Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

Technology, gotta love it

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It seems like I’ve spent a lot of time so far this vacation dealing with technology.

Dan’s BlackBerry was delivered the day before we left, so a good part of Friday was spent getting it set up. I am not sure why a brand new phone is delivered with an older version of the operating system and desktop software, but it was, and that took a while to update. Also, there is no quick and easy way to get contacts from a Motorola phone to a BlackBerry, especially if you don’t want to involve Outlook. All is good now though.

There are three Dish Network satellite receivers here at Mom and Dad’s, but only one gets used daily. After a bad moment trying to reconnect the oldest TV, with the help of (non-outsourced! yay!) Dish phone support, all was working again. Well, almost. Apparently Dish receivers have to be reactivated if they are not used regularly. Sigh. Another phone call, another wait. All is well again so can’t be too upset for now.

(NaBloPoMo | November ’09: 22 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 267 of 274)

TiVo withdrawal

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This morning our TiVo went belly-up. It wouldn’t move past the grey startup screen no matter how much profanity was directed in its direction, not to mention crying, cajoling, sweet talking and multiple reboots.

We have gotten more than our money’s worth out of the two TiVo units we have owned since almost the very beginning. We paid quite a bit for the first one as is the curse of the early adopter. Its Series 2 replacement was more reasonably priced. We were also able to transfer the lifetime subscription purchased at the original $199 point to the newer unit. That makes me a smart and lucky person, as the lifetime subscription increased in price a few times and then was discontinued entirely.

But enough about my one-time financial and technologic coup.

I’ve forgotten how to watch TV minus TiVo. It’s been nearly 10 years since we got the first one, and I’ve gotten so accustomed to pausing for phone calls or snack breaks, rewinding to listen to missed dialogue, and fast forwarding through commercials that I’m a bit lost. That’s not even mentioning the shows whose regular airtimes do not fit into our schedules that are recorded for later viewing.

I think we’ll be having this unit repaired, as we weren’t planning to get a new one until we switch over to a new HD TV. At that time we’d have to give up the lifetime subscription anyway, but until our current TV malfunctions, we don’t plan to replace it solely to switch to HD. I hope it is still repairable, and before I go into a TiVo withdrawal meltdown. I rarely use the word “withdrawal” for anything, so you know I mean it this time!

(NaBloPoMo | November ’09: 17 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 262 of 274)

Typekit and “real” fonts on the web

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I heard that Typekit is now sending out invitations, so I signed up for a trial account. I’m behind the curve as usual, and I’m still not sure when I’m going to get to really test it out, but I’m very interested in the concept.

As you already know if you saw my recent post on the Sun-Times buyout, my work background is in the graphic arts, specifically pre-press production, and originally typography. I have also had a web page, website, and/or blog online since 1995 and on one of my own domains since 1999. So you can see I’ve been gritting my teeth about not having more say over typography on the web for a very long time.

Typekit is a service that hosts a library of web-licensed high-quality fonts. Theoretically, it should allow your pages to display using the typography you intended. I am looking forward to seeing if this is the reality as well.

While HTML5 and CSS3 offer better type handling features than past versions, there is still the issue of older browsers and older operating systems. Boing Boing’s recent redesign looked fine to anyone using a current browser on Windows Vista or Mac OS X, but not so good to those using older versions of browsers, or older operating systems such as Windows XP which are still in very wide use.

I’m still hopeful and interested in Typekit and other solutions to getting real typography on the web, including Font Squirrel’s free @font-face kits. I use paid-for fonts more often than free fonts, largely due to quality issues, but I am not against free when that free is also of good quality and more important, not stolen. So I do want to check it out.

I hope to have some time to play with fonts after Axel leaves on his road trip and before it’s time to start preparing for vacation. You’ll hear from me again about the joy of fonts then!

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09:20 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 242 of 274)

Who needs more than one computer anyway?

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Today I was helping Denise set up her new computer. As we made sure that both old and new computers were visible on the network and able to connect to the internet and printer, she said that she’d never really thought about having more than one computer at a time, and how that must seem a little funny to me.

Well, yes and no!

There are seven working computers and only two human residents at my house. One of those computers is on its last legs, and one is used only for German style dog shows (forgive me for not explaining fully, and I’ll probably write something here about German style dog shows soon enough anyway). Usually, the sole desktop and two or three of the laptops are live on our home network at any given time. So we’re really not that geeked out. Hey, I saw you laugh. Stop it now.

But even though having and using multiple computers is a given at our house now, that was not always the case. And we did not even plan for the possibility. We did quite a bit of remodeling shortly before we got DSL service in 2000. We ran a separate phone cable to the back office, and coaxial cable for TV to every room that didn’t already have it. But for some reason I never thought of running CAT5 for networking at the same time. Looking back, I am not even sure why we didn’t do it. The expense wouldn’t have been prohibitive, and obviously, we were running wires already.

I guess at that time I never envisioned having more than one computer, or wanting to have a computer anywhere other than an office area. And if I didn’t think of it, Dan certainly wouldn’t have thought of it either, not back then.

By the time we did get our first laptop, home wireless was available and pretty functional, so it’s never been a huge inconvenience. It would be nice to take advantage of the faster broadband speeds (another thing I didn’t see coming, I guess) with wired connections, but the thought of running cable again is not a pretty one.

Ah, well, live and learn…

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 30 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 218 of 274)