OK, now I’m getting seriously annoyed. For quite a while I was happily using TomTom Navigator 5.21 on my Axim x30, and recently I found an option to check for updates which told me a free upgrade to version 6.01 was available – great! I then spent hours mooching around the abomination that is the TomTom website looking for this mythical download, only to give up (I needed to sleep) and email support for it. “We’ll get back to you in 24 hours” they said.
Two days later (…) I received a message back with version 6.01 attached. Only it wasn’t because you have to go through their terrible support thing, but I found the file easilt enough. Opening up the Zip I’m greeted with nothing remotely resembling an instruction document. Nor an installer for that matter – the executables are there but are for Pocket-PC only. Er.. great.
I copy the files onto my 512MB SD card and run one of the programs, only to be told I’m out of space on a card that’s only half full despite holding a full install of the software. Wait… what? I copy the whole card’s contents to a 2GB card I nicked from the Wii downstairs and we at least get past the ‘Out of space’ message.
But the problem now is that TomTom Navigator starts and quits again. By pure accident I click on one of the Cab files (there are two) and.. something happens. OK it fails because it’s the wrong version but at least I know you can install Cab files. I didn’t know this because under Windows they just open as an Archive. I click on the other one and… TomTom installs! Huzzah!
Only now when I try to run the Navigator app, it shows me a warning about not using it while driving and then complains that it can’t find any maps. “No Maps Found” says he. From a bit of reading I’ve done it looks like I need – wait for it – version 6 maps! And from the look of it, I don’t get them for free, I have to pay for them.
I am not a happy bunny.
So I’ve sent another message off to TomTom HQ asking them what the hell is going on, and what do I need to do now to get my SatNav working again? I’ve no doubt I’ll need to wait another two days before I get an answer, which will be something along the lines of “Pay £60 for new maps, LOL”, to which I will blow my top and fire off an angry rant, then – most likely – remove all traces of TomTom from my Pocket PC and start again.
In preparation for this year’s jaunt up to Scotland, I went out for my 3-mile walk in my hiking boots. This was the very same pair I’d used last year in my failed, half-hearted attempt to scale Ben Nevis and I figured things wouldn’t be too bad – at least not as bad as the old trainers I used that took the skin off the back of my ankles.
The regular pounding of feet on concrete proved too much for my dainty plates, and I’ve been rewarded with a few blisters. I parked closer to the office this morning to minimise any further walking throughout the day.
This year I’ll be a bit more prepared and should make it to the top, where I can bask in the glory of accomplishment (while gasping for breath, naturally) before making my way back down again. K has said he’s up for the trip as well so it could be fun.
I may also invest in a couple of hiking poles, since the trip down proved to be the worst bit by far. The steps slope ever so slightly downhill, and they’re big enough to force you to drop, rather than step down. Repeat that over a couple of hours and it’s bloody agony, especally with my dodgy hip.
It’ll be a victory for fat, out-of-breath, old blokes everywhere.
Yeah I know, I haven’t been updating the ol’ website again. I’ve been busy on a massive website with work and juggling other stuff around it. It’s been crazy, but I’m back up to working five days a week again, which is nice. Might be able to pay something off the credit card bill this month.
Precisely because I’ve been so busy, I’ve just not had the get up and go to resume work after a horrible harddrive fuckup that wiped all the data from my backup drive. I’d just reformatted and put the 250GB drive back in to restore my files, when the Win2k boot process decided to scan and fix them all. Yeah, fix them all straight to hell. Everything was gone – photos, emails, contacts, the lot.
Sigh…
I’ve also taken the opportunity to get shut of an old PC and assorted drives by putting a machine together for my sister. She’s inheriting my Athlon 800Mhz system with 512MB RAM. There’s a 10GB C: drive and a 15GB D: drive, plus a DVD ReWriter as E: and – because I couldn’t find a matching blanking plate – a CD-ReWriter as F:. M even managed to find a 4-binder set of PC Know-How, or How-To, or something, for about £4 in the local Oxfam shop.
Things should cool down a little now. Just today I realised that the phone had hardly rung at all and that I wasn’t twitching nervously on the odd occasion that it did. It was quite relaxing, actually.
