Oh dear. Sometimes, you wonder why people don’t see the obvious…
Apparently this is a genuine lightswitch sold to devoted Catholics, and not photoshopped. From Pharyngula:
I got the PC started up this morning – then, when I went looking for a file on the 2nd hard drive, which I keep for backup – couldn’t find it. The drive, that is. It wasn’t showing up in the BIOS setup either, even after I’d checked all the cabling. But I can feel it spinning.
Which probably means that the drive is kaput – it’s getting power. But it feels very hot, which is not a good sign; it’s a Maxtor, which apparently has a reputation for overheating. It’s also a very old drive, which I’d actually marked as “damaged?” at some point in the dim past for reasons that now escape me. I’ll try changing the cable or just hanging the drive outside the case to keep it cool, but I don’t hold out much hope.
Luckily, I’ve been obsessive about backing up over the last fortnight, so my important stuff is safe.
Another current techie woe of mine is about installing Linux on the laptop. I haven’t managed it so far. Yesterday, the spanking new Ubuntu cd arrived. I looked at the sleeve; it says I need at least 384 meg of RAM to run the Live CD. Which at least explains why I couldn’t get it it run on my laptop with it’s measly 128 meg.
So, I went looking for some another Linux distro. I had only two specifications: 1) it should be able to run on an older system with little RAM; 2) it shouldn’t require a degree-level knowledge of Unix command-line codes.
Fluxbuntu seemed to fit; the nice website and the slick blurb convinced me to download the .iso and burn it onto a CD. Installation started well, with the hard drive formatted and partitioned; then it stalled – it couldn’t load the base kernel files from the CD. I tried again with another CD and got the same response.
So, I went looking again. Damm Small Linux attracted this time; only 48 meg and runs off a pen drive! I download the zip file unzipped it to my flash pen drive and prepared to try it on the laptop. But – I’d forgotten that without an OS, the machine won’t recognise USB devices!
So – next up was Xubuntu – a lightweight version of Ubuntu that promises to run on systems with 128 meg or less of RAM. So, I once more downloaded and burned. Installation went very smoothly – for the first 40 minutes. It began loading program files from the CD, then the screen went blank, with just a blinking cursor. Thinking that this might be part of the installation process, I went and did something else for 20 minutes. But nothing had changed when I returned. I rebooted, started the whole installation all over again. And exactly the same thing happened.
So I’m feeling a bit po’d with Linux at the mo. Its fans keep telling me how much better it is than Windoze, but I had no problems whatsoever at all in installing WinXP Pro onto the laptop, and getting it to run basic browser, email and word-processing programs. It could even run a heavyweight astrology program without complaining. OK, it ran terribly slowly. But it worked as advertised.
I’m reminded of the time, a decade or so ago, when Microsoft came out with an educational program for pre-schoolers. It was a complete failure, largely because the enthusiastic young programmers who produced it hadn’t bothered to get any input from education experts; not all that far from kidhood themselves, they produced a program that appealed to them, rather than something that was of actual use to real children.
Linux, I think, is probably around that same stage of development. With the exception of Ubuntu (which is almost certainly being given some heavy nudges in the right direction by its commercial sponsor), most Linux distros seem to be aimed at other Linux enthusiasts, rather than the average computer user. She doesn’t want to spend days fiddling with code and hardware to get something to run; she just wants to switch on and go. That’s why Windoze is so popular.
But never fear – I haven’t given up completely on Linux. I’m now downloading the .iso version of Damm Small Linux. I’ll see how that goes.
ETA: Well, I’ve just tried installing DSL. I got totally lost in the geek’s orgasm that was purporting to be an install menu (WTF is HDA????) and hit con+alt+del; and now my laptop is frozen halfway through the shutdown process. I cannot switch it off at all. So I’ve unplugged it and I’m waiting for the battery to run down.
And tomorrow I shall reinstall WinXP.
…computer woes…
I was going to write a post to say how pleased I’d been today by a couple of things.
First, I installed Xampplite and, after a couple of hours sorting out various bugs, got it fully installed as a server that I could test out various versions of WordPress on, including configuring, which I’ve been wanting to do for ages.
Then Son dropped by for a natter and revealed he’d been reading a book. Nothing startling about that, you may think. But Son has never, ever been known to ever crack open a book willingly. He has no problem reading – he is simply not interested in reading for pleasure and never has. Even as a child, I couldn’t get him interested in reading storybooks, even though he enjoyed being read to. So to hear him say he was reading something that he did’nt have to was pretty startling. And the book? It’s An Intelligent Person Guide to Philosophy” no less; Son remarked that it is “most interesting” and that he’ll probably be looking for similar books in the library.
So, I was feeling quite jolly when I sat down in front of my PC, which had been left switched on as usual. Then I found that the screen was frozen; rebooting bought the message “NTLDR is missing”.
