[CCC News] Assorted News 26 - Holiday Special :)
Michael Kean
michael at auzzie.net
Fri Dec 18 13:30:23 AEDT 2009
*In this edition:*
*
Holiday Special
* Podcasts for your Travels.*
* Websites for a laugh.
Smoker? No warranty for you.
Lick It!
Statement Fun.
Google Desktop
TL;DR
Watching TV Online
Gmail Saves The Day
Inkjet becomes one pin dot matrix
Vitamin D
Rant on Greed V2
Any web designers out there?
Computer Table wants a home...
E-Bike review.
A week off...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Podcasts for your Travels
*Chances are some of you will be embarking on some long trips this
holiday season. Taking some podcasts with you will help make the journey
more enjoyable.
Podcasts are basically radio shows that you can download and listen to;
with the exception that you can tell your computer to get them
automatically if you have iTunes or other podcasting software.
Here's a few of my faves:
*/CarTalk.
/*Two funny American guys who spend at least half of the show laughing
constantly. Whether or not you're mechanically inclined; you'll probably
enjoy this weekly one hour show . They'll try all sorts of tricks to get
you out of trouble with your car, or to pass the blame onto someone
else; or simply tell you that your car is going to blow up any minute...
http://www.cartalk.com/
/*AnswerMeThis.
*/Warning: Not entirely safe for kids - uses bad language now and then.
Three crazy British people (two guys one gal) answer some of the
craziest questions that people submit to them online and by phone.
http://answermethispodcast.com/
*/The Moth.
/*Warning: May use bad language or discuss themes that may offend.
OK so that's a weird name for a podcast. It is "Real Life Stories told
Live, Without Notes, in under 20 mins." There is an amazing variety of
stories here, from accountants, to strippers, to prisoners with dying
rellies on the other side; and more. Some excellent listening here.
Experience the full variety of people that exist on this earth.
http://www.themoth.org/podcast
/*TED Talks.
*/No, it's not "Big Ted" from Sesame Street :) TED Talks are described
as "Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world." Most of
them are pretty good; although since they cover a huge spectrum of
ideas, some are bound to be of more interest to you than others.
http://www.ted.com/
Note: Most podcasts tend to be between 20 and 50MB to download, so for
those of you on limited download plans; you might need to keep an eye
on your usage while downloading these gems.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Websites for a laugh.*/*
*/Here's a couple of gems I've run across in the last month that you
might enjoy:
"What's the Funniest thing you've done / seen someone do in a classroom?"
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/9x4op/whats_the_funniest_thing_youve_done_seen_someone/
Warning: Some of these posts are likely to offend. (Bad language,
politically incorrect.)
Another Warning: You might get nothing done for 5 hours reading all these!
Find out about the Cow Button, the 8.5 by 11 foot sheet of notes, the
fake suicide out the window - with the chair, the "Thank you for last
night" comment, Spontaneous Spiderman, the teacher with the Bull Whip,
DENdoodahBAHdoo and more :)
*"What is Love"
*This chicken thinks he knows :) http://vimeo.com/8121722
*"One Man Band"
*Well, if your low on income, and have musical skill, you could copy
this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fuv3QOeDDI
Hmm - I'm sure there are more, but I'm short of time. The phone keeps
ringing. And I want to get this out by 1:45pm.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Smoker? No warranty for you...
*.. or your Apple computer.
First, let me congratulate those few of you who actually did quit
smoking this year. I'm proud of you! (It also makes working with you
more of a pleasure, as second hand smoke is one thing that I'm not fond of.)
Anyway, earlier this year Apple made the decision that it would not do
warranty repairs on laptops belonging to smokers. This was because they
were classed as hazardous materials; and also because the residue gums
up the cooling systems. It's actually been quite a while since I've
repaired a heavy smoker's computer - the worst I remember was a Gateway
2000 machine that was yellow inside from the front-mounted fan dragging
the smoke into the computer's innards.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Lick It!
