Technically Speaking

Picture this

Sorry about the long gap between posts. I've been busy getting my new boardgame 'Land Dreadnoughts' into shape. Without the use of a PC I have no idea how I would have done this. It amazes me to remember the early dark ages of wargame design when everything was done by mechanical assistance; no word-processors or desktop publishing software then. Now, when I make a change to the counters or rules, it's a sinple matter to make the adjustments and move on, all within seconds. I'm not a great whiz in the art department, so that my use of MS-Paint for my counters may seem a little silly for the more experienced artists out there, but it works for me. I will transfer my counter art to Adobe Acrobat when I work out how to do it. Other than that, Word is a perfectly good program for creating the rules and all of the combat tables I need - I must say that I do prefer the older versions of Word - the newest one doesn't seem as intuitive to me.

What all this shows, is that there is no right way or wrong way to do what you need to do on your PC - just what works for you. Sure, there are others that will just laugh at the way I do what I do, but I don't care - I get where I want to - eventually. As an example of 'what works', I used to create my new or replacement game pieces in Paint and then resize and print them through Photoshop. The results were not always what I expected or were rather poor quality. What a twit I was - I Just needed to correctly use the settings in Paint and now my counters look just perfect. I suppose, like any man, I hate reading instructions. The picture above shows the artwork for the Dreadnoughts themselves - what do you think?

Touch me, feel me!

Still playing with my new iPod Touch and finding out it's little tricks and the neat things it can do. Other than loading up with my music collection and downloading various games and applications (Jailbroken? I'm not telling you!), I've been surfing the 'net, checking out YouTube and navigating around the World, I've also been looking at all the accessories available. I found a nice acrylic case for the thing but found that I'm useless at placing a screen protector - where does the damn dust and grit come from? I needed some cheap headphones and found Radio Shack just right for that simple thing. I was looking at the various external speaker solutions, but didn't really need another boombox, just a simple and inexpensive solution would do.

Good old RedFlagDeals.com and Walmart came to the rescue with this little beauty. For the money, I am quite impressed. The simple benefits of ultra portable and requiring no batteries or power cables are perfect when teamed with the portability of the iPod. The sound quality? Well, it's not what you would call great, but it's quite adequate and actually reasonable considering the size and price. There is a stereo version available, but I don't think that it would be worth the $60 that is being asked for it. The only downside to having this iPod to play with is that my aging eyes have a hard time coping with the small screen and sometime they just go completely out of focus - or is it the booze?

On the fence

With all the news surrounding the Palm Pre (maybe Palm's last gasp) and the new iPhone, I've been consumed with one question. Should I or shouldn't I? It's Windows 7 that has got me in a whirl. It's been sitting here on my desktop ready to install for a couple of weeks now but I haven't got up enough courage to actually install it. My son has been running it on a laptop for a while and, so far, has had no issues or concerns with his other applications and games. I suppose I should just 'bite the bullet' and go ahead - damn the torpedoes! The trouble is that I so much 'stuff' installed on multiple hard drives that it will take forever to sort out. I even have one drive partitioned so that I could install Vista as a dual boot system when I still had Windows XP as my primary OS - man, that seems like ages ago. Maybe I'll use our new 1.5TB external drive to copy to and then just transfer back when I've reformatted and partitioned my drives. I'm just not looking forward to all the time and nonsense required - I'm just lazy I guess (down at the back there!). I suppose it's like anything that needs change; it's hard to take a step into the unknown. I think, however, that this is the week - I'll just have to make the effort and move into the 21st Century at last. Wish me luck.

What a pain

Just a little update on my previous post. Yes, it was a setting associated with the router that was the trouble - quelle surprise. It just goes to show that a little preparation can help resolve a nasty issue. Now all they need to do is to see how to transfer video from their HD camcorder to the PC and 'burn' it to disk. I did take a stab at this for them, but they didn't bring their software over - it happens. This brings me to another point of contention with hardware and software people. Why, in heavens name, can't you guys get your act together? You would think that you would be able to plug in a hard drive camcorder and just copy over the info you want - oh no, that's too easy. You need specialized software and have to jump through burning hoops to do that! It's the same with digital cameras that use RAW images - no damn standard. I almost feel a rant coming on - I'll stop now.

