The lab equipment is willing, but the post-doc is… skiving

When trying to diagnose why the lab computer was refusing to communicate with my magnetometer, I forgot to factor in one very important fact: the computer is running Windows, which can be a little quirky when it comes to dealing with peripherals. In my experience, it’s not so much ‘Plug and Play’, as ‘Plug, and Watch Everything Connected into Your Computer Conflict with Everything Else.’ As it turned out, the serial connection was using the same COM port as an internal modem, which was not actually plugged into anything and, and as far as I’m aware, never has been. I manually changed the port assignments, and now all is well in the shielded room.
Sadly, however, I’m not in a position to take advantage of this sudden functionality, because I’m leaving South Africa for a few weeks to visit the motherland – although my route back to the UK is hopefully going to incorporate a slight detour. A couple of things are scheduled to appear whilst I’m airborne, and I’m planning to blog both from my mystery destination and when I’m back home proper, but posting is likely to be a little slow until I return to Jo’burg in September.