I'm not very good at keeping this blog up to date, alright I'm bloody useless but hopefully I'll have more to say from now on.

A short history of my life over the last year and a half:

1. My wife decided we should part company in Sep 2006 however she didn't want to kick me out and allowed me time to find myself a new house.
2. Moved to Peebles in the Scottish Borders on 18 Dec 2006 having successfully bid for a ground floor flat 200 yards from the local golf club.
3. I didn't find it easy to adjust, particularly as I already suffered from depression. At least the split was very amicable and my wife very generously gave me all the furniture I needed to settle in comfortably. There was also sufficient funds for us both to have several thousand to spend on little luxuries.
4. In my case the luxuries included a 32" LCD HD ready TV and Sky HD with all the trimmings, movies, sports, setanta etc. Of course I also had to buy a washing machine, iron, pots, kettle etc.
5. In February 2007 I joined the local gym, with a gym/swim membership in an effort to get fitter and lose weight. More of this later.
6. In April 2007 I joined Peebles Golf Club and at the end of 2007 I gave up my membership at West Linton Golf Club. It was too expensive to maintain two memberships to say nothing of the petrol costs of a 40 mile round trip to WLGC.
7. I actually played much more at WLGC during 2007 because that's where my friends played. Sadly, one of my best friends became quite ill and had to stop playing around May of 2007. It only took the NHS 3 months to diagnose cancer in his neck.
8. I became ill at the end of August, and had to be rushed to hospital suffering from very severe pains in my abdomen and back. Turns out it was gall stones, so they performed a small procedure to offer me some short term comfort but went on the list to have my gall bladder removed. In the meantime I have to go on a low fat diet and lose 1 1/2 stones.
9. In November one of my dogs became seriously ill. The vet, after taking bloods for examination, said it looked like leukaemia but she faxed the results to the Dick Vet. They got back to say they wanted to see her immediately so we took her in on the Friday. It turns out that if she'd not gone in til the Monday she would have died. It was not leukaemia but auto-immune haemolytic anaemia. Her immune system was killing off her red blood cells and platelets. The Dick Vet kept her in for 6 days while plying her with copious amounts of drugs, one to suppress her immune system, steroids and a drug to combat the likely side effect of vomiting. She survives to this day and is now on very small doses of the drugs.
10. In January 2008 I go into hospital to have my gall bladder removed by laparoscopic surgery (as in keyhole). Back on a normal diet a month or so after the surgery and have put on about 11 lbs (naughty boy)
11. My wife comes up to Peebles in March 2008 to tell me she now has a boyfriend, culled from one of the many dating sites which proliferate the internet.
12. Give up my membership at the gym in April 2008. I wasn't going often enough because it bored me and I could do better things with my money.

I've tried to keep it brief because god forbid I should bore anybody. Actually I couldn't give a monkey's.

It's been a while but hello again. I'm moaning today, about Canon printers in general and mine in particular, an inkjet i550.

My printer head is blocked, so print quality is crap. Talk to Canon and they tell you to use the 'maintenance' tag in the driver to 'clean' 3 times then 'deep clean' once. They assure me this should do the trick. Wrong! I've cleaned and cleaned again, deep cleaned, cleaned again and again and again, then deep cleaned and deep cleaned again and again. No amount of cleaning does it. Canon said if this didn't work my printer head was *%^!ed. So I looked to purchase a new one, printer head that is, not a printer. Bloody hell, the cheapest one I could find was around £65, one was over £90. There is no way I'm paying that for a printer head that may well go the same way as the original.

At this point I should perhaps advise you that I don't use original Canon cartridges. I use compatibles bought from inkcycle which I've used for some time now. My daughter uses the same cartridges in her Canon S750 and has not had a problem to date. Perhaps it's because she uses her printer more often than me and my ink dried in the printer head causing the problem. Whatever, it seems from the 'forum circuit' that this is not such can unusual problem with Canon printers.

Why then, do Canon persist in making printers with a separate printer head, when many other manufacturers incorporate the printer head in the cartridge. That way you get a new printer head every time you change the cartridge so much less chance of them becoming blocked, and if they do you just change the cartridge if you can't unblock it.

I'm currently waiting delivery of some 'cleaning cartridges' to see if they will solve my problem. Just over £13 for four (including VAT and delivery) from e-inkjet. They are just bog standard cartridges with cleaning fluid in them instead of ink, so should give the printer head a really good clean. Let's hope so, otherwise it will be a new printer for me (not a Canon).

