We Saw a Chicken …

Category: computers suck

  • sometimes you just have to …

    smiley spreadsheet
    smiley

  • frag

    I really don’t know how a Windows system disk can get this fragmented:
    fragmentation

  • How to select broken URLS from e-mail

    (without resorting to TinyURL.com, xrl.us or is.gd when posting …)

    Some mail clients wrap URLs in a way that breaks their ability to be clicked on. Trying to explain a method to fix this is tiresome, so here’s an animation that explains it:

    a_handy_guide_to_fixing_broken_urlsBasically, it helps to select the URL from the end to the start. Once you’ve got all the text, copy it, and paste it into your browser’s location bar.

  • timed screen grabs (with mouse pointer) on OS X

    The following shell script will, after a five second delay, save a screenshot every second for the next minute:
    sleep 5
    for f in $(jot 60)
    do
     screencapture -wC $(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%).png
     sleep 1
     echo $f
    done

  • no zapf, dingbats aplenty

    scruss handwriting font

    Well, yes, according to YourFonts.com. You write into a special template, scan it, upload it to their website, add your signature and bank details, and you get a TTF of what you wrote. Next time, I’ll be a bit more careful with baseline  alignment.

    I might mess with the alignment and kerning in FontForge, but otherwise I like it.

    (via Cool Tools)

  • Unix Timestamp 1234567890

    unix_timestamp_1234567890.ics

  • CHDK on Canon PowerShot SD790

    CHDK works, kinda-mostly:

    chdk on canon powershot sd790

    All I’ve really tried is raw imagery, which creates DNG files of some hugeness.

    Ixus90 / SD790 Porting/details thread has more (you need to log in to see the firmware files). It’s not ready for general usage yet, but shows promise.

  • i really do remember when all this was fields: fresh sweet cron

    fresh sweet cronAt the corner of Warden & Steeles, there was a little farm. It’s gone now. I think they were better at growing than spelling.

  • emacs: replacing newlines

    Jeremy says it’s C-q C-j, and that works for me.

  • Stewart & His Constant Search for Patterns in Randomness

    Three consecutive tracks in today’s the automatic podcast from “& His” artists:

    1. May Flower — Mike Shaw & His Alabama Entertainers
    2. Call On Me — Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
    3. Reset — Casper Fandango & His Tiny Sick Tears

  • 20000th track

    My music archive just hit 20K. The lucky track is Momus‘ I was a Maoist Intellectual.

    Momus is giving away his albums that he did for Creation as an advent calendar. So far, he’s released The Poison Boyfriend and Tender Pervert; more to follow.

  • the little computer that should

    My home server went phut last week. There was a brief power outage, and everything else came back on — except the server. It was a three year old Mini-ITX box, and I’m casting about for ways to replace it.

    To serve my immediate music serving and podcasting needs, I have pressed The Only Computer That Runs Windows into service, running Ubuntu using Wubi. Unfortunately, I do still occasionally need to run Garmin Mapsource, which only runs on Windows, and also The Only Computer That Runs Windows is also rather too nice a laptop to be sat doing server duty.

    I have some options:

    • Get a new motherboard for the mini-itx box. Via still has some crazy ideas about pricing (over $200 for a fanless C7?) but maybe I’ll go for Intel’s snappily-named D945GCLF, which looks okay for what I need and is only $80.
    • I could resurrect the old Athlon box I got in 2002, but it’s big, loud, and its components are probably near end of life. Also, why disturb a mature spider habitat?

    What I was really looking for was one of those tiny fanless internet appliance boxes that were so 2007 (like the Koolu and the Zonbu, both of which have moved on to other things), but such units, without the tied storage service contract, are upwards of $500.

    My needs are simple:

    • run Firefly to feed the Soundbridges;
    • generate the automatic podcast every day, which realistically means a linux box with Perl, sqlite and the like;
    • have something to ssh into when boredom strikes the need arises. Perhaps unwise having an open machine sitting directly on the internet, but only the ssh port will be open.

    I really also need to get rid of all the computer junk in the basement. It now includes two fritzed mini-ITX systems and the world’s slowest PostScript laser printer. Such fun.

  • AWS OpenWIND

    AWS OpenWIND is a free wind farm design tool. It’s from people who know what they’re doing. I’m intrigued.

  • my browser knows about toronto highways

    Thank you, I’m here all week …

  • glaikit: n., chiefly Scottish

    that’ll teach me to mess around with photo booth and Catherine’s iMac.

  • I don’t like prunes, but I do like prune


    Just spent a pleasant morning munging gps data and photos using Prune. It has allowed me to edit a complex GPS track, add many photos, correctly correlate them to GPS locations, and save it all back out in a variety of useful formats.

    I see that the author is talking about producing a native KDE version. Noooo! I like my Java. It runs everywhere.

    (Incidentally, I see that with the recent software update, the Blackberry Curve will now geotag images from the camera. It’s now a really good “I was here” device – coming close to the “Utensil” that Robyn Hitchcock spoke about years ago.)

  • the voice of the Mr. Owns

    I am trying to speak to my computer I’m not sure it understands the two well actually it’s doing not badly I’m speaking in a rather disjointed manner I have to go to New York state tomorrow I’m not quite sure why I have to look at twin turbo inns no I don’t have to look at twin turbo ends I have to look at wind turbine what’s

    While it’s remarkably accurate I’m going to be really mean and bald face and sure I don’t know “bold face is that I’m going to be located anyway, to your things have calmed pear shaped nine

    This is the voice of the Mr. Owns and I do I think I’m going to live. I suppose this is better than I expected especially since Mike accent is unusual most people in Canada do not understand a and so finally I have a computer that understands the this is a bit worrying isn’t it?

    Well that wraps it up for dictation. You have a pleasant evening. Good night!

    – what Microsoft speech recognition thinks I said. The random “what” and “nine” is me starting to laugh, and “bald face” is “blog this”.

  • goodbye, guardian

    Summary: tl;dr

    The Guardian has changed its news feeds to contain the whole article instead of just the lead paragraph. That’s just too much reading for me.

  • mini revived

    I revived Catherine‘s old (old?! it’s less than half a decade old!) iPod Mini with a new battery from iDemiGods. The kit was under $10 shipped, and took about 10 minutes to install.

    Strange how large and clunky the Mini feels compared to recent players. Of course, I immediately installed Rockbox …

  • pgmrnoise – a more random (or less repeatable) pgmnoise

    Update: If you have a recent NetPBM, this is fixed.
    I’d previously alluded that netpbm’s pgmnoise wasn’t as random as it could be if you called it several times in quick succession. Nerdy discussion after the break, but here’s a (perhaps slightly linux-centric) alternative:

    #!/bin/sh
# pgmrnoise - a more random pgmnoise; limited to 8-bit images
# created by scruss on Sun Oct 12 19:36:37 EDT 2008

echo P5
echo $1 $2
echo 255
dd if=/dev/urandom bs=$1 count=$2 2> /dev/null

    I just pasted the shell text in there; you’ll need to save it as a file. It works the same way as pgmnoise:

     pgmrnoise width height > noise.pgm

    It is limited as written to 8 bit-per-pixel output, but is a fairly trivial edit to make it 16 or more bits.

    (more…)