Digital Impulses

Busy Tuesday

Wow.

Work Laptop dies due to Encryption+
I walk in to work today to find that my work laptop is kaput.  Upon power up, it had a nice BSOD full of hexadecimal numbers, multiple cod boots did nothing to alleviate the issue. 

Taking the rest of the day off
After putting in a ticket to have the laptop repaired, there was no point in staying at work so I used some PTO and too off the rest of the day, leaving work around 9:30 A.M.

NEW 100GB hard drive for my personal laptop
After leaving work I drove over to Fry's in MB and I bought a 100GB hard drive for my personal Fujitsu laptop, since it had been making a lot of grinding noises during Scrabble play.  After buying the HD, I saw David for a little while at my house.

Trip to Aragon
In the early afternoon, AJ and I went to see Aragon, but he was not there.  I need to get this put to bed.  This is ridiculous.

Walking, walking
1.41 mile walk at night.  Getting my Goal Meter of completing 28 miles in 4 weeks completed.

Outfitting a UStream.TV mobile setup

This afternoon after work, I stopped by Staples and picked up a Microsoft Lifecam NX-6000 webcam for my personal laptop to use in further experimentation with UStream.tv.

It was a cinch to install and configure and I was able to start using immediately.  For $108.23 (Incld. tax), I now have the ability to stream any event or situation I am in, assuming I have some kind of connection to the Internet.

Next up to complete my live streaming mobile setup will be a 3G Wifi PC Card from Cingular that allows a connection to the Internet wherever my cellphone has a signal.

Installing Windows Vista on a 3-year Laptop: A Wasted effort

So this evening, while watching TV at my mom's house, I decided to see what Windows Vista would be like running on a 3-year old Fujitsu E2010 laptop purchased in June of 2004 from notebookshop.com in Cerritos, CA.

First, the hardware specs of this Laptop:

• Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 2.0GHz (with SpeedStep® Technology)
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional
• 1 GB DDR266 RAM
• 30 GB Hard Disk (Ultra DMA/100 and S.M.A.R.T. Support)
• 14" XGA TFT Color screen (Max resolution: 1024x768)
• Internal ATI Graphics, 32/64/128 MB selectable with 3D graphics Accelerator and MPEG-2 Support (for DVD)
• Internal Speakers (Stereo)
• Integrated V.90 modem & 10/100 Base-T LAN
• 802.11b Wi-Fi compliant module (Optional)
• CD-R/RW Drive (Swappable device bay)
• External USB FDD (bundled)
• IrDA 1.1 (Max 4Mbps)
• Up to 2.7* hours (Standard Battery Pack Li-Ion 14.4V 3800 mAH)
• Approximately 2.65kg (with Weight Saver)

According to the Windows System Assessment Tool, the laptop was rated a "1.0" on a scale of 1 - 5, because of the low-end, integrated graphics.  Microsoft was not kidding when they stated that Windows Vista requires a high-end graphics card in order to run Aero, the new GUI included in all versions of Windows Vista except for the Home basic edition.

Regardless, I really wanted to demonstrate Windows Vista to a friend (although now, because of the sub-par graphic capabilities, one of the neater parts of the upgrade, the Aero interface, would not be present), so I trudged forward with the install and hoped for the best.

After inputting some basic information, I wiped my C: partition and proceeded to do a "clean install" of Windows Home Premium (Note: the install was performed via my Windows Vista Ultimate DVD; all versions are included on the DVD -- the version you are installing is determined by the product key that you provide).

Since I had not yet purchased a valid product key from Microsoft via their "Windows Vista Family Discount", I skipped the entering of a product key and did not activate Windows, as I figured that 30 days would be enough time to decide if I can live with Windows Vista on this under-powered notebook.

As was to be expected, Vista installed without issue and works fine for the most part, except for the fact that Aero is not present and thus most of the "eye candy" is therefore absent also. 

Games
Attempting to play any of the new games included with Windows Vista gets you a large pop-up box in the middle of the screen with a rather dire warning that graphics performance does not meet the minimum requirements and thus performance will suffer.

Conclusion
Graphics card strength is the single biggest factor affecting the performance of Windows Vista on any platform.  All in all, the machine runs well enough to be serviceable, but I am leaning towards popping Win XP Pro back on here as soon as my buddy is able to put what passes for Windows Vista on this notebook through its paces.

Fujitsu Laptop repair complete

Woo Hoo!

In a complete surprise, Notebookshop.com, the place that I took my laptop to yesterday to have the keyboard replaced, called me this morning to tell me that it was ready to go.

Wow.  I guess they had a keyboard in stock already for my laptop, and so they must have done the repair right away yesterday. Considering I was told that the keyboard had to be ordered and that it would be a few days, I did not expect to hear from them until the end of this week, at best.

So.  At lunch, I drove back to their store to pick up the laptop and was in and out of there in about 10 minutes.  $110 lighter in my wallet, but on my way with a laptop that boots normally and has a brand-spanking new keyboard. 

Now to get a replacement battery for it.  More $$$, alas.  Such is life.

Laptop repair

This afternoon at lunch I drove over to the Cerritos office of Notebookshop.com to drop off my laptop to have the keyboard replaced.