On another track; check out the 'street view' option in Google Maps - it's absolutely amazing and totally addictive. It's only in the US, UK and certain European cities so far, but is a wonderful way to tour unfamiliar places. For an ex-pat Britisher, going to old remembered places is a treat and retracing routes that I used to walk is just like going back in time. Amazing how many things have stayed the same after more than 22 years. The picture above is of the street view camera - neat, isn't it?

When logic fails

For all those poor people floundering around with 'odd' PC issues I have one word (no, not 'plastics'), logic. When your laptop doesn't connect to your wireless network and you are disconnected from the wibbly wobbly web, it's easy to just cry out, 'my computer's broken'! Often, that's what is said to a technical support person and does absolutely nothing to help them determine the issue and solution. The key is to be specific about the problem and be sure that you have checked all of the obvious concerns. Again the word 'logic' should apply. Here is a good example. A friend was have the issue that I mentioned above - no wireless connection through their new router (a good one, actually), but a good connection when directly connected to their main PC. They were getting errors regarding firewalls and no IP address being found. Now, I am not one of those 'techie' people that believe in thinking everyone should know what everything means on a PC. Well, the laptop worked here fine on my wireless setup - no issues at all. I cleaned up the laptop in terms of unwanted programs - got rid of Norton  - man, that clogs up a system and does a real number on the registry. Ensured that there were no nasty little pieces of spyware of other assorted evil things lurking on the system and all seemed to be running well. So, here was the next step. We now knew that the laptop was OK and had no trouble connecting wirelessly and surfing the 'net, we knew that the main PC when connected directly through the router was fine. All that we needed to do was directly hook up the laptop. Turns out that was fine and they had no issues. OK, now we know that it must be a setting of the router that was throwing everything off or the network setup of the laptop. The latter would be unlikely as all was working fine here. Now you could call the router's technical support and give them clear and concise information that should resolve this quickly. All the 'grunt' work had been done and logic showed just where the difficulty lies. I'll let you know what happened.

Getting on a bit

I have one problem with laptops and their ilk - upgrading is a pain in the rear. If you have a laptop that's over 3 years old, you will find it harder and harder to add RAM or even upgrade the harddrive. If you want a better CPU or better video you're out of luck. However, all is not lost. If you do your research and dig around the wibbly wobbly web a bit, you may find what you need - or close to it. The real 'sticking point' is, what do you use your laptop for? If it's just general surfing, e-mailing and the like - then you can get away with a fairly low-spec unit. If it's gaming and multimedia usage, then I'm sorry - you need a new unit and throw that clunker away. My one year old Acer is still fairly strong for high-end use due to a large harddrive, lots of RAM and a 512MB dedicated video card - unfortunately, the HD-DVD drive is a bit of a letdown now, but I still have quite a few HD films to see. If you have an older laptop, then the advise is lean and mean. Get rid of applications you don't need or use, don't fill it with too many utilities, one good anti-virus program and a good anti-spyware application is fine. I don't recommend Norton Utilities as much now as it tends to dominate and choke most older PC's - there are many alternatives (some free). Luckily, even older laptops are easy to open up to check what you have and to add or replace RAM. A five year old Compaq had just 2 screws to loosen and away you go. My advise is always to ask for help from people that know their stuff - that 16-year old next door may be just the guy you need!

Nuts and bolts

I know, I know! I said that I wouldn't bother with Windows 7 Beta but....my son (no, really) decided to give it a try. He had an external harddrive for his Dell laptop and decided to use that to install Windows 7 on. A good idea, but flawed in execution. In a way, we were screwed - in respect of the number of screws used to place the external drive into the laptop as it's boot drive. This was after the built-in CD drive wouldn't mount the downloaded and burned beta software and an external drive wouldn't either. We even tried a bootable USB drive - nope, nothing. More screws later we placed the drive into my Acer laptop and then recreated the bootable CD on the desktop PC. This time it all worked great and we had Windows 7 running in all it's glory. Now my laptop is up in his room and playing Left 4 Dead on-line via the new Microsoft offering. Was it worth it? I have no idea as I haven't even had a chance to play with MY laptop since. This excercise does indicate that it's not that hard to replace things in most laptops - 4 screws for the Dell and 8 for the Acer. The harddrive just plugs into it's socket and away it goes. The only trouble is that some of those screws are so tiny and some are covered up so you don't even know they're even there. Ah well, better than trying to fix things on cars - is it metric, Imperial, US or some weird and wonderful measurement and standard known only to GM.

