Adventures in technological wonderland

26. February 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: just thinking... · Tags: ,

Anyone else ever watch James Burke’s wonderful series “Connections” on PBS, or read the accompanying books?  Burke made grand entertainment out of the simple premise that because this happened, then that happened, and because that happened, something else happened, and lo and behold we ended up with something completely unrelated to the event that set the chain in motion.

Well, that’s what life has been like for me lately.  I think my motto ought to be “It’s a good thing I LIKE doing this stuff,” because so often I have simply had to out-stubborn something till it worked.  (Not to mention that it is also a very good thing that I like learning something new every day.)

So here’s a typical recent chain of connections.

On Twitter, I get into a casual discussion about Twitter apps.  Someone suggests a particular app, but it runs on equipment I don’t own.  I make a casual comment about not owning the equipment.  Another commenter offers me an older version of the item, which commenter recently replaced with a new one.  Ooo.  Lovely.

For whatever reason, however, the item never arrives.  I chalk it up to “Well, it was sure nice to think about while it lasted” and move on.

However, as I think it over, it is clear that yes, I actually did want the item, which is simply too expensive for me to go out and purchase new or even used on eBay.  There is, however, a lesser-featured similar item which does most of the same things and costs noticeably less.

I mull this over.  And realize I’ve had a small inheritance just sitting around gathering dust (and about dust’s worth of interest) for many years, and I could for once in my life quit being the Queen of Older Versions and treat myself to something shiny and new.  I spot the item on sale and I buy it.

In the course of checking out assorted Twitter apps, I idly browse to my blogs and my main web page.  Ye gods.  My main web page has been totally wiped out and replaced with the very first placeholder version I put there when I first established the domain.  I hustle to replace the page, but it won’t replace.  I then copy the code directly from my web page software and upload that and it still isn’t right–all the custom elements provided by the software are missing.

I go back to the software and browse for my theme and…  it’s gone.  I can only conclude that the theme was old and the company discontinued it.  None of my other web sites were affected.

I endure pointed (and absolutely correct) comments from my daughter about people who rely on web page software instead of writing their own HTML.  Knowing that my HTML skills are rudimentary at best (but enough to create a placeholder while I figure out what to do next) I still opt for web page software, but no more NetObjects Fusion, thank you very much.  Relying on good reviews on Amazon, a reasonable price and a rebate offer, I choose Serif WebPlus X4.

The software arrives and, be still my beating heart, actually contains a printed manual in the box!  I’m in love.  This is my kind of software no matter how well it might work.  :)   As it turns out, the software is easy to use, but the templates that come with it are nothing to write home about.  I therefore take my daughter’s advice and start creating my own page, using the software to ease the process along.

I have to create my own graphics, and in the process discover that the font I wanted to use, something I’ve had kicking around since the Windows for Workgroups days, crashes Photoshop Elements 4 like nobody’s business.

I discover that I don’t remember the ftp password to my site, and therefore have to go create a new one.  Then I discover that I’ve left one digit out of the username.  Then I discover I’m trying to upload to the wrong folder.  (See “It’s a good thing I LIKE doing this stuff,” above.)

Finally, the first working version of the new web page is in place.  It looks a lot better than the placeholder even though there is still obviously work to be done.  I have learned new software.  I have bought myself something shiny and new for the first time since I can’t remember when.

And it all started with a discussion about Twitter apps.

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.

one, two, free…

28. February 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: just thinking... · Tags: ,

Tom Terrific and Mighty Manfred

Tom Terrific used via Creative Commons license from the artist

I was, my mother always said, one of Captain Kangaroo’s first audience.    It’s probably true; we did have a TV in 1955 when we lived in a housing project somewhere near New York City while my dad worked on his Ph.D. at Columbia.  (I wish I knew where that place was–it’s the only childhood address I can’t remember, other than we were in apartment 3E.)  The TV most likely belonged to, or was on loan from, my dad’s parents, since it was one of those huge cabinet models with two front doors.

One of the features in the Captain Kangaroo show was a cartoon called Tom Terrific.  Tom Terrific could transform himself into anything, and he was almost always accompanied in his travels by Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog (who was a doggie doofus from the get-go).

I don’t remember a lot about those cartoons, but I do remember one in which an elephant who was supposed to remember everything, forgot the combination to a lock of some kind.  And it wasn’t till Tom said something about “being the one to free them” that the elephant realized that the combination was “one two three.”

All of this is by way of my musing that we modern-day folk have to remember a lot of combinations, with far worse mnemonics than the elephant got.  I personally don’t have much trouble remembering all my passwords, which is why I never write them down.  It’s not so easy for other members of the family, which is why I ended up having to unsnarl the bank web site today.

