Category: Computers

I got a renewal notice from today, demanding $40 for another year’s license for their Radio software. I refuse to pay another $40 for 12 more months of abuse by Dave Winer, as far as I’m concerned he personally owes me a $40 refund. So I’m migrating my old Radio blog with help of Bill Kearney’s Radio Exporter. I’ve got all my old content imported into this site’s archives, now I never have to deal with Userland and Winer ever again.

Apple’s new Safari browser works well enough to be my primary browser, but I wouldn’t switch until an ad blocking system was implemented. I heard the latest 1.0bv73 version had popup blocking, but that isn’t sufficient. I poked around the web and was surprised to see that Safari supports the same ad blocking techniques as Mozilla, using a css stylesheet.

I noticed Safari’s Preferences>Advanced>Style Sheet allows you to set your own style sheet but I didn’t immediately realize this was where you put your ad blocker. I downloaded one of the more popular Mozilla ad block userContent.css stylesheets, saved it in my home directory and activated it in the prefs, and ad blocking was activated. I’ve been editing the file in BBEdit but so far I’ve had a hard time improving on it. There are some tricks for blocking Flash files but they don’t seem to work in Safari. Even so, I’m switching over to Safari because the ad blocking is now good enough to satisfy me in everyday use, and bookmark management is better than any other browser I’ve used.

Update 6/12/03: It appears this little summary is getting linked around the web, but my link to the stylesheet example at FloppyMoose.com is undergoing a temporary outage. Now you can download the stylesheet I’m using for my own ad blocking, I’ll host it on my own site for a permanent reference. If anyone can improve on this stylesheet, I’d love to hear about it, so leave a comment.

Update 4/11/04: FloppyMoose has updated his ad blocking style sheets, with improvements, so check out his site and download the latest version.

I have a Powermac “wind tunnel” machine and I just received my new replacement power supply kit from Apple. Actually, I got two kits, they double-shipped. I called Apple, and of course they double billed too. It’s not so bad since it’s only a $20 overcharge I’ll get back, but these new quiet power supplies and fan kits are rather scarce, and someone is waiting for one of these kits. And I want my $20 back.

This replacement is about as deep as you can go into the guts of the machine, I have to strip everything out to get at the power supply and fan brackets. What a pain. I hope the noise reduction is worth it. I’m thinking of getting one of the Verax fan kits for further noise reduction, but I’ll see how this swapout goes first. At least I will have the case completely stripped so I can see where I could do further sound dampening.

But the big question is, will this fix my floating ground problems? I’ve totally rewired my office numerous times and I’ve never been able to get the electrical interference out of my computer/TV system. I get big white bands across my TV every time I try to capture video. I’ve tried to get rid of this problem for months.

Update: I’ve got the new power supply installed, and it’s definitely quieter. It seems to have a low throbbing sound at medium fan speed, it’s a beating sound of the two different size fans running at a harmonic. Yep, I think I’ll get the Verax fan kit, and maybe some Dynamat dampening panels too. And I’ve solved the floating ground problems by putting my CPUs on cheater plugs (only 29 cents each). Now everything in my “MacTiVo” rig is working together without interference, maybe I can keep it all working once I get everything back in the cabinets. I had it all working once before, and the grounding failed the moment I got it back in the cabinet.

I finally got a new battery-backup power supply, so I had to shut down the server just to plug it in. Ooh I hate losing a good uptime, I was up 51 days. And I find it particularly galling to lose uptime just to replace power supplies. At least I had an opportunity to install some system updates, I’d been procrastinating because the updates required a restart and I didn’t want to lose the uptime. I was surprised to see I was still running MacOS X 10.2.1. I really should update Movable Type as well. I’ve been procrastinating on that upgrade too.

