I replaced my BlackBerry Curve with an Android smartphone (HTC Thunderbolt) in May. Although I still miss the BlackBerry’s superior handling of multiple email accounts and most of all BlackBerry Messenger, I don’t miss its less-than-stellar 2MP camera.
The HTC phones all seem to have better than average cameras. The Thunderbolt has an 8MP camera and image quality in adequate light is probably better than that of my first digital point and shoot camera.
When I’m stopped at the light at Orleans and Ontario, every so often I use the phone to snap a photo of the Sears Tower. Or at least the top of the Sears Tower plus all of the other shorter buildings on Orleans. Yes, I know that is not its current name. I do not acknowledge that name. So far, luck has not had me stopped safely at the light for the most interesting cloud formations and lighting conditions. Eventually I’ll get them all, I hope.
I apparently spoke too soon when I said that WordPress was back to normal. I’ve had some ongoing problems with 3.1.1 and some plugin or combination of plugins. I’m still not entirely sure what the magic combination is, but I think that this time, things are really, finally, back to normal.
I’ve still been trying to keep my April NaBloPoMo going offline, so you will be seeing back posts appearing as I transfer them over.
Like yesterday, it was a first-time problem with a product that had always worked well for me. Clear’s 4G mobile broadband service has been reliable for me since I opened the account last July. Not today. I had lights and connection. I didn’t have the Internet. Fortunately there was an actual informative error message saying that it was unable to connect to an IP address that turned out to be a DNS server. Switching to Google’s DNS servers got me back online. The actual Clear DNS server was reachable at a later time.
Can’t wait to see which technology bails on me tomorrow!
The latest WordPress upgrade to 3.1.1 is the first time I’ve ever had any problems updating, so it really took me by surprise. On the scale of bad technology moments, it was still pretty low (maybe 2 out of 10). I had two very recent backups of both database and files, one at work and one at home. I ended up not needing either one.
What happened is that all of my admin functions slowed to a crawl. The site itself was loading fine for viewers. But it took forever to publish a post, open a post for editing… or to do anything at all. After googling to see whether anyone else was having similar problems, I disabled all of the plugins and re-updated. Everything was back to normal speed, so I started adding back plugins one by one. When I got to the last one, I added it back to verify that it was the culprit. It wasn’t. Everything was still back to normal speed. It still is. So I guess I’ll never really know for sure what the problem was.
I’m thinking about using Joomla! 1.6 for a major reboot of a website I maintain. So I’ve been wrestling with it all night. I just popped over here to make my daily post, and I see that WordPress 3.1.1 is waiting for me.
I’ve been a little lax about updates and stuff, so I’m going to make this short and take care of my updates and scans and backups and such before heading off to bed. Good night, and hope with me that I don’t break anything!
I don’t really get Tumblr yet, but it seems like a good place to put things that are too long for Twitter or that perpetuate this blog’s recent identity crisis. So here goes with Rottweilers Tumblrd My Laptop.
Even though I’m probably one of the most antisocial people on the planet, I spent part of today checking out the RockMelt beta. RockMelt bills itself as a “social browser” and is tightly integrated with Facebook and Twitter. It’s based on Google Chrome which is already my secondary browser so it was definitely worth a look. Marc Andreesen’s involvement was a bit intriguing, also. I’m liking it ok so far, except that it seems to turn on my Facebook chat at random, whether I want it on or not.
My Hybrid server prize from WiredTree is happily chugging along. The cutover from my VPS was totally trouble-free. I asked for the cutover to happen anytime between November 1-5. They scheduled me for November 1 at 1 a.m. I got a reminder email on Halloween night at about 10 p.m., and another one at 12:59 p.m. advising me that the upgrade had started, followed by another one not quite an hour later upon successful completion. Have I mentioned how much I love WiredTree? My business also has email and website hosted with WiredTree. Today I had to put in a ticket for an email issue. I got a reply in two minutes. Yes, minutes. I love these guys.
Doesn’t look like we’re back on track with the Rottweiler and computer related content yet. But here comes a Rottweiler to help. I think I’d better let it do what it wants. It outweighs me.
When I first got it, I didn’t realize how much I’d be using my Sony Reader to read library books.
I absolutely love being able to borrow books online from the Chicago Public Library. Since I don’t have as much time to read as I’d really like, it hasn’t been too much of an inconvenience to deal with the waiting lists.
In the past, I’ve been guilty of spending way too much money on books that don’t have a great shelf life. I like reading mysteries, and honestly, once you know who did it, the writing really has to be over-the-top excellent to be worth a second reading. I also like checking out best-sellers, and some (well, more than some) just don’t live up to the hype. Being able to borrow books that might not be keepers has definitely freed up some dollars for other, more lasting, enjoyments.
The other nice thing is that they return themselves. You can return them before they are due, but if you don’t, they just magically become inaccessible on their due date. No fines, no trouble. The only real downside for me has been that annoying glitch which prevents borrowed PDF and borrowed EPUB books from co-existing on the Reader at the same time. And even that can be worked around with some planning.
I have bought books for the Reader, as well as a few paper books. But I am really happy with the online library thing!
