The Canon IP90 printer now works with the Dell Mini 9

I managed to install some drivers for the Canon IP90. It seems to work for black text printing with Linux Canon Pixma IP 4300 drivers. I can at least print black text. So I now have a very portable printing systems in the Netbook and IP90 combination.

I am planning on saving for some hard drives but actually I have one 250 GB hard drive spare perhaps.

I am also wanting a hard drive for the storage bay still but planning on saving up for this. I want to install Kubuntu on Remembrance and would also want a third hard drive in Remembrance for this. I am not sure but I believe I have a spare 250 GB hard drive from my Pentium IV 3 Ghz IBM desktop. This would be an IDE hard drive not SATA. I can install such a hard drive in Remembrance, if I have some extra hard drive space. The motherboard will certainly support the older IDE hard drives. So this will be my next project. I am downloading Kubuntu as I write this. I just learned that Kubunutu is not a community version of Ubunutu but in fact, a KDE version of Ubunutu which would be peachy keen.

I am still using Inference of R and also becoming more familiar with Office 2007.

I have been using Office 2007 for about three months now. I have been using Inference for R for a few weeks now. These are both installed on the 64 bit Windows XP.

The old Dell 600 Mhz machine I got in a swap.

So yes, this old Dell was used at a political office for volunteers to use. I donated it to the party without tax receipt. The office tech guy set it up to run Kubuntu. When I booted it a couple of days ago I could log into Kubuntu. The problem now is that the machine fails to turn on and the message is "Thermal Failure". I can try a few times to get it to boot finally. But this will not be a good PC to donate to a Linux newbie as was my intention.

So now I can repair it or take the parts and build a another PC. I am not sure seeing that is a proprietary case that I can put a new mother board into it. More e-waste problems for me to solve.

I decided not to do email on my home PC's.

I decided given the viruses and worms in emails and the lack of security on PC's to not run email on my PC's. I did again import my Mac mail on my Macbook into Eurdora and once agan tried to import email into Entourage and it again did not work.

I set up my office again and moved Remembrance out of the living room

I had Remembrance set up in front of the TV for a month or two. I was intending to get Eve Online on the TV. But this did not work. I am not really enjoying Eve online so much after all. It is partly people issues with smutty talk and drunks on line. I am considering closing my accounts.

I set up the 17" CRT monitor in office in the middle of the desk. I have on the left side my eMac which is not getting much use these days but is still a print server for my Macbook and the Canon printer. To the right to of the CRT monitor is the new LG 19" Widescreen monitor. I was running the used Dell 600 Mhz computer into the CRT monitor and Remembrance into the LG monitor. The Dell is running Kubuntu. So I have three monitors side by side. I am chasing images in the media and various workplaces I work at; images of computer setups.

I installed Microsoft Project 2007 on Remembrance

I installed Microsoft Project 2007 on Remembrance and made a file for the thesis I am working on in graduate school.

I installed Thunderbird version 2 for my Win XP machine, Remembrance.

I downloaded and installed Thunderbird for my Windows Desktop. I have been reading about how to import mboxes which are a common mailbox file for storing email. I will attempt to import all my Mac Mail going back some almost 15 years into the new Thunderbird install.

To transfer the mbox files to the windows PC I am using the network storage drive. But the network storage drive is running out of space and has only some 200 MB free space. I thought of going to PC Cyber to buy a one TB hard drive to install in the network storage bay but just do not have the money saved up for this. So this will wait for a month or two. This buying a one TB drive has been planned for over a year now although last year the plan was for two 500 GB drives. One TB drives are coming down in price so soon may be in May if I save up I will buy this drive. I have a work around for today and that is to delete all the Microsoft software ISO images from the network storage drive which will give me enough space to store the mboxes. So before I delete the iso images I am copying them to the Windows PC and am going to burn hard copies of all the ISO files. This will be four CD's and 2 DVD's. I will only make two copies of each. This also gives me a chance to try out the burner on the Windows PC called Remembrance.

I downloaded and installed Real Player version 11 for the Mac OS 10

I downloaded and installed Real Player version 11 for the Mac on my Macbook. I wanted this to view and listen to CBC news items.

All my main computers are running well.

My eMac is functioning fine and I even found the DVD drive working again. The Macbook although it is filthy is working fine as my usual daily machine now in the living room, The new home built PC with Windows XP 64 bit and Debian Linux is also working fine now. The new Dell Mini 9 Netbook is fine and I carry it around all the time but it is not getting much use but it is very useful to have it if needed. I used it at a community group last week to keep minutes of a meeting.

I am thinking of buying a Windows laptop that I would build from an OCZ laptop skeleton. This PC laptop would also be running Windows XP 64 bit and Debian 4.2. I am also thinking of buying an iMac 20 inch desktop. I am looking at used MacBooks and Powerbooks and iBooks for a friend and perhaps one for myself for music recording. I am looking in the 200-400 dollar range for these. These would be running Tiger not Leopard for an OS.

Next laptop will be build from parts.

