Category Archives: Computer Stuff

Playing With My Blog

Computer Stuff, General

Nina left this morning at her usual 7:30 a.m. time to go to the prison for their Sunday morning meetings. A few minutes later she called to ask if I was supposed to be at a meeting this morning at 7 a.m. at the Stake Center. I was supposed to be there, of course. Priesthood Meeting had completely slipped my mind. I wish I could blame it on age, but that really doesn’t work for this one.

One of the fellows I follow on Twitter sent an update a bit ago saying, “At church … An hour early … Forgot about the time change last night!” At least we didn’t forget about the time change! I set all of the clocks that don’t know about daylight savings time before we went to bed last night. All of the computers that do know about daylight savings worked correctly. My cell phone switched correctly. However, the big “atomic clock” up on the wall did not switch correctly. It’s a pain to set the time on that clock. Oh well.

Since I had a few hours before going to Church this morning, I decided to do the code to put my Twitter updates on the sidebar of my blog. I wrote a script that every fifteen minutes goes to Twitter, downloads the last ten tweets that I’ve sent to Twitter, formats them, and puts them into my blog area so that they’ll be displayed whenever someone reads my blog. I originally thought to go get the tweets and include them on the blog anytime the blog page is displayed, but the Twitter Interface documentation says that they support a maximum of 70 downloads per hour per userid. I only update Twitter every few hours (unless exciting things are happening) so there’s no need to grab the updates each time the blog page is displayed. The process seems to be working correctly. The next step will be to insert the timestamp on these updates as well. Real Soon Now….

Shot

Computer Stuff, General, ,

I am actually quite paranoid (a disturbed thought process characterized by excessive anxiety or fear) about needles. But, I still go get a flu shot most every year. Today was the day this year. Nina told me that a local pharmacy was giving flu shots today for $15, a very good price. So I made my way to the pharmacy this evening, paid my money, sat down, and closed me eyes to make sure that I did not see the needle. So what did the nurse do? She gave me a countdown before the jab! Ugh. I was not happy. Then as she was putting on the band aid she said, “Oh, you look a little pale! You better sit here for a minute…” I told her it would have gone much better had she not said, “Ok, here it comes … 3 … 2 … 1 … JAB!” But I did sit there for a couple of minutes before standing up. I still felt a little wobbly-kneed, but got out of there without going down. Next time I’ll make sure to give some instructions first.

I’ve mentioned Twitter before. I’m finding it quite interesting. I try to send an update every few hours, most are bland and inane. I’m following a couple of family members (one of whom has never “tweeted” .. hint, hint littletwerp) and a few other people that I know or know about. A couple of them are very interesting and they often send links to interesting stuff (in addition to sending just inane, bland updates). Twitter also has a capability of “tracking” keywords. Any tweets that contain that keyword come to me even though I’m not following that person. So, I’m tracking three keywords: Idaho, Utah, and Mormon. That has also been very enlightening. This afternoon about 3:30 I got a tweet from the U.S. Geological Service that there had been an earthquake on the Wasatch Fault at 3:06 p.m. this afternoon. It was a magnitude 1.2 quake just down the hill from Heather’s house! That’s probably not strong enough to be felt, but still that was pretty close to hearth and home! One of the people I follow (Phil Windley … teaches IT at BYU, former CIO for the State of Utah, host of the monthly Utah CTO Forum) somehow grabs all of his updates that he’s sent to Twitter and puts them on the sidebar of his blog. I’d like to figure out how to have that automatically happen (it’s kind of cool!). There are so many interesting web things going on!

The company I used to work for here in Pocatello today did another round of people cuts. The company is having some serious problems and it’s being taken out on the people who work there. I’m very happy not to be associated with them anymore. Their idea of culture and ethics are a very long way from my idea and a very long way from those held by the Pocatello community (where the company is still the 800 pound turd). Woodrow Wilson said, “Never murder a man when he’s busy committing suicide.” Unfortunately, my former company seems to be high on the list of companies busy committing suicide … they can’t even release their third quarter earnings because of inventory valuation accounting issues. Meanwhile, no one in senior management is getting shot … for now they are doing the shooting. But, they should be warned: what goes around comes around.

