Daredevil (and comics in general)

I have mostly been reading Daredevil this week. After the dark and gothic environment of the Shadowland denouement to Vol. II, the new comics (Vol. III) are a breath of fresh air. The artwork is very bright and summery, people are smiling and enjoying life, and Matt Murdock wears a jumper with "I am not Daredevil" emblazoned across it.

Since deciding to give up the booze, I've caught up with Uncanny X-Force, Astonishing X-Men, and even decided to invest in Iron Man - from 500 onwards (which is the number I picked up Daredevil from, if I remember correctly?  What a coincidence...)

So I have a pile of comics on my bedside table, ready for reading. I'm looking forward to starting Supurbia, a four-part series from BOOM!, as well as catching up with Morning Glories.  I think I'm about a year behind on Incorruptible, and don't even get me started on Haunt...!

But the new system might just work, and if I can read more in a week than I buy on a Saturday, hopefully the pile next to the bed will slowly diminish (we can live in hope...). And if I can continue to read some comics on the train as well, that'll help too.

Job's a good'un!.

TTFN

Posted via email from Rob Thorley's Posterous Site

Sussex Cricket Season Opens

Last Sunday was the first of many trips this summer to the Probiz County Ground in Hove. Of course to see Sussex play cricket in a CB40 match against the Unicorns, who are (as I understand it) an ECB development side which was formed to give exposure to potential stars of the cricketing future.
As such, Sussex walloped them. 291 from 40 overs, with centuries for Joyce and Machan. When the Unicorns were 45 from 15 overs I realised the jig was up and made my excuses.
It was a good day; the sun was out, it wasn't too hot - in fact when the wind blew it was quite chilly. I had a fleece on for much of the later afternoon. I managed to read a couple of old Guardian Weekends which I've been hoarding for years, and I got to road-test my new, bigger and more powerful binoculars.
I saw a girl from work, M, and exchanged a few words with my fellow spectators. I enjoyed a couple of pork pies courtesy of the Tesco Express by Hove station, washed down with a couple of bottles of Coke - no alcohol was taken! I also enjoyed a cold homemade burger which TW had prepared the night before.
All in all it was a lovely day, a good start to the season and a taste of things to come. Apart from Machan's innings, it wasn't a compelling match, and I'm hoping for better atmospheres and more gripping cricket as the season continues. But there's no better way to spend a sunny afternoon than at the Probiz - especially with Sussex in control.

Posted via email from Rob Thorley's Posterous Site

Bank Holiday Style Pt. I

It's been a busy three days.

The list of to-dos began even before I got home. TW phoned me at work to let me know that the fuses had blown. "Darling, I wasn't doing anything. Just hammering a picture hook into the wall above the light switch." So job #1 was to rewire an old fuse.
And of course, I left the picture hook in the wall. So, as soon as I put the repaired fuse back in the box and switched the circuit back on, it blew. Dammit!
So I had to redo it. This time I took the picture hook out of the wall. A neighbour came round and reckoned I was on a hiding to nothing, but I thought it was worrth a try. The other alternative was to call an electrician *on a bank holiday* to come out and repair it. We would have had to sell the house, I reckon, to pay a bill like that.
Anyway, this time it worked, thank the lord. Old style fuses are so fiddly. So that was job #1 completed.

Posted via email from Rob Thorley's Posterous Site

Adventures in Linux / Customizing a Netbook

I may have mentioned I bought a netbook a few weeks ago. It may have slipped my mind to record the fact. But either way, I've had a new toy to play with.
The annoying thing with Windows on a netbook, though, is that it feels like only part of the display is on view.
So I asked a guy at work about Linux and he recommended Mint. I happily bumbled home and looked it up.
Mint's big selling point is it's multimedia capabilities. Aha! I thought, that'll do me.
So I downloaded the ISO onto a USB stick - several times. It appears that 1GB sticks don't hold 1GB of data, so I had to use a 16GB stick I had. Of course, Linux users being more precise, the ISO is actually 1024MB in size, and it won't fit on a USB with 997MB free. My bad.
I tested the system by booting it from the USB and I liked it, so decided to install it. And that's where I came unstuck. The system is supposed to install a dual-boot menu, so that on start-up you get the choice between using Linux or Windows. But the menu didn't kick in. So I reloaded it and tried again. Same thing.
Eventually I had to delete three installations of Linux Mint! And it still wasn't booting as expected.
Then I checked the MD5 value, to ensure the downloaded software wasn't corrupted. No problems there. So I tried again. Went through some serious problem-solving steps and ended up deleting and reinstalling the bootloader - that was a bit worrying since if the procedure had not worked, I would have borked the netbook.
But all this effort was to no avail. I just could not get the boot menu to install from the USB.
So I decided to change my line of attack. I used mint4win to install Linux inside Windows. It took some time; I had to download a virtual drive piece of software, and download a cut-down version of Mint. But it installed as smooth as butter; I then clicked on the 'upgrade to DVD Version' and voila - the full version installed. And the boot menu appeared as desired - so I now have Mint on my netbook! Hurrah.
TTFN.

Posted via email from Rob Thorley's Posterous Site