A DIY laptop I have had my eyes on is on clearance sale now. This week they are also offering a rebate on this laptop so today after work I may go and buy one. I would still need to buy a CPU, memory and hard drive. I have read some reviews and it looks like it will make an excellent dual boot machine. I have a copy of SAS, and a copy of Arc View I can legally install on this. I also have a copy of Office 2007 I can install legally. I have 160$ saved up but need 800$ then will get 200$ back in the rebate. So in the end I will have spent 440$ more than I have saved.

Gaming accounts and costs.

I have been gaming with Eve Online for a little over a year now. I keep a blog for my game character written in the third person about this character and have started two other characters. One of these others was going to be a second account and also cost 15$ US currency a month. Instead I have not paid for this account and allowed it to expire. The other of the two extra characters (These are also known as "Alts".) is simply another character on the first account I have. The first account has cost me approximately 15 US$ a month now for 13 months or about 195US$ US. This was paid for in Canadian dollars over the past year. So recently has cost as much as 18$ CND per month.

I am thinking this account is a non-business account unlike my Second Life account where the game money can be exchanged for real money. This game though does not net any profits for me as of yet and is more of a monthly cost. It has cost as much as 25 US$ per month in land fees and 22.50 US$ quarterly in game membership costs. So it has cost as much as 7.50 + 25 or 32.50 US$ per month. There are also costs with buying land and other objects. But my online character has not made any sales beyond selling land to others that the character had to buy first and I believe these sales and have never resulted in a profit of more than 50$ CND and probably not more than 10 CND$ profit in any given year. At present my costs for land fees are at 40 US$ a month so about 47.50 US$ per month in costs. But I am allowed to "own" 1/8th of a region now and do own a sizable amount of land in a region known as "Monty". I am planning to either develop a virtual park in this region or sell the land off in parcels to try my hand at a virtual land business in Second Life.

HTML authoring resources by Ian Graham University of Toronto

I think Ian Graham wrote some great HTML books in the 1990's. Is anyone studying the computer self help press?

here are some titles that are only pennies used from Amazon

If a few bucks is still too much you read his online tutorial

http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/intro.html

Old but still useful

The Html Sourcebook: A Complete Guide to Html 3.0 (Paperback)
by Ian S. Graham (Author), Ian S Graham (Author)


Html 4.0 Sourcebook (Paperback)
by Ian S. Graham (Author) "What is a text markup language?..." (more)



I am trying to start reading this one

HTML Stylesheet Sourcebook (Sourcebooks) (Paperback)
by Ian S. Graham (Author)



BTW I do not know Ian or have any monetary connection to him nor really academic beyond learning from his great books and always available online tutorial.

Macbook backed up to USB external hard drive now.

I backed up the Macbook documents folder, the desktop folder and the mail folder to one of the external LaCie 250 GB hard drives. I also just started the back up of the eMac to the same 250 GB hard drive. I will not have to use the 160 GB LaCie portable drive to do this backup. I reviewed my 2007 backups for the Macbook and they are all burned to DVD now. I did this last year in 2008.

I would like to back up both computers once a month. I should also back up Remembrance this weekend. My next purchase for backing up will be an internal 1 TB drive for the network storage or a 1 TB or 500 GB USB external drive which again will hook up to the Linksys Network storage box. Another possible backup purchase will be more blank DVD disks. But I do have 50 fresh blank disks available now.

I am backing up the eMac2 today.

I am using my 160 GB portable drive to back up the eMac2 today. I have 35 GB of free space and the eMac2 documents folder is 21 GB at the moment. So the first goal will be to use the 160 GB drive to back up the documents folder and the desktop, pictures and library folders containing mail. Then I will go to the Macbook and start to burn DVD's of the eMac2 by copying them off the 160 GB drive. Right now I am freeing up some more space on the 160 GB drive. There are three Microsoft program ISO images on the 160 GB drive and I am copying these to my network drive and then deleting them from the 160 GB drive. These are just back up copies of the Microsoft software that I was given free from school. There are a few other folders I can first delete on the 160 GB drive

Getting my Macbook backed up.

I have made eighteen DVD backups for the Macbook at year end. I have three disks, one is documents, the other mail and mail downloads and the third the desktop and everything else. I do not back up applications. For each of these three disks I have six copies. Two copies go to one off site location and two more to another. Then I save two copies as on site back ups. I need to back up the eMac too but it requires an extra step because the DVD burner is not working well on it. So to back it up I need to copy files to a USB hard drives then to the Macbook and then burn the disks on the Macbook. I have enough blank disks to do this I think having some thirty new disks to work with for the back up.

The Dell Mini 9 first thoughts.

I got the Dell Mini 9 yesterday just before time 1234554321. I first updated it. Then tried the package manager and installed KDE and R. I set up a new gmail account with Evolution software. I got the social browser Flock working on the machine. I adjusted the home page in Firefox and also took the Yahoo tool bar out of view. Still the top of the browser is too large and the window size is further hurt by the lack of a window scroll track pad like my Macbook has. I am so used to the scrolling window track pad control. So I may need to get used to some new finger control methods.

I transferred some songs to the music player and started to use the F-Stop software for photos but did not really get anywhere with F-Stop. The idea of transferring photos to the computer got me copying my photo store on my eMac to my Macbook and also to my network storage drive, as a first step, before transferring the photos to the Mini 9. So I did get the networking working and was able to connect to my network storage.

