Autumn Zebra

Last month's goal was to study Polish for at least 30 minutes a day, which I pretty much achieved except 2 days when I was out too much (work + out in the evening + no time in the morning before work) to do so. But some days I did 1 hour, so hopefully that makes up for it. So I achieved my goal. I think that's the first time I have achieved an explicit goal (despite endless "goal-setting" classes and exercises at school), so that's pretty weird/exciting. I think I see how it works now. Sort of. It might be the first time I've wanted something enough to have it work, but I think there's more to it than that, but I don't know what. I'm not sure how much I learnt (of Polish), as there's no way to really measure the amount of knowledge currently stored in your head on any given subject. You could do some kind of test, but I have no test handy, and how would you know you had tested for everything you know? I can't explicitly remember any Polish ...

I've been at work for an hour, and so far: The computer was running unbearably slow with several seconds required to change from one window to another, etc, and the task manager wouldn't open so I couldn't find out what program might be malfunctioning. Eventually the task manager sort of opened - but minimised itself into the task bar tray and refused to come out. Eventually it opened it's menu to close/restore/whatever, but I couldn't click on anything and the menu would not go away eithr - you know those dislocated floating menus? So I restarted the computer. Within 15 minutes of restarting, Windows Explorer crashed and had to restart, so I had to reopen the folders I was using, which annoys me. Five minutes later, Word crashed and had to restart. Two days ago I had an interesting problem where the computer was running very slowly and then all the windows froze up, and I couldn't restart because the start menu refused to open. After a couple of minutes it did...

Don't you want to know your words-per-minute typing score? Here is an online test where you type in the words shown for a minute and they tell you how many you do correctly. 49 words Speedtest I got 38 the first time, because I was not relaxed enough and was trying to be quick also. You need to be relaxed to type quickly, and you need to not think about it and just do it. I'm not sure if I type this quickly normally or not. On the one hand, I am not trying to type fast normally so maybe I just be slack and do it slowly. On the other hand, I am normally not worrying about anything and am just typing, so maybe I am more relaxed and thus typing faster. Also, when typing from my head instead of looking at the words on the screen, I am not slowed down by what the words say, or by having to visually process the words and then send them to my hands. Typing what I'm thinking seems to involve less thought (or no thought even). I make a fair amount of mistakes though, some of which a...

Possibly the worst quiz ever. Oh no wait - most awesome quiz ever. I get confused. Which File Extension are You? I'm sad that I did not get a file extension I've actually heard of. But then, what is wrong with me that I have not heard of this file extension? Everyone must do this and tell me what they got (or post where you know I'll see it). Emergency edit - I have heard of it, but as an I N F file, spelling out the letters rather than saying "inf" which is how I was thinking of it before. (Apparently my brain only recognises sounds, not visual information.)

One of the best things about working with computers all day is the exciting things that happen ALL THE TIME, as fellow computer users will surely know. For the last 2 weeks, every day I arrive at work and my computer complains that it has an IP address conflict with another computer on the network, even though this is, in fact, impossible. Sometimes my network and internet access will work fine - despite the "issue" - and sometimes it won't. At least once a day, Windows Explorer will suddenly crash. Explorer is the thing that you view files and navigate folders in and as well it makes the start bar happen and probably many other things. In previous versions of windows at least, it was also tied to IE, the web browser, so a crash in one could take down the other. What am I doing when Explorer crashes? Oh, something like changing from one folder to another usually. Nothing particularly interesting or intensive. When it restarts, it restores maybe about half of the little ic...

I don't know if I'll have time to write anything later, but I am too tired now to do anything proper, so here is a picture of the two giant monitors I have at work. (It is like having walls, of being at the stock exchange, or something.) And the ergonomic keyboard I inherited. And the mouse which annoyingly has to have a cord because the keyboard is already wireless and the mouse that came with it is decidedly right-handed and I need to even out the pain caused by computer usage by using my mouse left-handed. Everyone else at work hates if they have to do something on my computer (like check out some Vistarism because my computer is the only one unfortunate enough to have Vista installed) because they can't use the keyboard or the mouse properly. Ha ha. The wallpaper on the monitors is some kind or massively magnified photo of some chemical crystal, but I forget what it was now.

