Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

I spent quite some time trying to get VNC working between my laptop and desktop. Didn’t work. Actually I didn’t spent that much time but with only about 40 minutes to set something up I opted for the Remote Desktop tool that is built in to Windows XP. And it actually worked.

The next step was to get it working in the wider world. IE, configuring my firewall and port blocking to allow the connections. After that step was done all I needed now was something to deal with the possibility of a dynamic IP address. Luckily NO-IP Duc came to the rescue combined with a scheuled task to run the application even if I wasn’t logged on at 8 am, 1 pm and 6 pm every day.

So I got home and tried to test it – it actually worked! The frame rate is of course aweful but that is to be expected. The point is I can log in and access all my stuff which I did last night when I needed to check something and I can even stream music and stuff over it by opening up media player on my desktop and playing whatever. Awesome.

So it turns out my host wasn’t kidding about the IP changes. They cut them off last night as far as I can make out as Branch Planet was working yesterday lunch time and wasn’t working when I tried it today.

I’ve been busy going round and making the changes and I think I have most of them but the reason I didn’t make them before is I simply don’t know what makes connections and what doesn’t. It’s only really now where I can see if a site has died or not that I know if I need to make an IP change and that is going to take me a while to complete the process at that.

I went into Headingly to get a new Serial ATA cable about an hour ago. Looking back I think the old one may have been working but this one is shorter so less messy in the case and Dell says a maximum of 450mm. I think the one I am using now is 450-500mm whereas the old one was 1,000mm.

Anyway so I went into bios and it was picking it up and it was even listed in device manager, it just wasn’t set up. So I downloaded the Seagate DiscWizard thing which does it all for you. It quickly formatted the drive and by the time it had exited the program, it was appearing in My Computer. Now I can begin transfering things over, item one, my music.

The reason my blog hasn’t been working properly recently was that my tmp folder was full. That has now been fixed so I can blog again but I wouldn’t have figured that out from the WordPress error message. I only worked it out from problems with my other sites. Hunting down other problems now but as a general guide – upgrading a server is not good. I’ve lost my GD functions now!

Yeeha! It’s sorted – finally both my computers can view the workgroup and each others shares! I have restarted my laptop and it still works, I’m too scared to restart my desktop and see if it still works though lol. Seriously, I can see it not working when I start up next time which I am really dreading.

Still for the moment I need to focus on other things. I am moving my printer over to my desktop as a the moment it is an extra wire on my laptop and this way I can just run it as a network printer to my laptop via my desktop. I am also thinking about doing the same thing with my external hard drive although once I get my new hard drive (250 gb Seagate, ordered today) I am going to use that as my storage drive and use my external hard drive as a backup drive I can take with me when I go home or whatever.

I really want to minimal the things attached to my laptop so I can pretty much to plug it in to my network cable when I get here and use it with all the network or I can take it away without having to detach a million cables.

The other thing I need to do is set up remote access to my desktop so that when I am at home and all my files are here I will be able to access them. It will still probably be limited by the transfer speed of the internet but I will still be able to get the important files like word documents and website code which I need.

Stuff like my emails and things are going to be staying on my laptop anyway as these are things I am going to need wherever I am and I am going to be going between Bod and home or wherever I am so I need anything I need with me always to be on my laptop. Then the other stuff goes on the desktop.

There are a few solutions for remote access I am thinking off, the main contendors are VNC and Citrix. VNC is good and free, I’m not sure if Citrix is free but the school of computing at uni use it so it looks pretty good.

I have my Windows reseller account back underneith it’s bandwidth limit but I want to continue migrating sites over to my Linux account. The first two I think I will work on will be Worfolk Music and Interstate.nu. Worfolk Music will be pretty easy to do while Interstate will require a little ASP to PHP translating.

I also bought Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas today and started playing it. It’s not a bad game from what I have played so far though the controls are really bad. Once I get into it though I’m sure it will turn a lot better.

Ok currently I have both computers on the internet, I think I mentioned that earlier. I keep getting steps closer too, now my laptop can access mshome, see both computers on the workgroup and access shared folders on both computers.

The desktop meanwhile cannot access mshome and cannot access the shared folders on my laptop but it can browse it’s own network path so slowly but surely I think I am getting there. I also need to make sure nobody else can access my shares though.

I’ve blogged live from DEC-10 and Eniac, now I’m blogging from Inca. But Inca is no computer lab, it’s the name I gave to my brand new desktop which I’ve just finished configuring with my router so that both my laptop and desktop can access the internet!

Now all I need to do is get them to talk to each other and I’m sorted! It’s a cool machine as you may know if you have read my previous posts. The 5.1 surround sound is cool though I need to test it at high volume to really appreciate it and in the early hours of the morning I doubt the people living on either side of me would appreciate it too much.

It also has a massive 17″ monitor which I’m currently running at 1152 x 864. It will go up to 1280 x 1024 but I quite like having it at this resolution, I don’t really need a massive screen size as my laptop runs 1024 x 768 and that handles things fine. What I really need now is a decent game to test the true power of this machine.

The gig was awesome last night! I set off a like 5:20, but the bus didn’t turn up until 5:55! What is that about? To rub it in, two left just as I got there and two pulled up at 5:55. That sucked. But anyway I got into town like 25 minutes later and grabbed some food at Luckys. I ended up getting into the gig at 6:45. It had been moved from The Refectory to Stylus so I think ticket sales must have been really down.

There was a warm up band or something on first, they weren’t on the bill but I presume they started when doors opened at 6:00. They finished at 7:00 and The Unseen came on which were a little hardcore but they gave a really good performance. Nobody gave a bad one but these guys were really rocking it.

They were followed by a band called Randy which were ok, I wasn’t a huge fan, though. They finished at around 8:15, then at 8:30 Flogging Molly came on. They did a good performance and stuff that I knew so that was pretty cool.

They finished at 9:15 and then finally at 9:45 Millencolin took to the stage. They were great, especially finishing on No Cigar. Plus they came back and did another three songs after that which was awesome.

It was a little weird (but very cool) when I first got there though as there were so many moshers. I felt like I was letting the side down in my non-black t-shirt. I wanted to pick up some merch anyway though so after The Unseen I got a Millencolin one and stuck that on. All in all, a solid night.

Finding a computer that works in here is a bitch. The first one the mouse was messed up so I moved onto the one next to it. That one I couldn’t fit my USB pen drive in. That’s terrible design, everyone has pen drives now and they have been around for years. And yet computer manufacturers still design hardware for normal cables and don’t leave space for pen drives.

Finally getting on top of my coursework I think. I have submitted by SE15 and SY11 today, PD15 is ongoing and I still have maths but other than that I was sorted until I got some more GI11 coursework this morning. What I really need to do is get more reading done.

I was up this morning and working after breakfast as I needed to get my website updates and such done as I finish at 4 today and have to be back at the union two hours later for the Millencolin / Flogging Molly concert. It’s only like four and a half hours away!