By matt | Published:
November 1, 2011
Here is the SWLUG Decd 2011 poster. Please download and improve, I’m quite sure it’s awful!
swlug_dec_2011_poster
By matt | Published:
October 19, 2011
All the other parts are now sold. Just the media center PC.
Media Centre PC – £130
Currently running Ubuntu 11.04 with XMBC Media Center installed. It’s pretty much finished, just needs a small blanking plate installing on the front of the BluRay drive. It’s powerful enough to do most things at a decent rate, especially as you can use VDPAU, which is basically a way of handing off the HD processing to the graphics card so it’s not all on the CPU. It could probably do with a bit more RAM and a larger HDD if you want to stack lots of media on it.
The Silverstone case is very well made and there’s plenty of space for several extra PCI cards (TV Tuners etc). Also as it’s a big case, there’s lots of scope for fanless PSU coolers and lots of soundproofing, so this could be even quieter than it already is. I have a DVI to HDMI adaptor, so it’s easy to connect to any TV with a HDMI port.
Why am I selling it? It’s quite big, too big for my fairly small front room. Also BluRay support under Linux isn’t that great (a requirement from the wife) so we’ve got a PS3. XMBC is however one of the best Media Center front ends I’ve ever used, so that side of things is great.  You could easily install a TV tuner in and use it to run Myth TV.
Spec
Athlon X2 64bit 3800+ (Dual Core) CPU
1gb DDR2 PC2-3200
Gigabyte M57SLI-S4 Rev 2.0
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2539#sp
4 ram slots, 6 SATA 3gb/s ports, 2 PCI Express x 16 slot,3 PCI Express x 1 slot, 2 PCI slots, 4 USB (with extra header on motherboard), 5.1 surround sound
nVidia GeForce GT 210 512mb Fanless Silent Graphics Card
250gb SATA HDD
80gb SATA HDD (not currently connected, I don’t have a spare cable)
Samsung BluRay Drive
Silverstone Lascala LC17 Media Center Case (120mm fans)
http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=82&area=
By matt | Published:
September 18, 2011
Here is a list of commands that I find useful on a Linux command line.
du -sh $dir – find the size of a directory
grep -H -r “$string” /path/to/files – search through all files in a directory for a specific string. pipe through grep again to search through the list.
To be continued.
By matt | Published:
August 30, 2011
So if you’re fairly geeky and re-install your copy of Ubuntu/Mint on a regular basis it’s often quite nice to have a list of standard stuff that doesn’t seem to be installed with the main distro (little things like, Emacs, MySQL, Apache etc etc) anymore. So the following might be a good idea:
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get install emacs konversation k3b python mysql-server apache2 vlc build-essential php5 ruby git-core cvs subversion virtualbox inkscape skype wine
If you just want the geek stuff (i.e. no Konversation etc):
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get install emacs python mysql-server apache2 build-essential php5 ruby git-core cvs subversion virtualbox inkscape
Obviously the proper way to do things would be to keep a list of all the packages you have installed and just reload them.
By matt | Published:
July 20, 2011
I have to say it’s been a stunningly poor year for my running so far. I got plenty of miles done in January, training for Scotland. I slackened the pace off in February as I was doing a fair bit of climbing. Then I injured the tendons along the top of my foot, so no running for a while. I was beginning to get back into the swing of things when I bruised my heel climbing which has taken two months to heal. Now that’s done I’ve managed to sprain my ankle. Gaah.
By matt | Published:
March 20, 2011
While my winter is over, for some lucky souls it’s not quite over. So here a few good Scottish Winter videos to keep the psyche going:
Ines Papert, Ian Parnell and Audrey Gariepy – Winter Climbing Video
Petzl Scottish Ice Trip
Point Five Gully, Orion Face and Tower Ridge all three videos by Alan Kimber
Dave MacLeod climbing The Hurting
Andy Turner and Dave MacLeod on Minus Three Gully and them on Piggots Route and finally on the Great Chimney.
That little lot should keep you going for an hour or two. They’re all really good videos, but the Petzl one is probably just about the best. All are very well worth a look tho. Enjoy!
By matt | Published:
March 8, 2011
In an attempt to drag this blog back to it’s slightly geekier roots, I’m going to give a few pros and cons of mine and the Wife’s latest gaming purchase, the Sony Playstation 3. The Wife is rabidly anti-Sony which is why we’ve held off getting one. However the PS3 is a good Bluray player, so we decided to bite the bullet. I’ve also been fancying a decent console for a while. Anyway, without further ado:
Pros
Great feature set, iplayer, plays most audio and video files Quiet, you really can’t hear it at all, there’s no noise. Looks ok as well. Good range of games eg Fallout 3, Gran Turismo 5, Assassins Creed series, about the only major series it’s lacking is Fable It’s dead easy to upgrade the hard drive, well done Sony
Cons
It’s made by Sony Sony are evil gits who love locking you into a wierd and wonderful Sony only format The number of updates for games reminds me of playing games on a PC, I buy a dedicated games console so I don’t have to spend hours updating the OS and patching the game… You can’t run Linux on it any more cause Sony are cocks When you buy the console you have to agree to a bunch of EULAs, I’m sure somewhere in those EULAs I’m agreeing for Sony to watch my every move, anal probe me and generally record everything I do Also they monitor everything, so if you break some random rule, I’m quite sure they’d ban you from stuff…
The pros just about out weigh the cons. Now, I’m off to play some more Gran Turismo 5.
