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As I said in a recent post, I’ve been drawing a lot lately, and really enjoying it. Being a techie, of course I integrate technology w/ art. I draw in my moleskine sketch book and then I scan or take pix of my sketches and then send them to flickr and also I poste them on a new Art Blog I created. I go online and look at other people’s drawings for inspiration, and participate in art message boards. I recently ordered and recieved a USB Drawing Tablet (a Wacom Graphire 6×8) and downloaded a fantastic free program called ArtRage2 (which is only $20 for the full version). Using that w/ the wacom tablet is AWESOME. And then today I had yet another idea. Install ArtRage2 on my teeny tiny laptop (Fujitsu P1510) because it’s a TABLET LAPTOP so it would be like virtual painting!! Anyway, I am having so much fun w/ this.

EDITED TO ADD: Oh, and if you LOVE art and tech and have more money than I do, CHECK THIS OUT:

blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/02/review_wacom_ci.html

It’s a huge tablet/screen all in one – a Wacom Cintiq 21UX. (From their list of “15 Gadgets For Artists“).
kw: wacom, graphire, 6×8, ,6 x 6, stylus, tablet, art, drawing, sketch, sketches, sketching, moleskine, sketchbook, art rage, artrage, fujitsu laptop, fujitsu p1510, small laptop, wacom cintiq 21ux.

I’ve been using Mozilla forever. I installed Firefox long ago and continue to update it and use it sometimes when I want a different browser (such as for logging into a site w/ a different login, staying logged in with Mozilla and logging in w/ a different user ID in firefox). I like the Firefox plugins, but that’s it. I am making a list of reasons why I like Mozilla better. I’ll post it when it gets long enough [later today] (it’s all in my head and I can’t make a list right now, brain fried). I hope mozilla stays around a long time, and keeps it’s superior features.

EDITED TO ADD: Here’s my list so far of what I like about Mozilla over Firefox:

* I hate the way History is displayed and none of the options give what I want (like it is in Mozilla).
* I like the integrated mail of Mozilla.
* I hate that in firefox there is a seperate box for google search, I prefer to do it the Mozilla way- type in keyword into url box, hit down-arrow, BOOM, it’s done.
* I hate the firefox search-in-page feature.  In Mozilla, you just start typing the word.  But in Firefox, you have to do ctrl+f first and then that stupid bar pops up on the bottom.  Hate it.
* In firefox, the “open in new tab” right-click option for a link opens it in a non-focused tab. I prefer an in-focus tab like in firefox.
** Even if all the above things can be done in firefox, it’s not by default.  I don’t want to have to install a bunch of extension and change a bunch of settings when Mozilla already does everything I want.

kw: mozilla, firefox, browers, browsers, better browser

I got a new scanner today.  It’s a small, lightweight, usb-powered scanner, which’ll do until SOMEBODY fixes my main, favorite scanner.

Now I can do some better scans of my artwork for my new art blog.

I have to say… some companies CARE.  I recently complained that I was having trouble w/ Shozu.  As sometimes happens, a person from the company I am blogging about, writes to me in response.  Someone from Shozu left a comment on that post which was HELPFUL and NICE.  Meanwhile, there are other companies out there [*cough!* t@xtamerica *cough!*] who won’t even answer inquiries even from their PAYING customers.  While I still can’t get Shozu to work on my phone right now, I CAN SAY that Shozu, as a company, give a care.  And that impresses me. 

Little bean pod or whatever it’s called [iPlop], w/ my new iPod in it.  The new iPod came w/ a little velveteen sleeve, which is perfect.  I have a great iPod case but it makes it too bulky to want to carry all the time.   So I was gonna buy a really nice fuzzy soft sock for it, but hey, the sleeve it came with is great!

My 60 gig iPod Photo is really buggy.  It works, but it often won’t sync and frequently freezes up.  I want to get a new one, but I JUST KNOW that as soon as I buy a new one, then they’ll come out w/ what I really want: an iPod with WiFi so I can wirelessly sync the ipod.  I have wireless on my one point-n-shoot camera, a Nikon S6, and IT ROCKS to be able to just tell it download pix, no cord-hunting.  I wish I knew if a wifi iPod was on the way.

NPR did a thing on “BlackBerry Orphans”.  M and the guys he works with call it “The DivorceMaster 3000“.  LOL

[I am so sick of writing posts and then accidentally leaving the page and losing the unsaved post. *sigh* What was I saying...]

Surfing the internet and watching movies on the Nintendo Wii using the Opera Browser:

It’s so neat now to be able to surf the net on the Wii.

..::PICS::..
We have the Nintendo Wii and they just released an Opera browser for it. There is something fun about surfing TOGETHER from the couch, sites like flickr and youtube are a lot of fun to watch together. Then we went to google video and watched some full length stuff such as the full movie Jesus Camp and a few documentaries. VERY COOL. Now that we can DO this, watch a movie on the wii, together, from the couch, theoretically w/ a bowl of popcorn between us, we are now wishing that there was a download-on-demand movie rental website where you can stream the movie IN THE BROWSER, not a watch it in a seperate player. So we just searched google video and youtube for interesting stuff.
Here is an article about download movie services but as far as I can tell, none of them stream the movie in the browser.

Using the WiiMote from the couch to watch movies is great; scroll around, pause, go back, etc.

kw: Surfing, internet, net, movies, movie, Nintendo, Wii,  Opera, Browser.

It’s happeneing again. I can’t get to a website (this time Flickr.com) from home, but I can if I go thru a proxy server.

So now the question remains: is it the wifi hub/dns in our house, the dns at our isp, or a problem at a major hub in Miami or Orlando? Sometimes major hubs (?) will go down in major cities and since we are on a peninsula, that means there’s no other way to get to therest of the internet. We have a new ISP as of this month, so I doubt it’s them. Hmm.

Too much weird sh*t has been going on tech-wise at home.

The intranet at home worked fine forever, got the new laptop, everything worked fine, switch from dsl to cable, everything worked fine.

Then one day the the network started acting up. The fujitsu xp laptop can’t see the main pc (where all my files are), the toshiba xp laptop can’t see the main pc, the old gateway 98 reliable albiet slow workhorse laptop can’t see the main computer.

For days this has been killing poor brain/programmer/sysadmin M.

Now tonight I notice that when I load ftp on toshiba xp laptop, the profile is set so that the left pane is the main pc over the network, mapped drive E. Normally if it can’t see that networked drive, it gives an error and defaults to c:\ in the left pane. But nooOOOooo, it’s SHOWING E (main pc). I can see, navigate, and move files, on the main pc, over the network, in the left window of the ftp program.

Weird.

I think it’s my aura. Half the time I have a tech problem, all I need is for M to stand near me and it fixes itself. I had a friend once who, when she was upset, electrical stuff near her would malfuntion, once during a shouting match w/ her husband, the light bulb in the room exploded and went all over the place. Mabe there is something to the aura of techies.

I’ve always believed that my aura must be plaid.

And then last night fotki.com kept giving me ’503′ errors. When they finally stopped, I uploaded 4 galleries of photos and then went in and added commentary to them.

Today half of them are gone, just white boxes where the thumbnails should be, and a ghostly grey box w/ a shadow where the images should be. Direct links to the archived images bring up an error. I had to delete all four folders, re-upload them, go back into all my blog posts here, at the family blog, and the dog blog, and change all the direct links as those change if the images are deleted and reuploaded. So I reuploaded all of them, went thru all the links to them to change them, and I’m NOT going to add comments when I don’t feel Fotki is stable right now.

I have a flickr pro account as well, and I totally love flckr, but I’m not ready to make a difinitive changeover to using flickr for all image hosting. I like the ease and customization of fotki, along with their (usually) fast help response, ftp, and more.

Here’s hopin’ tomorrow goes better.

(I’m tired, I got nothing.)

XP is better my ass.

