↓
 

Blasdale Home

The web home of Steve and Rosemary

  • Home
  • Picture albums
    • 2020s
      • 2020 Gallery
      • 2021 Gallery
    • 2010s
      • 2010 Gallery
      • 2011 Gallery
      • 2012 Gallery
      • 2013 Gallery
      • 2014 Gallery
      • 2015 Gallery
      • 2016 Gallery
      • 2017 Gallery
      • 2018 Gallery
      • 2019 Gallery
    • 2000s
      • 2000 Gallery
      • 2001 Gallery
      • 2002 Gallery
      • 2003 Gallery
      • 2004 Gallery
      • 2005 Gallery
      • 2006 Gallery
      • 2007 Gallery
      • 2008 Gallery
      • 2009 Gallery
    • 1990s
      • 1992 Gallery
      • 1993 Gallery
      • 1994 Gallery
      • 1995 Gallery
      • 1996 Gallery
      • 1997 Gallery
      • 1998 Gallery
      • 1999 Gallery
    • 1980s
    • 1970s
    • 1960s
  • Tag Cloud
  • Blog
  • Blasdale Genealogy
  • Cambridge
  • Grendon
  • Subscribe
Home→Categories Technology 1 2 >>

Category Archives: Technology

Technology, geeks, stuff

Post navigation

← Older posts
Dell Lattitude cooling

Dell Lattitude E6520

Blasdale Home Posted on October 28, 2019 by SteveFebruary 4, 2020

My Dell Lattitude E6520 is seven years old. Still running fine. I did change the hard disk drive to an SSD a while ago. This happened after a failed upgrade of Windows 10. I had been running Windows 10 for a year. One day it decided to update, and there started a loop. Update, fail, backout, update, fail, backout ……… A search on the Internet suggested a failing drive. Diagnostics showed some possible issues. Read more ….. I bought an SSD 512G drive and installed from scratch. Best thing I ever did. So fast, boot-up time almost instantaneous.

Anyway, a couple of years later I started to get warnings about the fan. Ignored these for a while, then one day almost burnt my hand on the laptop after it had been working hard. Took the back off, and realised there was a heat pipe taking the energy from a couple of hot spots, moving it to the fan. All this had to come out to get to the fan. Found the product number on the fan, MagLev MF60120V1. A quick google, eBay order and next day had a replacement fan. Quickly reassembled and now no warnings from the BIOS at startup, and I can hear the fan when the PC gets working hard.

Next update maybe a new battery. They are still on sale. The battery in my laptop is now less than 50% of its original capacity.

Reckon that has saved me a lot of money, there are still years of life left in the laptop. It would be nice to have a lighter, High Definition replacement though.

Posted in Technology | Tagged Dell, E6520, Lattitude | 3 Replies

Updated the default character set on mysql server to utf8mb4 💩

Blasdale Home Posted on March 26, 2017 by SteveMarch 13, 2020

I had to update the default character set  to utf8mb4 on my mysql server.  I was getting quite a few submissions on my tomcat hosted systems with emojies like the ? symbol being inserted.  These always failed with a database error.  Reading up about this it appears the utf8 support of mysql was for up to a 3 byte utf character.  Full support requires 4 bytes, and this was a late addition to mysql.

I dutifully converted the database, and tables to utf8mb4, running into issues with the referential integrity I use.  Database, tables and columns all converted, set the default client and mysql to utf8mb4 and problem solved.  I could now add the ? into the application.

Along came the boss, who now complained about all the capital As, with a hat on top, in this the blasdale.com blog.  Arrgh.  Yes in the blasdale database there were some latin1 tables from a really old install of wordpress.  So a conversion of this database and tables to utf8mb4 but still the capital A with a hat appeared.  More googling, yes I had UTF data stored into a latin1 column, so had to run some sql to convert the data. 

update wp_posts SET post_content=convert(cast(convert(post_content using  latin1) as binary) using utf8mb4);

In total I ran the following SQL statements on the server:

ALTER DATABASE blasdale_blog CHARACTER SET = utf8mb4 COLLATE = utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE wp_blc_filters CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_blc_links CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_blc_synch CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_commentmeta CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE wp_comments CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_email_list CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_email_list_config CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_email_list_future CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_hl_twitter_replies CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_hl_twitter_tweets CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_hl_twitter_users CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_links CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_ngg_album CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE wp_ngg_gallery CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_ngg_pictures CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE wp_options CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_postmeta CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_posts CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE wp_subscribe2 CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_term_relationships CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_term_taxonomy CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_termmeta CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_terms CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_usermeta CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_users CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfBadLeechers CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfBlockedIPLog CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfBlocks CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfBlocksAdv CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfConfig CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfCrawlers CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfFileMods CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfHits CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfHoover CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfIssues CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfKnownFileList CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfLeechers CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfLockedOut CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfLocs CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfLogins CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfNet404s CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfNotifications CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfReverseCache CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfSNIPCache CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfScanners CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfStatus CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfThrottleLog CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci; 
ALTER TABLE wp_wfVulnScanners CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