I took the Mini 9 out on the bus and read a pdf and it was not bad reading and I could keep my glasses on and read while seated but I needed two seats to get the right distance from eyes to screen. I shut the Dell Mini 9 off this morning.

I updated the BIOS on Remembrance to support the Wolfdale processor.

I updated the BIOS on the new computer I built. It is now running at its true 3.0 Ghz speed.

I am getting a Netbook is about a week and a few days.

I am going to get a Netbook. I originally was checking out the Asus models at PcCyber a local small chain computer and parts store. In fact, this store was where I first saw these Netbooks and I first saw them on their website. I surfed ebay numerous times looking at the Asus models. Now two articles have come and gone in Linux journal covering first, the Acer Netbook and its Linux compatibility, and now this past month the Dell Mini 9 was covered in a more general product review. I was already going ahead with the purchase of the Dell Mini 9 before I bought this month's issue and read the review.

So here are the made to order specs of the Dell Mini 9 I am getting. N270 1.6 Ghz Atom processor with 2 GB 667 Mhz RAM, 64 GB solid state drive, cherry red in colour, with 1.3 Mega pixel built in web cam, Bluetooth, wireless G connections, and that is about it, I think. I have two cases for it already shipped and received. It will fit in a coat pocket and also fit in a small shoulder bag I have. It should be cool. It will be here by next Monday, but I am hoping it arrives early on Friday the 13th. Have Netbook will travel, to paraphrase the old science fiction master.

That is strange; my last computer was fully built on Remembrace day and this next one possibly arrives on Friday the 13th.

I learned more about PCI interfaces and the PCI standards by trying to buy the Motu sound card.

It turns out the Motu card because it is a few years old uses a different PCI standard than the motherboard and PCI interfaces in Remembrance. In fact, the Motu was designed for Pentium III era motherboards and the older 2.0 and 2.2 standards for PCI interfaces. It seems that the key thing is the voltage of these standards. The modern standards in effect since about 2002 use about 3 volts whereas the older standards used 5 volts. The Motu card that was on auction required the older 5 volt standards. So this card would not have worked in Remembrance.

At any rate I lost the auction and, in fact, the price went out of my price range.

Music on the computer.

I was able to play my electric bass into my eMac and Garage band the other day. I use an M-Audio Quattro USB interface that digitizes the signal from my bass. I use a Trace Elliot pre-amp with Tubes for my bass. So I was looking at used iBooks to use for a recording platform that would be more mobile. I need a Mac running only Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger because there are no Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard drivers for this Quattro interface. I then found an Motu PCI interface available on ebay from Asutralia. But this is on auction for another 7 days so the price will probably go out of my range. The prospect of getting this card has me looking at PowerMacs to install the card in. But I could just install it in Remembrance and have not even won the auction for the Motu PCI card yet. I did investigate Motu's drivers and they do not have Linux drivers. So having not won this interface card and rack processor, I will not be looking at PowerMacs yet. In fact, I should loose all the auctions I am bidding on because I can afford this stuff now. It would be green to buy the used equipment. I had been looking at new M-Audio Delta PCI cards because there are Linux drivers for 50$ available for these cards but the cards are about 175 dollars and the local computer store just raised their prices on these cards when they got them in stock and the price is now above retail. So for now I have recording abilities with my eMac. I should see if I can get the Quattro working with Windows XP 64 bit but this will probably not happen.

I am going through with the purchase of the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu 8.

I hope by now I have canceled the purchase of the Mini 9 with Windows XP home. I reordered the Mini with Ubuntu 8 and upgraded the hard drive to a 64 GB solid state drive. I am also shifting some attention to music recording and have been looking at late model macs used.

My ISP Bell Canada offered a 110$ coupon off a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 but I backed out of buying one.

I was offered a deal to buy a small laptop from Dell. These are popular now and often come in Windows and Linux models. My ISP which used to be known as Bell Sympatico offered me a coupon of 110$ off the price. I did go to Dell and set up an order for one of these Inspiron Mini 9's. I had the order set up to be paid for on an installment plan but then when I saw the plan was at 19% interest I changed my mind. So I canceled the order. I had thought perhaps to have SAS working on this small laptop. But the OS was Windows XP Home which I think will not run SAS. I am still interested in having one of these small laptops but might prefer to have a Linux version.

I can instead run SAS on my Macbook using a Windows boot up on the Macbook. I still need to set Windows up on the Macbook after installing the new hard drive.

I do have my eyes on getting a Windows gaming laptop. An OCZ gaming laptop is what I have my eyes on. See the model I am interested in here at this URL: http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/diy_notebooks/ocz_diy_15-gaming_notebook-small-intel-nvidia_edition.

I installed Kaspersky Internet Security software on Remembrance

I installed a one year licensed copy of Kaspersky Internet Security on the Windows XP 64 bit Remembrance computer. It may have shut down my use of vent a chat software I use in Eve Online to effect group game play. Otherwise I have no problems with this Internet security package.

Tree tabs and mixed tabs add ons for firefox.

This video from a Linden Labs staffer explains these useful firefox add ons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFz66w8wAEY

or search tree style tabs and mixed tabs on goggle. You need the mixed tabs for the tree tabs to work.

