corvideye: (fruitful)
At last, time and weather allowed me to take my writing rig outdoors! The yard is hitting its peak of lush, extravagant beauty. I sat and marvelled amid the drifting fragrance of wisteria and white lilacs.

Whether I work indoors or outdoors, however, the question remains the same: where is it exactly that I think I'm going to sit?


The back yard's full glory will kick in as the English walnut leafs out over the next few weeks, creating complex woodland shade. Right now its seemingly lifeless twigs are just beginning to emit leaves:


The current lack of shade makes the laptop screen visibility extremely poor (I wish there was a way to fix that; what is a laptop for if not to take outside?), but the ambience is worth it. Later I changed locations to stay in the shade. Here's Mama keeping me company again amid her jungle...I wonder if she feels nostalgia for that corner, as I do, since that was where she and the kitten horde were living when we first met?



Meanwhile, in the bucolic land across the street...


(A few minutes before this, the horse looked for all the world like it was waiting at the bus stop next to this lot, but it moved by the time I got my camera.)
corvideye: (Default)
I really wish I had known about this before I bought my Epson NX400 printer. It prints beautifully (if slowly) when it prints, but running out of any one color of ink locks up the printer until you replace all colors of ink. (And the cartridges are miniscule!) Apparently I'm not the only one annoyed by this:

"Consumers fed up with the high cost of ink jet cartridges are taking Epson America to court, accusing it of manipulating equipment in order to sell more ink. A lawsuit filed Friday in District Court in Texas claims some models of Epson ink jet cartridges prematurely block Epson printers from functioning even though "substantial ink" remains in the cartridge...

"The problem is with Epson ink jet cartridges outfitted with an Intellidge microchip, say Harnes Keller attorneys. Because the Intellidge chip stops Epson printers from operating until the ink jet cartridge is replaced, the plaintiffs charge that Epson is in breach of contract with its customers, who are entitled to use all the ink in the cartridge. The cartridges actually contain up to 38 percent more usable ink after the Intellidge chip cuts them off, according to research cited in the suits."

Also, now I know why I couldn't get the printer to acknowledge my set of slightly used cartridges: the chip is on the cartridge itself, not the printer; it knows how much ink the cartridge has given out, and if that amount doesn't suit it, it shuts down. BOGUS.

iTunes AGH

Dec. 23rd, 2008 03:15 pm
corvideye: (Default)
Okay, ye tech-savvy, I need your help... I had a series of unexplained computer crashes today, after which I went to re-open iTunes... it took a weirdly long time to load and put up a progress window saying it was opening iTunes library.xml... This took a very, very long time, and fearing it was all going to freeze again, I foolishly clicked the button to "stop"... thereupon iTunes opened, a whole bunch of music is missing, and all of my many many playlists are gone... Is there any way to restore this?? In the music library folder I see "previous music libraries", the most recent from two months ago... would that include playlists, or would I just lose whatever music I had added since then? (Which still might be worth it, since a lot seems to be missing.) Also on Apple support I see this... http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451 "How to recreate your iTunes library"
Should I do this? Right now I'm afraid to mess with it. Halp!

ETA: okay, the music at least is still in the "itunes music" folder, I'm just not sure how to get it back into the program, and again, don't want to mess with it till I get advice.
corvideye: (goose)
So another tech purchase needed in my future is a decent inkjet printer. I hate shopping for and comparing this sort of thing, so I'm open to anyone's recommendations/ opinions.

My parameters:
Brands: I have a very strong aversion to Epson and Lexmark--in my experience and observation, their products are crap. I have had good experiences with HP, and at least in the past their print heads are part of the cartridge and so get replaced regularly, which seems a real bonus as clogged print heads have been the demise of every inkjet I have owned. I assume that is still true. I don't know if any other brands are like that. I love Brother's laser printers but have no info on their inkjets. Have no info on Canon. (ETA: quoth wikipedia: Canon's print heads are designed to last the life of the printer, but can be replaced if damaged, unlike Epson. Wikipedia's "inkjet printer" entry has a fair bit on this subject--more than the manufacturers!)

I just want an inkjet, not an all-in-one (already have a nice scanner).

I will use it almost entirely for image printing--photos and artwork--and not particularly high volume of that. Will almost never use it for text; that's what the laser's for, so image quality is more important than speed.

Wireless capability is optional. Must work with Mac, of course.

Any thoughts?
corvideye: (Default)
Bwahaha... I finally managed to add 1 GB of RAM to my computer's existing 256 MB. Things are not so molasses-laden now. Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] grian_ruadh for a bit of reassurance, as the card was NOT that easy to fit in the slot, and I was nervous about how hard I could push on the thing. All seems good now! Plus there's two more slots available for future augmentation...
corvideye: (Default)
This ingenious guy invents games through which humans help make computers smarter... He also invented the captcha (those stretched letters and numbers that foil spambots--I hadn't known they had a name). Harnessing fun: what a wonderfully devious way to get work done...

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/15-07/ff_humancomp

"People will contribute their brainpower, but only if they're given an enjoyable, time-killing experience in exchange. Play is the unexpected glue that lashes human brains together into a global overmind. So to build a good human-computation project, you can't merely be a scientist; you also need to be a videogame designer."
corvideye: (goose)
My computer has been getting ve-ry lag-gy late-ly, so I was hunting for ways to streamline memory. I knew that the many extra language modules built into Mac's OS take up huge amounts of memory, but I wasn't sure how to root them out of their myriad hidey holes. Then I found a nifty piece of freeware called Monolingual that, with the click of a box and push of a button, does just that. So I off-loaded Estonian, Faroese, Lithuanian, Thai, and many more... and freed up ONE GIGABYTE of space. Suddenly my computer, instead of performing tasks like a teenager asked to do chores ("Oh...do I HAVE to?") is zipping along like a hyperactive corporal ("Ma'am! Yes ma'am! I'll get right on it!"). Here's where to get it if any fellow Mac users want to tame their babel...

http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/index.php

Mind you, I did leave Klingon on there, just because it amused me too much. Yep. The Mac OS includes Klingon.

Edit: apparently one should be sure to close all applications before running the program. And be careful not to delete any version of English, or it will cause problems!

More Mac streamlining tips:
http://www.imafish.co.uk/articles/post/articles/130/52-ways-to-speed-up-os-x/

Profile

corvideye: (Default)
corvideye

December 2016

S M T W T F S
    123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 20th, 2025 06:25 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios