Category: Computers & Software

Facebook has some ads off to the side, and one of them aroused my curiosity — an ad for the ProFlight Simulator.    I have used flight simulators since the very first version of what was to become Microsoft Flight Simulator, subLOGIC’s FS1 which ran on my Apple II+ back in the 1980s.  I have… Continue reading Free Software That's Not Free

Old Krell (a Panasonic Pentium-III Toughbook laptop circa 2002) having served its various purposes but getting somewhat hoary with age, I decided to invest in a new laptop.  My criteria for selecting the new laptop included: relatively lightweight, good battery life, and Linux compatibility.  I was sorely tempted to buy one of the new MacBook… Continue reading New Laptop at EP Studios: Lenovo X220 (aka SuperKrell)

Over the years I struggled to find reliable and realistic backup solutions for my computer data.  Originally (back in the early 90s) I used a tape drive, which took forever to back anything up.  Right from the start of my backup attempts vexing questions arose.  Should I do full backups or incremental backups?  Incremental backups… Continue reading Backup Solutions, 2011 Style

For quite some time I have been bothered by the EP Studios website. Although created in 2004, it had an amateurish, out-dated, 90s-website appearance from the get-go. I was initially proud of it anyway, because I had to learn on my own how to set up an Apache server, write the HTML, set the file… Continue reading Converting EP Studios Website to a WordPress Site

This is actually part 2 of the series. C++, like most programming languages, starts counting at zero. Part 0 of the series is here . I had intended to make Part 1 about serialization of objects, but that can wait. If you can’t get past constructors in C++, you won’t get very far. I have… Continue reading The C++ Way. Part 1. Constructor Tips and Traps

Keeping the computers humming along at EP Studios, where there are more computers per cubic foot than the average Google data cluster, is a continual challenge.  A few days ago the TV sound died on MediumHeadBoy.  All other sounds from the computer were fine.  I should mention that MediumHeadBoy is our kitchen computer and is… Continue reading A Sound Card Adventure

It came to me today as a sudden revelation (an “ah-ha” moment) that our fax machine is a total anachronism, like something out of the 19th century.  Here it is the 21st century, and we are still sending back and forth images of paper documents over the phone lines, using an old-fashioned modem, completely independently… Continue reading Fax Machines Are Stupid

Yes it’s possible to write a blog post on an Android phone using WordPress for Android.  Why anyone would want to write a post on the Droid’s clunky keyboard is an excellent question.  I suppose if there is something you just can’t wait to write about, and it’s short… 

I had problems sending posts to WordPress from weblogger on Emacs because of formatting errors. I have been using auto-fill-mode in Emacs to avoid lines extending off the screen. Auto-fill-mode works by inserting newline characters (ASCII 0A, C-j) at the end of each line. Turning off auto-fill-mode does not eliminate these characters. If you want… Continue reading Emacs Word Wrap Modes