Month: October 2011

My latest publication tackles the Lionel gateman

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , ,

Yesterday I saw (and edited) the final proofs for an article that will be appearing in the January 2012 issue of Classic Toy Trains, due on newsstands 6 December.

The article, “Smart wiring for the gateman,” shows some different ways to wire the venerable Lionel gateman accessory, first introduced 75 years ago.
Read more

RIP, Dennis Ritchie

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , ,

Dennis Ritchie died this weekend, aged 70. You may not know who he is, but if you’re reading this, you’re using something he invented.

Dennis Ritchie was, among other things, co-creator of Unix and the C programming language. Even if you run Windows, Windows was heavily influenced by Unix, and a lot of programs you run were written, if not in C, in its successor, C++.
Read more

Review: The Utilitech Pro 430 lumen 7.5 watt LED bulb from Lowe’s

Dave Farquhar Saving money
Review: The Utilitech Pro 430 lumen 7.5 watt LED bulb from Lowe’s

Last Updated on November 30, 2022 by Dave Farquhar

LED lighting is slowly getting cheaper. Home Depot has its 40W equivalent bulbs under $10 now, and Lowe’s countered with a $13 40W equivalent. The Lowe’s bulb uses less wattage, so I think that’s the better value.

I bought some.
Read more

What you should know if you want to write a book

Dave Farquhar Writing

Last Updated on October 11, 2019 by Dave Farquhar

And here’s some first-person testimonial about book-writing in the 21st century. Most of it rings true. It took me 9 months to write a book, vs. 2.5 years. But my advance was smaller than what she got. I don’t know my sales figures, but she seems happy with sales figures that I would have thought were disappointing. Royalties of a dollar a book are about right (mine were closer to $1.75), and working for less than minimum wage is definitely a possibility. She’s also right that publishers will not promote you. You absolutely, positively have to promote yourself. They’ll put your book on store shelves and send a few copies to reviewers, but from there you’re on your own to sink or swim. Read more

Yesterday was Patch Tuesday again

Dave Farquhar security , ,

I’m way too tired to do the kind of Patch Tuesday writeup I did last month, so I’ll just remind you, and hope that suffices. This month we have vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, Silverlight, and .NET, some of which can cause remote code execution, which is a holy grail for spreading malware. So apply those updates. The Silverlight update applies to Macintoshes as well.

Is there something better than Robocopy?

Dave Farquhar Software

Last Updated on April 21, 2017 by Dave Farquhar

Here’s a question I hear quite a bit: Is there something better than Robocopy? If you’re looking for alternatives to robocopy, read on.

I immediately thought of Xxcopy. Depending on your perspective, it could be better. So-named because it’s an extension of Xcopy, which was itself an extension of copy, it’s a third-party copy utility that mimics the familiar xcopy command, which Microsoft’s own Robocopy does not. Read more

Don’t use software firewalls: Good advice or bad?

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , , , , , ,

A common piece of good-meaning advice you’ll hear is that you should never use software firewalls. But is that good advice, or bad?

On the surface, it’s good advice. It’s much better to use the firewall built into a cable/DSL router. But the software firewall built into Windows XP, Vista, 7, and (presumably) 8 makes for a good second line of defense, so I don’t recommend disabling it.

I’ll explain further.

Read more

An old Windows myth looks to (finally) become reality in Windows 8

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , ,

For the better part of my adult life, I’ve been dealing with the myth that if there were certain settings that could speed up Windows, Microsoft would make those settings the default for the operating system. The pundits who perpetuate this myth have their reasons for doing so, but that didn’t make them true.

Now, the difference is harder to notice today than it was when I started my career. There are things I can do to make Windows 7 run better on my 4-core, 3.1 GHz AMD64 box with 8 GB of RAM and a 100 GB SSD. But I won’t notice the cumulative effects of a few 5% improvements on that box. Not the way I did on 50 MHz 80486-based PCs in 1997.

Microsoft’s philosophy for 22 years, from Windows 1.0 in 1985 to Windows Vista in 2007, was to write the software, and if it takes a few years for the hardware to catch up with it, so be it. Windows 7 changed that–for the first time, the actual requirements for running a new version of Windows went down–and, with Windows 8, it looks like CPU requirements will hold steady, and memory usage will actually go down.

Read more

How to remove paint from a tin litho toy or train

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , ,

Last Updated on June 3, 2019 by Dave Farquhar

It isn’t terribly rare to find old tin lithographed toys or trains that have been overpainted. Boys will be boys, after all, and have you ever met a boy that didn’t love paint?

When it comes to restoring these toys, there are no guarantees. Removing the paint without damaging the lithography beneath is tricky, at best. And, of course, there’s a pretty good chance that whatever lies beneath that paint is scratched up or otherwise damaged. Generally speaking, it’s the well-worn toys that get painted, not mint-condition ones.

But if you’re feeling brave and at least a little bit lucky, you can remove the paint, see what’s under it, and maybe, just maybe, it will prove to be salvageable.

Read more

We’re just about ready for an era of 64-bit browsers

Dave Farquhar Software, Windows , , , , ,

Adobe released a new Flash player this week. As almost an afterthought, they mentioned there’s a 64-bit version included.

That means Windows users can finally have mainstream 64-bit web browsers without using any beta software. I can put one on my main machine, and Gmail and Youtube and anything else that relies on Flash works the way it’s supposed to work.

What about Firefox? Read on.
Read more