Speeding along...

Yesterday saw more progress on the massive paint job. Excitingly we’re getting near to the point where I get to switch to white paint. I’m now on the final wall, and in fact have started painting the final door frame.

The lounge doorframe is succumbing to a delicious coat of kimono red…as is the last stretch of the kitchen door frame.

Incidentally, you can see what a jaunty angle that door is at, unfortunately, in that picture. There’s not much to be done about it, that side of the frame is just that badly off square. And I’ve now had a bit of a nosie and I’m right, of the four possible positions the door could occupy on the frame it’s now been in three of them (there’s rather a lot of filler in the frame). The other side of it needs ‘quite a lot of work’ to get it into a state fit for painting though.

I also finally got around to fixing the toilet cistern’s valve again. The original 1930’s syphon is still in place:

But occasionally the little rubber seal gets sickly:

And it starts to not-switch-off which leads to water pouring out of the overflow. Usually just after we’ve got comfy in bed. It’s a 5 minute job, but one which requires me to go and dig the spare seals out of the garage.

…which leads to negative reinforcement.

Or at least, positive reinforcement of negative behaviour patterns.

See I freely admit to being a bit of a horder. Not terrible, not mounds of crap everywhere, but I find it hard to throw stuff away. And that not wanting to throw stuff away behaviour gets reinforced every time I wander into the garage and find, for example, a padlock like I need for my locker at work. A set of plates that I initially planned to use to mount the extra hard-drive in the computer case (I didn’t end up doing that, but only because I picked up two that didn’t match by accident)…and obviously the pack of spare seals I need.

Still, we’re going to have to have a good sort out before we move, so… rather a lot of this stuff is going to have to go.

In other (more distressing) news. My MacBook has switched off without warning several times in the last few days – and not even bothered with a ‘Your Mac Shut Down Because of a Problem’ when it’s come back on. I’m beginning to think it may not be for this world much longer. Which is a bit of a bugger, because I wasn’t planning on it dying just yet.

I’ve put some funding towards the 64Gb Jolla tablet because for a lot of my ‘dinking’ that, plus a keyboard, is pretty sufficient. Add in a modern, adequate, desktop for the heavy lifting when I want to do something more interesting, and lo, we should be in a world of joy. Only, that requires my laptop lasting until the tablet ships…

An 'unfortunate' quirk

So having installed the much updated Ubuntu 14.04 I’ve run into an interesting bug. Using the graphical filer window to copy large amounts of data (by which I mean, the smallest amount I was copying when the bug appeared was around 20Gig – or the amount of data I generated doing Dead Bug Jumping (which I really hope to get back to at some point))…

It’ll be copying and copying and then *FZT* the machine reboots. No warning, no errors generated. Just suddenly reboots.

I’ve no idea why.

I’ve even less idea why because if I stick ‘cp -r ….’ on the command line it’ll happily do the job.

Other than that I’ve done a lot of data shuffling, and I’m thinking we’re most of the way towards an install. I just wish I knew what this rebooting nonsense was about.

Meeeedia Server, why do you hurt me so?

Bdr-bdr-bDRRRRR-bdr-bdr-drrrr-drrr-bdr-bdr-drrrr-drrr-bdr-bdr-drrrr-drrr-bDRRRRR….

I’ve been sat here on and off through the day tweaking the server. I’m not sure why it’s randomly, occasionally rebooting. Seems to happen only under heavy loads, but weirdly more under heavy graphical loads than anything else, and it’s not like it’s a really umphy graphics card.

Nothing in the logs, because it literally seems to be a DROP EVERYTHING NOW reboot. No errors recorded, just ‘la la la REBOOT la la la”. I’m trying to be a bit more gentle with it, I was asking it to simultanously scan the audio directory into Logitech Media Server and the film directory into Plex. This may have been a trifle harsh.

I’m slightly wondering if the powersupply is flaking out, it’s meant to be 700 watts, according to its packaging, but it wasn’t exactly a pricey supply.

Anyhow, it’s chugging along. I’d like to get it scanning the TV Series rips, but Plex’s having a complete hissy fit about that, refusing to even acknowledge that there are files on the drive. I’m hoping it’s a bug that’ll be gone when I upgrade it. Which I’d do…except it’s in the middle of scanning the audio directory. Which may take the rest of my life. Despite the 4 cores and 6 Gig of memory. Irritatingly, unlike LMS which does a quick scan of the number of files, then gives you a percentage, Plex (at least this version) seems to just give you the current file it’s scanning. Which is fine for ‘normal’ people who don’t ridiculous music libraries that have terrabyte drives all to themselves. Every so often it pauses and I think it’s done.

But then…

Bdr-bdr-bDRRRRR-bdr-bdr-drrrr-drrr-bdr-bdr-drrrr-drrr-bdr-bdr-drrrr-drrr-bDRRRRR….

All I can do is hope that I work out why it’s rebooting randomly occasionally. Because that’s not the kind of behaviour I want to encourage.