Tom Roper's Weblog

Moving files around

Over the years, as well as paper, as those who know me will agree, I have used more or less every method there is of transferring files from computer to computer: floppy disks of all kinds, CD-ROMs, DVD, Zip disks, removable hard drives of all shapes and sizes. 

I now find myself with a problem. I have too many ways of doing it and I need to settle on one. So, I have several USB sticks, an iCloud account, Dropbox and Google docs, soon to become Google Drive, it tells me every time I use it. Though I'm supposed to be an information manager, the management element is somewhat lacking.

This becomes urgent. The other morning I found myself having to recreate a great deal of work because I didn't have the right file.

I found this guide from Ars Technica useful:  http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/04/cloud-storage-a-pricing-and-feature-guide-for-consumers/

My iPhone 3.1 hell

I upgraded my iPhone to the latest version of the software on Friday, since when:

• it freezes and crashes constantly
• apps open and then close again immediate
• the battery life has deteriorated, for example I charged it fully overnight, and used it lightly today, lightly as I couldn't get it to play any music on my train journey in, yet by 2 pm the battery had expired
• the touch-screen often refuses to take any input at all

I've tried various tricks: removing the lock, turning off wifi, countless hard resets. If you haven't yet upgraded, dear reader, hold off, for heaven's sake.

Oh no it isn't

At 9.05 tonight, though iPhone 2.0 has supposed to have been out for at leat 12 hours.

PowerBook Schwärmerei

How odd! Twice recently I have been accosted by complete strangers in cafés asking about my laptop. It's a PowerBook G4 12", no longer made, which suggests that Apple are missing something. I bought it for its compactness, the quality these strangers admire. I first had one for my job at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, which I had to hand back when I finished there, sobought one of my own.

It is lamentable that it is my computer that attracts attention, not me, and that only from suited men. No mysteriously-veiled beautiful woman whispers to a friend, 'look at the handsome man with the PowerBook G4 12", isn't he oddly compelling?'

Domain mapping

Regular readers, if there are any, may have noticed some unpleasantness here in recent days. That's not my blog reacting to the dire news of Boris Johnson's election as mayor of London, and his proposals to introduce fagging, flogging and roasting new boys over a slow fire to the capital; rather, I have been trying to implement domain mapping, so this blog shows at my domain of roper.org.uk, which I registered years ago, but have never used to any great extent. It should all be fixed now. If you read me in a newsreader, you probably didn't notice.

Panorama on wireless

I look forward to widespread panic after tonight's Panorama which will claim, misleadingly, that the use of wifi carries health risks. See here for a counterblast from the Guardian or this Pubmed search.
For myself, I wish wifi networks were stronger.  I am fed up with AirTunes cutting out when I try to play my music  and I have totally failed to get my son's laptop to see the network at all.
Wearing chain mail underpants while using wifi seems to me a small price to pay. Does anyone remember when Panorama used to be a programme of repute?

Blotter

Seeing it on UKWebFocus, I thought Blotter looked interesting. Here's a graph for this site which will become more useful over time.

And here's one for the running blog

PawSense

I found this through pattern recognition. The beast pictured below, Eustace, has twice caused considerable damage to my last PowerBook. If only there were a Mac version.

PawSense
"When cats walk or climb on your keyboard, they can enter random commands and data, damage your files, and even crash your computer.  This can happen whether you are near the computer or have suddenly been called away from it.
PawSense is a software utility that helps protect your computer from cats. It quickly detects and blocks cat typing, and also helps train your cat to stay off the computer keyboard."

Technorati Tags: cats, laptops

Swicki

I've just added a swicki to this blog; the best definition of a swicki I can find is on the OSS4lib site. Mine is a little crude, but may develop. I was torn between Eurekster and ZoomClouds, but went for the former in the end: Zoom Clouds does the tag cloud, but not search, as far as I could tell.
Post scriptum: I've taken it of for the time being. The Eurekster version seems to require to be populated manually, rather than build it organically from the blog, tags and searches. Also it slowed the pages down no end.

Cleese or Rumsfeld?

I saw this on Phil Bradley's blog and thought I'd try it. He is supposed to resemble Lou Reed, and I hope he will not be offended if I say that I find it hard to see a very close resemblance.
But then it thinks I look like John Cleese, Alain Delon, George C. Marshall (he of the Marshall plan), Carl Perkins, David Coulthard, John Glenn, Donald Rumsfeld. Anthony Burgess and Wim Kok. I am rather upset about some of these, especially Rumsfeld and Kok. Still at least it didn't mistake me for Jeffrey Archer, as a Big Issue seller did at Brighton station recently.