I know that this is going to get me in all sorts of trouble, but my quote of the day is:

Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious. - Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

I found this old(?) but interesting comparison of TVs, and TV technology power usage comparison of TVs, and TV technology power usage.

Most interesting was the average power consumptions;
Microdisplay rear projector TV: 0.14 watt per square inch,
LCD: 0.29 watt per square inch,
Plasma: 0.34 watt per square inch,
CRT: 0.34 watt per square inch.

I'll have to keep that in mind , and pay particular attention to the power consumption, when I'm next looking at purchasing a TV, but to be honest I'll only be looking at LCD vs. Plasma.

The Quest for a Cheap, Compact, Silent Network File Server for Home - Solved

I managed to get my Compaq Evo D510 USDT all set up a few weeks ago. I popped a whopping big hard disk into it and gave it a RAM upgrade. I successfully installed a copy of Windows XP (licenced) that I have from a now long dead PC and installed all of the updates etc.

I have set up a small home network which seems to be pretty reliable and the everything is neatly tidied away behind the vanity panel of my desk out of sight. Not quite out of hearing range though, as although it is quiet, the new file server isn't quite silent and there seems to be some sort of resonance going on in the little gap between the vanity panel and the wall, which I will need to address at some point., but for now I am happy with the way everything is set up.

The Epson printer even fired up without any issues and although I'm out of colour ink (or it has dried to a powder) I can print, albeit noisily in black which will do for now.

I have been carefully copying files off of my PC to the file server, nothing important at the moment just junk that I can't quite reconcile myself to permanently deleting. Soon I will start moving important stuff to help reduce the usage on my PC so that I can get to the business of scanning. I have a ridiculously large collection of negatives that need scanning and the scans consume a lot of space a 24bit scan saved as a compressed TIFF file uses about 35Mb and a 48bit scan uses about 120MB of disk space.

The only problem with little server is that I bought a USB Bluetooth adaptor for it so that I can sync my phone with it, but every time I reboot the machine it 'forgets' that it is connected and the only way to 'remind' it is to unplug and reconnect the USB adaptor, which I cannot reach because it is tucked away behind the desk. I'll need to find a solution to this as it takes 15 minutes to disassemble the desk, fix the USB key and reassemble the desk, not the end of the world but at the rate Microsoft keep releasing critical security updates it is going to be a real pain.

George Jr.

I've got a chili pepper plant at the office which last year produced one small but very hot chili pepper, which was given the name of George, before we ate it/him.

This year there is a much bigger chili pepper growing which has imaginatively been named, George Junior.



Unfortunately the chili pepper plant has contracted an infestation of aphids. The first sign of aphids was on Monday and there are now thousands of them, and they are mutliplying at a stupendous rate. Anyone know what to use to kill aphids? The plant is in an office so there aren't any natural predators.