42 posts tagged “computers”

I suspect I might go to Windows 7 some time in 2010 or 2011. The reason: I have an XP machine running the way I like it. My laptop is running Vista, the way I like it. I have no obligation to Microsoft’s share price. My obligation is to me and my productivity, and last I looked, technology serves me. As long as it does so, and does so reasonably, then the status quo is absolutely fine. In a year, maybe I might need the new features, but not now.
   For those considering upgrading, this PC World article is instructive.

I was glancing at the laptop and what it could see of the head-office network today (without going into the network itself):

If you told me 10 years ago that a simple office network would have over a terabyte of hard drive space, I would have laughed at you.
   The laptop itself has 320 Gbyte, and the two hard drives it can reach have 1·5 Tbyte between them. The cellphone alone has over 2 Gbyte.
   Not long ago my main computer was on 80 Gbyte, the design computer was on 40 Gbyte, and I think the laptop had something in the region of 10 Gbyte, less than a tenth of the above. The cellphone had 40 Mbyte.
   And I am sure it is within living memory for many of us when 40 Mbyte seemed to be endless space for a home computer. That’s what I had on my PC, and it was double what my closest friend had on his.
   We are getting to the point where the time involved in deleting a file exceeds the cost of retaining it. These numbers will be perfectly normal to so many people now, especially younger readers, while I still marvel at them.

Strange errors these past 12 hours on Twitter and Facebook.
   According to Facebook, I only started posting to the wall six hours ago:

And according to Twitter, I am following no one and have no followers, either: Sad, isn’t it? Over 8,000 Tweets and no one wants to listen.

Here are some more neat finds on YouTube. I have only a vague recollection of this show, but I might be confusing with others that had fake computer messages going across the screen (The Invisible Man, The Gemini Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, etc.). Apparently, it was originally entitled Probe, but was retitled Search (possibly due to a conflict with another TV series). It didn’t last, due to a producer change and the idea of a revolving star each week (mixing between Hugh O’Brian, Doug McClure and Tony Franciosa). But the theme music and titles are great (note the use of the MICR typeface) and very early 1970s. They also hint at the optimism people had toward technology as a tool to aid mankind, in this case, an agency specializing in searches.

You’d think that I learned my lesson the first time I tried to upgrade Wordpress using its innocent little button that read, ‘Upgrade to 2.8.1’. But, I figured, what if I messed up, and the program was OK? I’d feel bad about rubbishing the software, right?
   So tonight I pressed the button again on another blog we are working on.
   I am doing nothing wrong. The program is stuffed. This is all that happens:

Half an hour and counting.
   If you see the update button on Wordpress: do not press it! Save yourself some heartache and do it the long way.
   This blog isn’t even customized much, and it still doesn’t work.

PS.: Last time, I let Wordpress run for about 15 minutes before giving up, and this stuffed everything up. This time, I estimate I let Wordpress stay on the blank screen above for around 35 minutes. I then clicked the ‘Dashboard’ button and Wordpress claimed that it had performed the upgrade, and I needed to click one more button to upgrade the database. Surprisingly, that has worked.
   So: this does not take a few minutes as some users claim, and there is certainly no progress bar. The entire process takes over half an hour, during which time one should not touch that particular tab on one’s browser. After that is done (you won’t know when: you’ll have to guess, but that is better than reading erroneous instructions), click ‘Dashboard’.
   For those who are having issues, please give the above a try. However, I can’t believe one has to rely on guesswork and I still reckon Wordpress should have tested its update program a lot more.

Got to love technology.
   For the last few days, Windows Vista has been trying to find drivers for my Nokia 6275i. It has failed most days. Today, it downloaded the driver by itself, but failed to install it.
   I have noticed that Nokia PC Suite no longer works. I was running the latest version.
   So, I hopped along to the Nokia website. However, it refuses to let me just download a new PC Suite. I had to select the 6275i model first (a process which took minutes before the website finally realized I had, indeed, clicked on the model icon). It led me to a link, which allowed me to download the version that was compatible with my phone.
   Only thing is, this version does not install. It claims I have a newer one already on the system. Never mind that the newer one does not work: that’s not Nokia’s problem.
   Again, as I have said many, many times before: (a) doesn’t anyone ever test this software?; and (b) is it so hard for computer boffins to make things that just do what they say on the box?
   Or is this someone having a grown-up rendition of the old ‘40 GOTO 10’ command line we used to do in BASIC just to be stupid?

