The 3400 BIOS doesn’t support PXE or USB boot… so I decided the quickest install method was to take the disk out and put it in a USB adapter connected to another machine. I wiped the disk, created a partition and configured grub to boot the debian installer. Linux install was straightforward. I’ll need to rebuild the XFree86 fpit driver to get the touchscreen working. My first attempt to do got a reaction from the mouse but was still rather broken.

4-Gang = Brush Chrome Faceplate 11.40 4 * 10A SP 2Way Push Switch 15.96 4-Gang grid mounting frame 1.52 2-Gang back box 0.75 29.63 (34.82 inc. VAT) 2-Gang = Brush Chrome Faceplate 5.95 2 * 10A SP 2Way Push Switch 7.98 2-Gang grid mounting frame 1.07 1-Gang back box 0.59 15.59 (18.32 inc. VAT)

Well, I was impressed first thing yesterday morning when Tim from TLC got back to me to confirm the price of the faceplates (probably only minutes after MK sales had opened!). I was even more impressed when he phoned after lunch today to say that the switches, backboxes, etc had arrived. Absolutely brilliant service - well done Tim and co - if they only sold all the other things we need for our new house I think my life would be much easier!

I’ve spent a few days looking at possibilities for automating window blinds. Here’s what I’d like to be able to do: Have all blinds in the house come down at dusk and go up after we’ve gone to work Have a blackout blind in our bedroom go up (behind curtains) in the summer to wake us up naturally (but not at 4:30 am as has been happening recently …), this needs the motor to be pretty quiet, don’t know if this is possible.

I don’t think we are alone in having trouble sourcing momentary switches that actually look good. Someone seems to have spread a rumour that people spending hundreds of pounds on X10 modules have no taste and like really ugly switches. Well, we’ve found two sources for nice switches. The first, we found when we got lost in London. Ideabright Ltd of 772-776 Fulham Road, SW6 5SJ, 020 7736 4014 sell Jung Switches.

Purchased four Fujitsu Stylistic 3400 tablet PCs from ebay. These should make good frontends. There is even a manual on the Fujitsu web site but I don’t suppose I’ll read it. Looking forward to trying to get Linux installed on them.