Minimalist Weblog

26-February-2010

The technical steps behind the scenes when you load an URL in your browser.
(tags: internet computers) (permalink)

19-February-2009

17-February-2009

Intel on measuring IT ROI.
(tags: computers IT intel ROI) (permalink)

10-January-2009

Rebuilding my iTunes library brought prompt, temporary relief of my playback skipping problems. However, it's not a good experiment until "Genius" is turned back on, since it was on prior to the rebuild and off afterwards. It sure takes a long time to "collect information" about your library.
(tags: iTunes apple computers music) (permalink)

01-December-2008

About the time I got my iPhone, my laptop computer (a Dell XPS M1330) started acting funny. When typing long sentences (like in an email), the letters would stop showing up. After a short lag of perhaps a second, the letters I typed while they weren't echoing would all show up at once. This laggy behavior was maddening! I was worried that the problem had to do with iTunes, the iPhone driver, or the gigabyte of music that I ripped. But it was none of these. Dell helpfully ships a program called "Media Direct" on this computer. It manages your music, videos, plays DVDs, and -- bafflingly -- your business contacts and PowerPoint presentations. Of course, I had started using Vista's built-in contacts feature to manage my iPhone contacts, and now that I had 15kb worth, I was getting laggy typing. Turns out that Media Direct (apparently) reads the contact file every second or so and writes it back to disk. For no apparent reason. Luckily, Media Direct lets you turn off this function, and when I did that, the problems stopped. (Of course, I also updated the program, so maybe that fixed a bug or something.)
(tags: computers dell mediadirect laggytyping problems) (permalink)

System Info for Windows can really help you troubleshoot a lot of Windows problems, if you know how to use it. If you don't know how to use it, dinking around with the menu options long enough usually yields an answer. In my case, I used the Microsoft System Performance tool to find a high amount of disk IO on a file I didn't expect to have any at the time.
(tags: siw systeminfoforwindows utilities computers) (permalink)

29-November-2008

I've been using VMWare Server 2. I felt like its web-based management console brought with it a lot of weird complexity in terms of UI and of installed components, but I chalked that up to being a curmudgeon. Then, I put my machine to sleep while running a VM, and when it woke up, I couldn't load the web page to manage it. Turns out the VMWareHostd service stopped and wouldn't start up again. No amount of restarting or even reinstalling would help! Finally, I googled it and learned that your datastores.xml file can become corrupt and need replacement.
(tags: vmware computers) (permalink)

14-July-2008

Sun could be a takeover target.
(tags: sun computers business rumors) (permalink)

27-June-2008

(via Dave Winer on Twitter) Spend 10 minutes watching The Website is Down (YouTube). It's totally worth it. Language NSFW.
(tags: bofh computers) (permalink)

08-June-2008

Seen on Twitter: The Arc of Engineering. Why applications jump the shark.
(tags: software engineering computers) (permalink)

02-April-2008

TODO: subscribe to crypto-gram podcast. Other subscription formats are available. I saw Bruce speak at DevCon; he was good.
(tags: bruceschneier security computers) (permalink)

20-February-2008

(via /.) In naming their new line of -- get this -- action figures, did Microsoft fail to realize that the name SourceForge is already in use with respect to computer software?
(tags: sourceforge microsoft software computers lame) (permalink)

29-January-2008

Podcatcher Matrix is supposed to help you choose the best podcatcher to suit your needs. However, I was not able to use it to find one that will run on Mac OS 8.6. In fact, I'm having a hard time finding sites that specialize in pointing to software for that OS.
(tags: operatingsystems mac macintosh computers macos macos8 podcatchers podcasts) (permalink)

Your PowerMac 8500 can display on the monitor or project, not both, unless you have a VRAM upgrade.
(tags: computers hardware macintosh mac 8500 vram) (permalink)

20-January-2008

Old computers! (via rubber room with a view)
(tags: computers vintage) (permalink)

17-January-2008

Sun's buying MySQL.
(tags: computers databases sun mysql) (permalink)

10-January-2008

Gloriously Glam V8 engine computer case.
(tags: glam v8 computers hardware autos casemods) (permalink)

20-December-2007

Russ, who loves Spacemonger and WinDirStat would flip over this hard drive, which displays its usage map on its own OLED screen. via Make magazine blog.
(tags: harddrive oled diskdrives disk usage software hardware computers) (permalink)

18-December-2007

Seems like a democracy would want its voting machines to be a bit more secure than this.
(tags: voting democracy votingmachines computers software elections) (permalink)

14-December-2007

The difference between CIOs and CTOs isn't just whether they wear a baseball hat to business meetings. CIOs aspire toward platform uniformity while CTOs require it. I guess that means if you're a system vendor, you should be prepared to deploy on any platform or else make sure you've chosen the one platform that your market demands...if there is just one.
(tags: software computers cio cto) (permalink)

24-November-2007

OK, I just installed Gutsy Gibbon on a VMWare virtual machine. Looking forward to playing with that. If you're not a linux dweeb, you may need some pointers on how to install VMWare tools on Kubuntu.
(tags: kubuntu vmware linux gutsygibbon virtual dweeb computers operatingsystems) (permalink)

23-November-2007

Command line reference for Windows, BASH, and others. Conveniently, the Windows and BASH commands are cross-referenced. Useful!
(tags: computers operatingsystems tools shells reference commandline) (permalink)

09-August-2007

I don't pay much attention to NASCAR. A racecar needs fenders like a fish needs a bicycle. But it's cool that they're using technology to show the draft effects in realtime.
(tags: nascar racing autos f1 technology computers Navier-Stokes) (permalink)

It's interesting that NASA's climate data had a Y2K bug in it.
(tags: nasa climate y2k computers globalwarming climagechange) (permalink)

21-July-2007

There's a new report out about Ohio's lost backup tape. It says: One of the unfortunate ironies of this theft is that OAKS administrators allowed callow interns to take home backup tapes in order to protect the data in the event of a disaster at the OAKS facility and to save money. Ironies? or stupidities? It's smart to move your backups off-site to protect your data from loss. It's stupid to do it in an insecure way, because that fails to protect it from exposure. Ohioans want their data protected from both loss and exposure. (via Jim.)
(tags: computers ohio data backups) (permalink)

BTW: You can find out if your personal info was on the stolen backup tape on this web page: http://ohio.gov/idprotect/lookup/lookup.aspx. Free identity protection for a year if you are.
(tags: ohio computers fraud) (permalink)

16-July-2007