tonygoodson

Technical Whinge - XP and Adobe Reader and Power points

Three whinges today. 
Firstly, last March, I was trying to use WiFi at Food Inc.  Free WiFi.  My laptop collapsed in a heap.
Well guess what?  Today, same thing.  XP collapsed catastrophically.  I love the robustness of XP and I've never seen anything like it.  I switch the laptop on.  Enable WiFi and then BANG, a quick blue screen with an error message to quick to read, and laptop switches off immediately no disk close down, nothing.  Luckily this time, it didn't damage my disk.  So when I go on the WiFi at Food Inc (Melbourne Central, Elizabeth St), I can create a complete collapse of XP!!  What the hell is it about the WiFi at Food Inc that would cause this to happen repeatedly.  The one long shot is that there's a power surge on my battery, but I can't test that theory because Food Inc doesn't have any power points!

Which brings me to my second whinge of the evening.  What's the point of having free WiFi or paid WiFi, if you don't advertise it on your window, and you don't have any power access!!  Let me tell you guys, the places that advertise their WiFi, and make users welcome, and have power access, are packed out.  I'll name them. Kat Baloo on Acland St, and E55 on Elizabeth (don't read the review if easily offended!!).  And this looks like a good list for free WiFi in Melbourne.
Hey Azure, you need to start getting your clients to put up stickers on their windows, and work out if your WiFi is usable.  At Melbourne Central, there are no seats and power, to use your two WiFi locations, and the one place where there are actual PC stations with power, are too far away from the signal!!  At Ludo Cafe another Azure location, I set up outside, the helpful waitress came up to me and asked where I was getting the WiFi from.  Your cafe!! "Oh I didn't know we had WiFi!!"  And she was the one who told me about E55!!

And finally, Adobe reader.  Why is Adobe Reader so often such a pain in the ass to upgrade.  A simple upgrade wants me to close down every tab in Firefox, and Adobe locked the first time in the DOS prompt.  DOS!!!!

My Acer Tablet resurrects itself

My Acer TravelMate C300 disintegrated yesterday.
I was in a café in Melbourne, and switched the Wi-Fi on.
The tablet re-booted itself, causing disk errors.  And each time it started loading windows, at some point it kept re-booting, to the point where more and more disk errors were appearing.
I thought that was it, time for a new laptop.
Thank God I bought an external hard disk last weekend and I'm fully backed up.
The laptop had overheated last weekend, and my guess is that the wi-fi part of the chipset is damaged.
So when I switched the wireless on this caused the reboot.

However, a miracle has happened.  Today, it's working fine!!
My second guess is that there's something wrong with the battery power delivery.
I wasn't plugged in yesterday, so the addition of wireless was causing a power overload on the battery.  Time for a new battery I think.

Watching your main computer go kaput causes a life rethink to not be overdependent on any one device.  It's all well and good backing up, but it's a bloody hassle to recover and rebuild.  I spent most of last night updating my PC to handle my laptop data.  Just simple things like my Outlook on my PC not being able to read my Outlook .pst file from my tablet.  Grrrrrrr.

My tablet is 20 months old, and my PC is over 4 years old.  When do you assume something irreparable is going to go wrong and plan for the next PC purchase!

So what have I learnt from this close shave.  Build my PC to accept my tablet data.

Getting Things Done in 2006

I'm just having a look at my 2005 New Year's Resolutions, and almost everyone of them ended up as the opposite, which is largely how I intended them.
More Chocolate in 2005! was an attempt to give up chocolate by eating more.  And it worked.  I ate so much chocolate in the early months of 2005 that I think I've become allergic to chocolate by the end of 2005, so now I don't eat any or drink it.  Fantastic Tony, well done! Other 2005 resolutions;

2005 Resolutions
1. More Chocolate
2. Longer meetings!
3. More chocolate!!
4. Less food More Food!
5. More Cycling/Windsurfing
6. More holidays
7. More Blogging
8. More Improv
9. More time with Annie

I've blogged less, done no Improv, forgot about longer meetings, eaten the same amount of food as I always eat, cycled a bit, not windsurfed at all (but that wasn't a literal resolution), not been on holiday, and we now have a pool of babysitters, so Annie and I do spend more time together.  So all in all, my resolutions have mostly come true and how I wanted and expected them.

And so to 2006.  Getting Things Done.  Yes, partly following the book, and it's something I want to help more people with this year.  I think how we manage our lives, especially with information overload, is a big thing, and even if I can't get it right for myself (Ha Ha!) I can help others, who can then help me.

2006 Resolutions
1. GTD.  Work, Home, Network, Money,
2. Health.  I think this can be solved in one event.  Drink more water!
3. Cycle/Windsurf.  When it's windy windsurf, when it's not windy, cycle.  This applies to life.
4. Family.  I'd like to help teach Georgie to read, this year.  And more sport with Jay.
5. Tablet.  Take notes in meetings on my Tablet, with MindManager (and maybe learn OneNote).
6. Fun.  Go-Kart, Beach, Improv, Football, Ski/Snowboard, Annie.
7. MP3. Listen to more, maybe create more.

Oh, and one more thing.
8. $15Million!

p.s I've used Performancing, a Firefox add-on to create my first 2006 Typepad weblog entry.

Drawing the Write Circle!

I just downloaded ritePen and riteMail, after reading Cameron's advice and listening to The Tablet PC Show. I'm a terrible handwriter so I don't use my Tablet much for writing, but I love annotating and MindMapping.  I haven't been using the pen much recently so I thought I'd revive my interest.

Now riteMail has something in it I haven't seen before.  You draw a circle or square or any other geometric object and the software corrects it to a perfect shape.  Now that's cool, because you can draw diagrams and link them with lines.  Have I missed something here or is this the only software that does this for a Tablet?

And it set me thinking.  Scoble, yes you Robert Scoble (he tells us to write about him in our weblogs and he'll pick it up, so let's see if this works!!), do you think that if Microsoft is serious about the Tablet, they could add simple circle drawing software to PowerPoint and Word, and add a bit of something to Outlook.  I know Microsoft would have to divert vast resources to each of these separate programmes, but what else have they got to do, other than write bloatware, and worry about security?

Many of us don't want to go back to the pen, but things which help us to draw and express, that's where the money is.