A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

My new class doesn't start until next Monday. After last week's weird and wacky weather, things really started to look up today. In retrospect, even though it's only six o'clock, I cannot believe I spent so much time in front of this screen. I suppose I have to come to terms with the fact, I'm rather addicted to computers. As I'll be turning 49 years old in July, you'd think I would know myself well by now.

I guess it really wasn't a surprise to realize I am fascinated with PCs. I first spent hard-earned cash on a Radio Shack TRS-80 in 1980. The tasks I was able to do in those days weren't very inspiring by today's standards. I recall making a simple BASIC program that simply added one plus one and showed the result on the black and white screen. Then, it would add one more and print again. I let it run overnight and I couldn't believe the device had made it into the hundreds of thousands by morning.

Technology marches on. Today, I was playing with my computer, network, and PS3. I was using TVersity to make my PS3 into a media server. I downloaded video from the Internet through a BitTorrent. Moving around 600 megabyte files is probably something I wouldn't have thought possible when my Radio Shack had 16K of RAM. The fact most of these files were destined for a 16x9 format 42" LCD television screen, would've undoubtedly sounded like science fiction too.

Here's my belated tribute to the recently deceased futurist who lived his last fifty years in Sri Lanka:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-- Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)
Profiles of The Future, 1961

This show is not a video file. It's a live program streamed through
the net from a Sri Lankan TV network to this aparment in
New Westminster, BC.

Labels: computers, Internet, PS3, sci-fi, Sri Lanka 2006, television

THE FUTURE: 1950 STYLE
Eventually, automated homes such as those described by Ray Bradbury will exist. As of today, I am one step closer to the part where the house plays music. Let's forget about the exact scenario of the short story from The Martian Chronicles as I'd rather leave the fear of nuclear devastation for another blog entry. Also it's important to note that he wrote this short story fifty-eight years ago. Smart houses are assuredly taking longer to come to fruition than my childish notions would've predicted.

SERVING MEDIA
I'm thinking about There Will Come Soft Rains, as I have thousands of .mp3 and .wma files on an external hard drive near my computer. I use it for the collection and backing up important info. from my main drive. As discovered on Saturday the new Playstation 3 will play these networked songs through the built-in media server in Microsoft's MediaPlayer 11. My PS3 lacks a direct DTS output for stereo files, unlike my computer's sound card. However, there's something quite simple and satisfying about making a selection on the large TV screen. It just feels right to pick music with the same remote I use when watching a DVD.

GETTING IT TOGETHER
Many people already have some sort of home network today. Most are wireless and used just to get the Internet on a notebook computer without a plug. This could be a wonderful basis for a smart house. The problem is that most of our consumer electronics products do not get along. Most of the devices are not designed for interoperability. In order to make any of them work together one must work too damned hard.

TO KNOW ME IS TO LOVE ME
I envision a day when, as one walks into the house, all gadgets will ask permission to connect to the home's network. For example, I should be able to listen to a podcast on a visitor's iPod. If the system were clever enough, a graphic representing the temporary device would automatically appear on a screen showing the current technology environment. As well as the calling-card information previously entered by the visitor, the system would recognize the unprotected media on the device. I'd simply be able to direct the system to play the podcast.

FIGHTING IN A FUTURE
This is a little more complex than Ray Bradbury's circuits and tapes in the walls. However, I can easily think of a good topic for a new, short story. Let's assume that all the system devices on our imaginary network have a priority on the system. What if various devices started fighting for supremacy in the heirarchy? Every iPod Nano lusts for power, you know. Somehow, that'd make for an interesting read.

Labels: computers, futurecast, Mediaplayer, podcasts, PS3, sci-fi, technology

I'm not going to set any speed records today. Yet, there's something cool about not touching the keyboard. Windows Vista has speech recognition built right inside. I purchased cheap headphones at Staples yesterday. I went there in order to buy a some DVD labels. I'm not quite sure why paper labels cost nearly as much as the discs themselves. Anyway, wearing this headset and microphone is giving me the chance to try something new.

I will probably not rely on dictation as a normal means of blog entry. I type about 50 words per minute so my fingers are faster than my mouth. (There are, however, many people who may believe my mouth would always come out the winner.) The entire process of trying to verbalize an idea in order to make it hit the screen, seems quite odd. I'm sure that vastly different parts of my brain are at work.

