One thing leads to another.

Okay, so you agree to build a custom made computer for someone else. You do actually order good quality equipment and components, but you want the resulting computer to look like a quality effort too, so you order a nice case rather than a cheap plastic one. As it happens, the online store from where you are buying most of the components has one for sale with a clear side, so that you can see the innards of the computer. Upon ordering this, you find that you are at a "suggested accessories" page at the online shop. The accessories are not expensive, so you order a couple. And when the parts all come, you put them together.

And that is how I managed to build a computer with one clear side, two glowing case fans, and an internal multicoloured fluorescent light.

Actually it's kind of cool. And it's a nice computer. I rather wish I had built it for me.

Wednesday Evening Song Lyrics. (Yes, I know it is Thursday).

I step off the train
I'm walking down your street again and past your door
But you don't live there any more
It's years since you've been there
But now you've disappeard somewhere like outer space
You've found some better place
And I miss you - like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you - like the deserts miss the rain
Could you be dead?
You always were two steps ahead of everyone
We'd walk behind while you would run
I look up at your house
And I can almost hear you shout down to me
Where I always used to be
And I miss you - like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you - like the deserts miss the rain
Back on the train
I ask why did I come again?
Can I confess I've been haning around your old address?
The years have proved to offer nothing since you moved
You're long gone
But I can't move on
And I miss you - like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you - like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you
I step off the train
I'm walking down your street again and past your door
But you don't live there any more
It's years since you've been there
But now you've disappeard somewhere like outer space
You've found some better place
And I miss you - like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you - like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you
And I miss you - like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you - like the deserts miss the rain
The deserts miss the rain - like the deserts miss the rain
The deserts miss the rain
like the deserts miss the rain

-- Everything But the Girl, from their 1994 Album Amplified Heart, although it was actually a later remix of the song by Todd Terry that turned it into a hit.

More computers

Well, I am now blogging from the new PC I am building for my landlady. As this one has been built from new parts rather than recycled ones, it is rather more up to date than the PC I recently built for myself. This one has an Athlon XP 3000+, 160GB hard drive, 512 MB of RAM, DVD+/-RW, ATI Radeon 9200 128MB graphics, on board sound (but 5.1 sound with digital outs if needed), a nice set of 2.1 speakers, 802.11b wireless (for freeloading off my internet connection), a much cooler case than mine, and a few other things that I am not remembering right now. Unlike the computer I recently built for myself, this one has more legacy stuff like a floppy and a modem. This makes sense. If I need things like this, I can rush out and install them myself, but less technical people can't always do so. (Actually if I ever need a floppy, I have a USB floppy in the bottom of a box somewhere).

The computer is more or less assembled, although it is still sitting on top of my bed with its case open. Various things like case fans and internal lights need to be installed, but the hard work is done.

Redirection

I have a piece on the mystery of Selhurst railway station over at Transport Blog.

Houston, we have an operating system

Okay, I'm now blogging from SuSE Linux. The installation took a lot longer than a Windows installation, but once I got it started, it really wasn't especially painful. Using the KDE desktop environment now, which at least has a prettier default background than Windows XP.

The Linux installation process

Okay, I first attempted a network install of Debian. It took a while to find the image of a Boot CD that contained the right driver for my network card, but eventually I did.

I attempted to install Linux on my former laptop 2.5 inch hard disk, but halfway through the creation of new partitions, it kept telling me that it was unable to write to the disk, and then the disk vanished from the computer. Curious.

I then attempted to install Windows XP on the same disk, just to test if the problem was with the disk. Again, the process stopped halfway through, after which I the computer was unable to see the hard disk.

My thought at that point was that the 2.5 inch hard disk was faulty, but just as one last test of it, I installed it in my laptop and attempted to install XP on it while it was on the laptop. This worked fine, so presumably there is nothing wrong with the hard disk, and something wrong with the connection. I tried swapping my devices around between the two IDE ports on my motherboard, but no cigar. The 2.5 inch disk still wouldn't work. I can only conclude that the IDE cable I bought the other day is faulty. (I should have got one of those adaptors instead of a cable, even if the first shop didn't have one). A brief attempt to find the receipt for the cable so that I can either get another one or get my £5 back failed.

Okay, time to attempt to install linux on the main hard drive instead of the little one. For some unexplainable reason, I at this point decided to stop trying to install Debian and attempt to install SUSE instead. After an assortment of messing around with FTP sites and addresses, and eventually figuring out that ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/9.1 and ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/current do not in fact point to the same place, even though the documentation suggests that they do, the Linux installation is now going well, and I suspect I will have a running Linux box within a couple of hours. (Touch wood).

On the other hand, the piece of advice given on the Debian download site, which was "Use CD-RW and not CD-R" has turned out to be excellent advice, because I burned half a dozen different CD images before ending up with what I wanted, and using up six CD-Rs would indeed have been wasteful.

Redirection

I have a piece on a run-in I had today with George Galloway's European election campaign over at Samizdata.

I'm installing Linux

My computer has been trying to talk to my router and the screen has been telling me:

"Please Wait. Trying to get network configuration using DHCP/BOOTP... This may take a few minutes, be patient"

for, well, a few minutes. Perhaps I have the wrong driver for my ethernet card. I am not sure I am feeling especially patient though.

Redirection

I have a quote of the day from Nancy Reagan over at Samizdata.