Author: Dave Farquhar

How I fixed a lamp

Dave Farquhar DIY ,

Soon after my wife and I got married, she used some of our wedding gift money to buy some lamps. We like them quite a bit. But one of them developed a big problem with flickering. I fixed it, temporarily, by bending the tab underneath the light bulb, but last week it deteriorated rapidly, ultimately reaching the point where any time we turned the lamp on, it blew the breaker immediately. Here’s how I fixed a lamp–for good.

After trying a few things, the solution ended up being replacing the lamp socket. A lamp socket is a $3.50 part similar to this one. I purchased mine locally, of course.

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Making the ribbon even worse

Dave Farquhar Software

How can you make the dreaded Office 2007/2010 ribbon worse?

Add Clippy to it.

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When Windows gets a file association with .exe files, get a hammer. This one.

Dave Farquhar Windows ,

I spent a maddening couple of days with a Windows computer that somehow had gotten a bogus file association with .exe files, which roughly translates to, “Windows quit running any programs.” Microsoft has a fix for that. Except neither solution worked. Nor did connecting via remote registry, or even renaming their automated fixer-upper to have a .com extension (presumably because it turned around and tried to download and run a .exe). It’s too bad that didn’t work, as I was pretty proud of myself for remembering that little trick.

So where’s my hammer?

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So why are Apple and Google (and Microsoft) tracking us?

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , , ,
So why are Apple and Google (and Microsoft) tracking us?

So what are Google and Apple doing with this location data? And Microsoft, now that it’s clear they’re gathering it too (but they claim they aren’t storing it anywhere on the phone).

They aren’t saying a lot, but they’ve said enough to take a pretty good guess. And no, I don’t think the intent is to be evil.
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Disabling Android location tracking

Dave Farquhar security ,

It appears that you don’t have to defeat Android location traffic; disabling Android location tracking is entirely possible. Go to Settings, then Location and Security, and uncheck the options Use wireless networks and Use GPS satellites.

There are upsides and downsides.

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Ye Olde Nintendo 64

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , ,

I fixed up a Nintendo 64 this past weekend. People of a certain age affectionately refer to it just as “the 64,” though to me, “the 64” refers to a computer with 64K of memory introduced in 1982. I have an inherent bias against almost anything that reminds me of 1997, but in spite of my biases, I found a number of things to like about the system after spending a few hours with it.

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Android isn’t completely clean either

Dave Farquhar security , , ,

In the wake of yesterday’s iPhone mess, Android isn’t coming up completely clean either.

While Google’s intentions aren’t completely clear, the approach is safer.

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iDo track your every move

Dave Farquhar security , , , ,

The scandal of the day is the iPhone and the discovery that it tracks your every move. Will that be featured in the next Android commercial? iDo track you. DROID DOESN’T. Update: Probably not.

Of course, the pundits are all over the map on this one. Nobody thinks it’s a particularly good idea. Some think it’s bad but are willing to live with it since they trust Apple not to misuse it. Some think it’s no big deal as long as Apple stops with the next patch. Others have gotten paranoid.
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An easy change to improve your city gas mileage by six percent

Dave Farquhar Saving money ,

Would you like to improve your gas mileage in stop-and-go traffic by five or six percent without spending any money and without changing what you drive?

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Samsung, Samsung, and more Samsung

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

Well, that certainly didn’t take long. Yesterday Samsung announced its hard disk business was for sale. Today it announced Seagate was buying it for $1.375 billion in cash and stock, a slight discount from the asking price.

So after the deals finish shaking down, Seagate and Western Digital will each have somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of the market, and Toshiba around 10 percent.
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