Random thoughts about using computers to do things. Presently using an Alienware Aurora Desktop (Windows 10) , a Dell XPS 13 developer edition (Ubuntu 19.04) a Dell Precision M2800 laptop (Windows 10), a Mac Mini, an Apple iPhone 7, an Apple iPad 6, a Samsung Galaxy S8, a Samsung Tab A (2018), an iPod Classic 160GB plus CD's, DVD's, USB keys, and zip disks everywhere. Enjoy learning computing with me.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Documenting some chart making in Open Office and Excel.
I downloaded some data that was free. There were only 5 years covered. I have been using years as my X axis for the past two weeks. The data was divided by age groups and I only downloaded 5 year age bands from 45 to 89 and then 90 and over. It was for cause of death data and is published annually. These vital statistics are free for download. I have around 27 causes picked out. I had the data for both sexes and for men and for women. So for each year I had a column and for each age band and each of the 3 gender categories I had the 27 causes in rows. All in all about 750 rows of data.
I downloaded that data into a spreadsheet. I then created a new sheet in that workbook. Editorial Note: When one downloads data it seems the workbook has only the one sheet unlike when one creates a new workbook with three sheets. In the new sheet I copied totals for cause of death for the same age bands and the same gender categories but from all causes of death in Canada. This was copied from a separate download. These two sheets were then not changed and after this step; data were only copied out from these two download sheets. Then in a third sheet I made my own row labels for the genders and age bands matching the second sheet's row ordering. The labels from the database were lengthy and unreadable in the width of my spreadsheet window and the differences between the labels could not be viewed easily. Editorial note: the labels were so long not even a 30 inch monitor would display them completely I am guessing. These new labels were shorter and after much copy and pasting I had made all some 31 rows labels by age bands and gender categories. They were in the same row ordering as the downloaded deaths by all causes. I then made five year columns after these row labels in the first column and copied the totals deaths by all causes by years data to this sheet.
Then I went back to a copy of the death by specific causes download in separate workbook and saved a copy of that download as a text file or comma separated file. I then closed it and imported it. I imported the data as a text file. This is one of my data handling tricks that could also be done with regular expressions if one was using a programming or scripting language. The picking of the appropriate delimiters is the trick. I chose delimiters during the import that would cut the long row labels in this file so that the specific causes' names, age band's names and gender names, were all brought in to this new spreadsheet in separate columns. Actually I used three columns and then copied these labels into a new fourth sheet in my main workbook. The row order for the 750 rows was preserved.
I then went back to the first sheet in the main workbook with all the cause specific data and copied all the data but not the labels into the new fourth sheet. So sheet four was the same as sheet one, but I now had three columns for labels and the labels were short and readable on the screen. I then made new rows in sheet four at the top of the beginning of each specific gender category (both sexes, males, females) and the beginning of each age band (5 year age bands 45-89 and the age band 90 and over). So when for example, the data for both sexes, 45 to 49,and 27 rows of specific causes of death started in the sheet, a new row started the 27 rows for both sexes, 45 to 49 years old. Then going back to sheet three with the total causes of death by genders and age bands, I added two more columns between the labels and the yearly totals columns to make a proper column alignment with the three column labels in sheet four. Then one at a time, the new rows I had created in sheet four were pasted with the rows from the 31 age and gender specific death by all causes data and short labels for gender and age bands from the third sheet.
I was now ready to calculate some results. I created formulas for counts for specific causes over total causes and then made this number a percent. I used the real number for the total but for the specific cause count I used a cell reference. I then filled down the columns into the 27 specific causes effecting the calculation for all five years and all 27 causes for the first set of data which was 45 to 49 both sexes. This was the only data I worked through today. I still had these 27 cause specific rows by 5 years columns of data highlighted after the fill so I then used format cells to change all the numbers to percents with 6 decimal places.
I then charted all non-zero rows basically following the charting techniques in Excel I have learned at work but I did it in Open Office. Somethings are done differently in Open Office charts. I then also did a counts chart that matched the percents charts but makes no reference to total deaths. After a long break, I spent some time formating the charts for printing and printed the two charts out.