SELECT column_name,character_set_name FROM information_schema.`COLUMNS` 
WHERE table_schema = "blasdale_blog"
 AND table_name = "wp_hl_twitter_tweets";
 
create table wp_posts_bkp LIKE wp_posts; 
insert wp_posts_bkp select * from wp_posts;
 
update wp_posts SET post_content=convert(cast(convert(post_content using latin1) as binary) using utf8mb4);
update wp_posts SET post_title=convert(cast(convert(post_title using latin1) as binary) using utf8mb4);
update wp_posts SET post_content_filtered=convert(cast(convert(post_content_filtered using latin1) as binary) using utf8mb4);

I also updated the WordPress configuration to include utf8mb4 instead of utf8:

/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8mb4');

 

The problem was not caused by the initial conversion, but by the statements I had placed in the my,cnf configuration file which caused WordPress to assume all connections are utf8mb4.

[mysqld]
local-infile=0
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
character-set-client-handshake = FALSE
character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci


[client]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

[mysql]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

I think it is all working now, tomcat is happy and so is my WordPress install.   I do though have many tables in other databases which are only utf8.  I expect they will function unless someone tries to insert the 💩 into a page or post.  I expect I will get around to converting those databases,  should be straightforward…..

 

Posted in Technology | Tagged utf8, utf8mb4 | Leave a reply

Home Computer Problems

Blasdale Home Posted on February 8, 2017 by SteveFebruary 10, 2017

Last weekend the laptop, a many year old Dell E6520, decided it should update Windows 10 to the anniversary version (1607).  There was much churning of wheels.  The machine restarted and displayed a blue screen, with the wonderful words that an error had occurred.  There was an error message DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION.  It  restarted again, then went into recovery mode. There was a successful recovery to the old windows.  Phew! I still had an operable machine.  Of course in a few hours the whole process repeated.  The update was downloaded again, and then applied, and the DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION message appeared.  This went on time after time.  What was I to do?

Google suggested incompatible drivers and pointed to the screen drivers.  I removed the drivers and the update started. The drivers came back and the whole error appeared again.  Another suggestion  was the disk was failing, and I should run a CHKDSK /R /F.  CHKDSK was started. The progress steadily increased until it reached 14%.  At 14% it hung for several hours.  Again there was  someone on the interwebs who said if it hung there for a long time, it was because it was trying to recover bad disk segments and therefore you had a problem.

The Solution

Gambling time had come.  Buy a new disk drive, and while we were at it, buy a solid disk, a Samsung SSD 850 EVO.   Amazon delivered next day. I replaced the disk drive in minutes. I then downloaded Windows 10 onto a stick and booted the laptop from the stick.  Yes it recognised the new drive, and yes it also recognised the laptop so I had a licensed machine.   I also no longer had all the Dell crap bloatware anymore.

The installation media was pre 1607 version, so fingers crossed while Windows updated itself.  This time no problems and now we are all up to date, and a FAST running machine.

The machine now is rejuvenated.  The solid state disk, boots in seconds and is operable immediately after I login.  Previously the machine took 10 minutes to become usable, because there was so much disk I/O from Dropbox indexing the files to find out what was had changed. Startup time was unacceptable.

Now its back to reinstalling applications, and recovering the data from the cloud.  Thankfully, with my FTTP connection this was quite fast.

Posted in Technology | Tagged Dell, DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION, E6520, Windows | 1 Reply

WordPress 4.4 Installed

Blasdale Home Posted on December 13, 2015 by SteveFebruary 8, 2020

Successful upgrade to WordPress 4.4

Posted in Technology | Tagged Wprdpress | Leave a reply

Land Rover Defender

Blasdale Home Posted on October 1, 2015 by SteveNovember 12, 2020

imageWednesday a group of us went to Land Rover Solihull factory to have a look around the factory and see the last of the Land Rover Defenders coming off the production line. We started the day at a nearby pub for lunch, then arrived at the factory at 1.00 for the Land Rover Experience day.

First we saw the body shop where the components of the body are manufactured and were put together ready for painting. This seemed quite a manual process, with the occasional robot doing a spot of welding.

We missed seeing the paint shop, apparently not practical for a tour.

The next stop was the production line, where the chassis, wheels, transmission, engine all met with the body. It all was a complicated process as each Defender is made to order, and there are many variations in body and style. Apparently around 110 Defenders are manufactured per day.

We were taken around by an Australian, and predictably were not allowed to take photographs. It was a fabulous day out, seeing the last of a great British iconic vehicle coming to the end of its life. What will its replacement be like? Did you know the biggest export market is Germany, and that a door made for today’s vehicle can be fitted to a 25 year old Land Rover? The factory building where the vehicles are assembled in are the same buildings as Maurice Wilks used when he started building Land Rovers after the war.

Posted in Technology | Tagged Car Manufacturing, Defender, Land Rover | Leave a reply

Post navigation

← Older posts
©2023 - Blasdale Home Privacy Policy
↑