I clicked a link in a virus email but luckly I was on my eMac so the exe file did nothing.

I am just installing Debian 3.1 r0 on the T30 Thinkpad. I have WinXP working on the first 29GB. I have an 8 GB FAT partition which is the D drive. But realise that it is Fedora Red Hat linux that can see and write to fat partitions. I am not sure about Debian. I am installing Debian into a 19GB partition. I have a 750MB swap partition. So basically today and Monday/Tuesday I have reinstalled all the operating systems on the T30. If I could replace the screen I would have the cool laptop system back in use. I may order a 256 MB RAM PC2100 chip for this laptop today at the school computer store.

I am copying my user account on the eMac and all the files and folders to my back up hard drive. This is about 10GB. I will perhaps wait a bit to make my DVD back ups. But this user account would be one thing to back up. Also I would back up to DVD, the My Documents folder from my windows machines.

I have the credit to buy a new laptop from futureshop. I also have the credit to buy a refurbished IBM from HBC.com. But of these sources are selling these laptops at higher costs than elsewhere and also this would be on credit which would be costlier in the long run too. I am getting more into buying music equipment these days.

My eMac computer is still working ok although MS Internet explorer is a bit buggy these days. The broken laptop can be my windows machine. And my used iBook might be here this week. So there is really no need for a new machine right now. I have at least two more computers here that can surf the net. I am keeping all my email on the eMac these days and can also back up this email. I also now have access to DVD burners at school and will be buying some blank DVD's and making some DVD backups soon. I may do that this weekend. I would use my 20GB USB drive to copy files off the eMac and thern burn them to DVD at school on the Learning Commons computers now available in our library.

My windows XP CD's arrived. I got both WinXP SP2 and WinXP for 64 bit computers. I installed the WinXP SP2 on the broken T30 laptop. I updated it at microsoft.com. I also went to IBM.ca and downloaded and installed all the drivers for this T30 running WinXP. I used an automated software installer at IBM. I am just copying my old WinXP my documents folder over to the new install. I will now reinstall Debian 3.1 using the Debian net install CD. Then I will be done with this T30 for the day.

I printed this blog in hard copy for the months of February to August and placed these printouts in my hard copy computer log book. I also have some R code and some C++ code and my XML dtd in this hard copy binder.

I bought a Belkin USB keyboard and Kensington USB mouse for the Thinkpad T30 so I can work comfortably at the external monitor with out the broken screen blocking the way. Both of these work fine in Win2K and Debian 3.1. I explored a little of the Debian net applications. Last night I installled R and SAS 8.2 on the Win2K side. R is already installed on the Debian side.

The clamshell iBook should arrive next week sometime. I will still need to buy it a larger hard drive and install Panther on it. I will also still need to install more memory.

If I get a new refurbished Thinkpad I will use the 60GB drive and reinstall WinXP and Debian 3.1 on the new Thinkpad.

I used the web today, not much email, some of my Palm and Dream Weaver. It is now Tuesday and I have not yet uploaded the pictures of my new PA but the pictures are taken and have been imported to iPhoto.

I installed Adobe Reader on the Macintosh and got some copies of book reviews from the journal The Information Society onto my palm W. I have been using my palm W for school email and have been paying 25$ a month for this. I am just about to install Avantgo on my Macintosh but actually I am installing an open source software to do this in Mac OS X which will work with the Avantgo web clipping service.

I have been making some web pages with dream weaver. I built a little bit of a fan web site for the TV show Stargate. I need to write a little more content for these web pages before Wednesday evening. I will do some of this tonight.

I am mostly working on my eMac for everyday work. I did get a 160GB external USB hard drive by Western Digital. I made four partitions and left two partitions free. I made one of the first ones 60GB and the other 14GB. These two are Mac extended journalling partitions. I copied the desktop, email and user to these partitions. So some simple copy file back ups have been done. I just disconnected the hard drive tonight. I will do this copy once a month.

So this goes back to my two 160GB drives with a network USB connector. I will wait until the Linksys USB hard drive network connector becomes a bit cheaper and also get two other 160GB drives for general (none back up) use but I will also wait until these drives become cheaper. The new 160GB drive cost about 280$.

