Author: Dave Farquhar

Greenberg’s Marx Trains Pocket Price Guide, 9th edition: A review

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I received my copy of the new 9th edition of the Greenberg Pocket Price Guide for Marx trains this past weekend. Marx used to print on its packages, “One of the many Marx toys. Have you all of them?” This book won’t completely answer that question, but at the very least, it gives you a start, and helps you avoid paying too much for the ones you don’t have yet.

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Steve Jobs and the Commodore PET

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Steve Jobs and the Commodore PET

There’s a nasty rumor floating around that in Walter Isaacson’s bestselling biography, Steve Jobs, Jobs alleges that Commodore copied the Apple II when making its first computer, 1977’s PET. Here’s the story of Steve Jobs and the Commodore PET.

The book doesn’t come right out and say it, but it insinuates it. I know how the PET came to be, and the PET would have happened whether the Apple II ever existed or not.
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Audio Express vs Best Buy car radios

Dave Farquhar Music
Audio Express vs Best Buy car radios

My oldest son and I broke my wife’s car stereo. He put quarters in the CD slot, and I broke it worse trying to get the quarters out. So it was time for a new stereo. So along the way I learned a lot about Audio Express vs Best Buy car radios, and I also found a sleeper option worth considering.

I hadn’t shopped for any kind of car audio since college. I found sales tactics haven’t changed a lot, but it seems pricing has. Or at least I found a pleasant surprise in what I could get for the money these days.

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Microsoft’s leaked roadmap

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , , , , , ,

Microsoft is getting aggressive with Windows release dates, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s going to put a damper on future sales.

Windows 8 is coming out in August, which was a poorly kept secret anyway. That can’t be helping Windows 7 sales, but at this point I think Microsoft is mostly concerned about new computer sales and corporate sales. What’s more concerning to me–initially–is the revelation that Windows 9 will be out in November 2014.
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This hard drive shortage may put a crimp on things

Dave Farquhar Hardware

If you haven’t heard, there’s a hard drive shortage due to floods in Thailand, where many drives and/or components are made. So now, rather than 1 TB hard drives being priced lower than a tank of gas in most cars, prices are rising fast.

That will discourage upgraders, and could cause the cost of PCs to rise.

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Deep Firefox SQL optimization

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , , , ,

I was looking deeper into Firefox optimization, and I found Adventures in Firefox-places.sqlite. It’s a pretty intense analysis that goes beyond the usual simple, in-browser SQL vacuum that I’ve mentioned in the past. It was written with Mac OS X and Linux in mind, which is fine, but if you run Windows, you might want to do the same thing.

It has two benefits. It speeds up Firefox, and it reduces the amount of disk space your Firefox profile occupies. The two things are related; smaller databases are quicker and easier to navigate than large ones. As for why you should care about the amount of disk space it takes up, well, on an SSD every megabyte counts.

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Looking back at Achtung Baby, 20 years on

Dave Farquhar Music

I’m of the age that’s supposed to like Nirvana more than U2. Or at least, when U2’s Achtung Baby came out, I was. (I suspect a lot of people my age would rather listen to U2 than Nirvana now, while my teenaged nephew would have the opposite opinion.)

I bought both Nevermind and Achtung Baby, at the same time in fact. I’ve written before about what Nevermind meant to me and the people around me. Being arguably my favorite record of all time, I think Achtung Baby, which is being re-released this week, deserves the same treatment.
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Serious hints for your employee self-evaluation

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized

Since posting my tongue-in-cheek hints for completing your employee self-evaluation, it’s received a ton of hits, presumably from people who want serious advice on filling out employee self evaluations. Just to clarify, I do not recommend calling yourself “awesome sauce” on your evaluation.

The main thing is to be understated if anything, fair to yourself, and back up what you say.

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Making newer versions of Firefox work like a fresh install

Dave Farquhar Software ,

About a year ago, I told you about how to vacuum Firefox’s SQLite database to make it run better.

The trick still works, but they moved stuff around on us in Firefox 7.

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HP decides to keep its PC business

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

HP came to its senses this week and decided that ex-CEO Leo Apotheker’s decision to pull out of the PC market he didn’t understand was a bad decision. They’re staying in.

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