Nirmal Jayasinghe

nirmaljayasinghe.wordpress.com, in the eye of Websites as Graphs.

Looks like it’s badu banis for my Canon A430. Actually my dad’s or else probably I’d have it fixed by now (“Now, Mr Canon, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way, or the medium way, or the semi-easy-medium-hard..”). Did some research on the Internet and it seems a common problem with similar Canon units. There’s an entire website dedicated for that error. It’s the ubiquitous lens error problem. Your lens simply won’t retract. It is stuck out, like.. You cannot turn it on either. With a series of quick beeps comes the black and white error message saying ‘lens error: please restart the camera‘ only it doesn’t go away no matter how many restarts you try. This first happened on campus reunion day but then a bit of fumbling around worked and it got itself right. But this time it seems here to stay.

There are few tips I’d like to try today including checking whether the lens assembly is out of alignment and snapping it back if it is, blowing compressed air around lens assembly, banging the camera [with one of the rubbery parts down] on the desk, battery removal etc. Actually i tried the banging and battery tricks but it might worth a try. Anyway I was never very happy with A430. It’s a bit slow and cumbersome, and a wee bit too sensitive when it comes to this example. I’d prefer a bit ruggedized one. Actually for all these years of consumer electronics usage never have I come across a problem not solved by a good bang esp. in a product this new. Bought it overseas so warranty might not apply but anyways I’ve a hunch to herd it to Canon if this doesn’t work.

Anyone who came across this and found a solution?

This is the desktop, funked up a little bit using rusty GNOME icons and Floating Leaves background. It’s Edubuntu. Wanted Kubuntu but ended up having not enough memory to run the live CD So got this, but great. While my XP partition complains and throws memory requests out all the time and even starts up with a “Virtual Memory Minimum Too Low” moan, edubuntu just hums along with several heavy apps like OpenOffice, GIMP, Firefox and all the while playing “My Love” on Totem. It too kinda groans under heavy strain, but other than badly made PowerPoint and the OGG-only player [I'm fighting a battle to install VLC], I’d happily spend the whole night with it.

Last night again had a fight with XAMPP-Linux. The installation goes without a hitch but never starts up properly. http://localhost, well, “Firefox cannot establish a connection to the..“. No error, but I’ve a hunch Apache never woke up there (I’m including a copy of logs here). Ohh.. I’m even kinda tired of this.Times were like I couldn’t live without it, but now stuff is like all the day I work on it and at home I don’t have an installation to have fun. Even our school labs’ve got XAMPP-Linux. I even tried mailing the creator but not much help. Grr..

So I’m hoppin’ around python these days. It’s kinda nice. Who needs PHP and Apache anyway? Well this is only til I get it sorted out. Afterwards, hehe, well let’s see..

Hell wie der lichte Tag by Lars Trebing

Looks like I’ve been tagged. Oh great. Does this mean I have to reveal seven random facts about me? Only 30minutes left of the workday but I cannot spend time on this at home. OK here goes:

01. Rushes home to watch Nickelodeon.
02. Working out is my life, to quote SpongeBob.
03. Waiting, waiting and waiting.. (ohh..)
04. Tasted flight once, and now walks the Earth with face turned skyward!
05. Loves cricket. Match this evening, boys?
06. Likes to sit on a dusty disused bathroom floor wondering about stuff on a clear Saturday morning, when everyone else is out (with morning sun sketching patterns on dust).
07. ‘I Love Web Engineering!’

Hope this is it. Tara, boys!