Arghhhh. I checked all the cabling; tried booting into DOS. No luck – could not get into the C drive at all. Used the XP installation CD to check the disk it couldn’t read any of it. Tried repairing the MBR and the boot sector – no luck. Got out the laptop and searched the internet. Came to the conclusion the drive was probably FUd. But, ever hopeful, I decided not to give up on it, and instead I formatted it – luckily, I’d performed a complete backup of everything important just a few days ago. Rather mysteriously, the pre-formatting reported that the disk was full, with only 6mb free – only this morning, I’d done a disk cleanup and there was over 5gb free.
The formatting went normally. And while I’ve been writing this, WinXP has been installing. And now the install has finished, and is successful. All that remains now to to install all of my programs…… It’s going to be long night.
….the laptop. Yes, I’m blogging from my laptop!
Not actually from choice, though. My monitor finally died last week; I hooked the desktop PC into B’s gigantic 21″ monster (since he didn’t have any immediate work to do), and everything worked fine for a day…
The, I started getting reboots, frazzled screens and an error message about “invalid frequency rate”. As far as I could tell (searching inbetween involuntary reboots), that meant the monitor’s refresh rate was incompatible with my hardware; moreover, any prolonged use would do actual damage. So that nessessitated an panicky switch-off, and a switch to the laptop.
Which is adequate, but only just. The tiny amount of memory makes things extremely slow, and trying to have my usual six dozen browser windows open at once, plus five programs running in the background, results in a freeze. And of course, there’s no hope of installing and running my usual DTP and web-editing programs. Plus, the network receiver won’t always connect,` the tiny keyboard is driving me [pootttyu and I cannot get used to working with a trackpad.
But we’re going off to take charge of a couple of monitors this afternoon; chez Val (the computers part of it, anyway) should be normal by tonight.
Courtesy of the Pagan Prattle, a list of Christian fundamentalist idiocy, collected from forums and chatgroups. Here’s a sample:
Gravity: Doesn’t exist. If items of mass had any impact of others, then mountains should have people orbiting them. Or the space shuttle in space should have the astronauts orbiting it. Of course, that’s just the tip of the gravity myth. Think about it. Scientists want us to believe that the sun has a gravitation pull strong enough to keep a planet like neptune or pluto in orbit, but then it’s not strong enough to keep the moon in orbit? Why is that? What I believe is going on here is this: These objects in space have yet to receive mans touch, and thus have no sin to weigh them down. This isn’t the case for earth, where we see the impact of transfered sin to material objects. The more sin, the heavier something is.
—
I am a bit troubled. I believe my son has a girlfriend, because she left a dirty magazine with men in it under his bed. My son is only 16 and I really don’t think he’s ready to date yet. What’s worse is that he’s sneaking some girl to his room behind my back. I need help, God! I want my son to stop being so secretive!
—
[about a girl being born with mental disabilities]
This girl is like a leper so what she needs to do is try and find god
if she really believes she can be healed from this state, she will be healed from this state
Most afflictions like this are caused by sins committed while still inside the womb. If she can repent for what she does god will embrace her and make her as human as you or me but if she chooses not to she’ll always be like this
god tests every one of us [emphasis added]
—
How can anyone beleive we evolved from monkeys heres a few questions for people who beleive that
1.If we did evolve from monkeys then how come babies arent born monkeys
2.Even Darwin said his theories were wrong before he died so why do you still believe them
3.do you really not believe the bible it says we were created in seven days not millions of years
4.how come we cant speak monkey
Just for a fact ape like creatures are monkeys Just in case certain people get on this thread
—
The only good Atheist is a dead Atheist.
—
“Make sure your answer uses Scripture, not logic.”
—
[Talking about an eleven year old girl who was raped and then buried alive]
god was sacrificing this child as a way to show others the light. much as he did his own child. what a beautiful gift he has given us.
(Yuck – I need to wash my brain out now.)
These are of course all, or nearly all, US Christians speaking. However, we Brits can’t feel too superior – I’m sure we have a few equally insane people here in the UK.
And, never forget, these people have the vote.
Meanwhile, the US administration says that we are the ones America should be worried about.
Eh???
We’re reorganising things around the house this week. The main change is that B is moving his computer and the big printer into the office upstairs, while I’m moving down to the table in the hall.
It makes sense – B needs space for his printing, while I do nearly all of my work on the computer. But it’s annoying not to have a desk, with drawers where I can stash everything – anything that can’t fit on the table has to go on the shelves in the utility room. A further annoyance is that my old monitor has finally died; I’m using B’s monitor at the mo while I’m waiting to get one from Freecycle. But It’s huge – a stonking 21″ CRT monster that takes up all the space. We’re both aiming to get TFT monitors, but that takes money we haven’t yet got.
I did have the bright idea of using this laptop screen to feed the desktop video through, but there are snags. Direct cabling won’t work, as the lappie doesn’t have a video input. I thought that this software would be the answer – it enables remote desktop – but although I got the desktop screen on the laptop, attempting to open anything crashed the laptop. It just doesn’t have the memory to cope; heck, it’s liable to freeze just doing stuff in Windows.