*OK a slightly less hygienic computer tip for you. Many computers now
have finger print readers. For most people these work OK but sometimes
you may find it just refuses to acknowledge you giving it the finger. If
this happens to you, try this simple step. 1 - lick your finger. 2 -
wipe your finger on a nearby fabric. 3 - swipe your finger on the reader.
If your skin is dry, it makes it harder for the computer to see it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Statement Fun.
*You know the old saying about the plumber's house having leaking taps.
Well, my accounting is a bit like that sometimes. I'm pretty good at
entering the information in as it comes in, but chasing up old accounts
is not something I give much priority to. I knew for the last few months
that something was up with my system not sending accounts under certain
circumstances; and it turned out that through a logic error I introduced
to it, anyone who had an unpaid account less than one month old would
never get a statement.
As a result, a few got away from me. The worst ones being an ex Internet
customer who racked up $700 before shooting through, and another guy who
has $600 worth of wireless internet gear. (Another guy appears to have
stolen a $145 modem from me too.) Fortunately such occurrences are quite
rare as most people are pretty good about keeping up to date with
things. The challenging counter to this is that each 6 months I receive
about $1,000 in electronic payments to my bank account that have no
payee reference - so I have no idea where that money came from or who
it's for. Since quite often people pay multiple invoices in one
transaction, it's very difficult to reconcile those amounts to a customer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Google Desktop.
*I think I've covered Google Desktop before. It allows you to search all
your files for key words in a matter of seconds. This can be quite handy
when trying to find information in documents that you no longer remember
the name or location of; or emails.
One other useful feature is the ability to view your 'timeline' which
will show you all the things you did on your computer on any given day.
This has proven to be quite useful recently where a customer had many
different web pages on the boil, but wanted to bill each to a separate
entity and I had not recorded accurately which web site was worked on
when. (Accounts are entered into a calendar daily, but transcribed into
the accounting system monthly.) The history button gives me a minute by
minute rundown of what page was worked on when :)
Google Desktop is not for everybody as it can slow down the computer a
bit with it's constant indexing; but for some of you in office
environments it might be quite handy. (Microsoft has similar features
built in which I've not fully tested as they do not work with my email
program, Thunderbird.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*TL;DR.
*You might see this written - typically at the end of a long article. It
stands for "Too Long; Didn't Read" and is usually followed by a one or
two sentence summary of the article it accompanies.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*
Watching TV Onlne
*Some of the TV channels are starting to get with the times and allow
you to watch shows you've missed via the Internet. ABC is probably the
most well known of these with their iView service. http://abc.net.au/iview
Channel 10 has a similar feature at http://ten.com.au/
NBN does not have it on their main site, but you might be lucky with
some of the individual show websites.
Prime doesn't seem to have it at all yet.
SBS has done a good job with theirs at http://www.sbs.com.au/television
With all of these sites, they use quite a lot of downloads - around
400MB an hour as an estimate - so be careful if you're on an expensive
low usage plan. (If you're on slow ADSL, you might not be able to see
them in real time - you can always call me for a better deal ;-) )
Of course, for the 'naughty' ones among you there's always channel BT.
Oh, and YouTube is legal and handy too once you work out how playlists work.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Gmail Saves The Day.
*A few days ago, a customer called because some of his email had
disappeared. A number of possibly zero day viruses had conspired to
somehow nuke the outlook data file and it wasn't readily retrievable. (A
rare occurrence, possible question as to whether Avast contributed to
it.) Fortunately some time earlier I had set up gmail to poll his
address and capture a copy of his email to their server; so a copy of
all received email was still there available to be re-downloaded.
So, if your email is important to you and you want a free backup -
register an address at http://gmail.com and then under Settings, click
Accounts and Import and give it the details for your current email
address. (If you don't know your password, I have a program that can
usually retrieve them.) You may need to set your PC to leave a copy on
the server for one day too.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*
Inkjet becomes one pin Dot Matrix?
*A customer called last week with a problem. A single drawing pin had
fallen into their fancy Canon printer / copier unit and was not
retrievable since it had been swallowed along with some paper.
Usually retrieving foreign objects from a printer is relatively simple -
with other recent occurrences being a crayon in a laser printer, and
dried flowers in an inkjet. However, this one was quite a challenge,
taking over an hour to get out. The pin was slightly wider than the gap
it had fallen into so it wasn't as simple as 'turn over and shake'. It
had also cleverly wedged itself near the flap that is used to determine
whether the paper comes from the upper tray or below; and also serves as
a duplexing chute.
In the end, we got it back together, and then it refused to print saying
error 5010. Turned out that the scanner ribbon was the wrong way around.
(It came out of it's socket before I had a chance to see its
orientation.) Customer was happy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*
Vitamin D?
*This item missed last newsletter. The host of one of my regular
podcasts - Security Now! - decided that he was so convinced of the
benefits of Vitamin D after doing some research that he devoted an
entire show to it. (This was out of character since all previous 203
shows were about computers.) It seemed to have some reasonable evidence
behind it so I've listed it here. (Mainly as an anti-cancer product.)
Listen or read at http://www.grc.com/health/Vitamin-D.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*
Rant on Greed V2
*Another item that missed the last newsletter.
One of our two cats disappeared for a few days and came home covered in
fleas. This of course meant it was time to buy more Frontline. However,
while Frontline is quite effective it's also hideously expensive; so I
did a little research to find out if there were any ways around it.
The primary discovery was that the formula for dogs and cats are pretty
close matches. (a 25% difference in one of the active ingredients.) Thus
with some careful mathematics it was apparent that you'd get almost as
good a result by using 0.5ml of Frontline Plus for extra large dog to
treat a cat - meaning roughly 24 doses for the price of three. So, one
in the eye for Merial then; trying to charge almost the same for a tiny
packet as for a large one.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Any web designers out there?
*My web design skills are fair, but not excellent. In particular I'm a
little lacking in graphic design aesthetics. So, if any of you are into
web design work and are looking for work; let me know. You'd need to be
familiar with Joomla, Drupal, CSS and HTML.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*
Computer Table Wants a Home.
*A new Guyra resident has found she has one too many computer desks. If
you're after one, let me know and I'll put you in touch. Pretty sure
it's going cheap.
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_NLoFolZ2mFo/SyrhCvd6_rI/AAAAAAAADog/LqbBXWpsfLs/s800/P12-17-09_18.00.jpg
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*E-Bike Review.*
Just a quick note that the bike will get me from home to the roadhouse
and back without going flat. If I get it to do most of the work, it
takes 17 minutes to get there, covering 8.5km at average 25kph and peak
50kph down the hills. I'm quite happy with it :) I haven't tried a
return trip to Guyra yet.
$429 reasonably well spent; although of course it would be more useful
if I lived in town. If I worked at the tomato farm for example it'd be a
huge saving compared to buying a car and paying rego.
By the way the Kingswood's still in at the doctor's. It's leaking oil
out of the shifters for the gearbox, etc; and turns right when you put
on the brakes. And speaking of rego, I don't think we'll see people
adopting electric cars in Australia until they change rego laws. Why
should I pay full price to rego two cars when I can only physically
drive one at a time. (Most electric vehicles don't have enough range for
holiday commutes, etc.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*A Week Off.
*I'm having a week off from on-the-road repairs in the first week of
2010. This will give me some time to fix some issues around the house
and car, such as fixing the gauges on the car, upgrading the service
desk computers, etc. I'll still be available for remote assistance calls
during this time :)
Have a great Christmas / Holiday season all :)
Cheers, Mike
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Cool Country Consulting & Auzzie Internet
http://www.auzzie.net/ccc
MSN: michael at auzzie.net
Tel: 02 6775 0239
Fax: 02 8212 9582
Mob: 0427 644 825
Skype: cccons
Yahoo: lispbourke
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