I like this error, given by Expression Blend (used to make and markup a user interface): The character "}" is unexpected at this position. It's nice and polite. It doesn't sound terribly upset about it, and it's not trying to make any trouble. It's merely letting you know that it is a little surprised about your choice of placement for this particular item. Perhaps you would like to reconsider? There is a certain hidden firmness in the question however. It is not so much a request as a delicate order. It will not compile with such unexpected positioning.

I'm not entirely sure if we're actually past Part 3 or if I just hate my work computer so much that it just seems like it. I was just looking through a list of posts I made on a particular forum, and some of them have been voted '5's. See, you can vote 1 to 5 on a post if you wish, and 1 is bad and 5 is good. A few of mine, about 1 in 7, have got votes, and they are all fives. This one got three votes. I'm so proud. It is in response to whether or not a particular person should get Vista for their computer: Don't do it! don't touch Vista! at least not until it works! About once a day, Explorer.exe crashes. Basic file operations fail. I can't unzip a file directly in to Program Files (or somewhere, I do it once a fortnight and have to unzip it elsewhere and copy it in). It is a slow UI - the expanding, the contracting, why doesn't the thing just open and close the windows? Sure, blank my screen for 5 seconds and then bring up a moronic message for me ...

I sincerely hope that we have now fixed our internet problem. It would have been fixed earlier, had there not been more than one problem. The original problem seems to have been that the router had stopped working. The second problem was that the password in the second router was wrong. The computer automatically entered the username and password into the router opeions, presumably from what I had entered in the internet settings in the DSL configuration in the network settings. Unfortunately this turned out to somehow be incorrect, as when we entered it again, the internet suddenly worked. Hopefully this is not a coincidence. Having the wrong password was presumably not the problem with the other router, as that had worked fine for a week before gradually slowing down and eventually stopping working altogether. When I swapped the routers and the second one didn't work either, I assumed the problem was with the connection further on somewhere, rather than that there was a second pr...

I am spending the afternoon watching videos on how to program using Windows Workflow Foundation , not ever known as WWF which seems to be an awfully popular acronym that no one can use except the World Wildlife Fund, or whatever it is called. Not wrestling, not Microsoft, ha ha the pandas win. But shall we iterate again - videos, on programming. They're actually pretty good videos about this new technology one can use for programming workflows, ie. sequences of actions, events and data transfer, without having to write the actual sequencing bit yourself. You specify the workflow (simply put: the flow of work) and the conditions for transitioning between events, and you specify what actually happens at various stages, ie. what work is actually done, but you don't have to handle the flow yourself; you specify the parts and when you would like them to happen, but you don't need to make them happen. It's hard to explain what I'm talking about if you don't already kn...

I installed Suse 10.1 on my computer yesterday evening, eventually, but it actually went pretty well. I now need to get the internet to work, and then I have internet and word processing and I am half way there. Then I need to make sure the peripherals like the digital camera can connect to it, and I am all good, except for games. But I don't play that many and we have another computer we have to use for the new stuff anyway. I mainly would want to get the old dos and win95 games going if possible, and there might be emulators for that for Linux - it might not actually be any harder than getting them to work under a new Windows version. The thing that immediately struck me about was that it was like walking out into a cold, crisp morning or evening, where things are quiet and clear and uncluttered, free and easy, there is a clarity. Things happen immediately. You click on something and there is an immediate crisp response. It - wait, that's it! Unlike in Vista, where everythin...

