Post op week 2

I must admit that I am pleasantly surprised by the lack of pain from this op on my hand. The previous three ops all had me taking pain killers for weeks and my hand was totally useless as the slightest pressure on my thumb or fingers was extremely painful. This time round, it took until the morning after the op for the anaesthetic to fully wear off and my fingers to start moving again but when it did I was pleased to find that there was very little swelling, hardly any bruising and very little pain. Within three days I was using my hand to type with one finger. Now apart from the clumsy great pot on my hand and not being able to grip anything properly I hardly notice the op at all. I also don't need to take any more than my usual dose of pain killer to keep my arthritis under control.

I haven't managed to do any work on my network due to my hand but I have been busy doing other bits of upgrades. I have rejoined Skype using a wireless head set and web cam bought from eBay. The camera is tiny but give a good image even in the dark due to the LEDs that supply illumination. The web cam is compatible with Skype but not with Yahoo messenger so I can talk to some of my friends and customers but not others.

The wireless head set is a multi purpose one. It can be used for online audio/visual chat, It can be used as a baby monitor although wearing a headset all the time isn't my idea of comfort. It can be used wireless headphones to listen to music or DVDs without disturbing anyone else so it wasn't bad value at just less than £6. I haven't worked out how to wire it in permanently to my system as crawling about under the desk is a no no with this pot so it is just plugged in to the front mic and earphone connectors for now where it seems to work perfectly once I had told Vista what it was and where it was connected.

Earlier this week I was reading an article about how to make curved corners in CSS. It looked to be a lot of hard work just to make boxes with rounded corners so I thought I would have a go. I set to and designed a template for a web page called Curved Corners which you will find here if you want a look Curved Corners Test Page . It is a bit rough and ready at the moment but it wouldn't take much work to make it fully functional if anyone out there would like a site built using it.

I often find myself grinding my teeth at the claims of WYSIWYG web site editors who claim to be able to write perfect cross platform code first time every time. The simple fact is they can't as the following example will show. On Curved Corners is a small piece of code that produces a search box like this:-

<li id="search">

 <h2>Search</h2>

  <small style="margin-left: 25px">Search this site</small>

    <form id="searchform" method="get" action="">

 <div>

   <input type="text" name="s" id="s" size="15" style="height: 27px;" />

   <input type="submit" value="Search" style="height: 29px;" />

 </div>

    </form>

</li>

What this is supposed to look like is this :-

What you get is this in Mozilla :-

In Internet Explorer 8 you get this :-

And in Avant you get this:-

I am told that the WYSIWYG editors can sort this out but I think the above examples from my template show they are not quite as good as they claim. When I have debugged the code and made them all look the same I will let you know what had to be done to the CSS and HTML to get it right.

On Tuesday the heavy pot comes off, the stitches are removed and a light weight pot put on for the next four weeks. I am hoping that I will get a bit more use out of my hand although I will have to care full not to over use it.

Post Op

We had a bit of a scare when we turned up for the op as my BP was too high for comfort but the Anaesthetist decided that it was OK to go ahead, The op was straight forward so I now have a very heavy pot on my left hand and I am trying to learn how to do everything one handed.

I have managed to edit a new article for my web site all about User Accounts and Passwords. I know some of my readers have concerns about how to secure their computer from intrusion both deliberate and accidental so there should be something for everyone in here. A word of warning, some of the recovery techniques described in the article could in the wrong hands do some damage so think carefully before you implement them.

Typing one handed is a bit tiring so I hope you will excuse the brevity of these few words.

New Articles

As my regular readers will know, I do spend some time trawling the web to find articles that I know will be useful or interesting to my 'customers'. This time I think I have found something for everyone.

I find the Telegraph Boot camp a fertile source of articles that, with a small amount of editing, can be made into very readable tutorials, hints & tips and sources of programs and materials. This month Rick Maybury (Boot Camp's author) has rounded up some of the best Freeware programs from around the web. I have often been told that Freeware is a load of rubbish but it isn't so. There is some rubbish out there but in the main the programs and utilities fill in the gaps that the main software houses leave or would find uneconomic to write for as they have a limited audience. A second source of material is those authors who like to find an idea, write a program to develop it and then ask others to add to what they have done. A good example of this are two famous programs The Gimp and Picasa which you will find on the computer of any serious digital photographer.

Rick split his offering up into eight weekly parts but I have tried to draw it together to make it more readable and the programs easy to find so you will find a menu page for the main groups and then individual pages for those groups. The groups are :-

• Handy tools and utilities
• Pictures and graphics
• Audio and multimedia
• Privacy and security
• Networks, Internet & email
• Alternatives to Microsoft programs
• Odds and ends

You will find the menu page here Freeware Menu Page. Not all the pages are up on my site yet (there are nine in all) but I hope this little project will keep me busy while I converless.

This is the week when I have the next op on my hands. I am usually looking forward to an op because I know exactly what the surgeon is going to do and I am intensely interested in what is going on. This time I don't feel that way at all, in fact I am very apprehensive about the whole thing. If my hands weren't so painful and there was another form of treatment available I think I would seriously consider giving the op a miss and trying something else. In this case there is no alternative that I know of so on Tuesday morning I will be lying on the table and hoping the op doesn't go on too long.