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.

The brother Multi Function Centre 420 CN software is now installed on the new PC

I downloaded and installed the full set of MFC 420 CN software for my network printer on the new PC.

I am installing a one year one time install version of ESRI's ArcGIS 9.2 student version on the new PC crystal 89.

I was surfing the school's web pages for computer services for students. I was trying to find a copy of Symantic anti virus software. I did download the school provided Windows version of Symantic anti virus software but it is 32 bit and will not work on the new PC. But while exploring software available for students I noticed that the license for ArcView has changed at school and we are now allowed to use the software at home. I was taking a break from work and decided that in my travels on the buses yesterday to go to school and get a copy of ArcView which is now in version 9.2. I had trained in version 3.2 in 2000 at Carleton at the geography department there where I have done many years of part time studies. I have also done an analysis of a conference paper about GIS last winter 2008 as a school term project. I have also read an introduction to ESRI GIS database use this past summer by borrowing a book from my workplace library. I was studying for a job competition but did not get very far with that application so stopped reading the book. So at the moment I am installing ArcView 9.2 with the intent of continuing a project from 2000.

At the moment I have installed the software and plan to open my old term project from the course I took in 2000. Then, by accessing recent census data I will update the ArcView project. I had used spreadsheets containing census 1996 data, entered into Excel from Zypher at the Ottawa Carleton Social Planning Council. There I had been paid to enter the data. I am a proud supporter of the Ottawa Carleton Social Planning Council and give them money every pay cheque through charitable donations. This is my present and first project for ArcView 9.2. I then may also attempt to open GIS files provided by Statistics Canada and Elections Canada, two of the workplaces I have worked.

I did not succeed right away with the new software. I was able too import my project file but could not get a map to appear. I am up over night and do not want to spend my time on a desktop computer working out this problem as I had planned to read books. So I am stopping now with the software successfully installed and registered.

The new PC Crystal 89 is up and running and has been stable now for 2 weeks.

The new PC has mostly been used as a platform to play Eve Online. I have also run a Windows version of Second Life successfully once or twice. I had been using Google's Chrome browser on the other PC I own running Vista. I have managed with the new PC to avoid installing Vista. The new PC has also been used with Eclipse and I have gotten Eclipse to work on the new PC. I need Eclipse for school work in computer programming. For web browsing I am using only FireFox. For email I am only using web based accounts. I have not done any blog work on the new PC.

Much more installing of software needs to be done yet on the new computer.

I did manage to use a USB key on the new computer without issue. I can not open the front USB ports because the little door does not seem to function anymore.

I have also used a USB headset successfully on the new computer.

I need to install printer software. I have used Open Office 3.0 now once on the new computer. I have not needed yet to print anything.

I have a new Internet modem from Bell.

I have a brand new 2wire Internet modem. It is apparently a wireless four port router as well as a gateway. I have not set it up yet but now that my school work is submitted for the week I may set it up on Thursday. I have horror stories warning about changing successful network setups with new parts but I will go ahead with it. I did not want to risk changing it before my critical Internet activities were past for awhile. I no longer have a back up ready Internet service because I no longer have a computer with telephone modem. Although, I do have two telephone Internet services I have not accessed these for a few years now. To correct this I should buy a USB modem for my Macbook.

I found out from Bell that I use about 23 GB in downloads in a month and less than 2 GB of uploads for around 24 GB of traffic. I have now been upgraded to a 60 GB limit from a 30 GB limit. I believed everything the Bell technician told me when she sold me the upgrade.

The new computer is one week old now.

The new computer is still working and is only one week old now. It has not needed any windows updates since the second windows install. It runs as a 2 Ghz processor. There is an error message saying Intel Unlock press F1. I tried to fix this by changing a setting in the BIOS under CPU settings and crashed the machine. I needed to take out the CMOS battery and clear the settings. But that worked, even if I lost the jumper. I am really glad I bought six little bags of screws, jumpers etc. on ebay a few years ago. These have come in handy on this PC build. I have now put both sides back on the case and placed the computer a little more permanently on the floor under the desk.

The new PC is stable for two days and a bit now.

With just enough drivers now installed and a few rounds of windows update I think the Win XP 64 bit is now stable.

The sound was not working on the new PC. But I have it working now

I had spent two hours trying to get the sound working on the new PC but had no luck yet. I just plugged in my Microsoft headphones and those worked. I finally used the setup file in the audio drivers section of the motherboard DVD and now did get the sound working at the same time I got the headphones to work. Luck or persistence.

I played Eve Online in premium mode and it was cool. I chose the upgraded graphics for the new computer based on computer game demands.

I now am installing JAVA 6, then Open Office 3.0 then Eclipse, then Adobe reader and then I will start to install Debian 4.0 r5.

The windows XP is now being updated. It seems stable.

I seem to have Windows XP working fine now. I did learn, being more careful this time, that I need to install a Microsoft HD audio HotFix before installing the the audio drivers from the ASUS motherboard disk. Right now I am not sure how to do that but slowly I am using Windows Update to bring the system up to date

This time I will not be installing any ASUS AI software.