I then saved and closed all the workbooks. I thought it would be a good idea and relaxing and good for my intellectual health to document all my work so I have posted this notes.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
I used Disk Utility to Seven Pass erase a USB key.
I am getting some old SLR lenses
Hard drive space on the Sun Machine.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Sun machine
Friday, May 30, 2008
Chapter one read now in Solaris 9 for Dummies
Friday, May 09, 2008
The eMac2 finder is working again.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
The eMac2 is having troubles but fixes are being attempted and emergency critical backups have begun for right now in case of further failure.
I did think last night to access the folders remotely using the Macbook1. So slowly late last night I have been copying the email folder and mail download folder off of the eMac2. I have shut off the email and the plan is to use the email software on the Macbook now.
Speaking of changing email software, I did loose a little email for about 1 hour's worth of incoming email on the Linux machine when I thought of switching to Linux for a main email computer. But I should learn to copy Mac Mail to Linux and also to Thunderbird email software on Vista. I still do not have a way of transferring email between operating systems other than Netscape email. I am hoping Thunderbird can do this too as Netscape is now closed as a company. This reminds me I need to access Netscape downloads and download some historical copies of the browser.
After my back up I will try to read all this email in the IBM under both Linux and also Vista. If this works I will try to load all the email into Solaris but I doubt there is room on the old Solaris box
I am also remotely deleting the last folder made on the eMac2 which was the burn folder for the backup I was trying to make. I am hoping that when this burn folder is deleted the finder will work again. If this does work out this way the situation will be less critical.
The only follow up may be simply increases the backup frequency for the eMac in future. I guess I would also stop burning disks on the eMac2 and try to avoid a similar problem in the future. I may also continue to follow through on switching some main computer tasks off of the eMac2 and onto a different but newer computer.
I can also just look up how to manually eject the DVD and that may solve the problem too.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Still burning backup DVD's from the 2006 state of the Macbook1.
The email from 2006 is all backed up now to six DVD's and properly labeled. The whole user folder is not being backed up to a number of separate DVD's and I am not sure how many DVD's I will need to split the user folder into. So far I have the folders and files decided for two DVD's and the first disk is now burned to six identical copies. The backups continue.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Buying a Tadpole laptop
Saturday, April 19, 2008
My final exam was written. I did so so.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
I enjoyed a creative person's gathering in Second Life or a creativity meeting in a virtual world
Slowly installing the media wiki on the Debian Linux IBM Thinkcentre
I have been using the media wiki quite a bit on the Macbook for my study organisation. I have also been using LATeX much more and have learned to use BibTeX now.
For fun I have been playing Eve Online.
I must focus on school work now so tinkering will have to be put on the back burner for a week or so because it takes a lot of time to do.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Fink is now updated and the Macbook has a fresh install of the X code developer tools.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Drupal is up and running with some issues.
I will now install Drupal on my Macbook.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Mediawiki is installed on my Macbook now
I am setting up a study wiki on my own computer not to be web based.
To use a Wiki I selected I needed to install it on my Macbook. I first had to start Apache which I have done. I then needed to install MySQL 5.0 which I have downloaded and run two installers and then added the preference panel for MySQL. But so far I can not get MySQL started. I have studied MySQL in the past. I also managed to edit the file httpd.conf for apache so that PHP 5.0 will run now. I had to use vi for the edit and also chmod to change the permissions on the file so I could save my edit. I then changed the permissions back too. I had to use Linux for Dummies to use vi and to use chmod. I will leave this note here and report back later. I did take a break at this point to read some books before documenting this. I am now going back to the install of MediaWiki following the instructions for that software. It promises TeX support and images. I am going to run MediaWiki on my laptop and not serve it over the net.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Ice Dove for email
Sunday, March 09, 2008
I deleted my Eve Online subscription.
I deleted my subscription because the game was taking too much valuable time from my home life and other activities and was costing money and I have no extra money. Also my main focus both with computers and school work is not in the entertainment gaming field. Yes, I can make connections to other topics like helping strangers and cooperative play but as I said it took too much time and too much money. I have also been able to experience the cooperation at a basic first time experience level. But games have traditionally been used in education to effect cooperation (aka Game Theory).
