5 Jun 2010
Posted in Tools and Resources
The challenge this week is:
Come up with a personal genealogy challenge of your own. Each person has different research goals and experiences. Use this week to come up with your own challenge, and then take the steps to accomplish it.
Haha, I thought. that one’s easy! My biggest challenge is finding the time to get everything done that I need to do. So I’ve decided, for the sake of this challenge, to narrow it down.
I don’t seem to find time to read any more. To just sit down with a book and read it. I used to do most of my reading on the train into the city, but these days I tend to do stuff on my netbook computer, which I’ve talked about before, or read research notes or minutes and notes for Council and committee meetings.
I used to always carry a book with me. Always. Now I don’t. If I think I’ll need something to read I might take a family history magazine or journal with me, but usually the netbook is enough to keep me occupied.
How do I read the books I need to read to further my research? There is so much I have to read:
- books on Australian history
- books on Fijian history
- books written by early settlers and sailors in Fiji (usually downloaded from Google Books as PDFs)
- books on how to find records for family history
- journals and magazine, which are arriving all the time
- fiction (we all need some down-time)
Last weekend, when I was walking past my local Borders bookstore, I saw the answer. The Kobo is Borders’ answer to Amazon’s Kindle. It’s an e-reader that is cheap ($199 Australian), light, easy to read, and small enough to take anywhere. It does nothing except read books, which is what I want. It reads PDFs as well as e-book formats.
Unfortunately I couldn’t buy one on the spot as they had run out, and were taking pre-orders. I said I’d think about it and went home. I thought about it so much that I rang and pre-ordered it from home. They told me it would be in on the 7th June, which is next Monday.
On Thursday (3rd June) I got a call to say they were in, and I could pick mine up! Woohoo!!! I did. I had a workshop to prepare so I didn’t really get to play with it until yesterday.
I’m already reading more than I ever did before. I’ve started on Dickens’ Great Expectations, which I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never read before, although the story seems strangely familiar. I think that contemporary fiction counts as educational, don’t you? At least I’m not reading Harry Potter!
And I feel much better for it already. Reading is what was missing from my life.
The Kobo is a little slow to change pages, so I’ve already learned to press the button a little ahead so it’s there when I’m ready for the next page. I’m still looking around at what books I can put on there. It came with 100 books already, including Dickens and Jane Austen.
The PDF part is still a bit of a challenge, though. I downloaded two PDF books to experiment. They are:
- Smythe’s Ten Months in the Fiji Islands, 1864
- Fanning’s Voyages to the South Seas, 1838
I’ve had success finding ancestors, or potential ancestors, in these sorts of accounts, so I’ve got to keep reading them. Printing and reading takes way too much paper and toner, and I tend not to read them on the laptop, although of course I search them for surnames and places as best I can.
So far reading these PDFs has not been a success. An e-book flows so that no matter what font size you select, the text flows to fit the page. PDFs don’t do this, so there’s a lot of scrolling involved which is too disruptive, even in these old books where the pages are actually quite small. Apparently they are looking at software changes to allow this, but in the meantime scrolling is slow.
So that’s the challenge I need to resolve next, and this is what I’m doing to resolve it:
- I’m experimenting with zooming in and changing the orientation to landscape, but it’s still slow to get down the page.
- I’ll experiment with the different page sizes of different documents
- I’ll look at different formats. Perhaps these books are downloadable as e-books rather than PDFs?
- I’ll be experimenting with Descent, the journal of the Society of Australian Genealogists, which was published from the beginning of the Society in PDF form. That will save me having to decide before I leave the house which one I’m up to. If I can resolve the PDF issue!
Wish me luck!
9 Jan 2010
Posted in Computers, Tools and Resources
Well, I was brave enough to take the risk! My new mini notebook is a Toshiba NB200, which arrived by courier yesterday. I broke the seal warning me that my new purchase may not function correctly and I’ve been playing with it ever since.
So far I’m just installing the software I need and downloading and installing updates, and the battery has lasted very well. The keyboard feels solid and the major keys are much the same size as on my standalone keyboard, although of course all the other keys are in different places – another keyboard to get used to. The touch pad is much the same size as on my 15in laptop.
It works well and quickly, even though I wasn’t able to upgrade the RAM to 2GB as the salesperson advised me. I’ve seen forums where a lot of people have upgraded theirs successfully, and I might consider that later when I really start using it.
I am expecting to use it when I go into the city or out to the archives, and for my birthday last year I got a mobile broadband … thingy (whatever the thing is called). My old mini is a HP 2133. The battery lasts less than 2 hours, and with Vista it’s very slow to get going – both reasons to leave it at home. If I use it on the train on the way into the city I have to take the power cable to charge it again for the ride home, especially if I actually use it while I’m in the city. I bought it too soon – at the time there was very little around, and what there was was small and made from flimsy-looking plastic.
It’s so small and convenient that I’ll probably use it around the house as well. The fate of the HP is yet to be decided.
8 Jan 2010
Posted in Computers, Tools and Resources
I bought a new mini-notebook, to replace the piece of junk I bought a year and a half ago. It has just arrived, and the label stuck across the opening to the box states, in part:
You must read and follow all set-up and usage instructions in the provided manuals and Instruction Manual for Safety and Comfort. If you fail to do so, this product will not function properly and you may lose data or suffer other damage. EVEN IF YOU DO SO, TOSHIBA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OR WARRANTY THAT THIS PRODUCT WILL FUNCTION PROPERLY IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. [Upper case in original]
Thanks, Toshiba, that’s very comforting.
29 Oct 2009
Posted in Computers, Tools and Resources
I have been trying to find a theme for my blog. I want one that displays the writing in a clear and clean manner, and …
Nearly everywhere I have read recommends the Thesis theme, but my understanding is that is is well built at the back end but you need coding skills to design the front end. I may end up going that way, because the alternatives all have problems.
I found Elegant Themes, which look very nice. It’s US$19.95 per year to use all of them, and you keep them if you don’t renew. I’ve been experimenting with one now – StudioBlue – it’s on the right. Ih shows featured posts and lists of posts by category and is very configurable. It allows ads in the top right corner, but I’ve realised that I have to insert code to put them in there, instead of just in a widget editor, so that’s out.
I also tried one called eNews which showed pictures, but it required a thumbnail to be generated for each post, as well as the code-insertion drama mentioned.
It’s not that I am unable to learn to code, I was a programmer for many years. I just don’t want to spend my time doing that. If writing a post is an extra hassle I’ll do it less often. I would be prepared to spend more to get something more user-friendly but I want to try it out before I buy it, and not find out that I have to mess with code when I’ve already paid for it.
Of course, the real reason for all this mucking around is not for this blog but for my business blog and website.
5 Oct 2009
Posted in Computers, Tools and Resources
I currently use 5 different photo editing applications for different tasks. Here is my attempt to document which one is best for which task.
The applications:
Corel PaintShop Pro Photo X2 – this is an upgrade from PaintShop Pro 7, which I bought when I was looking for photo editing software and it looked easier to learn than Adobe Elements. I had another look at Elements before I upgraded, and it’s so big and still not as easy to learn. PaintShop Pro is just more intuitive.
- copy and paste from the web to create an image.
- cropping
Adobe Photoshop 7 – an old version I had for work some years ago. I can’t afford to upgrade it.
- resize to precise number of pixels for websites
- crop to precise size
- add text (citations of document images).
Picasa 3.5 – free software
- culling of new batch from the camera
- best for levelling a crooked photo
- face recognition (haven’t tried this yet)
- creating web albums (although I seem to put them in Facebook these days)
Faststone Image Viewer – free software. I know others swear by Irfan (?), but I liked this one better.
- batch renaming, resizing, compressing for the web.
Windows Photo Gallery – the one that comes with Vista.
- culling of new batch from camera
- simple fixes – crop to standard size, red-eye, brighten and auto-contrast. Has taken over from Picasa because it is the one that the photo automatically opens in.
I know there are other applications out there, but I’m happy with the ones I have, although it would be fantastic if I could just use one or two.
Which ones do you use? Have I left anything out, tasks or software?
30 Jul 2009
Posted in Computers, Tools and Resources
I have been trying to find somewhere accessible to plug in my mini-notebook in my office and I’ve run out of power points. Again. How is this possible?
Let’s count them. My office at the moment has two power points in the wall, on opposite sides of the room. One has a single, 6-point power board, into which is plugged in:
- a desk lamp
- old camera battery charger (the batteries are never the same, are they!)
