I started to burn the 18 DVD's to complete the year end back up of the Macbook 1.

I burned two copies of the Documents folder and three copies of the Mail and Mail Downloads folder. This means I have 13 copies left to burn.

Organizing software then installing some on Remembrance

I spent about half an hour last night organizing my disk software cabinet. I then finally installed Access 2007 and also Visual Studio 2005 on Remembrance. I did not like the terms of the Visual Studio license at all. It forbids open source licenses and also requires that all software build with this IDE run only on Windows. How is that not a tight grip on property like a monopoly? I also installed Dereamweaver 8 on Remembrance.

Backing up and file and folder making.

I made some folder for years, months, and quarters. I made some templates for folder arrangements. So I have years from the early 1950's through to 2008, I also have a folder full of the months and folders for quarters for different fiscal years. I can then copy and paste these templates into what ever I am organizing.

I also have made some html txt files for this blog and my studies blog for the year 2003 when these blogs were started. I hope to find all my study notes and other files that I made and store them in folders for each year and then back these up to DVD.

I have made some burn folders for the documents folder, the desktop and other files folder and the email folder for the Macbook. This is three 4.7 GB DVD's and I will make six copies for each DVD. So my back up process for 2008 has started.

The Macbook hard drive replacement was successful.

It seems the hard drive replacement has been successful. I will still need to install Windows on the Macbook but the Mac side is working fine and everything seems to be still working.

Using R to parse regular by line occurances

Task: total prices of a web page list.
Goal: to price the cost of owning every O'Reilly pocket reference and guide.
Software needed:
A web browser
A spreadsheet
R software
a text editor.

Find a well formated web price list such as
http://oreilly.com/store/series/pocketrefs.csp

Step 1: Web browser
Highlight the beginning of the price list (i.e. highlight the beginning of the first item/record on the web page). Scroll to the end of the list or web page. Hold your shift key down and click just after the last item/record. Now copy this highlighted list. You should have all the items highlighted

Step 2 Spreadsheet
Paste this in to an empty spreadsheet. Examine this and see if prices are on one row alone. It does not matter if there are dollar signs with the prices in the cells or also in this case a currency symbol USD. But here we find in the spreadsheet a price such as "$9.99 USD" occurring in every eighth row. The Prices should be in cells by themselves. But there is all the other stuff like the title and the blurb which here we want to parse out.

Step 3 Spreadsheet
Save the spreadsheet as a CSV file comma separated file. Remember the name and directory for the first line of R code below in the next step.

Step 4: R software ( www.r-project.org), text editor
Copy and paste the code below into a text editor
Change the directory and file name to your file and directory name from step 3 in the first and and the directory in the last line of this code. On the last line chose a file name.
Change the line jump <-(seq(x,y,z)
so that x is the first row a price occurs and y the last row a price occurs and
z is the number of rows between each price.

You can also change jump(x,y,z) to parse out all the titles or all the blurbs or all the dates published.


After editing copy the code into the R command line a line at a time
the # lines are comments


Use R software and run this code on the R command line after editing it in the text editor. Stop after each line that begins with # to check the results. good luck and use R help if needed.

###################Code Starts here##################
OPocket <-read.csv(file="/Users/ptimusk/documents/school/books/OReillyPocket08-12-24.csv", header= FALSE)
# read into R and the variable OPocket the csv file created by Excel save as csv.
#change "Users/ptimusk/documents/school/books/...to your directory
# and file name OReillyPocket08-12-24.csv

OPocket
#check variable for rows that contain prices. Every foth row starting at 4 ending at 394
#
jump <- seq(4, 394, 5)
# create an index of rows where prices occur. Start with row 4. End with row 394
#Count by 5 rows

OPocket.Prices <- as.vector (OPocket[jump,1])
#take only the rows(indexed by "jump") with prices out of the variable OPocket

OPocket.Prices
# check to see above variable contains quoted prices in 79 rows

write.csv(OPocket.Prices,file="/Users/ptimusk/documents/school/books/OPocketPrices08-12-24.csv")
#write the prices to a csv text file

###############Code ends here######################

Step 5 text editor
Open with the text editor the file you just wrote on the last line of R code
Save as txt

Step 6 Spreadsheet

With the spreadsheet and a new empty spreadsheet open the txt file you just saved. That should be the text file with the Prices. This file should have the variable OPocket.Prices as an R format variable.

The spreadsheet should take you through some import steps where
you can adjust the separator characters to parse out the prices only without the $
and without the currency symbol. You also parse out the first line and the quotes.

Sum the prices column
Your done!
Answer: all the O'Reilly pocket references and guides will cost 851.69 $ for the 79 books.

The steps are now completed and the hard drive in my Macbook has been replaced.

I was able to replace the hard drive in my Macbook. I now have a little bit more than 170 GB free space on my Macbook hard drive. I was not able to automatically restore the windows XP on the Macbook. I intend to reinstall that using 32 GB of space on the hard drive.

Time Machine is done the back up now.

I have completed step 1 in the hard drive replacement. But I do need to make some special backups of the windows side of the Macbook. Although I am planning on reinstalling the Windows on the Macbook so I can adjust the size of the windows partition and start from scratch with a 32 GB windows partition. So now I am going to reboot into windows after one last updated backup from Time Machine. Then I will reboot with the Leopard install DVD and do step 2 which is to check that Leopard will do the restore function I need from it.

iTunes on the Macbook

I am just copying the songs from the Macbook to the Network drive. I used the add to library option on iTunes to do this copying. This will make sure any songs I have bought using the Macbook are copied to the network drive.

