Thursday, October 16, 2003

 
Progress

When the * key fell off my cellphone I asked about a replacement handset.
Well, sir, since your phone is "obsolete" it cannot be directly replaced. You'll need one of the new ones that runs on the "new service".
Fine, but will it use the same lead when I want to use it as a modem, or will I need to buy that again for the new phone.
No sir, none of the new phones can be used as modems.
So how do travelling business men check their email on the run ?
They buy an "aircard ", sir, which is a PCMCIA wireless modem connected to our phone network.
Great, how much is that ?
$300, sir.
(Splutter) How much ??
Plus tax, sir.

Needless to say I replaced my original phone with an identical used one through eBay. Cost about $30 and now I have 2 chargers and a spare battery.
Of course they will one day turn off the "old service", and I'll be stuck.

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

 
Is this cool or what ?

OK, I may be behind the curve but until this week I'd never seen a Trikke.
Click here if you are wondering what I'm talking about.
That looks far more fun than a Segway ever was.
I wonder if George Bush could fall off one to keep us amused ?

Monday, October 06, 2003

 
The old ones are the best

I was recently trying in vain to do a backup. What I wanted was a straight copy of a directory with about 1GB of stuff, on onto a large external USB hard drive on another PC elsewhere on my (home) wireless network. Difficult to do unmanned because Windows would prompt midway because some file somewhere (which was encrypted) would not fully copied. And it took ages and the network fell over from time to time. In fact doing it overnight had about a 30% chance of success.
So I did what I have haven't done for ages (and never in XP) - I wrote a batch file that called the good old "command line" version of PKZIP (the original 32 bit "long filename compatible" version, called PKZIP25).
One by one I zipped huge directories, then copied the resulting file to the external drive and then deleted it off my local hard drive.
It was faster than straight Windows copying, it worked first time (and second time when I repeated it the next week). It used the storage disk space optimally, and (best of all) I now have a one click icon for it. Unlike fancy built in backup software, I have full transparent access to all the backed up files.
And people call me a Luddite because I dare to miss DOS !!!

PKZIP is still one of the coolest available. Version 6 is $39.95 and offers either GUI or good old command line. Check it out. (No, I'm not on commission - I just love the product).

Random musings. No more.

March 2003 ♥ April 2003 ♥ May 2003 ♥ June 2003 ♥ July 2003 ♥ August 2003 ♥ September 2003 ♥ October 2003 ♥ December 2003 ♥ January 2004 ♥