It’s not supposed to be safe to write down passwords–but if you can’t remember them, what else is there to do?  I know there is plenty of password-keeper software out there, but you still have to remember the password to the “lockbox” they create.  And if the password for that has to be easy to remember (or guess) then it’s not particularly safe.

I wonder if it’s a matter of brain chemistry or brain priorities that produce some people with the ability to remember just about everything, and others who fall into the “CRS” category without half trying?

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.

Teacher, teacher…

09. January 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: computer follies · Tags: , ,

It all seemed so easy.

I was going to clone the contents of my son’s hard drive to a new, larger hard drive, and then set him up with a newer computer. I have software that will deal with that. Or so I thought.

I got Maxtor MaxBlast with my newest hard drive, and it offered to let me upgrade to Acronis TrueImage at an attractive price. So I took them up on that. Unfortunately, I can’t install TrueImage because it’s an upgrade copy and it keeps asking me for the serial number of the previous version, and MaxBlast has no serial number. I emailed Acronis about this two days ago and have only got their form “we got your email” reply.

I tried using the MaxBlast software on the computer I was trying to refurbish, but it says it won’t run without a Maxtor or Seagate drive present. Um… there were three drives in the computer at the time–a WD, a Maxtor, and a Seagate. *BZZZT!*

It was all moot anyway, because my son’s original hard drive refused to be moved. If I tried it in the other computer it promptly lost its mind and I got all kinds of scary looking “missing boot device” messages on the Blue Screen of Death.

So I gave up and put everything back together in his room… and that’s when the fun started.

All of a sudden Windows 2000 was asking for a logon password when it never had before. My son didn’t remember his password. Logging in as Administrator did no good. So, OK, I’ll try running the Windows 2000 CD and see if I can repair the installation.

Uh…. now the BIOS wants a password too? Aiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeee!!! Sure am glad my son had long since left for work.

In the end, I took my own advice and learned a LOT of new things today. Like how to reset a CMOS password, which is something I already knew how to do in theory but had never tried. Till tonight. And how to get past a Windows password, too, although I haven’t actually done that yet. Oh my, the internet is my friend.

I think, all in all, I’m going to just let things be for the moment and tackle the rest of that project tomorrow. I love fiddling with computers but I’m not about to push my luck.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Stoichiometry

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.

Explore strange new worlds

22. December 2007 · Write a comment · Categories: commentary · Tags: ,

Table of contents for 10 Ways To Take A Stand Against Ignorance

  1. The ultimate question, the ultimate answer
  2. The ultimate stand against ignorance
  3. Who’s pulling your chain?
  4. Don’t be part of the choir, no matter who’s preaching
  5. Go to the source
  6. Check it out. Check everything out.
  7. Your own library
  8. Look at your world
  9. Break on through to the other side
  10. Explore strange new worlds
  11. Support knowledge expansion
  12. Introduction

There’s an old saying that goes “You learn something new every day.”

Unfortunately, a lot of us don’t learn anything new, for days, even years at a time. This makes us all not only ignorant, but complacently so.

Try making a point of learning something new every day. This doesn’t have to mean taking classes or going to a lot of exertion (although both might well be a good idea to meet the goal). It can be as simple as hearing the name of an unfamiliar place on the news, and looking that place up on a map. There, now you know something you didn’t know before. It can be as simple as finding a “word of the day” web site and checking it. The main idea is to make sure that every day, you acquire some kind of knowledge that you didn’t have the day before.

Learning something new can be as easy as changing channels. Many Sunday newspapers print TV listings for the week. Take the listings, and start looking at the channels you don’t ordinarily watch. Look for the ones that are full of educational content: PBS, History Channel, Discovery Channel, TLC, BBC America, National Geographic Channel… you get the idea. Find at least one show that would teach you something you didn’t already know. If it’s on at the same time as something you regularly watch, or at a time when it’s inconvenient for you to watch, record the show. Then, of course–make sure you make time to watch what you recorded.

Here are some suggestions, but I’m sure you can find plenty of others when you look.

PBS:

  • Nova
  • Nature
  • American Experience
  • Wired Science
  • Globe Trekker

Discovery Channel:

  • Planet Earth
  • How It’s Made
  • Mythbusters

Food Channel:

  • Unwrapped
  • The Secret Life of…

History Channel:

  • Modern Marvels (also on National Geographic Channel)
  • The Universe
  • Wild West Tech
  • Ancient Discoveries

National Geographic Channel:

  • Lost Worlds
  • Is It Real?
  • Naked Science
  • National Geographic Explorer
  • Science of…

TLC:

  • Little People, Big World
  • What Not To Wear
  • Clean Sweep

BBC America:

  • BBC World News

All those shows are designed to be both entertaining and informative. Learning something new doesn’t have to be a chore. Give it a try–make it a habit.

