It's a New Day

Well, I’m back at work after the move and it doesn’t seem as though I have been away.

I can see immediately that the Circle Line from Liverpool Street to Victoria will provide an adequate substitute to the Northern Line for oddness and annoyance. That said, I have other options, including switching to the Central Line either at Stratford or at Liverpool Street, though that involves rather more Tube jiggery pokery than I like, involving as it does, a switch on to the Victoria Line. We’ll see.

I am still working out the best route to walk to Ilford Station from home, though I think I found a strong contender pretty much straight away this morning. I shall try a variation on it tomorrow and then decide. Either route will dispense with the hideous road crossing that Furtle and I used in each of our pre-move visits to the area. Provided the weather is okay, the walk to the station takes about 20 minutes at a sedate pace and if the weather turns rotten, well we have a bus stop directly across the road from our front door. As part of our relatively healthy new start, I intend to walk to and from the station rather than take the bus. We shall see how long that lasts…

The actual move from The Carpathia on Tuesday went as well as these things do, though it turned out that even with the combined space afforded by the movers’ van and the transit we had hired, there was just a little too much stuff. We picked the rest up when we went back on Thursday to clean the flat and hand over the keys. The rest of the week seems to have been lost in a haze of packing, unpacking, petty sniping and driving from A-B doing things. We have been too busy to meet our neighbours, which we must do this week, or to visit jimfer and Cat, who live just around the corner – though the former did pop in to see us briefly (and successfully, at the third or fourth attempt – we’d been out each previous time) on Thursday evening, when westernind and forbinproject swung by to drop of additional sets of keys and other miscellaneous items they had inadvertently packed and taken with them.

Yesterday, while I was trying to get stuff into the loft – a task best fitted to a much thinner person – some neighbours popped by to get us to sign a petition against a property developer who wants to build in the space behind our house (Cynical git that he is, he has been turned down by Redbridge Council several times over the years as he has submitted plan after plan. In each case, the local residents have protested, including westernind and forbinproject. The timing of his latest application seems to have been designed to reduce our chances as the new occupants, from even noticing, much less commenting. It didn’t work, we both emailed objections to the council yesterday). Petition duly signed, potential new friends made (though names immediately forgotten), jfs arrived, looking cheery and refreshed after his recent holiday in Japan, brandishing a box of Japanese tea-flavoured chocolates. Work was duly suspended for a welcome chance to socialise over a cup of tea in the garden (I can’t quite get used to that, yet!).

The place is beginning to look like home by degrees, though we still have a fair amount of unpacking and sorting to do. We also have to install and plumb in our new washer-dryer, which as been sitting in the middle of the bathroom for most of the week. I’m happy enough with the attaching of hoses and turning on of water, etc, less convinced by the thought of opening the back of the machine to remove the brace that restrains the drum for transit. It gives me the willies, My Dears. It gives me the willies. The thought of unscrewing bits of an expensive appliance and embuggering it worries me.

What else, what else?

Despite buying some Go-Cat to entice the local Cat Called Hitler, he has not shown himself in the garden all week. I think it’s making Furtle’s ears sag a little, she was looking forward to adopting him under a pseudonym (I think perhaps Charlie as in Chaplin). Still, there’s time.

The newly installed wi-fi can be picked up in the local pub garden. How cool is that? I must remember from time to time to check that the password protection has not been breached. It’s not obvious, so I hope it will hold. I must check that we can receive it at the bottom of our garden.

Still no photos and stuff, I’m afraid. We have taken some and will take more once the unpacking and sorting is finished, but right now, I don’t know where the cables that connect the camera to the PC are, so I can’t load anything onto the computer, much less put them online.

I guess I should do some work, now.

It's a New Day

Well, I’m back at work after the move and it doesn’t seem as though I have been away.

I can see immediately that the Circle Line from Liverpool Street to Victoria will provide an adequate substitute to the Northern Line for oddness and annoyance. That said, I have other options, including switching to the Central Line either at Stratford or at Liverpool Street, though that involves rather more Tube jiggery pokery than I like, involving as it does, a switch on to the Victoria Line. We’ll see.

I am still working out the best route to walk to Ilford Station from home, though I think I found a strong contender pretty much straight away this morning. I shall try a variation on it tomorrow and then decide. Either route will dispense with the hideous road crossing that Furtle and I used in each of our pre-move visits to the area. Provided the weather is okay, the walk to the station takes about 20 minutes at a sedate pace and if the weather turns rotten, well we have a bus stop directly across the road from our front door. As part of our relatively healthy new start, I intend to walk to and from the station rather than take the bus. We shall see how long that lasts…

The actual move from The Carpathia on Tuesday went as well as these things do, though it turned out that even with the combined space afforded by the movers’ van and the transit we had hired, there was just a little too much stuff. We picked the rest up when we went back on Thursday to clean the flat and hand over the keys. The rest of the week seems to have been lost in a haze of packing, unpacking, petty sniping and driving from A-B doing things. We have been too busy to meet our neighbours, which we must do this week, or to visit jimfer and Cat, who live just around the corner – though the former did pop in to see us briefly (and successfully, at the third or fourth attempt – we’d been out each previous time) on Thursday evening, when westernind and forbinproject swung by to drop of additional sets of keys and other miscellaneous items they had inadvertently packed and taken with them.

