Category Archives: Computers

leron’s crib

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Welcome to leron’s crib — after Dreamhost decided to make WordPress a one-button installation included with their plans, I decided to move my blog over to it.

I intend to soon unify my old blogger blog, the movable type blog, the leron movies, and some other stuff soon. I’ve lately been trying to assemble and organize my portfolio and all my disparate works — a challenging task — and this is one step in that process.

Amazon Associate

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Just for fun I’ve signed up to be an Amazon associate; if you click this link, I’ll get a small percentage of anything you buy. As I continue writing stuff here, I’ll also be putting more links to products I get and make it easy for you to buy ‘me through me, if you’re interested.

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iChat Robot

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NSLog() asks “If you could have an Eliza application in your chat app, would you use it?”

I say emphatically yes! If you don’t know Eliza is the infamous “A.I.” program that passed the Turing Test, the premise of which is, “if a human cannot distinguish the program from a human, then the program can be deemed ‘intelligent’.” Of course, the premise is flawed, but Eliza and its ilk are great fun — they are good at creating mindless small talk, not to mention being bang-up Freudian philosophers in a pinch.

Anyway, if I could have an AI program answer my chats when I was away I’d be quite pleased. Plugin for iChat, anyone?

Creating Themes for MacOSX

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I’ve been checking out the Mac OSX theming scene for a while; there’s something appealing about customizing the look and feel of your computer, but it has some caveats: it’s generallly a bit difficult to develop, and it isn’t technically supported by the operating system.

When MacThemes.net announced a contest to create User Interface theme mockups (no technical expertise required), I decided to give it a go: MacThemes.net | Contest: Pencil Neck (you can go there and vote now!).

UPDATE:

So I didn’t win, but the winners (for the most part) were pretty cool. I still want to see my theme actualized…
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Welcome Back

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First of all, I just want to say welcome back to myself. It’s been a busy week, and tuesday was my first day back on the broadband wagon — 10 days without a cable modem (and cable TV for that matter) was quite the challenge. But alas, here I am, able to waste my time with the best of them.

Playing around today with the styles for the site — found this neat new plugin for the mozilla FireFox browser called “Edit CSS” that lets you edit a pages CSS and watch it update live in the browser. This is good for web designers, but also anyone who wants to customize the look and feel of just about ANY website, using your own custom style sheet for a site.
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Weird directions.

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From Apple’s Web Site

For optimal sound quality and performance, the Apple In-Ear Headphones need to make a good seal with your ear canal. Simply placing the ear buds in your ear without making a good seal can result in less than desirable audio quality.

…Everyone’s ears are different… In some cases, wiggling the ear bud into place can also help. Let go of your ear when you feel a good seal . The ear bud should remain securely in place when there’s a good seal. Repeat the process until the desired fit is achieved.

If you’ve inserted the ear bud as far as is comfortable, but can’t get a good seal, try a larger ear cap size. If you get a good seal with a larger ear cap size, but it is uncomfortable, try a smaller ear cap size.

[ You might also try having your ears surgically altered to fit the size of the ear plugs ]

Weird File on my Drive

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Found a weird file on my desktop — “ChassisD.log” I’m not sure where it came from… it was last modified on the 22nd, created on the 13th… it appears to be some networking related thing, but I’m really not sure…. anyone?

13/01 18:27:06 inAENumber = 15000 (0x3a98) ‘ : ‘
13/01 18:27:06 pShareData before = 94142464 (0x59c8000) ‘ ‘
13/01 18:27:06 pShareData after = 94142464 (0x59c8000) ‘ ‘
13/01 18:27:06 tagYourIt = 1 (0x1) ‘ ‘

Merry X-mas

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Snow Day

Happy holidays to everyone. Finished all my holiday shopping yesterday — almost all at Amazon.com. What a breeze that was. The hardest part was that when I initially placed the order it wouldn’t go through; I kept getting a weird error message and was sent back to Amazon’s homepage. I called their customer support # (which isn’t listed anywhere on their site, btw. For future reference: 1-800-201-7575), but they weren’t too helpful. They just told me it was a problem with their web site and to try back in a couple of hours.
Two hours later it still didn’t work, so I decided to troubleshoot. Turns out that two of the items on my list were not being sold by Amazon.com, but by one of their retail partners. I removed those items from my shopping cart and I was able to place the rest of the order without a hitch. I then placed those two items as separate orders and they also went through. Odd, but still much easier than trekking around the city, standing in line, going to the post office to mail stuff. Oy.
I should start packing — Tania and I are on our way to L.A. to visit her family for christmas tomorrow morning at 6am. We’re going to spend christmas day in Monterey, actually. It’s my first time to either location, and I’m looking forward to it — although two warm x-mases in a row is a bit odd (last year in hawaii). I’m not complaining though!
So happy holidays to everyone, and until next year…
schwa

OS 9 USB Woes:: Solved.

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What started as a (relatively) simple USB printer solution turned into an exasperating journey into more than I ever wanted to know about USB under Macintosh OS 9. A client had a Powerbook G3 (Wallstreet series), the kind without built in USB. OS 9.1. IOGear USB 2.0 PC-Card (Which under OS9 should work as a USB 1.1 interface). Canon MPC555 multi-function USB printer/fax/scan jobber.

Main problems: No printing. No waking from sleep. How to fix it? Let me tell you.
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