Enough with that game and information society cash out stream. This will save me 15$ per month as that was going to become the cost of that game. The game Second life is now costing me 33$ a month on a regular fee basis plus costs of buying land and other items. In fact, I am this weekend, buying another 512 basic lot adjoining my present virtual 3D land holdings
Sunday, February 24, 2008
SubEthaEdit
Friday, February 08, 2008
I downloaded Adobe InDesign to learn.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
I installed Vista on the IBM Thinkcentre
Monday, February 04, 2008
Playing Eve On-Line
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Successful burn of only one disk
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
I am preparing the eMac's documents folders from 2006 and 2007 for burning
Sunday, January 20, 2008
The backups continue I am moving on to the eMac backups now with the Macbook mostly completed.
I took a different approach and an important step I am realising. I went into each Desktop folder and deleted old burn folders and movie files. These were mostly movies I had collected from google that are copyright free . These were downloaded for the PSP or iPod. Most were movies used in Internet research such as Apple computer TV advertisements. Another movie was a documentary on how the Internet came to be. This deleting is important because it will help not only cut down the size I need to archive but it will also clean up the back ups in case someone else has to open them some day. It also cleans them up for my own use and I learned some practical file management this way. I do not need to back up other peoples stuff so much. These movies are only related to me as research sources I have used and will most possibly be still available from the Internet in the future. Also I do not need to save more than one copy; not one copy in each desktop. So for these movies I left one copy in the first Desktop it was found in and then deleted these large files in future desktop folders.
So I now have all these Desktop folders ready for archiving to DVD. The six folders should now fit on one 4.7 GB DVD and I have at least six blank DVD's to use for this. This is a way of clearing up the eMac's LaCie 250 GB backup drive. The other LaCie drive had 80 GB free after the backups last week and it is now back in regular service for the Macbook again but not with Time Machine or LaCie backup software but instead a simple copy of the three basic folders every other month.
- These three folders are
- Documents
- Desktop
- Mail and Mail downloads
I am buying fifteen 8 GB double layer DVD's today for 20 dollars and then the next purchase will be 50 or 100 4.7 GB DVD's.
I helped some other poor computer owners to use their computers.
Yesterday, also I connected someone to the Internet. She was paying for the service for about 5 months without using it. This was Rogers Yahoo Internet service that was delivered by a technician but not hooked up. The technician could see that she had only a windows 98 Pentium1 laptop but left her stranded with the bill. I helped her buy an new HP low end desktop as a microloan and gave her my Sony LCD 17" TV monitor for a complete recent system which she has been learning to use. So yesterday we hooked the system up to the net and then I updated a variety of softwares and she now has an email address. She has some basic understanding of what she is doing now but we covered a lot in the two hours of help. I have her using Thunderbird, Firefox and Open Office.
There is one more person to help and perhaps today she will also get some help.
The 160 GB LaCie drive is now working as the Music Library folder on the IBM Thinkcentre
It took a while to get the LaCie drive working with the IBM Thinkcentre running XP. In the end I formatted the drive on the eMac using Disk Utility as a MS-DOS disk. iTunes on XP asked if I wanted to copy my music library to the LaCie when I changed the store folder of iTunes to the LaCie. So this worked fine and it works with the Linksys music bridge. So that is that. Too bad the Linksys bridge does not also handle video.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Configuring the use of external hard drives
I do have some very personal voice memos though which I should make sure stay on only the eMac. I used the Griffen iTalk microphone and my first 60GB iPod photo to record these memos and I no longer record voice memos that way. I can now use my Blackberry to record voice memos but have not really recorded any of these yet.