The software seems quite adept at being able to navigate the Windows environment. How cool it is to simply say, "Internet Explorer" and "gmail" and have the request appear on the screen automatically. It's a little magical but, in the long run, it's probably not very practical.

Labels: blogging, computers, Windows

I receive a weekly newsletter from NCIX.com. It always contains great deals on computer equipment. Even though I'm flush with extra, end-of-year cash, there was nothing much from the recent Boxing-Week sale that interested me. My quad-core processor PC and related equipment is new enough to not require upgrading. It seems odd not to drool over some new device or other.

The only item I could remotely consider as needing was some additional flash-memory for my new camera. My first digital camera had a 128 MB card although it was 4 mega-pixel. The average photo size was about 700 K. My new Kodak is 12 mega-pixel so each picture averages between 1.5 MB and 4 MB. Still, I was ahead with the 2 GB card I bought with the Z1275.

The sale at my computer store, however, included an 8 GB SDHC card for $49. I couldn't afford not to buy one. I think the computer I shipped from Dubai when arriving here in 1996 had a whopping 12 GB hard drive. Now, this little card holds 8. I doubt I'll ever have the need to carry around over 2200 photographic images. The little camera does create HD 720p video clips though.

Labels: camera, computers

In the space of five minutes, I just had to endure two of the 'PC vs. Apple guy' TV commercials. These annoy me no end. Who in the hell is the target audience for that ad campaign? It seems they're always pandering to idiots by insisting they're so simple to use. Perhaps there are fools being fooled though. I just did a web search and and found that Apple's market share has recently been soaring. After this amazing growth, it stood at just a bit more than 8% in the third quarter of this year.

Big deal, eh? If a mass-market consumer product has been around for decades and still cannot even manage 10% market share then it cannot be all that spectacular, can it?

I guess I could be confirmed as staunchly anti-Apple. I've even refused to buy an mp3 player that sports the iPod name just because they wear the little Apple logo. Most importantly, I don't think of their products as being cool, just well-hyped.

Labels: computers, Creative Zen, opinions

I hadn't planned on making any comments about computers today.

I did successfully find a new home for the machine that used to be the main PC. The new owners stopped by this morning and lugged the enormous beige box away. That didn't require a blog entry. My students are busy checking information on the individualized course homepages at my.bcit.ca. I've gone on and on about that many times before, so it didn't require even the briefest mention here today.

I find myself complaining here as my notebook computer seems to be on its way out. The bottom third of the screen appears washed out now. This makes using it impossible. I've had a rather love/hate relationship with this particular piece of equipment, I suppose. I was happy with the 14 inch screen as compared to all those people lugging around much wider beasts. The little notebook worked well when overseas on separate trips to Europe and a month in Asia. On the other hand, Gateway product support did not impress me at all.

This means I probably will have to start looking for something new. I don't want to replace my home computer, so I do not want anything large. In fact I think it'd be rather nice to have something with less than a 12-inch screen. I want something that's not a pain in the back, literally, to carry around. If it weren't for the fact they're a bit overpriced for what you get, I'd absolutely love one of these new ...

Labels: computers, opinions

I'm considering doing it again and it certainly doesn't seem like it has been four years since the last time.

What about this addiction I have? The computer I'm typing this entry on is capable of everything I require of it. Perhaps Windows Vista itself is making me feel inadequate.



Or perhaps it's just that I like spending money on equipment that soon fades into obsolescence. I don't dare add up the tab since my first IBM compatible over twenty years ago. I have constantly maintained that someday I was going to start from scratch but always seem to dribble money away on never-ending upgrades.

When I bought my current internal 300GB harddrive, I was doing so with the intention of it lasting through the next motherboard swap. Yet, disks are so cheap nowadays that I should go with a new one. I will need new DDR2 RAM for a new motherboard. My graphics card is AGP which is old technology. The current power supply is new but I might even buy a new case rather than just replacing the innards as I've done for at least a decade. Consequently, my old beige (read: yellowing) DVD writers will need to be replaced with the now nearly universal black.

Let's see what this leaves me. Items not needing replacement include:

DD/DTS Audio Card
Monitor
Video Capture Card
Keyboard / Mouse
External Hard Disk

It that all that is salvageable?

