The waiting room at my kids’ Kumon school has free wi-fi, and many parents bring their laptops to pass the time. Yesterday there were one MacBook, one MacBook Air, three Dell Inspirons with work bar codes on them (lots of Dell employees in Austin, of course), and one Toshiba. I felt a bit old fashioned since I was just reading a book. On a related note, I did see someone reading from her Sony Reader at lunch. It was pretty neat.
Check out my muxtape at barron.muxtape.com! Hopefully muxtape will survive for a while before the legal eagles swoop in.
Following Randomguru’s lead, I added Gravatar support to my site comments. So, if you have a Gravatar, it will show up next to your comment. If you don’t have a Gravatar yet, you can sign up (free) at www.gravatar.com. Enjoy, won’t you?
One totally convenient thing in Vista is the way that it handles copying files. Specifically, if you are copying a file to a location that already has a file with the same name, Vista will ask you if you want to either “Copy and Replace” the file, “Don’t copy” the file, or “Copy, but keep both files”. You can also of course select Cancel. But the huge change is that there is now a checkbox that asks if you want use the same choice for the rest of the files pending copy (and it lets you know how many files are in conflict). This is so convenient for me when I am copying photos between camera and computer, or from computer to computer. For instance, I will copy several days’ worth of photos to the computer. But then I keep on taking photos with the camera for the next few days, without ever deleting the previous photos. When I next copy the pics from the camera to the computer, I can just select all of them, then select copy, and then choose the “Skip files” option with checkbox to do the same to the remaining files. In Windows XP, you had the option to Skip a file, but you couldn’t tell XP to do the same action for all duplicates in that batch. I actually searched (albeit not too hard) for a utility that would do this. So it was a pleasant surprise when I saw the new, improved Copy File dialog box pop up in Vista. All-in-all, Vista is a really nice OS. I am enjoying it quite a bit.
I’ve been reading (an enjoying) Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor Reviews and I like the way he names his computers. His newest is a Macbook Air which he named Khaos, the Greek goddess of air. It got me wanting to give names to my computers, of which I have three: my new HP desktop, my Dell laptop running Ubuntu, and my iBook. Long ago (mid 90’s) I named my mac that I had at work. I can’t remember what it was with 100% certainty, but I think it’s name was “Death Star”.
I like the names from Greek and Roman mythology a lot. I have decided to name the iBook “Echo”, but I don’t know what to name the other two. I am thinking maybe Medusa, Nemesis, or something along those lines. I just can’t decide. But it will certainly be more interesting that “Barron-Vista” and “Barron-Ubuntu”.
My new computer is in town! It’s on the truck out for delivery. Tonight I will probably be up pretty late setting it up and doing all the things that need to be done. It’s been a long time since I bought a new computer, but I think the process of transferring stuff to the new machine should go pretty easy. As for applications, I don’t have to install too much. Here’s my list:
As for documents, music, and photos, I have that all ready to go on the external hard drive. I use an IMAP server for my email, so syncing my mail will be easy. My Firefox favorites have been exported and attached to an email for quick import (I do this at least once a month). It should all go smoothly. The only wrinkle is that I will have to set up iTunes from scratch, including ratings and podcasts. But, that can’t be helped since that data was lost. Lastly, I hope I don’t get bad karma for not going with Dell!
My peripherals shouldn’t be a problem to setup. Drivers should be readily available for our scanner and printer. And I am assuming that file sharing should be a snap. The external hard drives should just plug right in. The computer comes with a wireless mouse and keyboard, which is pretty cool. I don’t really need the wireless keyboard since I use a keyboard drawer, but the mouse might be nice. I just hope it has the same amount of buttons (or more) as my current Logitech.
One thing I have been wondering about is where I should keep my data. I am leaning towards going with the Microsoft-preferred method and putting everything in the My Documents folder (and the appropriate subfolders). I used to put everything in a “Data” directory on a separate drive, and just use the c: drive for Windows and program files, but I am rethinking that now. The new computer comes with a 400GB drive, which should be plenty for everything. If I use it exclusively for program files, I will have a lot of unused space. I could repartition it and reinstall Windows, but I’d rather not go thru all that. I will eventually get another internal drive, since they are pretty cheap, and then I still have my external hard disks. I think I am going to use the externals exclusively as backups.
The new computer comes with Windows Vista installed, which I was not too thrilled about initially. I have heard so many bad things about Vista, but at least it comes with Vista Home Premium, and not the basic version. Now I am actually looking forward to using Vista. The computer should be beefy enough to run it smoothly, and SP1 should be here any day. If Vista is truly an OS that is lacking, I have confidence that Microsoft will keep improving it. I heard that XP won’t be supported for very much longer, so a switch to Vista is probably not a bad thing.
