Category Archives: Computers

by chris

Rating a music library

I won’t say that I have the largest library around. I do have, however, more music in my library that I have not heard than I have. This is true due to the austin music festival South By Southwest. Each year they put a song or two from nearly every artist that is going to be playing on their website for public download/preview. I’ve downloaded every such song from the past three years. I’ve also downloaded the entire music library on OCRemix, a site dedicated to remixing game music. There are a few gems in there, especially for inducing nostalgia. So when I put my music player on “Random”, I get exactly what I ask for. Most of the time I have never heard the currently playing song before.

Now, this presents a kind of problem. With so many songs, there are quite a few out there that I’ll have no interest in hearing again. Some songs don’t even get to play all the way through. Others I’ll love, but I’ve got no chance of remembering which ones those are. Since I’m playing these on the Ipod, the only way I have to sort through these songs as they play is the five star ranking for each song.

After some debate, this is the system I’ve come down to:
0 star – have yet to get playtime, or I didn’t think enough of them to rank them. Every now and then I will up-rank the unstared but played songs to be 2 star ranked.
1 star – never play again. Incomplete songs, songs I didn’t like, or for other reasons.
2 star – Ok songs. Don’t mind them on random, but I probably won’t seek them out either.
3 star – Good songs. I like these enough that I will probably put them all on big playlist someday for when I want to listen to what I like without the drudge of songs I don’t care for.
4 star – Personal favorites. Songs that I can play over and over without getting tired of them. Songs I do seek out to listen to every now and then. I’d recommend these to people with music tastes like mine.
5 star – Songs that I would recommend to anyone. Best in class by me.

My goal is to really start figuring out what music I really like. A song can (and will) get moved around a good bit in these ranks. One thought I’ve had is squish rank 4 and 5 together for a time and use 5 star to be songs that I think are interesting on one listen, but need to hear more before really making an opinion. This would be good for all the artists that I’ve not heard before, as it might mean I go out and listen to/buy more of their music.

by chris

On IMing

One of the neat features of a few IM clients I’ve used recently is reporting the typing status of your contact. Seeing that they are typing a message lets me know they are actually responding in some fashion. However, there are a few times when this feature becomes more annoying than useful. Case in point, one person always shows up as “User has entered Text”. As if they had typed a reply but had not hit the ‘send’ button. I sit, waiting expectantly, for a response that never comes. At its worst, this happens when trying to get a message to the president of the company.

Anyone else have this experience?

by Nelia

xp

How long have i had XP?  Years…..  I have just figured out how to modify my music folder so the contents can be searched by artist, song, genre, date, or whatever criteria I want.  There is great satisfaction in having figured this out and I roll my eyes at how long it took me.

Soon we may have one file for our music.  Our solution till now has been to duplicate everything and list it differently.  Luke is going to have soooo much more room on his drive now.

Once, some time ago, Christina said that this could be done……   I have kept looking for how, off and on, till now.  (Could have asked, but it is satisfying to figure it out.).

by chris

The computer is still down

I didn’t mess with the computer for a few weeks. I couldn’t bring myself to pull the massive case out, clean a place to work on it, and start pulling things apart. I think I knew what would happen.

Yesterday I pulled the computer apart and found that nothing worked, even separated out. Sure sign of a dead power supply. I borrowed one from work, took it home, and tried it out. Low and behold, the fans all spun up and the power switch worked! So I took the power supply back to work and bought a new one after work.

I happily plugged everything back in. The computer went back under the desk. All was well with the world. Then I turned it on.

The fans spun up. There was some hard drive noise.

There was nothing on the monitor.

There is something else wrong. Something more than the power supply.

I have a sinking feeling that the motherboard is also lost.

The hardest part? Last night, in my confidence that the power supply was the problem, I also bought a new mouse (nice one, giving wireless a spin) and… a new camera. Canon DS550. Great camera so far, takes pictures in low light that our previous camera wouldn’t even attempt to do.

Guess what? That camera was purchased with cash I’ve been saving. And now I might need it for the computer.

Sometimes, computers annoy me.

by chris

Computers Annoy Me

I came home and logged on to my computer. I had left it running over the holidays so I could still access my files from afar. (much <3 to remote desktop and unchanging IP addresses)

All was good. I plugged in the camera to transfer files… and it wouldn’t do a thing. Ok, fine. Reboot the machine with the camera plugged in. That should do it.

Nothing. Computer hangs on startup. Chris is annoyed. I hit the reset button.

The computer powers off.

I hit the power button.

The computer does nothing.

I do some basic troubleshooting. Nothing helps. I try to manually short-circuit the power switch. Nothing. Nada. The fans don’t even start up.

As of Monday, I have no desktop. To figure it out I have no choice but to take it apart and test pieces individually. I pray that something (like dust) didn’t short circuit something.

sometimes, Computers Annoy Me

by chris

Distance tech support

I usually don’t mind doing tech support for people. I know it is the first geek rule: don’t do free tech support, especially for family. Something about people expecting you to do tech support from then on for free. And if something doesn’t work/breaks in the future you are held responsible. For whatever it was that broke. Not always a place you want to put yourself into.

But I do it anyway. Usually it is stuff that isn’t so much of ‘help fix this major problem’ as much as it is ‘I don’t know how to do X’ questions. I don’t mind the latter; the former are the ones that come back to bite you. So I do my best to make sure my solutions are, indeed, the solution needed. I don’t want to fix a symptom if I can find the real problem.

Well, one of the distant (as in physical distant) relatives is having a computer problem that I’ve been trying to help them fix. Right now they are stuck with a dead hard drive. (some data might be retrievable; I hope the drive isn’t gone beyond all hope) I have a spare hard drive. Not that this spare is one that I would really like to give out; it has been sitting unused for a while now. Drives don’t always like to be left alone like that after being used for a while. Hence I am doing my best to test this drive for any problems. Right now I’m using programs from the disk manufacture to check the drive out. Please oh please pass the diagnostic!

I really don’t want to send a drive that is going to die soon if I can help it.

(and I really wish I could tell them to just go buy a cheap Dell; but they can’t do that right now. )