The view from down here » tech http://willowdove.com/blog The musings of an Aussie viewing the World waist high .... from a wheelchair Sun, 13 May 2012 08:45:38 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Such a strange but beautiful thing http://willowdove.com/blog/2010/05/31/such-a-strange-but-beautiful-thing/ http://willowdove.com/blog/2010/05/31/such-a-strange-but-beautiful-thing/#comments Mon, 31 May 2010 12:12:38 +0000 Joanna http://www.willowdove.com/blog/2010/05/such-a-strange-but-beautiful-thing/ Continue reading →]]> It was a strange juxtaposition. Reading Jane Austen on a shiny new iPad over the cold and miserable weekend that marked the last gasps of autumn (Fall for my American friends) here in Sydney.

While one friend waits patiently for his delayed delivery from the Apple compound; directly from the horses mouse, another went to a local department store and shazzam.

Very pretty but I don’t want one. Yet.

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]]> http://willowdove.com/blog/2010/05/31/such-a-strange-but-beautiful-thing/feed/ 0 the long wait is over http://willowdove.com/blog/2010/01/06/the-long-wait-is-over/ http://willowdove.com/blog/2010/01/06/the-long-wait-is-over/#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:19:49 +0000 Joanna http://www.willowdove.com/blog/?p=487 Continue reading →]]> My circumstantially imposed technology retreat is finally over.

BoB — my new modem with VOIP arrived yesterday after being sent to the wrong box number and then being unable to be delivered to a box at all.

I set him up last night as visitors were here when he arrived. It took a bit of fiddling as these thing often do as we already had a wireless modem in the Time Capsule for backing up which wants to be the only router, but that can’t then work with the VOIP phone line. Anyway, on and on it went, till the wee smalls and ultimately we have a network within a network.

Lots has passed through my life and mind in the interim. As I settle back into this the 21st Century, I will upload.

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]]> http://willowdove.com/blog/2010/01/06/the-long-wait-is-over/feed/ 2 tweet tweet http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/11/08/tweet-tweet/ http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/11/08/tweet-tweet/#comments Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:07:49 +0000 Joanna http://www.willowdove.com/blog/?p=413 Continue reading →]]> i used twitter yesterday much like I think it was intended, or at least a very handy way of using it to broadcast a problem PB was having with Vodafone (the Australian phone company) and his iPhone. It wasn’t solved through the tweeting but the up to the minute information was shared and further broadcasted. It is strange but I feel a strange coming of age feeling -using the web for up to the minute goodness in Australia.

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]]> http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/11/08/tweet-tweet/feed/ 0 the curse of the early adopters http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/09/07/the-curse-of-the-early-adopters/ http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/09/07/the-curse-of-the-early-adopters/#comments Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:23:38 +0000 Joanna http://www.willowdove.com/blog/?p=345 Continue reading →]]> Ok, so there has been a rather prolonged semi-silence from this blog

There are probably a few reasons for that. However the main one is technology.

I’m very into technology as I’ve declared here before; Particularly Mac tech. So when Snow Leopard – the new operating system- came out I was bound to upgrade before too long. However I certainly wasn’t in the queue this time. In fact almost by instinct I was going to leave it a couple of weeks or even months. I must be getting old; I was quite happy with Leopard and although I’ve never had any major issues with the upgrading process it can be scary and a little tedious.

A friend reimbursed me for a copy of Leopard by giving me a copy of Snow Leopard last weekend when it first came out.

snow leopard

snow leopard

With box in hand I was all set to forge ahead and see what miracles Apple had produced. In hindsight, it was not a good week to be experimenting. As well as my usual workload I was also really keen to print off and post more than sixty hard copy hand designed invitations to a soirée I am holding. I don’t use my printer much so I had an older (but by no means old) HP Desk-jet which I got cheaply from OfficeWorks 18 months back. It was doing ok and after early conniptions about printing colour via WiFi the desk-jet and I had an understanding and 20 invites had been printed and delivered.

The Snow Leopard upgrade did not seem to go quite to plan. It seemed to stop a few times and need to be restarted via a “hard restart”. Yes alarm bells did start ringing but it was too late to go back. So I plunged forward.

