Ians Ramblings

Recursively Rename Files Linux

2010-01-13T11:18:00.002Z

I was just doing this today and thought I would post the bash script I wrote to do the job. This particular example finds all jpeg files recursively and renames them to .jpg but you could just change the .jpeg part to anything and / or the .jpg part.

You just have to paste this into a .sh file and run it with sh filename.sh or set it's executable bit and run it with ./filename.sh


#!/bin/bash

find ./ -type f -name "*.jpeg" | while read FILE
do
newname=`echo $FILE | sed s/\.jpeg$/\.jpg/`
echo "renaming $FILE to $newname"
mv "$FILE" "$newname"
done

Great day

2010-01-08T19:24:00.002Z

Well today turned out a thousand times better than I had expected today. Initially I thought I was having a tooth removed which would have been horrible and then having to wait to look for a new car but in-fact the dentistry had to be postponed and I got myself a new car hehe.

Here is a quick pic of it, I will take a few more in the future in the light. It was a bit scary driving it for the first time in all the snow we have been having here recently though and on the motorway for the first time, but it all turned out well.

It's great how quickly you can get taxed and insured these days especially being as I am a new driver I was able to get insured for about 670 pounds would certainly recommend using go compare.

I just hope when I release the new version of my software at work soon I will be so lucky.

Christmas is almost here!

2009-12-20T21:56:00.002Z

And I still haven't finished my shopping and wrapping yet booooo. Though in better news I have passed my car driving test at long last. After years of riding motorbikes all year round winters to come should be a lot more pleasant.

Other than that I passed my team leader 2 management course as well so things are all going rather well, especially as now I can chill out all the way until after new year hehe.

It has been snowing loads around here today, I am really hoping it will pause for tomorrow and the next day so I can easily go to town and fit my new scorpion exhausts to one of my bikes, selfish me.

I hope all is well with everyone who comes across this site :) especially my Azizam xxx

MD5 Checksums and Windows

2009-12-08T22:42:00.002Z

Ever downloaded an application realised the site had the MD5 Checksums there but you didn't bother to check them because you couldn't be bothered to install something and faff just to generate MD5 hashes on Windows?

In case you are not familiar with MD5 Checksums, it is basically a number which represents the exact contents of the file, a finger print as it were, often when you download an application a website will provide the checksums and you ideally need to check your downloaded file matches. This ensures that what is about to be run is what the site had intended for you to have and nothing else had been added or removed.

So anyway, I found a really nice easy and free little program to do such checks at the click of a mouse and thought I would share it. http://www.colonywest.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=56

Motorbike Show 2009 - NEC

2009-12-03T22:23:00.002Z

Yet again I have been a very lazy creature regarding posting anything on my site, but thought I would put a few links to some more recent pics and whitter on a little about the motorbike show over at the NEC I went to this year.

I had a good time over there as usual, still tons of bikes being displayed there as you can see in the pics, particularly BMW, they had a huge stand this year and a massive range of models, also great to see Norton there and Triumph.

With regard to BMW, their sports bikes are looking amazing these days. They are pretty pricey but in the same kind of ball park as the Ducatis. Here's a link to a site about one of their models, I included it just because it's a really novel site take a gander.

It was a little dissapointing to not see Honda, Ducati, Harley Davidson or Aprillia there though. Hopefully it's not a sign of bad things for them economically.

As always they have a huge amount of biking kit on sale at really decent prices, so I ordered myself a pair of scorpion exhausts for my Yamaha really looking forward to their arrival probably early next week!

Tokyo Sonata

2009-11-19T09:41:00.002Z

Last night I saw a very interesting Japanese film, Tokyo Sonata, I am not sure I would recommend it from an entertainment perspective, but if you are looking for something curious that really embodies Japanese mentality this seems to me to be one to watch.

The cinematography is superb, a lot of the slower scenes look like excellent photos, one scene showing some high rise buildings with the slow moving of traffic just looked amazing, it's a shame I can't find a still of it on the net to show here.

