Two for the price of one
A little while ago I bought the Apple iPad and consider it a third platform. Last year, I bought a wireless keyboard to use with my Macbook. It was a breeze to have the laptop and keyboard sync up. When you have a lot of typing to do on the iPad it can get tiresome to be constantly typing on the glass. The magic question was, would I be able to reuse/recycle the wireless keyboard for use with the iPad. My initial attempt failed. I did a quick check of Apple support and found out that the keyboard driver was out-of-date. I used the laptop to upgrade the keyboard and then tried another Bluetooth sync with the iPad. Vola, the iPad detected the keyboard and the problem was solved. Kudos to Apple…
When a backup isn’t a backup!
A couple of years ago, I bought a seagate FreeAgent disk drive to backup my laptop. In keeping with tradition, my father bought the same drive to backup his computer. Over the Christmas holidays, the backup drive stopped working as you could feel the drive spinning but Windows Vista would not detect the drive. While at home on the weekend my father asked me to take a look at it. We ran the diagnostic software and it said that the drive was toast. We ran the disk recovery software and it said that it could not recovery any files. Once back in Ottawa, I did a couple of more tests and found to my surprise that the drive is still under warranty. Sweet! The repair depot is located near Toronto. Seagate is very precise on how they want the drive packaged for return. The drive has to be surrounded by 2″ of foam on all sides. Where to find 2″ foam rubber? I had a brainwave which saved the day. Fabric stores sell foam rubber for folks that want to make cushions and comforters. I headed out at lunch to a fabric stores and bought a 2′ x 2′ x 1″ foam rubber pad and cut it into segments to fit a box. I’ll send the box on its way tomorrow and see what Seagate does.
Time Capsule installation a success
Last night, I installed my Apple Time Capsule backup drive and it went really well. It was simple to do and fun at the same time. Apple makes the installation and configuration easy to do. The plan was to buy the Time Capsule to backup my Macbook and little else. When I flipped over to using WiFi so my iPod touch and iPhone could access the internet at home I have always faced the dreaded wifi drop problem. My iPod touch would find the wireless modem and I would surf for a few minutes and them BOOM out-of-the-blue I would get signal degradation. This was frustrating. I made an antenna out of tin foil and it sort of helped.br /br /While waiting at the Apple store for my GarageBand workshop, I started talking to concierge and explained the problem as his father had the same problem. He gave me some leads to look at. I downloaded Apple’s Designing Airport Networks guide and started to think about the scenarios. I opted to have an Ethernet connection from the modem to my windows laptop. I run another Ethernet connection from the modem to the Time Capsule. This allows my Macbook, laptop, Touch and iPhone to have access to WiFi. An added bonus is that my printer can wirelessly accessed from either computer. The wireless signal strength from Time Capsule is good. To reduce interference, I set the signal strength of the wireless modem to low. So, I now have a wireless network that I am happy with and a backup drive for my Macbook. The initial Time Machine backup took longer than expected but I really pleased that I was able to solve a major wireless problem. Thanks a href=”http://apple.com/”Apple/a.
Computer Surgery
I did something of the Christmas holiday that I am proud of, computer surgery. A little before Christmas my parents bought a new HP desktop computer. At the time, my father was a little reluctant to decommission his old IBM Thinkpad laptop. This was a good decision in time. On Boxing Day, a little before I headed out for my 10 mile race the computer stopped responding. My initial thought was that it had gone into Windows stand-by or sleep mode or Windows was acting up. The problem would have to wait until after the race. I called HP technical support and we suspected it was a hard drive problem or the computer’s power supply. A couple of days, later a new hard drive came by UPS and the recovery DVDs came by FEDEX. We replaced the hard drive and the computer was unresponsive. I called HP again and they thought it was a problem with the power supply. The next day a new power supply arrived and we switched all the cables. With a new hard drive and power supply the computer started up and started to purr. It would take about an hour for the recovery DVDs to be processed. But it was a good feeling to head back to Ottawa knowing that my parent’s computer was working again.
User experiences…
Today, I was at Mountain Equipment Co-op (a href=”http://www.mec.ca/”mec.com/a) buying some last minute provisions for my hiking/camping/climbing trip (a href=”http://www.mec.ca/Products/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524441775397″a summer sleeping bag /aand Clif bars). It was during lunch hour so the checkout line was long and slow moving. I let my eye wander over to a computer screen that you can use to search the online catalog and order stuff from the mail order department. The flat screen was embedded in a wood frame and part of a wall where you could post notices. From a distance it looked like a touch screen. A person walked up and started to touch the screen thinking that it was a touch screen. They would double-click on an icon and nothing would happen. The mouse point was visible on the screen and they tried to move the pointer by dragging their finger across the screen and nothing would happen. It was sort of fun to watch while killing time in the queue. The problem is it wasn’t a touch screen. There was mouse and keyboard on a shelf underneath the screen but it was so low that most folks didn’t see or ignored it. Just as they were ready to bolt, a stranger nearby pointed to the mouse and keyboard and suggested that perhaps these were would be useful. I was at the cash by this point so didn’t see what happened next.
