having to re-install and reconfigure these wasn’t something I was looking forward to, especially if I had to change the operating system to Windows Vista, from Windows XP. Some of the programs would need upgrading to run on Vista and the cost would be prohibitive.

Dell do a range of computers for Small Business, called Vostro which are very well specified and which also offered the option to ‘downgrade’ from Vista to XP for £10. This seemed a very good solution to me. We specified a Vostro 220 mini tower system with a dual output graphics card to match the functionality we already had. This also became the point at which we changed from a pair of 17″ CRT monitors to a pair of 19″ widescreen TFT monitors. The thought was to re-arrange our desk to minimise the items on it. To accomplish this we bought a Belkin OmniView Pro2 KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch which would allow us to run both the new computer and Jo’s laptop sharing one of the screens and the other screen only attached to the new system.

ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics cardWhen the system arrived, I was in for a surprise with the dual outputs on the graphics card. I was expecting a pair of DVI (white digital connector on the left) outputs. I should have checked the specifications of the ATI Radeon HD 3650 card that Dell provided more carefully. It had one DVI output (which I promptly had to convert back to VGA to attach to the KVM switch) and a Display Port and HDMI output. I had to get a HDMI to DVI cable to attach the second monitor.
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Posted in Computers, Hardware | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

Upcoming concert dates

by Ian Posted on March 2, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, I found that the Mediaeval Baebes were going to be performing in Milton Keynes at The Stables, Wavendon in May. I tried to get tickets, but they were only available to members at that point. The tickets went on sale to the general public today at 10:00. At 10:03, I had purchased tickets 1 & 2 on the second row, so that’s sorted. We haven’t seen the Mediaeval Baebes since the Joust in 2006; we would have seen them in 2007, but the Joust was cancelled due to the flooding. The company behind the Joust went into liquidation and it hasn’t run since. There have been a lot of changes to the lineup and their new album Illumination is being released in May and they will be doing a few dates in support of the release. I’m looking forward to 22nd May.

Also at The Stables are The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. We saw them last year in Aylesbury and they were brilliant, so we knew we had to get tickets again. As they were playing in June, I didn’t check this morning to see if I could book tickets. I was surprised this evening to find the tickets on sale already, and knowing that they will sell out quickly, I have snapped up a pair of front row tickets.

While checking out other acts on at The Stables, we came across The Mandolinquents, who are a quartet of mandolin players. Jo plays the mandolin and one of her tutor books is by Simon Mayer who is in the Mandolinquents. It looks like they will be a good evening as well, so the final set of tickets for tonight. I think we might be the first to order tickets, seats 1 &2 on the front row.

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Bristol Cameras took my money

by Ian Posted on February 28, 2009

Also known as ‘The right and wrong way to deal with an internet order problem’. This also applies equally to telephone and any other form of distance selling. Here is the sad saga of my dealings with Bristol Cameras Ltd. It is preceded by a couple of problems with internet orders that were well managed and resolved.

Traditional Aikido Volume 1Before Christmas, I ordered 2 books from the Aikido Journal website, Traditional Aikido Volumes 1 & 2 by Morihiro Saito. These were books that Jo and I used to clarify our techniques many years ago; we never owned them, but were looking after someone’s library for them. The originals were printed in the 1970s and had been out of print for many years. Occasionally, you would see one or more of the 5 volumes on Ebay, but they would go for in excess of £100, usually a lot more. In early November, Aikido Journal announced that Volume 1 was available immediately. This was a brand-new edition done in the exact style and format of the original books by Saito Sensei. These are hardcover volumes made for durability featuring a semi-gloss paper like the originally published volumes. Anyway, back to the problem, after completing the order for volume 1 and confirming my credit card details, instead of a confirmation, I got a series of database errors displayed. I left a message detailing the problem on the contact form and within a few hours I had received an email back from Stanley Pranin, the editor-in-chief of Aikido Journal, confirming that they had received my order and that it should be shipping on the Monday. I had the same problem when pre-ordering volume 2 and had the same swift response and confirmation.
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Posted in General, Music, Photography, Rants | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Trying out my ‘Bigma’

by Ian Posted on February 21, 2009

We went out to the zoo this afternoon, which gave me a chance to try out my ‘bigma’. What, you might ask, is a bigma. Well, it is a camera lens, to be precise, it is the Sigma 50-500mm f4-6.3. I had been considering getting a longer lens later this year for my birthday and had concluded that this was the lens I would get. About 3 weeks ago, while checking a photography forum, I came across a post talking about price rises for Sigma from the 1st February 2009. Because of the changes in the value of the pound and the yen, they are having to increase their prices to reflect the change in exchange rate. This change is in the range of 40% – ouch! The recommended price on the Sigma site was £880 at that time. After a brief discussion with Jo it was agreed that I would buy my birthday/xmas present a few (!) months early. I placed a collect in store order with Jessops in Milton Keynes, who had yet to increase their price and collected it the following day on my way home from work. The current Sigma recommended price is now up to £1350 (53% increase). Jessops have increased their price this weekend, it is now £430 more expensive, I’m glad I got in when I did.

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Posted in Photography | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Upgraded to WordPress 2.7.1

by Ian Posted on February 18, 2009

I upgraded to WordPress 2.7.1 on one of my test blogs a few days ago using the new automatic upgrade feature. The upgrade went quickly and smoothly and everything worked afterwards, so that was good.

Tonight, I got round to upgrading my other test blogs and they didn’t go well at all.

Initially on 2 of them I got as far as “Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.7.1.zip” and that was all; it just sat there doing nothing. OK, so I looked on the forums and saw a suggestion that it might be plugin related, so I disabled all the plugins on one of the blogs, this then got to the next stage “Unpacking the core update” and sat there doing nothing. Hmm, this was strange it worked on the first blog. I tried the update on my last test blog and this worked automatically in seconds. The mystery deepens!

Then I had a thought, back in July, when I was working on the problem with Firestats, I found a resolution by adding a line to my .htaccess file:

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

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Posted in Blog-design, Website | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Going Mobile Part 2

by Ian Posted on December 12, 2008

A couple of weeks back I talked about adding a plugin to convert my blog to be viewable on mobile devices.

After I had activated the plugin, I checked the site using the page check at ready.mobi and found that the pages created by the plugin had some statements missing and some other errors. By using the helpful guidelines on the site, I was able to modify the Main Index Template (index.php) in the WordPress Mobile Edition Theme.

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Posted in Blog-design | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments