Palm LifeDrive 2.0 Update

Palm has indeed (finally) come out with the rom update that they have been promising for quite a while. Given how long it took to get here, I would have hoped the install would be less painful, but it did work — I think. Part of the problem is that they didn’t include the standard … Continue reading “Palm LifeDrive 2.0 Update”

Palm has indeed (finally) come out with the rom update that they have been promising for quite a while. Given how long it took to get here, I would have hoped the install would be less painful, but it did work — I think.

Part of the problem is that they didn’t include the standard “Here’s how you tell you’ve been updated” information on their website. That, plus the fact that it shut off part way through, and I had to reset it to get it to finish, makes me wonder whether I actually got the whole update or not. I’ll play with it tonight, to see if I can figure that out.

A worse problem was that, on the first sync after the update, it (together with The Missing Sync) caused all my contacts to be thrown away. Luckily, I managed to catch this before a .Mac Sync happened. Reseting my sync info fixed the problem on my Mac and the next sync fixed the LD too. The alternative would have been too frightening to consider: .Mac would have happily taken the trashed contact info and distributed it to all my Macs, almost guaranteeing that it would have been an unrecoverable problem.

Oh well, I didn’t brick the LD, and the Mac’s (appear to) still have all the right data on them, so I guess I can declare this as another typical Palm update. oao.

Six 13-year-olds!

My god, I think they’re more trouble than 13 six-year-olds. It’s Dennis’ birthday party tonight/tomorrow and my house is rapidly being turned into a disaster area. With a bit of luck, the walls will still be standing tomorrow, but beyond that all bets are off.

My god, I think they’re more trouble than 13 six-year-olds. It’s Dennis’ birthday party tonight/tomorrow and my house is rapidly being turned into a disaster area. With a bit of luck, the walls will still be standing tomorrow, but beyond that all bets are off.

The wiki is secure.

Everyone can still read the wiki, but you now need a password in order to edit it. *sigh*. How sad is that. I have sent the password out to a random selection of people, but if I miss you and you want access, just send me a note and I’ll give it to you.

Everyone can still read the wiki, but you now need a password in order to edit it. *sigh*. How sad is that. I have sent the password out to a random selection of people, but if I miss you and you want access, just send me a note and I’ll give it to you.

Script kiddies versus the wiki

For the last few days, some moronic cretin from Russia has started spamming my wiki with pages of random drug sites. Although it is trivial to revert the pages back to their uncorrupted states, getting up and doing this every morning has become sufficiently frustrating that I have decided to enable authorization. Once I have … Continue reading “Script kiddies versus the wiki”

For the last few days, some moronic cretin from Russia has started spamming my wiki with pages of random drug sites. Although it is trivial to revert the pages back to their uncorrupted states, getting up and doing this every morning has become sufficiently frustrating that I have decided to enable authorization. Once I have done this, I will send out an email to all obvious candidates to grant them access.

My frustration with this whole situation has prompted me to post this to the main page of the wiki:

Spammers really are the single greatest threat to the future of our society. Religious terrorists are a distant second place. I formally curse all spammers as follows:

Your children will die of a disease that would have been curable, except that you put such a drain on the internet that the communication needed to discover the cure did not happen.

Divertimento rocks!

Well, actually, they “classics!”, but that’s not so catchy. 🙂 Two more successful concerts under our belts. Friday was a better space to play in, but Saturday seemed to have better sound (despite my early misgivings about the hall having too much reverb). In particular, it was easier to hear how good the choir was … Continue reading “Divertimento rocks!”

Well, actually, they “classics!”, but that’s not so catchy. 🙂

Two more successful concerts under our belts. Friday was a better space to play in, but Saturday seemed to have better sound (despite my early misgivings about the hall having too much reverb). In particular, it was easier to hear how good the choir was on Saturday. Walter Babiak attended both performances, which was quite an honour. His Movin’ in My Heart was received well, given its complexity, and I do believe we may end up with a CD’s worth of music worth listening to. Well done everyone! As usual, I am in awe of the skills that our players have, and continuously surprised that they haven’t kicked me out for being such a duffer. <g>

The next concert will be a “Pops” concert, Friday, February 10 and Saturday, February 11, 2006. The program is still being discussed, but there should be lots of nice stuff, just in time for Valentines Day. 😉

After that, we’re playing Friday, May 5 and Saturday, May 6, 2006. I’ve already got the music for that show. On the program is:

  • Wolfgang Mozart – Overture to the opera “The Magic Flute”
  • Johannes Brahms – Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn
  • César Franck – Symphony in D minor

Time to start practicing!

