Archive for April, 2009

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Wattson is well again!

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

After a 3.5 days recuperating  (powered-off), Wattson has managed to get over his sickness! Not a very elegant solution for such a designer object (an un-bent paperclip stuck with blue-tack underneath – to aid reset, and leaving a few days for the batteries to discharge, so wattson forgets his corrupt configuration, to prevent him from freezeing.

Some interesting observations after leaving Wattson unpluged from the DC charger and computer for a total of 3.5 days. Do not be temepted to re-connect to pc or charger at this time (wattson will still be active and freeze!)

After leaving wattson off for 3.5 days, after a power-on, you know wattson is happy again, because it defaults to Colours Only.

Plug back into DC mains charger, connect back to Holmes, and run a collection, the previous days data is still stored, I had 7 days of data before the freeze, Holmes detects Wattson, the data and time is set to 30.11.1999, and it starts to collect all data, and set the tariffs.

Holmes collecting data from Wattson

Holmes collecting data from Wattson

Wattson is now happy again.

Holmes collecting data from Wattson

Holmes collecting data from Wattson

and energy readings will appear again in the side panel.

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Female Pheasant

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

A regular visitor to  the garden, these birds are very tame and people friendly! This picture was taken by Lindsey! 

Female Pheasant
Female Pheasant

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Npower Sign Online 15 Electricity Tariff

Friday, April 17th, 2009

A 5 minute telephone call today to Npower has saved me £350 on my electricity bill in switching from Standard to Sign Online 15 Electricity tariff, which is paperless billing, and you send them a meter reading, rather than the “twonk on stupid street” from Meterplus, which always leave a card because I’m out at work, asking me to do it. Who reads their meters, because they are out reading mine!

I could have saved over £550 on my electricity bill, by switching to Web Online 15, but this tariff offered by Npower, is excluslvely to “new customers” only to Npower, so for me to get this, I’ve got to switch to another provider e.g. EDF or E-ON, and then come back to Npower, then they’ll put me on that tariff. Now there’s an idea, maybe I leave and not comeback, as Npower Customer Service doesn’t rank very highly according to the Which? surveys!

Oh, I know my exact electricity usage because Wattson records it, and has been for the last 510 days, so whether it’s per second, minute, day, hour, week, month and year, I have the data!

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Applying Windows XP Service Pack 3 to my workstation!

Friday, April 17th, 2009

In the hope it fixes my issue!

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All Done!

Friday, April 17th, 2009

I’ve completed the migration of data from the old legacy FishHouse and Our House blogs to this new blog WordPress.

New posts for the fish house blog can be located in the fish house category, and likewise with posts to the our house blog, can be located in house.

I’ve left the old legacy blogs in place for the current time. If you find any issues please let me know.

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Our House imported posts from legacy blog

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

I’ve now imported all the posts from the old Our House blog. I’ve still got to convert the posts with photos and internet links in before they get published here. I think I’ve decided to take the plunge, and no longer update the old legacy blogs, and new posts will appear on this new blog, in the various categories, sections or topics. It will make things easier for posting, and make easier reading. To keep the timeline correct, they’ve all been tagged as category house, but I’ve also tagged them in other relevant categories. So over the coming weeks, you’ll see more of the older posts appearing, once they’ve been duly converted (provided WordPress and the hosting holds out!)

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Windows XP Failure!

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

I’ve now struggled for a man week, in repairing my production workstation, so have decided to backup it up using Symantec Ghost 8.0. I know this is not the latest product from Symantec but it works for me. I have a dedicated VLAN in the office for multicasting ghost images around the network, so it doesn’t impact on the main internal network.

After I have a full backup of the operating system, I can then tinker with the service packs and repair procedures.

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Ghosts in the machine!

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

ah, the reason no data is being shown is my wattson has crashed and hung. It will be a few days, until it gets over it’s illnes! It has done this before in the last 510 days I’ve been logging data. I don’t know what’s going on here, my TiVo crashed again, my phone reset and crashed, I’m still trying to get my PC working, and Wattson’s poorly!

Ghosts in the machine!

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No data from Wattson!

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

let me give wattson a kick! there’s no data displayed!

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Protected: Freeware Links

Monday, April 13th, 2009

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

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