Monday 23 November 2009

Tissot T-Touch Trouble

I'm a bit grumpy about this... After seven years of faithful service, my Tissot T-Touch started playing up. It all started when the analogue hands started going out of synch with the digital time. It turns out there is a procedure to resynch the two clocks which seemed to work quite well. Bish bosh, job done, I thought*. Exactly why the two clocks need manual intervention to synch themselves is a bit of a mystery but just added to the quirky charm as far as I was concerned.

Unfortunately it soon happened again, and again, and again. Eventually the resynch procedure failed to do the necessary and I was stuck with a watch that didn't tell the correct time any more, which isn't really what you want in a time telling device. Then the touch function started acting up and I started to get really concerned. Fortunately it wasn't anything too troublesome - the flashing "bat" on the digital screen eventually clued me in that all it needed was a new battery. Nothing untoward about that you might think. But as ever, nothing could be further from the truth. I took the watch in to our local jewellers, he had a battery, he popped it in, I resynched the hands and... It worked. Bish bosh, job done, I thought*. I did notice in the shop that the watch was reading the temperature as 86.2 C which I commented on as being a little on the high side but the jeweller said he'd just been working under a hot light, so fair enough.

I was really pleased for a few days that my trusty watch was back in full working order, until that is, I tried to check the atmospheric pressure during a big storm. The screen was blank. I then noticed that the temperature was still reading as 86.2 C and the altitude screen was also blank. Uh oh. A swift trawl round the Internet revealed quite a few people with a similar story "my T-Touch was working fine, then I changed the battery and now the temperature is stuck on xx.x degrees and the pressure and altitude screens are blank." Even worse there's nobody saying "my T-Touch was working fine, then I changed the battery and the temperature got stuck on xx.x degrees and the pressure and altitude screens were blank. But then I did xyz and now it's all sorted."

What kind of a watch breaks when you change the battery? That's just pathetic. Now, I'll admit that the temperature function was a bit pants, after all, it only ever showed you how hot your wrist was which is fairly, if not totally, useless. So I can live without that. The altimeter also wasn't much use as you need to recalibrate it every day and I don't know how high I am almost ever, unless I'm at the seaside of course. So I can live without that too. But, I did use the barometer function quite a lot. No reason for that particularly I just used to find it interesting. And anyway, what kind of watch breaks when you change the battery? I know I said that already, but it's a bit of a sore point. And in fact I know the answer to that question, it's a hugely expensive Tissot. I suppose it's not that expensive compared to Rolexes and the like but it's the most I've ever spent on a watch.

It's obviously a not entirely unexpected problem either as it's listed in the manual in the troubleshooting section (next to the ominous words "return to dealer for repair".) So I'm going to take it to a local Tissot dealer and see what they say but I think it could be a bit expensive to fix. If it's too much I don't think I'll bother, I'll just buy another more sensible one with the money.

Still, at least the title is nicely alliterative.

*OK, that isn't really what I thought.

Saturday 21 November 2009

Stairgate SG-1

Spent the afternoon fitting a stairgate to the top of the stairs. It doesn't look much like the one off the telly, but still, I can't wait for the aliens to start walking in through it. Some people might wonder how it is that such hugely dangerous and highly advanced alien technology is being sold in Mothercare. I say, who cares? Let's just be thankful that it is.

Thursday 19 November 2009

Adventures with Windows 7 part 3

Mutter...
Grumble...
Won't boot...
Grrr...
Arrgh...
Won't boot without the DVD...
Oh for fecks sake...
Poke...
Prod...
Create Master Boot Record...
Groan...
Sigh...
Still Won't boot without the DVD...
Boot Manager...
Moan...
Disconnect Other Drives...
Swear...
Cut Fingers...
Repair Installation...
Again...
At Bloody Last...

So there you have it. I have to say it wasn't the easiest installation I've ever done. But I have now got a bootable version of Windows 7 Professional. It seems the installer can't cope with creating a bootable Windows 7 installation in a computer which already has a bootable installation of some other version of Windows on another disk. I'm guessing it was trying to update the Vista boot manager to point to both installations but obviously the Vista BM didn't like that much. In the end I had to disconnect the other hard drives and then the repair programme correctly diagnosed that boot manager wasn't present and repaired the disk but only after I repaired it a second time. No idea what it did the first time but obviously it wasn't repaired properly.

Friday 6 November 2009

Demon Spawn

One of the main rules I decided upon when starting this was that I wouldn't wibble on about Phoebe too much. The other was that I wouldn't wibble on about work too much. But this is definitely worthy of comment.

I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised, after all, she was created by a gravely evil act so something like this was bound to happen. To be honest I had my doubts about her even before she was born when we couldn't seem to pick up any heart beat on the foetal heart monitor. I'd sort of resigned myself to the fact that she was was going to be some kind of undead zombie baby clawing her way directly out through Hayley's stomach. That did sort of happen, although she had a little assistance from a surgical team. Since birth though she's seemed perfectly normal, almost as if she was human. Presumably now though the gaping void within her where a soul should be has now been filled by its rightful demonic occupant...

Wednesday 4 November 2009

The Secret You

Another fascinating Horizon episode about what gives us our sense of self. I find this sort of stuff incredibly interesting. I'd read about a lot of the experiments he did (the equally fascinating Mind Hacks book is a great source for interesting psychological tricks you can do at home) but it was cool to see them actually done. It's amazing how easy it is to trick the brain into thinking 'you' are somewhere else other than in your body. Presumably these sort of effects are responsible for out of body experiences too.

I'm so interested in the workings of the brain that sometimes I wonder if I chose the wrong career, but I suppose it's not as dissimilar as it seems at first. It's really trying to understand the software of the brain which isn't too different to understanding any other software. Possibly.

Wisley

Spent a nice afternoon at Wisley Gardens with Hej and Phoebs. I know, it sounds like something an old person would say. However, of course, my motives were photography related. There's a selection of sculptures, including a (fake) Henry Moore and interesting looking plants in the glasshouse. So I took along my camera. Here's what I found:



Shrooms



The lovely Hej spotted this excellent crop of mushrooms growing by the fountain thing in the garden. I'm very pleased she brought them to my attention.