Progress with the Lenovo s10e. I finally bit the bullet and put FreeBSD on it this morning. I couldn't get unetbootin to work at all - it would not boot. So I ended up pulling an external hard drive to bits so that I could hook up an IDE cd drive.

That booted the standard 7.2 release disc 1 ok, and I ran through a normal installation. This model has a normal hard drive, so I didn't need to do anything special for an SSD.

On booting, there are some issues with acpi that I haven't got figured yet. It won't, for instance, power off. It only halts, then needing a button press.

The broadcom wireless chip is not supported. I downloaded the driver from the Lenovo site and extracted it on a Windows machine. I then had to to use icon to convert the inf file from utf to ascii before feeding bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys to ndisgen. This created a kernel module which when loaded created ndis0. This can be treated like a normal wireless device, and I'm now up and running. It seems to need a separate "ifconfig ndis0 up" command after boot to work, so I'll need to work that into a boot script at some point

Back home from the weekend excursion, and back to work.

I'm sitting on the train at the moment on my way back from a meeting in Manchester. It wasn't riveting unfortunately - even though I was chairing it.

Work feels a little steadier this week. There are still some issues, but it doesn't seem as manic as last week.

I have a new toy at home, a Lenovo s10e. It's a netbook, and it's very nice Very nice indeed. I've been struggling with the SuSE Linux it came installed with though. I'd love to put FreeBSD on it, but I'm nervous. Particularly about the wireless card. I'm trying to build up the courage to have a go If I do I'll post my progress here - especially as there doesn't seem to be much info on the web at the moment about running FreeBSD on this machine

Enjoying the sunshine at the National Railway Museum at York at the moment. It's Alex's favourite place in the whole world, so we stopped off here on our way home from a visit to my parents. Overnight in a Holiday Inn last night, and then York today.

I'd love to go and see some of historic York, but Alex will never be dragged away from the NRM. In some ways it's a shame, because he would also love the Roman and Viking history. He just can't get past the trains.

Going for a sausage in a bun in a mo', and then wait for Deb and Jess to finish in York city before heading home.

Horrifically busy at work the moment, hence no updates for a while. This week I'm effectively covering for both my SEO and Grade 7. The project I'm working on is moving so fast that you only have to blink and you've missed something crucial.

This week has basically been about trying to broker a deal between 2 operational teams and training, all of whom have fallen out over schedules and material for training courses. I just want to bang some heads together and get it sorted!

To cap it all, by boss is on 3 weeks leave. She ran out of time to finish a key piece of work, but thought we'd be able to make do. The proverbial hit the fan today, so I had to make time to try to pick the pieces up. Sigh.

Trying to decide whether I can justify spending £200 on a Lenovo s9e netbook. I just need to know whether it would run FreeBSD...

Spent last night getting linux to run on my Palm TX. It's fantastic that it works, but slow and clunky. Not really a replacement for Palm OS yet. That said, there's a new version being worked on that promises to make it possible to use the wifi. That would be good, but it also needs to improve the responsiveness of the system.

I'm a huge fan of Palm - the TX is my third after an original Zire and a Tungsten E. It's a great machine, and very usable. But the age of the design is starting to show. I've just bought a Windows Mobile smartphone, and I'm slowly moving my PIM data over. Eventually, I'll probably end up getting rid of the Palm. That will be a sad day for me though. Windows Mobile doesn't feel as intuitive. But it has a GPRS connection, and potentially means carrying one less gadget.

I'm really struck by the software contrast. There's far less for Windows Mobile, and is far more difficult to get it working. With Palm, you just plonk the prc file on the device.

Perhaps if the linux for Palm gets better I can convert that into a proper miniature computer?

Long delay in blog posting, caused mostly by being extremely busy in work. I don't think I've been this busy for 3 years. Still, it has it's rewards. Found out today that I'm being full time onto the project I've been working on (which is what I wanted) and that I'll get 6 months of temporary promotion out of it.

Home is...home. Alex has been quite challenging of late. He's become very wedded to our extension room, where he will play a computer game whilst watching a DVD at the same time. He can get really aggressive when told to stop He's now been to visit his new school (from next year). Problem is he likes it more than his current school...

Jessica is doing her SATs. Urkk. Deb has just gone back to work after her operation. Urkk.

So life is 'fun' at the moment ;-)

"Panopticons" in Lancashire. Fabulous art which we visited at Easter.

Another week at work over.

Deb's recovery seems to be going reasonably well. She's getting frustrated that she still feels so tired though. She is back to doing the school run morning and afternoon.

I'm shattered after my two days away. Need some time to recover. Here's hoping for some nice weather over the bank holiday. The barbeque beckons!

Not much else to report. I'm reading sub-Roman Britain at the moment (some interesting links to Byzantium). I've also acquired the opportunity to go on a one week archaeology 'training excavation'. I'd love to do it, but I don't know where I'm going to find the week off.