Time Machine is about half way done its back up now.

Time Machine is about halfway done the back up of the Mac side of the hard drive. It still needs to be set to back up the windows side of the drive.

I got an early Christmas present from my father. It is a new 250GB hard drive for my Macbook laptop.

I bought a new laptop hard drive. I bought a 250GB drive for 75$ from a local computer store. Here are the specs Fujitsu model MH22 BH.My brother gave me instructions to use the Leopard Time Machine software to help replace the drive. I will use Time Machine in the first step and fourth step.

The first step is to do a full back up of the Macbook hard drive using Time Machine. To do this I will use the LaCie 250 GB hard drive that I have been doing Macbook backups on. I needed to delete the most recent back up of the eMac that I had done on the LaCie 250 GB to give me enough space, 90 GB, to do a full back up of the 80 GB drive.

I am waiting for iTunes to get loaded with the new library then I will shut down all applications on the Macbook and run only the finder and Time Machine to complete the first step.

Once that first step is done I will test the Leopard Install DVD to make sure it is going to work according to the Time Machine instructions for a system restore.

Then the third step, if the Leopard Install disk appears like it is going to work, is to replace the hard drive. I will use the instructions at iFix it http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac/MacBook-Core-Duo/Hard-Drive-Replacement/86/5/Page-1 to replace the hard drive. I happen to have the tools I need because I had bought a Torx T8 screw driver when I refurbished an original iBook a few years ago.

Then the fourth and final step is to follow the instructions for a system restore from the backup made by Time Machine on the LaCie 250 GB USB drive.

iTunes on both the eMac and Macbook is now using the Linksys network storage bay to store songs.

Today I used the advanced tab in iTunes preferences on the Macbook to change the place that iTunes stores music. I changed the storage location to the network storage drive that is already being used by the eMac's copy of iTunes. I did that to save space on the Macbook but, in fact, today I went even further to solving the lack of hard drive space on the Macbook. But more about that in the next post. This means that the network storage drive needs to be turned on whenever I start iTunes on either computer or else iTunes will change the storage folder back to the default location. I can not run iTunes on my windows PC because Apple do not make a 64 bit windows version of iTunes. This means I must try to configure Windows Media Player to work with my Linksys Musicbridge. I have had no success with that yet.

After iTunes is settled into using this new library (The process is about half way completed now.) I need to add the songs from the Macbook iTunes default storage location to the iTunes library. This is to make sure I have copies of all the music I have purchased from the iTunes Store using the Macbook. So in effect adding these songs from the old storage location the default iTunes folder on the Macbook will copy any songs from the Macbook not already on the storage drive. I will also add the default iTunes storage folder on the Macbook to the eMac's iTunes library.

The last step will be to reload the iPod with a good selection of the whole iTunes library. I will also resubscribe to some Podcasts I have previously deleted. I have almost 120 GB of storage on the network drive. So the present model of iPod Classic would work fine but for now I have an 8 GB Nano.

The ThinkCentre is now donated to making a community centre lab.

A local group I am involved with is offering a computer lab to a community centre. The idea is to run Ubuntu with the education version running terminals on old Pentium 1 and Pentium 2 computers. The donated ThinkCentre will be the server for this small lab that will allow an upgrade of the community centre's computers. This is being done for a community centre in a small town near, Ottawa, Ontario Canada.

Here is the link to the basic information about this version of Ubuntuhttp://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/edubuntu.

I copied the user folders from the ThinkCentre to Remembrance

I copied the user folder from the Linux side of the ThinkCentre to the Linux side of Remembrance and I copied the windows user folder to the windows side of Remembrance. I now just need to take the 250 GB drive out of the ThinkCentre and try it out in the 1 U clone server.

I need to reinstall Linux on Remembrance .

I reinstalled Linux on Remembrance. I had tried after the initial first install to install KDE piece by piece and had gotten some "not authenticated" files and broken packages and was stuck even trying a lot of stuff and learning the Gnome package manager. So I reinstalled the whole operating system.

I use a command prompt to install KDE as the desktop right from the start.

I have successfully completed the first step in backing up the user folders from the ThinkCentre.

I tired again to offload the user folders on the ThinkCentre to the eMac using the home network connection but this failed. I then simply plugged in the 160 GB portable LaCie USB hard drive and quickly copied both the Windows and Debian users folders to this external hard drive. Now I might back these files up to DVD's. I have blank DVD's to do this with. I did spend some two hours on this work as planned. I will now not need to put in another 10 to 14 hours on computer upkeep this week but will hopefully put in some time before the weekend.

I am donating the ThinkCentre to a Geek lab.

I am donating the ThinkCentre to a Geek lab along with my old Linksys 5 port switch. This means I need to take my user data off the ThinkCentre. So far I have taken off the Vista Documents folder, the Desktop folder and the Eclipse workspace folder. I will spend 2 more hours making sure all user data is taken off the windows side then 4 hours taking off the user data from the Linux side. This means I am donating 7 hours to the Geek project. I also will need 1 hour to take out the 250 GB IDE drive. I will use this drive in my 1U server and see if I can get it to boot up. So that may be a few hours of installing Debian if that clone boots up. It has a Pentium M processor. I have also allocated another 4 hours to installing more software on crystal 89 which I have named Remembrance in honour of Remembrance day the day this computer came to life. Yes, this new windows/linux PC has been working since November 11th so is still not a month old.

The Canon IPPixma 4300 printer software is now installed.

I have installed the other printer software, the Canon IPPixma 4300 software now on the new PC.