It just made me realise how completely different the Japanese are to us here in England, if that is indeed a realistic representation of the way they think and act. Honour it seems is so important that it actually clouds their judgement in making rational decisions that could overt the situation becoming worse.

This is really one of the first films I have seen that shows typical contemporary Japanese streets and houses, I think that is what really makes it so intriguing. The people seem so calm and considered, always listening to what another says before answering until they eventually snap under extreme pressure. I think it's actually a storyline that could not work in any setting other than that of modern day Japan.

MySQL Selective Dump

2009-11-10T16:50:00.002Z

This is just something I was wondering about, whether I could back up specific rows I am going to modify during test, so I can re-insert them all after I have finished and deleted my test data.

To selectively dump just specifc rows from your mysql table you can use the following:

mysqldump --where=domain_id='7' -t -umyueser mydatabase mytable > mydumpfile.sql

Omitting the "-t" option will also place the drop and re-create table SQL into your dumpfile. It can be handy if you just want to backup a specific set of data from your db. Note it does not create REPLACE INTO's though so you would need to delete the matching rows before restoring from such a dumpfile.

Lost and found

2009-11-03T22:36:00.003Z

My Dad brought a good film over to my house today, Lost and found, made by the same people who do those cool Lloyds bank adverts.

What a change to see something so subtle and chilled and such tidy, tactile animation.

Such an interesting story of acceptance and caring about someone / something you just came into contact with no matter how alien they may seem.

It really has an almost Scandinavian feel to it, particularly the clothing styles and the buildings in the village, almost like Norway.

Piping file list into RM

2009-11-03T13:10:00.003Z

Another geeky posting, but something I could not find on google, how to pipe a specific list of files into rm on linux in order to delete them. I also found some crazy postings about how to get find to not search recursively so thought I would share what seemed to work for me.

It's worth reading the man pages for find, xargs and rm.

This will find all the items in the current directory that are 6632 bytes in size and prompt for deletion for each.

find -maxdepth 1 -size 6632c | xargs --interactive rm -f

Halloween Death Star Pumpkin !

2009-10-31T15:03:00.009Z

It's Halloween again, and there was a competition at work to see who could produce the best pumpkins. Being technical geeks we decided to go for something rather sci-fi and made a death star!

Here are some pics of it in the dark along with the background and little paper x-wing and tie fighter.

Luckily we won a prize for the most unusual concept. The pumpkin was filled with three sets of Christmas lights to get it to illuminate that brightly not recommended for home it did get rather hot..

Mount NTFS drive CentOS 5

2009-10-19T12:41:00.004+01:00

I came across a problem today mounting an NTFS drive on CentOS 5, previously the NTFS driver seemed to have been compiled into the kernel as standard on CentOS 4.

Firstly ensure that you are root.

su -

Originally I installed fuse-ntfs-3g-2009.4.4-2.el5.rf using yum, unfortunately it resulted in the problem which it seems so many people are having when mounting: -

modprobe: Can't locate module fuse
fusermount: fuse device not found, try 'modprobe fuse' first
pcname:/home/me# modprobe fuse
modprobe: Can't locate module fuse

In the end we realised you also need to have the dkms-fuse package installed as well. So here is my little step by step.

1. List the drives and note the name of the NTFS disk

fdisk -l

Output:
Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30394 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14 30394 244035382+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.3 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 243201 1953512001 7 HPFS/NTFS

2. Install the packages

yum install fuse dkms-fuse

3. Create the directory to mount to

mkdir /ntfs/

4. Mount the disk

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /ntfs/

Star Trek

2009-10-10T21:09:00.006+01:00

A bit late with this one, but I finally got around to seeing the new Star Trek film. I had some reservations about seeing it before due to the casting of Simon Pegg who is playing Scotty. I usually find whatever the role is, he is a bit of a clown and is not really believable.

However in Star Trek he did a fine job and I was impressed overall with the whole film. Unusual for me being such a picky blighter. The whole film had a really nice retro feel to it and carried through the feeling of the original series but also the spirit of the newer films. Excellent action and great special effects, I also thought the acting by Zachary Quinto was supurb.