Labels: computers, Hardware, money

I really did wear out my PC. The other day, my desktop computer stopped working due to a malfunctioning motherboard. I knew by the way it was acting, and the fact I put in a new power supply, that there was something seriously the matter.

On Thursday, I carried the box down to the truck which is no small feat in itself. After, I drove up Kingsway to my computer store in Burnaby near Metrotown.

That business takes on interested high school students doing their required business training project. This means there are always lots of young, techie guys hanging about. Had there been personal computers in the 1970's, I would've been in a similar place. The real technician, had my computer in and out in a bit more than an hour. Thankfully, he wasn't doing much and was able to devote complete attention in taking out my ASUS P4P and putting in a new cheap motherboard.

I could go one of two ways:

Get things back running as quickly and cheaply as possible, or

Upgrade to the point of nearly building a new computer.

I chose the former this time around. I always buy in to computer technology at a fairly advanced level in order to maximize the years I can get out of a PC. I was really not prepared to jump up to state-of-the art again. It makes more sense to wait for autumn when all the new technology is being pushed for the back-to-school season.



A major problem was the innards of my box were new back when this blog was. I have DDR1 RAM rather than DDR2. I bought an AGP video card recently so I'll have a video card that can run the new interface on Windows Visa. My CPU was only a 2.4 non-duel core So, for around $100 bucks I had a new cheap motherboard installed. It isn't even as good as the old ASUS. It can only hold two sticks of memory, so I had to throw away 512 megabytes of RAM. It only has three IDE slots, so I had to make a decision about what card not to install. It cannot be overclocked in the BIOS setup so my old Intel chip runs at the stated 2.4 rather than its previous 2.8 Mhz.

When Windows woke up inside the new configuration, it made me authenticate it again. I have to admit, it was fantastic to simply get access to my life again. It is a clear lesson to me that it's really what's on the hard drive that makes the computer.

Labels: computers, Hardware

The Internet has everything, or so I thought. I'd never before been able to come up with a topic on which I couldn't find copious amounts of information.

I was recently admiring satellite views of the world through Google Earth. Back when personal computers were new and I worked overseas, I used to collect pirated software. In the Gulf, in the eighties, there were no avenues to purchase authentic copies. I was reminded of a very early program I once used. A company called BlueSky Software once created IBM-compatible software called PC Globe.

I came up nearly empty on the Internet. I only discovered a bit about the company and the titles they produced but very little about when the specific piece of software in question was released. What I really want to see is a view of the, then state-of-the-art, CGA graphics that it boasted. Suddenly I remembered, I could double check on PC Globe by looking at my Software Games from 1989 pdf. Unfortunately, the 5 1/4 inch bendable floppy disc I was thinking about is not listed there at all.

It's a bit sad to think that something created within the last twenty years can vanish so completely. This is especially poignant as computers are what the Internet is all about. I've been unsuccessful in my search. Please drop me a line if you know anything about BlueSky's PC Globe. I volunteer to be a resource and will even write up an entry for Wikipedia!



Today, it's possible to even zoom in on the very neighbourhood where I grew up. I'm 5,000 kilometers from that location and maybe that adds to the romanticism of being able to look where my feet trod over 45 years ago.

Labels: computers, games, Google, Internet, New Hampshire, software

In the 80's and early 90's, personal computer technology changed so quickly one had to periodically throw away computers. The growth in the last 10 years really hasn't slowed down but it's become possible to upgrade a bit at a time. The computer case I'm using is yellowed and probably about eight years old. My current motherboard has been running since the very first week that my eJournal and images began in 2003. My CD burner was replaced by DVD burners. I've tripled the RAM from the original 512 megabytes. I had to replace the power supply on two, separate occasions. Just last month a new, 300-gigabyte hard drive replaced a smaller 40 and 120.

In order to keep me running through next year, I need to get a better video card. The Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor told me so.

So after work today, I'm going to pick up my order at my computer store. I also ordered a new LG DVD burner that was on sale to replace the older of the two that are already installed on my system.

This nickel and diming seems as though I'm always buying equipment. Maybe it'd be cheaper just to wait and go back to the old method. I could just toss the equipment every two or three years and buy the freshest technology all in one fell-swoop.