It's been almost a year since I last posted anything here and unfortunately it's not been a very happy time. My mum died last October and my wife's granny died in November. I loved my mum dearly and she's a great loss to me. It may have been as a result of this that I've had to revisit my psychiatrist regarding my depression and he has added to my list of prescription drugs and referred me to a therapy group which I started attending a few weeks ago. I hope I'll see something positive coming out of it.

There are times when life is a real bastard. Ah well, bye for now.

Dave.

I thought people should see just who I am, so here's a photo, taken in 2002, of me at Mt. Tide in Tenerife. It's not the best of photo's but it will do for now 

What can I say today

I'm not exactly a prolific blogger, but what the hell! Here I am again.

After successfully building my own PC, I've now built one for my mate. It gives me a great feeling of satisfaction to be able to do this. Only four years ago I was terrified to even open my PC up.

We now have 3 PC's and a laptop in the house. I've just to add a card to one of the PC's to have them all connected to an ad-hoc wireless network. I only use the 802.11b standard which is quite fast enough to give my wife, daughter and myself access to the internet, even with the broadband connection.

I can remember saying to a work colleague around 12 years ago that if I got through life having never touched a computer I'd be very happy. However, no employer nowadays can afford to fall behind in the great technology developments, and mine was no exception.
I had to reluctantly accept that I had to join the technical revolution. At first it was no fun with our big mainframe computer and our bespoke software. No fun to be had there! Then Microsoft brought out Windows 3.1 and it was all change. Personal PC's on every desk and the education began. Before I retired (early) I also had experience of Win95 and Win NT 4, by which time we'd bought our first family PC driven by an Intel 166MMX, with a 33.6k modem, 32Mb RAM, a 1.5GB hard drive and Win95. WOW! Oh, almost forgot the 2Mb graphics card.

That was back in 1997, and the PC is still going strong in a friends house where the grandchildren use it.

The 'small' PC in the house is now driven by a PIII 600mhz (Win98SE). The laptop has WinME (not a personal favourite of mine, but it's my wife's). My daughter inhereted my old PC with WinXP Home. My own one, which I built earlier this year has an AMD AthlonXP 2500+ with Barton core, 2 HD's totaling 220GB's, 512MB DDR RAM (2x256MB TwinX Corsair Memory PC3200) and a 128MB graphics card (I'm not a gamer) and WinXP Home SP1.

My knowledge of computers, although still far from extensive, has been gleaned mostly from various PC magazines, the internet and various books bought over the years. Magazines are a great source of information, if they use plain english. I personally subscribe to Computer@tive, Microsoft Windows XP-The official magazine and Personal Computer World. I've only recently started with the lastmentioned one, so have yet to form an opinion on it, but I highly recommend the first two.

You've no doubt guessed that I've been well and truly bitten by the computer bug.

The learning has been done slowly over a number of years and it's an absorbing hobby with much still to learn and exiting times ahead. It keeps what brain cells I still have reasonably active.

If anyone reads this, and they are at the beginning of the adventure, then I would urge them to stick at it. It's probably one of the few areas where I can honestly say I know more about it than my 17 year old daughter does. She gives me the impression, at times, that she knows more about everything else in life. Only joking, she's a wonderful kid and I love her to bits.

OK, that's it for today.

Bye for now!

Music: The great love of my life. I started at the age of 9 playing violin at school. I was never more than average and after a fight with my music teacher, quit playing at the ripe old age of 13. The descant recorder was next from 13 to 16. Myself, my dad, brother and brother in law used to have a little quartet in the kitchen once or twice a week. My dad was the real musician. He was a fabulous singer (tenor) and tremendous euphonium player. He also taught brass instruments at high schools in the area after he retired at the age of 65, and continued until he was 77.

The story so far would lead you to think that I was a classical buff. Not so! I used to tune in to Radio Luxembourg in the early 60's and it was during this time that my real passion for music began. On hearing The Rolling Stones single 'Not Fade Away' I was hooked. This was what I wanted to hear. I followed the Stones through the 60's, at the same time picking up on The Animals, The Who, Hendrix, Cream, Jethro Tull, Yes et al.