Evil Day

2009-10-06T13:24:00.002+01:00

I was looking forward to today, testing out my new glasses at work, unfortunately it started really badly lol. Looked out the window and it was raining so I knew my nice shiny motorbike would be complaining all the way, got to the garage door opened it too quickly and it jammed.

Spent more than an hour taking off it's cables and putting them back on, it's a nightmare, garage doors are evil. Luckily I eventually got it to close, but it's got no cables attached to it now so will need fixing.

Finally got to work for a half day and the prospect of bus trips for the next few days boo, at least I can practise more farsi.

دلم برات تنگ شده جونم!

Lil blue Honda

2009-09-20T20:32:00.002+01:00

Ah the old girl was up to her tricks again today. As it was a gorgeous day I thought I would go out for a nice long ride, unfortunately I only got as far as Aston Upon Trent before the clutch cable detached itself.

Not all bad though she'd faltered just outside a pub rather nicely so was able to sit in the sun with a nice cold coke until the recovery truck came.

Luckily we were able to fix her at the road side, something they don't usually like to do with motorbikes, fortunately I knew where everything was so we could get away with it.

File-roller bug CentOS 5

2009-09-18T10:21:00.003+01:00

Anyone using CentOS 5 may find that their file-roller gui app that is used for opening archives such as zip files does not work correctly and shows all zip files as empty.

I certainly found this to be the case, this is how I fixed it:

yum remove file-roller

wget ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/Linux/distributions /centos/4.7/os/x86_64/CentOS/RPMS/file-roller-2.8.1-1.x86_64.rpm

rpm -i file-roller-2.8.1-1.x86_64.rpm

Just installed the version I know works from CentOS 4.

Pedal for Pounds 2009

2009-09-17T20:08:00.002+01:00

Over the weekend I had a nice busy time working with my sister at the pedal for pounds event that she organises each year for Yorkshire cancer research. This year there were just shy of 300 cyclists doing either a 50 mile or 20 mile ride.

All went well though it was tiring, I don't think many people realise just how many sign posts are involved in a 50 mile cycle ride hehe.

Well other than that I have certainly been the feeling for some kind of travel again, especially somewhere cultural again.

Linux Essential X Commands

2009-09-03T11:28:00.001+01:00

This is mainly just a list for me so I know I can find it somewhere! I always forget how to get back into X after accidentally dropping out of it..

<Ctrl><Alt><F1>
Switch to the first text terminals. Under Linux you can have several (6 in standard setup) terminals opened at the same time. This is a keyboard shortcut, which means: "press the control key and the alt key, hold them. Now press <F1>. Release all keys."

<Ctrl><Alt><Fn> (n=1..6)
Switch to the nth text terminal. (The same could be accomplished with the rarely used command chvt n. "chvt" stands for "change virtual terminal"). In text terminal (outside X), you can also use <Alt><Fn> (the key <Ctrl> is not needed).

tty
Print the name of the terminal in which you are typing this command. If you prefer the number of the active terminal (instead of its name), it can be printed using the command fgconsole (="foreground console").

<Ctrl><Alt><F7>
Switch to the first GUI terminal (if X-windows is running on the 7th terminal, where it typcially is).

<Ctrl><Alt><Fn> (n=7..12)
Switch to the nth GUI terminal (if a GUI terminal is running on screen n-1). On default, the first X server is running on terminal 7. On default, nothing is running on terminals 8 to 12--you can start subsequent X server there.

<Tab>
(In a text or X terminal) Autocomplete the command if there is only one option, or else show all the available options. On newer systems you may need to press <Tab><Tab>. THIS SHORTCUT IS GREAT, it can truely save you lots of time.

<ArrowUp>
(In a text or X terminal) Scroll and edit the command history. Press <Enter> to execute a historical command (to save on typing). <ArrowDown> scrolls back.

<Shift><PgUp>
Scroll terminal output up. This works also at the login prompt, so you can scroll through your bootup messages. The amount/usage of your video memory determines how far back you can scroll the display. <Shift><PgDown> scrolls the terminal output down.

