[Tippon]

Happy birthday John 🙂

[Tippon]

Glad to hear he’s ok 🙂

[Tippon]

Happy fake birthday! 😀

[Tippon]

There’s a *very* cheap Peugeot Quicksilver up for sale near me*, so I thought I’d run an insurance quote as if I’d just passed my test. Third party only was £1,572, TPF&T was £835, and fully comp was £673.

Insurance is baffling!

 

*I’m not buying it. It’s diesel with no MOT, and from the photos, the inside is soaking wet. The picture of the dash has mould everywhere

[Tippon]

Dave Rice wrote:

I’d put an AP in each loft on the underside of the landing ceiling. If there is mains in the loft they could be powered from there and only 1 cable run down to the router. If no mains then they will all need to be cabled back. The power could come from an appropriate PoE switch or the included power injectors. The PoE switch is the most elegant solution. Shopping list: N – 3 x Ubiquiti UniFi UAP £60 / Ubiquiti TS-5-POE TOUGHSwitch 5-Port Gigabit PoE Switch (60W) £85 or NETGEAR GS305 5-Port Desktop Gigabit Switch £15 and the power injectors. AC – 3 x Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LITE GEN2 AC1200 £80 / Switch with PoE TP-LINK TL-SG1008P 8-Port (4x PoE Ports) Desktop Gigabit Switch (53W) £60 or NETGEAR GS305 5-Port Desktop Gigabit Switch £15 and the power injectors.

Thanks Dave 🙂

I was afraid you were going to say something like that. I don’t think he’s going to go for that sort of cost. As much as I like him, he’s your stereotypical older guy who doesn’t see the point of the internet apart from a bit of fun and some shopping. On top of that, I doubt that I’d be able to do it myself, so would have to get someone in to do it for him. I’ll give him the details and see what he says though.

It’s a bit gutting, because a few years ago I would have loved a challenge like this 🙁

[Tippon]

Thanks for the replies guys 🙂 Sorry I haven’t been here as much as I’d like, it’s just been one of those weeks.

Steve: Thanks for the idea. I might follow a video tutorial just to see if I understand any of it. The theory seems quite straightforward, but actually figuring it all out probably isn’t. I always forget about YouTube too. I’m so used to using it as basically a toy that I forget there’s useful stuff there too.

WoF: Thanks for the link. edX looks great 🙂

[Tippon]

johnbarry wrote:

search for groups rather than bands.

Thanks John. I thought bands wasn’t right, but I couldn’t think of the word. Looks like the Ka is a group 2, so I doubt the insurance will drop by much.

Richard wrote:

I wonder why you are going for the car before you have a full licence? I would expect that to change the insurance landscape.

At the moment I’m just looking ready to get a cheap car, or be able to jump on a deal if something comes up. I’ve checked prices with and without a full licence though, and they’re about the same. The Ka’s MOT expires fairly soon too, so I’d rather shift it than pay for another MOT. If the insurance group is already low though, like John’s link suggests, I may stick with it.

The Duke wrote:

My first car I had, was a van (lol) as insurance was super expensive in Liverpool, and vans are cheaper to insure.

That’s a good point. I may price up a van, or at least borrow my mate’s number plate for a price comparison.

I just realised that I didn’t give a budget in the first post. Basically, I don’t have one. I’ve got whatever the Ka sells for, unless I now keep it because of the insurance groups. Using the tool from uSwitch, it’s looking more and more likely that I’ll be driving the Ka. Everything I’ve looked at on my local Facebook selling page is a much higher group 🙁

[Tippon]

Dave Rice wrote:

Tonight’s tipple. Proper job.

 

I thought that was a box of muesli ???

[Tippon]

Goto was the bane of our teacher’s lives in school. We were all using BBC Micros and Acorns, and they ran Basic. Within the first few weeks of form one (year 7 for the youngsters 😉 ) we’d all learned

10 print (naughty word here)
20 goto 10
run

😀

[Tippon]

Shadow Warrior 2 is currently free on gog.com

[Tippon]

Apologies for the double post, but I didn’t want to confuse my replies above.

I’ve just remembered that I’ve got some of the Robin Nixon ebooks from a few years ago (2011>). I think it was Ed who found them over on MM. They’re the HTML5, CSS, Javascript, and PHP crash courses. I’ve also got a Dummies book (2013?). It’s a 7 in 1 book on Web technologies, html and css, Javascript, PHP, MySQL, Web applications, PHP and templates.

Are they likely to still be in date, or are they too old now?

[Tippon]

Thanks again guys 🙂

Ed P wrote:

A lot of Python applications are based on using on-line information. In order to do this efficiently you need some knowledge of html/css.

I may get those books then. I manage a WordPress site for a music festival, so the html / css would be helpful anyway.