- cordless phone charger No 2. (No. 1 is in the other office)
- phone connection for the cable TV (so we can order pay-per-view movies)
- empty at the moment, but the old laptop is usually plugged in here.
I seem to remember removing a phone that needed power when I decided against the job where I’d need to wear a headset.
The power point nearest my desk has a 4-point power board with surge protector, into which is plugged:
- Bose Wave Radio
- desk lamp
- new camera battery charger
- 5-point power board with surge protector
This second power board has:
- laptop
- external hard drive
- laptop stand
- MP3-player charger
- empty at the moment but likely to get the floor lamp back now that it is no longer needed for a guest bedroom
Fortunately I don’t have to accommodate the printers, cable modem and the old desktop computer, which are in the other office with their own spiderweb of cables and power boards.
Finding enough power points is a constant struggle. Why do we have so many electrical appliances?
Phones didn’t used to need electricity, and now they do. The cordless phone has 4 handsets, and we can usually find one when we need it, but they all have their own chargers that need power.
Speaking of the other office, it has a single 4-point powerboard on the wall. Into that we have:
- an 8-point powerboard with surge protection
- a 4-point powerboard
- cordless phone base unit with answering machine
- kept empty for visiting laptops
These two powerboards have in no particluar order:
- the old black-and-white laser printer
- the more recent multi-function-printer that also scans, copies and faxes
- the flatbed scanner
- the slide-and-negative scanner
- charger for the husband’s PDA
- desktop computer
- the monitor for the desktop computer
- wireless router
- cable modem
- desk lamp
- empty
Our phone chargers, one for each phone because they change over time, are downstairs in the bedroom where we are more likely to remember the phone when leaving the house. The bedroom, of course, also requires two desk lamps, clock radio, mozzie zapper and air filter.
Never mind the mess of cables and power boards behind the TV, catering for the cable TV receiver, DVD player, and home theatre system! We got rid of the record player, cassette deck and the VCR.
No wonder we use so much more electricity than we used to! It makes me wonder how many of these appliances are on standby, drawing power when they’re not being used. The desktop computer certainly does, it’s on all the time because the laser printer is plugged into it. The cable modem and wireless router are always on. The cable TV receiver is always on, even when it’s off. Clock radios, phone chargers, battery chargers… how much power do they draw just to keep that little light turned on?
Probably a lot more than we think.
Do we really need all this stuff?
25 Feb 2009
Posted in Computers, Tools and Resources
I am in the midst of a website crisis. I run my blogs, including this one, and my business website using WordPress. They are all easy to back up, and all are easy to upgrade WordPress except for the business one, which requires a manual upgrade. I won’t go into the reasons for this, but I moved it a couple of times and the server can’t find it to upgrade it any more.
I’ve done this upgrade before and it works fine. The last one appears to have been in September. When I tried it yesterday i followed the instructions: I backed up the files using FTP, I checked that some of the folders could be opened in the backup, I deleted the files off the server, I copied the new files onto the server, I went to run the upgrade program, and it couldn’t find it. My website wouldn’t display, I couldn’t get into the admin. It was stuffed.
You have probably spotted the problem by now. I went to replace the files with my backup and a great deal of it wasn’t there. Horrors. I’d checked that the folders had been created but I didn’t check enough of them to see that many of them were empty. No backup. This is what they mean when they say “my heart sank”. You can feel it hit bottom.
This was yesterday, at about 7pm, when I realised that my website was completely stuffed. It’s now nearly 4pm the next day and I have only just got the pages back, but not all the plugins – contact forms, e-commerce and all that stuff. I’ve tried all sorts of things, not helped by my imperfect knowledge of how the thing works.
I don’t know what I did wrong with the original upgrade. Maybe it was too big a jump between the version I was on and the current version. But I do know that if I’d been able to restore everything from my backup I wouldn’t have had the heart-hit-the-floor experience and I wouldn’t have been up til midnight trying to find out how to fix it.
The lesson here is:
Don’t just run the backup – check it.
Check it properly.
Check that everything you need is there in case you need to use it.
Last weekend, when I was walking past my local Borders bookstore, I saw the answer. The Kobo is Borders’ answer to Amazon’s Kindle. It’s an e-reader that is cheap ($199 Australian), light, easy to read, and small enough to take anywhere. It does nothing except read books, which is what I want. It reads PDFs as well as e-book formats.
