Category Archives: Pining for Tech

Tech related news and information.

Gateway drugged

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Shortly after upgrading WordPress to 2.0.3, I had a number of entries I wanted to write, but first I decided to reload my main desktop computer because it was periodically freezing on me. I wasn’t able to leave it on during the day to download files or leave a scheduled job to run because I couldn’t rely on it staying stable. Thinking Windows was the problem, I reinstalled. Naturally, 21% into formatting the harddrive, the computer freezes. It appears that Windows was in fact not the culprit. This means it was a hardware issue. Man down.
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Nerd Welfare

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[15:52] Brendan: i think ultimates proves that its getting too expensive to be a nerd nowadays
[15:53] Brendan: or atleast a nerd with varied interests
[15:53] Me: how do you figure?
[15:54] Brendan: i cant afford comics, anime, toys, science fitcion to level that i would really like to be at
[15:54] Me: that just means your not nerdy enough
[15:54] Me: bittorrent
[15:54] Me: its like nerd welfare
[15:54] Brendan: haha

The Penalty of Stability Part 4

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5 installs of Windows XP and service pack 2 later, I have returned the victor!

To make a long story short, it was the graphics card driver. I uninstalled it in safe mode restarted and it went right into Windows without so much as a pause. I’ve loaded up some of my applications including those necessary to get the Zen Vision up and working. I only meant to watch the first few seconds of the episode of Battlestar Galactica I loaded, but ended up watching all 45 minutes of it. I’ll post a review of the Zen player at another time, but needless to say I am pleased with it.

Now I can get some sleep and get back to work.

yay.

The Penalty of Stability Part 2

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To better the chance of success with the reload of my system, I am writing a ‘script’ of procedures for myself to follow. I have started with a fairly extensive list of the applications I use now that I would like to re-install in addition to a few other apps I am using to replace some I was unhappy with.

So here is my application install list so far to install on Windows XP:

The Penalty of Stability Part 1

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My big birthday/holidays gift for 2005 was a Creative Zen Vision. First, I would just like to say that this thing is one kick ass video player. Now that I have said that, I must now say that I only know this from watching the default videos on the player. Here’s why.

At first I thought I left the software at my parents house where I opened it first. It took me a day to realize I should check the cardboard cushion that the screen was resting on in the box. Sure enough, hiding underneath was the software, drivers, and manuals. First crisis averted.

I just loaded the drivers cd into my computer, eager to get everything up and running so I could watch the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica on this marvelous video player. To my shock and horror, the autorun software popped up saying that my version of Windows is not compatible with the Zen Vision. Feeling my irrational fury building, I checked the box. Sure enough under Minimum System Requirements it says ‘Microsoft Windows XP’. Yep thats right, no other operating system is listed. I am currently running Windows 2000. I’m running Windows 2000 because its stable. I know. You must be saying to yourself, “But Windows XP is stable and better,” and to this I will agree but only the latest version with the latest service pack. I add to that the amount of time I spend online and the all the crap I download. It can sometimes cause some instability in many systems and has on other boxes. Not this one though. This one has remained stable since its last upgrade, ridding itself of the plague called Windows Me (though ironically the only OS that ever ran my multimedia keyboard correctly). As the saying has always gone, if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it. Well, it ain’t broke, but I got a new toy I can’t play with, so it needs some fixin’.

I am sitting here migrating 80 GB of data from my harddrive to my server in preparation of a system wipe and reinstall to XP. I am less than excited about the thought of having to reinstall all these applications. On a side note, though, it will be nice to finally get remote desktop on here and I think I’m going to skip the Office re-install and instead opt for the OpenOffice.org suite and give it a run. No time like a reload to test new software.

Amazon Wishlist

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In my quest to make my wishlist more dynamic and easier to update, I had an epiphany in the middle of the day today at work.

Amazon has a lot of extra features that many people don’t even realize. My thought was that they may offer as RSS/XML style version of their wishlist. If this was the case, I could then use CSS to manipulate it and make it look like every other page on this site.

Sadly though, this is not an option in Amazon. Leaving me to still manually update this list as best I can.

XAMPP

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I had mentioned to one of the guys at work how I was trying to setup a testing region for this blog on my server at home last Thursday. I also said how I was having trouble getting everything setup properly. Right away he told me to check out XAMPP.

Here’s a brief description from their site:

Many people know from their own experience that it’s not easy to install an Apache web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start.

In all seriousness, it really was that easy. I’ve never had an installation for any type of server/database software as smooth, easy, and fast. Once it was installed, it has its own control panel that can start and stop each of the services, in addition to, I believe, a couple other things.

The installation itself took under 10 minutes and the setup for my testing region took maybe another 20 since all I needed to do was import my database and move my web folder to the server.

If your interested in playing with Apache webserver, PHP scripting, or MySQL databases, I highly recommend giving this a go.

Creative's New Contender

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Ah Creative. Just as I am starting to write a blog entry that completely slams you and your ineffective ability to market your products, you show us another nugget of gadget goodness.

I will share my complaints before I go into their latest offering.

Creative has some top notch, quality products in the portable audio market. They have declared war on Apple and it’s dominating market share.
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Yay Literacy!

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So this is the first post in a new category I’ve created. Gadget Fetishry. Pretty self-explanatory.

The most recent piece of gadget pr0n that has caught my attention is the Sony Librie EBR-1000EP.

Basically its an e-book reader. Fundamentally, its a device that will allow you to read texts, manuals, novels, manga, comics, etc., on screen so sharp and crisp that it will put many monitors to shame and has a weight equivalent to a lightweight book (300 g/10.6 ounces).

I believe it was released about a year ago exclusively in Japan, with no word on any type of international release. The device’s popularity has been steadily growing overseas. A group of Librie fans calling themselves the Librietarians have set out to make the Japanese device more useful through software developement and have released a firmware upgrade. Recently the MAKE:blog on MAKE Magazine‘s website posted an article on how to upgrade the firmware on the gadget to the new version released by the Librietarians. This basically upgrades the device to English since most of its user interface is in Japanese.

This upgrade fixes one of the largest cons to the device. That said, it still has its faults. The Librie reads a specific type of e-book standard that was created by Sony and a number of content publishers. This format renders the e-book useless after a two month period, more or less creating a rental type of system. This is unfortunate, but you can still read plain text files. Considering I have a number of books in just a text file format, this would still be useful. I’m sure it will only be a matter of time before the format of the e-book is broken and we’ll be able to read pdfs and files in other formats.

I would say the largest con of this device is its prohibitive cost. In my research of the device the prices range from US$419 and up. Even at this price its a still a tempting prospect considering the amount of time I commute and read on the subway.