David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
I do a lot of work with CSV files, sometimes very large CSV files, for a living. And sometimes it’s not practical, or possible, to do what I need to do entirely in Excel. Merging files is an example. So here’s how to merge CSV files on various platforms from a command line so you can get it done quickly and efficiently.
I like to support my local dealers, and of course Ebay makes it easy to buy trains, but there’s still nothing like an old-fashioned train show. Here are my train show tips that I’ve found helped me in the past. Hopefully they’ll help you too.
You may recognize some of these from my tips for garage sales and estate sales, but some of the methods are unique to shows. Also, not all shows are the same, and my tips may work better for local shows than traveling shows but most of them should work for both types.
Somewhere around here I still have my old Abit BP6 motherboard. Abit is a long-dead manufacturer of enthusiast motherboards, and the BP6 was one of its landmark achievements. It was the first cheap dual-CPU board.
The Abit BP6 is a bit obscure today, but hardware enthusiast sites like Tom’s Hardware Guide were pretty excited about it in 1999.
Can SNES play NES games? That question is older than the SNES itself. But the two systems aren’t backward compatible, unfortunately. At least, not when the two systems were still on store shelves together. That’s changed in modern times to a degree at least. More on that in a minute.
There are physical limitations that prevent an NES cartridge from even fitting in an SNES. But there was a technical reason to make the two physically incompatible. Even if the cartridge would fit, it wouldn’t work.
In 2016, I got spiffy new Internet service that promised to be a little faster than 100 megabits. So I got a spiffy new gigabit router to work with it. It worked for six months. That got me thinking about how long should a router last.
For a while, routers were so cheap I didn’t really care how long they lasted. You could get a good-enough router for 20 bucks. But to get the features we want today, you’re looking at $100 or more. And at that price point, you should expect it to last a while.
Dealing with false positives is a fact of life for a vulnerability analyst. So here are some tips for investigating and dealing with Nessus false positives from a system administrator turned vulnerability analyst. Read more
I want a quiet keyboard that doesn’t feel like typing on overcooked oatmeal. Ideally I want it to be tenkeyless to save space on my desk. I need the desk space more than I need the keypad these days. I realize I ask for an awful lot. My quest led me to the Hyperx Alloy FPS Pro. It’s designed to be a gaming keyboard, but I’m using it for work. Here’s my Hyperx Alloy FPS Pro review.
How much does it cost to build a computer, you ask? It depends on how much you want to spend, whether you have any parts you can use already on hand, and what your expectations are. But I can give you some ranges so you can figure it out.
You can build a computer for $300 or even a bit less, if you have parts to reuse. But a high-performance computer will cost more, potentially hundreds or even thousands of dollars, depending on what you want out of it.
Is your Roku buffering all the time when you try to watch streaming media? While it can be frustrating, usually these buffering problems are solvable. Here are six things to try to fix Roku buffering before you switch to another streaming device like an Apple TV or Fire TV stick in frustration.
Some streaming apps are more demanding than others, so if you experience buffering in some apps but not others, that’s not unusual. Watching TV on Netflix always works great for me, for example. And while some people find Hulu occasionally problematic, I don’t think I’ve ever had more than a minor hiccup in Hulu. But I have friends who have issues with HBO Go and I have issues with MLB.tv.
Last Monday, Excel greeted me with a new error message on my work machine, which happens to be a Mac. When I imported a CSV file and tried to change the row height to the default 16 points, I got the message that Excel row height must be between 0 and 5.68″.
I’ve been changing the default row height back to 16 for decades so I don’t know why Microsoft changed it. But they didn’t ask me. Complaining about it doesn’t help either. So I set out to find a workaround. While I observed this on Excel for a Mac, I would expect some versions of Excel for Windows will behave the same way as well. My copy of Excel 2013 on my Windows box hasn’t changed, but that’s the most recent version I have.