Alan Jeeves Blog

Cape Town Big Walk 8th November 2009

We’re planning to enter the annual Cape Town Big Walk  this year which is on Sunday 8th November 2009 - i had to email the orgainser to confirm this date as the website hasn’t been updated with any details of this years event. They replied ultra quick howvere - so thanks!

Post a comment if you are planning on participating!

New Forest 2009

Another road trip took us to New Forest - Lymington. Along with the ride was Ruth and Avril - my girlfriend!

Lymington was lovely, we went to the Otter and Owl Sanctuary.

And stayed at a nice Bed & breakfast named Fernbrake, the host made us feel comfortable and happy and would recommend it highly, it was located on a side track so was very quiet. See: http://www.fernbrake.co.uk/

We ate sunday lunch at the Hobler Inn pub, all our dinners was yummy and i ate two deserts! See: http://www.alcatraz.co.uk/indexSite.html

View photos here

Synamtec Backup Exec - USB Hard disk - Backup-to-Disk Folders going offline - resolved

There is a known problem with using Backup-to-Disk Folders (on a USB external hard disk) in Synamtec Backup Exec where the drive / folder goes offline just before a backup is started which means the bacup pauses until the folder is back online - you can make it come online by right clicking it and selecting Online. But I think i have found the solution to the problem!

Randomly i kept the application open and the backup worked without going offline and i have done this for over a week now and the nightly backups has worked ever since!

 I think leaving the app open means it keeps the connection to the external disk open and live and the problem before was when the backup starts it needs the drive to be ready but it can take a few seconds for this external drive to wake up and be ready and backup exec just timeouts and marks the drive offline for ever - until user action puts it online.

If you find this helpful - please please leave a comment! Its great to know people read this and i have helped.

adium and unknown error 205

Hi,

I think i started to get this error when i updated to the latest version of  adium (on mac osx)

Every time i connect to msn i get a error message popup saying unknown error 205, unkown user.

I’ve just found out how to stop this, the problem is that i somehow got the user: messenger@microsoft.com on my buddy list. Just using Adium this user never shows up so i installed Microsoft Messenger for the Mac, connected and went to preferences then privacy and removed that user from the lists (either the allow or block list) - to do this right/Ctrl click the contact in the list and select delete (thanks Camille for highlighting this weird UI)

Quit messenger and loaded Adium without the annoying message popping up

If you find this helpful - please leave a comment  - use the link below - thanks!

Direct link to the English messenger 7.01 or Click here to go to the page to download Microsoft messenger for the mac. Its a confusing page, scroll the details frame - bottom right and the download links are at the bottom.

Weekend in Bath with Avril

Had a lovely weekend with my girlfriend in Bath.

Fudge Factory sell nice fudge

3 page photo album - nav buttons top left

Las Vegas & New York Holiday Aug 2008

Went to Las Vegas and New York with my brother for two weeks ending with Sacha’s stag weekend in New York.

Had lots of fun, and bumped into a couple of people from Mitcham! Can’t believe it, certainly made the evening.

Stayed at ~Circus Circus in Las Vegas - nic e and large room (with two double beds!) but the place was unsurprisingly full of families which was annoying.

Vegas is sureal - see photos here

New York was cool, similar to london but much bigger - in many ways! See photos here.

Flash is random

If you’re not a Flash programmer this may not entertain you - so move onto something funny, if you are please read on…

If you have a two movie clips - one laid over the other, flash is ‘clever’ and knows the user can’t see the one underneath and therefore deactivates mouse handlers - onPress, onRollover etc when the mouse moves over the MC overlaying it.

Another test (s3 inside s2) shows all handlers of a MC within another MC will never be called if the containing MC has any handlers set.

Check out this movie showing what i mean

British Museum - China’s Terracotta Army

Went to the British Museum the other day with mum to see China’s Terracotta Army.

The exhibition was pretty crowed and small was wasn’t that enjoyable but was good. But the other stuff in the museum made up for it, was there for over 5 hours and was very knackered by the time i got home!

See: British Museum - China’s Terracotta Army

Given in to the Mac

Several months ago i gave in and bought myself a MacBook Pro (the top 15″ model).

I love it!

Its far from perfect but it’s just more fun to use.

On friday i went to the Mac Live Expo and Tate Modern and Borough Market.

Then on the way home i got Leopard (new MacOS X) which has some nice touches but a few bugs - my dock dies and i have to reboot to get it back

Its all fun though!

My first camera and deviant

I bought my first camera a few weeks ago - a cannon (IXUS 850IS) and i am loving it!

I’ve created a photo gallery, based on the brilliant Gallery2  and the Ajaxian Theme - browse my albums from here: digial.co.uk/photos.

I’ve also join DeviantArt too (been going there for years but never created an account till today), and submitted my first which can be found here