Bank Holiday Weekend

Had a fairly uneventful Bank Holiday weekend.

I was in work on Saturday night, applying datafixes to the system. This was only a four hour job so I was home by 20:30.

Much of the rest of our time was taken up with more Macfoolery:
1) Setting up NeoOffice. This is free open source software based on OpenOffice, but with more regular improvements targeted specifically for the Mac.
I use OpenOffice for Windows and find it perfectly adequate for my needs.
Novelist Supermum is a more demanding user however, and was unhappy with the way it tracked changes, comments and notes. She's ordered a copy of Word for Mac.
2) During trying out the above we discovered that:
There is no DEL key on the Mac. Solution - Use Fn Backspace.
There is no right mouseclick on the Mac (we did know this, obviously as there's only a single mouse button. We didn't know how to obtain the equivalent functionality in an application). Solution - Use Ctrl Mouseclick.
3) Seeking out, downloading and installing the latest printer drivers for our ageing HP psc 750 printer/scanner. Printer is still stuttering and stopping. Need to understand how to access and troubleshoot the printer queues in Mac OS X. Perhaps I should just get down to the Unix shell and use lpstat?

Sister phoned me on Sunday to check that I'd got the Birthday card she sent me earlier in the week and for a general chat. Chatted for half an hour, but was cut short by having to deal with Samwise who had gone to the toilet in his underpants (He's still got L plates when it comes to remembering that he's no longer in nappies - but he's getting there).

Entertained the hobbits with two trips to the Aztec play area.

We bought Spiderman 2 on DVD, and then sought out a copy of Spiderman 1. Looped through both a couple of times - the hobbits were only really interested in the action sequences. Samwise liked "The Green Gobbler Upper" - he refused to say "Goblin" for a while. Frodo's favourite bad guy is Dr Octopus - I got grabbed by pretend robotic arms a few times afterwards.

Typical Bank Holiday weather on Monday. First of all a hailstorm. Later a downpour with a single flash of lightning and a rumble of thunder.

Blogging before bed. Back to work tomorrow. It's half term, so I'm going in early so that I can get back sooner to assist with unruly children.

Apple Mac Airport Extreme Wireless => Inventel Livebox Orange ( Wanadoo ). WEP Key Problem and Solution.

Novelist Supermum has invested her book royalties in alien technology. Therefore I'm rapidly gaining experience as an alien technologist whilst we set the glowing white device up with everything she needs.

Some advice for getting an Apple MacBook fitted with an Airport Extreme wireless card to connect to an Inventel Livebox wireless broadband router (as supplied by Orange, formerly Wanadoo).

Here's the Orange help for this type of connection.

At the point where it says type your WEP key into the 'Password field' - your AirPort password is your WEP key which you'll find on a sticker on the base of your Livebox)

I found that I was getting connection errors.

The solution was to simply place a $ sign at the start of the WEP key in the Password field !!!!

I dredged this arcane advice from a forum on the 'net, but can't for the life of me remember which one to acknowledge this.

The reason behind this is that the livebox is expecting a hexadecimal WEP key (as is printed on the livebox) whereas the Apple Mack Airport software / card is using a decimal key. Putting the $ sign in front of the WEP key in the password field tells it that a hexadecimal key has been entered.

All working fine now.