Labels: computers, software, Windows

After pulling an older 120-gigabyte Maxtor out of my computer case, I couldn't let it go to waste. I found an el-cheapo drive enclosure for sale at my computer store. For $20, I reckoned it'd be useful to have a drive that will plug into the USB port of the nearest computer.

The nGear brand is not especially well-known for quality. The point was driven home. In fact, the first one I picked up on Wednesday simply didn't work. I brought the unit back to my computer store. Fortunately, it's only one block out of the way when I drive home. The technician took a look and agreed that it was defective. He replaced it for me.

This time, as soon as I connected the drive and plugged it in, I had 120G of extra storage space. Think of all the mp3's I will be able to carry around with my laptop now! It's too bad the power supply is nearly as large and heavy as a cement block.

Labels: computers

I accidentally clicked a link under my favourites list in MS Explorer. I do like how the new beta deals with favourites, but that's an entry for another day. My favourite computer store popped up on the screen. I've already mentioned that when Windows Vista comes out this year, I plan to buy a new hard drive to install it on. I had bookmarked the page with drives. How amazing! Nowadays a 300 gigabyte component goes for $150 Canadian.

I won't go into details to prove I've been computing since DOS. I have already mentioned that my first IBM-compatible came with two 360K floppies and no fixed disk. My first Seagate cost a fortune and could hold 20 megabytes.

We certainly do have the ability to save lots now. There's not much reason to be organized. It's easier to save the junk along with documents. When was the last time I wrote to a floppy drive? Email attachments beat a sneaker-net in the 1990's. Hell, most every photo out of my digital camera is too big to fit on a 1.4 meg. floppy disk.

(This photo was taken with a borrowed digital camera in December of 1999. It was a Kodak which saved on standard floppy disks. The original image was 480 x 640 pixels and about 60k.)

Labels: camera, computers, hard disk, Hardware

There might not be anything exceedingly impressive about the picture to the right. But believe me, it once amazed me.

It was a 256 color, 320 x 200 pixel .bmp file which took up the whole screen. I found the original intact on a historical backup CD. In order to post it here, I needed to convert the 64K file to .jpg format.

I first saw this colourful frog as a demo on a computer monitor in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia in February of 1988. I couldn't believe the stunning impact of the new VGA graphics cards. To me, the screen was just like looking at a photograph. I was almost speechless.

You see, prior to that time we were stuck with lowly IBM CGA cards. There were some Hercules cards with higher resolution but they were in boring monochrome.

Now, I see how photography has turned digital and how many images never even hit paper. I'm sure if I'd known that one day I would be saving my own images like this for viewing on a computer screen, I'd have openly wept.

Labels: computers, Saudi Arabia

Update: These are some events since this morning's entry. As the computer's heavy, I ...

drove to the computer shop at 10:05 am.

read the sign which said, "Summer hours: 11:00 am to 7:00 pm".

returned home.

drove again to the computer shop at 11:10.

found that no one was there.

went to the shopping centre and looked in London Drugs for 20 minutes.

drove back by the store and there was still no one there.

drove away, but first copied down the phone number on the storefront.

returned home.

called the phone number and left a message.

received a call at 12:15 when eating lunch.

drove again to the computer store.

parked, brought the bare PC inside, plugged into their outlet and it worked!

felt like a fool.

loaded the computer back into the truck and returned home.

parked in front of the building rather than in the parking garage.

brought the PC into the lobby, got the original power cord, and plugged it in.

saw nothing happening.

surmised, finally, the brand-new cord that had come with the power supply was not functioning.

returned to the computer store with the cord and it didn't work.

plugged it in using one of their spare cords and it booted right up.

took his cord and returned home again.

am typing the entry on that computer. PHEW!

Labels: computers, errands, Hardware

Posted by: Dennis S Hurd / 2:04 PM 0 comments

I'm happy to be able to blog today. I'm doing it on my Gateway notebook as my home computer is sitting beside the doorway.

Yesterday, I mentioned that the power would be off in our building for maintenance. I turned off my computer just as I should. I cannot remember the last time I shut it completely off. Occasionally, I reboot but it's been months since the hard disks have spun down.

After six hours all the home gadgets came back to life. We had to run around and reset the alarm clock, microwave, and other appliances. I pressed the switch on the computer ... and nothing happened. Since I had once had a power supply give up the ghost, I assumed I knew the problem.