The store was empty when I arrived, but they had one guy ahead of me in the service department.  Once I spoke with the tech, he booted the laptop and saw the issues with the "error 0210 - Stuck Key" incessant beeping at boot-up that I have been dealing with over the last few weeks with my laptop.

Replacing the keyboard is going to cost $79 and labor will be $25, so I am looking at 3 or 4 days and a $104 dollar expense to get this laptop back in shape.

I also looked up a replacement battery and found one at a site called meritline.com where they have my exact battery listed for $77.  I will be getting one or two of those soon also.

*sigh*.  This $999 laptop (bought in June of '04) is starting to cost a lot of money.

Canada Fulbright Chair Speaker Series: Steven Starr

USC
Annenberg School Center for Public Diplomacy
Room 207
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
1837 Hrs

I am sitting at USC in the Annenberg School for Communication waiting for the talk by Steven Starr to begin at 1900 hours. 

Cory Doctorow is holding an animated discussion with two gentlemen on the evils of DRM and what the MPAA and the RIAA in lockstep with the hardware manufacturers are planning to foist on the public in terms of DRM and your ability to do what you want with the media you pay for.

Cory just stated that if you update your Creative MP3 player to get the newest firmware, it surreptitiously disables the ability to record from the built-in FM receiver, all this under the guise of “added functionality”. This is precisely the reason I am here tonight.

 Here we go:
 (1903 hrs) 

• Steven Starr is the co-founder of a company called Revver.
• Revver pays MORE the MORE a media file gets played
• He just mentioned the sale of YouTube to Google
• Revver sets up technology to allow the distribution of media files
• They have developed ‘Super Distribution’, where media files fly through the      Internet, reporting back to Revver “Hey, I'm being watched! Send me an Ad!”. So people get paid on those terms.
• Revver splits ad revenue 50-50 with the media creator
• The Mentos and Coke creators got:
  • 5 – 6M views and
  • got $70K in Ad revenue that they split with Revver, thus
  • making 35K on a 2.5 minute video that cost
  • $100-200 to make
• Revver has a set of tools and technologies, with an API that allows you to create      your own site and become an affiliate of Revver that makes money as a      re-distributor who makes 20% of the Ad revenue
• Content creators can opt out of Ad categories that they do not wish to be associated with
• Revver released its BETA 11 months ago
• They do NOT allow copyrighted video
• Revver has been seen as a company that has taken UGC to the forfront of the ‘free media conversation”.
• Revver uses CC licenses. Every piece of video flies out with a 2.5 version CC license.
• Revver is NOT a video portal destination site, per se. They differentiate themselves as a tools and services company

All in all, it was a great talk, where a lot of very good questions and issues were raised on the legalities and dangers of content creation and rights retentions/ownership in the world of UGC or User Generated Content.

A Router for Mom

I just finished installing a Linksys WRT54GS Wireless G Router at mom's house to protect her ATT/Yahoo! DSL connection.  As a result  of this, now when I come over here to visit, I will be able to do some work and blog from here, check Jeopardy!! answers, etc.

Marathon Sunday PC upgrade and tutorial

Wow.

I spent 9 hours with my dad and uncle at my dad's house today adding memory, installing a DVD burner, configuring an HP OfficeJet 6210 Printer/Copier/Fax/Scanner and then trying to get a scan of a graphic to print in the correct size for later creation of CD Jewel Case inserts.

Between dealing with a PC with only 128 MB of RAM, multiple trips to Comp-USA for RAM, the DVD writer itself, a USB cable and a can of compressed air, no access to the Internet and a very cramped working space, it was a considerably stressful situation. 

Add to that the fact that my uncle forgot to bring the Driver CD that came with his HP Multi-function un it and that meant that I had to drag my laptop out of the car, connect to (luckily enough) an unsecured Wi-Fi connection from somewhere in my dad's apartment building, ad go on to HP's Web Site and download the Driver/Software package that weighed in at a hefty 274 MB.

In the end however, the uncle went home with a faster PC (not throttled by almost no RAM), a functioning all-in-one unit, and instructions on how to copy non-commercial DVD's.

However tired I was, there is something to be said for all of the free praise and adulation you get when you help complete neophytes conquer some aspect of personal computing that they were previously completely unfamiliar with...

Work: Moving to a Laptop

The transition to an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T60

at work is complete.  It went much smoother and quicker than I had anticipated, considering that I had quite a few apps to install and quite a bit of data to restore.

Surprisingly enough, the image on this laptop was pretty complete and I only had a handful of utilities and applications to install.  That is done and after copying back the folder with my working data on it, I am back in action pretty much at a 100% level.

I am very happy with this laptop, as it is a huge improvement in speed, ergonomics, style, etc.  The fact that I can take it with me everywhere and work from anywhere that has a Net connection is just icing on the cake.

More to follow as I put this unit through its paces...

Laptop rebuild continues apace

The software rebuild of my Fujitsu Lifebook E2010 notebook is almost complete.  Tonight I installed Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Frontpage 2003 and Microsoft OneNote 2003.

I am being really careful about what gets installed where, what applets are being started automatically and what apps I allow to litter shortcuts icons on my deskotop and in the Quick Launch toolbar.  So far, I am very pleased with the results and the laptop seems to be snappy in general use and quick to shutdown also.

Save for a few other Firefox extensions and another couple of programs, this adventure is nearing its completion.

More to follow as I tie up all of the loose strings...