I had no idea that Matt Groening (in his "Life in Hell" era) did a brochure for Apple about how college students should really look at getting a Macintosh computer. Fun stuff (and an extra bonus for showing another artifact of a bygone era, a typewriter eraser.)
Category: My Computer
Playing with Chrome 64-bit
I finally got confirmation just before going of town for the weekend that my sine qua non extension, LastPass, works fine with the new 64-bit Chrome, so yesterday I loaded it onto both my home laptop and my work one. So far it's operating well, and "feels" more stable. None of my extensions seem to be failing that I've noticed. Next step is to see which other machines at home need updating.
Chrome Browser
Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.
The evolving digital classroom
A lot of schools, especially at higher grade levels, are finding that keyboards are critical. Meaning iPads are being swapped out for … Chromebooks.
+Kay Hill's school district (Littleton Public Schools) has been pretty aggressive about the digital educational experience. Kids get district-based Google Drive accounts early in elementary school, and they're used for papers, presentations, etc. In elementary and especially middle school, they had a lot of netbooks (Asus Eee's) for students to use in class.
For her high school it's BYOD (unless you can't afford it, in which case they have some devices available). Either notebooks (OS-agnostic) or netbooks or Chromebooks are encouraged — anything that can hook up to the school's WiFi network. Tablets are deemed okay but the limitations of being without keyboard are highlighted.
As it turns out, we're going the Chromebook route. In fact (glances at Amazon), it should be arriving very shortly …
Why Some Schools Are Selling All Their iPads
Four years after Apple introduced its popular tablet, many districts are switching to laptops.
A minor configuration change for my Chrome installs
(Not of interest to most people, but I like to write these things down.)
Ever since the option was available, I've preferred to have a dedicated search bar on my browser. Yeah, I know the Chrome Omnibox allows search, and that's fine … except sometimes (almost always) I want to search result to give me a new tab (so that means clicking a new tab and then searching), and usually I want a search to a particular engine or site (Amazon, IMDb, Wikipedia).
For the latter, yeah, I know you can create keywords for an Omnibox search, but once I got used to some sort of selectable search bar that has been the way my brain has been wired.
I can't remember what I used in my old Firefox days, but for many years on Chrome I've used the "Universal Search & IE8 Accelerators" extension, which did everything I wanted. Alas, I just discovered that it's been discontinued / pulled from the Chrome store by the owner. It will remain in a Chrome installation until you do something to reset things, at which point it vanishes without a trace (as happened on my home machine).
Bummer.
So, after a fair amount of digging around, I've switched over to a new extension called SearchBar (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/searchbar/fjefgkhmchopegjeicnblodnidbammed?hl=en), which seems to do everything I want (and more), and it's easily configurable to any site that has a search bar on it.
Not earthshattering, but of such little things is life made a bit less irksome.
SearchBar
The most efficient way to use your favourite search engines. Search selected text, use customizable hotkeys and much more.
I have performed my husbandly tech duties for the weekend
Shopped for, specced out, bought, installed, configured a new desktop for Margie. Ended up with a PowerSpec G421 from our local Micro Center (http://www.microcenter.com/product/424423/G421_Desktop_Computer), and at a discount to boot. Intel Core i7-4770K Processor 3.5GHz, 16Gb DDR3-1600 RAM (expandable to 32Gb), 120Gb Solid State Drive (C:) with a 2Tb 7,200RPM Hard Drive (D:). Twin NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 graphics cards. Plenty of expansion slots. Margie should be pretty happy with all that for a while.
It came with Win7 installed, but with Win8 disks if I choose to upgrade it. Not today.
Dead Computers Aren't Much Fun
Yeah, that was Margie's ASUS desktop with all the happy-happy-not-fun disk errors last night. Later in the evening it awoke in a partially pithed condition, looked around, said, "Who are you?" Eyes widened. "And who am I? And why are you running an illegal copy of Windows? Daisy, daisy give me your … answer … true …."
Um …
The machine rebooted itself overnight, unwilling to face the rest of its short life in such a diminished capacity. This time the boot sectors failed to do their thing.
Which is mostly okay, as we'd already decided to take it out behind the woodshed and put it down send it to a farm upstate where it could live free and happy.
I've already ordered a restore USB stick from +Backblaze (huzzah), and pretty much everything else data-wise will be handled via Google and Dropbox. I do regret not having had a chance to get a list of applications that were installed, and a list of browser extensions (and bookmarks, as her Xmarks install had been a bit wonky). But that can all be recovered more or less as need be. I might end up buying a case for her existing hard drive and seeing if I can pull it up at least for reference on the new system.
