Jul 08 2009

Bill Bailey, TVs & Hairdryers

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 2:51 am

I wanted to send some advice to Bill Bailey (see his twitter account here) re. his misbehaving television, but quickly realised that 140 characters (the limit for tweets) would not really provide enough space. So here is the post I’ve written for him and linked to in said tweet.
If you’re reading this on the front page, don’t click the link below to read any further, until you are sure you….

    Understand and comply with safe working practices with high voltage equipment.
    Do not have a warranty left on your television.
    There are no children, pets, other humans, farmyard animals or anything basically alive in the house at the time.
    Realise this procedure is described for educational purposes only, and should never be attempted in real life.
    Take full responsibility for your own actions.

If you have come to this post directly, please either match the conditions above, or promise to close your eyes until you’ve fumbled for the back button in your browser…
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Mar 27 2008

Hibernating A PC Automatically

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 1:10 pm

OK, so far today we have had two power cuts. The first woke me up, as the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) sounds an internal alarm when the electricity is cut. However, when I’m not around, or deeper in a sleep, the PC is automatically shutdown to prevent data loss or damage to sensitive electrical equipment that could result from the supply being simply cut off.
However, what I would prefer is for the computer to hibernate. This means the PC is shut down to the point that it does not require any further electricity, but all the contents of the RAM is stored on the hard drive. Theoretically, this should mean that when the power is restored, I can turn on the PC, and have the same programs, webpages etc. all opened up as they were prior to the power cut. Anyway, there is no -h switch for the command line shutdown command, so I had to do a little searching. If I enter %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState Hibernate into the program to be run after sixty seconds of no power, in the UPS configuration utility, the theory is that no data will be lost, and all should be fine. There are problems with some programs not being compatible with hibernation mode, but I’ll deal with those as they arise.
If you need more info, or specific guidance, leave me a message…

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