Ed P wrote:

Stackoverflow can be really pissy and unhelpful

Oh yes! I’ve learned that just from random web searches for help. Probably 90%+ of the questions I’ve seen asked there have been closed by a mod essentially saying that they shouldn’t be asking for help with something basic ?

Wheels-Of-Fire wrote:

Do you have any programming experience Tippon ? Anything will do but if you don’t you should get to grips with Variables, Loops and conditional branches like the If then do stuff. You can’t write an app without them.

Not for about 20 years, and that was first year college. I vaguely remember some of the very basics, but that’s about it. Just to check, a variable is something that can change, rather than a constant like Pi, a loop loops 😉 , and a conditional branch checks the state of something (a variable?) and performs an action based on the result? If I wrote something like

If total 5
Then finish
Else add 1
Goto start

total would be the variable, if, then, else would be the conditional branch, and returning to the start makes it a loop? Apologies to those of you who I made cry with the butchered attempt at remembering scraps of languages and stitching them together 😛

 

[Tippon]

Thanks for the replies guys 🙂

I should clarify – I’m not expecting to pick up a book and then write an app in a few days 😀 I’m ideally hoping to get an app running by this time next year, but that’s the ‘ideal’ goal if everything goes perfectly. I know that there’s a good chance it will take a lot longer than that. The REST API apparently makes it comparatively very easy, and even I understand some of the words in the documentation 😉

Those links look great Ed, thanks 🙂 I’ve read a few threads in the Codecademy forum, and they recommend HTML and CSS for beginners first. Would you say the same, or is Python different enough that it would confuse matters? I eventually want to learn all three, so does it matter which order I learn them in?

Thanks again 🙂

[Tippon]

Steve, have you done the usual checks? Boiler’s plugged in and the gas is on? Water pressure is ok? I’ve got loads of boiler manuals here if you want a copy of yours. My uncle’s a plumber, so I’ve backed up copies of hundreds of the bloody things 😀

 

[Tippon]

johnbarry wrote:

I had to notify my car insurance that I had heart attack and can’t drive for 4 weeks (according to the info sheets). This I did and was asked what the doctor said (I said 4 weeks) after 4 weeks I need to notify the insurance when the doctor says it’s safe to drive. The doctor never said to me I couldn’t drive, it seems I need my doc to say it’s safe I am getting confused, I just read the leaflet. Also I think the insurance has now took insurance off me (for 4 weeks) does that mean I get an extra month at the end ie runs out April will it now be May

Good to see you back John 🙂

After my transplant I spoke to my doctor to see if there was any reason that I couldn’t ride my motorbike, other than the obvious scarring etc., and they said after the initial few weeks I was fine as long as I felt ok. Next time you’re in for a checkup, just have a chat with the doctor. They may be able to give you a letter too.

[Tippon]

Dave Rice wrote:

All this combined has me back on Tramadol 3 times a day which I hate. It contributes to the “I can’t be bothered” mentality.

I know that feeling well Dave, and I don’t envy you. You get to thinking that because everything is so much more of an effort, you may as well stay where you are and not deal with it. I’ve found that forcing myself to do something, even something small, helps. e.g. I take Alice to nursery three times a week, so I’ll buy an all day bus ticket and go into town for a coffee instead of going to the nearest shop, or I’ll walk along the bus route with her and catch the bus the rest of the way if I get stuck.

[Tippon]

Oh bloody hell! Hope you’re ok John

[Tippon]

It sounds like you’ve got two problems – the password and the keyboard. The keyboard has a simple workaround, plug in a USB keyboard. I’m pretty sure the eee PC recognises them in time for the BIOS.

It sounds like the password is a Windows password, as you can get the accessibility keyboard. If so, you can either just forget about it if you’re going to reinstall, or you can use ophcrack to crack the password. It’s essentially a Linux live disc, but it cracks Windows passwords. You can get it here:

http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/

 

[Tippon]

I had a chat with the staff in a local shop this week, laughing at the sorry state of our town. We’ve got car parks at either end, which are fairly cheap thanks to complaints from the local businesses. However…

Businesses at the ‘edges’ of the route between car parks are still complaining that we need more car parks.

The indoor market owns a decent amount of property around town and prices any competition out.

The shops that are open and not big names close by about 4pm *if* they open on a particular day.

The stalls in the market close earlier, and the staff in some are routinely rude.

The staff from a lot of the town centre shops park and drive down pedestrian streets, making them unsafe for families and the elderly especially.

Despite all this, when an old school friend set up a Facebook page to drum up custom, the traders handed out a load of abuse and complaints when people dared to suggest that their shops weren’t perfect, and even blamed customers for not going to their shops! One shop is on a side street, under another shop, and the owner got quite abusive when someone said they didn’t know the shop was there.

I’d love to see the town centre thriving, even if it’s because I have to kill a few hours in the afternoons, but I find it hard to support people like that.

[Tippon]

Thanks Dan 🙂

[Author]

Posts