So we have a new Government, may I wish David and Nick well, I hope it all works out for them and us, the people of the UK.

Never mind the new Government, what interests me now are future events. Bye-elections and the next general election, scheduled for May 2015.

Will the two coalition parties field separate or single candidates in the bye-elections?
Will they combine for the next general election. If they do it may keep Labour out of office for a very long time.

Interesting time are ahead.

May 6 – we all get to go to the polls and vote for the next government of the UK. Usually I don’t bother; I really am not that bothered who runs the country, they are all useless.

However, despite having zero interest in the election and politics I love the election night TV. I’ll be up all night and fascinated by the election results.

Remember Chris Pattern, Shirley Williams or Michael Portillo? They all lost their seats at a general election.
David Owen’s SDP getting less votes than the Monster Raving Looney party!
John Major snatching back the keys to number 10 from Neil Kinnock when Labour looked sure to win?

I thought not; but I do and I am sure this election will bring many more amazing moments as the results are declared.

I can’t wait.

Better yet if we get a hung parliament we may get to do it all again a few months later.

Two election nights in the same year. Geek heaven!

Interesting article on the BBC news website about the change to Digital Radio, or DAB.

The change over to digital TV is well under way, and Wales is now 100% digital, there’s lovely now see. Less than two years to go before analogue TV is obsolete everywhere. The advantage TV has over radio is that a TV can be used with a set top box (which are almost always under the TV, set bottom box anyone?). A radio, however, is not convertible. Once the analogue service is turned off those radios are pretty much useless. In the home there are many ways of getting ‘radio’ and many people use their digital TV but once you are out and about portable or in a car it’s different. The biggest problem is car audio, millions of cars are going to need new radios. (Might be a good time to get into the ICE business?)

I was curious to see if retailers were still selling analogue radios, so I took a look in Currys and Comet.

99% of the radio equipment was DAB in both stores, but there were a few analogue sets on sale. I think those sets should have big red stickers on them:

THIS DEVICE WILL BE OBSOLETE IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS

Meanwhile I am considering getting an Apple TV. Streaming audio off the web, all my music and video on my home entertainment system.

Way to go people, be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Digitise now.

I had an interesting job recently. A client wanted their Asus netbook upgraded with a bigger SSD. The existing SSD was 8Gb and he wanted a 64Gb installed and all the data cloned across.

The netbook runs Ubuntu Linux, the dedicated netbook variety. My normal method of drive cloning is to connect both source and target drives up to my MacBook Pro via two USB to SATA adaptors and run the Drive Utility on the Mac. Apart from the Linux disk format and the fact that these dinky SSDs did not fit any of my adaptors it looked easy. NOT!

The netbook does not have an optical drive so I was beginning to think the job was a non-starter. However:

You can boot a netbook from an external CD drive connected via USB, so I used my Freecom external CD/DVD drive.

Clonezilla is an open source live CD that boots the netbook into Linux with dedicated cloning software, once you have your head around the menu system it works well.

I had to do a double clone, the target drive to a SATA external drive on USB, as an image, then fit the new drive and restore the image. Easy!

I was very impressed with the Asus, it has all the features of a larger machine. While the client was with me I got his Skype account working with video, the Asus has a built in web cam and microphone.

If anyone has a use for a mini SSD of 8GB I know where one is up for sale.

Fixing computers is pretty mundane. It’s not often I get one of those moments when I can punch the air and shout “Yes!” But today I got a “YES!” moment, and it felt good.

I was installing Skype for a client. I had persuaded the over zealous firewall that Skype was not the work of the Devil but a safe and sensible application that could access the internet. I has searched for my client’s relatives on Skype and added them as contacts.
It was looking good.
I was just about to call the Skype test facility when the Skype rang, her sister was calling from the US. I sat my client in her office chair and clicked on answer.

I opened the video and the two ladies chatted for about half an hour. They had not seen each other for over ten years.

They were both delighted.
I was ecstatic.

“YES!” Punches the air.

Today it worked better than I could ever have planned.

It’s 2010. Happy New Year!

That’s TWENTY TEN not two thousand and ten.

You would not say one thousand nine hundred and sixty eight for 1968, it’s nineteen sixty eight!

So let’s get the naming convention right in twenty ten and keep to it for the rest of the century.

Thank you.