Rick's b.log - entry 2012/05/30

Just done my tax form

I still have to put aside around €700 towards the end of the year for land/property taxes. That's not so nice.

Beagle still not barking

So the plan is as follows. Joe is kindly sending me a microSD to try. I will run my board from a computer PSU (most likely my A3000's power supply) which ought to have enough juice to get the thing going. I will power up with Joe's card inserted. If it works, it suggests a corruption of both of my cards (odd, given the second card was formatted and with the official Angstrom distro imaged onto it - several times over!).
And if it doesn't work, it suggests a hardware problem. Which, frankly, is looking more likely given some of the quirks I recall from the past. It is possible that the kernel panic is a symptom rather than a cause?

In this case, I will request an RMA and send it back home. Joe has offered to do a swapsy for his, which is a kind offer, but if something really is wrong, it would surely be better to get it fixed or replaced, no? I know Joe reads my blog, so I'm sure if he (dis)agrees, he'll comment...

For now, I can do nothing except quietly sulk. It was magical to see a RISC OS machine going that fast. I never, ever, thought I'd experience the OS running at 1GHz. It was... pretty awesome.
And I'll make you a promise. When I get a working Beagle, I will set up RISC OS and I will run RISC OS and Linux can go take a running jump. I think Linux knows I don't like it much, and it obviously feels the same about me. No loss, playing with Linux was just for fun. It was RISC OS that I intended to set to work with...

Look on the bright side - for all of you waiting for your RaspberryPis, at least I'll shut up about the Beagle for a while. ☺

Vide genier

Mom got a Japanese stitchwork picture for me (€10). Here's a photo of it:

It is a beautiful thing, stitched in silk and metallic thread in long stitch. Here's a closeup to show the level of detail:

A little further on, a woman wanted €20 for a 17" flat-screen monitor. She said it works, though vide greniers are always caveat emptor. It, sadly, does not accept DVI (for the Beagle), but it takes analogue VGA-style so I could get rid of the assortment of crappy CRTs around.
Sorry, I said, I only have fifteen with me holding up a ten and a five.
Sorry, she replied, I guess I'll have to let it go for fifteen.

Here's the lovely zombie girl Sanka Rea:

I'm sure you're getting an idea of where I might find a use for this monitor. Imagine animé films...

Your comments:

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joe, 31st May 2012, 08:27

Hi Rick,  can't you claim your laundry expenses, for washing work clothes? We can do it, something like $0.50 a load, twice a week is like $100, you'll get 30 to 40% back.  If this Japanese thing is real Japanese, it might be worth much, much more.  Yes I am still willing to send you my Beagleboard xM, I'm an optimist and I don't think the swap would be necessary, besides we have DigiKeys her, just around the corner.

Rick, 3rd June 2012, 03:38

Due to sterility/hygiene, washing stuff is contracted out. Some days, the girls come out of work looking like they'd just done mud wrestling in a vat of chocolate (hmmm, pervy!) so washing that muck in a domestic appliance would kill it in short order.    I'm always a little upset when I see something that took a lot of work being flogged off for pennies. There was a cross-stitch that somebody bought. Looked like a famous painting, though I don't recall which, and it must have been over a metre wide. A real labour of passion if you think a stitch is maybe 2mm or so across. The woman that bought it paid TWO euros. WTF?    Okay, okay, it'll be in the mail soon! ;-) I'd like to be an optimist, but I'm of British descent. <rotfl>

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