My home computer has stopped working - we need to install another operating system of one kind or another. The computer itself seems to work, but Windows won't boot. So that sucks. In the weekend I was going to write lots of things for my report for Design Process, that's why I turned on the computer to find out it didn't work, but I couldn't. Not much point writing it out on paper to type it in later, that's just annoying. And I missed out on lots of web surfing - how sad. And no blog writing either. Or picture downloading from my camera. Or anything. And it was a long weekend too, perfect time to do some of those things. When I get time, hopefully this evening, we will hopefully find out that this Linux disk I have, unlike the other one, works, and then I shall install Suse. And then I need to get everything to work, which may be tricky, but at least it won't be stupid, like Windows (I assume).

wpf & wpf Like trying to wrestle an escaping eel into a string bag. No seriously. It is like that. I hate getting things into string bags.

When I was looking at some .net programming documentation on the web the other day, I got this message on the page: Ok, that's dumb. ;) The formatting seems to be the same in each "English (United States)" phrase, making it slightly less likely it is due to, say, a dual entry in a database. I'm just glad I got to see it in English (United States), and not, for example, Spanish (Spain), English (Spain) or Spanish (United States), but it is a pity it doesn't seem to display in REAL English, English (Real English). :)

Normally I'd say "arse", but people might get offended. Why I (heart) Vista, Part 2 I'd like to share with you a couple of articles, a few quotes. The first is this one, " User-privilege flaw hits Vista ". The UAC (User Account Control) is enough of a flaw in Vista as it is, so I don't really care about that. The UAC is a terribly annoying "feature" that pops up whenever you are trying to do something to warn you that you need administrator access to do it, AND THEN pops up a SECOND message box asking you, under administrator privileges, if you want to actually do it. I think it is obvious that they only needed ONE dialog box here, not two. To make it really obvious that your computer is doing something serious (installing software for instance, or drag-and-dropping certain shortcuts to your desktop - really serious stuff) then the screen spends a couple of seconds going into ultra-serious grey-mode in order to pop up the second dialog, and the...

Today, I discovered another reason why I love Windows Vista, and we shall start our "Why I (heart) Vista" series of blog posts with this little example. I was happily at work, doing the same thing I have done at work using Vista for the last 1-2 weeks. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a message box pops up with a message along the lines of 'An application is trying to send you a message from the desktop.' My options were something like 'view' and 'later'. My response was something like, "ummm, what?" After realising I had no frickin idea what it was talking about, I decided to click view, or ok, or whatever it was. And my screen goes blank! Completely black! I was confused. This is not normal behaviour for a windows computer. Normally they crash, not turn themselves or the monitor off. At first I had thought it was another one of those "Administrator access" situations, where the monitor goes blank for a fraction of a second. But after a f...

Finally, my modem and instructions arrived from ihug. After being marked undeliverable by the courier company because ihug didn't provide room for me to fill in the company name and the floor of the building in their delivery address, I rang and provided them with the information and they delivered it on Friday afternoon. You have to get the modem signed for, and it is delivered during normal work hours, so if you work you have to have it delivered to your workplace pretty much. But that worked out fine in the end. When we tried to set it up, neither that modem nor the one I borrowed off Dad would connect to the internet. Why is that? Not sure, but we think there is a filter/splitter already in the wall or something, so using the filter we were sent by plugging that in as you are supposed to and then plugging the modem into that presumably meant the signal was being double split and stuffing things up. We had to test the connection by plugging the modem into the wall directly and s...

If you ever need to kill someone, but can't work up the nerve, then try using " Expression Blend ", formerly known as "Interactive Designer" and currently used to design GUIs for the new technologies surrounding Windows Vista. After a very short time you will be happy to kill anyone any way in order to help relieve your frustration and just generally make yourself feel better. Case in point: I still haven't worked out why the horizontal alignment "centre" button spreads out everything you are trying to centre at random distances, over to one side, with most things partially on top of each other. You can't see this very well, but I think it is clear that this is a weird definition for centreing these 3 buttons: So I must centre things by guessing, although there are other convoluted tricks that work for odd numbers of objects only. I am also unable, even in a space like the tool bar pictured above (which is actually about twice as big), to move ...

I've been thinking, when I get my website sorted out, where do I put it? It has to be free, so are there any good places I can get free space with only minimal advertising and none of it annoying?