Category: Geekdom

Photoshop and Photography Link Dump

Here are some more links for you, based on the theme of the last few days.

If you have any others to share, post ’em here!

February 25, 2007

Linux Link Dump

More links to get rid of, mostly for my reference…

February 23, 2007

Games Link Dump

I’m getting caught up after my weekend off, and have a bunch of links sorted into several categories. So you’ll probably see more posts like this over the next few days.

Below are the fun little flash games and gaming news links I’ve been sitting on for a few days….

Thanks to everybody who sent me some of these links and keep them coming!

February 21, 2007

Unicom Getting Bought Out By Eschelon Telecom

I know there are a few folks locally who read this site that use Unicom‘s services (either phone services or Internet service). We have a T1 with them at one of the offices I work at as well. And that service will soon be provided by Eschelon Telecom. Here’s the press release from Eschelon, press release from Unicom, and Custom Service info from Unicom.

Now Unicom bought up OneEighty back in the day. OneEighty bought out HighSpeed Communications (aka the ol’ EmpireNet) and also owned OregonTrail Internet. So Eschelon now owns all these former companies and domains, too.

My worry is thus: I’ve had less-than-stellar dealings with support at Unicom (the T1 was there before I got there), and they didn’t integrate the clients they bought very well (we were former OneEighty and previously EmpireNet clients). When I call them, it always seems to take them a year and a day to bring up my account info, and when they finally do, they have to escalate my call because the person answering the phones can’t help me with my usually complicated problem. They have a dedicated support line for their high-capacity lines (T1 or larger), but this wasn’t brought to my attention until after many calls to them. Generally speaking, I’ve had to work around Unicom versus working with them (their DNS servers were caching a domain name totally wrong for example, and it was easier for me to route the office’s request to different DNS servers than to deal with them). My guess is this is only going to make things worse.

My question for the local community is thus: Who out there is locally-based and is provided business-class ‘net access now? I know BendTel (who I use at the other Sunriver office I work at) and Bend Broadband (who I use at home) are still here and doing fine, but I think that most of the local companies that are around are local branches of larger national corporations (like Unicom) or sold out a long time ago (BendNet bought up by Rio Communications). I remember back when Dial-Up first came up here, everybody seemed to be selling it (mostly through reseller companies — very few of them actually owned their own modem banks). But any more, it seems like everybody’s who’s offering DSL or Dial-Up is doing it through another company. Am I wrong on this?

To throw another thing into the mix, there are a few folks who provide Internet service via Wireless (Yellow Knife, Webformix, Clearwire, among others).

Am I missing somebody really obvious here? Anybody have any experiences/stories to share? Discuss…

February 19, 2007

Microsoft Recommending An Apple Product For Your PC?

Indeed they are. In an article about making music on your PC (published in Microsoft Home Magazine), the author recommends using GarageBand for advanced music creation.:

Part of iLife ’04, a suite of integrated applications (including iMovie and iDVD), GarageBand is a popular program that turns a Mac computer into a professional-quality recording studio for musicians.

Link via the comments section on this Digg article.

February 15, 2007

“Why Is My Fan So Loud?”

I do a lot of tech support during my day job, handling all sorts of random problems. I’ve posted about various spyware removal jobs I’ve had to do, along with the various other problems that I’ve had to deal with (among others). But I always get a laugh at conversations like these.

Co-worker: My computer’s really loud.

Me:: The sound is really loud or the computer itself?

Co-worker: The computer — sounds like a jet engine.

Me:: I’ll come by in a minute.

As I’m walking down to her office, I know it’s probably a fan in the system that’s making noise. Generally, noisy fans that weren’t noisy before means one of a few thing:

  • The fan is going bad.
  • There’s something hitting the blades of the fan (loose wires or something).
  • Or the system is overheating and the system’s temperature sensor is kicking the speed of the fans up to cool things off (common in the Dell systems that this person had).

I hear her computer fan the minute I walk in the office, and it sounds like the thing is heating up. I open up task manager on the system, just to make sure something hasn’t been stuck using 100% of the CPU power for an hour, and it’s sitting at 99% idle. So I reach down under the woman’s desk too look at the system to check the fan blades, and it’s hot to the touch. Then I notice the space heater sitting next to her desk, turned off.

Me: Were you using this this morning? (It was below freezing this morning out here…)

Co-worker: Yeah, it was cold in the office this morning.

Me:: Where was the space heater when you were running it?

Co-worker: Underneath my desk.

Me:: Right next to your computer?

Co-worker: Yes — was that the problem?

So basically, she was cooking her computer — the plastic on the front of the Dell probably would’ve melted had it run too much longer.

So I shut the computer down and opened up the case door to get some cooler air in there and told her to not turn it on again for at least 10 minutes (or until she didn’t feel any heat on the side panels, which were hot to the touch). And if she wanted to use the space heater again, she needed to run it from a different outlet, away from her desk.

February 11, 2007

More Vista Links

A few interesting Windows Vista links that I’ve come across recently in addition to those previously posted (on a Vista-related note, an old friend of mine is sending me a legitimate copy of Vista Business edition, so I might dual-boot or VM it and play with it a bit before going full bore on the thing — stay tuned).

Cripes…I had more than I thought here. Enjoy!

February 5, 2007

Hold Off On Vista

Windows Vista hit the market today, but I’d hold off on purchasing it. To steal a bunch of self-promoting (for Mike Elgan) links from the Raw Feed:

1. Vista is incomplete

2. Vista is expensive

3. Vista wants a new PC

4. Vista is time-consuming

5. Windows XP isn’t obsolete

6. Vista may be the best reason yet to buy a Mac

Here are 10 other good reasons to avoid Vista.

Seriously, though, Windows XP is fine for 99.9% of the folks out there, and I just have to wonder why we waited as many years as we did for this.

January 30, 2007

Stupidly Handy Windows Applications (and FireFox extensions, too)

I can’t believe I didn’t find Taskbar Shuffle a lot earlier, as I’ve always wanted the ability to rearrange my taskbar buttons like I do with my Firefox tabs.

Then I realized something: I have a ton of small little applications installed that make my windows experience a heck of a lot more entertaining, usable, and flexible, and all of them are free. And I’ve never documented them all in one place, so I’m going to make the attempt here (mostly so I can remember these in the future should my computer ever go haywire). These are in no particular order, and this post has been several weeks in the making.

Full list after the jump.

(more…)

January 24, 2007

Gaming Console Link Dump

Keeping with my tradition of link dumps to get rid of a bunch of bookmarked links in one post, here you go (understand I’m not a gamer, but I did find these stories interesting):

That’s only four links, I know, but I did update my linux, Photoshop, and Web Dev dumps with more goodies, so be sure to check those out.

January 17, 2007