I got a new Belkin F6C120-UNV with a pretty good capacity of 1200 volt-amps. I’d been avoiding it because the ads all show a huge odd shape with tons of plastic, but this unit was just a nice little square metal box. It has a USB port to connect to a server for monitoring. Belkin’s battery monitor program “Bulldog 3” is MacOS X compatible, but the program can’t see my UPS. Apple System Profiler can see the UPS and read the USB ID. I don’t know what’s wrong, but it’s either a software glitch or else the unit is DOA. Remind me not to install new hardware on a weekend when tech support is closed.

On a brighter note, it looks like the battery backup has eliminated the ground interference that’s been plaguing me. Now I can get all my TiVo and DSS gear back in the cabinets. I can even get my printers running again, I had them unplugged and some of the interference went away. It turned out that interference came from a corroded old Isobar surge protector the printers were plugged into. It would generate interference as long as it was plugged in, even if nothing was plugged into it. I hated to throw out that Isobar, it was a really expensive unit, the best surge protector I used to sell.

And there’s the rub. I used to sell this stuff and I know what cheap crap it is and the big profits it generates. An average surge suppressor costs $5 wholesale and sells for $30. They were the highest markup item I sold, always at least 50% profit and usually 80%. Sometimes we’d sell people a surge suppressor with their computer and make more profit on the $30 surge suppressor than on the $2500 computer. We used to call this sort of high-profit item “point builders’ because it “built up points,” it increased profit over a base sale. I got sick of this game and just sold these items at a reasonable markup, or threw them in for free and absorbed the cost by charging a few bucks more for the computer.

Update: I got the USB monitoring to work after discovering the Belkin Bulldog installer is severely flawed. It must be run as root, the scripts do not sudo correctly. Belkin does not know how to write a proper installer for Unix.

I’ve been struggling with the strangest bug for over a month, every time I launch Adobe Acrobat, it immediately quits. I finally checked the Adobe customer forums and found the most obscure solution I’ve heard in a long time. During a recent MacOS X upgrade, Apple supplied new language .plists and the Acrobat language preferences got scrambled. The solution is to go to MacOS X’s System Preferences:International and modify the Languages list. You can make any change, exchange the order of the bottom two languages, hit Edit and remove unused langauges, etc. and new correct prefs will be written. Now Acrobat will launch again. Oh boy am I happy to have Acrobat running again.

I decided to totally rewire my computer and video systems, since I am desperate to eliminate some electronic interference between my TiVo and my PowerMac. “Hum bars” and other interference patterns are the bane of any electronics rig, and they can be difficult to eliminate. I had everything all working a few weeks ago, then I merely put it all back in the cabinet without disturbing the cables and suddenly the interference is back again. It’s driving me crazy.

But this time, I think I have the solution. Some Mac audio geeks say the new MDD PowerMacs have ground loop problems when connected to external audio devices. The solution is a cheap $15 ground loop isolator from Radio Shack (part #270-054). I bought a couple and I’ll put them inline in the audio at various places in my Mac/TiVo rig, and see how that works.

So the server may be up and down over the next couple of days, and I hate resetting the server and losing my uptime. One of the crazy strategies that was suggested to eliminate the ground loops was to run all the Mac systems ungrounded, using a 2-prong cheater plug. That was obviously unsuccessful and now it’s just a hazard. Now I have to rewire the power plugs. I haven’t replaced my backup battery power supply either, that will cost at least another $150. I decided that the new Belkin UPS looked good, since they released MacOS X drivers for power management.

I’ve totally refurbished my office, and cleaned everything. I have a new high powered vacuum with a HEPA filter, it’s great. It sifts such fine microscopic particles that you can almost completely eliminate all dust from a room. But the 4HP motor pushes out so much exhaust that the room is practically a hurricane of dust, and you’ve just got a little straw to suck it up, so it takes a few repeated passes to get it all. But it is astonishing to see how much fine dust that computers and CRTs will attract. It’s important to clean this fine dust because when you work at a CRT and keyboard, the static charge also accumulates on YOU, your hands and face become statically charged and attract dust just like the CRT. You get dust in your eyes and nose, causing irritation. If you get eyestrain from working at a computer for hours, this is part of the reason. So go clean your desk and CRT.

