Technology is a wonderful thing.
Web browsers are technology.
Web browsers are not always wonderful things.
IE + HTTPS + SWF + ‘Pragma: no-cache‘ + ‘codebase=http‘ == Bork bork bork. No graphs load.
Talk about seriously brain-dead, but at least it wasn’t as silly as the Eolas patent.
In the end, due to the SWF library we use to generate graphs, I had to use ob_start(); $chart->export(); header(‘Pragma: IE-Die-Die-Die’); ob_end_flush();
Blech.
Today was the day of the Grand Inspection by my paternal grandparents of the new kitchen. I am pleased to report that the work has been approved of!
Need to get the channels filled in, and the wall re-skimmed where the tiles left holes. After that, I’ll have to decide on the splashback, and the kitchen will be pretty much done. It looks like it could use another lick of paint, but there’s no so much surface to cover now, so that’s something I can handle.
The garden also met with approval from Gran – she saw it a few months ago, and it’s come a long way since then. The peas are growing quite well now that I’ve got cocoa shells around them (slugs can’t stand the shells apparently), and I’ve moved most of the onions to the top bed under the flowering cherry. Apparently peas and onions don’t get on very well, so I’ve evicted the onions.
Put the new oven to the test the other night, and prepared a wonderfully moist roast chicken. I’ll be taking a knife and a long simmer to the carcass, and creating a nice chicken stock / soup tomorrow. Also made a batch of chocolate chip cookies from the Tollhouse recipe that I have – they went down a storm at work. I fear for my waistline now that I have an oven!
As mentioned earlier, the pump that drives my entire hot water system (heating and hot water for the taps) decided to die this morning. Called the friendly plumber who did my new bathroom sink this morning fairly early, but didn’t have his mobile, so had to leave a message on his answering machine at home. He’s just called back, and confirmed that the pump that died happens to be one of the cheapest piles of junk you can buy. He’ll price up a decent replacement on Monday, and if I accept the price, he’ll be around one evening to fix it.
Gotta love friendly plumbers.
I figured that I’d upgrade my work PC to Ubuntu Dapper this morning. In retrospect, considering that my heating and hot water pump died this morning, and dropped water all over my floor, I really shouldn’t have done this upgrade.
Things that broke:
The GUI required a full reinstall of the ATI proprietary driver, and the removal of xcompmgr from my .xinitrc. However, by blanking .xinitrc, I managed to cause X to fall over in a big heap! It looks like an empty, but present, .xinitrc causes X to try to exec nothing, and it just exits. Not even a ‘.xinitrc specified nothing to execute’! *twitch*
apt-get dist-upgrade decided to remove all of my KDE packages. I don’t know why, it just did. Had to reinstall KDE by hand. Installing KDE didn’t install KDM (GUI login manager), but KDM got removed when KDE got removed. Moreover, KDE’s bottom (for me) panel showed up blank. All my configuration was gone, and I have to re-create it. *twitch* *twitch*
apt-get dist-upgrade didn’t upgrade the kernel, and this broke ALSA (sound) in mysterious ways. The driver for the sound card refused to load (it turns out), which meant everything sound related didn’t work. A quick browse of the Ubuntu Forums indicated that people had experienced all sorts of weird issues with the Dapper upgrade and sound, and I finally found mention of ‘upgrade the kernel, it should be 2.6.15′. *twitch* *twitch* *twitch*
Next up, after installing the kernel and rebooting, I find that I have no network connectivity. dmesg indicates that tg3 has found eth0, but by the time the OS is up and running, ip addr, ifconfig and pals all tell me that there is no such hardware device as eth0. It’s now eth1! *TWITCH*
I’m afraid to see what else doesn’t work now.
Well, with Beta 4 of Google Earth, you can now run it on Linux. I’ve just tested it on my Kubuntu box at work (ATI graphics card, ATI driver), and it worked brilliantly. Went hunting for the place I grew up, and managed to find a decent res image at 13°12′11.60″N by 59°33′59.28″W. Where I am now is 4,128 miles from there, where I went to college is about 2,100 miles from there, and 3,400 miles from here.
I just wish they’d update the satellite imagery for where I went to college – it’s just a pinkish blob :(
So the gas fitter came and went, but not without remarking that there were no mounting brackets for the hob, and that the plinth below the oven needs a 12 mm gap to be legal. Steve is apparently available on Thursday to fix that issue, so the plinth is off for now.
All that’s left is to fix the holes in the wall where the gas pipe and electrics are channelled in, skim the lot and put up a backsplash. Oh, and return the leftovers to Howdens (still in their packaging) and get a credit back on my card. Seen a nice bit of coloured/frosted glass as a backsplash in one of the retailer brochures, so I might go that route behind the stove, and then use either the same glass all the way around the cooking area, or a row of tiles. Or perhaps something else, I need to see what I can do.
I’ll probably go and buy a chicken tonight, as a good roast chicken would go down very well as a first calibration test of the oven. Of course, I’ll probably burn it as I get used to baking with gas instead of electricity, but that’s life. Once I know how gas marks relate to heat, I’ve got a pile of cooking to do :) It’s been so long since I had an oven (Madeley I think), and I’m itching to roast and bake food.
[set rant=on]
Some days, dealing with tradesmen can be very very irritating. The gas man told the fitter (who subcontracted him) that he’d be here at 8:30 A.M. It is now 9:00 A.M. and there is no sign of the gas man. A quick call to the fitter has revealed he’ll be here in 5 minutes.
There was a new article recently about this, indicating that Britons lose something like 2 days a year to workmen who are late to jobs. If you’ve told a contractor/owner you’ll be at the place to do work on it at 8:30, please show up at 8:30. If you can’t show up at the promised time, at least have the common decency to inform the contractor or owner that you’re going to be a bit delayed. Not showing up on time and not communicating this fact is a very good way to annoy people.
We’re short staffed this week as it is, so this is the last kind of delay I need.
[set rant=off]
At least I’m getting some work done in peace and quiet. Birds are singing, and I’m tracing some old code to work out how to make it work properly.