Network wise I was called to a computer that had its sound card replaced and was misbehaving when it was re-connected to the Internet. It had a relatively new motherboard with two network adaptors. When just one of the adaptors was connected to the router the Internet connection was painfully slow. However if both adaptors was connected to the router and then the resulting network connections bridged Internet browsing became blisteringly fast. This will be old hat to large network technicians but small network and home networking technicians like myself often miss out on these snippets. When I got home I thought I would see if it made any difference to my own network. My motherboard has two gigabyte adaptors so I ran an extra cable to my hub and enabled the second connection. It took about three minutes for the computer to recognise both connections and to bridge them but the hub took all that in its stride and now have a bridged connection running at a full 1 gb speed. It has speeded up my Internet connection noticeably but the real gain is when I move big files around my network - they now don't doddle about at 20 to 30 kbps they are moving at several megabytes a second. I think I will spend some of my enforced rest time after Tuesday rethinking the layout of my network and seeing just which of my computers will benefit from 2 network adaptors and which can be safely left with one.

I may not be adding to my blogg over the next week or two as typing one handed is a right royal pain so please keep an eye on this blogg and I will be back as soon as I can use at least one finger in my left hand.

Another project finished

I have just uploaded the final files of my latest project. It is an updated website for a person who is heavily involved in providing the support for dyslexic children and adults especially those who have problems with Maths. If you want a look you can find it here after 10 am on the 9th June.

Dr Chinn also writes books about problems with maths and I have been involved in typesetting them. A new set of five books has just been released. They are :-

• What to do when you can't Add and Subtract
• What to do when you can't Learn the Times Table
• What to do when you can't Multiply and Divide
• What to do when you can't Tell the Time
• What to do when you can't do Fractions, Decimals and Percentages

They can be bought from Egon Publishers at this address.

Now this project is out of the way I can concentrate on getting ready for the op on my hand next week. I don't know why but I feel very apprehensive about this op. Unlike previous ops I have known exactly what the surgeon is trying to achieve. This time we won't know what he is going to do until he has opened up my hand and seen just what has gone wrong with the joints at the bottom of my thumb and wrist. As the op is done under a local anaesthetic I will be able to discuss with him what he finds and listen to what he proposes to do about it. Some of my friends and colleagues find this a bit too much to take in but as an ex-nurse I am not a bit squeamish and I am too interested in the procedure to be bothered about feeling faint or sick.

I didn't finish the upgrade of my network even though I now have all the bits. My hands were too painful to hold the components and the tools. The bits will still be here once the op is over and my hand has healed and I hope I will be able to finish the upgrade then.

Pilgrimage Over

The difference between a day trip to Ypres and staying for a few days is enormous. On a day trip you just have time to find the right cemetery, leave a note in the visitor’s book and then head off back to the ferry. When you stay in the town you begin to become aware of the huge number of men involved in the fighting and just how many were killed. Being told 100,000 were killed in a battle is just a number but seeing more than one cemetery where 4,500+ are buried brings home to you just what those numbers mean.


This is the Hooge Crater Cemetery just outside Ypres. In it are buried 5,892 soldiers of all nationalities of which 60% are unknown. This is by no means the biggest cemetery but still has the power to move when you think of all those young lives cut short for what turned out to be no good purpose as it all had to be refought 20 years later.

The people of Belgium haven’t forgotten the men who fought and died so that they can enjoy being Belgians today. Every day at 8pm the buglers from the Ypres Fire Brigade sound Last Post under the Menine gate, something they have done every night since 1927 with the exception of the years 1940 to 1944 when they were occupied by the German Army. However on the night they were liberated by the Free Polish Troops, the bugles were brought out of hiding and Last Post again sounded across Ypres even though fighting was still going on in the outskirts of the town.

My wife and I were privileged to take part in the ceremony on the night there was a visiting multinational military party taking part.

As the bugles rang out the crowd of several hundred were still and even the school parties felt the atmosphere as we all stood for two minutes in silence remembering all the men and women of all nationalities who lost their lives in both wars.

Belgium is a lovely place to visit. The people are very friendly and mostly tri-lingual. The main language around Ypres is Dutch but most people speak French and German as well. Most people have a smattering of English which can lead to some hilarious misunderstandings when all you have got is school boy French, a tiny bit of German and no Dutch at all.

We stayed in a Rural Hotel about 7 miles out of Ypres. It is called De Diligence and is run by a delightful team of young people under the guidance of Delphine the owner. The food was authentic Belgian recipes in huge quantities, very well cooked and presented. The menus are in Dutch and French so the sight of us trying to puzzle them out using school boy French as Delphine has only a smattering of English must have been highly amusing to the other guests. We enjoyed every mouthful of the food but not once did we manage to work out what we had ordered i.e. on the first night we ordered Fondue Bourguignonne. In our ignorance we expected something with melted cheese. What we got was a pan full of smoking hot oil on a spirit lamp and a plate of five different cuts of meat to ‘fry’ at the table. It was absolutely delicious when accompanied by Belgian vegetables (a salad) and chips. If you want more details here is the link.

