New Installation

I have finally installed my new hard drive and put an operating
system on it. I decided to take the plunge and completely do away
with Windows. So there is nothing but Debian testing (soon to be
stable) installed. I have decided to go through the assorted
problems and issues that I am dealing with as I get the new system up
and running.

Selecting the correct hard drive setting: cable select didn't work.
I got to the partitioning stage of the installation procedure and it
tells me there are no partionable devices. Grr.

X: I decided not to use the Debian desktop system task, but to do it
bit by bit. I also managed to incorrectly set up my mouse port
during the X server configuration. Lessons learned: dpkg-reconfigure
is very useful, but you need to know which packages you are
configuring (I systmatically went through the X packages that I had
installed to find the correct on). It is easier to use Debian tasks
(which I had to resort to in the end), although they take a long time
to download and use a lot of space.

Restarting: whatever is claimed, lots of things only work in Linux
after a system reboot.

CDs

Asa thank you for helping him at the weekend, my Father bought me a
new CD, The Sky Moves Sideways by Porcupine Tree. It is very good,
being quite experimental, ambient rock. There are all sorts of
sounds going on but the two that struck me most of all were the
occasional resemblance to Boards of Canada and the very Dave Gilmour
sound of the lead guitarist, neither of which are bad things in my
opinion. While I don't think the gift was necessary, I shan't be
complaining giving the quality of it.

I shall be ordering two new CDs myself, to use up the Amazon voucher
that I received for being on the University Web Focus Group. I have
pretty much settled on the new Dream Theater album and the remastered
edition of The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails. How very rocky I
must sound.

My weight has increased by about half a stone since my last monthly
weigh in. I am less than happy, although I can see no visible signs
of weight gain in bad places. Maybe it is my sudden gym attendance
but I doubt it would have that much of an effect in such a short
time. Ho hum, I shall just have to carry on paying attention to my
food intake. Moving out and feeling able to cook properly and not
having to live off of convenience food will help.

Edinburgh Overrun

Edinburgh officials are slightly concerned about Bob Geldof's plans
to have one million people march through the city to support the Make
Poverty History campaign during the G8 conference.

Quite apart from the fact that, as Midge Ure suggested, the one
million figure is pretty much just a rallying cry from Geldof and
unlikely to be achieved, you do have to question the reasoning of the
authorities.

After all, just how many people congregate on Edinburgh for the
Festival? The situations are clearly different, the Festival being
considerably more spread out both geographically and over time, but
the other main difference? Festival goers stay in expensive hotels
spending lots of money in restaurants and arts venues. They aren't
whingeing lefty drop out student types.

Beyond that, central government I am sure don't want a popular
protest from the people embarrassing both them as hosts and making
their guests, especially the nice Mr Bush feel in any way guilty or
responsible.

I was all excited about going myself, my first popular protest and
all, but it is the last day of my NASMA conference. I suppose this
may lead to a slight questioning of my commitment to the cause. Ho
hum.

While I do throw as much support behind the cause as possible, I do
disagree completely with Bob Geldof attempting to persuade children
to skip school to go. Naughty Bob.

I do think that he may get a few more people to go if he promised
that he would come in a new suit.

Names

I have noticed that one of my rulers at work is called Emma.

It is raining. It is a nice steady rain, good for the ground and
lovely to be out in.

Three plums are not as filling as two bananas. I shall take more
plums to work tomorrow.

A small meme courtesy of Nikkiana.
Not my usual cup of tea, although I feel that changing, but it is
about music and I just can't resist that.

Total volume of music files on my computer:
None at all. I don't download illegal music, have no need of
electronic copies of my CDs and consider electronic format music to
be of too poor a quality to be worth buying compared to CD.

The last CD I bought was:
One Live Badger by Badger.

Song playing right now:
The Good Don't Last from The Kindness of Strangers by Spock's Beard.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
I am very much an album person rather than just songs, which probably
also has an effect on my lack of computerised music. So, five
albums:

1. Led Zeppelin IV (Runes)
2. Graceland by Paul Simon
3. Close To The Edge by Yes
4. Snow by Spock's Beard
5. Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence by Dream Theater

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:
I don't really pass such things on by e-mail, so I shall have to
trust my readers here. However, the chances that there are five
people who read my blog are slim, so I suspect that this will be a
dead end for this little meme.

What to wear?

Ezboard have been having some very nasty problems with their service,
posts going missing, pages crashing, data loss and so on. They claim
they have suffered a major attack. That implies someone cares enough
to attack them. Ah, possibly a disgruntled customer.

Anyway, it will soon be the Athletics Union Dinner and I need to
decide what to wear. I cannot of course wear the same as I have in
previous years, which rules out black shirt with gold tie or black
tie. I can't remember what I wore two years ago and can't find any
photos, but I suspect that it may have been black on black (two years
in a row, I needed shooting).

Shoe choice is fairly easy, I should really wear lace shoes and not
slip on and I can't afford a new pair for the Dinner.

So, shirt, tie and cuff links. White shirt? Black shirt? If I wear
black shirt, my tie choice is limited. I could wear the bow tie that
I wore at my Father's wedding. I could buy a new tie or bow tie. I
may try and find some duck cuff links. Everything is open to me with
a white shirt. Do have the figure for a cummerbund though?
Waistcoat?

Decisions, decisions.