<Ctrl><Alt><+>
(in X-windows) Change to the next X-server resolution (if you set up the X-server to more than one resolution). For multiple resolutions on my standard SVGA card/monitor, I have the following line in the file /etc/X11/XF86Config (the first resolution starts on default, the largest resolution determines the size of the "virtual screen"):
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" "512x384" "480x300" "400x300" "1152x864"Z
Of course, first I had to configure the X server, either by using Xconfigurator, xf86config, or manually by edition the file /etc/X11/XF86Config, so that it supports the above resolutions (mostly the matter of uncommenting the line that defines my video chipset, and specifying the synchronization frequencies my monitor supports). XFdrake (Mandrake configuration utility) can do it from GUI. See also the commands xvidtune and xvidgen.

<Ctrl><Alt><->
(in X-windows) Change to the previous X-server resolution.

<Ctrl><Alt><Esc>
(in X-windows, KDE) Kill the window I am going to click with my mouse pointer (the pointer changes to something like a death symbol). Similar result can be obtained with the command xkill (typed in X-terminal). Useful when an X-window program does not want to close (hangs?).

<Ctrl><Alt><BkSpc>
(in X-windows) Kill the current X-windows server. Use if the X-windows server cannot be exited normally.

<Ctrl><Alt><Del>
(in text terminal) Shut down the system and reboot. This is the normal shutdown command for a user at the text-mode console. Don't just press the "reset" button for shutdown!

<Ctrl>c
Kill the current process (works mostly with small text-mode applications).

<Ctrl>d
(pressed at the beginning of an empty line) Log out from the current terminal. See also the next command.

<Ctrl>d
Send [End-of-File] to the current process. Don't press it twice else you also log out (see the previous command).

<Ctrl>s
Stop the transfer to the terminal.

<Ctrl>q
Resume the transfer to the terminal. Try if your terminal mysteriously stops responding. See the previous command.

<Ctrl>z
Send the current process to the background.

exit
Logout. I can also use logout for the same effect. (If you have started a second shell, e.g., using bash, this command will make you exit the second shell, and you will be back in the first shell, not logged out. Then use another exit to logout.)

reset
Restore a screwed-up terminal (a terminal showing funny characters) to default setting. Use if you tried to "cat" a binary file. You may not be able to see the command as you type it, but it still will work.

<MiddleMouseButton>
Paste the text which is currently highlighted somewhere else. This is the normal "copy-paste" operation in Linux. It a fast and powerful supplement to the widely-known GUI "copy-paste" menu-based operation. (It doesn't work inside older versions of Netscape which use the Mac/MS Windows-style "copy-paste" exclusively. It does work in the text terminal if you enabled "gpm" service using "setup". It also works inside any dialog boxes, etc.--really convenient!) It is best used with a Linux-ready 3-button mouse (Logitech or similar) or else set "3-mouse button emulation". The <MiddleMouseButton> is normally emulated on a 2-button mouse by pressing both mouse buttons simultanously.

~
(tilde character) My home directory (normally the directory /home/my_login_name). For example, the command cd ~/my_dir will change my working directory to the subdirectory "my_dir" under my home directory. Typing just "cd" alone is an equivalent of the command "cd ~". I keep all my files in my home directory.

.
(dot) Current directory. For example, ./my_program will attempt to execute the file "my_program" located in your current working directory.

..
(two dots) Directory parent to the current one. For example, the command cd .. will change my current working directory one one level up.

Some additional KDE keyboard shortcuts (useful, but non-essential)
<Alt><Tab> Walk through windows. To walk backwards: <Alt><Shift><Tab>
<Ctrl><Tab> Walk through desktops. To walks backwards: <Ctrl><Shift><Tab>
<Ctrl><Esc> Show the table of processes running on my system. Allow me to kill any of the processes I started (or send other signals to them).
<Alt><F1> Access the K-menu ("Equivalent to MS Windows "Start" menu).
<Alt><F12> Emulate the mouse using the arrow keys on the keyboard.
<Alt><LeftMouseButton> Drag a window to move it. Normally, I move a window by dragging its top title bar, but occassionally I manage to get it off the screen. With this shortcut, I can drag by any part of the window.
<Alt><PrintScreen> Take a snapshot of the current window into the clipboard.
<Ctrl><Alt><PrintScreen> Take a snapshot of the entire desktop into the clipboard.
<Ctrl><Alt><l> Lock the desktop.
<Ctrl><Alt><d> Toggle hide/show the desktop (great to hide the Solitaire game when your boss walks in).

