Post from Linux

I got an ASUS eeePC 900A for $150 and have been playing with it.

With only a 4 GB SSD "hard drive" it doesn't have a large capacity.

I can see why so many have been returned and show up now as refurbished units, after about half the updates that were downloaded automatically when I booted the machine, it was out of disk space so the rest of the updates wouldn't install (and the error message wasn't clear why, just it wouldn't work).

I reformatted the SSD and installed an eeePC Ubuntu configuration with Open Office 3.1 and have about 900MB left.

I'll also install Windows XP (without a lot of options) on a SD card so I can dual boot either to Windows or Linux

Speed DOES Matter

I got a DXG 581V in February, just in time for a trip to Bangkok!

It is amazing.  1080p, and so tiny…

clip_image002DXG 581V

I have to admit that up until now I’ve pretty much viewed flash memory as a commodity that is purchased largely on price.  I also have been very lucky, I haven’t had a flash memory failure that included any information or pictures.  If I got a bad memory card (or drive), it either didn’t work from the start or it worked fine as long as I used it.

So I was a little surprised when a 4 GB SDHC card I put in the DXG581V worked for a little while then gave me a memory error when I was recording a video.  I tried reformatting the card and that worked fine.  The card worked in another camera.  But after 10 seconds in the DXG581V I got the error.  Another SD card worked fine.

When I thought about the “failure” on the flight home it dawned on me what the issue was.  1080p video is a lot more data per second than a digital still or 640x480 video I’ve recorded before.  My memory errors weren’t a failure in the card, they were the result of the SD card not being able to keep up. Read more »

What's Wrong With This Picture?

I saw a Google Blog post about their new toolbar labs.

Since I love the Google Toolbar in Firefox and less frequently Internet Explorer, I clicked on the link while in Firefox.  I got an interesting message so I opened Google Chrome and tried the same URL, that’s when I got this:

Image1

Ok, I know Chrome isn’t supported by Google Toolbar (which I find odd because I love my bookmarks and autofill), but still to have a message that the toolbar is only available for Microsoft Internet Explorer…

English Isn't My First Language

Last night late, while clearing immigration into Canada in Halifax, I saw this really interesting sign.  I asked if I could take a picture, they said yes, so here it is.

The title reads

It’s True.
English Isn’t My First Language.
That would be
JAVA or C++

 

CIMG3297

PC/Mac Cross Platform Frustrations

My last post on Using Excel to Create HTML, I discussed using Excel to automatically create HTML for a friend Cinda.

I use a PC (actually a network of PC’s, I use more than one computer) running Windows XP.

Cinda uses a Mac.

QuestionOur first incompatibility was one character. 

Specifically the Mac’s desire to turn apostrophe's into curly quotes.

Cinda would edit the spreadsheet and the web page from the created HTML would display a diamond with a question mark inside.

A Google search showed the mysterious character was a Unicode Replacement Glyph, what web browsers display when presented with a character they don’t understand.

That could be solved by a search and replace inside a macro to replace the ASCII code of the curly quote with the ASCII code for a straight quote. Read more »

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