The install worked and looked lovely. I do love the speed and the application exposé. I haven’t dug much deeper. However my dear deskjet didn’t work and for once in its life it needed to. I wanted “old fashioned” invites with enough time for equally old fashioned RSVP’s. So after several attempts I googled and discovered that it should in fact work, I tried installing then promptly uninstalling various drivers and unsuccessfully winding the operating system back and forth.

Time Machine backups worked to restore although I ended  up with half backups all over the place owing to my permissions and some bad sectors on my hard drive.

After about 12 hours work over 3 or 4 days the easiest solution was to buy a new printer. I didn’t really feel the desk-jet I had was old but it seems to still not be compatible.

Most tech journalists often advise waiting a month before upgrading to allow the developers to “iron out” bugs. I’m sad to say that perhaps they were right this time.

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]]> http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/09/07/the-curse-of-the-early-adopters/feed/ 3 Less mousing around http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/08/25/less-mousing-around/ http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/08/25/less-mousing-around/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 01:10:04 +0000 Joanna http://www.willowdove.com/blog/?p=338 Continue reading →]]> Interesting post giving an account of computing with limited use of the mouse from someone who has a recurring injury disability

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]]> http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/08/25/less-mousing-around/feed/ 0 The hard rock bottom of my drive http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/06/22/the-hard-rock-bottom-of-my-drive/ http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/06/22/the-hard-rock-bottom-of-my-drive/#comments Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:59:00 +0000 Joanna http://www.willowdove.com/blog/?p=199 Continue reading →]]> I am writing this post on the iPhone app for WordPress. It is 1 am on Monday morning and I have had a bad tech week!

I am sitting here watching a fairly clever graphical representation of my hard drive bring scanned and (hopefully repaired) by Disk Genius 2. A set of cats hair like they use to locate the target in a gun I gather are seeking out bad blocks. The graphic spins around on a focused area and zooms in every thousand blocks or so to reveal a computer like screen up close and personal with 1 s and 0s scurrying through and after 5 or so seconds that feel like forever a reassuring little tick appears. Phew! Then off we go again.

Let’s hope this works. Otherwise I’m going to have to get better at the iPhone keyboard

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]]> http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/06/22/the-hard-rock-bottom-of-my-drive/feed/ 1 Iphone apologetics http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/04/02/iphone/ http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/04/02/iphone/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:48:55 +0000 Joanna http://www.willowdove.com/blog/?p=122 Continue reading →]]> I get teased (mercially) about my geekism. This is not fair as the intentions are generally noble ones of simplicity, ecology and organisation.

However there is some truth to the ribbing as I was pondering today;

  • I own both a mac-book pro and an iMac (which I have configured as a server).
  • I have converted at least three people I know to Macs (where’s my commission, Steve?) and now act as tech support.
  • I own an iPhone for which I queued and I was issued with an ever-bleeping blackberry from work.
  • I own a blog which goes through cycles of life and death.
  • I tend to download music rather than buy the CD and even books (although I still prefer to buy the books and flip through the pages

So while there is indeed some validity to my “tag” to a geekgirl, I will not budge. I am de-cluttering. I am more organised. Or at least getting there.

One of my favourite iPhone/iPod Touch applications for this very purpose is ixpendit . I was trying to get in the habit of writing down everything I spent to prevent the whole thing of  “losing $20″ at the end of the day. This meant that I tried to carry a small but not fiddly notebook and  a pen that worked and remind myself after each flat white or coin to a begger to find a hard surface, get out of the flow of pedestrians and then spend 5 mins writing down the details while trying not to let the coffee go cold. All this with the use of own hand and without spilling my coffee. It meant that I carried a full blown handbag every time I went anywhere else I’d forget.

So I can leave the house now with my purse in my hand, my phone resting against my fingers, my keys hooked on my index finger and a bad memory.

There is a good review here

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]]> http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/04/02/iphone/feed/ 3 now tracking stats http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/02/22/now-tracking-stats/ http://willowdove.com/blog/2009/02/22/now-tracking-stats/#comments Sun, 22 Feb 2009 07:05:20 +0000 Joanna http://www.willowdove.com/blog/?p=83 So come one…. come all

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