Next, I need to decide what to do with my old computer. As I mentioned before, I am leaning towards Ubuntu and a file server. But really, what would be the point of that, other than I could keep it running to serve files and I can turn off my new computer. Or I can just use my new computer as the file server and set the old computer as a media center. One idea is to hook it up via DVI-HDMI to the TV in the family room and use it to watch dorama. I’d just have to add a wireless card to it, and maybe use that wireless keyboard/mouse from the new computer. I guess I need to do some research on home media software for Ubuntu to make the UI look nice and slick. How fun!
Just a quick tip that might help someone who had the same problem as I had with updating Thunderbird. If you are getting an error installing or updating Thunderbird, and you cannot manually delete the file mozMapi32.dll from your computer, you might have to stop your Logitech Quickcam. Just quit it in the system tray, then the update/reninstall of Thunderbird should work.
The past couple weeks, my computers have been having issues. First, on my iBook, I am using an app called Snitter to post on Twitter. It’s been giving me a message each time I start it up that a new version is available, and asks if I want to download and install it. If I say yes, the app quits, the Adobe AIR installer starts the install, but then it never finishes. Actually, it looks like it finishes, and I don’t see an error, but when I fire up Snitter again, it gives me the same message about a new version. This past weekend I saw that there is a new version of AIR out, version 1.0. I figure I will just remove Snitter, then remove AIR, then download the newest versions of each and the problem would be solved. So I download the Adobe AIR Installer. However, when I double-click on the Installer, nothing happens. Then I try to copy the installer to the Applications folder, thinking that is the way to do it, but nothing happens if I double-click the installer, or try to launch the snitter.air file. So now I have no AIR, and no Snitter. I guess I will have to go back to Twitterific, which is nice, but lacks some features I like, for instance the ability to quickly reply to someone, and to filter by Replies or Direct Messages. If anyone has any ideas as two why I cannot install Adobe AIR, please let me know!
Secondly, my desktop computer’s hard disk is dying a sloooow death. More sectors are going bad day by day. My new quad-core supercomputer still hasn’t shipped, so I am keeping my old computer on life-support. One bad thing that I did lose, however, was my iTunes xml file. It must have been on a bad sector, because when I launched iTunes, it said some files were missing, then started up with a vanilla library. The xml files were reset. I am not sure what info I lost, but I am expecting that all my playlists are gone, as well as the ratings. I believe iTunes appends the comments field to the .mp3 files, so at least I can rebuild my smart playlists easily. But I fear that all my ratings are gone. I did backup my xml files in early February, but I think that was before I consolidated my library to an external hard disk. Also, I learned in the past that it’s generally not a good idea to manage music manually outside of iTunes. When I do get my new computer, iTunes should be pretty snappy, though, which will be something new to me.
I am still wondering what I should do with my old computer. I am thinking of installing Ubuntu onto it (it still has a secondary hard disk which is still solid) and using it as a torrent/file server. I can run it remotely using Ubuntu’s remote desktop, so I won’t need a monitor for it, which seems like a good solution. I thought about using it as a media computer, and hooking it up to our LCD tv, but the case is too big and it would be too loud to keep in the family room. A new smaller home theater case would be nice for the motherboard, but those cases are expensive!! I guess it’s just gonna be a Ubuntu machine.
Last night my desktop computer was seeming a bit pokey, so I decided to run chkdsk to see if anything was wrong. It required a reboot, at which point chkdsk started doing its thing. It found about 25 unreadable sectors on the boot up disk, and then went through the process of moving files, fixing files, and whatever else it does. This took about an hour, however it ended with a message “Unknown error occurred,” so I am not sure that it actually fixed anything. After the error message, it continued to boot up into Windows, but it was super-slow, with the disk access light constantly on, so I decided to run chkdsk again, then went to bed. This morning, it was still running, at the 22% mark. At least I think it was still running. It could have been locked up. So, I hit the restart button, then bypassed chkdsk and got into Windows. It was a little slow, but not too bad. Now I am copying any data files I have on that disk onto one of our externals. The only data I have on the bootup disk is whatever I dumped on the desktop, so the backup shouldn’t take very long (it was estimating 30 minutes when I left).
I guess I could just get a new hard drive to use as the boot up disk, but the problem is that I don’t know where I put my WindowsXP disc. The computer itself is getting long in the tooth, being about five years old. It’s a Pentium 4 2.4Ghz with 1GB of RAM. I am thinking that it might be time to just get a whole new rig, which means I can either buy a prefab box from Dell, or hit Fry’s/Newegg and build it myself. I am inclined to just get a basic Dell box, and buy a nice video card on my own. Of course I don’t want to spend much money, but since I tend to keep computers longer than the average computer nerd, I should probably get something near the top of the line. Luckily, I enjoy spec’ing out new hardware, so this should be a fun process. Reinstalling my programs, however, will be a pain, especially Adobe apps, since they are mostly upgraded versions.