Speaking of costs I have also been upgrading my PA equipment and that has cost hundreds of dollars. I am getting a rack case for this music gear and might buy some music rack cases for computers at some point. May be later this fall I will buy a small 1U or 2U HP server with Pentium III dual processors and about 60GB hard drives. This would be to do music on the server maybe as a Linux workstation may be as a WinXP or WinVista workstation. Maybe dual boot would work well. I would need at least one PCI slot on the server too for a music interface card. At least I can use the music store for a supplier of rack cases. I think I will take some pictures now of my new PA gear and place them on our musical blog.

The iBook is being shipped a second time. I am hoping I can use the older iBook for my laptop and not need to buy a new laptop. I am considering buying another refurbished IBM/Lenovo laptop near the end of the school term. I could maybe capitalise on Christmas sales.

Nothing much new with my computers. I did order a 160GB hard drive to do back ups for the eMac. As soon ago, as 3 years, a 20GB drive would have been enough. I don't have a DVD burner yet.

I sort of did some bidding on a replacement laptop screen for my Thinkpad, this evening. In the end the bidding got too high.

I then retired to work on my laptop hooked up to an external monitor. I installed some software on the Win2K side of the computer. I have installled WinZip, Adobe Reader, FireFox, Black Ice, Lotus Smart Suite, I had trouble installing Illustrator 8.0. I also installed the Palm Desktop on the Win2K.

Speaking of the Palm, I tried installing some Palm softwares I had paid 2$ for namely Chess annd Checkers on my Tungsten W but neither worked very well. Oh well 2$ down the drain.

More photos of Thinkpad T30

More photos of Thinkpad T30

more photos of Thinkpad T30

Photos of Thinkpad T30

I have been using the laptop with an external monitor and installed xcircuit, R, Emacs, ESS and a GNU Go game on the Debian OS. I also surfed a bit this morning in Debian but mostly this was window shopping surfing. I am writing my blogs and doing school work surfing this morning using my eMac. I could sell my thinkpad back to IBM. I am also thinking that using it with the external monitor would be ok and that it might be worth it to keep and even upgrade the RAM by 256MB for 50$. I read about the first half hour of Learning Emacs in 24 hours.

My laptop is still in the shop and so far they haven't been able to fix it. I am hopeful but it may be a lost cause. I was able today to fax using my Mac. So that functionality is ok on the Mac. So I may not need a windows computer for that.

I was able to get my PSP updated to system 2.0. I can now wirelessly surf the internet on my play station portable. I learned a little of how to use it and bookmarked my personal home page and my wife's poetry page. I will now test playing Apple iTunes files on it.

The WinNT would not see the zip drive and also the WinNT would not work with the IBM download for drivers. So I tried Fedora Core and it did both. It downloaded the drivers and also saw and worked with the USB zip drive. So I downloaded only the ethernet driver. I then copied it to the Win2K machine and installed this driver. I was able then to connect the Win2K to the Internet and updated windows first. I then use an automatic drivers update software at IBM and got all the drivers installed and even updated the bios on the laptop. I also completed copying the old My Documents folder to the Win2K.

I am taking the laptop to the school's repair shop to have it looked at tomorrow or today. I also need to install Debian again.

I installed Windows 2000 successfully on my new laptop hard drive. My Windows XP CD is no good. I will now reinstall Debian. I need to download about 20 drivers or more from IBM for Windows 2000 to work properly on the IBM Thinkpad. I can not download the drivers on the Macintosh, so I am going to boot up my server running Windows NT and see if I can download them to a zip disk. Then I will transfer them to the Thinkpad. This will also test the server running Windows NT and its USB connection because I am using a USB zip drive. I have never tried to get anything to work in the server's USB connections. I am at the moment copying the old My Documents folder from Windows XP to Windows 2000 using my USB hard drive on the Thinkpad.

I emailed the school's hardware repairs services and asked if they could fix the laptop's screen. They charge 35$ per hour. The new screen may cost a lot.

I got the X windows working on the T30 but have some problems still with the mouse. I used dpkg-reconfigure. I used information at this page on the web to learn about the xf86Config-4 file. http://ozlabs.org/~jk/docs/T30+linux/

I am reading about SGML, IP law, and e-business this morning.