P0rtal

Canoe Update

Published on August 12, 2011 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

So, time passes.. my canoe is still a canoe, but it had a couple of small leaks around the bottom. I decided I’d best take some action to prevent the leaks and add further strength to the joints.

I picked up some polyester resin and fibreglass tape from Polyfibre in Aston and set about preparing the canoe. Sanded back the edges to the plywood then applied the glass tape and resin, let it set and then gave it all a coating of resin just for good measure. I’m then left with a nice strong (ish) plywood canoe, although not looking to pretty as the paint had been stripped back, so a new coat of paint was required. I went for B&Q Mailbox Red exterior gloss to make it stand out a little more than the white it was previously.

Shall be taking it for it’s first voyage since the the alterations. Hopefully there’ll be no leaks

Building a Canoe

Published on June 9, 2011 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

So.. I was a little but bored and fancied a little project, and this sounded like a fun thing to do. Many hours later after trawling the internet for canoe plans and the best/cheapest methods to build them, I settled for the 14′ Cheap Canoe using free plans from Bateau.

A trip to B&Q later and I had some wood… a couple of 6mm plywood sheets, some cheap battens to use for the gunwales, some more cheap battens to secure the sides to the bottom, and a couple of boxes of screws (I decided to screw it together rather than go down the stitch and glue method). You don’t really need any fancy tools. I managed with a jigsaw, a screwdriver, a sander and lots of clamps.

Once I had the canoe all assembled I primed the exterior before painting it with Dulux gloss and then varnished the inside and gunwales with exterior varnish. It’s not brilliant, but for a first attempt at canoe building I managed to make something that resembles a canoe, and floats!

Booting an iPaq Without a Keyboard

Published on May 12, 2010 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

The iPaq computers make good headless servers but as they are designed as desktop computers they are meant to be used with a keyboard. Therefore, when a keyboard is not present it will refuse to boot until a keyboard in connected. There is no option in the BIOS that can be set to not halt on errors. I have come across a couple of methods that allow the iPaq to boot without a keyboard present.

Method 1

Use a USB -> PS/2 adapter (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/106560), this will trick the iPaq into thinking that a keyboard is attached and will boot up without any issues.

Method 2

Enter the BIOS by pressing the F10 whilst it displays the ‘Compaq iPaq’ splash screen
In the ‘Security’ menu, select ‘Power-On Password’, then enter your password
A new item under the ‘Security’ menu is added, select ‘Password Options’, then enable ‘Network Server Mode’
Save changes and exit the BIOS

The iPaq will now boot up without errors when there is no keyboard present. You will be prompted for the power-on password when booting whilst a keyboard is present.

Method 3

Download the Compaq NOF1 floppy utility (ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp0501-1000/SP0667.ZIP). Move the files to a floppy disk and insert the disk into the iPAQ. It will boot from the floppy and ignore the missing keyboard.