How can it be Sunday already... HOW!? I don't feel that the work I did yesterday accomplished anything. But on the plus side, the stuff I worked out seems to have my dissertation supervisor's approval. I mean, it seems to work. No obvious mistakes. The main thing now is reading and comparing with other sites. *sigh*

After working all day yesterday I gave in and played Star Wars Galaxies for about four hours. About an hour of that I lost when I disconnected and it didn't remember all the stuff I'd done, but... ah well. I learnt some new tailoring skills, and some new pharmacology skills, and also some new ranged weaponry skills. Very exciting. ;)

I'd had slight withdrawal systems because the internet wouldn't work properly in my room. It worked in Ali's room but not mine. Very strange. Was it just coincidence? It didn't seem to be. I moved Brian the laptop into her room and it worked in there. But the cable modem kept going peculiar when it was in my room.

It started a couple of weeks ago, but it was very slight in the beginning. Every now and then it wouldn't collect e-mail or go to websites, and if you left it a little while it started working again. I thought it was just the service, not something to do with me. But it was getting worse and worse... It was virtually impossible to get a connection that didn't disappear every few seconds and then reappear, teasing the computer with its transient presence.

I figured I'd get Rob to look at it, since he has to be useful for something. And it's his job to mend computers, so I feel he ought to be better at it than me. :)

Ages later, after trying ethernet cables instead of USB, and various other things, we unplugged every other electrical item in the room and tried it with just one of the computers on and the modem. And... it worked. So something was interfering, causing the modem to reset every few seconds. It dawned on me that I'd suspected the speaker transformer was making a weird high pitched noise (only just on the edge of human hearing) lately, and it hadn't done that to start with, so I left that unplugged. And... it worked. It still works. The speaker transformer was generating a field that disrupted the modem! It didn't have to be in the same set of plug sockets or anything... must be a pretty big field. What was it doing to me?!

Anyway, I ought to go and get ready for church. I shouldn't be sitting here blogging. :)

Bye!

I have been mostly.... WATCHING (TV): neighbours (bbc 1) / READING: star wars new jedi order 1: vector prime (r.a. salvatore); artemis fowl - the arctic incident (eoin colfer); edge magazine / LISTENING: bring it on (gomez); dirty vegas; now 41; Q's best new music of 1999 / PLAYING: star wars galaxies

posted by Fiery Fred @ 9:10 AM