It’s amazing how I get a brand new XP laptop and nothing works on it. It’s not the laptop, it’s the system. It won’t read card readers, it won’t read cameras, it won’t talk over the network, it won’t run Pagemaker.

So far my experience is that Win98 is better.

I really should just switch over to Linux or Mac.

I was going thru some piles last night and came across a notebook of my brother who passed away last January. [[I can't believe it's almost a year! ]] It was full of his handwriting. He was a writer, but this was notes to self re. cancer treatment and also, and this is what really killed me – handwritten emails that he never got a chance to transcribe and send.

It just hit me now that maybe he did get a chance to send them and the notes are just still in the notebook.

But last night when looking at all of them it just made me sad.

Also notes to ask the doctors, like “Q. WHY isn’t anyone taking me seriously about the swelling???! The swelling is the most painful in the left leg…” I remember thinking that the doctors didn’t always do their best. He basically died of a punctured lung. On his last visit to the doctor outpatient, before we knew about the punctured lung, both he and I intended to ask the dr. about his really bad coughing. We both forgot. But do you think the freaking doctor or nurse would have thought to listen to his chest?

Whatever.

We were sittin’ around today and that frequent dns problem came up. I don’t know why, but once in a while (too often), my website SEEMS to disappear, and it’s only this one or one other. But not other sites. Just my two main ones. Strange coincidence. ? I can see the sites thru megaproxy.com and thru anonymizer.com, so it’s not a problem w/ the hosting company and the sites are NOT down. So it’s either our wifi hub/dns, or our ISP’s dns, or some dns server between our town and the rest of the U.S. (we’re on a peninula, so we have a geographical bottleneck). We are on DSL. I said to M “I wonder if we’d have the same problem on cable modem”. M jumps up and goes to the pile of mail and pulls out a flier that expires today: sign up for cable modem and it’s only $9.95 a month for the first two months, that’s a good deal if we just want to try it out!

So we headed off to the mall where the cable company has a kiosk and signed up, got the self install kit and modem, did some shopping, and tonight M set it up. It seems faster, but maybe ‘cuz I expect it to be. Our DSL was 1.5mbps down / 256 up. The cable modem service here is supposed to be 3.0mbps down / 256 up, and they said it’ll be 4.0 soon (down).

DslReports.com benchmark tests don’t show it being 3.0, but it still seems faster than DSL, but we’ll see. We still have DSL too, so we’ll probably do a test, switch over, and do another test, to really benchmark the two.

I’ll mainly be interested to see if there are any slowdowns during peak times and if that strange website-disappearing-act ceases to occur on cable. If it keeps happening then it’s either our wifi hub/dns or something out in the state somewhere.

It really is amazing to me the BLOATED software they try to push on you. All those people out there who use Outlook and OneNote and Nortons and McAfee.

I removed all kinds of crap from the new system today, 4.84 gigs (?) and then some.

Then I made a disk image.

Then I started installing stuff:
* Ad Aware and updates
* AVG anti virus and updates
* Breeze Browser
* Edit Plus
* Huey
* IrfanView
* Mozilla
* Spybot S&D and updates
* Trillian
* Winamp
* Ws_ftpLE

All of the above, and it BARELY impacted the available space at ALL! I’ll probably do another image before adding Photoshop and Pagemaker, which are larger.

But that’s all that’s really left.

BTW, seems Acronis True Image is the app of today for making disk images, supposedly better than Ghost. You can create an image while IN winxp and save it right to cd’s as you go. Pretty cool.

Ahhh, the fun of a new computer. First I have to go in and set all the settings. Yes, show hidden files, put Explorer in Classic mode, force it to show C:\ upon opening explorer, etc etc etc. Secondly: UNINSTALL all that CRAP they put on there! Nortons and AOL and all that crap. GARBAGE! After that, I get to INSTALL Zone Alarm, AVG, Spybot S&D, etc. Then I make an image (or before the installs I’ll do that). Images RULE. I hate the way systems are by default. It takes days and days to get it the way you want it.