It was just after installing the ASUS AI Nap that the system stopped booting. My theory is that the AI NAP was keeping the computer asleep. This time I will only install the drivers minus the RAID driver and not install any ASUS applications. WinXP should be reinstalled in about 6 minutes.

Reinstalling Windows XP 64 bit.

So with one error I am now reinstalling Win XP 64 bit. I am again waiting for the formating of the harddrive.

Windows XP is now installed on the homebuilt PC and has been updated once with 46 updates. Now I am installing the motherboard drivers.

The Windows XP install worked and I updated the system using Windows Update

Now I am installing the drivers for the motherboard.

These include

• an Intel Chipset Inf Update Program, now at version 7.2.2.1006,
• a high definition audio driver that is a SoundMax ADI1988B Audio Driver version 5.10.2.4580,
• a Marvell 61xx SATA RAID Driver version 1.1.0.43,
• and finally a Marvell Yukon Gigabit Ethernet Driver version 8.56.1.3

Now I am installing motherboard applications. These include

• a Marvell Yukon VCT application version 2.13.2.3
• ASUS AI Gear version 1.00.16
• ASUS AI Nap version

At this point the machine would not start Windows anymore so I am forced to reinstall Windows and this time not install so much stuff from the ASUS disk. This time I will not install the raid driver or applications. Hopefully this time I do not loose windows. I will also install the few drivers that I will install first then do a Windows Update. Strike one to ASUS.

I want to have the system up and running by 9:00 PM when I can play Eve Online again with the new expansion and hopefully in premium mode with advanced graphics.

First boot worked now installing Windows XP 64 bit.

So today on Remembrance day I bought the Intel E8400 Dual core 64 bit Wolfdale processor. It uses 65 watts and is 80 plus power efficient. I installed it in under five minutes. I hooked up a keyboard, ethernet cable, mouse and monitor and booted the machine. The first attempt failed and I investigated the motherboard. In fact, the power cable to the motherboard was not securely attached. After I fixed this the system booted up. I went into the BIOS setup and set the clock. I then saved the configuration and then the system asked for boot media. I turned it off and burned a windows XP 64 bit operating system disk and am now installing it. The next step will be to update windows. Then I will install the motherboard drivers. Then the monitor drivers. I will then start installing software. I will make a list on this blog later today of the software I will install.

I am downloading a current release copy of the Debian net install CD and later today I will install Debian on the second drive.

I have installed the 8 GB of RAM now.

I installed the other 4 GB of Kingston 667 Mhz RAM today so now have 8 GB of RAM in the new project PC. I now only need the CPU but that may not be bought until Christmas. I do now have two copies of Windows XP 64 bit version. I am having trouble downloading the 9 GBs of Vista 64 bit from my school's server.

I found out that the Wolfdale processors are 64 bit processors, so I am downloading Win XP and Win Vista 64 bit versions from the MSDN school site

I had worried that the 8 GB of ram would not work with the computer I am building but if I use 64 bit versions I can access all the RAM. I did learn that the Wolfdale processor is a 64 bit processor so I can use 64 bit versions of Windows for the new machine. Using the Microsoft Developers Network academic alliance web site I am able to get free legal copies of windows. I am downloading Win Vista 64 bit and have already downloaded the Win XP 64 bit version. I will run the Win XP on the new computer and not the Vista.

By the way the CPU is going up in price again probably because of currency changes in the recent markets.

The monitor drivers are installed

I installed the monitor drivers for the new 19" monitor on the windows Vista on the IBM ThinkCentre.

The new monitor needs the driver CD probably. Eve window can be good but takes adjusting.

I have been playing with the EVE Online game settings with regards the window size and number of pixels. So the monitor is wide screen meaning that I might stretch the game a bit on some settings. Right now I can get the monitor to some windows settings but it would be better if I ran the CD that came with the monitor and get some proper settings. The monitor should be at 1440X900 pixels but windows does not have that setting. This has me thinking that a second monitor with a huge screen might be good rather than two identical monitors. Then I would use the large one sparingly because of course it would be power hungry monster. I am really reflecting on the amount of power that we Canadians use these days. It is so much power we are the most power intense country in the world.

I bought a new monitor an LG 19" widescreen monitor

I bought an LG monitor model W1952TQ-TF and may buy a second one in a few months.

I bought two Kingston 2 GB sticks for my new PC for 4 GB of RAM. I may buy 4 more GB now.

I was able to get 4 GB of RAM and install it in the PC. I may buy 4 more GB of RAM today. All I need to buy now is the CPU. I damaged the head of the screws for a case fan I bought. I am worried now that the case fan will rattle. I may have to forcibly remove the fan and take it back to the store.

Backups happening. Labeling the last set of the DVD's and backing up email.

I spent some time labeling three DVD's of the Macbook Documents folder from 2007 fall. I have six copies each of these three DVD's. I still have many more DVD's to label. I also bought another 50 blank 4.7 GB DVD's to continue the process and prepare to start backing up 2008 in a couple of months.

I also used one of the LaCie hard drives to back up my email and that was successful.

The eMac DVD drive opens again.

One sign that I may be able to keep using this eMac for another few years, the DVD drive opens now. I will now just need to be careful with running too many applications on it at the same time. I will also not use the DVD drive too much.

