(no subject)

Bah, finally fell off my bike due to not being able to get my clip-on pedals unclipped today.

I'd nearly done it twice in the last two weeks—once when the ability to unclip temporarily deserted me when I was coming to a standstill (I finally got my right foot unclipped as I came to a halt, at which point of course the bike fell over to the left); and once when I had to stop in a hurry, and didn't have time to think through unclipping. (Hopefully as I do it more, it will become more automatic.) On both occasions, my feet came miraculously free halfway down to the ground.

Today I had to brake suddenly, as I was following a driver reversing in front of me, and he was weaving all over the road. The bike came to a stop, and started to fall over, and I couldn't get my feet free, and hit the ground.

It was rather funny in retrospect: the driver came out, and I had to tell him "It's not your fault I fell over" and explain about the clip-ons. And then do the explanation a second time fifteen seconds later for the security guy at the gate of my workplace.

Fortunately, I've got away with minor cuts and bruises. Tarmac is a lot less unfriendly to fall onto when you hit it from a horizontal speed of 0mph than 5mph.

New laptop

My new laptop has arrived. It came with Windows preinstalled, but without a restore disc. I 'phoned the shop I got it from, which told me they only include the restore discs if they get them with the laptop; often the clients they get them from (for reconditioning and selling on) have lost them. They told me I can restore from any Windows disc, though; provided I key in the key on the machine.

They also told me, when I proposed installing Linux first and coming back to do Windows in my own time, that I should be able to tell Windows to respect the partitions I set up myself; my father had warned me this might not be possible.

The other comment I have at present is that the battery level is going down like there's no tomorrow, but the instructions that came with it said to give it a twenty-four hour charge before reporting any battery problems (and other online shops I've seen reported likewise).

The person who was going to lend me a Red Hat Linux Fedora Core 6 disc (I'm only running Fedora Core 5 at home) has forgotten to bring it in, and in any case (a) I'm cycling home today, and the laptop, case, base, adaptor and bag are rather heavy, and (b) I'm going out this evening, so I'm not going to get a chance to look at it any further before tomorrow. (I'll be leaving it
tonight locked up inside my filing cabinet at work.)

Now I need to get the thing wireless. The Linux Emporium warns:

Wireless NIC manufacturers are notorious for changing the chip sets on their cards depending on the price of the components. They then supply different drivers with each new card to make them work. It is possible to buy cards with the same model number from the same vendor with very different circuitry.

So I dursn't buy from anyone apart from them. But the PCMCIA cards they have listed are labelled unstable under Fedora Core 6, so it looks like I'll have to get a USB wireless device, which is slightly less desirable, from the point of view of having a device sticking out the back of the machine taking up space, and easily knocked out (or, perish the thought, snapped off)...