Amsterdam

Doing these entries retrospectively is a challenge - I'm sure that I will miss something important, but hey...

So much to say about Amsterdam - what a place! I enjoyed it immensely, and am determined to return at some point. There was so much to see (and I'm not talking about the Rijksmuseum). We stayed at a camping place named Gaasper Camping - on the edge of the city, but close enough to get in easily by train. They sell 24 hour tickets at the site for 7.5 euros  - which is a good thing to do because they give you unlimited travel in the city on everything except the boats.

The campsite itself was great - with free wifi that worked really well. My only gripe was the cost of the laundry facilities - eight euros for one load of washing is a lot, and the drying was four euros, and that wasn't enough - it came out damp. I know - petty aren't I ? There is a supermarket on site that sells fresh bread and lots of other stuff including booze of various types, and it's not overpriced. 

We bought our tickets for seven and a half euros each and started our five minute walk to the train station. Heard strange cawing sounds - then saw these parakeets eating berries from the bush next to the path - weird!

The train took about half an hour, and we had to change once at 'Man with a Mad Hat Wig' station - that's how I remembered it, but it was really 

We arrived at the central station and emerged right next to a load of boats. We had promised ourselves a boat trip - so we perused the tariffs. They were all basically the same for your standard hour trip - fifteen euros. Except for one very well turned out Captain type fellow, who was offering his trips for only eight and a half euros. We put thoughts of cruising to one side and decided to try the trams. This is where having the all day pass comes into it's own - because it doesn't really matter which tram you get on!! Anyway - we gave up trying to make sense of things and jumped on one. You validate your ticket by offering it up to a reader (machine, not person) as you get on to trams etc. and are massively encouraged to effectively 'sign out' by doing the reverse as you get off. We ended up at the flower and bulb market - spotting it from the tram we leapt off at the next stop.

Amazing selections of bulbs and flowers - lots and lots of stalls, and the prices were pretty much the same in all of them. Some of the biggest Amaryllis bulbs I have ever seen. The flower stalls were on the river (literally - see them from behind). Facing them were bars, coffee places and cheese shops (Python fans all take a few moments here to recite the cheese sketch). Lots of free tastings to be had - not just lots of cheese, but crackers and types of relish too - yum! 

We walked right to the end, over a bridge (in Amsterdam, who'd of thought?), K had a look in the Delftware shop under the tower whilst I loitered outside watching the passers by. We made our way back into town to find a tram. This was just the start... more later

Antwerp - Fashion, Printing and more Buildings

Apologies for the lack of blogging. We have been oh so busy, and playing with computer has been quite far from my thoughts. We awarded ourselves a 'day off' today - so I thought that I would begin to catch up....

In previous days.......

From Bruges we headed for Antwerp - on the promise that there would be free(ish) parking in an Aire. Giving over full control to the Sat Nav we headed there and, remarkably, arrived in exactly the right place - which was the Antwerp Expo centre. It was getting on a bit in hours, so I found a place to park and took my shoes off. On the way in we had noticed a smallish hut, but no obvious signs as what to do (at least not in a language that I understood), so we went and parked.

Shortly after I had removed my trainers there was a knock on the door and a man enquired as to whether I was going to come to his place to pay, now. I answered that I would come immediately, and looked for my crocs to put on. I left the van and he had gone. I assume he cycled to me - seeing as I had driven straight past his hut. I found him, paid, gained information on transport into Antwerp and returned to the van. 

The site had no toilets or water, but did have chemical toilet emptying facilities and free wifi (odd). The cost for the site was 8 Euros - which wasn't too bad I thought. The surroundings were not too great - but it was fairly quiet and close enough to the centre to catch a tram.

Antwerp itself was interesting - but much like any other large city, except for the 'old town' - which seems to be the case in a lot of these places. Pictures of the 'Old Town'-

Whilst looking through attractions for Antwerp K had seen the Fashion Museum and Printing Museum ads. We had to go there of course - I must admit that the printing museum was good and very interesting, but I don't think that I would go back to the fashion place - it seemed mainly to be a retrospective of the famous fashion designers that had been produced from the Antwerp College.

 The printing museum was the base of the Plantin-Moretus printing empire:

All set in a rather splendid building. I will publish links to the various things here when I have a better connection.

Onward into Belgium

After spending three nights in the French campsite near Lille we set course for pastures new in Belgium. We picked a campsite pretty much at random from the ASCII camp book, and so ended up near the coast at a place named De Haan An Zee.
 