The LaCie 160 drive is all cleared off except the backup from Time Machine which I will try to transfer to the new Time Machine drive. The old 250 Macbook backup drive is being cleared off still and backed up to DVD's in fact six copies of each DVD. Four of these copies will be mailed to family members each person getting two copies of each disk. I have some cardboard boxes for mailing that are filling up with DVD's now. I did buy more blank DVD's and DVD's sleeves. I will use up this new supply of fifty DVD's sometime today. I will not quite finish the back up and clear up but have about 80 GB free now so I can start the Time Machine on the drive today. I have also copied some folders to the eMac's 250 GB external drive.
I am almost done backing up all the 2006 backups which mostly include a variety of dated copies of three major folders for different dates through the year. The folders are the Desktop, the Documents and the user folder.
So now I am almost ready with enough free space on the Macbook 250 external drive to start Time Machine as I said. Then I can start the music drive on the Windows XP computer today too. This means two help files are needed from the Apple Web site. One help file explaining how to transfer or change Time Machine drives and then a second help file or help web page to change the store folder for the music in iTunes on the WinXP computer. This does tie down the iTunes to having the external drive running but it does not have to absolutely use AC power. So this should help with my habit or keeping all devices not in use turned off and not on some sort of on state. All those AC adapters left plugged in produce heat and thus use wasted electricity
The Canon IP Pixma 4300 will not print duplex from the Debian computer.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Returning the RAM and buying more ink.
The Linksys Wireless-G Music Bridge streaming music device arrived and I just set it up.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
The IP 4300 printer works with the Debian computer
I am taking back the memory and Linksys streaming music device
Monday, December 31, 2007
The Keyboard Monitor switch is hooked up now.
The memory arrived in the mail and was Desktop RAM not laptop RAM.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Keyboard, monitor switch.
I am updating Fink
Friday, December 28, 2007
1 GB memory upgrade may be this evening.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
I bought ink this evening but the buying has to stop now.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
I burned the two more 8 GB DVD's.
The year end back up continues
To continue to clear the hard drive I have deleted all the twenty some CD's of Debian 4.0. I have burned some of these to CD and what I deleted was the original downloads. If I have too I could download these again. I have also not had to use these as my last Debian install was done with a net install disk. I do not have too many other files I can just delete. I have about 51 GB free space now. I need about 85 at present to hold my iTunes library for streaming. If I can meet this goal with this drive I will not need a new drive.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Year end back ups started.
I will want to buy more blank DVD's at the boxing day sales.
I learned to unlock the burn folders after the first burn and it was this locked aspect which was giving me a lot of trouble in the past with burning DVD's and the Finder going into non-response.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
iTunes on the Windows box.
Annual year end backups; getting ready for the end of the year.
I am doing things with iTunes.
I have so far started to use the Thinkcentre windows side to sync my Blackberry. Now I will also use it for iTunes and the Wireless Music Bridge. Since I have started to use iTunes on Windows I have had nothing but headaches loading all my music. This past hour I decided to delete everything on that iTunes.
I am also backing up my eMac iTunes to some 4.7 GB DVD's but this has been headache prone too. Right now I am starting again; having ruined three DVD's trying. First, I am downloading a bunch of podcasts. When those are updated, I will back up the iTunes on the eMac.
I also have been using iTunes on the IBM to get my songs from the library of music to my Blackberry. This was the initial reason to put iTunes there. This worked but the Blackberry is troublesome for listening to music while traveling around on the bus. It turns off and on and stuff. I have still have not learned all the buttons or the lock screen function beyond using it once only.
Monday, December 17, 2007
I backed up this blog.
We did not get to those paypal and amazon problems with the neighbour.
I am now home and was playing some computer games and now am back to transferring songs to my new cell phone, the Blackberry.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
I am helping a neighbour with Paypal and amazon
How to get iTunes into the Blackberry.
Desktop PC.
But I have not been using the WinXP Operating system much on the IBM desktop so I am having to spend an hour or two downloading updates from Microsoft now. The reason I am needing to use the Desktop PC rather than the Macbook WinXP is that the Macbook Win XP partition is almost full and I need to save that for my SAS install. I use SAS at work and need to have a home copy to learn on and have a school license for SAS.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Email, contacts, address books between Palms, Blackberries, and computers.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
I could not find my Palm hotsync cable.