Divertimento concerts this weekend

Just a reminder to everyone that the Divertimento Orchestra of Ottawa and the Kanata Choral Society are playing two joint concerts this weekend. The program is: Franz Liszt – Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 Antonín Dvorák – “Largo” from the New World Symphony Wolfgang Mozart – Regina Coeli K.108 Walter Babiak – Movin’ in My Heart … Continue reading “Divertimento concerts this weekend”

Just a reminder to everyone that the Divertimento Orchestra of Ottawa and the Kanata Choral Society are playing two joint concerts this weekend. The program is:

  1. Franz Liszt – Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
  2. Antonín Dvorák – “Largo” from the New World Symphony
  3. Wolfgang Mozart – Regina Coeli K.108
  4. Walter Babiak – Movin’ in My Heart

The Babiak is a world premier. It has never been recorded or publicly performed, so it should be quite exciting. Here’s where we will be playing:

Friday, November 25, 2005
Orleans United Church
1111 Orléans Blvd., Orléans
8 p.m.

Saturday, November 26, 2005
St. Paul’s Anglican Church
20 Young Rd., Kanata
7:30 p.m.

Note that the Friday concert is at 8pm, but the Saturday concert is at 7:30. Also, there’s a hockey game at the Corel Center on Saturday night, so you might want to factor in a little extra travel time.

Tickets are available at the door: Adults: $15.00. Students/Seniors: $12.00. Children 12 and under: Free. I hope to see you there. (Look for me on the third cello desk.)

More on the odd Mac behavior

So the problem occurred again. When I went down to look at the machine this morning, I saw the following things: Backup open with the “I’m about to back something up” dialog visible and the auto-start count at 0 (i.e. ready to go), but not running Backup, Adium and iChat all flagged as “Not Responding” … Continue reading “More on the odd Mac behavior”

So the problem occurred again. When I went down to look at the machine this morning, I saw the following things:

  • Backup open with the “I’m about to back something up” dialog visible and the auto-start count at 0 (i.e. ready to go), but not running
  • Backup, Adium and iChat all flagged as “Not Responding” in the Force Quit dialog

When I’m in this state, if I force quite all three apps, then attempt to shutdown, the Mac shuts down to the “grey screen with progress spinner” stage, then stays there forever. I actually have to power it off and on to continue.

The thing is, there are several possible sources of the problem:

  1. the 10.4.3 upgrade
  2. switching to use the UA-5 USB sound module
  3. Backup itself
  4. network issues related to backing up to my slug.

It seems like there must be *something* network related, since all 3 apps would have been using the net stack at the point the backup was going to happen. However, even though those apps have locked up, everything seems fine if I browse the web or crawl around on the remote backup volume.

I got the combo 10.4.3 update, and I’m going to re-apply that tonight. I’ve also got the latest version of Disk Warrior and I’m going to feed it the main volume as well. Then it’s flush all the caches and maybe the preferences files and then just hope. If it happens again after that, I’ll have to start disconnecting pieces (likely the UA-5 first) and see if that helps.

sigh.

Starbucks and Hotspot

Well, I paid my 7.50 $CAN to get connected to the net at the local Starbucks. The good news is that it worked, it was relatively easy, and I can post to the blog. The bad news is that 7.50 for 1 hour of connection time is bloody highway robbery. I know I could have … Continue reading “Starbucks and Hotspot”

Well, I paid my 7.50 $CAN to get connected to the net at the local Starbucks. The good news is that it worked, it was relatively easy, and I can post to the blog. The bad news is that 7.50 for 1 hour of connection time is bloody highway robbery. I know I could have paid just less than double that for a whole day’s use, but I’m only here ’till Deb and Dennis get out of church, so…

Here’s the thing though: The service routes through a standard wireless connection. We all know what the limits are on that technology: the bottom line is that the total bandwidth that I can push through this is exactly the same as I can do at home. And in case you’re saying, “But there could be more people there”, no, we all share the bandwidth. More people just means slower transfers for me.

So the real question is, why am I being charged so much for this? Like everything else in our society, the answer is, because they can (currently) get away with it. The incremental cost to get their service set up at this Starbucks was almost certainly less than $500 over what it cost to do it at home. But for some reason, they think it makes sense to charge me, what, 5 orders of magnitude more or so. It’s insane. Bell, in case you’re listening, I would have happily payed $7.50 for a month of connection time.

It’s exactly the same problem that we currently have with data plans on cell phones.

I can tell you though, the first coffee shop that comes up with a fixed monthly usage rate, will get all my business. Think about it guys.

Some odd Mac behavior

Twice now, I’ve come downstairs in the morning, and found Backup open on the desktop, in a state where it looked like it was almost going to start backing up the website, but was just sitting there (not responding). This morning, I noticed that my IM client, Adium, was also not responding. I have not … Continue reading “Some odd Mac behavior”

Twice now, I’ve come downstairs in the morning, and found Backup open on the desktop, in a state where it looked like it was almost going to start backing up the website, but was just sitting there (not responding). This morning, I noticed that my IM client, Adium, was also not responding. I have not seen anything like this, prior to upgrading to 10.4.3, so I wonder if there may be a correlation.

Maybe I should get the combo updater and re-run it.