Back online - and it's about time!

Some of you might have heard that I was battling with my hosting provider after months of not being able to post here. It is FINALLY resolved!

I had cervical osteoarthritis and severe pain in my neck and right arm. The prodecure I went through is called "Cloward's procedure". The disk between my C5/C6 vertebrae was removed, the bone spurs closing the spinal canal also and the disk replaced by a carbon box.

It spent a week in hospital and now started my recup time (could be up to 6 weeks off work). I will keep you guys posted here.

New Painting

The painting I bought arrived home yesterday. A Jeff Schaller's encaustic painting, it conveys carefree happiness in an inspiring fashion.

I fell in love with it in the art gallery ... and now it hangs in my living room (OK at a certain cost but hey!). Would be glad to hear what you think!

Louise RIP

My beautiful cat -- Louise -- died a few weeks back and I still can't quite get used to her absence... to the fact that she won't come under my cover and sleep on my arm while I read in bed in the evening, that she is not there when I get home, waiting for a cuddle and to play in the staircase. It is a weird feeling after 13 years of almost daily life together.

I lost a lot of sleep in the past months thinking of the day I would have to take her to the vet for the last time. As I saw her become weaker and weaker, I knew that the end was getting closer. One day there was no more escaping the hard reality. She could not really eat anymore, was getting thinner by the day and almost never moved from het cot in the kitchen. The time had come.

We took her to the vet for what would be the last shot. In the waiting room I had trouble keeping my tears back especially when another customer saw her and said how gorgeous she was. And this is true, even in her last moments she was still utterly gorgeous: big green eyes, tiny pink nose, beautiful grey coat.

Lately, her Mom Bonnie, who is the only remaining cat in our house, has taken up the habit of miaowing frantically from the top of the house. Is she looking for Louise? Is she lonely, bored? Does she do that only when we are home? Should we get a kitten to keep her company?

Complicated (and gritty) keyboards

Complicated (and gritty) keyboards
Originally uploaded by egoes

Here a pic taken by my friend Enrique while on the road in Thailand. Made me smile because I have had quite a few keyboard discussions recently, so it just seemed fitting.

Let me tell you more about why keyboards are a topic of discussion...

My work keyboard has a broken "leg"... that is, it won't stay level and it is driving me bananas. So I ventured out and starting looking at potential replacements.

I fell in love with the flat Mac keyboard, sooooo "sweet" but the alt and apple key are reversed compared to a PC keyboard (sigh). I guess I would get used to it :-)

Then I thought that a keyboard with a touchpad (aka a cat) would be cool to have. With that I could reduce the time my arm spends extended over a mouse and -- thus -- help reduce my shoulder tendinitis (still going on - re-sigh). I found a few but so far it does not look good for a Swiss French layout (re-re-sigh).

Then my friend Chris asked if he could borrow a keyboard to enter some stuff faster into his iTunes library. "Sure!" I said. Off I went and found my old keyboard in the attic (white - yuk!) and happily brought it with me for him. Silly me forgot that the PS/2 adapter is no more a fixture on modern laptops (re-re-re sigh). ended up having to "borrow" a keyboard from a colleague's desk... but don't tell anyone!

So you see keyboard are at the forefront on my mind these days. Fascinating life I live!

One Step Closer to the Digital Home

This week I finally got all the elements together to stream my digital music collection on my stereo system.

First I has to find a NAS hard disk with an iTunes server. Luck stroke in FNAC where I found something that looked the part: LaCie Home Edition 500 Gb. Check!

I'd been eyeing the second part of the installation for a while but at 500.- Sfr., the Logitech Squeezebox was just a little dear for my budget. Especially when one is in experimentation mode... So, after another trip to the FNAC (!), I came back with a Soundbridge device (by Roku Labs). Check!

Then started the battle, I plugged everything in and the bloody devices were not talking to each other. For that matter, the LaCie iTunes server was not talking much to anything wireless. I could access the hard disk volume wirelessly but not the iTunes server part... Back to the drawing board, or in this case, the support boards!

I visited the Roku, Axentra, LaCie support boards and read a lot of stuff until the wee hours to no avail. And then after a good (tho' short) night's sleep the solution dawned on me... What if it was my router that was the issue? Quite a few elements were pointing in that direction so I visited yet another support board; the Netgear one this time.

Once I had worked out which router version I have (finally found it on the sticker under my router - no way you can find that in the admin panel it seems), I ventured to download the latest firmware. And here something I have the biggest problem with on the Internet happened: I was redirected to a page in German and ONLY in bloody German (I will write about my frustration on this one in a separate entry soon, I can feel my blood boiling again). Trying to stay calm, I downloaded the new file, uploaded it to my router and voilà! my iTunes server and wireless streamer were on speaking terms!

So now on to the next stage: digitalizing my CD collection... I have been diligent in the last two years and every CD I bought in that period is on the server already. But when it comes to the 1,500 CDs bought beforehand, I am afraid I have only reached the letter B... At an average of 10 minutes per CD, I believe I have 250 solid hours of work before me. And then, the CDs still need to be imported into each iTunes library as there is no way to share one library with multiple users over a common network. And here the LaCie NAS drive was of no help whatsoever. So if you have multiple users with iPods, you still need multiple iTunes libraries... :-(

I don't consider myself an expert on this but I think I am definitely one step closer to being able to understanding and discuss this (at length)... Good or bad news? As long as I don't become a total Anorak, we're (you're) safe! ;-)