<Alt><SysRq>
(Non-essential.) This is a group of key combinations implemented at the Linux kernel level (a low level). It means, chances are these key combinations will work most of the time. The combinations are meant for debugging purposes and in an emergency (mostly developers); you should try other, safer solutions first. The key <SysRq> is also knows on PC as <PrintScreen>. The combinations can be enabled/disabled by setting the relevant kernel variable to "1" or "0", e.g. : echo "1" > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
<Alt><SysRq><k> Kill all processes (including X) which are running on the currently active virtual console. This key combination is know as "secure access key" (SAK).
<Alt><SysRq><e> Send the TERM signal to all running processes except init, asking them to exit.
<Alt><SysRq><i> Send the KILL signal to all running processes except init. This may be more successful in killing runaway processes than the previous key combination, but it may cause some of them to exit abnormally.
<Alt><SysRq><l> Send the KILL signal to all processes, including init. The system will not be functional.
<Alt><SysRq><s> Run an emergency sync (cache write) on all mounted filesystems. This can prevent data loss.
<Alt><SysRq><u> Remount all mounted filesystems as read-only. This has the same effect as the sync combination above, but with one important benefit: if the operation is successful, fsck won't have to check all filesystems after a computer hardware reset.
<Alt><SysRq><r> Turn off keyboard raw mode. This can be useful when your X session hangs. After issueing this command you may be able to use <Ctrl><Alt><Del>.
<Alt><SysRq><b> Reboot immediately without syncing or unmounting your disks. Your will likely end up with filesystem errors.
<Alt><SysRq><o> Shut the system off (if configured and supported).
<Alt><SysRq><p> Dump the current registers and flags to your console.
<Alt><SysRq><t> Dump a list of current tasks and their information to your console.
<Alt><SysRq><m> Dump memory info to your console.
<Alt>SysRq><digit> The digit is '0' to '9'. Set the console log level, controlling which kernel messages will be printed to your console. For example, '0' will cause only emergency messages like PANICs or OOPSes displayed on your console.
<Alt><SysRq><h> Display help. Also, any other unsupported <Alt><SysRq><key> combination will display the same help.

Inglorious Rubbish

2009-08-26T23:47:00.002+01:00

Well I have not walked out of the cinema for a while, since the assasination of richard nixon, but today warrented it, and instead of being tortured with the utter rubbish that was Inglorious Basterds I had a sureal wander around the city at night nothing open but bars unfortunately...

I should explain my rapid escape from the cinema after 20 minutes. I liken Tarentino films to a trashy fashion gossip magazines, there is a certain level of curiousity to see it, even though you know it will be cheap rubbish but you have to check it, you also do not need to read or see the entire thing to see it for what it is.

It started poorely with some rigid script reading dialogue followed by some horrendous over acting by Brad Pitt, there was then some over the top violence to keep the plebs interested and then the start of an un-believable storyline which just annoyed / bored me to the point of leaving.

MySQL 5 and Sphinx

2009-08-26T09:35:00.003+01:00

I just thought I would put some help points on compiling and installing Sphinx and SphinxSE with MySQL 5.0.37 to help anyone out there who is currently working on the same process.