It was only 4 o'clock in the afternoon, so I walked down to a computer store that's a few blocks away. The owner tested the power supply and said it was dead. So, I pulled out the bank card, withdrew $55 and walked home with a new one. I screwed the screws and plugged in plugs. Then, I reached for the switch. Still ... nothing happened.

Although that shop stayed open till 7:00 pm, I decided to just leave it until today. I'll carry the whole computer back to the guy and see what he says. I do like having a two CPU house.

Labels: complaints, computers, Hardware

When given the chance to explain an idea, I gravitate towards words. Expressing ideas through mathematics was never a forte. Yesterday's entry, about adding RAM to my computer, prompted me to dust off a calculator. I blithely mentioned having a gigabyte and a half of memory now. Somehow, this number no longer seems astronomical as digital cameras and mp3 players now sport comparable numbers.

Still, from a historical perspective, that's a lot of memory. I could probably use RAM size as a means of sequencing events in my life. For example, when moving to Canada, my computer had just 128 megabytes. Further back, in the middle of my tenure at the Higher Colleges of Technology, the average computer had 2 megabytes. Retreating to my first IBM compatible reminds me that I once did all my computing in 640K because the space between there and one megabyte was used for 'system housekeeping'. Wait, I can go back further to college days! My trusty and true TRS-80 had a whopping 16 kilobytes which is about the same as the file of this calculator image. I had upgraded the Radio Shack device from an original 4K.

Let's take a look at the bytes represented in those abbreviations:

TRS-80 Model 1
4,096 bytes

RAM in Current PC
1,536,000,000 bytes

Damn, my calculator doesn't have enough digits! Again, remembering that I'm no math genius, I think that's an increase of around three hundred and seventy five thousand percent. I wish my bank account had increased as dramatically in the last 25 years!

Labels: computers, Hardware

Finally! I've been waiting for a smooth segue to add this graphic. It's been sitting on my hard drive for a while anticipating the chance to join this blog. In yesterday's entry there was an Acrobat file which showed the game copies I had in 1989. So, now I'm able to include these two screen captures.



Jay maintains this was the only fun computer game. It used to run on my original IBM XT clone's CGA card. He doesn't have much regard for up-to-date equipment because one can't play Moonbugs.

I never use my computer to play games nowadays. Hell, my XBOX sits in a cardboard BOX as I never even manage to fire it up. I would be able to blast people right out of the room with Dolby 5.1 though. It might be I was thinking of this topic because of last month's buzz about the XBOX 360.

Labels: computers, games, software

When Service Pack 2 for XP did not automatically show up on my computer yesterday, I could wait no longer and took the process into my own hands. The 272 megabyte file took about twenty minutes to download. Then, it took more than fourty-five minutes to install and longer if you count the disk defrag with which I finished up the installation. All went smoothly and I watched as thousands of system files were replaced.

I couldn't help but think back to my first IBM compatible purchased in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia about 19 years ago! It sported 640K of RAM, two 360K floppy disks (rather than a hard disk), and the 8088 cooked along at 4.77 MHz. The real point for today's entry though is that it ran good old MS-DOS 2.1. In those days, only command.com (17,792 bytes) plus two hidden files were required in order to boot up. My goodness, Bill, we've come a long ways.

Labels: computers, Hardware, Saudi Arabia, Windows

After playing with my capture-card half the day yesterday, I am sure I didn't make a mistake. That was only part of the purchase; the other part was a DVD writer. What a cool combo! This is as exciting as when I discovered that music can be transferred onto recordable, shiny CD disks! This time it's video ending up on recordable, shiny DVD disks.

One of these new little platters holds 4.7 gigabytes of data. That's so amazing! (I had a computer with two, original 360K IBM floppy drives. (Those disks really were ... floppy and bendable and are probably collectors' items now.)

I'm able to create videos which can be watched in anybody's DVD player. (A player now costs only a bit more than a new-release feature movie.) Simple computer software allows me to make menus by template. I've got a pile of old 8-mm tape to archive.

I think this may also prompt me to spend less time with my digital camera and hasten my return to shooting video.



.
Speaking about watching, here's a song from
the early 80's. It seems slightly related to
the topic at hand in a paranoid sort of way.

Labels: computers, Hardware, software