David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Over time, I’ve been experiencing weird issues with my blog. Plugins worked, then stopped working. Or they’d just run really slow. Occasionally I’d get error messages saying the plugin ran out of memory, but frequently it would just do nothing.
I found a solution inside wp-config.php. Read more
One day a Cleveland-area man walked into a Bass Pro Shop, and they offered him a credit card with a promotion that would pay the sales tax. The savings amounted to $50, so he accepted. A few weeks later, he received a letter in the mail informing him that his credit score was 848. Perfect score is 850.
A longtime reader asked me recently about putting an SSD into a laptop optical bay. The idea has crossed my mind–the extra storage is increasingly more useful than the optical drive as time wears on. Thinkpad warriors have been doing this for a long time, though IBM’s caddies were a bit pricey.
It’s not an expensive project anymore, and it’s not limited to Thinkpads either. Read more
Linus Torvalds called hard drives evil, nasty platters of spinning rust in an interview this week, while saying he likes SSDs.
I didn’t say it. He said it. Though it’s no secret that I like SSDs too. Read more
I ran into a former supervisor from many years ago at the local Home Depot this evening. We had a pleasant discussion. It reminded me of a question I asked, right around the time he and I last talked. I asked whether it’s better to be a consultant or an employee.
Here’s what I would say to my 2005 self if I could, somehow. I present it here since I know someone else must have the same question.
The venerable Atari 2600 turned 35 this past weekend. People of a certain age remember it as the device that ushered in home video games. I know I spent a lot of afternoons after school playing blocky, chirpy video games on them in the early 1980s.
The 2600 wasn’t the first cartridge-based console, but it was the first widely successful one. It even spawned clones, the private-label Sears Video Arcade and the Coleco Gemini.
So John C Dvorak (I’ll call him John Dvorak because he hates it–John Dvorak John Dvorak John Dvorak) says that cyber warfare, like Y2K, is a bunch of hooey.
I lived through Y2K, and I’m fighting the cyber war. He’s wrong on both counts. Read more
As I’ve mentioned recently, my new job allows me to work from home one day per week. They provide me a laptop to take home, but that’s it. If I want other hardware, I have to provide it.
Fortunately for me, I was able to outfit my office on the cheap.
Yesterday I wrote about the importance of encrypting documents before you send them via e-mail. But what if you don’t have a PDF creator, other than Microsoft Office or Open/Libre Office?
It turns out you can encrypt PDF documents, including those you create with office software, for free–with caveats.