Yesterday, while I was trying to get stuff into the loft – a task best fitted to a much thinner person – some neighbours popped by to get us to sign a petition against a property developer who wants to build in the space behind our house (Cynical git that he is, he has been turned down by Redbridge Council several times over the years as he has submitted plan after plan. In each case, the local residents have protested, including westernind and forbinproject. The timing of his latest application seems to have been designed to reduce our chances as the new occupants, from even noticing, much less commenting. It didn’t work, we both emailed objections to the council yesterday). Petition duly signed, potential new friends made (though names immediately forgotten), jfs arrived, looking cheery and refreshed after his recent holiday in Japan, brandishing a box of Japanese tea-flavoured chocolates. Work was duly suspended for a welcome chance to socialise over a cup of tea in the garden (I can’t quite get used to that, yet!).

The place is beginning to look like home by degrees, though we still have a fair amount of unpacking and sorting to do. We also have to install and plumb in our new washer-dryer, which as been sitting in the middle of the bathroom for most of the week. I’m happy enough with the attaching of hoses and turning on of water, etc, less convinced by the thought of opening the back of the machine to remove the brace that restrains the drum for transit. It gives me the willies, My Dears. It gives me the willies. The thought of unscrewing bits of an expensive appliance and embuggering it worries me.

What else, what else?

Despite buying some Go-Cat to entice the local Cat Called Hitler, he has not shown himself in the garden all week. I think it’s making Furtle’s ears sag a little, she was looking forward to adopting him under a pseudonym (I think perhaps Charlie as in Chaplin). Still, there’s time.

The newly installed wi-fi can be picked up in the local pub garden. How cool is that? I must remember from time to time to check that the password protection has not been breached. It’s not obvious, so I hope it will hold. I must check that we can receive it at the bottom of our garden.

Still no photos and stuff, I’m afraid. We have taken some and will take more once the unpacking and sorting is finished, but right now, I don’t know where the cables that connect the camera to the PC are, so I can’t load anything onto the computer, much less put them online.

I guess I should do some work, now.

Oh yes. Tech woes.

The last thing my PC did when I powered it off for the last time before I packed it and we left The Carpathia, was to announce that such and such a file may be corrupted. Unfortunately it left this snippet of intelligence until it was actually in the process of shutting down, so I couldn’t make a note of what it was.

Well, once it was all up and running after the move, it turns out that it was something to do with my Seagate 750GB external hard drive, which was no longer on speaking terms with the rest of the computer. Guess where Bryan’s entire music directory was, with some 55GB of songs on it? Guess where a load of movies were stored? Oh, yes.

After some faffing about, I managed to get the PC speak to the disk long enough to reformat the drive. I knew that this would wipe anything on there, but at least I’d have the drive back. So far, so good.

Anyway, last night I decided to recreate as much of the music directory as possible by using my iPod as the source. Of course this means telling iTunes not to synchronise anything and then enabling disk usage. So far, so good. Then we go about transferring files one subdirectory at a time. This takes ages as my iPod has 50 subdirectories full of music and stuff and even then a portion will be lost as file names repeat between directories (cleverly, they only register with 4 letter names, so 15,000 songs takes some restoring. Two hours into the process and read-write errors start popping up, don’t they? Suddenly the Seagate has spasmed a second time and all that data is lost (happily it is still on the iPod).

Once bitten, twice shied as they say. The Seagate does not get another chance. More to the point, I’m not entirely sure I can be bothered to try rebuilding the library. Life is too short.

Does anyone have any ideas on a better way of getting the information back on to my PC without cutting and pasting a block of files at a time?

Oh yes. Tech woes.

The last thing my PC did when I powered it off for the last time before I packed it and we left The Carpathia, was to announce that such and such a file may be corrupted. Unfortunately it left this snippet of intelligence until it was actually in the process of shutting down, so I couldn’t make a note of what it was.

Well, once it was all up and running after the move, it turns out that it was something to do with my Seagate 750GB external hard drive, which was no longer on speaking terms with the rest of the computer. Guess where Bryan’s entire music directory was, with some 55GB of songs on it? Guess where a load of movies were stored? Oh, yes.

After some faffing about, I managed to get the PC speak to the disk long enough to reformat the drive. I knew that this would wipe anything on there, but at least I’d have the drive back. So far, so good.

Anyway, last night I decided to recreate as much of the music directory as possible by using my iPod as the source. Of course this means telling iTunes not to synchronise anything and then enabling disk usage. So far, so good. Then we go about transferring files one subdirectory at a time. This takes ages as my iPod has 50 subdirectories full of music and stuff and even then a portion will be lost as file names repeat between directories (cleverly, they only register with 4 letter names, so 15,000 songs takes some restoring. Two hours into the process and read-write errors start popping up, don’t they? Suddenly the Seagate has spasmed a second time and all that data is lost (happily it is still on the iPod).

Once bitten, twice shied as they say. The Seagate does not get another chance. More to the point, I’m not entirely sure I can be bothered to try rebuilding the library. Life is too short.

Does anyone have any ideas on a better way of getting the information back on to my PC without cutting and pasting a block of files at a time?