Nope, Ubuntu doesn’t apppear to be ready for every day usage. not for me at any rate. After all the hassle of getting it installed and working, several niggles have cropped up which basically annoyed the hell out of me, and right now I am in two minds whether to reformat (again) and stick Windows 2000 on there all on it’s own. Where to start?
Epson Perfection 2480 Scanner and Ubuntu? Finally!
I finally got my trusty old Epson 2480 working but nowhere in the install did it say ‘You need the firmware from the driver CD, it’ll be in one of the cab files so you’ll need a utility to extract that, then copy it to this folder and then edit this config file’. For the love of god – this crap should all be built into the SANE installer/config thing and should not require a user to hunt around Google for an hour trying to find out why the hell it doesn’t work.
Networking keeps.. not working. Only on Ubuntu!
When I originally installed Ubuntu it picked up my network cards (dual board, see) and installed working drivers for them without fuss. So why don’t they work anymore? I started last week sometime when I couldn’t get connected for love nor money, but Windows 2000 (which I dual boot this machine with) would work without problems. On that occasion I turned the machine off overnight and tried the next day – instant connection!
Today, or rather last night, I had the same problem – no connection, left the machine off overnight. No such luck this time though, I simple cannot get connected to the Internet. Once again, Windows connected without problems on the same network card, connected to the same router via the same Cable modem and with the same LAN IP. Ubuntu? Not a chance.
These are just two of the things that have been annoying me, but it’s painfully obvious that, unless you’re going to supply someone with a fully-configured machine so that they don’t have to do anything, the average user is going to get pissed off with things just not working and give up – much like me – and go back to something that does work.
I shall be hunting for a fix for the networking problem tonight, but if I don’t find it there will be another reformatting session pretty soon.
Part one of.. who knows how many. I actually started this last night when I got home with the backup portion of the whole farce. Farce? Yeah well nothing’s really gone as smoothly as it did during testing, and there’s really no reason for it all. Granted, I’ve moved from a regular IDE Harddrive to the SATA ones in my machine, but is that really enough to throw things out?
Ubuntu installed without problem, detecting the SATA drive and allowing me to partition it as saw fit. I created two equal partitions of 58,000MB which left something like 1.2GB for Linux Swap. Formatted and installed Ubuntu, no problem. Yet.
Downloaded and installed the nVidia Linux drivers using Alberto Milone’s ”Envy” script, which all went OK, but the desktop just wouldn’t default to 1600×1200 (only one monitor at the moment). I could select it in the nVidia utils and apply it, but it wouldn’t stick.
Installed Windows 2000 on its partition, only for the install to balk at adding some drivers from the motherboard CD and trash the whole thing. I sighed, reformatted and reinstalled the partition and away we went again. Second time lucky, but it took hours to download and install all the frickin’ patches, highlighting a major, major difference between Windows and Linux updates: Ubuntu downloaded all updates in one go and installed the lot with no hassle; Windows downloaded and installed, rebooted, downloaded updates for the updates, rebooted again and… you get the picture.
Then the Ubuntu network died. Seriously, what the hell? It had been working flawlessly right up until the point where it decided not to, with no warnings, errors or anything. I reinstalled the whole OS hoping it would fix both this and the desktop resolution problem but to no avail, and I eventually went to bed at 2AM.
So this morning I hunt around the network config file and, on a hunch, delete the entry for my second ethernet adapter. I don’t have a Gigabit switch anyway so it’s kinda pointless. This brings the network back up instantly – Huzzah! I type ‘ubuntu resolution problem’ into Google and find a forum entry about configuring X from the terminal, run through the steps and – praise be! – my desktop is now in the correct resolution. I still have no idea why this should cease working just because I used SATA, however.
For a data drive I dug out a Win98 install CD and formatted the whole drive to FAT32. This part went suprisingly smoothly, althoug it was a pain waiting the best part of an hour for it to format. I went and had a shower… and read a book… and went out to post a letter as well. Zzz… I’m currently at the point where I am reformatting the drive using TrueCrypt to create an encrypted partition. It occurs to me that I probably could have done this in plaece of the FAT32 format but I’ve wasted enough time.