• Category Archives Computers

  • Imagine a life with no computers……ahhhh……bliss…..

  • 10.5 hours latter, and we are back on the interwebs

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Power was out a little longer than they said it would be…. But that’s Ok, the Southern Edison trucks are still out around the streets and they have a few pits open, so clearly things did not go like they expected or planed.. I have had a few days like that, so who am I to complain?
    UPS held things up for about 40 min, so I am happy with that. Once we get a house I plan on getting the solar panels up and run the computer off them using the UPS. Was the plan in Buninyong, it still is the plan (that’s if the HOA (Home Owners Association) will let me put them up…. don’t get me started!).

    Rain forecast for tomorrow afternoon / evening and we have a training group in, so life is busy.

    Edit: Oh, and Gary…. The computer booted right up, and if I was you, given the amounts of electricity you are using, I would not be making jokes about MY momentary lack of electricity!!


    Computers Life in the USA

  • 2:1 = ‘cant’ live without it.

    Posted on by beno Comment

    I have about 70 applications on ‘my’ (technically, it belongs to work, they are letting me borrow it while I work on all this web stuff) iTouch…….. Of those, about 37 need the web to even function.
    What does this mean? It means, when you don’t have the web, there is not much to do with it.
    Same thing with my laptop, when you don’t have the web, its pretty much a dead weight.
    All of this came about when we arrived in Sydney and the motel seemed not to have Internet access. (There was no mention of it on their web site nor in the room). It was not looking good to get much done. It was amazing how isolated I was feeling. No constant email, no news, no blog updates, no twitter, no work websites…. on and on it went. I know I have built my life around the net, but it really surprised me just how much so.

    Thankfully we found (by using the itouch to look for open access points) that there was a motel log on web page, so we asked about and found for a pretty reasonable price (remember, Australia has not come to all you can eat internet for a flat rate yet) we could get internet access.
    Turns out, its not real quick and they have a bunch of ports locked down, but, hey, we are on the net and for that I am very grateful.

    Moral of the story? There is none. We all know how much I ‘live’, work and depend on the net. I’m a geek, its what I do. I was just surprised how much so. I guess, when I stop and blog about it, I have net at work and net at home, and they are the only two places I spend most of my time. For the past two years I have been constantly surrounded by the fog of the WWW.

    Huh, who  knew??


    Computers

  • Crash goes my web site, crash crash crash….

    Posted on by beno 1 Comment

    Its like this….. My third hand 5+ year old computer has power issues and locks up now and then. Never now, and always then, well, sometimes…..

    Anyway, point is, when it does, my whole web site (geek hint, that includes this blog), goes down, as in, ‘the web site you are looking for is not there’.
    Yeah, its a hassle, yeah, I’m flattered that you miss me when I am gone, no, complaining about it is not going to help and no, I am not sure when I am going to fix it.

    See, the problem is, its not just any old computer, its an old computer, and I have parts in this one that will not work on a new computer, so I cant just dash off to Fry’s and buy a new one and get back up and running faster and stronger than ever before. So, I need to look for another old computer, one that does not have issues…. But not just any old computer, if I am going to spend the time changing everything over, I want to make sure its a bit of an upgrade to make it worth my not inconsiderable time to do the do….. No point doing all that for a computer that runs slower than the one I have…. wait, the one I have locks up and does not run at all….. blah! You know what I mean.

    In the mean time. If you hit the site and its down, a POLITE email (Gary) would be really helpful as I can then let Freddy know and she can reset it.

    Thanks and Chow.


    Computers

  • Busy times.

