March, 2005

General — No Comments
28
Mar 05

Apparently users aren’t skilled enough to replace motherboards.

I talked to Compaq technical support and due to their poor support script they were about to send me a new power supply.

However, since I was convinced it was a motherboard problem, I managed to figure out where the script had sent the support technician on a wrong turn. The script (or the technician) didn’t properly explain which power supply cable I was supposed to unplug from the motherboard and I had unplugged the wrong one for one of the steps.

With that issue resolved the script sent the technician on the right path to needing a replacement motherboard. I’m happy we managed to get it resolved before the replacement piece was sent. It would have cost both Compaq and myself more money. It would have cost Compaq when they would have had to send the motherboard after finding out that a new power supply didn’t fix the problem, and it would have cost me additional time.

However, it turns out that after determining that the motherboard needs to be replaced that they have to send a technician along to replace it. (I guess they send two boxes. One with the motherboard and one with the technician and I assume some food and water to keep him alive.) The technician isn’t covered by warranty and so costs money (and there’s probably a bit for the food and water too). I’m not about to put any more money into this computer given it’s current lack of reliability. So instead, they are going to send me a box. I put my computer in the box and it gets sent back to Compaq. They fix the problem and send it back to me. A royal pain due to the amount of downtime that will entail, but I’m not really dependent on that computer for anything really important. Although it does mean that I’m going to be without an answering machine for awhile.

I suppose I need to find something different for an answering machine. Anyone have any pointers for an answering machine that I can put on a landline that will allow me to retreive my messages through email as wav files? (I.e. to replace the functionality that I have now)

General / Technology — No Comments
28
Mar 05

Compaq dies again…

So my Compaq Presario has died yet again. Last time it was the motherboard, and I’m guessing that this time it’s probably the same thing.

Pending any miraculous resuscitation techniques I imagine that it will be on another trip back to HP/Compaq repair centers shortly.

This again happened around the time that I was using my iPod with the USB connection.

Last time, the computer died (powered off) at the exact momement that I plugged in my iPod.
Due to that episode I have been exceedingly careful when plugging the iPod into my computer ever since. I always make sure to touch some metal, to touch the metal on the USB connector, and to touch the metal on the female USB connector (because I thought the previous death might have had something to do with static electricity.)

Well, this time, the computer didn’t die the same way. I had just used the Apple iPod updater to install a new firmware on the iPod. As part of the steps you have to connect the iPod to the AC power adaptor to let it update the firmware. So I unplugged the iPod, plugged it into the AC adaptor, let the firmware flash, and then plugged it back into the Compaq computer (following my normal steps of touching metal/connector).

At this point the computer just didn’t recognize that a USB device had been plugged in. I thought it might have something to do with the firmware, so I tried plugging in another USB device. This wasn’t recognized either. So then I went to “Add New Hardware” to see if that would cause the devices to be recognized.

At that point (during the scanning for new hardware) step, the computer became extremely sluggish to the point that the mouse wasn’t even moving. I tried hitting the power button to power down and the computer started the power down sequence, but got stuck when a program wouldn’t quit, and I didn’t have any way to hit the “end now” button.

So… I held down the power button to force power off. I then powered the computer back on. Windows XP started booting, but then hung during the loading process with the loading bar on screen.
I again forced a power cycle and tried booting again. Again it hung during the loading bar.
So then I forced a power cycle yet again and tried to start up in safe mode with networking. This again hung.

Finally I forced a power cycle again and selected plain safe mode. At this point I successfully got the computer to boot. I proceeded to run one of the Compaq system diagnostic programs, yet it claimed that the version of the software wasn’t licensed to run on that machine. (I’m guessing that when Compaq replaced my motherboard last time that they didn’t fix the software so that it could run correctly with a different CPU serial number or something. Either that or the program doesn’t like running in safe mode.)
Since that didn’t work I figured I would go to system restore and see if the iPod update had messed up my USB drivers somehow. I clicked back to the previous day in the System restore calendar and again the computer hung. *sigh*

I powered off the machine again.
This time when I tried to power on the machine I never got a POST and I never got a video signal.
And I haven’t been able to make it past this point.

R.I.P. Time to call Compaq support.

And of course, it choose to die again while I am on vacation. As if to say “No, you will not spend time enjoying your vacation, but will have to deal with getting your computer repaired again.”

Let this story be a warning to anyone who might think they can save a few bucks and buy a Compaq.

General / Technology — 2 Comments
26
Mar 05

Media your way

I’ve always been a proponent of the viewpoint that a person should be able to do whatever you want with things that you own. So if I buy a CD, I believe that I should be able to listen to it however I want to. If I want to copy it off of the CD so that I can listen to it on my iPod I am going to do that. If I want to convert my whole CD collection into MP3′s so that I can easily listen to any of them through my home stereo, or in my car or on my smartphone I’m going to do that.

And for audio there are a lot of tools that make it easy to use your purchases the way that you want. However, for movies this hasn’t been the case. If you wanted to take a movie that you own and put it on your laptop harddrive so that you can watch it on a trip you typically have had to jump through a lot of hoops to do this. It hasn’t been convenient.

So when I came across HandBrake I was happy to see that someone was working on making this easy for movies. (For Macintosh and BeOS)
You’ll see on the website that it’s still beta, but from some quick tests it seems like this is on the right track.

Maybe I’ll start thinking about creating a digital collection of my movies now, much like I have done with my music.

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17
Mar 05

GDC: From the floor

GDC: From the floor

This is a picture of some people playing the Nintendo DS on the floor of the Game Developers Conference.

Games — No Comments
13
Mar 05

GDC: Coverage

Gamespot has some pretty good coverage of the Game Developers Conference, so make sure that you check it out.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/gdc2005/index-1.html

Games — No Comments
13
Mar 05

GDC: Spore

So one of the big items of buzz at the Game Developers conference was Will Wright’s talk about his upcoming game Spore.

I missed the talk due to attending another excellent talk about motion data blending at the same time. However, from talking with people who did attend it sounds very cool.

You could probably call Spore an evolution game, but it’s much more than that. You start as a spore and can end up controlling the universe, but in the experience you will encounter different styles of gameplay and creations from other players (procedurally animated and constructed).

You can read more about it on gamespot.

Does anyone out there have shaky-cam footage of his demo? (Apparently people were told not to take pictures, so maybe not?)

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12
Mar 05

Plogit

So I just downloaded and installed a freeware app called plogit that will let me post blog entries straight from my new Treo rather than having to try to do it through the web interface. I’m having it use the “blogger” api so we will see how it works.

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10
Mar 05

New Zelda

Nintendo just showed footage of the new Zelda at the Game Developers Conference.

Looked nice from the clip they showed.

They also demoed a program called electroplankton that looked neat.

In addition they announced the Nintendo Revolution would have builtin wifi, and use an IBM cpu (broadway) and ATI GPU (Hollywood).

General — 3 Comments
9
Mar 05

H-D-T-V

So I’m here at GDC and so far it has been an interesting day.

Microsoft gave away 1000 HDTV’s to developers.
And I won one.

Also Jallard mentioned podcasting!! during the keynote.

General — No Comments
8
Mar 05

Up up and away

So i’m on my plane heading out to the game developers conference. I’m quite excited as I have never been before. Hopefully it will be a learning experience. More from san fran.