It wasn't an entirely unexpected death. Back in July (https://hill-kleerup.org/blog/2013/07/06/this-is-a-bad-sign-isnt-it.html) she was getting some disk errors, but we worked through them and —
Well, heck. That was a new drive back in July. Dagnabbit, Seagate. Or else the controller is going bad and is liable to spatter any drive that gets hooked to it.
Oh, well. Her computer is four-and-a-half years old (https://hill-kleerup.org/blog/2009/08/09/best-buy-and-another-pc-purchase.html), and we'd been thinking in the replacement direction for a bit. We'll probably hit up MicroAge this weekend instead of Best Buy. If nothing else, hopefully this will also "fix" the strange Wifi problems she was having. Which will be worth the price of a new computer.
Meanwhile, time to shut down the old computer and yank the new power supply I added to it, as well as the video card we added and that pesky hard drive.
(Cartoon via http://xkcd.com/722/, tooltip "This is how I explain computer problems to my cat. My cat usually seems happier than me.")
Yeah, that is not a good sign
“Like a helicopter submarine”
Okay, I'm sure there are probably some great applications for a touchscreen laptop. Aside from ones involving the screen popping off and converting into a tablet, which I've always suspected is far cooler in concept than in reality. And let's leave aside the question of the distinct difference in interface between a finger and a mouse.
I dunno — does anyone have one of these and find it really useful?
Reshared post from +Andreas Schou
Heaved myself off my deathbed to price a new laptop for Sara. Why does every manufacturer now think I need a touchscreen on my laptop?
(1) Laptops are not tablets. You aren't fooling me into thinking I'm buying a tablet just because I can jab at the screen like an orangutan.
(2) I guess I could treat it as a tablet that's too far from my face and at the wrong height? But except for the subterranean race of humans with eyes for nipples and transparent forearms, this is basically terrible for everybody.
(3) I could ignore the touchscreen? Oops I just paid $100 for the ability to accidentally click ads with my knuckles whenever I lift my big dumb hamfingers from the keyboard.
A touchscreen laptop is like a fucking helicopter submarine. Every single feature for one operational mode is a ruinous bug for the other. Either the icons are too big or too small or the display is too close or too far away or you're making accidental inputs because you have the motor skills of a none-too-gifted infant.
Congratulations, the entire apparent market for laptops: you just talked me out of a sale.
Looking for remote access ideas
I know that there have been a variety of remote access tools put out in the public arena in the last few years, and I'd like to crowdsource my vast studio audience for recommendations.
In particular, I'm looking for something that can be put on parental PCs that would allow their remote tech support resource (me) to see and interact with their desktop at some time other than when visiting for the holidays or by voice interface over the phone.
Ideas? Recommendations?
Your tech support "cheat sheet" for all occasions
Not that there's any intentional, conscious link between my posting this and my parents and in-laws both being in town for a visit.
And, yeah, this is pretty much what I do.
(Original URL http://xkcd.com/627/ ) (h/t +Roger Burgess)
I am looking forward to my new…
I am looking forward to my new, larger, faster hard drive today. I am not looking forward to moving into it.
Computer-Buying Advice Advice
I.e., advice on advising someone on buying a computer.
I dunno. I'd still be reluctant to advise someone to just a tablet. While it probably would satisfy a large number of people's needs, I'd be worried about that one must-have game or app that they'd get a hair up their butt about wanting that wouldn't be available outside of Windows or a Mac. (Bigger screens and keyboards are nothing to sneeze at, either.)
Or maybe I'm finally (shut up) betraying an increasing old-fogeyness in my technical recommendations.
At any rate, the more fundamental advice here is sound: never recommend anything you won't be willing to support.
(h/t +George Wiman, via http://goo.gl/9zcxzJ)
Hard Drive swap
My current work laptop HDD is maxing out, so I'm getting it replaced with something larger (and solid state) next week. Which means it's time to recreate my checklist of apps that need to be reinstalled (sigh) and reconfigured (again, sigh).
(Note: this occurrence is not altogether a bad thing. I'll have a new, larger HDD, which is good. Better, it does allow for cleaning up my installation by not installing stuff I'm not using. But it's still a pain in the patootie.)
These kind of posts also provide an opportunity to talk about what I use on my PC.
STUFF FOR THE IT DEPARTMENT TO REINSTALL/REIMAGE
– MS Office 2010 [our current standard], along with Visio 2003 and Project 2010
– MS Communicator 2007 R2
– Cisco IP Communicator
– The current iPass/VPN standard
– TrueCrypt
– Paperless Printer driver
STUFF FOR ME TO REINSTALL FIRST THING
– Chrome (this may be installed with the image, since it's now a secondary standard in the company)
– LastPass (password management FTW!)
– XMarks (bookmark sync FTW!)