    Posted on by beno 1 Comment

    Its been a little quite on the blog front, most of you regular readers know that means its been a busy time in other areas for me.
    I guess it goes with out saying that its busy at work. The amount of ‘business’ thats done in this country is staggering. I am told that the current economic climate is rather bad, more so in other parts of the country than here. Its one thing that I really don’t like, I have such a small view of whats happening in this country. While we are the same (roughly) physical size here as Australia, given the shear number of people its so much harder to really keep up with current events over here. You end up just looking at whats happening in your state which has more people in it than all of Australia. It does not give you a true view of whats happening….. wow, thats a long way to say that from where I sit, business is booming and the amount of work that is to be done is staggering.
    I have been busy putting together a small Linux computer to run as a web server, data base and interface to our controllers. We have been getting it together for a demo that happens in Washington DC next week (if we get it ready in time). We have some exciting opportunities opening up on the East coast that might spread over the whole nation.
    Of course all this is on top of the usual phone calls and resulting emails that come in day to day.
    I have been putting in some pretty solid hours and then coming home, having dinner and then logging on and doing a few more hours. Even programing on Sundays has slipped in here and there too.
    I am still finding myself surprised as to the odd skill set that I have managed to put together over the years. Its interesting to (try and find the time) stop and reflect on what events happen years ago that caused me to take the time to learn each of those skills. At the time, they were just a means to an end, they did not seem to have a big picture or future to them. It is also interesting to reflect on how I never would have thought that those skills would be drawn on over here. No one is irreplaceable, but its just so convenient having certain combinations of abilities in one mind, you don’t need to have meetings to coordinate different people.
    In the same vain, I am getting frustrated with chunks of my ‘old’ life in the garage. I don’t think I am ever going to get back to tinkering with all the little projects I started in Australia. I feel I am using my skills in a different way and the stuff in the garage is just ‘noise’. I would like to have a sale and clean it out, rather dramatically if I could.
    Its not going to happen anytime soon, I just don’t have time to arrange it, but the longer it sits there, the more frustrated I get with it.

    For the past 2 weeks I have a really solid head cold as well. Its left me with a very raspy voice an really annoying cough. The cough has got to the point where it starting to hurt my back and chest. I’m just sore and tired. That’s a good reason just there to not be sitting at the blog.

    In other news, I found a moment to install Google Chrome web browser on my Linux computer…….. I am totally shocked as to how fast it is. I have not had time to do some background research as to why it is so fast, its like I have turbo charged my internet connection, which of course I have not, but its like something has happen to make my computer and Internet so much faster. It really is a significant boost in speed. I have been using Chrome at work on my XP computer because its faster and more stable than FireFox, but after seeing it on Linux, I am thinking about getting an old 2nd hand computer, putting Linux on it and taking it to work to just use as my web browsing PC. I spend so much time on the web searching for information that if I speed up my browsing it would be a solid boost in my throughput. It really is that much faster. Its only been about 5-6 days since I have done it, but so far its been very stable. I will need to give it some more time, but there are no reports on the web about stability issues…. and there are plenty of reports of the speed boost, so at this stage it seems to be a keeper.
    I know that not every one runs Linux, and I know that you have to dig around a little to get the right version of Chrome to install, but if you do and you have the skill set, I HIGHLY recommend giving it a go….. Have I mentioned how blazingly fast it is?

    So, not much of a blog entry really, I just have not had time to do much of anything that most of you would find interesting…. I would love to go into depth on the technical side of what we have been doing at work but am mindful that its probably about as interesting to you all as reading food ingredients in Spanish is for me……. Be grateful that I spared you!


    Computers Life in the USA

  • Am I really that old?

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Had a fun Sunday lunch this past week…. We were sitting around the table woofing down some of Freddys corn fritters (recipe from my Mum (hard to believe that shes been gone 15 years next month)) chatting about I forget what when the topic turned to how my kids do not know a world with out the Internet.
    This lead to me reminiscing (right there should be a tip that I am getting really old!) to what my teenage years were like, computer wise.
    It came to me how we used to save our computer programs and so I explained it to the family… I think Terry just about wet his pants he was laughing that much that he was crying… All because I was running him through the process of saving your programs onto audio cassette via a standard cassette player.
    I bought on more tears and laughter when I told them about how much I loved the Dick Smith System 80 computer because it had the tape deck built in.
    He then totally lost control when I explained how you had to have a scrap piece of paper beside the computer that had the tape numbers on them and then the tape counters for each program. That way you could select the program you wanted from the tape, and then fast forward to the tape counter, type in ‘Load’ then press play on the deck. It was how we did it, there was no other way for guys like me at the time.
    I also fondly remember the Microbee computer I had, and the Computer In A Book. I started out with a cassette deck and was pretty excited when we got a single sided 420kb floppy drive for it. I think our first printer was a huge band printer that I saved from the scrap heap somewhere.
    About here is where we stopped, I think Terry would have exploded if we had kept going. We then tried to imagine him going back in time to show me his itouch when I was his age…. we then talked about how PDA’s were not even a thought then, and finding your music on anything other than cassette or LP would just not have been understood.

    It was an interesting lunch to reflect back to when I was my sons age and talk the differences in life for the two of us.
    Its sad in some ways that he does not know times like that, I am unsure that todays ipods are going to be remembered so warmly and affectionately, only time will tell, just like it did with me I guess.


    Computers Life in the USA