I installed Eve Monitor on my Macbook under Windows XP and uninstalled a lot of Microsoft software

I uninstalled Microsoft SQL client and Visual Studio 2005 from my Macbook on the XP side. This gave me about 2 GB extra space on the windows hard drive. I then installed EveMon and got it working just fine.

So Eve Monitor stopped working.

I got an new API key for the game Eve Online and my Eve Monitor software became broken. I have been spending hours this past half year playing this multiplayer online role playing game. I have a lot of friends in the game now. It is a very cooperative game.

Technology consumer goods prices are always going down so as long as something does not leave the market, it always better to wait

The Wolfdale CPU I had wanted, the 8400 is down in price to around 170$ now. It had been at 180$ I will not be buying it this week most likely. But perhaps two weeks and a few days from now. RAM prices are also going down. I plan to buy either 533 or 800 DDR2 RAM although the mother board manual says only 533 can be used for 8 GB of RAM. This would be about 160$. Those are the main remaining pieces in the computer. I have now started wanting a new LCD monitor or even two and a stand for two monitors. This would be about 600 dollars more on this project but one monitor could work with the Mac Mini. The Mac Mini would be 1000$ so perhaps an iMac for a few hundred more might be better.

My eMac is getting to be slow

I do most of my computing on a late 2005 eMac. It is becoming slow and I can no longer open the DVD drive. I leave it on all day sleeping. It has seen a lot of use. But it still runs Second Life just fine and is able to surf the net. All my email stores are on this machine. I need to transfer email to another newer machine. The easiest transfer would be to my Macbook. This would also reduce energy use of I started to do all my email on the Macbook.

Another plan is to upgrade to an iMac. An even cheaper plan would be to upgrade to a Mac Mini. This might also allow me to use the planned upgraded monitors that are going to be the monitors for the new PC. I am looking at refurbished 22 inch HP w2207 on sale at Future Shop. These are selling for 199 right now and I think of buying two monitors and placing them on a stand. I could switch one monitor back and forth between the PC and the Mac Mini.

Java installs all around

I have Java installed on all my computers now. Today I installed Java on the two windows installations I have. So on both my Macbook running XP and on my IBM ThinkCentre running Vista I have installed Java 6. I needed to install my professor's software ABC model and failed to install this on Vista but have just been successful installing it on the Macbook running XP.

Missing blogs and numerous accounts all over the web.

I started a couple of word press blogs I never use. Today I signed up for www.mryl.com a virtual worlds integration project. But it is some commercial project. I had a gmail account too for my Second Life avatar but can not log in now. I also have forgotten about the inworld blogging system I had installed in Second Life. I also left the socioprano forum behind. There is a similar PHP forum for users of manual focus lens on digital cameras I joined this summer. I should go back there now and up date my signature file and read some more there. I have a hosted web space on yahoo with three blogs that get some updates. I have lost access to one blog I used to update daily. It was an semi anonymous blog. I use non anonymous email lists to fill that void now. I also opened a my experiment account and have open sourced some spreadsheets and also some R code there. That site is non-commercial, in fact, an open source government site based and funded in the UK. Mostly it is for bioinformatics.

Yes I have lost a number of accounts within my busy digital life

I have a network storage hard drive working now. It is my music storage device.

These linksys storage bays finally went on sale and I bought one. I installed my first SATA drive in this. It is a 120 GB drive. I got the drive used from a computer swap. Eventually I will put two 1 TB drives in this storage bay. So I now have network storage.

I am running the iTunes storage folders on my eMac and on my Vista computer from this network drive. This size 120 GB will also perfectly match the new iPods if I ever get back into iPods. My new workplace is not a place where I listen to music so I do not listen to music all day like I could last year.

I bought the power supply for the new PC

Here is the link to the Sea Sonic M12 power supply I bought for my new PC. It is installed now as are the new Samsung DVD burner and an old 100 MB zip drive. The floppy is also wired up and the back port plate is installed. Also two more USB ports are now connected on the front of the case.

Video card for new PC

This is what will take the energy and be bad for budget and environment...the PCI-express video card. This card needs a 400 watt power supply. A green PC would use less something like 300 watts. Here is the manufacturer's information page for the card I bought e-GeForce 8500 GT Part Number: 01G-P2-N793-LR

Building a workstation from parts.

I am planning on building a semi green PC. I would like to use the Wolfdale processor because it is the latest in high energy efficiency. The power supply will be a 500 watt Seasonic which is again a high efficiency component but all in the all this system will be a high energy use system. I will also try to buy an HP w2007 20 inch widescreen LCD monitor again this is a high efficiency monitor in terms of energy use. So this will be a PC rather than a Mac. It will run Windows Vista and Debian Linux. Yesterday I purchased a motherboard for this project. I simply bought an Asus high end board on sale at PC Cyber www.pccyber.com The board is an Asus P5WDG2 WS so brings me into the quad core dual core world for the first time. .

I have an Olympus BH microscope and looked into buying it a camera adapter

I looked into buying a camera adapter to use a digital camera on the Olympus microscope I have. I also bought a 100 slide hard case on ebay.

