Brian Lang, Abbotsford, BC, Canada
My observations of the world and news from my life
| May 1st, 2008 | Comments Off | Miscellaneous
Apple announced today the ability to purchase movies from iTunes in the US (I’m sure it will spread worldwide in time). Now, the news release doesn’t mention what file size the movie downloads are, but I think it’s ridiculous that anyone would consider this for standard viewing. Here’s why.
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| March 12th, 2008 | Comments Off | Miscellaneous
This is a sample blog post created and edited using Google Docs.
Once I’m done typing this message I will attempt to post it to my blog at http://www.brianlang.ca.
I’m including a photo of my son Joseph picking what he wants to eat for supper. Just to see how Google Docs handles it.
Update: Well, Google did it’s job – kind of. Missing from the Publish to blog feature is the Blog Post Title. Something Needs To Be Done! Otherwise I will have to come here and edit every post anyway. What’s the point in using an external editor if I have to come here and edit after the fact. Why not just start here and write the post here in the first place. Or in me email software which is – oh – Gmail? I could post a blog post via email with a title, why not from Google Docs?
Other than that, it looks OK. Google Docs will even let me un-publish a post, edit it and publish it again. There’s also a re-publish option, but I didn’t try that today.
| June 20th, 2006 | Comments Off | Miscellaneous
Well, it’s obvious it’s still a Beta, but it’s working reasonably well for me. I’ve had a few times where an application would freeze up and one BSOD! I have not had any one specific item cause repeated problems. Most of the software I use regularly is working fine. The one thing I miss most is my SonicWall Global VPN Client because I cannot connect to the office without that software. (more…)
| June 12th, 2006 | Comments Off | Miscellaneous
To recap the story:
I Downloaded Windows Vista Beta 2 at work on Friday. Burned a copy to DVD (you have to use DVD) but it was a bad copy.
Re-downloaded it on Saturday and burned a nice shiny new DVD (burned at 4x – recommended to burn at 2x – talk about slow). I Ran first crack at installing it late Saturday night – found I had to un-install a few programs first (McAfee Security Center and Anti-Virus; Windows Defender; Real Player) so I went to bed.
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| June 11th, 2006 | Comments Off | Miscellaneous
Ok. I’ve walked through the first few steps again, but went the Custom route. The installer asked which drive I wanted to use, told me what it was going to do (move the old version of Windows to a folder called Windows.old along with other things too) and then started installing.
This time I got an error copying files to my computer. I’ll give it one more try and see what happens.
| June 11th, 2006 | Comments Off | Miscellaneous
I’m upgrading my home PC to Windows Vista using the Beta 2 version just released by Microsoft. Here’s my story. (more…)
| January 21st, 2006 | Comments Off | Miscellaneous
VICTORY IS MINE! I have defeated the XBox 360 and its media playing demons!
Or something like that.
What I ended up doing was this:
Format C:\
Re-Install Windows XP
Re-Install All Software.
Fortunately I have two hard drives and I could use the second for backup. I don’t recommend this if you don’t have any way to do your backups.
Not the best solution in the world, but whatever. It worked.
I just watched a slide show of photos from one of my recent hiking trips while playing music from my computer. Very nice now that it works.
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| December 27th, 2005 | Comments Off | Miscellaneous
With the Christmas arrival of my new XBox 360, I’ve decided to convert my CD library to digital music. That brought up a bunch of questions and issues, most of which I have now resolved. Here are some of the highlights of my search for digital music. (more…)
| September 14th, 2005 | Comments Off | Miscellaneous
Samsung will start producing new memory cards next year that have the potential to hold 32 GB of digital files (music, pictures, video, whatever). They also announced a new 7.2 megapixel sensor. I would imagine that by next Christmas, we will start seeing new 7 megapixel cameras at the consumer level from various manufacturers. Wow! The file size of photos taken at the best possible quality level will be huge. (more…)
| June 14th, 2005 | Comments Off | Miscellaneous
Wired News: How Gamers Can Help Cure Cancer
Wired News has an interesting article on distributed computing with a twist. Why not put to use all the spare computing cycles that game consoles generate? Given that the current XBox is a 733 MHz machine, and the XBox 360 is supposed to have 3 3.25 GHz CPUs, you’re looking at over 13 times more processing power than the original. And given that most XBoxes are connected to the internet full time, why not process data in a distributed computing grid?
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