By matt | Published:
February 19, 2011
On the final day we decided that a walk in to Stob Coire nan Lochan (SCnL) would be the best way to finish of our already tired limbs. So once more we began the slow and steady pull up into the corrie again in the rain which turned to snow as we gained height. Legs were definitely slowing down but we still made the corrie floor in a respectable time. Teams were already on Dorsal Arete so we decided to do the first few pitches of Ordinary Route with the aim of ending up and doing some leading on Boomerang Arete. The crux of the inital pitch was quite tricky and I think James was worried we wouldn’t be able to manage it, but after some discussion he romped up it. Darren and I however weren’t quite as quick. I honestly couldn’t have climbed it without leashless axes. I stepped left onto a ledge before the technical 5 crux slab, so had to make a large move onto the spike, before finding a bomber hook for one axe a crap hook for the other. I then spent a while cleaning off the small footholds and working out the sequence for the next few moves. I then moved up balancing on my frontpoints and manteling down on the one axe with a good placement. I was then able to get axes into the neve at the top of the slab, so I was able to move up further. Unfortunately I didn’t have the stamina to get the nut out without a rest on the rope. Once the nut was removed it was a simple romp to the belay.
The second pitch was much steadier and both Darren and I shot up it. I took a small slump when removing a cam as the snow that had seemed solid when I kicked a ledge proved to be less than solid. We arrived at the belay on the arete. Unfortunately the temperature had risen and the snow had turned to rain. This meant that the arete was rather loaded with snow so we decided that the safest option was to bail. A quick abseil and we were at the bottom of boomerang gully, we quickly got out of the danger zone and onto the corrie floor. We then made the long and slippy trudge down the path of slush back to the car park. While it wasn’t a perfect day the technical climbing was awesome and the experience of bailing in winter was a good one to have gained. Jame’s blog post is here.
All that remained was to return to the cottage dry off our gear, pack it all up and begin the 8 hour drive home.
So far this winter thats a total of 6 days of climbing routes (two on PyF and four in Scotland) and one day walking around only for conditions to be poor. So that’s fairly decent bearing in mind how changeable British weather can be. The week was an excellent trip and was certainly money well spent. I learnt an incredible amount from James, both from watching him climb and what he did and from asking him endless questions about snow stability, placing gear, navigation, climbing etc etc. I’ve definitely learnt much more in a week with a guide than I would have done from a week on my own. Now hopefully I can get out a few more times before the winter is over to put the new skills into practice.
By matt | Published:
February 18, 2011
As the forecast for the Lochaber area wasn’t too stunning we elected to head over to the Cairngorms on the third day. After a much shorter walk-in we arrived in Coire an t’Sneachda. We had a look around the corrie and the Fiaciall Butress was selected as the crag du jour, as there were already climbers on The Seam, James decided the Invernookie (III,4) was the route for the day. It’s IV,5 under powder according to UKC which is even better, as guess what it was pretty powdery when we went up it. The routes generally looked in good condition with a stunning looking Patey’s Route in the middle of the corrie. My legs were really glad of the short walk in, it was a nice change from the past two days. As the route was considerably shorter I suffered much less from a fitness point of view. My leashless axes and the solid neve coating the route made the crux moves quite easy. Helped by being able to watch Darren struggle on them I floated up the crux moves. A couple of high axe placements and few free climbing moves (a cheeky sidepull) and I was up on to the final rightward ramp up to the top of the Fiaciall Ridge. We scrambled up that and navigated around the top of the corrie, dropping back along the ridge into the ski area car park. Sadly by now my blister on top of a blister had ripped into one massive open wound on the back of my heal. So despite all the taping and the blister plasters for the first few days, I’d still ended up with a wound the size of a 50p peice on the back of my left foot. Once we were back at the cottage it was back into the now routine business of drying off gear and repacking the bags for the following day. The movie for the evening was True Grit, something we’d need plenty of on the final two days.
Matt on Invernookie
Back to the Ben for the penultimate day. My legs were beginning to feel it and there was a definite slow down as we slogged up into Coire na Ciste. However we did manage to keep up with a couple of Jame’s considerably fitter mates on the way up the path to the CIC Hut, while they were probably strolling along it was nice to have all the training pay off. We were keen to get on a IV and Central Gully Right Hand (IV, 4)) was clear so we geared up and got on the route. The first few pitches were dispatched quite easily however the final pitch up the middle of the gully was quite tough and I got my first forearm pump of the week. It was excellent to be back on proper steep ice. Also as I was following Darren up the pitch I got quite a lot of ice and spindrift down on my head. Proper Scottish climbing. However I pulled up the steep ice onto the easier ground with a short plod onto the top of the cliff. Conditions weren’t quite so good weather wise and we took a short walk around to the top of Number 4 gully where the snowpack was stable enough to allow a quick walk down the gully back to the CIC Hut and again down to the car. The weather wasn’t quite as nice as it had been the past few days so not as many photos in this post. I’m hoping that I’ll get a few more tho and when I do get my grubby paws on them, I’ll amend this post.
