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Monday, October 8, 2001

And the big raid on Afghanistan commences; I wonder where the next terrorist strike will be?

Another showery day, with more rain on the way tomorrow. The dry areas of the country are benefiting from the rain, and the hydro lakes will get more water in them. We've had coverage on TV of the South Island lakes showing acres of shingle and boulders where the lake level should have been.

I was busy on office work this morning, and then Joan and I lifted a line of cobblestones in front of the house. We suspect that the plastic pipe which is the water feed to the house has sprung a leak and now is the time to fix it. The pipe comes up inside the front toilet wall; there is a hole in the wall behind the toilet where the new house pipe was spliced on to this old black stuff -- and we just papered the hole over. The urgency is that our interior decorator will be coming later in the week to re-paper the toilet, so we need to get the pipe looked at smartly -- the plumber will be here tomorrow, hopefully.

Joan went off with Joanna back to Lisa Cresc while I tried to do some 'help desk' work with Russell by phone, sorting out some Photoshop settings which enabled him to load a large file. I then drove over to Lisa Cresc myself, as today was Eli's eighth birthday. The birthday person gets to choose the menu; we were offered sausage rolls, small potato-topped tarts, and a cheese board. Oh yes, and a birthday cake of gooey chocolate from our favourite patisserie in town.

Because of the food, we delayed having our evening meal while we caught up with the air strikes on CNN and our own local TV coverage. I went upstairs and spent some time sorting likely images for my museum cafe exhibition -- these have to be done by Wednesday next week. I threw them into Ventura pages, putting four images on a page, and printing them out. I'll take them in to the Museum tomorrow and discuss my choices with the exhibitions person. After they're done, I'll get them up in the Gallery pages for all to look at.

Tuesday, October 9, 2001

Rain all day, and heavier this evening with thunder. The painter arrived this morning to start the painting and re-varnishing, so the house is all higgledy-piggledy with dust sheets on things. I duly went out to meet the lady at the Museum, with her display assistant in tow. She was very enthusiastic about my proofs and has suggested I stick with the interesting texture and pattern shots with a bit of human interest as well. I called into Millennium Computers to return the motherboard, and found that they were out of stock of the correct one. The comment was that all hardware is being held up in customs at the moment, due to the increased vigilance and extra searching. It should be in at the end of the week. I haven't got time to deal with it, anyway, until these prints are done and framed.

I came back home, prepared and sized the images to be printed and dropped them onto a CDRom to take in tomorrow. In the process of trawling through the folders of pix, I found the family photos I'd taken in August when we all went down to the Waiouru Army Museum for the day. Joanna looked at them and immediately requested a set, so I spent some time trying to get them to print -- they kept coming out really weird. After an hour of effing and blinding, I suddenly flicked out what the problem was, and did a nozzle check. Sure enough, there was no black being printed at all, and some of the other nozzles were blocked too. A few rounds of nozzle cleaning remedied the problem, and I got a couple of sheets of good photos. While I was at it, I prepared a set of web-sized pix, and they're on the Family Page if you're interested.

Wednesday, October 10, 2001

Painters underfoot again the morning. I had to pull out the wheeled desk that Milly resides on, to let the painter get at the capping on the mezzanine wall to apply varnish; that disturbed various cables and plugs, so it took a little while to get everything back into place and functioning. Then we had a real downpour, just as I was getting ready to go into town, and more rain on the way.

I took the CD of images into the local Fuji photo place, as they have a printer that goes from digital to a photographic printer (I believe it uses LEDs to produce RGB onto photographic paper. The prints will be a bit bigger than A4; while discussing the job, I found out that they do their own picture framing in-house, so will possibly be able to have the frames made as well

More tidying efforts this afternoon; the new carpet is about two weeks away so a lot of stuff has to be dealt to before then -- and we'll be away for a few days over Labour Weekend. Russell came over after tea to let me look over the rules for a digital photo competition that the PSNZ is promoting. We spent some time sorting out maximum image sizes; I took time to prepare a series of files of the same picture at various pixel sizes, and we decided that 600 X 450 pixels was optimum for screen size versus file size. The entries are to be viewed on screen separately by three selectors, so we are trying to get viewing standardised. We might even have to supply IrfanView so that they have the same program to view with. The whole idea sounded easy to start with, but got very tricky as the various ramifications cropped up.

Thursday, October 11, 2001

A bit of painting went on this morning, but the main decorating job was papering the front toilet and vanity area -- this is very conveniently situated between the front hall and the garage. You might think this is an odd place to put these facilities, but it has proved to be most convenient for guests as well as ourselves. We come inside from the garden through a side door, remove boots in the garage, and are able to wash hands on the way through to the rest of the house. Anyway, the paperer is a superb tradesman -- he's the boss, and does a wonderful job.