My new Wacom Intuos2 tablet has an odd bug that the manufacturer cannot duplicate. When I click in the topmost row of the screen, the menu will not pop up. I have to slide down at least one pixel before clicking in order to get a menu. This is not how the Mac GUI works. One of the best mouse GUI features is that you can just slide your mouse to the top of the screen and keep going, the pointer will stop at the top of the screen and you’re ready to click. This allows you to hit menus much more sloppily, with a larger target, with one quick motion. Now I have to take two actions to do one menu task. It’s driving me nuts. Wacom can’t duplicate the error, they’re investigating my report. I’m not holding my breath for a fix.

Do not buy any APC product, you will regret it. I just had a most unpleasant experience with APC, regarding a battery backup unit I purchased. About 2 years ago, I bought an APC Office 280 unit for about $30 at Staples. The unit was always a little troublesome, the recharger to buzzed about once an hour, but I figured that was normal, I didn’t know because I’d never owned a backup power unit before. It wasn’t normal. The one time I had a power outage, about 2 months after I bought the unit, the battery lasted about 30 seconds. Now I am informed it should have lasted at least 5 to 10 minutes. Finally, after about 18 months, the Replace Battery light came on and it totally failed. I thought the unit had a one year warranty, so I tried to find a replacement battery through the APC website. It didn’t exist. So I threw it in a closet and forgot about it.

Today I found the original packaging and discovered it had a 2 year warranty. I called APC and they informed me that the UPS I bought had an expected battery life of 3 to 4 years, but that model was discontinued 4 years ago. The UPS I bought had been sitting on somebody’s warehouse shelf for at least 2 years, the battery had already rotted away before I ever purchased it.

I told APC that the unit did not meet the Implied Waranty of Merchantibility, since it was defective when I purchased it. They said I should have returned it under warranty if I had problems. I told them I didn’t know it was defective until now, their story about the unit being 4 years old when I bought it explained everything.

APC presented me with two options: replace the battery for $45, far more than I spent for it in the first place, or buy a “trade up” that costs $60. I said this was not acceptable when the unit was defective when purchased. APC blamed Staples, and absolutely refused to replace the battery or even offer it at a discount. The manager I spoke to said I was unreasonable, that it was like buying a new car with a full tank of gas and insisting the dealer replace the gas when it ran out. I vehemently disagreed, and said it was like purchasing a 2003 Toyota and when you take delivery, they’ve switched it with an identical-looking 2001 Toyota that’s been sitting in the back lot, rusting and rotting away.

Anyone who is considering the purchase of any APC product should be aware that they do not stand behind their products. Any APC product you buy may already be nearly dead when you purchase it. APC will use any excuse to refuse any request for replacement, their favorite excuse is to blame the vendor. Do not buy any APC product, you will regret it.

DSL service was down all weekend, due to a defective Cisco 678 router. I got a replacement promptly, but there was nobody at my ISP who knew how to configure it until today. Internet Navigator gets a major thumbs-down for their weekend response. If you stick your junior techs with weekend duty, you still need to have the the senior techs on call. I understand that everyone needs their weekend time off, but hey, 5 minutes on the phone would have saved me 2 days of downtime.

When people talk in abstract terms about methods for programming computers, I always describe how Diamond Cutters work. A diamond will cleave cleanly along a plane alligned with the crystal structure, it only takes a small tap to cut the stone. But if you apply the pressure in the wrong direction, it will shatter the whole stone. When a cutter receives a huge raw diamond, he will study it for days, learning the stone’s raw structure, and plan how it will cleave into efficient sections for the production of smaller cut diamonds. After lengthy deliberation, the diamond cutter will decide where to inscribe a small groove on the diamond, to mark the cleavage planes. He places a wedge in the groove, and then with one carefully controlled tap of a mallet, the job is done.