Almontage

Nobody likes to spend money unnecessarily and I wasn’t looking forward to buying a new laptop when my old Dell failed. However, now that I have this new Lenovo Flex 2 15D I have to admit I have received value for money.

The new notebook has the same screen size and resolution as my old Dell so it’s pretty easy on the eyes. But it has a number of incrementally nice features:

• It’s thinner and lighter. The new netbook designs skew that way – even the basic ones like this. The new machine is only about 3 cm thick.
• It folds back to an easel configuration if you want to watch video or read an online magazine. It’s not quite as flexible as a Lenovo Yoga but pretty good.
• It has a great keyboard and touchpad with a numeric keypad – Lenovo learned a thing or two from IBM after they got the Thinkpad franchise.
• It has a touchscreen – not that I’ve used it much as I am a mouse and keyboard guy. But it’s a nice feature in such a lower priced unit.
• It runs Windows 8.1 – better than Windows 8. I’m not sure this is a feature I’d have wanted but honestly Windows 8 isn’t as bad as I thought originally. Once you install Classic Shell and banish the Start Screen and tablet apps for good, Windows 8 is just fine. It boots and runs faster than Windows 7.
• The hardware is pretty good for a cheap laptop. AMD has come a long way in its Hybrid System Architecture project and this A8 “Beema” processor works very well. It’s a System on Chip configuration – processor, graphics card and memory controller all on the same chip. This simplifies the motherboard design, reduces power consumption and heat generation. Battery life is far greater than with my old 2010 Phenom II laptop and the performance is better. The laptop also has a slim DVD-ROM and a fast mechanical hard drive with tons of storage space. It also has 8 GB of RAM which is plenty for what I want to do. I’m not running games or simulations on this unit. Got the big desktop for that.
• Bloatware wasn’t a major problem and most of it was actually tablet apps which I never see anyway. I uninstalled a lot of stuff like that so if I do have to look at the Start Screen it’s pretty clean.

So all in all I’m pretty happy with the Flex 2 netbook and pretty happy with Lenovo’s design. It never hurts to get value for money.

My I love Microsoft and especially Windows. Nothing like having to run antivirus, firewall, anti-malware just to stay safe from the bad guys. And then there’s Windows Activation.

Microsoft believes that all its customers (and I use that term loosely) are all guilty of piracy unless proven otherwise. So it was that after a “Windows Update” exercise, my well performing Acer desktop started rebooting time and again and failing to install one of the updates. Never mind it was for Internet Explorer – another piece of bloatware I never use.

A check of the error code I was getting showed that my computer now thought it was running a pirate copy of Windows 7. The verification tool I used said “buy the real thing right now or else.” Then the screen went black and Windows dumped my wallpaper. I figured it was only a matter of time until I couldn’t run it at all.

So I chatted online with Windows Activation Tech Support. The rep informed me that since I had an OEM copy on the machine I had to contact Acer for further help. They wouldn’t unlock my key.

Next a phone call to Acer where the nice lady informed me that:

• I couldn’t see the product key anyway because Acer hard codes it into the BIOS.
• There was a way to fix my problem and it was:

Nuke and repave, that’s right. Fortunately I had my data backed up but after restoring I had the inevitable 168 Windows Updates (they did work this time.) Then I had to reinstall all my applications and recopy my data to the machine. 12 hours of work later I was finished.

All’s back to normal now. Did I tell you how much I love Windows?

This is what we used to mean if we used the term in computerese. Mainframe units that required their own air conditioned room.

These days with a lot of folks surfing the Net on a smartphone, I’d argue that “big iron” probably refers to a desktop system. Call me a dinosaur but I still think there is a place in my online world for the big unit.

• Nice big keyboard with easy typing.
• A mouse – no fat finger pointing.
• 21 inch screen or larger.
• Gobs of memory.
• High speed processor and powerful video.
• Plenty of storage space.
• Speakers that actually sound good.