But on the positive side, we’re having a good clearout of all our rubbish and unused junk.
Teh shiny!
My council-dump find, all spiffed up with a new OS and updated drivers. Runs fine (if a little slow). Can’t figure out why anyone would have wanted to toss it.
… and got the laptop working. Getting around the password was a doddle once I had the right bit of equipment. The contents were singularly unexciting – it seems to have been used as some sort of work computer, but there weren’t any interesting files on it. It had last been accessed over 18 months ago, which reassured me – I’d been worrying that it was stolen, and dumped by the thieves when they couldn’t get past the password. But it’s just an old work computer that’s probably been sitting unloved in somebody’s cupboard ever since the owner got upgraded to a shiny new machine.
It was running Win98, and I tried installing Ubuntu straight over the top. A couple of minutes into the installation, some incomprehensible error messages flashed across the screen and everything locked – I couldn’t even turn it off. Eventually, I pulled the power lead and left it to turn itself off.
Have no idea what the cause of the crash was. Maybe I should have tried a clean install onto a bare drive, or maybe it was a faulty disk – I’d downloaded the disc image from Ubuntu.com and I use very cheap CDs. But I’ve ordered a installation CD from them (they send them out completely free) and I’ll try again with that.
In the meantime, I’ve installed XP, and it’s running beautifully. I’ve even got it networked, though I’ll have to get a second network dongle if I want to run it alongside the PC and share files.
So I’m still moderately cheerful – and eventually I’ll stop looking for the catch.
…we went yesterday, to virtuously dispose of our accumulated plastic, cardboard and bottles. While we were slinging bottles into the banks, I noticed a laptop bag sitting on top of the adjacent (overflowing) electronics bin. I took a peek inside – yes, there was a laptop! I grabbed it and slung it into the car before anybody else spotted it.
Once home, I examined my prize. Not only was the lappie all in one piece, it had a power cable and spare batteries packed in the bag with it, so no time was lost in turning it on. It powered up, but sadly, it proved to be BIOS password-protected – which meant there was no way I could get it to boot up.
Went to the manufacturers’ site and checked the specs – it’s an old machine, with only 128g RAM, 10 gig HD, Win98 and no wifi. But it’s upgradable; once I get it running (which will be soon – I’ve discovered how to get around the password protection), I’ll install Ubuntu on it and start playing.
Meanwhile, I’m still gobsmacked at what people chuck away!
That wasn’t all that I found yesterday – searching through our Big Box of Computer Bits for a spare cable ribbon for B’s machine, I came across an old hard drive that I had completely forgotten about. I’ve been planning for some time to get a bigger drive for my machine – 30G is too small, and I’m continually clearing stuff off; this old drive is 40G. So, this morning, I cabled it in as a slave drive, checked it, took off what little stuff I wanted to keep and formatted it. I’m now copying my DVDs of photos and music onto it.
And that’s still not all – I bought my usual scratchcard yesterday – I found I had won £4. This morning, I took it into the shop to collect my winnings – and according to the machine, my prize was actually £14. I didn’t stay to argue, but I did get another pair of scratchcards. Sitting in the car, we scratched our cards together. B scratched his and came up with nothing; “If you get another prize, I think I’ll slap you.”
“OK, slap me now!” was my reply – I’d won £12!
So, right now, my mood is cautiously cheerful (there still might be a catch in something somewhere….)
….anyway. I intend this year to a) start making some serious money, and b) stop wasting so much time on the interwebs and Soduku.
The money-making part involves mainly getting the AstroDiary completed and selling. Plus getting my act together and improving my astrology services; I bought a comb-binding machine on Saturday which should help to improve the appearance of my reports.
Cutting down on the online timewasting may be more difficult – there’s so much interesting reading out there. For instance, one of my favourite blogs currently has a post that is garnering close to 500 comments, forming an informative and hugely interesting ongoing discussion on politics, religion, fantasy/science fiction and slashfic. (For those new to Slacktavist, he is an American Christian journalist who devotes part of his blog to a detailed deconstruction of the Left Behind books, which are hugely popular amongst US fundivangelicals; some of the regular Slacktavist commentors have even formed their own Left Behind fanfic/slashfic community.) I spend hours a week on that, and other blogs, and on forums. That has to be cut down!
Something else I need to cut down on is the time I spend on Sodoku puzzles. I’ve got the stage where I can solve Evil Level Sodoku puzzles in one sitting; I’m now tackling Killer Sodoku. What’s irritating me about my Sodoku addiction is that it’s not achieving anything concrete beyond an ability to solve Sodoku puzzles (and boast about it online!). It’s like going to the gym and working out every day, when you could be putting all that physical energy to some practical use – like digging the garden, or powering a generator. Where is there a practical application of of all that mental effort and puzzle-solving ability? I’ve looked at Amazon Mechanical Turk and similar sites, but nobody seems to be offering payment for simple number-puzzle-solving. Maybe I should get down to writing that Sodoku tips & tricks book I’ve been thinking about for a while.