Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: eConfusion
Introducing the HP TouchShmuck
This is the HP TouchSmart. I gather they’re available for around $1150. I would offer you a price comparison to non-touch-screen monitors of comparable size, except I can’t determine the size of this thing from HP’s description. Here’s the thing in action.
Explain to me, please, why a touch-screen monitor is a good idea. I guess the idea of stowing the keyboard would appeal to people with limited desk space, but really: who wants their monitor covered with fingerprints?
But my main objection is a good deal more practical than that. When you use a keyboard, your fingers are in motion, and your wrist serves as the fulcrum. Same thing happens when you use a mouse. If you use a touch-screen monitor, you’ll be putting the fulcrum at your elbow, or possibly your shoulder.
There’s a principle in surgery that says you want the shortest distance possible from your fingers to the fulcrum. Longer distances magnify tremor (which we all have to some degree) and larger muscles are recruited to do things smaller muscles ought to be doing. You’ll end up with a whole lot of strain.
The TouchSmart makes no ergonomic sense, that’s what I’m trying to say.
But beyond that, why would I want such a thing? Why do I need a different way to move stuff around on my screen when the old ways work just fine? There’s nothing novel or sexy about touch screens — it’s not like this is some kind of new technology. In contrast, flat panel monitors are GREAT. I like being able to pick up my monitor with one hand! I think it’s a plus that my little lightweight monitor can’t double as a murder weapon!
See, I’m not a Neo-Luddite; bring on those flat panel monitors. Please.
But keep your paw prints off of ’em.
D.
Disaster
Wasn’t I just saying something about how royally effed I’d be if my old computer died? It died. Not sure what died, but something died. Karen pulled the hard drive out of it and plunked it into the disk drive slot of one of our Crescent City office computers (we’re up to our umbos in computers, I’ll have you know), and the office computer can access the data on my old computer’s disk drive, so we’re not too royally effed. I can, for example, recover my half million unpublishable words.
ANYWAY here’s the question. I can access the data files, I can back stuff up . . . but I can’t seem to figure out where my old emails are stored. We use Thunderbird. We’ve found the Thunderbird program file, but it’s not obvious at all where those old emails are hiding. Does anyone have any ideas about this?
Thanks 🙂
D.
PS: I’ll be incommunicado (email-wise) until I get that azureus account up and running again.
Catharsis
I’ve been writing for catharsis. Thought about sharing, but nah, this is for me. And that’s what a lot of catharsis-writers fail to realize. Have I ever told the story of my high school friend who, when I was home visiting from college, felt it necessary to read aloud from his novel-in-the-making? He had just finished reading The World According to Garp and it showed. His writing was one part faux-Irving, three parts teenage angst. I can still remember my gratitude that we didn’t have a loaded gun in the room.
We finished the computer room today. Our gaming computer had a fried hard drive, so we popped for one that was Newer! Bigger! Better! The repair dude said, “Man, I am SO glad you didn’t trash it, because that is a sweet box.” When a computer geek says “sweet box,” everyone knows he’s talking hardware, and the geek doesn’t even realize he could be talking about something else.
But don’t get me wrong. Geeks rule. We got this box a year or two ago, mostly because Jake and I wanted to be able to work on World of Warcraft quests together. Of course, now we’re bored with WoW (only took us three years!) so the impetus to have two good gaming computers is no longer there. Still, Jake’s “good computer” is getting up there, and the computer I’m using right now is older still — maybe six years old? Karen would know. Old. About 100 in computer years. It boots up like a 286. So old that when you put a CD in, out comes a poof! of dust.
And yet it’s MY computer and it has tons of MY stuff on it, including stuff I can’t back up. Paint Shop Pro, for example. It was shareware, once upon a time, and then I began buying the upgrades. You can forget about original disks. They don’t exist. And now I’m stuck. If I switch to another computer, I’ll have to buy all new software.
There really ought to be a thing where you stick one end of a cable into one computer and the other end of the cable into the other computer, and you hit a button that says “Clone A to B” and it turns Computer B into a carbon copy of Computer A. And then everyone would whine about how they screwed up and meant to turn A into B, not B into A, and now they’re ruined! And everyone else would snicker knowingly and say, sotto voce, “Noob.”
Not that I would ever make an error like that. You know why?
I’d make Karen do it.
D.
Karen has a computer geek question.
She wants to turn the audio from this Invader Zim clip into a ringtone for her cell phone. I gather she has already searched for downloadable ringtones and this particular one isn’t available.
Any suggestions?
Anyone gonna buy Spore tomorrow?
D.
As I wipe the spittle off my chin
Cue Deliverance music.
I can’t figure out Excel. I’ve never used a spreadsheet, but I figure, how tough can it be? (Answer: too tough for me, apparently.)
Here’s all I need to do: enter two columns of numbers (A and B) and automatically have each C = A*B. Thus, C1 = A1*B1, C2 = A2*B2, and so forth. I do NOT want to have to do this line by line, since I have a lot of data to enter.
At the very end, I’ll want to sum up all of my C values. I can’t figure out how to define my C column so that every row of C is the product of that row’s A and B.