Halloween Over For Another Year

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The conference in Boise worked out such that I was able to leave there about 11 this morning so I was home about 3:30 this afternoon. Once outside of Boise I set the cruise control and didn’t get out of that mode until I exited the freeway in Pocatello. It was very nice to get home. The Trick-of-Treaters started showing up about 6:30 this evening. They came in waves, as usual. First the really little kids with mommy and daddy hovering nearby. Then the grade school kids, either with an older brother or sister in the background or mom and/or dad in a car driving slowly up the street. After another break then came the junior high and high school kids, always in big groups, many with no real attempt at a costume. I closed up the candy shop at 9 and Halloween was over at our house.

Then it was time to refresh the mouse traps. One more mouse had been snagged by a trap in the basement. I’ve no idea how long it’ll take to get rid of all the mice. It’s a definite frustration. Maybe I need to borrow a cat or something! Jaelene, maybe you can come for a visit for a week or so … the cats would probably be well fed!

I’ve upgraded the operating system on my Macbook to the latest version (Leopard). It is very cool. Since my Macbook is so new, the upgrade went without a hitch and very quickly. I’m already in love with a couple of new features, like TimeMachine (which keeps a constant, browse-able backup) and Stacks (a great way to organize icons). So far I haven’t found anything about the new operating system that I don’t like.

The next task will be to get all of the weblogs on my server upgraded to the latest release of WordPress. I’ve been running the latest version on my blog for a couple of weeks and it’s working well. For most folks, the upgrade will be almost invisible. That’s all for tonight!

Macbook Happy

Computer Stuff

I am really enjoying my new Macbook! So far I’ve had three problems … all of which were quickly resolved. First my cell phone, a Treo 650, wouldn’t sync correctly. A call to Palm Support (which turned out to be in the Philippines at a Convergys call center across the street from the Bellevue Hotel where I’ve stayed several times) fixed that problem. Secondly, moving my iTunes library from the PC to the Macbook didn’t work quite right. A call to the iTunes support people resolved that problem, although it required an escalation and more than an hour and a half. Finally, I ordered the laptop with a virtual machine and Windows Vista installed. The computer came with the installation done, but they had installed it under a lame user name. I tried to move it to my user name and ended up with neither user being able to use Windows Vista. A call to the Parallels support desk got me to a guy in Seattle who, even late on a Friday afternoon, patiently worked through fixing my problem and then properly moving the application to my user name. Everything is now working with the Macbook. It’s a lovely, white computer and is FAST!

I haven’t yet installed anything on the Vista side, that’s the next step. The Photoshop Elements program I have needs to be installed in Vista so I can go back to work on the Norway Cruise Pictures project. I’ll also install the Microsoft Office suite that I have in Vista (hopefully that will work!) and a couple of other programs that I used on my PC from time to time. Eventually I’ll replace the Vista programs with native Mac programs.

I’m definitely a convert. Now to figure out how to make enough money that I can buy an iPhone!

Upgrading

Computer Stuff

There is a new version of WordPress available which fixes a number of small bugs and some security issues. So, for the past few days I’ve been checking out the new code on my test server. The system works very well and I really like the changes. So, tonight I upgraded my blog to the new software. We’ll try this for a couple of days and then I’ll upgrade some of the other blogs on the site to the new software.

Some of the improvements have to do with picture handling and uploading. It is much easier and more intuitive. When writing a new blog entry, it is automatically saved every couple of minutes so what is written doesn’t get lost by mistake.

The other day Heather told me that she never wants to be upgraded!! She doesn’t want to have to learn how to do things all over again. Meanwhile, Jaelene has asked to be upgraded because she has this killer new theme that she wants to use and she can’t until her blog is upgraded. Since I’ll be at Heather’s house over the weekend, I’ll show her what the new software looks like and she can then make the final decision.