I disappeared off into town in the late morning to pick up my enlargements and sort out details with the picture framer. I was able to negotiate a price of $NZ25 = $US10 for a narrow picture frame with glass only. I'll cut my own mattes and backing card. Later in the day I picked up a bare frame from him which will give me the exact dimensions to cut the mattes, and I'll collect the order next Monday. This will give me a couple of days to assemble the 16 framed photos. I also called into Millennium Computers to collect motherboard, Celeron processor and 125 MB memory stick, which now completes the parts list for the new Linley. I don't know when the assembly will happen -- the photos will take precedence for the next couple of days. I also have to do some woodworking for Joanna: cutting some bed slats to size to fit a different bed. This bed will be needed next week, so I'll have to get it done in the next day or so.

I spent most of the afternoon finishing the job of assembling and binding the latest batch of our family history book, so I could clear off my work table in preparation for the matting job.

Friday, October 12, 2001

We drove over to Lisa Cresc at 9.45 am, as Don, Joanna and the family had left for a short break in Auckland, and the dishwasher repairman was due at 10 am. He, of course, turned up late at 10.40 (as trademen are wont to do); diagnosed a blocked drain hose, cleared it, and departed. I took Joan into town and left her to do some leisurely shopping while I returned home and started cutting up mount board. I found I could get 6 mattes out of a sheet; I only had two sheets of that colour, but I've managed to locate another sheet bought by another Camera Club member from the same batch. I'll do a swap with him, so that will give me enough board to finish the job. I also cut backing board to size; these sheets are much smaller, and I could only get two out of a sheet. This board is very cheap, about a quarter of the price of mount board -- and I have plenty, as readers may recall my having to buy a packet of 25 sheets a couple of months ago.

After the bulk cutting exercise, I got out my fancy bevel cutter which I bought in Wellington recently and essayed a couple of mattes to see how it went. The machine is excellent -- the actual cutter rides on a bent-up lip which is the side of the straight-edge. A moveable fence to the rear of the hold-down, permits making nice cuts parallel to the matte edge. Dead easy, once I got the knack of it, and the results are spot-on.

After tea, I left the cutting until daylight tomorrow, and started in on the assembly and mounting of Linley's motherboard. Then connect the floppy, drop in the video card, connect monitor and keyboard -- and power-on for the smoke test. Mirabile dictu! A cheery beep from the BIOS, screen lights up, and we have lift-off. This is the very first new assembly I've done, that everything booted up on the first try. Usually I do something dorkish, like inadvertently unseating the CPU when trying to get the heat sink clipped (that's what happened to Milly's startup :-p ). A subsequent fiddle with the jumper on the primary 40 GB drive (the diagram on the drive label lied...) and all the drives are recognised and ready for partitioning.

Saturday, October 14, 2001

Busy, busy today. I needed to drive over to the other side of town to swap mount boards with my friend; I dropped Joan at the supermarket on the way and collected her on the way back. We stopped at the Library to return books, then back home.

We got out in the garage after lunch; the bed slats for Joanna's spare bed needed cutting down (for a slightly different bed), and the tape joining them was stuffed. When that was done, we went over to Lisa Crescent, screwed the main slats down and stapled the new webbing to the others. A good job done -- Deirdre will be sleeping on that bed tomorrow.

After a rest, we headed outside -- I did the lawn edges before mowing while Joan cleaned up round the paths and front with the Ryobi leaf vacuum. Tea and TV followed, then I came upstairs and set about partitioning/formatting Linley's drives. Ross in London came on Instant Messenger, so as promised earlier in the week, I rang him back and talked for about an hour. Our overseas calls in the weekends are 'capped' i.e. I pay only a fixed amount -- I think it's $NZ7 at the moment.

Sunday, October 14, 2001

The big job this morning was to tackle the cobbles we had lifted outside the front door last Monday. Being assured that the plastic pipe from the road is alkathene and definitely not likely to leak, we thought it safe to re-lay. However, the garden irrigation pipe had been exposed, so I started to scratch a channel in the dirt to get it well below the cobbles. Imagine my surprise when I found a substantial root under the pipe; I got that out, but where it went under the lawn was also a surprise. A bit of excavation uncovered a root at least 6 cm in diameter, and we dug back a meter before sawing it off. It will probably re-grow in time, but eventually we'll have the whole front area lifted and re-laid by a tradesman. So by the time I got the dirt and sods back into place, and buried the pipe, it was lunchtime and time for a rest.

The cobbles went back into place without too much trouble, and we swept fine sand into the cracks to lock everything together. I went upstairs after cleaning up, and got Win98SE loaded into the second partition on Linley. I didn't feel up to doing more of my photo mattes -- but they'll have to be done first thing in the morning.

Joan's brother and partner, Graeme and Leonie, arrived about 6.30 pm to stay with us until we go down to Wanganui on Thursday for the school reunion. They're from Australia, but are house-broken so we don't hold that against them...