SmartRemarks

Through many years and many computer systems, I’ve always been the sort of person who likes to tweak and customize my setup. I’m not happy just to make do with the programs that come preinstalled or shipped in shrinkwrap. I acknowledge a point of diminishing returns in this sort of thing, of course; I’ve never taken the effort to learn how to use Linux, for instance, or for that matter even to dip into Terminal on my Mac… but I do like to be able to do my own basic troubleshooting.  I don’t script my own utilities… but on the other hand, I do know how to dig up, install, and use custom scripts created by others, whether I use ‘em through Automator in OS X or through Greasemonkey in Firefox or what-have-you.

Nor have I ever had the inclination (or money or time) to be an early adopter of every new thing that comes along… but that just makes it all the more important to put in the time and effort to properly research and configure my choice of tools and workflow when I do make a change, because it’s probably something I’m going to be sticking with for a while.

So I’ve always been in sort of a middle ground… I’m by no means a Power User compared to the kind of folks who post on SlashDot, but OTOH I am one compared to probably 90+ percent of day-to-day computer users.

With all that said, one might imagine that finding a way (in the course of my latest nearly-from-scratch rebuild of my system) to handle basic PIM functionality wouldn’t be that big a deal, right? After all, managing data like contacts, calendars, and to-do lists is at the very heart of what people do with computers, and there’s been user-friendly software for the purpose for over 20 years. You’d think finding a solution now would be a no-brainer.

Think again…

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Tags: Apple, BusyCal, calendar, computers, contacts, Entourage, internet, iPhone, Mac, Plaxo, software, task management, to-dos, Toodledo, user interface

It’s been quite a few weeks since my last post. That’s because during most of that span, whenever I’ve had time to sit down with my laptop, it’s been to work on restoring things from the catastrophic hard drive failure I suffered just before Christmas. I’m happy to say that as of now, I’ve finally got the computer back to a state where I feel my life is under control again (as much as it ever was, anyway), and in fact the system is (in some ways) better than ever.

All the gory details below the fold…

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Tags: Apple, computers, e-mail, iPhone, Mac, PowerBook, software

I love my PowerBook. My computer is my life… or at least, it allows me to conduct it, and contains most of the relevant details of it, and connects me with the world beyond it. And using a Mac makes the whole process, really, downright fun sometimes.

Nevertheless, I admit to living dangerously where the safety of my loved one is concerned. I know the mantra that hard-drive failures are a matter of “not if, but when”… but despite that, I’ve never really had a regular backup routine. I have some archived files that are years old, but most of the more recent documents on my current machine (purchased over three years ago now) aren’t backed up.

Recently, however, I decided to own up to this irresponsible conduct and change my ways. I’ve been putting off a system upgrade (from OS X 10.4 to 10.5; this Mac is from the last pre-Intel generation, so it won’t run 10.6), but I knew that before installing a major upgrade a backup would be a Really Good Idea, just in case Something Went Wrong. This drive has worked flawlessly for as long as I’ve had the computer—in fact, I’ve never had a drive failure—but better safe than sorry, right? Plus, its 80GB capacity was about 75% full, and I know performance starts to take a hit above that level, and I figured before I started weeding out old files I should have everything backed up. And I expected that regular incremental backups would be easier after the upgrade, anyway, thanks to Apple’s nifty TimeMachine utility, so any headaches involved with this “safety” backup would be a one-time thing.

So yesterday I pulled a pristine new 500GB external drive out of its box, and attached it to my trusty PowerBook with a FireWire cable, and downloaded the latest version of the handy freeware backup utility SuperDuper!, and carefully shut down everything else that was running, and had the program begin making a bootable clone of my PowerBook drive on the external drive.

And guess when my hard drive decided to fail?

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Tags: computers, hardware, irony, Mac, PowerBook, troubleshooting

And the mantra became, “June 12 is the new February 17.” After all the preliminary publicity, it was somewhat annoying to have the conversion from analog to digital TV broadcasting delayed four extra months. But I can see the logic of doing it after the main television viewing season was over… and as it happens, complications along the way have shown that not just viewers but quite a few broadcasters needed the extra time to get their technological ducks in a row.

Offhand, you wouldn’t think I’d be terribly concerned about the switch. I have an HDTV and a DVR with an ATSC (i.e., digital) tuner, so what’s the difference, right?

But as I’ve written before, there are complicating factors… for me and lots of other people. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: digital transition, DVRs, television, TVGOS

Just a quickie here. I’ve discovered today that in some browsers, this blog’s main page isn’t displaying the sidebar correctly. The search box, categories, tags, blogrool, etc. should be immediately to the right of the main content area… but in Safari and Opera, they’re instead rolling down to the very bottom of the page, underneath the content.

I haven’t been able to check it in Internet Explorer (I use a Mac). And it only seems to be happening on the home page, not when specific individual posts are loaded. Moreover, everything remains just fine in Firefox. I’ve tried to do some troubleshooting, but so far I haven’t been able to narrow it down.

So if you’re a reader and you don’t see the sidebar, please add a comment to this post and let me know what browser and system you’re using. If you’re a techie, feel free to pass along any suggestions that may be helpful. I put effort into getting this site to look the way I want it, and this kind of thing (while not disabling) is frustrating.