– Google Talk (hopefully I can still download the client-based version, which I find cleaner, faster, less annoying, and more useful than the in-browser Hangout tools)
– DropBox
– Filezilla (FTP client)
– Hack to put "Recent Items" in Favorites for Win7
– Restore all documents from external HD backup.
STUFF FOR ME TO REINSTALL AT MY EARLIEST CONVENIENCE
– Techsmith SnagIt 11 (screen capture and graphic editor)
– Flickr.Net screen saver
– Google Drive (download sync)
– WebEx (so I don't end up spending several minutes doing so when trying to hop onto my next session.)
– BestSync 2012 (easy backup to external HD)
– MFC-9840CDW LAN printer drivers (for at home)
– CCleaner
– YWriter 5 (novel writing editor)
– MessageExport plug-in for Outlook.
– Games: Pirate 101; Torchlight 2 (never played at the office, of course, but while traveling on business)
CHROME EXTENSIONS
(I think Chrome's sync will deal with this, but in case …)
AdBlock
Add to Amazon
Bit.ly
Classic Retweet
Copy Without Formatting
Create Link
Favorite Posts of Google+
Feedly (RSS reader)
FlashBlock
Goo.gl URL Shortener
Google Translate
MightText (SMS from my PC FTW!)
New Tabs Always Last
Search by Image
Share Extensions
Universal Search & IE8 Accelerators (set up for Google, Google Images, Amazon, Wikipedia, Wikiquote, WIST, Bible Gateway, Dictionary, IMDB, YouTube)
Weather Now
[LastPass and Xmarks will be loaded with those products]
"Posted from my Computer"
Net-net, I'm not a fan of the posted/sent from my phone/iPhone/tablet sig lines. I understand them — heck, I've used them, long ago. The point (at least my point) is to apologize for any weirdness of formatting or spelling lapses.
But phone/tablet email, etc., is so common now, that I think people have figured it out ("Hey, Dave used a similar but utterly inappropriate word — must be Autocorrect!"). And given that a lot of those messages also come across as ads ("Sent from BuyMeMail on My iPhone"), they're even more intrusive.
On the other hand, my CIO does it, so I'm not going to fight that battle in my company. 🙂
Reshared post from +Doug Dunfee
Annoying.
I know it makes me kind of an ass, but my first thought is always "please figure out how to use your phone soon…"
Sent from the +1 extension on Chrome 27 running on Windows 7
Are “Sent From My Phone” Signatures Useful or Annoying?
Depending on whom you ask, a mobile signature in email is either a clever time-saving trick…or just plain annoying. Which side of the fence are you on?
This is a bad sign, isn’t it?
Ugh. Margie’s machine is getti…
Ugh. Margie’s machine is getting “My drive is bad, back me up and replace it, NOW!” errors. That might, well, change our plans for today.
An odd home networking issue
At home we have a Comcast cable modem that connects to a Netgear wireless hub. Over the past few weeks, Margie's wireless connection from her home computer has been very flaky … except when my laptop is turned on and connected up wirelessly. Then her connection works fine. (My connection is solid all the time, as are other connections in the house.)
That strikes me as very odd. Anyone out there have any ideas?
Alas, Poor Reader
Tomorrow, Google Reader goes away. Last call for pulling your data out of there.
Reshared post from +Neville Hobson
July 1 is crunch day. That's tomorrow…
The Google Reader shutdown: Last chance to move on
If you use Google Reader, you’ll know by now that Google is shutting the service down on July 1. That’s tomorrow. Since its launch in October 2005, Google Reader became a popular choice for many as…
Back. It. Up
Really — backups, whether to USB drive or to a cloud service like my beloved +Backblaze, are so brainlessly easy these days, that if you aren't doing them, you deserve nothing but finger-pointing and laughing mockery when your drive inevitably dies a horrible, spinning death.
Really.
Reshared post from +Backblaze
10% of people back up their data on a daily basis -> http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/06/27/the-survey-says-apathy-is-winning-2/# Help us get those numbers up higher! #backup
Backblaze Blog » The Survey Says: Apathy is Winning
Why is Yev so sad? Is it because Backup Awareness month is nearly over? No. You see we just got back the results from our annual State of User Data Backup survey and the results made him sad. Let me explain. Each year for the past 6 years we’ve asked the folks at Harris Interactive to conduct …
Password Management
Good article at Ars on using password managers (and using them securely). I've been a LastPass user for years, but I am also aware that there are some things I can do to beef up the security of how I use it (notes topic of conversation with +Margie Kleerup).
The secret to online safety: Lies, random characters, and a password manager
Or how to go from “123456” to “XBapfSDS3EJz4r42vDUt.”