I have two of these behemoths in regular use at home.

My primary desktop is a commercial grade Acer Veriton M. Assembled in the USA with quality components, it has a 2nd gen Intel i5 processor and a 1 TB hard drive. Since I use this machine for my Train Sim games I have increased the memory and added a discrete Nvidia video card. To do that I had to replace the power supply which was the only weak point in this system. So it’s a modified commercial machine I guess.

My other desktop is one I built from the ground up as a Linux only machine. It has a gaming case, AMD quad core Trinity chip which combines video and processor, a solid state drive for the operating system and a large regular hard drive for photos and documents. This particular machine is very fast and powerful since it runs Linux. As a home built unit, it has quality components and didn’t cost all that much to put together.

The joy of big iron. Some days it isn’t bad to be a dinosaur.

I believe there is another Appliance Failure Law that says:

• If an appliance has been in use for approximately 10 years there is a 90% probability of a major meltdown.

The latest casualty at home is a rather unsung piece of metal in the basement called an HRV unit. This is something that is needed in well insulated houses in Canada during the cold weather. It is a heat exchanger that draws in cold outside air and warms it a bit with the warm humid inside air it’s exhausting from the inner space. It keeps the humidity at a decent level inside and is far more heat efficient than opening the windows. It’s great when it works.

Right now it appears to be broken though. I’ve tried rebooting it and checked the circuit breaker and power supply to it, but the motor’s not running.  The electric dampers open and close so I think the control board is OK. The repair adviser at the furnace service company thinks the motor may be toast – he’s replaced a bunch of them already this fall.

Without the HRV the windows fog up, and Maria gets grumpy. Gotta get it fixed.

All it takes is money. Not as much as replacing the fridge, but expensive enough. The repair person’s on his way this afternoon.

Update: The service company sent Adam – our favorite technician. He had the old motor out and a new one in – in 20 minutes. No more fogged up windows. Maria is happy.

When I first began to establish an Internet presence there was really only one practical way to do it – build a website.

Those were the days of online communities like GeoCities or Angelfire and many millions of online users picked up a bit of HTML and established a place on the Web. If they were like me, it was strictly amateur hour.

I’ve done lots of coding over the years, and in the late 1990s I learned enough HTML to be dangerous. My old website is still up there as a reminder of how bad things used to be. HTML is only one part of the picture – to be a serious website developer you need to learn Cascading Style Sheets and Javascript. My son-in-law – who is nowhere near as much of a geek as I am – put in the time to learn CSS and he made some quite passable sites compared to mine.

The other major problem with a website is that it’s static. You do a page. Then if things change, you redo it. If you want to write about a new topic, it’s a new page. You have to worry about navigational links. And you have to write the code correctly and with some creative flair. The means is more important than the end, frankly. It’s fun if you just want to be a geek I suppose.

A blog didn’t really exist in its current form back when I built my site 15 years ago. A blog is dynamic. You write an article and it appears at the top. Older posts move down. Instead of having to sign a Guestbook, your readers can comment on a post with ease.

You can start blogging in five minutes if you sign up with Google Blogger or WordPress. Even if you want to satisfy your inner geek and have your own domain, you can install the WordPress blogging software with a couple of clicks and maybe it takes 10 minutes before you write your post. If you want a little different look than standard WordPress Twenty Fourteen you can choose from thousands of professionally made themes and choose something that’s right for you. This Bayse theme I’m using is specific for personal blogs and storytelling.

The blogging software is slowly converging with website creation software and the hybrid product is called CMS (Content Management System.) At this point CMS makes a nice website that looks vaguely like a blog. So I think there’s a way to go before blogging software takes over the Web.

In my view the difference between a static website and a blog is similar to the difference between a computational computer program and a spreadsheet. The program gives you more flexibility but you have to learn all the nuances of coding to make it really cook. The spreadsheet just lets you get on with the job.

At this point in my life I’m probably a better story teller than a programmer so I’ll stick to blogging.