The campsite manager fitted us in for two nights - we found ourselves on hard standing, which was actually the base for a static caravan. It was fine though, because it had it's own water, power and drainage all to hand. It was very warm when we arrived, so hot in fact that in was almost painful to sit in the sun. I took the bikes off of the rack and we went exploring. Luckily we found a small supermarket open - meaning that that I could buy some wine. The evening was fairly fine, but that changed next morning, when we woke to the promise of rain, and major dark clouds.
 

We walked to the town, then took a tram to Ostend. Finally a train to Bruges. After a spectacular fail at finding the tourist information office at the station (it's on the right as you come out ) we walked into the centre of Bruges. Lots of nice buildings and more than enough chances to pacify the shopping demon. I resisted the Christmas shops, chocolate shops, waffle shops etc. I did, however, succumb to a beer emporium, which boasted a 'beer wall' comprising what seemed to be several hundred beers, and their glasses all behind plexi glass. It was impressive. We both had a beer and warmed ourselves by their external flame heaters. 
 

The rain started in earnest, and we rapidly started our return journey. We arrived back at the van after carrying out the reverse of our outward trip. We were soaked. We hung our clothes to dry in the shower room. Today - Monday - we drove to Antwerp.  I am writing this on my phone, from an aire just outside the city - at the Expo centre. They have free wifi !

En France

We are taking our motorhome up into northern Europe - heading for Oslo in Norway, hoping to get there before the winter weather sets in.  

We have been in France for two days now. Staying at a camp site near Bondue, which is just outside Lille. The sun is shining, and all is well. I am using the free McDonalds wifi to send this. Here is a picture of La Piscine - which is an Art Deco swimming pool which had been converted to a museum. It is in Roubaix. Worth a visit.

 

 

Blog Crazy

We seem to have become the above at home. My daughter is back from her travels for a month - she has two blogs. While she is here she has been helping my wife develop her blog - and obviously, I have had a blog for a little while... Much talk of blogs at present.

I actually had the idea of starting a blog originally to talk about my allotment (yawn?). I think that late one night - after a glass of wine or two - I sat down and subscribed to a blogging site, thought of a name, and wrote about the trials and tribulations of having an allotment. That blog must still exist - if I find it I will link to it here sometime (making the BIG assumption that anyone is at all interested). There are so many blogs. Between Tumbler, Wordpress and Blogger alone there are over 200 million blogs. That's a lot of reading.

Adventure Begins

The summer is here at last, and my wife has gained her 'year off', so it's time to do some serious travel planning. We have already booked a holiday in the Canaries, and a month exploring India. Also on the cards is a trip to northern Europe in our motor home. This may just be the beginning - we have quite a bit more time to fill up. I think that this will be the easy part.

We will be getting our shots soon, and will have to apply for the Indian visa a bit later in the year. My generation never had 'gap years' - so this is our chance to explore and gain new experiences. The weather in the UK is great at the moment, so that's not bad either. Perhaps that bodes well for the future :)

Mobile Blogging Using Android

Intending to spend some time travelling this year, decided to see how easy it is to be mobile and blog at the same  time. The answer is very easy - as this shows. Especially as I am using Swype for my Android phone. I can apparently send pictures as well. I'll try that in a minute.

I am using the Google blogging app. It's simple and seems to work well. I will have a look on the Web in a bit and see how this has come out. If it works ok, this could become a travel blog for a while :)  Now for a totally unrelated picture taken with the phone...

Bios Manufacturer Key Commands

Something that I need every so often is the correct key stroke needed to open up the BIOS on different computers. If I need it - so might someone else - so I thought I would post these here.