1 download the mysql source for version 5.0.37 from http://downloads.mysql.com/archives/mysql-5.0/mysql-5.0.37.tar.gz

2 download sphinx source unpack it and the mysql source in the same root directory eg home/youruser/

3 from within the mysql source dir where sphinx source is in the same director cp ../sphinx-0.9.8.1/mysqlse/sphinx.5.0.37.diff ./

4 patch -p1 < sphinx.5.0.37.diff

5 sh BUILD/autorun.sh

6 cp -R ../sphinx-0.9.8.1/mysqlse sql/sphinx

7 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --with-sphinx-storage-engine (this is important as the sphinx instructions just mention the --with-sphinx-storage-engine, without the prefix mysql is very difficult to get started believe me

8 make (takes ages for mysql)

9 make install

10 cp support-files/my-medium.cnf /etc/my.cnf

11 cd /usr/local/mysql

12 chown -R mysql .

13 chgrp -R mysql .

14 bin/mysql_install_db --user=mysql

15 chown -R root .

16 chown -R mysql var

17 /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

18 then complete the instructions for installing Sphinx on Linux, complete the sphinx.conf and run the indexer

Instructions for compiling with SphinxSE
http://www.sphinxsearch.com/docs/current.html#sphinxse

Instructions for installing Sphinx on Linux
http://www.sphinxsearch.com/docs/current.html#installing

Instructions for installing MySQL from source
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/quick-install.html

Can One Become A Pirate Bay Mirror?

2009-08-25T00:34:00.003+01:00

Pirate bay, according to the news has been shutdown due to threats from the Swedish government to fine it's primary bandwidth supplier, Black Internet.

Maybe the pirate bay should open it'self up more, distribute it's site amongst many volunteer webservers constantly appearing on new webservers while others close down, distributed on as many web servers as possible.

So far I have seen that one person had effectively wget'd the site, which is not the same thing, it needs to be a clever distribution of the main site across hundreds of mirrors.

In many respects it's no different to the torrent style of the site, and would just suffer from DNS propogation delays, other than that it should be a flexible way to keep the pirate bay afloat, if lot's of webmasters were willing to donate bandwidth.

Although I do not download from them, I agree with their freedom of speech and I certainly feel that film makers and record companies have been massively over paid for far too long, there is nothing to say that an actor or actress should be paid millions, or a singer for that matter. Certainly not the greedy record executives that savagely protect the industry by making a mockery of the legal system, forcing it to give out hugely disproportionate penalties to small infractions.

Iran flight 655

2009-08-22T15:29:00.002+01:00

Related to my previous post, I have read that the motivation for the lockerbie bombing may have been the horrendous shootdown of an Iranian passenger aircraft by the US missile ship USS Vincennes.

This is an incident again where seemingly law means nothing to people with power, the international community should really have insisted on a complete explanation of the situation, had it been for example the Iranians shooting down a passenger aircraft full of americans just off the US coast and over US airspace I am convinced the international response would have been quite different!

I just hope changes can be made internationally to address these misbalanced responses. They re-inforce the knowledge that there is no equality between countries and their people in reality. Unless this international level of respect for others is observed there will never be peace between the countries that are treated as second class and those who believe themselves to be superior, this does seem to be someting that the US is misunderstanding.

Either that or they fully understand it and have no intention of allowing other countries to grow and develop and are thinking from a purely selfish narrow minded perspective.

Lockerbie Bomber

2009-08-22T15:11:00.004+01:00

Strange political games going on these days, really weakening the respect that remains for the already frail justice system in the UK.

Almost amusing now how after the Libyan's didn't do what they were told to, and treated the return of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi as a heros return that the shift has been to effectively to blame the Scottish. Any mention of the British system has been quickly edited to read Scottish as they run for cover.

I imagine the Scottish as a whole feel rather humiliated by the waving of their flag amongst the jubilation of the return of a mass murderer underlining their weakness to the whole world.

I think it is fairly evident that whilst some wishy washy left wingers in the Scottish legal system had a hand in the release alot of the pressure was put on them by people in power in the British government for trade purposes.

I think this just needs bringing to light and looking into as it is starting to errode any respect we have for the legal system. It appears that politics and money are getting too much control over the law, this certainly includes the mass of new anti terrorism laws introduced over the last few years.

As much as the theory of compasionate release sounds civilised, the reality is that the families of those who cannot go back to their families, ever and who did no wrong feel utterly utterly betrayed by the system.