At 17, I bought my first bass guitar and was soon belting out Cream's 'Sunshine of your love' and Jimi Hendrix' 'Fire' etc. A few of us around that time used to meet in each others homes to practice. God! What a bloody din!! Looking back, I see just how tolerant our parents were, although I didn't think so at the time. We moved on to practice in various town halls and pavilions in the area, but we never were much good, nor did we ever play any gigs.

I joined my first gigging band, 'Before the Dawn', in late '69, and the first gig we played was as support for Tear Gas, who went on to join Alex Harvey and become the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. One of our roadies at the time left us to join SAHB. If you ever read this Tam ('Wee Tam' Fairgrieve) I hope you are still enjoying your life in music. I left this band in late '70, and didn't gig again until '84.

By '84 my musical taste had become firmly entrenched in rhythm and blues. Myself and the drummer from Before The Dawn, Tam Dalgliesh, started a band in '83, eventually calling ourselves 'The Heaters'.

We only ever gigged around Edinburgh, but it was good fun. We went through a few personnel changes before ending up as a 4 piece comprising drummer, bass guitar, guitar and vocals. Our last gig was in Feb '89. I've not played since, but still love listening to the blues, blues rock, and any other good music that catches the ear.

Currently amongst my favourite acts are Bill Perry, The Fabulous Thunderbirds circa '79 to '85, Kim Wilson, Gov't Mule, Bernard Allison, Kenny Neal, Anthony Gomes, BB Chung King and The Buddaheads, Billy Branch, Bryan Lee, Joe Bonamassa, Jimmy Thackery, Julian Sas, Omar and The Howlers, Rob Tognoni, Robben Ford, the late great Stevie Ray Vaughan, Tab Benoit and Tommy Castro to name but a few. Check them out.

That's it for today. Remember, always show patience and understanding to those around you, particularly the ones you love.

Cheers.

Dave.

Forgot about this for a few days. Hi, I'm Dave, 56 years old scotsman. Today is a moan day.

Has anybody out there got the MSI Personal Cinema FX5200-VT128 graphics card? If so have you had problems with the drivers? I sure have. The problem seems to lie with the remote control software and a little file by the name of nvgpio.dll which is part of the Intervideo WinDVR software bundled with the card, and also involves the TV software (I think). Basically an error message comes up after booting into windows, to say that nvarem.exe (the remote software) must close. So no remote. Great!! That was one of the features I liked about the card. There is a work around for this problem. Delete vngpio.dll from the system32 folder, and the remote works. Goodness knows what will now fail to work. I suspect it will be the TV tuner but I've not yet fixed up an arial for my PC, so can't say for sure. Now when I boot-up I get a little box named 'test' which says 'Load nvgpio.dll fail' and 'OK'. Press OK, the box appears again, click OK again and it disappears. Nothing else has failed to work, but I await with trepidation, the installation of the TV arial.

I e-mailed MSI regarding this issue many weeks ago but they haven't got back to me, and I suspect, never will. I'm sure they must know of the problems because it is a major source of complaint on the MSI forum. This is an nVidia card but there is no point in getting in touch with them as their site is quite explicit. They don't manufacture the cards, they only supply the chips to the various companies who make the cards, and in the event of any problems 'contact the manufacturers' of said cards. Talk about passing the buck. After all they do write software which can be used with 'the manufacturers' cards, and their software causes the same problems as MSI's.

So I appeal to anyone who knows of an answer to this problem. Please get in touch!!!

It has been suggested by some that one way to overcome this situation is to re-format the HD, do a clean install of the OS and the graphics drivers.

My system is fairly new, having built it myself a couple of months ago. The details are as follows:

Mobo: Asus A7N8X Deluxe
Graphics: MSI Personal Cinema FX5200-VT128
Mem: Cosair Platinum TwinX 512MB DDR XMS3200C2PT CAS2
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton Core Retail and supplied fan.
OS: Windows XP Home Edition - OEM
Main Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax +9 160GB 7200rpm 8MB Cache
Slave: Maxtor DiamondMax 60GB
CD: Samsung CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo SM 352B

Nothing in the PC is overclocked so there is no strain on the system.

Well, here I am. My first published stuff on the web. I should start by introducing myself. My name is Dave (known as FenderJazz on forums, p2p's etc.). I'm 55, at least until 16 April 2004, male, 6ft and around 205 pounds. I love music, mostly blues rock, fiddling with my family's computers and golf. I'll not say any more for now otherwise I'll have nothing left to tell.