Computer Tips -Tech Info

I’ve got to say, I haven’t spent ENOUGH time with rsync to really be fluent in how I could put it to use…. A week or so ago I was reading this list of essential Linux software by a guy that moved from Mac OS X to linux because he detested the DRM that was being shoved down his throat. Anyway, one of his essentials was rsync for backups. Which got me thinking. Why didn’t I use rsync for backups. At one point in time I used unison, but for some reason had stopped and was in need of reorganizing my home backup strategy anyway. I found a few interesting approaches.

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I just read that Codeweavers has managed to get World of Warcraft working in Crossover Office in their development builds it should be possible. Of course, it’s been possible for some time to run it via Transgaming’s Cedaga. But codeweavers seems to be working on it in their Crossover product as well and are “testing it extensively”…. NOW I know why it’s taking so long for 6 to come out….

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As most people have heard, the World Cup is over. Italy has won and a month-long tournament to choose the true WORLD champion of Soccer (outside the US football) is over. Thirty-two nations sent their teams to compete after a LONG qualifying process and of course, there are lot’s of individual stories that will be remembered. The main item that’s encouraged me to write this up is hearing someone on the radio talking about how boring a sport soccer is and how the U.S. will never care about it, and our top athletes are drawn to other sports… blah blah blah, “sport where no one scores” etc. Every caller that seemed to start into a rebuttal got talked over and good-bye’d… so I thought I’d use this post for a bit of a roundup.

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I saw this ZDNet post today with a tantalizing glimpse of Gdrive. It comes originally from cocaman.ch where he found a login page for something called Google Platypus, which is essentially a remotely used file storage. Now, from the page there are a couple of items that can be gleaned. Currently it’s something that’s in use internally (by the Googler’s…) Also, there is a download client for Windows/Mac/Linux that is used to synchronize files somehow. The benefits of it as it is advertised in the screenshot….

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and Internet Explorer use has dropped below 80% in the US. Currently 12.93% of online users browse with Firefox. Almost 40% of German web-browsers use Firefox to view the web. It’s nice to see Firefox’s share gaining. I, personally wouldn’t mind seeing SEVERAL competing, standards-compliant browsers with significant share’s. (Opera has moved above 1%.) I think (and hope) the day will come when it doesn’t matter a bit what browser you use (as long as it’s standards compliant.) Hopefully we’re moving towards that.

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I really couldn’t find a quick answer to this on this in a quick search. Maybe it’s just me. But, one of the computers that I support has UPS Worldship installed on it. (Version 8.0.16 I think.) They had a printer problem and switched printers. Of course, Windows handled the printer just fine. Worldship printed out labels (this all happened before I got there, but Worldship gives you an opportunity to change the label printer.) Unfortunately reports wouldn’t print. When looking through the setup and attempting to test it simply gave a message that the printer couldn’t be found (the printer could not be found) and nowhere was an option to CHANGE the report printer. In retrospect, I wonder if I should have looked in the “Change label printer” choice, but at the time I didn’t want to run the risk of tinkering with THAT working part. So… here’s what I did.

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One of the frustrating things about windows is having to wander through X number of menus looking for a specific item that you KNOW is there, but just can’t quite find. If ONLY you remembered the command name for it, but the RUN commands are sometimes quite a bit different than the name of the utility or program. After all, the legacy is the 8 character name dos days (8+3 but windows hides the 3…) Well, 156 Useful Windows run commands is for you then. This reference has a good list of some of the more useful of those. (There are a number that are third party software as well.)

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Sunbeltblog has the heads up on this one. Spyheal is the name it goes by and it hangs out at spyheal (dot) com

So, if you’re in a position to block sites that looks like one to filter for your network.

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USB thumb drives seem fairly simple, nothing hazardous…. but Lexar has recalled several models of the Firefly series as well as the JumpDrive Secure II, 1GB model. The affected Firefly sizes are… 256MB, 512MB, 1GB and 2GB. They apparently have a “risk of burns to consumers and property damage.” I would assume the risk is ONLY when they’re plugged in to a USB port. I wonder if it has to do with the circuit for the LED light. USB provides 5 volts power and LED’s can be quite particular about getting the exact voltage needed. In a LED circuit you usually have a resistor to bleed off the un-necessary voltage. Once I built a light with about 18 white LED’s and I ran into a “design failure” in my first attempt (didn’t take into account the wattage rating for the LED.) and so the first mockup had a smoking resistor.

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Looks as though Google (as in… “I’ve spent the afternoon googling for information on ski vacations.”) is now officially part of the English language according to the Oxford English dictionary. Of course, many people realize that google had another meaning. (Was this terminology from the game of cricket?)

intr. Of the ball: to have a ‘googly’ break and swerve. Of the bowler; to bowl a googly or googlies; also (trans.), to give a googly break to (a ball). Hence googler, a googly bowler

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