Apologies for the outage this afternoon. I downed the server to do some gut swapping with the former primary desktop machine. Everything went smoothly enough.
For my next trick, a clean server rebuild onto the former desktop unit under 10.3! Thank you, I’ll be here all week!
Eudora Mailbox Cleaner may be of help when I finalize my transition away from the venerable Eudora. I would love to keep my mail archives accessible. The archives are now well over ten years’ worth of mail.
I may fiddle with Eudora a bit before I do this – many of the email addresses I have in it are old and the filters are so crufty that it’s not all that useful anymore for autofiling.
Of course, I have to pick a client to move to. Mail is in consideration (for support reasons, mostly) as well as Entourage (for platform compatiblity and to better understand the PC version, which baffles me in classic Microsoftian ways).
I have actually found myself using Gmail almost exclusively of late, primarily because of the superior spam filtering. I would love to be able to hide and reveal messages by label in that UI, though. Certain other limitations make it not quite perfect, such as the inability to map my domain to gmail for email and the related problem of address-based segmenting. All of this points, once again, to selecting an email and hosting provider rather than doing the provisioning myself.
However, these matters are not for resolution today. Today I intend to work on my big pile of hardware, something that will probably take all weekend just to plan.
macosxhints – 10.3: A script to create a segmented disk image is intended to partially resolve the oversize disc image problem I have. The updated version of the script will split extant images as well. I need to go back to AskMe and post this (someone also suggested Disk Copy, which I misunderstood), but the site’s down, dang it.
Well, it’s a real boon to have a new, fast machine. But it’s also hugely distracting, because I have an irresistible urge to re-nest on the machine and spend two or three days immediately fixing my home work area, schlepping files around, and so forth.
Because I’ll be migrating from the first machine I used as a primary Mac OS X machine, it’s not going to be a simple matter of plunking my home directory and root library over onto the new machine – I fought tooth and nail against the Apple-assumed organization scheme when I came over and as a result I have crap scattered across about ten volumes.
Those volumes also represent a wide range of additional drives, both internally and externally connected to the old machine, and of course I cannot pop my internal 250gb drive into the laptop.
I kinda doubt I’ll have a budget for more goodies anytime soon, but here are some I’ll bookmark.
Villagetronic PCI video card – I have two desktop monitors I’d like to continue using. By default the Powerbook only supports one external monitor. This is a moderately unlikely purchase.
Some kind of stand for desktop use, like this, this, or this. Inexpensive, non-computer-market alternatives will be explored, as well. I’m currently using a plastic copy-holder. Unfortunately, the Powerbook’s hinges prevent opening the screen beyond about 75 degrees, and the slant of the copyholder means that the screen tilts in at about 15 degrees.
A sleeve for finish protection. I love these Acme designs, but instead of the zip closure and handles, I want a simple flap. Closure is only moderately important, so velcro or even ties would be ideal. I thought I remembered seeing very simple sleeves made of wetsuit neoprene with no detailing, but it looks as though the market has moved on.
A bit more Googling brought me to a Tom Binh product, the Mitre. Binh is locally based and even has a retail store in town, so this is promising. More closely reflecting my initial vizualization is this Tucano sleeve.
But Binh’s social factors are predominating, I have to say.
Today, a rash of new computers arrived. I’ll be busy for the next couple of weekends transferring stuff and figuring out to do with the current batch.
Viv’s got a shiny new iBook 14″ and I am going to spend some time with a 15″ Powerbook. I considered waiting for the probable g5 but given the supply problems with that chip and the less-than stellar track record for first-gen products outta Cupertino of late, I’ll hang back fearfully for the nonce.
I’m thinking about jettisoning in-house primary mail service, as I have just not had the time to hack through the underbrush of setting up under qmail with various server-side spam-combat measures in place. Doing so would prompt a server rebuild with limited mail support and a greater degree of centralized datastorage.
On the other other hand if I’m looking for outside mail services perhaps I should look at outside primary hosting as well, and reduce the amount of public-facing webservices on offer too. Hm.
Time to count hard drives and do some math.
I spent yesterday evening in Tacoma eating the best fried oysters ever in the world, along with southern-style fish-fry food the likes of hush puppies, catfish, and corn.
I had promised Bart I was going to shoot for the next episode of Rox at the fry; alas, my nerve failed me and I shot not a thing. I still intend to shoot in the manner I’d intended, though. We have about a gig of flash ram, and in theory, I should be able to get enough material at 320 x 240 using the Dimage to provide editor B with what his jones is for.
It strikes me that certain scalawags hereabouts may be prepared to provide an appropriate venue for a shoot.
In other news, I’ve been heads down pushing and poking at the Yahoo! Store, in an attempt to get a multi-thousand item store up and live by the end of next week. Alas, the good people at Yahoo have adopted a ‘simplified’ approach to deployment and setup within their commerce environment. While significant help docs are available, and a 384-page Merchant Solutions Getting Started Guide is available as a PDF, no straightforward sample templates for large-inventory sites are readily available.
Of course, there are many folks ready to take your money to provide the solution to the conundrum. The triumph of commerce, providing that open and even playing field, yet again.
