3rd
September
2007
In my life as a Windows user, I’ve learned that sometimes there will be problems. Not every day, because that would certify me as a masochist. Still, even with caution and safety harnesses and protective software up the yin-yang, there will be stormy moments. I’ve spent two evenings doing battle with a trojan/spyware infestation, and it meant that this was not a labour-free weekend.
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posted in computing |
30th
May
2007
Even though I didn’t have the spare change this week to attend the D5 conference down in San Diego, some nice people did point out some of the salient details from today, and I’m impressed by what the future holds for me. In fact, back about five years ago, when Minority Report was released, I thought that science fiction had a certain cool factor going for it. Now, I believe that certain objects may be closer than they appear. Forget the substance plot. Focus on the interface.
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posted in computing |
26th
April
2007
In the world of the blog, we sometimes get so self-absorbed in our writing that we forget that we are simply emulators of a model that the world calls the “newspaper”. Especially since we don’t always have to present news, and our editorial direction is ours. But in the real world, newspapers do exist, do have to fight for readership and do have to live in a world where the dollar rules supreme.
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posted in economy |
25th
August
2006
Ah, technology. Loved and needed, rarely abandoned unless something “better” stumbles into view.
Tonight, I had a request to find a lost file, so after making sure that the missing wasn’t misplaced, I went and brought our Backup-Drive into view…
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posted in technology |
13th
July
2006
Synchronicity. Not just an album by the Police, or a term from a long since over psychology lecture. Rather, a moment when a number of people arrive at the same moment with the same idea. No, silly, not when the train comes in.
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posted in computing |
29th
April
2006
I just “won” my first one cent auction on eBay. Now, nothing costs a penny; the shipping is for 700 percent of the amount, but not to quibble. The site had a very good explanation of what S&H stood for; I quote:
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posted in economy |
5th
January
2006
Today was a maintenance day for software. Microsoft released their version of a patch for the WMF hole, which seems to work. New versions of MediaWiki (1.5.4) and MySQL (5.0.18) are now running and nothing has mysteriously stopped. I even was able to Google my way to resolving an obscure problem involving “php and mb_string”, which might have had some unexpected effect sometime, somewhere, in a galaxy near you.
The whole problem for a person trying to maintain a test server is that you can’t be sure what update will send you back to square one. I had to rewrite my Wiki data from start after one such session. I don’t know how to back up this blog, so it lives a similar, ephemeral existence…
posted in computing |