I just installed Open Office on the IBM desktop

I just installed Open Office on the IBM desktop

I still need to label all the DVD's I burned. Film Labeling

I have a sharpie black marker for labeling DVD's and CD I burn. I have these seven DVD's in six copies each that need labeling now. I am also looking around my office for some sheets of labels so I can print and label some film canisters. The reason is that I have three rolls of ISO 400 and three rolls of ISO 200 film and I will get them confused. Actually now that I think about it they are labeled on the film cartridge so the containers or canisters will not need labeling. I think I will load a film roll now. Old tech eh?

My new monitor is a used Samsung SyncMaster 955DF

I was helped by a friend with recycling an older computer. He also donated to me a 19 inch monitor. I am using it now with the IBM.

The 2007 documents folders from the Macbook are all backed up to to DVD disks now

I have finally completed backing up the documents folder from the USB hard drive. I deleted some from the hard drive yesterday. I can now move on to examine the user folders made by LaCie backup software. I will then back up some of these files.

I also copied the present contents of the documents folder, the desktop and the email folders to the USB drive. I now have three backup folders from 2008 on the USB drive.

I adjusted the by line for this blog.

I adjusted this blog's by line to better reflect the ThinkCentre computer which I thought was an Intellistation but is not.

Sixth disk being burned now.

The sixth disk is almost burned in six copies now. Again I have gotten behind on labeling the disks. They are stacked up on a chair in the living room beside the laptop. I have only the seventh disk to burn six copies of and then I believe there may be some user folders to back up but with in those folders I can probably safely ignore backing up the documents and desktop folders. It has taken me almost 8 months now to back up 2006 and 2007. I do not know where I am with the progress of backing up the eMac. Also I have not backed up my Linux or PC computers much at all. Both the PC and the Linux are on the same physical machine the IBM ThinkCentre. I think now to make space I will delete these documents folders I have backed up over the past two months. That is I will delete them from the USB hard drive, This should give me about 20 GB of space to back up the Linux or PC parts of the IBM computer.

Installing Wn2K also failed as the Win2K disk is not good.

I am giving up on this data access problem for now.

Hard drive issues caused a failure with installing NT on the Dell.

I was unable to install Win NT on the Dell. Only Win NT and Win 98 will operate the Iomega Ditto drive. May be I will install Win2K and only access the IBM 20 GB secondary drive for now. Yes, I think I will do that now.

I am setting up the Dell computer temporarily with Win NT to help me access some of my computer files from 1999-2003.

I may be missing files from my home computing that occurred between 1999 and 2003. I am not sure I am missing anything but I have two backup sources where these files are stored. These back up sources have not been accessed in a long time. I just need one access to each and a chance to copy off the files. Then the sources can be discarded and I can check all the files I find.

One is an Iomega Ditto Tape Drive. Supports I will use for the drive are here at Iomega's Ditto support site for Win NT.

The second back up source is a difficult IBM 20 GB hard drive. This was my old second hard drive in a Duron system used from March 2002 to late 2003. It is a difficult drive because it has many partitions due to numerous Linux installs on it (done when I was a Linux install Newbie), and some windows repair guys working with it.

So those two sources will be attached to the Dell for offloading. I hope I can network the Dell with my Macs and get the files off. That's plan A.

I have a PS2 mouse, PS2 keyboard, network cable, monitor hooked up the the Dell now. First I will install the hard drive or attempt that. Then I will plug in the Ditto parallel port drive. So those two steps still need to be done and then I will attempt an Win NT install.

The hard drive is now installed as a slave drive in the Dell. I will hook up the Ditto now.

I can not find the Ditto drive so I am cleaning my office more and setting aside this project for today. Everything else mentioned is ready to go. I also need to find my Win NT disk.

I am still making steady progress at backing up the 2007 documents folders for the Macbook1

You could say to quote Marc Smith of Microsoft that, "the internet would be nothing if not for Obsessive-Compulsive users." So I feel obsessive about my backups but they are really needed in case of a hard drive failure or other potential lose of the computer system. I have in business speak added value to home computing.

Back ups continue

I have two documents folders from the Macbook 1 from 2007 backuped to DVD now and have started on a third folder.

The DVD drive in my eMac is still stuck closed

I have not been able to open the DVD drive of my eMac.

Backups continue

I managed to burn one DVD of the documents folder for my Macbook. I made six copies. I call this Macbook, Macbook 1. So this is a 2008 copy of the Documents folder. I also completed burning the 2007 desktops about 6 of them from various months of 2007 of the Macbook. I am now going to make 7 sets of 6 copies of DVD's each of the documents folders from 2007. I have seven folders on a USB hard drive. So this is the next back up run for the Macbook. I am burning these disks at 1 X speed with no errors.

One of these computers I traded for works and is complete.

So I traded away my Sun Ulltra 5 and got two 1U servers, three mid sized towers and one Dell laptop in exchange. I also traded a Peavey Stereo EQ. The stereo EQ cost 99 dollars and was really a mistake as it was a monster and very old. When I can afford it I will buy a proper modern EQ for our music gear set up. So I was testing out these computers and one of the towers seems to be missing a hard drive. One of the towers is a Dell Pentium III 600 Mhz machine and it works and is complete. It has an 80 GB hard drive. I installed Debian 4.0 r3 on it and set it up for someone who I will donate it too.