Motorbiking weekend

2009-08-16T20:33:00.003+01:00

Plenty of motorbiking this weekend, think I need another weekend to recover. It seems the riding my Honda is like being at the gym after a couple of hours back shoulders and arms all feeling it hehe but it's all good.

I did about three hours of riding today and the bike is really running great now so smooth through all the bends and I took her down the most bendy roads I have seen before, proper single carriage way roads with hairpins and massive inclines through the derbyshire dales.

Great to see the motogp this weekend too, my ideal result Rossi first, Pedrosa second and Lorenzo sliding out on his butt hehe. Harsh but everyone's a Rossi fan aren't they?

Acer Aspire One 150 Won't Boot

2009-07-30T00:28:00.004+01:00

Tonight I tried to turn on my little Acer Aspire One A150 (put its full name in just to help searchers) netbook and it's power light came on but other than that it was totally dead, the BIOS failed to display and there was no hard disk activity.

I was really shocked as it has been brilliant so far and is less that 12 months old. My first instinct was just to go and get it's recipt and get it boxed up to go back.

However while it sat in the naughty corner ready to go back to Acer I discovered this chaps page. http://www.qrpcw.com/2009/01/acer-aspire-one-bios-recovery.html genius!! Not sure how this guy discovered the method especially with the BIOS file rename but it works, she's now purring away again and working perfectly.

Incase that site is un-available for some reason I will post the instructions here, just with a note that while it worked for me I could not guarantee it will work for everyone. For me the fix was complete in a few minutes and everything was restored.

The AA1 has a built-in BIOS recovery routine, making it possible to flash the BIOS even if the system doesn't boot anymore. It's only meant for emergencies and may void your warranty, so use at your own risk.

Follow every step carefully!

First format an USB pen disk with the FAT filesystem - Do this on another PC going to "My Computer" right clicking on your USB pen disk and click format, then choose "FAT" as the file system. Do a full format not a quick one.

Download the latest BIOS , and put both FLASHIT.EXE and the BIOS file in the root directory of the stick. Rename the BIOS file to ZG5IA32.FD, that's important. Do not remove the USB stick.

Turn the AA1 off, make sure both battery and AC adapter are connected. Press Fn+Esc, keep it pressed and press the power button to turn the AA1 on. Release Fn+Esc after a few seconds, the power button will be blinking. Press the power button once. The AA1 will now initiate the BIOS flash, do not interrupt it under any circumstances. After a while the power button will stop blinking, and the AA1 will reboot shortly after. Wait patiently.

The BIOS has been flashed and all settings reset to default.

If for some reason you made a mistake during the procedure and it doesn't reboot by itself wait 5 minutes before turning it off, just to be safe that it isn't still flashing the BIOS.

Also while looking into this I discovered how to make a USB pen disk a DOS boot disk, which is NOT REQUIRED for the above but handy.

http://www.bay-wolf.com/usbmemstick.htm

MotoGP Donnington Park 2009

2009-07-25T20:36:00.009+01:00

It's the last year that the MotoGP will be held at Donnington Park this year, so I wanted to make sure I didn't miss seeing it when it is so close to my place.

I decided to go to the qualifying and free practice instead of the main race because I would be able to actually take photos and would also not matter so much if I didn't know what was going on..

Here are a couple photos I took of Valentino Rossi and Andrea Dovizioso.

Unfortunately I had to take all my photos through an annoying wire fence, they seem to have come out ok though, it must be a nightmare for people who don't have manual focus or a forgiving auto focus. I still some how managed to take around 500 photos though so still sifting for good ones amongst them.

Next time I may have to ask for press accreditation from work to get some really nice pics!
I think it might just be because I had not really been to Donnington Park before but getting any info about the times etc was sparse to say the least.

I had a great day though so hot and sunny might even have a bit of sunburn boo ah well!

Great to see the 250s as well, I believe it is their last year of racing, certainly with two stroke engines, they are deafening hehe.

Well even though it was just qualifying the place was packed, the car park was full of bikes, was just hoping one didn't tip over otherwise it would have been a very expensive game of dominos..

The results for the day are available here.