DIE LIST (updates added all day today):
[x] aol 4.5 megs?
[x] quicken 4 megs?
[x] napster 6.5 megs
[x] norton anti virus 12 megs
[x] norton wmi update 2 megs
[x] arcsoft trials 5 megs
[x] live reg symantec 3 megs (insufficient access)
[x] live update wymantec 5 megs (insufficient access)
[x] microsoft onenote 4.1 GIGS!
[x] Outlook and Powerpoint 41 megs
[x] misc small leftover files from above deletions

INteresting!

I’ve been wanting a new large laptop….

CLICK BELOW TO READ MORE…
(more…)

Don’t believe everything you read, especially via email.

Most of those alarming email forwards are FALSE. And even if it looks authentic, never believe any emails from the bank, pay pal, ebay, aol, earthink, you name it, saying that you have to go to their website to ‘verify’ your account info or personal info. NEVER do it. They’re false, fraudulent emails designed specifically designed to STEAL your personal info.

If you are ever in doubt about an email that you get, check snopes.com. They research and verify or debunk stories that are circulated via email forwards. You can go to snopes.com and do a search for “verify account information” or some such thing, and see TONS of reports.

Don’t believe everything you read. If you want to believe it, check snopes.com first. And NEVER give out your personal info! Even if the site LOOKS authentic! Don’t click on the links in the email.

Forgot to mention, but the night before our road trip, M got my tiny laptop working so that it connects to my cell phone via bluetooth and uses the phone’s GPRS internet! So now, regardless of wifi availability, I can connect the laptop to the internet ANYWHERE. Have to turn graphics off to save bandwidth, but still, it’s great for most things, esp. logging into M’s work using SSH while in the middle of the everglades.

I have not seen a decent selection of PDA’s at Best Buy in over a year. I went last night and they have NONE. They just rearranged their entire store, and did not move the PDA section, so where were the PDA’s? M says PDA’s may just not be doing very well in general. I don’t see WHY that would be the case. I mean, it’s not like everyone is using paper date books anymore.

I have NO idea why PDA’s would not be doing well. Sure some phones can do alot of the same stuff a PDA can, but not ALL the things a PDA can… unless it’s a pda/phone, and I hardly ever see anyone with one of those.

It blows my mind that sony is going to stop making Clie’s and that PDA’s can’t be gotten except online.

I don’t get it. PDA’s can do everything for you, PLUS you can put ebooks on them, mp3′s, take photos, intall programs that range from diet programs to foreign language dictionaries. I can even surf the internet, chat, and send email using my PDA.

If people are just not buying Palms and other PDA’s, then I just don’t get people anymore.

In this day and age, why PDA’s would not be selling is beyond me.

UPDATE: More thoughts.

CLICK BELOW TO READ MORE…
(more…)

While digging around in a drawer for stamps and staples, I found this old Texas Instruments electronic organizer. I have no idea of the model number, and can’t remember if it was 64 k or what. But it still works! And was apparently Y2k compliant!

Let’s see, when did I get it… I know I HAD it and was USING it between 1995-1996. Not sure when I bought it.

Click to see larger:

UPDATE: Ha! Found a page about it here:
http://www.datamath.org/Personal/Organizer.htm
I guess it’s a PS-6600. Introduced in 1992. 64k. Wow. I used this thing religiously.

I’m REALLY friggin’ mad. Like I said before, I ordered my ipod mini from amazon.com on April 5th and it’s still not here. I got it with $100 OFF for signing up w/ Audible.com for a year. That was a big mistake.

According to ipod forums I am reading, OTHER Amazon customers are getting THEIR ipod minis MUCH quicker than I am! I think they are pushing me to the bottom of the list because mine was discounted $100, i.e. they make less off of me so I’m a low priority customer! Why else are other amazon ipod mini customers getting their mini’s before me??? People who ordered AFTER me got theirs already, and got theirs in like 30 days. It’s been 3 MONTHS and 3 days for ME!

AND! AND! I can’t even USE audible.com that I’m now locked into for a freaking year WITHOUT the freaking mini!!!! Oh, they SAY you can use the Clie ux50, but it doesn’t work. I ‘ve been on customer support with them multiple times and for HOURS, like over TWO HOURS one day and they can’t make it work.