ALR Advanced Logic Research, Inc. ® PC / PCI F2
ALR PC non / PCI CTRL+ALT+ESC
AMD® (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.) BIOS F1
AMI (American Megatrends, Inc.) BIOS DEL
Award™ BIOS CTRL+ALT+ESC
Award BIOS DEL
DTK® (Datatech Enterprises Co.) BIOS ESC
Phoenix™ BIOS CTRL+ALT+ESC
Phoenix BIOS CTRL+ALT+S
Phoenix BIOS CTRL+ALT+INS
Acer® F1, F2, CTRL+ALT+ESC
AST® CTRL+ALT+ESC, CTRL+ALT+DEL
Compaq® 8700 F10
CompUSA® DEL
Cybermax® ESC
Dell® 400 F3
Dell 400 F1
Dell Dimension® F2 or DEL
Dell Inspiron® F2
Dell Latitude Fn+F1 (while booted)
Dell Latitude F2 (on boot)
Dell Optiplex DEL
Dell Optiplex F2
Dell Precision™ F2
eMachine™ DEL
Gateway® 2000 1440 F1
Gateway 2000 Solo™ F2
HP® (Hewlett-Packard) F1, F2
IBM® F1
IBM E-pro Laptop F2
IBM PS/2® CTRL+ALT+INS after CTRL+ALT+DEL
IBM Thinkpad® (newer) Windows: Programs-Thinkpad CFG.
Intel® Tangent DEL
Micron™ F1, F2, or DEL
Packard Bell® F1, F2, Del
Sony® VIAO F2
Sony VIAO F3
Tiger DEL
Toshiba® 335 CDS ESC
Toshiba Protege ESC
Toshiba Satellite 205 CDS F1
Toshiba Tecra F1 or ESC

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

An old TV aerial post on our chimney stack was moving quite a bit in the recent high winds. As the stack passes through our bedroom, it was noisy enough to keep my wife awake, and disturb me a fair bit. It was one of those things that I had been aware of for a while - but it got worse over last weekend.

On Monday I looked up local aerial companies and chose one who said he could come that day and fix it. His price seemed reasonable, so I booked him in. He arrived about two hours later and proceeded to take the aerial post down. All well and good. As I went to see how he was doing as he packed up he said that his hat had blown off in the wind (it was windy, and cold - trying to snow), and was on next doors roof. We had a look, and could see the hat.

I said that I had a long pole in the garage and would fetch it. Going to the garage I spotted the pole behind some furniture that we have stored there (another story), and reached for it - as I did this, I dislodged a spade which had been hanging on a nail in the wall. The spade fell heavily, and I moved it out of the way to reach the pole. We managed to get the hat, I paid the guy, all was well.

Today (Thursday) I was in the garage looking for something else when I noticed that a battery charger which I had charging a battery had no lights. I followed the extension lead into which it was plugged back to the wall socket. What I found was that the lead had been neatly chopped in two by the spade as it fell a few days before. Turning off the socket I removed the plug and rescued the lead - it came completely apart in may hand.

I worked out that if I fitted a new plug, the lead would still be long enough to serve the purpose for which I had been using it. Long story short - it took me another 20 minutes to find a plug and fit it, test the lead and refit it into it's place in the garage. The old plug was really old - so much so that it wasn't a safety plug and still had solid metal live and neutral pins - so I didn't want to use it again. As nearly all new appliances have moulded plugs I ended up cannibalising another, shorter, extension lead. 

The battery charger doesn't seem to work any more now. I can only assume that something else blew - but that bears further investigation. The RCD for the garage didn't blow in the main fusebox when the lead got chopped - which is a good thing because our freezer wouldn't like it much if it did.

If I hadn't tried to help the guy get his hat back.............

D3dx10_35.dll Missing

I recently had this error code rebuilding my computer after a hard drive problem. I had saved all my files - including some games - to another drive. Whilst trying to start one of the games this error appeared, and it was suggested that I might like to reinstall the game. 

What the error actually means is that I don't have part of the dynamic link library for Direct X 10 on my computer. This is fairly easily remedied, with no need to reinstall the game. If you get the update pack from Microsoft here, you can add the missing bits from previous versions of Windows - from 10 downwards. It's a 'one size fits all' update - so give it a go. It certainly worked for me.

DgiVecp Service Failed to Start

OK - I'm a bit techie, and am the sort of person who actually looks through the system logs on their computer. When I started getting the above message as an error in my system log with an event ID of 7000 I was a bit concerned - I don't like errors. This one was occurring more than once on a regular basis.

After some searching I found references on the web to this error - the problem is that the service to which it refers does not appear anywhere obvious. I had to resort to the registry (don't do this if you don't know what you are doing - messing with the registry is an instantaneous way of screwing  up your computer big time).

I found a reference to the solution given by Shain Wray of Microsoft PSS Security Team. It is as follows: 

1. Start the registry editor and find the following
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services
3. Look for an entry listed as DgiVecp
4. If you find this, then change the Start data value to 4.
5. Reboot the system and see if the message is gone.


This worked for me, so I thought that I would share it. Thanks Shain.