Recently I changed the contents of my lounge. The old sofa and chair were removed and taken away and then a new sofa was delivered. It was all quite stressful really but I’m getting used to the new stuff. One indirect result of losing the chair was the door to the dining room now opens to about 30cm away from closed position when measured at the largest gap – I don’t know what angular measure this is. I needed a doorstop.
So, while I thought about what type of thing to use as a doorstop I used a 1kg cube of tungsten that I had already bought. I’m going to use it as a thing of beauty and also at work in those lessons when I teach about density. But I didn’t want it to be the primary doorstop. So I started looking at aircraft stuff on eBay.
I really like the idea of aircraft based furniture but it’s quite expensive and always custom made so it’s not the sort of thing I can really afford. But for a doorstop I knew I just needed a lump of something that’s quite heavy and looks cool. I did see a brake piston from a 737 on eBay but then while scrolling past the tables and desks made from aircraft parts I found the perfect thing.
Door Stop – Harrier Wing Tip Wheel
This is the a wheel from a Harrier aircraft. It’s a strange one, because along with the B52, the Harrier has wheels that drop down from the wing tips. The main wheels don’t give enough stability so there are extras from the wings. I like this object. I’m sure it’s going to bring me plenty of pleasure just by looking at it.
A couple of months ago a van was blocking my car which was parked by the side of the road. It turned out to be people installing fibre optic cables (invented in Harlow) to the telegraph poles in the village so that people can get fibre to property. Until then the village had FTC, which is fibre to cabinet and then metal wire to houses. This meant I was getting a bandwidth of about 74Mb/s, Upload was limited to around 10Mb/s. This is not a bad bandwidth, but at times it does need to be better, especially when there are around five devices that need updating with new software.
About three weeks after I saw these fibre installers I had an email offer to upgrade my broadband to FTP – fibre to property. I jumped on the chance. I ordered the new system and then just had to wait for my install date. Fortunately for me the install date was scheduled for a day when I am not in work. There was more of a problem as far as I was concerned which was where will the new modem/router go in the house? The house has been set up with the router in a specific place that allows wi-fi throughout the whole building and is the hub of all the wired devices. There are around ten devices wired into the LAN and there are also four switches that run the traffic near those devices. There was a video to watch which seemed to imply that I can request that the modem/router goes where ever I want. I knew that wasn’t going to be the case.
I spent a while thinking about how to arrange the home network if the router could not be placed where I wanted it. Given there are switches and it’s all kinda connected so doesn’t matter which way the traffic flows I decided I could live with the router in the front room of the house, the only real problem could be wi-fi range, the back of my house is quite a distance from the front of the house. I ordered a new switch and ethernet cable to allow for network connection.
On the day of the installation I had everything ready, I knew where things were going to go and I had options if they couldn’t be placed there. I also had a new extension lead placed in the front room because there could be two extra sockets needed, also the sofa is powered but that’s for another day. I chatted with the installer. I could have the router where I wanted it but each corner put in the fibre cable would drop the bandwidth slightly. This then gave me the thoughts that perhaps the ethernet from the fibre-decoder went via the switches to the router in the middle room. This is a possible solution. The installer chap said this was possible but I’m not sure he understood the finer elements of networking. I googled while he was working and I could have done this but only if my switches are managed and allow VLAN. They might allow VLAN but they are not managed and that is a level of stuff slightly beyond my confidence level. Then, I had the genius idea of placing the router above the AV centre and this would give a slightly higher range through the house.
So, the installation went well. The system was tested and it all worked. Then the person left and I took on the task of setting all the stuff up. There’s DDNS servers to configure, ports to forward and static IPs to set up. I have a spreadsheet for most of these details along with screen shots of the settings from the old router. Obviously I also ran some bandwidth tests, just to see what sort of rates I could get.
Internet Speed Test
These bandwidths seem good. I don’t think there’s anything I can complain about. It took a few hours to get the router working how I wanted it. The modem router is wired into the fibre box via an ethernet cable and the router is around four metres away from that box. Then, there is an ethernet cable connecting the router to one of the switches which means I have a good stable connection for all wired devices. The switches are gigabit so the wired network has a little spare capacity and shouldn’t become blocked.
I tried to update Fortnite on the main gaming PC and it went swimmingly. The download went quicker than the computer could cope with! The download is no longer a pinch point on the network. The install time is now limited by the read/write time on the computer. This is exciting and should stop problems when multiple devices are trying to download large files. I have recently been downloading some TV Shows from Apple and I the issue there is more that the Apple server is limited rather than my download speed being a problem.
I’ve got a project happening in Minecraft at the moment and I’ve built a railway station. I wanted to put a “town hall” elsewhere in the build and I had laid out a ground plan but I wasn’t sure how to design it or complete it. After a recent trip to the Lake District I found the perfect design – Moot Hall in Keswick. It’s iconic and gorgeous and it is just waiting to be made in Minecraft. I’ve recently spent a little time, a few hours, collecting materials and then building this hall in the space I had in the recent build. What follows are the results of the exterior. I haven’t started the interior at the moment. I’m not sure what to do for that. The actual interior is a shop and information centre, which I might try and remake.
Moot Hall, Keswick, but in Minecraft
Moot Hall, Keswick, but in Minecraft
Moot Hall, Keswick, but in Minecraft
Moot Hall, Keswick, but in Minecraft
I guess you’ll want to rate this compared to the actual building. Google it, I’m not going to link anything here.