Leaving A Trail

Computer Stuff, General

Some time ago I bought a small GPS datalogger from Wintec. This device captures GPS location information every few seconds and stores the information. Sometime later I can then download the information to my computer. I have a program that will read the data from the downloaded GPS information and match digital picture date and time information with the GPS information and put the latitude and longitude information into the digital picture. One of the features in Flickr is to be able to search for pictures by geographic coordinates and see all other Flickr pictures around the same area. That’s kind of cool so if I ever get around to uploading more pictures to Flickr, they’ll have this geo coding information in them.

The other capability of this device is that it is a Bluetooth device and can hook up with my Treo cell phone. I’ve been looking at a couple of mapping programs for the Treo and will probably get one of these programs to use in combination with the GPS data logger.

Saturday I turned the GPS data logger on and captured our activities for the day (click on the datastream to download the track for the day). Bring up Google Earth, open this file, and the little green line will show where we went during the day. That’s kind of cool…

Google Earth is a very interesting program. A couple of weeks ago I was listening to a podcast where someone forecasted that Google could get as much as a billion dollars of revenue per year just from Google Earth as businesses start wanting their info to appear on Google Earth. This capability is already becoming available on my Treo cell phone. I can connect to Google Earth and navigate all over the world. I can turn on different layers of information, including advertisements. One of these days I won’t need to buy every year the latest highway map book. It’ll all just come to a device near me as I need it. Very cool.

Cleaning Up Things

Computer Stuff, General, Technical

Today was Saturday and a very quiet one at that. The first Sunday of each month in the Mormon Church is Fast Sunday — we abstain from food and water for two meals in a twenty-four hour period and donate the money we would have spent on food to assist those needing help. Nina and I go out to dinner on the Saturday before Fast Sunday. Since we’re now on the morning church schedule, our fast day now goes from after lunch on Saturday through lunch on Sunday (and, because the first Sunday was New Years Day, our Fast Sunday was postponed until tomorrow), we went to lunch today rather than dinner. That and picking up a couple of things from the grocery store were the only reason for us to go out of the house. So we went downtown about 11:30 and were back home by 1:30.

There was an important reason to be home this evening. Nina wanted to watch the NFL wildcard playoff game between New England and Jacksonville. The game was being broadcast on ABC — but the ABC affiliate here had a problem for most of the day and were unable to broadcast a signal. That meant no signal on the satellite, on cable, or over the air. Fortunately in the late afternoon the problem was fixed and the game is now on TV. Nina’s downstairs sorting through letters and cards and rooting for New England.

I had a power supply from an old computer and decided to convert it to a lab power supply. There were just a few parts needed, so I picked those up from Radio Shack yesterday and spent a couple of hours with soldering iron in hand (burning myself once in the process) doing the conversion. I plugged it in, turned it on, and watched a coil go up in smoke. It was fun, but in the end all I had was some junk to throw in the trash. I’ve got another one and will try this again soon….

While I was at Radio Shack yesterday, I saw on sale an electronic learning lab. It looked quite interesting, so I bought it (thanks, mom and dad, for the Christmas present funding!)! I also had some fun putting together a couple of small projects. That was a lot better result than working on the lab power supply!

Finally, I did some cleanup on our weblogs. The metadata in the header records needed to be corrected and get the right keywords and authors in the header records. That’s been done, so eventually the search engines like Google and Yahoo will have the right metadata. That’ll be good. It was a nice, pleasant Saturday!

We’re Home — Computer Woes!

Computer Stuff, General

We’re back home after 22 days on the road. We had a great trip with lots of very good memories and arrived home at about 9:30 p.m. last night and fell into bed. It was a very long day.

We arrived in Barcelona on Sunday, November 16th. On Monday, November 17th the home computer network went down and stayed down for the rest of the time we were gone. There was nothing I could do about it, so this blog and several others have been offline for the past three weeks. The firewall connecting the home network to the internet was the culprit. I’ve put in a new firewall and now all the outbound stuff is working. Since the firewall has a different hardware address, I’ve got to wait for CableOne to reassign my correct Internet Protocol address. Until that’s done, the web site cannot be reached using it’s name. So, if you’re reading this, everything is back to normal. I’ll talk about the trip in the next posts.