Author: Dave Farquhar

Thank you and farewell, Dr. Grams

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , ,

About 8 years ago, I set my mind to repair two Lionel trains that had belonged to my dad. I took to the Internet, and about the only repair advice I could find was to track down The Beginner’s Guide to Repairing Lionel Trains by Ray L. Plummer.

Ray L. Plummer was a pen name for Dr. John A. Grams, a journalism professor at Marquette University and a prolific author. Using either name, he wrote a total of 9 books and 129 magazine articles about Lionel and similar vintage trains.

Dr. Grams died this week, aged 77.

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How to open multiple Explorer windows from a batch file

Dave Farquhar Windows

Sometimes you need to open multiple Explorer windows from a batch file. Perhaps because two directories need to be compared by a human, rather than by a computer.

I’ve had to do it multiple times for projects in the past, and so does a longtime reader, who wasn’t able to find how in a Google search.

You might kick yourself after you see how.

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Why you don’t want to be the first to install a Microsoft service pack

Dave Farquhar Windows , ,

And, like most Service Pack 1 releases, it seems Windows 7 SP1 isn’t flawless. Under some circumstances, SP1 machines hang during the boot process with a C00000034 fatal error. Or sometimes it goes into a reboot loop with Error C000009A applying update operation 120782 of 367890.

Microsoft doesn’t yet know what’s causing the problems.
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Usage caps for solving problems that don’t exist

Dave Farquhar ISPs , , ,

If you haven’t read, Southwestern Bell AT&T is solving a bogeyman problem of network congestion by imposing usage caps of 150 GB per month for standard DSL, and 250 GB per month for U-Verse (fiber). Use of AT&T’s own IPTV, VOIP, etc. are exempted from the usage limits, of course.

They cite network congestion, but really, this is more about making certain that non-AT&T services like Netflix, Skype, Vonage, etc. have a competitive disadvantage over AT&T’s costlier services.
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How to check your downloaded files’ integrity

Dave Farquhar security, Windows
How to check your downloaded files’ integrity

On some web pages offering programs to download, you may have seen something called an MD5 near the program link, consisting of a long, weird code like 6cbfd919baa7c9e03c8471ae4d8f8bb.

You can use that code to make sure the file you downloaded is what the author intended you to get and wasn’t corrupted during the download process or, worse yet, booby-trapped by someone else. Here’s how.

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The IE6 mess is Microsoft’s own doing

Dave Farquhar Windows

Microsoft is begging people to get rid of IE6. I saw this week that they’ve managed to get its market share down to 12 percent, but that’s still a long way from their goal of 1 percent.

I’m surprised they’ve managed to get it that low. And I don’t feel sorry for them. Not in the least.
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How to clean inside Lionel tubular track

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , ,

If the outside of your Lionel track is rusty or dirty, there’s a chance the inside is too. Here’s how to clean inside Lionel track.

The condition of the inside of the track is the standard reason people give for discarding old Lionel track rather than trying to fix it. But if you’re willing to put in some effort, this problem, too, is fixable.

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How CPU multipliers came to be locked

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

It was 1996. I was a senior in college, and I went to the computer store in the student commons to get a cable or something. I ran into an old classmate working in the store, who went on to work as an engineer for Boeing. We talked for a few minutes, and he told me about a web site that I just had to visit. I still remember the URL for some reason. He grabbed a piece of paper and scrawled “http://sysdoc.pair.com” on it.

It was my introduction to the world of PC hardware enthusiast sites. That mysterious URL was the early address of Tom’s Hardware Guide. The front page mostly consisted of links to articles telling you how to overclock Pentium CPUs using undocumented jumper settings on Asus motherboards, and the ads were largely mail-order houses offering specials on Asus motherboards and low-end Pentium CPUs.
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SSDs and pricing

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , ,

Mainstream SSDs cost around $2 per GB to buy right now. I was curious, so I decided to try to relate historical SSD pricing to the historical pricing of conventional hard drives.

It didn’t take long for me to find a correlation.
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On 99-cent e-books

Dave Farquhar Journalism ,

Slashdot has the story of independent writer John Locke, who writes crime novels and sells them as e-books on Amazon for 99 cents. He’s sold 350,000 copies since January, which was a 20x improvement over his sales rates when he was selling them for $2.99.

Publishers hate the idea. There’s not enough perceived value in a 99-cent book. Looking at it from an author’s perspective, I don’t think it’s necessarily bad.
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