Last week, we upgraded to Wordpress 2·8. Admittedly, this was an improvement over the previous 2·6. and it restored my faith a little in computing. (Wordpress 2·6 was progressively buggier by the week.)
   Given that 2·8 worked quite well, I pressed, today, the ‘Upgrade to 2·8·1’ button on the Wordpress desktop today. Bad idea.
   After a long wait with the words ‘Reading lucire.com’ at the bottom of the browser in the status bar and nothing else happening, I opened up other web windows to find out how long this should take. Most users agreed this should take a minute, not 10 to 15. Eventually, since Firefox reported that it was ‘Reading’ and not ‘Writing’, I stopped the process. Another bad idea.
   This corrupted the entire set-up which meant I had to install the entire Wordpress package from scratch. Luckily, our database was left intact. However, the dashboard was unusable, with all its CSS specifications gone, looking like a second-rate website from the early 1990s. Reloads could not restore it.
   After the reinstallation, the dashboard was still munted, despite reloads. I ran the install.php line as Wordpress’s manual instructed. This is a lesson I never learn. Never, ever trust the manual, especially when computers are concerned.
   I got the message, ‘You appear to have already installed WordPress. To reinstall please clear your old database tables first.’
   If you Google this error message, you get all sorts of recommendations about deleting PHP tables and whatnot. Basically, it is a serious error. I was already worried, and instinctively I knew that deleting things was a bad idea.
   Real solution in layman’s language: go to the dashboard. Reload it. Problem solved. No deleting PHP tables, going into PHPMyAdmin, etc., necessary.
   Hopefully, the above will save someone some grief because the innocent upgrade button does not work as it says and it certainly does not take a minute.
   Suggestions to Wordpress: give us some sort of status bar to tell us how far the upgrading process has gone. Or, don’t try to be clever with these buttons when I would have saved myself time and worry doing it the hard way.

We all know certain computer bugs only seem to happen to me, as I have chronicled frequently. Yesterday, we had a router fault. Today, my desktop machine refused to recognize my hard drive. And now, using Twitter, I notice that the type has gone monster-large:

   This has happened twice today. I did not hit Firefox’s enlarge function (impossible to do so “accidentally” on my laptop, without a numeric keypad), which would typically enlarge the background as well. You’ll also notice that the ‘Latest’ paragraph is in the correct point size. Has Twitter been fiddling around with its stylesheet, or did I stumble across a “large type” version of the site?
   I also managed to get search.twitter.com returning 404s today as my other accomplishment. I wonder if anyone else can see this page. I cannot—but it’s a simple, routine search for an earlier Tweet of mine. It seems I managed to break Twitter Search just by using its features (feeding in keyword, username and a date range). I believe others will get a 404 with the above link, too—which I think should dispel the growing myth among my friends that I have the worst luck with computers. Use them regularly enough, and you will break websites, programs and hardware, too.
   Meanwhile, PHP in Autocade prompted me (and no one else I asked to test this) to save a page, rather than open it, at different times today (see below). (This only began happening since Firefox “upgraded” to 3.0.11.) Again, this was unique to me, on both Windows Vista and Windows XP, though I believe the fault lies with the browser: One of my Twitter friends suspects it is advertising code, which is possible, since I managed to get this page working at other times today. However, it still begs the question: why just this one page, when the coding for the CSS and other elements to the page is identical to the rest of the site? And why does Firefox not want to open a page that is encoded ‘application/opensearchdescription+xml’, which I know is compatible with it?

PS.: Fellow Tweeter Ajay reports he experiences the first error.—JY

My friend Marie Young Tweeted about two 19-year-olds getting a book deal. As far as I can make out, as the article is not clear about it, they are rewriting 20 classics in Twitter form.
   So, does that mean we will get the following (as I Tweeted back to Marie)?

@flyinglens I wonder, e.g. Cinderella: nasty stepsisters! Gone to ball, OMG, left shoe behind! Prince C. brings it back. Thank goodness!

@flyinglens Or, Pride & Prejudice: Mum tried to hook Jane up. Darcy can be an SOB, but he does good stuff, cool! Nice ring! Yay Gardiners!

   Scary stuff.