Ages ago, Viv and I picked up a pair of Lucy chairs to go with our red formica kitchen table. Eventually, we figured out that we should have picked up four, but by the time this happened, Target was no longer carrying the chairs in-store. The topic came up at our party a couple months ago and Sunday night Viv reminded me about it when I was in a Googlin’ mood.
The skinny is, Target carries them online, but the delivered price was abut $220, free shipping notwithstanding. American Chairs offers them as well, but the shipping costs pushed it up over $200 again.
The link I initiated this post with, however, produces a shipping-inclusive price of $197. Now, I’m not necessarily ready to spend $200 on a couple of chairs, but maybe Viv is. So here’s the link.
HyperGami offers this paper sushi kit. There’s also this display page of various models on a different site. The models apparently stem from different sources, such as the tako (octopus) model, this selection of gunkan. Of course, what goes with paper sushi better than a nice, frosty mug of paper beer?
To eat sushi, someone must go down to the sea in ships. Up anchor under that paper moon and set sail over a cardboard sea with these vessels.
A slow-loading, insanely-detailed model of the British galleon HMS Mary Rose, with comprehensive instructions – in Russian! Enjoy. Once you’ve knocked that out, here’s another ship from the same period at the same site.
And finally, in case that sushi was out a bit too long, may I recommend Ed Bertschy’s fabulous nineteenth century hearse? Scroll down to see it in all it’s macabre glory, and note some of the other goodies he’s got on offer, among them a paper cello, a plunger-style “Blasting machine” of great beauty, and of course, a working paper steam engine!
I just spent the last half-day trying to fix my father-in-law’s e-machines desktop Windows XP box. He can’t clearly explain what happened, but somehow he became concerned that a new scanner he’d purchased had installed bad stuff on the computer, and I think he sought to remedy this by hand-removing some of the items he thought the installer had put on the disk. Hand-removing stuff under Windows is a bad idea.
At any rate, the upshot of all this was a non-functional sound card – the system thought it was running fine but no audio was produced. After walking through the unhelpful, very basic audio troubleshooter built into Windows, I took a deep breath, cleared my calendar for the day, and initiated a support call and ticket with e-machines.
After a brief intake, it was determined that the never-registered machine was out of warranty, and that the ticket would run $20 to initiate. I had been expecting some sort of charge, so I okayed it and we began.
After a few followups and verifications, we were recommended to run a full system install, wiping the HD, after pulling my father-in-law’s documents to a backup. Happily, we were able to do that with no gnashing of teeth, and I initiated the system restore.
When the initial-boot Windows XP setup appeared, it appeared over soothing music! Hurrah, the card’s fixed, I thought. After reboot – nothing. Alas.
One more phone call, and I was advised that the physical sound card was bad and that I should simply replace it. Now, my father-in-law really enjoys his computer, but rather than learning about it by reading or becoming a tech-nerd, he has evolved an elaborate personal set of metaphors that suffice to allow him to use the machines. However, that means he’s likely to blame the last person who touched the machine if things start going awry, and thus, the last thing I wanted to do was pop the case and start rummaging around in the guts of the machine.
I may understand how to assemble and disassemble computers but my level of expert Wintel knowledge dates to 1993, the first year I could afford to buy a Mac and get the hell outta Dodge.
After some frowning thought, I realized that the support person who advised me to buy a new soundcard had missed a clue: the machine played audio when booted into the setup routine. The card, physically, was fine. There had to be a way to address whatever tangled thing had cut off the circuits from the software.
One more call back to e-machines and I was told, in this order:
a) your machine is still in warranty for another year
b) we’re refunding your $20 ticket fee
c) use the device manager to uninstall the modem, then reboot
d) we’re going to reinstall the audio drivers from the restore CD before the modem drivers are re-enabled at startup
As it happened, due to a slight accident, the machine booted into Windows directly, with the startup chime!
I’m happy that the emachines support people were able to help; each time I placed a call I was connected to a real, live human within 30 seconds of having navigated the intake telephone tree.
On the other hand, I was told that the machine was out of warranty and that the audio card was dead, inaccuracies that would not have been corrected had I not pushed back, something that makes me reluctant to recommend the manufacturer to naive PC-users.
Finally, I have to note that the whole experience occupied me for four hours. Yeesh. I’m sticking with my Macs until they pry ’em outta my cold, dead hands.
UPDATE: One reboot later, the sound output is AWOL, again. On a clean install! Man! How do you people live with it?
As an element in my comprehensive rearguard exploration of last week’s/month’s/year’s interesting computer doohickeys, I have finally begun a sustained experiment in using Gmail, which is proceeding apace.
Only one bump to date: the unflagged blackholing of a flood of comment spam from comments.cgi on the blog left me a mite frowny – if I can’t see the mail, it’s hard to click the mt-blacklist link, now innit?
As is my wont, here are some Gmail toys, for whenever I get around to them.
Mark Lyon’s list of Gmail candy. It includes Pop Goes the Gmail, for POP3 access, as well as his GML, an app to allow you to pop your current mail archive into Gmail, should you feel so inclined.
Most useful on Mark’s list in the short run is Address Book to CSV 1.1, which enables a user to export from Address Book into the format that Gmail supports to build its’ own contacts list.
There’s also the propellerhead tomfoolery of a PHP script that converts your unused Gmail space into an offline backup solution, something that I could have sworn that tall guy over there wrote about, but I find no trace of it.