Prop not good of late. Very few decent sstv pics, and 27.555 is largely quiet. Couple of UK stations calling out each evening, but no takers from Europe. Feint voices, but that's all at the moment.

Just tried installing a new idea in operating systems on both my machines. It's free, and runs beside Windows so can be chosen at start up. It's called Jolicloud, which is operated via the browser. An online operating system.

My desk top is a pain as usual. This time the keyboard I'm using is not recognised and I can't choose the operating system on start up. If I change to an old keyboard, I have no problem. The 'Cyborg' is not liked by Joli or Linux it seems. Joli is the default system by the way, so will boot up to that if not bi passed as it were. There is no problem with the notebook, however, and I'm still evaluating Joli there.

Train Simulator 12 (Railworks) is running on 'Steam' now, excuse the pun. Seems I didn't have the right version of .net installed. Ship Sim still refuses to run though *sigh*

27.555 now has a chuffing sound on it. Surrounding frequencies are ok, so Murphies law says the frequency I want to sit on is affected. I have found the cause to be my monitor, ie the waterfall running on either MMSSTV or Opera. The only way around this annoying interference is to minimise said programs whilst listening to the Satellit 750. No big deal I guess, as I can periodically check for received sstv pics or stations logged on Opera. These things are sent to try us, as the saying goes.

Well that idea didn't last long *sigh*. When I tried to fire up Linux on it's own hard drive, the monitor wouldn't wear it. Amazing! the day before it was quite happy using the onboard graphics.

I did have an idea of checking NVidea for some Linux compatible drivers for the G-Force GT250 that I use for Windows, but it seems that idea is out the window as I can't fire up the browser to get them. I 'spose I could download them on the other 'puter and transfer them, but if I can't get the Linux running anyway I wont be able to transfer them anyway, will I!

Another pain I notice this morning, is that I can not edit my QSL.net site at all now I have lost my own copy during re-intallation of Windows. Normally I would edit the site on my drive and upload, thus overwriting the online version. (I thought I Had a full back up on a seperate drive, but this was not the latest effort I now discover). I was not initially worried as I thought I could use my ftp prog to get to the files on the host and download them back to my docs, thence to the Web Editor prog ready for editing etc.

This I can do with my 'Virgin' hosted pages, as they are uploaded with the built in ftp facility of 'Namo WebEditor'. Unfortunately I haven't figured how to this to the files made with 'WebSite X5' (hosted by qsl.net) in a way that I can re-import them to said Web Editor program for editing. Naturally I have noticed a glairing spolling mistake on line Hi, which I can not now correct. Yes, that's the one. Excactly instead of exactly on the Analogue SSTV page. Then again maybe you didn't notice after all. Damn!, I should have kept my big mouth shut.

I Have reinstated my Sirio 27 mhz half wave by the way. This is vertically polarized, and I'm using it for monitoring another interesting aspect of shortwave listening. ie the 'Freeband' fraternity. 27.555 +/- ssb. I wouldn't dream of transmitting my self on that frequency, but due to this mode/frequency's popularity world wide, I find monitoring this area more productive and interesting than some other areas that induce total boredom with their innactivity.

The Sattelit 750 is the ideal companion to the Sirio, so sstv and other data modes are catered for with the FT-897 and Pro Whip, using the desk top pc. The notebook is driving the PCR-1000 with HRD, which is used for shortwave broadcast listening.

D-Star is still brown bread, but I'll leave the 2 metre vertical up for now. General 2 metre listening is via the UBC800XLT and Discone.

That's about it for now. 'Steam' won't let me play Ship or Train sims now by the way. This is a stupid idea, using Steam, as I have the discs and games installed but can't play them *groan* 73 for now.

Well that was an interesting couple of days. Why I still insist on getting headaches playing with Linux I don't know. Guess I'm just stubborn Hi!.

Anyway, I decided in a reckless moment to have another go. This time I wanted to load a distro which allowed dual booting, which meant side by side install with Windows of course. Simple!. Erm.....The initial distro, I forget which one now, wouldn't shrink the Windows portion enough to allow a fit. Tried various way to resize/aportion the drive etc. All takes time of course, but eventually I got Mint to intall anyway.

To cut a very long story short I managed to get one distro ie Mint to actually fire up with no problem. This when I eventually figured that maybe the screen was not doing the business due to drivers not being supplied by Mint or Ubuntu, or anyone else for that matter, to kick start my video card (G-Force GT-250) and connected the monitor direct to the mother board instead.

The Mint disc I had available was version 8 and would not update, so I had to download Mint 12 and burn the iso to a boot disc. This took a while of course.

Now you would think that I was now in business. Not so, however, as when I booted up the keyboard would briefly light up, then die, before I could scroll to Windows. In other words I was stuck with Linux only. Oh flip! I said, wondering where I'd stashed my hammer.

I now abandoned the idea of dual booting of course, and now installed Linux to the entire drive to hopefully get to a position where I could re-install Windows from the dvd drive eventually, which I had successfully done after trying Ubuntu 9 and 10 a while back.

I had tried various distro discs prior to full disc install of Mint hoping to get to a stage in the install procedue that would give me an out, as it were, so I could get back to Windows. Unfortunately I had to admit defeat and decided to re-install Windows over the entire disc eventually. Simple!. Erm....

I tried to boot my Windows disc from the dvd drive, but to no avail. Even with the hard drive disabled in the bios, the damn thing would still insist on booting Linux. Totally illogical, but then computers are, aren't they?.

In the end I decided that I was basically 'stitched' with this hard drive, Windows wise, so then had one of my genius moments Hi!. Digging out my old hard drive from a defunct computer and praying it was compatible, which it was, I fitted it in place of the existing Linux job. I was now back in Windows business.

Now I have seperate drives for Windows and Linux which means I can now mess about with the Linux job to my hearts content knowing it doesn't matter if I screw up again *sigh* Of course this means taking the side casing off and transferring a couple of leads each time, but that's no big deal.

If only I had thought of that before I started playing with my existing drive, I could have saved all the hassle entailed with losing everything and having to eventually reintall all my currently used software.

All this took about twelve hours yesterday, which included getting loads of software installed on the Windows drive. Naturally murphies law says some things that did work before, now do not. Ship simulator and Propnet, to name a couple tried so far.

Oh well, at least MMSSTV and Opera are up and running again. Both web editors are also running. Flight Sim 2004 is a go, but I wouldn't be surprised, when I try other sims, not to have problems relating to activation codes used on another drive for instance.

Tea up!