Yearly Archives

16 Articles
Posted by Dave on

Digitising Dad’s Photos

So I have had to move my Dad’s photo collection around the house and this took me back to working out how to digitise the collection.

Method

I did a quick bit of google research and came up with the following links.

Scanners

Posted by Dave on

W7 and Sleep with an HP Probook

As shipped the HP Probook can take too long to wake from “Sleep”.

I found this post on MS Technet and have applied the advice to the WIFI adaptor. I found it using this google query.

I have tested it using the [fn] and [moon] button and it seems to work fine. I need to test it over a longer period but it may be safe to reconfigure the power management config to “Sleep on Lid Close” which should make using the laptop on a train commute feasible.

My laptop is an HP Probook 5320m.

Posted by Dave on

NWN – Some Modules

There’s only so many times one can play the official campaigns and after about 4 years I began to look for additional content. Obviously I have the Kingmaker Expansions, but for various reasons I decided to look further. This page is impacted by the bioware hack and also by the collapse/destruction of the original vault. This was replaced by a new vault, https://neverwintervault.org/.  Otherwise, here are my notes, which consist of sections

Posted by Dave on

Zurich

The financial & commercial capital of German speaking Switzerland.

Why

I needed to visit on business, in Jan 2007, and returned 13 months later. In 2010, it began to be a second home, travelling through it to Zermatt (flickr pictures) and Budapest (flickr pictures) and needing to work in Zurich West. I have not been back since, sadly.

Money


The Swiss still use the Swiss Franc (CHF).

Things to do

We spent the weekend walking around the old town and visited the Kunsthaus, the ferry quay with its views down the lake, the Lindhof park, the old botanical gardens, the University for its views over the town and the Fraumunster with its Chagal & Giacometto stained glass windows. See also this Zurich Tourist Site

Hotels

These first two are recommended by the business travel agent, and neither are in the rough guide.

  • Hotel du Theatre, near Central Sq., on Zahringstrasse.
  • Hotel Central overlooks the River Limat
  • Hotel City, Lowenstrasse, on the edge of Zurich West.
  • Hotel Greulich, near Langstrasse
  • Hotel Seidenhof, which is very central near the station, and recommended by another business travel agent.

My Map

This is Zurich city centre, the google map has the airport marked up.



View Larger Map

Getting There

In England, since we’re without the car, a very useful public transport is the Speedbus, which runs from Woking Station to London Heathrow Terminals. This is quicker than driving and parking; you’re taken straight there. The buses leave Woking every half hour on the hour or half hour. I have taken to flying Swiss from LCY.

If travelling to Zurich West, for the Crown Plaza or Mercure, one needs Tram No. 2 from Paradeplatz,the 6,7,11 & 13 go from the tramstop on Bahnhofstrasse to Paradeplatz. The 11 & 13 can be caught from the tram stop at the Hauptbahnhof front concourse, the 6 can also be found at the tramstop at the south side entrance.

Posted by Dave on

Ripping BBC iplayer

Ripping BBC iplayer

For some reason, I wanted to capture a BBC iplayer stream onto my hard disk; it looks like I was planning to use my MAC, and so didn’t because I would have needed to upgrade the MAC OS version to 10.6 or better. Please note I am a BBC license fee payer, although of course the MAC is a laptop.

I found these two URLs

Get iplayer Automator

This is for MACs, it uses a separate project to interface with the BBC site and is basically a GUI. It saves to disk and presents it through iTunes.

Get Iplayer (CLI)

I downloaded it using macports, and had a problem with the format conversions. This took me to rmtpdump.

I installed this using macports. I still haven’t made the –mode flag work which is why I installed the MAC optimised package.

 

Posted by Dave on

zbench

I have decided to use Zbench as my theme for the my revised blog, for which I have a wiki article, called  davelevy.info v4

See also WordPress themes at davelevy.info, which deals with the header.php, front pages, read more and category and tag lists.

The two initial problems I have are using the heading tags, and their code style.

I also would like to have the pages having individual comment closure dates, so that I can create an always open guest book, which i believe is possible on this wiki.

I need to check out Child Themes. This will make preserving customisations much easier.

Posted by Dave on

WordPress on 1and1

This is known as the 1and1 blog. Unlike their canned web site this cannot be be dicked around with. They have a bunch of themes, some of which are pretty cool. This article was created in Jul 2012 and revised in Mar 2019 as most of the material is out of date and much of the supporting documentation has gone away. 

Posted by Dave on

AD+D Saving Throws

AD+D Saving Throws

The NWN Online book says,

Saving throws are a measure of a character or creature’s resistance to special types of attacks-poisons, magic, and effects like a dragon’s breath weapon. If a saving throw is made, this may reduce the damage or prevent the effects of the spell or attack entirely.

Posted by Dave on

Intellectual Property Law

I made an omnibus article of my writings on open source, culture and copyright. This was dated 2012 in the blog but references earlier material. Some of it still holds good, some of it is passed it’s sell by date.