Saturday - One interesting thing about
the old Sony laptop (ca. 2004) is that it handles streaming video much
better that the newer HP Pavilion (ca. 2009). I wonder, is it hardware
- quality components and design, or software - Xp versus Vista? It's
quite striking.
I've downloaded Fedora 17, I'll install that on the old desktop instead
of Mint 13, and see if I have better luck. It may be the hardware -
I've had issues with Win2k, Mint and Ubuntu on this box from time to
time. Mostly revolving around USB insertion/deletion. Why this would
affect the hard drive address, the wireless connection, and so on it
hard to say, and it's not really worth trying to research forums for
old hardware to find out. If I can't get it to work I'll probably go
get a Win8 laptop, I need some sort of windows for work and the old
laptop, good as it it, is pushing 10 years old and can't be relied upon
not to die at any time.
Since both the efforts that require windows hardware haven't actually materialized I'll wait on that...
A friend called from San Diego, her mother's laptop had a
semi-blue-screen-of-death, but I talked her through a safe-mode reboot
and that seemed to fix things. It involved removing the battery - it
may be that the laptop battery was dead, dead, dead, and that the
system was trying hard to charge it and didn't have enough power left
over to run system.
I sent her a spreadsheet of my takeaway from her notes on the iPad app,
and some artwork. I believe her mother the art professor was probably
amused by 'louvre.zip'. A man's got to know his limitations, and I'm no
artist, but I needed something to try out random vs. sequential options in the program I'm writing.
Regarding that : An interesting thing I discovered (the hard way, by
trial and error) is that if you are making transparent gif's to overlay
on a background it's best to start with a single piece of
artwork, then select the bits you want to make transparent, and save
them as individual images, then save the final 'background' without
them. I guess it's some sort of palette thing, but it was driving me
crazy for a while, sometimes stuff would be transparent and sometimes
it wouldn't be, even following the exact same toolchain and
options.
I also went out and got a new Droid, the "Stellar". It's about the same
size screen as the old one, not the current mini-tablet size, and
doesn't have a keyboard (that I never used) so it's quite a bit
lighter. It's also running 4.0, so that's an improvement. So far no
problems. I was thinking about the iPhone, but they had none in stock,
not the new one and not the older 4S, and I pretty much needed a phone
right away. I also changed my plan - fewer minutes, more texting, and a
2GB data cap but the phone is also a (legal) hotspot which is
nice. I should save $20 or more a month. Given that I used 66
minutes and 300MB last month the 'unlimited' plan was overkill.
Friday
9
November
2012
Friday
- After a lot of fooling about I got the old Sony laptop to work. I had
forgotten that the built-in wireless had failed. Once I used an
external USB antenna it connected up just fine ... and immediately
decided to download boatloads of Windows updates and Anti-virus
updates. To the point where the hard drive was full. So I stopped what
I was doing, pulled a lot of stuff off onto an external drive, deleted
a bunch of other stuff, then restarted.
Eventually that was all done (hours of work) and I was able to download and view the
final revisions of the demolition project that Tim had sent.
And I have PSP available again, for as long as this machine lasts. I'm
feeling a bit snakebit. I did go and look at new machines, but they are
all Windows 8 and I have, as I mentioned, way too much completely new
stuff to digest to add that
into the mix!
It's raining and hailing.
Thursday 8 November2012
Thursday
- Update: 9/Nov. Went
down to Ventura. I met with Tim and Chris and we reviewed the Plans and
Specs for the demolition one last time. The boss was a no show - no
check for me.
I had intended to stay a few days and work on the boat, but the
miserable weather impelled me to just head home again. It rained all
the way home, and they are predicting rain and snow tonight and
tomorrow.
My phone has gotten so bad that people have started hanging up on me.
So, new droid or iphone? Verizon or AT&T? The reviews on Yelp of the local phone stores for each are all one and two star.
Wednesday 7 November 2012
Wednesday
- Update: 9/Nov. Working
away on the Xcode stuff. It's brutal, but I'm making progress.
Tuesday 6 November 2012
Tuesday
- Update: 9/Nov. Election
Day. Well, that could have gone better.
Monday 5 November 2012
Monday
- Update: 9/Nov.
I was going to use the Mint 13 desktop, but it decided not to connect
to the internet any more. At first it was just the wireless connection
to 'coronado', then as I tried to get it working more and more of the
network connectivity stuff - all hidden from the user now, like Windows
or OSX - started failing, until it claimed there was no network at all.
I was also trying to run Paint Shop Pro under Wine, with dismal
results. After install of WINE, then install of PSP under that, it
worked OK - once. Then it claimed that the executables - which I could
see - didn't exist. So much for using that. Not that, without internet,
it would have done me much good. I don't do a lot of graphics, but I'm
familiar with PSP which I bought ca. 2001, and am (again) not eager to
try to learn something new at the same nice as C++, Cocoa and Xcode :-(
Sunday 4 November 2012
Sunday
- Update: 9/Nov.
It seems that HP Pavilion laptops have a design flaw where the graphics
card eventually overheats and fails. The forums suggest this takes 18
to24 months, which puts it outside HP's warranty period. This laptop is
much older than that, but has only been used as the main machine for
the last year or so, so I guess it was due. The sad thing is that it is
probably booting and running just fine, it's the embedded graphics that
has died. Oh well. I did a backup in late October, so only a couple of
weeks were lost. Possibly I can pull the hard drive and put it into an
external chassis and recover even that stuff.
Or I could spend a few hundred bucks and buy a new laptop. Or try to
use the Mac laptop. Which is probably the smart thing, but it's hard to
face - Macs do everything ass backwards so even without trying it I
know it'll be a struggle.
Nice warm weather.
Picture of
the Week Photo Notes: Riley
and Cactus No. 2, 2012.