There are things changing in the castle that is my house. It’s currently quite stressy waiting. I’m waiting for people to turn up and do things and in the meantime I can’t really do anything else. I would normally watch television but it’s broken so I’m also waiting for that to happen. Things that are changing:
Old sofa being collect by bulk waste team
New sofa being delivered
Broadband supply changing to fibre to property
Television being fixed
These all occur over two days. Hopefully they all kinda happen in the correct order or there will be trouble ahead. I don’t have the space in the house for three grown ups all trying to do the things they need to do. I’m in waiting mode and feeling a bit odd about the whole thing. I just want everything done so I can relax.
I’m upset. For the third time in owning a Philips TV I have had one break. The first TV had a new screen fitted after a row of pixels died and then eventually a column of pixels became intermittent in that screen and I decided it was time to get a new one. That is when I bought the OLED version of the same TV. 55″ and ambilight, which I really like. The first TV led to the creation of my most popular video on YouTube:
Well, last night the new OLED broke. And in style. I was called to the front room because the TV “wasn’t working”. Normally this is a quick fix because the other people in the house don’t understand the system and so are unaware of input choice for the TV etc. It’s taken some time for them to understand the sound is created by a different box and not the TV. Anyway, I went into the room expecting to smuggly press a single button on the remote. This is not what happened. The TV wouldn’t turn on.
So, I unplugged the TV and then plugged it in again. I saw a brief cross of white pixels and then the screen died. The white standby light started blinking slowly. So, of course I tried the same thing again, this time leaving the power disconnected for longer. Same result. A search online claims it could be the power to the TV, but it is not. So now I am communicating with Philips, the TV is within warranty. It will get fixed. I will have a nice screen again. I just need to be patient.
In the meantime I have loaded some streaming apps onto my tablet to be able to watch some shows. It’s going to be a bit of a shock having to do that. I also can’t easily play my good Playstation and driving game. All of this has unbalanced me a little. Hopefully I won’t have to wait too long.
UPDATE – 5 minutes after publishing: Philips have been in touch and there is a OBR process for me to try. One Button Reset. Let’s see what happens later today when I try that out. I will update here once tried.
UPDATE – OBR did NOT work. I’ve been back in touch with Philips support and they got back to me pretty quickly with a case number and reference to a company who will come out and fix the TV.
UPDATE – The company have been in touch. They have said they have ordered the parts needed and that those parts come from the EU and so might take a time. Hopefully these parts come soon. I miss watching things on my TV. It’s frustrating. I’m having to use my 3D 1080p television that is in the dining room.
UPDATE – The company have been in touch and have told me the date they are coming to fix my television. Fortunately I am on a holiday from work and also in the country so I am able to wait for the TV to be fixed.
UPDATE – The TV has been fixed. A person came to the house on the day that the new broadband was fitted and they changed the screen and motherboard of the TV. Essentially I have a new TV. The only parts they didn’t change were the power unit and sound board. I don’t use my TV for sound. So, the box is the same but pretty much everything else is new. The fixer also used the secret maintenance menu on the TV but I wasn’t quick enough to see the code they entered to get that menu selection.
Many years ago the sea levels were different and there were a bunch of ports around the south east coast of this island that aren’t really ports any more. There are rivers and waterways that connect them to the sea but silt and level changes have created new land.
I had a lovely time visiting the town of Rye. The aim was to find a hot chocolate cafe but we ended up in a Mexican restaurant and that was lovely. Great food and lovely Mexican music playing.
Los Gringos – Rye
If I go to Rye again I will try to spend a little longer there and also look up more of the history. It is amazing that the Cinque Ports were once a thing but the geography changes have really made such a difference.
So recently the Legend got me a Lego Gran Turismo Car. I wrote about it here. I then had to play Gran Turismo and buy that actual car. Which I did. Here are some scapes photographs I took of this car.
Some software installation options allow the user to choose a language. A piece of software I installed recently had the following options – see picture. Why is the English USA English and not English English? Why give me what looks like different options for English without giving me different options? Maybe these options are listed like this to stop English English speakers getting upset about the software only using American English? Maybe the Portuguese option is only Brazilian to stop the Portuguese moaning about using a language that isn’t really their own? I do not know the answers but I do find options like this to be stupid.
According to this website the last Lego model I made was in 2020, it has been a while! I’m not sure why it’s been this long, probably my kids no longer need my help with Lego and I haven’t bought any – where do I put it? This model was bought for my cake-day by the Legend and it super pleases me. It covers two things I really enjoy; cars and gaming. This model is the Lamborghini Lambo V12 Vision GT Super Car which exists within the game of Gran Turismo 7.
Lamborghini Lambo V12 Vision GT Super Car
I need to go and buy the car in the game and then take some scapes photos with it. I will post those here when I have completed that side-quest.
Lamborghini Lambo V12 Vision GT Super Car
I’m hoping the car drives well. I’ve got a few races still to complete in the standard section of GT so I will be working on that.
On the way home yesterday after a pretty busy day at work I went to the local supermarket, I needed milk and didn’t want to walk to the little shop in the village. It had rained earlier in the day, not masses, but enough to turn the air cold. I parked the car and walked across the car park. Then, I felt wet inside my right shoe. Gah. This is really annoying. I can’t remember when I bought those shoes, but I know I hadn’t spent a lot on them. The plan was to generally buy more shoes but of worse quality over time.
A while back, maybe around, 2017 I bought a pair of DM shoes because I thought that spending a reasonable amount of money would mean that the shoes would last longer. However, paying over GBP100 for a pair of shoes and for them to hurt when wearing them seemed an affront to common sense. Surely expensive shoes wouldn’t need “breaking in”. I was wrong.
So now the cheap shoes have died. But I do have a good way of breaking in shoes. It involves a hammer and a little time. So, I’m starting to think I should get another decent pair of shoes – probably Dr Martens – with the hope that they will last and be comfy.