That’s all. On with your business!…

Edit:  FIXED.  See comment below.

Tags: blogging

Sorry I haven’t posted for a few days. But the holiday interregnum is now well and truly over, and the ordinary part of winter has commenced. Kids are back in school, the full staff is back in the office, and as of today the new Congress has been sworn in.

(Of course, that last part took place absent the junior Senators from Minnesota—although Franken’s win in the long, long recount, finally certified yesterday, is heartening, Norm Coleman’s legal challenge will delay things further despite being almost certainly doomed to fail—or Illinois—one can’t help but feel a little bit sympathetic to Roland Burris, but rejecting him as a symbol of Blago’s hubris is the sensible thing to do, and Burris certainly knew what a minefield he was stepping into. From Delaware Joe Biden is actually still there, until his successor is formally appointed on January 20; and likewise New York and Colorado will need new appointees Very Soon Now too, when Hillary Clinton and Ken Salazar move on to the cabinet.)

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Tags: Al Franken, Apple, blogging, Congress, economy, Gaza, Illinois, Israel, Obama, resolutions, Senate, transition, unemployment

A completely subjective list, of course. But what the hell… aren’t they all?

Going in to 2008, one could hardly open a magazine or flip a channel without hitting a media comparison to 1968. It was 40 years ago (a nice, round number), and it was a paradigm-shifting political year that looked familiar, with an open competition for the presidential nomination in both parties, all while a war was on overseas.

As it turned out, 2008 was a momentous year in its own right, arguably the most significant year in decades, and without question one we will all remember vividly. But it was not assassinations and riots that made its mark in the history books, unlike in 1968; it brought distinctive events all its own.

There’s not really a lot of room for debate over the two most significant news events of the year, and the annual AP survey of news editors corresponds with what almost all of us would surely conclude on our own, a point-counterpoint of encouraging and discouraging developments:

1) The presidential election of Barack Obama

I’ve already written quite a bit about this one, of course… but suffice it to say that it’s historic for the fact that he’ll be the first African-American president; it’s historic for the fact that he won with a (generally) upbeat, honorable, serious campaign; and it’s historic in that it marks a realignment back toward progressive politics after a generation of destructive radical conservatism, and after eight years of arguably the single worst president in American history. How Obama really performs in office of course remains to be seen, but what he’s accomplished so far this year stands on its own.

2) The worst economic meltdown in our lifetimes

Written more than a little about this, too, of course. It seems almost quaint now to recall that when I started this blog, back in mid-September—although we now know that we were already nine months into a recession—it was still possible to ask “how bad is the economy?” and wonder if it would still get worse. Within days, everything started to go to hell in a handbasket… in a way that seems to have created a destructive feedback loop, where every new development just exacerbates what came before. Homes foreclosing, jobs disappearing, businesses (and entire industries) collapsing, credit freezing, investments evaporating… we’ll remember this for a long time, no matter how much we might prefer to forget it.

After that, the choices grow more arguable. My assessment:

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Tags: Blagojevich, Chicago, climate, Congress, economy, Election 2008, financial crisis, FISA, history, Illinois, international, iPhone, journalism, Madoff, media, Obama, Top 10 lists

Collapsing industries are hardly an unusual thing this year. Real estate, banking, airlines, automobiles, music and more are all in dire straits. One of the most consequential ones, however, with ripple effects that will last far beyond the pain of this current economic downturn, is the death spiral of the newspaper business.

For some years now, even when economic times were better,a common question in public discourse was “will print journalism be able to survive the challenge of the internet?” 2008 was the year the answer became a painfully clear “no,” and the question shifted to “how long before print journalism gives up the ghost?” Indeed, one of the biggest news stories of the year was, ironically, the death spiral of the industry responsible for coving big news stories.

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Tags: blogging, economy, Humanities Festival, internet, journalism, media, newspapers

Well, I did it! If anyone happened to encounter difficulty reading the blog between about 11:30 PM and 2:30 AM (CST) last night, it’s because I was busy upgrading the back end to the newly released WordPress 2.7. (Ideally I’d have liked to have some sort of “Under Maintenance” screen in place for visitors; I do in fact have the Maintenance Mode plugin, but as the upgrade process involves deactivating all plugins anyway, it wouldn’t really have done much good.)

This was the first time I had to walk through the WordPress installation process “by hand,” and hopefully the last.  Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: blogging, software, WordPress

Remember not long ago I threatened to write about the process of (re)configuring my home theater equipment?

What, you thought I was kidding?…

What’s frustrating is this:  my girlfriend and I have a system we’re perfectly happy with. Nothing terribly high-end, but carefully researched and assembled. DVD players and recorder and a nice surround-sound setup. In particular, we watch high-definition (HD) signals on an HDTV, aided by a HD DVR. It all works and does what we want. And yet… even though we don’t watch any analog programming, I find that we’re going to be affected by the long-delayed but now impending switch to all-digital broadcasting on February 17th.

A little backstory:

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Tags: customer service, DVRs, internet, television, TVGOS