I’m f*cked! If I cancel the oder I throw away the $100 gift certificate which is ONLY for THIS ORDER of an IPOD MINI.

Re. earlier, both VeriChat and Trillian were quick to fix the YIM connectivity problem. Kudos to both of them.

What’s interesting to me is that VeriChat sent me an email that said “We have completed the necessary modifications for Yahoo! IM to the VeriChat
servers. VeriChat users should now be able to use Yahoo! again.”

Why can’t Trillian fix things server-side as well? Every time Trillian has to fix something, they come out w/ a patch that we have to download and install. Verichat didn’t make us download or install anything, they fixed it server-side and now the program simply works again. I’m just curious as to whether Trillian could do it this way or not.

Now I’m mad!!! I’m now getting SMS SPAM on my cell phone! I never display my phone’s number or email address and it seems that some person is guessing at phone numbers. F*ckers!

It’s stuff like this that makes me realize that I’m going to have to move to linux soon, for real, full time, for good. F*ck Microsoft, fight the power!

I swear. Guess how much time I spent on the phone today w/ customer support? An hour and 50 minutes! My ass was numb, my elbow was numb, my arm was sore. In the end, did they fix anything?

Well, they SORT OF got thir software talking to my palm, but it would not recognize all the room on my memory card (this was at the END of the almost 2-hour long phone call). Then they said “reformat that card and if that fixes it great, and if that doesn’t fix it then you need a new card”. So I hung up cuz my ass was numb and my arm was about to fall off. I reformatted the memory card and that did not fix anything. I put in a NEW memory card and that did not fix anything. Obviously this place can’t write software to save their lives. Then it stopped communicating w/ the palm. Then it started giving me awful errors. Then all I could do was reset reset reset to use my palm at all. It said there were files on the new blank card when the new card was blank.

It’s nuts. All this work because they’re SO afraid to give their customers flexible files once they have their money.

Oh yeah, and since they gave me a discount code to buy my ipod mini, I CANNOT CANCEL my 12-month subscription to the service. I pay them, they give me nothing, I have no recourse.

You know…

Companies work so hard to enforce DRM that they force honest paying customers to hack.

These companies can’t write software to save their lives, causing the PAYING customer to, a) not be able to use what they PAID for, and b) go f*cking crazy.

So these honest and paying customers have to resort to third-party software written by hackers just to access and playback the files that they paid for, that they rightfully own.

It’s rediculous. If companies would just stop treating their customers like potential criminals, the world would be a better place.

Man. I joined audible.com to get $100 of an ipod mini. I like audio books, so it was a great deal for me.

But the damn system just doesn’t work right. I download a book which sounds fine online, and when it plays back on my Clie it’s too slow. The author/narrator sounds drunk. They sent me an email to re-download but re-downloading doesn’t work (I mean, it won’t download). They sent me another email to update the software but it still won’t re-download. I figure I’ll burn a cd, cuz that should sound ok no matter what. But it’ll only download on my laptop where I have no burner. It won’t download on the pc where I have two burners. THIS SUCKS! All this for an ipod mini which is backordered for over a month. I like audio books but jesus, nothing is worth this much trouble!

re. previous post

Well, I signed up for Audible.com for one year and got my promo code for amazon.com to get $100 off the player (pda, ipod, etc.) of my choice. I guess I am a slave to fashion cuz I got the Pink Ipod Mini. I coulda got tons more space if I’d have gotten a regular Ipod, but the mini is smaller, and that counts for alot. I got rid of my clie nz90 cuz it was too big and heavy. The ipod is backordered of course, and should ship in mid-May. Ack! But in the meantime I can play the audio books on my UX50 or other device.

So I’ll probably quit TSO, although I want to log in a few more times to be sure. The game frustrates me and I have no TSO friends, I see no reason to keep paying for it.

A bracelet that lights up when u get a call. Usefull, I guess, if your phone is on silent.

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