For the servers I bought a Pentium M processor for one of them and got that in the mail, installed it and it starts up but does not post. The other 1U server is a Sun Fire v120 and for that I bought two hard drives 18 GB models 4177, the right hard drives with caddies. I am waiting for those to arrive in the mail. Other than that I have done no work on the servers. I need to learn more about operating servers.

The Dell laptop needs a power supply and is a Pentium II computer and has one USB port and a Modem.

Back ups at present

I have backed up this blog and my studies blog now. I have not done more work on the bibliography though. I also have the Macbook desktops from 2007 backed up to DVD. Again I have 6 copies of this DVD. I now must move on to backing up the 2007 documents folders from the Macbook. I also have backed up the eMac to DVD but did not label the disks so need to go through a stack of DVD's and load them in the Macbook and then write in magic marker on each DVD what it contains and which copy it is.

I did not back up my studies blog but did start some bibliography work.

I did manually enter the few books from my studies blog from October 2003 into RefWorks and made a rich text bibliography in ASA style. There are a few more books from that month of the blog and a case or two and some newspaper articles. I also downloaded and started to use BibDesk. With BibDesk I manually cited the first two months of the blog. Those files got saved in my studies blogs back up folder on my eMac. But other than that I dropped my bibliography work after the last post.

Back ups of this blog

Here is the path today. I was feeling guilty that I am not reading enough because I am borrowing about 40 books and instead of reading these I am cerfing the Internet. So I started to read some more of the O'Reilly book on PHP and MySQL. I read about MySQL and there is an example of SQL code for adding a book to a database. I get distracted and thought about making a database of all the books I have ever read. I then figured I could grab some books from my studies blog. I of course have to have all the posts to search. I then figured it is time to back up these blogger blogs. So I started with this one which is now five years old. I looked in my directories and found I have about two years of posts not copied and pasted into word processor files. So I have now copied all those approximately 24 months and now every month is copied and pasted from the web into a Microsoft word doc file.

Now I must to do the same for my studies and more studies blog then I can figure a way of scanning it for bibliographic cites. I typically used the McGill legal studies style for my citations. I have many choices now. I can do what the book recommends and use MySQL which is installed on my Macbook and on my Linux computer. I could also install MySQL on this eMac. Or it may in fact already be installed here. I could also use RefWorks but that depends on being a registered student at the university of Ottawa. I could use BibDesk and need to install that on this eMac. I could make a plain text file of the data or use Excel meaning use some tool not especially for books. I could also use Librarything.com. Some of these book specific tools will be able to share the files. So the only problem now is to back up the studies and more studies blog and then extract the citations. From there I will go to RefWorks then download for BibTex and then manually up load to librarything. Also I could use Refworks "Grab it" and may be capture the books right off the blog pages. I may try that now. I am also thinking now before I leap that I should keep a separate list of books that have appeared on my blog only. Once again by writing I have helped solve some problems.

Hard drives for the Sun but thats it for now.

I can not really afford to be buying a lot of parts for the Sun v120 right now. I may buy some hard drives for about 30$ today but that would be it. I am more interested in buying camera gear and groceries at the moment.

This is a DVD for sale right now on ebay.

X8082A 371-0736 8x DVD-ROM/24x CD-ROM Drive.

Swapping computers and parts with someone.

I put the Sun Ultra 5 up for sale for 120$. I have an offer to trade it for some other machines. One machine is a partial Sun fire v120 with Intel 866 Mhz chip and 198 MB PC 100 RAM. Another machine is 1 U rack server with 256 MB DDR but no chip (I did just buy a 1.8 Ghz Pentium M chip for this). Also a foxconn server board again for a Pentium M chip. A few older pentium II's and Penitum III's and one Pentium IV. These older computers are with partial cases and drives.

I researched the Sun Fire v120 and also the Foxconn board which he says is brand new. I will post some of my research later.

tesing posts to blog usng Blog Hud from inside Second Life

posted by Peter Krogstad on Monty using a blogHUD : [permalink]

Documenting some chart making in Open Office and Excel.

This post may be hard to follow but it is for myself to document my techniques and not loose them. If you learn from it you may find it useful for your spreadsheet work. It is also a way for me to practice for work and to push my spreadsheet abilities for data handeling.

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.

I used Disk Utility to Seven Pass erase a USB key.

I am giving a small 256 MB USB key to a coworker. I copied all the files off of it this morning and then did a seven pass erase of the key. I will now bring it to work for her.

I am getting some old SLR lenses

I am very tempted this past year to buy a Digital SLR camera. I have gone about buying old SLR non digital lenses this week. I may have over spent on these.

Hard drive space on the Sun Machine.

I think I ran out of hard drive space on the Sun Machine. I am not using it much so will wait to upgrade the hard drive. The memory I bought for it is may be the wrong type. I have updated a few items now. That was all I did with it last time it was on. I have learned to turn it off now properly.

Sun machine

I am just launching Update Manager on my Sun machine, Crystal-Sun-1. I turned off the machine last time and it might have been during updates so I may have incomplete updates.