Canny shopping

I normally don't bother with the Boxing week sales as I hate fighting for a parking space and then struggling through the crowds of other like-minded twits shopping for minor bargains. However, as you know, I needed a new TV and this seemed like the time. So after scouring the fliers and websites for the best 'bang for the buck', my son and I set off on our little sale trek. First to Best Buy - that was a damn waste for time. Idiot sales staff and no stock make for a rather poor shopping experience. Would be be so hard to place an out-of-stock sticker on those products that aren't available? Obviously so. Across the road to Futureshop for more parking woes and more crowds. Amazingly, parking was OK and the store was much less busy than Best Buy. Even better, they had stock and plenty of it. We tried to do a deal with the purchase of a Blu-ray player, but ultimately it was just a 42" LCD TV that we left with. Didn't bother with extended warranties and nor should you - a waste of money - just my advise. We also needed a stand, but I wasn't going to spend $300 and up for the privilege. I normally don't like Walmart, but they had just the right stand for just under $100 - sold! Took about an hour to get everything setup and running, which left us with a problem. How to get rid of a 42" projection TV. Advertised on Kijiji and it was gone in less than 3 hours. Wow! Things got better. That evening the Futureshop website showed the same TV for $100 less - so next day I was in line for my refund. Just shows that you have to be a clever and observant shopper to get the best deals. Just noticed that it's $100 more now - that was close.

A good idea?

You may know by now that I am a sucker for cool and odd gadgets, even if I don't actually go out and buy them. However, while at the local Staples on Monday, I decided to 'bite the bullet' and buy a digital photo frame. Well, it was a decent Kodak model and at a reasonable price. So I thought, 'what the heck', and brought my new toy home. Was it a wise purchase? Therein lies a tale. It is a very nicely packaged and designed piece of kit and is no bother at all to setup and use. After turning it on and inserting a memory card direct from my camera, it began it's slide show and impressed me with the clarity and sharpness of the result. The ability to show my short snatches of video with sound was an added bonus that 'spiced up' the whole experience. I mounted it on the wall just like any other frame and really didn't mind the fact that the power cable was showing. Here's a good point though - most people's walls tend to be light colours - make the power cable white for goodness sake. The only down side that I could see was that the angle of view was very restricted - just a few degrees off centre and the images became too dark and almost impossible to see. In addition, after a few hours of running, I began to wonder what the point of it was - who was looking at the pictures? The death knell to my photo frame was my son's comment when he came home from work - 'Man, that looks real tacky. Are you going to get one of those waterfall pictures that move as well?' Sorry to say, next day Staples had the unit back. Was it a poor product? No, not at all, it worked well and did what the blurb said it would. My feeling is that it is a niche product that has applications for some but not all people. Certainly not me, unfortunately. I suppose that when the larger (24" and up) models become more available at a reasonable price, we may see more market penetration. Until then, the regular photo frames will do me nicely. I can always view my images on the computer screen or TV if I want to.

You're outta here

There's been quite a gap in posting a new blog, but I have a good excuse. My son decided that he wanted to use our main PC again after using his laptop in his electronic 'den' upstairs. According to him, the PC was 'broken' and he wasn't going to use it till he 'fixed' it. On Saturday, while I was out all day, he finally 'bit the bullet' and started ripping the PC apart so that he could install a new motherboard. Thank goodness he's an experienced PC user and spent his first few hours backing up and copying all our important documents, images and files. Having multiple hard drives helps enormously and, although it took a couple of hours to do this, it made things so much easier and stress free. This is an important tip for everyone, If you are going to perform major surgery on your PC or give it to a 3rd-party servicer, back up all your info. Don't forget to record your serial numbers for any software and note down any special passwords. This major refit was the final use of Windows XP in the Cutner household. We are now a full Vista operation. Oh well, I suppose it was time to get into the 21st century. Our next  upgrade? We have our eye on an LG Blu-ray/ HD-DVD burner - upgrading never stops.