Author: Dave Farquhar

Amazon’s new Kindles look like rising stars

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,

I’m a couple of days late and for that I apologize (I’ve been on the road), but this week Amazon released its anticipated Kindle tablet and snuck out a couple of new e-readers.

The tablet–7 inches, a faster-than-rumored 1 GHz dual-core CPU, priced at $199, and dubbed the Kindle Fire–seems to be an immediate hit, with 95,000 pre-orders in its first day. Amazon is selling each tablet at about a $10 loss, which it should easily make up by selling digital content.

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Looking back at a year with WordPress

Dave Farquhar Personal

It was approximately one year ago that I migrated my web site to WordPress. In a way it felt like going home again, as I’d used the predecessor to WordPress, a blogging system called b2, for a couple of years around the turn of the century. I liked b2, but it lacked moderation capability and my blog was becoming a spam magnet. Had I been able to hang in there a few more months, WordPress would have come to my rescue, but I didn’t, so my migration took about a decade longer than it could have.

Better late than never. And it’s been a good year.

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Version 7 looks like just what Firefox needed

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , ,

Firefox 7 is out. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you already have it, because, historically, a large proportion of my readers use Firefox or, in the past, used other Mozilla-based browsers.

The last couple of Firefox versions have been yawners, and a frequent butt of jokes on Twitter. “It’s Tuesday. Time for a new major Firefox release.” This one looks better. Here’s my review, after a few days of use.

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Was CP/M overrated?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Was CP/M overrated?

Veteran tech journalist Dan Tynan recently published a list of 10 overrated technology products, and CP/M was on his list. But was CP/M overrated? I want to dig into that question a bit.

I think everyone knows the story of how IBM almost used CP/M as the operating system for its PC, but ended up using an upstart product from a small company named Microsoft instead. We’ll probably never know exactly what happened, seeing as the author of CP/M is dead and his business partner is no longer able to recollect those events from the 1980 timeframe, and IBM and Bill Gates have no reason to embarrass themselves by revisiting the story.

But CP/M was the first and most popular operating system for early 8-bit computers, so people who used it remember it fondly, and the way Microsoft steamrolled it made Gary Kildall and his operating system folk heroes to underdog lovers everywhere. Even people who never used it and weren’t even born when Kildall’s company ceased to exist have at least a vague idea of what it was.
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Windows shutdown command

Dave Farquhar Windows , , ,
Windows shutdown command

Let’s say you need to shut down or reboot your computer from a command line, a batch file, or a desktop shortcut. Maybe you want to shut it down right now, or in an hour. You can do all of that and more with the Windows shutdown command, shutdown.exe.
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Can you afford that house or apartment?

Dave Farquhar Landlording, Saving money , ,

Declining incomes have more people paying a higher percentage of their income in rent than in the past. I blame the recession. And what caused the recession? People getting in over their heads, buying more house than they can afford. I blame the big banks for that, because I personally experienced it. If I’d bought the kind of house loan officers were telling me to buy in 2002, I’d have been foreclosed on, too.

Here’s a very easy way to figure out whether you can afford a particular place. Read more

Oh well, whatever, nevermind. 20 years later

Dave Farquhar Music , , , ,

Rob O’Hara beat me to the punch with his excellent analysis of Nirvana’s seminal Nevermind, and I find myself not disagreeing with a word of it. So rather than duplicate his work, I’ll talk about how I came to learn of Nevermind and its reception in St. Louis.

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Windows 7 programs quit responding? You have a corrupt user profile. Here’s how to fix it.

Dave Farquhar Windows , ,

Windows 7 can suffer from old-age disease, where it thrashes hard drives, programs quit responding, and it generally becomes unusable. I’m beginning to wonder if my main PC might be suffering from this. Microsoft prescribes this cure.

If you’re comfortable with a command line, I can make the solution faster and easier.
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Toggle between two registry settings with another simple script

Dave Farquhar Windows

On the heels of yesterday, the same technique that swapped hosts files can be adapted to toggle registry settings too. The registry, if you’re not familiar, is a central database that stores Windows configuration settings.

Perhaps you want to be able to toggle your screen saver timeout from the default of 1500 to a value of 9999. That way, you can easily choose between the screen saver interrupting you or not. I run into a problem when running certain emulators with the screen saver timing out on me; this would solve the problem.

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Bargain SSD? Maybe more like hard bargain SSD

Dave Farquhar Hardware , ,

Dealnews had a shocking deal today: An OCZ Vertex Plus 60 GB drive for $45. That’s an after-rebate price, but even writing off the $10 rebate, at $55 the drive is still priced historically low.

I didn’t buy one. And I didn’t buy three. Here’s why.
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