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.
Previous in series Next in series

Introduction

20. December 2007 · Write a comment · Categories: commentary · Tags: , ,

Table of contents for 10 Ways To Take A Stand Against Ignorance

  1. The ultimate question, the ultimate answer
  2. The ultimate stand against ignorance
  3. Who’s pulling your chain?
  4. Don’t be part of the choir, no matter who’s preaching
  5. Go to the source
  6. Check it out. Check everything out.
  7. Your own library
  8. Look at your world
  9. Break on through to the other side
  10. Explore strange new worlds
  11. Support knowledge expansion
  12. Introduction

We seem to live in an age that disdains learning. While this is nothing particularly new (heck, back in the stone age when I was in high school, the really popular kids weren’t always the smartest) it has become apparent that as new discoveries are made around the world, the powers-that-be in the USA are determined to look firmly backwards and resist the progress of knowledge as much as they can.

I’m not that old (no, really, I’m not) and I am dismayed to see us go from the age of Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and (so help me) Wernher von Braun, popularizers of learning all, to the age of George W. Bush and the “gentleman’s C” and the incurious mind.

All of us are ignorant. We can’t help it–there is too much to learn, too much to know, and no matter how much any one person may know on any given subject, guaranteed there is someone else out there who knows more.

But being ignorant is not the same thing as being stupid. There is no limit to the amount that an ignorant person can learn, if he or she refuses to remain ignorant–and, in many cases, has the courage to refuse to remain ignorant in the face of tremendous pressure to stick with the status quo.

The new year is coming, and what better resolution to make than to take a stand against ignorance in the new year? Taking a stand doesn’t need to mean manning the barricades as if it were the Revolution all over again. It just means that we as individuals can encourage the expansion of knowledge and the diminishing of ignorance, both within ourselves and in the world at large.

And it’s not difficult. In the coming series of messages I’ll talk about simple ways we all can take a stand.

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.
Previous in series

oh lordy, I’ve gone over to the dark side

21. February 2007 · 1 comment · Categories: family follies, personal foibles · Tags: ,

My kids qualify as iPod pioneers. They both got them when iPods were (a) new to the market and (b) ghastly expensive. Ever since, they’ve both been down my neck to get one for myself, which I stoutly resisted on the grounds of (a) I already had a portable CD player, a Walkman, and a Creative MuVo MP3 player that weren’t getting much use, and (b) see “ghastly expensive,” above.

Fie on Apple. They finally snagged me. Thanks to refurbished last-year’s stuff on sale at the Apple store, I now have a black 1gig nano, which arrived yesterday.

I had checked out iTunes a year or so ago and hadn’t been particularly impressed with it, although it did let me play some of Blinkie’s music through my computer via the shared-library feature, which was great when I was trying to write a parody of “I Will Survive” in honor of “Dirty Jobs.” (Turned out great, if I do say so myself. I’m going to start putting some of my song parodies up online somewhere so I can see if I still want to pat myself on the back for my literary skills, but that’s another story.)

The music I like best is the music of my youth, which was so long ago that the legal download services in general go “Say what?” when I try to put the titles into a search. (Oh, the joys of the long-departed original Napster, which eventually offered just about everything I went looking for.) When I checked out iTunes Way Back When, it was as devoid of Sixties oddities as everyone else.

However, when I installed it again yesterday and idly browsed through, I spotted things like “Dubuque Blues” and “Pandora’s Golden Heebie Jeebies” by the Association. Hmm, said I. Hmmm.

The login I created when I bought Vengeant his iPod (in honor of his making it through UCLA more or less in one piece) was still good. So I coughed up a credit card and clicked “Buy” a few times. Told myself I was setting a limit of ten bucks, though. And stuck to it.

I must admit I had to read the manual a couple times before I grasped the concept of iTunes’ playlists, but after that, importing the stuff I’d put on my MuVo was pretty easy.

Of course, I then had to run to Fry’s and buy a case, because shiny-shiny black and silver don’t go well with greasy fingerprints. I was hoping for crystal clear, so the shiny-shiny would show through, but I settled for matte black silicone, and now have something that looks like the monolith from “2001.” (Or, as Mad Magazine put it, “the box the United Nations building came in.”)

So here I am, typing away with the monolith around my neck, rocking out to “Come Dancing,” by the Kinks. I’m gonna have to look up how to do that equalize-volume thing, though. With ears like mine, sonic surprises are not a good idea.

I’m sure my kids will have plenty of comments, suggestion, and finger-pointing laughter at my expense in the days to come.

Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.