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Saturday 3 November 2012

The birthday party

Ladysolly and I went down to London yesterday. We arrived at Marylebone and got the bus to Selfridges so that I could have salt beef sandwiches at the Brass Rail; now that Blooms and the Nosh bar are closed, that might be the best place for them in London.

Then another bus to Picadilly (and while there we did a cache), to visit Waterstones, which claims to be the largest bookshop in Europe. Maybe it is, but what I saw there was a lot of wide open spaces for people to lounge about on, whereas what I want in a bookshop is lots of books, so I think I still prefer Foyles. Still, I was able to find half a dozen likely-looking books.

Then on to daughter.1 for coffee, and then a bit later daughter.2 and bf arrived, and daughter.1.girlfriend, and then we all went out to supper where I ate too much, drank too much and had a good time.

On the train going home, I discovered that a bit of back tooth (or maybe a filling, I've lost count) has come out, so a trip to the dentist will be happening soon.

For my birthday (when I'm 64) I'll be getting a Raspberry Pi. I know this, because it's what I asked for, and I had to place the order. At RS they're £21.60 plus VAT, but RS are out of stock for a month (at least) so I bought it on Ebay for somewhat of a premium, and I also got the various bits and pieces to go with it (power supply, video cable, case). I'll be installing Fedora Linux on it, and if it lives up to its promise, I'll be getting several more to replace a bunch of aging servers that handle mail, DNS and other ancillary stuff. The Pi has no moving parts to wear out (my existing servers have hard drives that wear out and the power supply and CPU have fans that break down). Also, the power requirements will be *much* less; the thing that supplies the Pi with power is 5 volts, 1 amp, so it's 5 watts. The more traditional computers I use take 40 or more each. An 8gb SD card costs £4, and that's the "hard drive".

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