As I proof read this entry I tried one more time to look around where I usually leave my cables and saw the tell tale end that fits in the Palm. So I have now found the cable and will log off the Macbook Leopard and log into Win XP and try to transfer my contacts and and calendar to my Blackberry which arrived yesterday.
I am already using the Blackberry Facebook application and have downloaded 250 KB so far on the Blackberry of my 4 MB monthly limit. But for now I am ready to sync the two devices. First, I will back up the Palm to the eMac.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Getting ready for the Blackberry.
Memory for the Debian Computer would not cost too, too much.
Archiving and moving to Linux.
I opened some backup folders in Linux and copied my Old Computer folder and some Mac backups while archiving these to the Linux desktop home folder. I also updated the Linux computer today. I tried out Kate for my dtd file and also opened a school project written in C# with Kate and used the highlighting. Right now the Linux computer is turned off to save power.
I am buying a Blackberry 8130 cell phone/pda.
Monday, November 26, 2007
One laptop per child
Memory upgrades.
KPhoto
Friday, November 23, 2007
Second Life viewer on Linux
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Leopard updated this morning
Monday, November 12, 2007
Only hardware issues so far with new IBM desktop.
Leopard is taking a little getting used to.
The Visual Studio project is done now.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
The Leopard install is complete now
Saturday, November 10, 2007
The Leopard install has begun
One last task before install of Leopard is dragging out but that's because I am not working on it right now.
Then Monday I install Debian 4.0 r1 on an IBM M50 desktop which should arrive that day. I have Monday off of work. I will post details of the Linux install after the Leopard install is done but I am right now also preparing for the Linux install but won't give details right now.
You should back up your computer before installing an upgrade or new OS.
So far I have burned four DVD's of the Desktop folder as of last night. I burned two of these DVD's on Kodak DVD's and two on Memorex DVD's. I also did this with four disks for the documents folder. All other folders than documents and desktop were considered two large for DVD back up.
I also used one external 250 LaCie USB hard drive to copy these two folders once. I also used my eMac and the LaCie back up software on the eMac to back up the user folder on the Macbook to a second LaCie 250 USB external drive attached to the eMac. These two computers are connected to a router in common which keeps them networked together.
Another step is still in progress and that is to use the LaCie backup software on the Macbook to back up many different folders like the systems folder, the users folder, the library, and the applications folder to a third smaller 160 GB LaCie USB external drive. So far backing up the applications folder this way has not worked so a copy of it was copied to the drive.
Windows XP is also installed on the Macbook so a copy of the major folders was made to the first USB external drive mentioned above and then this was copied to the third drive as well. Some Windows folders on the Macbook could not be copied due to permissions issues.
The last step will be to use the LaCie back up software to make one more copy of the user folder to the third drive. Then the backups will be considered completed.
Installing Leopard on the Macbook.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
The community group web site will not close.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
New computer ordered.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
ProView 17" monitor works with Solaris machine.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Pain staking hand editing of Moving Type(MT) main index file worked.
http://cyborgcitizen.org/pkrogstad/index.html.
I used the witty name for the blog Just a Second Life Avatar's Blog. I made a table banner with 40 little Second Life screen pictures of my avatar. This was what took the hand coding. It was tough uploading too. I made a goal to completing this before going out today and I am now done. So I achieved this goal. I worked very hard.
I spent the day at work coding in SAS.
I also have been able to become an obsessive documenter. I wrote a lot of comments in my code today explaining each and every step in SAS comment lines. Being a blogger of my own daily life and other mundane topics has improved my skills in this regard.
Second Life progress update.
I have now learned more about Second Life by reading books. I read just a little of the Offical Guide to Second Life and with that created another account and avatar and went through orientation island again where I better learned to fly. This has really helped me out. I moved my house or should I say my offices to a PG sim and it is more pleasant to see on screen now. I find I am spending more time on-line there now in this virtual reality world that is like photoshop for 3 dimensional stuff. It has cost me close to 400 dollars now in about 1.5 years of use.
I am going to open a blog now for this virtual world and report my progress there. I will post the new blog address here when it is set up.