The in-program help for “function” and “product” doesn’t give me my answer. Any ideas?
D.
eCrud
In a recent South Park episode, the Internet crashes, and South Park’s residents (and all America) are left Netless. I’m not that hard up right now, but it’s close. I’m blogging on my Blackberry.
I hate blogging on my Blackberry.
Something about typing with my thumbs, I suppose. It makes me want to use a fork to eat mu shu pork, a hammer to open a quart of milk, a bobby pin to clean ear wax. Thumbs weren’t meant to do anything but hit the space bar.
There’s a rollup keyboard you can buy as an accessory for the Blackberry. It works well. I lost it first time I brought it along on vacation.
What’s wrong with my modem router thingy? Unlike the dolts in South Park, I’ve already checked to see if it’s plugged in (yes). I’ve unplugged and replugged it several times — the ultimate reboot. Figuring it needed a cooldown, I’ve left it unplugged for well over an hour, sitting in front of a fan the whole time. I’d fix it a dry martini if I thought it would help.
The most annoying thing? I can’t check my email. You’re supposed to be able to set up the Blackberry to check email, but it only wants to check its own email. And you know what else? Sometimes it doesn’t ring when it’s supposed to. Today, one of my old attendings called me back. I figured this out when my pocket started talking to me.
I want wetware. That’s right — I want it all in my head.
Gadgets are far too error-prone.
D.
Tuesday Night Jam
So Steven Van Zandt, Dave Grohl, Bruce Springsteen, and Elvis Costello walk into a bar, beat the crap out of the Country/Western band that’s singing some kind of Dwight Yoakam caterwaul, steal their guitars, and jam on The Clash’s London Calling.
Something like that.
My pick for best vocalist in this quartet: Dave Grohl. That’s the guy with the goatee, in case y’all aren’t fans.
***
As some of you know, I like to complain bitterly about not being able to embed videos on my version of WordPress.
Well, I’m going to do something about it. To the first person who gives me advice leading to the successful embedding of a video on this blog (yeah, no fair telling me I can embed back on my Blogger blog), I’ll give a $25 gift certificate to the online vendor of your choice, assuming they offer gift certificates, and what yutz doesn’t?
Hint: copying and pasting the embed code into my post’s HTML does NOT get the job done.
D.
Connecting to Server
Please Wait.
Recording Will Begin Soon.
That’s what YouTube says. Sneaky bastards, I bet they’re waiting for me to pick my nose before they start recording. Sure, I could edit the video afterwards, but they’re betting I’m too lazy to figure out their interface. And they would be right.
Nothing for it but to come back a few minutes later.
Nope. Still nothing. Guess I’ll go look at nudes over on Flickr.
Below the cut: um. Not safe for work?
Man vs. Shuffle
Now that a certain former roommate of Karen’s is hanging around my blog, I thought I would indulge in a bit of memoirist BS.
When Karen and I were first dating, I knew she had had a previous boyfriend, but I didn’t know a thing about him. I didn’t feel particularly comfortable asking, either, because what I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me, right?
But there was one guy who kept appearing, both in conversation and in person, so I figured he had to be the guy. Karen’s roomie, Kira, once went so far as to compare me to him. “Ah, a Renaissance man,” she said. “Remind you of anyone, Karen?”
So who was this guy? Turns out Bill was an old classmate of Karen’s and Kira’s, not an old love interest. (I think Karen was a bit shocked when my misunderstanding came to light.) Just as I made a nice life for myself at Berkeley melding the hard sciences with the humanities, Bill had found a way to meld computer science with linguistics. And now he’s some sort of Linux guru.
What does this have to do with the iPod shuffle? Well, Bill and I might both have been Renaissance men, but our skill sets scarcely overlapped. I was, and I remain, nearly computer-illiterate. And while Bill once professed to me with near-religious fervor, “Music is very important to me,” I still can’t bring myself to such an exalted state. Nowadays, I might reply to Bill, “Yeah, there are some songs I like.”
A few weeks ago, I won an iPod shuffle at our local grocery store’s “grand re-opening.” How exciting! I took it home, plugged the ISB cable into the ISB slot, docked my shiny new iPod, and waited for it to do shit. And waited. And waited.
My iTunes files were still there, so what could be the problem? For the life of me, I couldn’t find the button to “sync” my iTunes with my iPod. The iPod didn’t come with a CD, nor did it come with much in the way of instructions, and the online help was a masterful exercise in unhelpfulness.
This morning, I decided to give it another try, and once again, it was a non-starter. Then I slid a few things around on the iPod, plugged things in, unplugged things, and plugged things backed in, undocked the iPod, re-docked the iPod, and all of a sudden the little beast wanted to sync with iTunes.
So I’m wired, kids. Man vs. Shuffle, and Man wins! Fuck technology! Hallelujah, technology! Bill would be chortling if he could see 1/10 the grief this silly thing has given me.
Playing right now: Depeche Mode, “Enjoy the Silence.”
Live-blogging tonight: sometime around 7 to 8 PM PST. See ya soon.
D.
PS: these “ear buds” suck big time. I’m using headphones.