Our pilgrimage is over and it is time to get back to work. I am supposed to be retired now I am 60 but already the offers of work are rolling in. Come back next week to see what happens on Monday my first full day back.

Paying Respects

Today we sail to Belgium to pay respects to one of my Uncles who died in 1918 in the Ypres salient. My uncle was the eldest of three brothers (Ernest, Harry and George) who joined up together, trained together and very nearly died together. The official story is that Ernest was badly wounded and died at St Julian Dressing Station. His two brothers were also wounded at the same time but survived. The unofficial story is that they were sharing a section of trench with their mates when they were subjected to a gas attack which penetrated their respirators. As they scrambled out of the trench to escape the gas, a shell exploded near them. Ernest was badly wounded and died a short time later. Harry was wounded with shrapnel in both legs that he carried until he died in 1958. George, who was nearest the blast from the shell, was physically uninjured but the blast caused him to suffer shell shock from which he never really recovered.

Two years ago we realised that Ernest's grave had never been visited by any of the family so we took a day trip to Ypres and went to find the grave. It is in the St Julian Dressing Station Cemetery about 2 miles from Ypres. There was just enough time to leave a message on the grave and to visit the Menine Gate before it was time to set off back to catch the ferry.

When we got home, we realised that there was a lot of things we hadn't seen starting with the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres so we started to plan another visit, this time with an extended stay. I'll let you know what we find when we come home.

Network wise CCL have not been able to get the bits I want to rebuild my FTP server but sorting that out will have to wait till we get home again. However I have managed to get my main computer to dual boot with Vista and Ubuntu Linux. Vista for once is running beautifully but Linux is a right royal pain.

Being new to Linux I am having to learn how to do all the things that we take so much for granted in Windows like installing drivers. In Windows all we have to do is download the appropriate file, virus check it (You do check everything you download with an up to date AntiVirus program don't you?) and then after unpacking it with WinRAR or WinZip a double click starts the install process. In Linux it seems that first you have to download a shell script which then needs to be compiled in Terminal. Then you have to find the driver and authorise it. So far I haven't managed to do this successfully so the Linux side of my computer is running on the native drivers at a low resolution and on a single screen unlike Windows which has a three screen display. Oh well it will all wait till I get home and try to work it all out with a fresh mind.

Grrrrrrrrrr

Network wise a frustrating time. I ordered a new usb storage unit from CCL Computers and then got an email to tell me it won't be available till the 7th May. Trust me to pick something that has supply problems. This meant that I haven't been able to do any more work on the hardware side of the network upgrade.

As everyone was away and I hadn't any work in at the moment I took the opportunity to start a long overdue upgrade of my website http://www.omega-cottage.co.uk/ . This time round I have dropped using tables altogether and have written the pages using the XHTML Transitional DOM. It has given me a few head scratching times as there are some significant differences in the XHTML code over HTML 4.1 and CSS 2.1 is by no means perfect. However searching the various forums when I got stuck has usually produced examples of code I could use as is or adapt to solve the problem.

The way I have done it is to build two templates - a three column fluid one for the home page, articles page and contacts page and a two column fluid one for the article pages. On the old pages I had problems with the page fitting on smaller monitors but this time I have aimed at 1024 x 768 but allowed for the page to shrink to 800 x 600 without significant deformation. I haven't yet built a mobile version and new pages don't fit very well on PDAs and smart phones so that is something to think about for the future. I have also updated the PDFs of each article so they too should be up to date.

While I am working my way through the site moving the articles to an updated page I am taking the opportunity to update many of the articles to reflect the move to Vista and also the upcoming Windows 7. Hardware and software too has changed a lot since some of the articles were written so I have tried to rewrite the articles that were based on Windows 98 or XP and I will add ones as time goes by (and/or you ask for them) to reflect the new hardware we now think we can't do without and the software we now rely on to keep us safe and productive.

I sent a frustrating day at the weekend trying to get my workstation to dual boot with Linux and Vista. I seem to be able to load Linux OK but I can't get Lilo to find the new Linux installation and Grub just won't even load itself! What makes it more difficult is that Vista can't see the Linux partitions so I can't confirm that I am telling Lilo to look in the right place for the installation. I would like to be able to use both on this machine as I want to explore the claims the Linux fraternity make about how good, fast, safe it is to use. However I must admit I find it difficult to recognise the various applications due to the non descriptive names they give everything i.e. Grub and Lilo and what the heck is Konqueror? I used to think Mac was bad with applications like Toast and Stuffit but the quirky spelling of some of the application names just gives me a headache - I think I am getting old.

Here is a list of New articles added to he site over the past few weeks :-

1. Safe and Secure Downloads
2. WebPage Design - Hosting your Web Site
3. Introducing Windows 7
4. Make do and mend
5. Windows Startup and Shutdown Problems
6. Synchronising Files
7. Vista Service Pack 1
8. Poor Man's Vista
9. Creating transparent images with Paint Shop Pro

There are a few more articles in the pipeline but I will add them when I get to the relevant section as I update the site.