camless
the time has come to disconnect the webcam as i prepare to move my computer before i prep, paint, and floor my office. for the next couple of weeks, enjoy the view out my window as it stands today — this time of year, it doesn't change much.
February 16, 2004
October 14, 2003
let us all give thanks to paste
terry pointed out that the link colors i'd chosen were sort of hard to see. the dark greens don't contrast well with the dark gray and black of the text. so, inspired by the lid of the paste in the teeny picture i found this morning, i turned the unvisited links a butt-ugly orange...
...but you can see them, right?
October 12, 2003
black is the color of my true love's cam
among the many things hosed by the 10.2.8 upgrade is the webcam. can't make it work for love or money. i'm using oculus, which grabs the image from the cam just fine in the preview window, but won't show it in the main document window — it's only showing black.
i have reinstalled the camera drivers and reinstalled oculus. i am now officially at a loss. thank you, apple, for all you've done for me in the last few days.
i'm especially peeved because i wanted to show a before and after sequence of the raking we did yesterday — specifically, before this morning's breezes blew a million leaves down onto the freshly-raked lawn and driveway, and after i wept like a child on the front steps.
update: oculus out, evocam in. webcam is back in action!
it's not easy bein' green
 | my brother's spiffy new layout inspired me to ditch the orange in favor of a minty-fresh color scheme. freshens your breath while you scream. |
October 09, 2003
boot camp
for those mac users among you, i have a few gentle words of advice:
yesterday i foolishly capitulated to the sweet nothings whispered by software update and agreed that, yes, it could have its way with my young and innocent emac.
big mistake.
as the update downloaded, i went for a shower. when i returned, the screen had gone black. strange...and nothing would wake it up. so i did a forced restart. the graphite apple appeared, and then the whirling circle of progress...and then nothing.
forced restart again. graphite apple. whirly...whirly...whirly...ad infinitum.
repeat several million times. still nothing.
i tried a variety of boring things to get the machine to boot completely. theoretically, because my system was up to 10.2, i should have been able to boot from the system discs that came with the machine, do an archive-and-install, and have a clean copy of 10.2 back in business. but my machine came with bootable discs for 10.1 and un-bootable discs for the jaguar upgrade...so no dice.
so, okay, tried a greater variety of boring things. (i will not enumerate them here because it makes me cranky just remembering.) eventually i ended up in single-user mode, fsck-ing all the livelong day as instructed by the nice people on the apple discussion forums. i do not exaggerate when i tell you that i spent three hours typing that command, waiting for it to repair errors, and then typing it again in an infinite loop of boredom and rage. it kept finding errors to fix. all i can assume is that 10.2.8 hosed my machine but good.
finally, bored with fsck-ing, i considered my options. i could buy the bootable 10.2 discs for around $120 — but why would i do that with panther coming out? i could continue fsck-ing for the next three days, probably to no avail. or i could entrust my beleaguered emac to the tender mercies of the nice people at smalldog — they could do a clean system reinstall for about $65.
i was buckled into the driver's seat faster than you can say, "why on earth should apple's buggy upgrade cost me money to fix?!" we drove out to smalldog, dropped off the machine, and should be able to pick it up in a few days.
from what i've read — and that's been a lot — 10.2.8 is causing a wide range of problems, from zapping people's printer settings (a minor glitch that's easily fixed) to, well, rendering the computer unbootable. but many people are having no trouble at all with the upgrade. there seems to be little rhyme or reason to it. so if you're a mac user and feeling lucky, go for it (after you've done a thorough backup and made sure you have bootable system discs). but i really wouldn't recommend it.
May 23, 2003
troubleshooting for spackers
i finally brought my palm pilot out of the mothballs for the first time since i got my new computer. you should know that my pilot dates back to 1998; it's practically a clay tablet to be scratched with a sharp twig.
the cradle has a serial connector, but because my computer was made this century, it includes usb and firewire, with no serial ports. this didn't seem to be a problem, as the fine folks at keyspan had anticipated my problem by making serial-to-usb adapters.
i know what you're thinking: yeah, but i bet she found a way to fuck it up. indeed i did.
first i ordered the wrong adapter from amazon. then i borrowed paul's, a solution that worked but not a permanent one. finally paul went to smalldog and bought an adapter just for me — greater love, etc.
just one problem. the adapter has ports for round serial connectors, not the small rectangular 9-pin ones. and amid all our cables, we couldn't find a round-to-9-pin adapter. behold, then, the birth of frankencable.
that's right. 9-pin to 25-pin; 25-pin to round; round to serial-to-usb adaptor. it was going to be a miracle if this actually worked — which of course it did not.
i tried everything i knew to get my computer to talk to my pilot, but the pilot kept bleating, "unable to establish a connection with your computer." i checked all the connections between the various parts of frankencable, and they seemed tight. it wasn't until i'd tried to sync two or three times that i realized...
...i hadn't actually plugged the usb adapter into the computer.
April 05, 2003
ready for my close-up, mr. demille
the view of the birch tree is, well, sorta boring. i am toying with the idea of different cameras placed around the house. here are some contenders:
sewing room cam. i was thinking i would aim it at my design wall so you could see what i'm working on at any given time.
pro: you could send me messages saying, "i like the other color combination better," or, "wait! you're about to make a mistake! fix that!"
con: you'd see how messy my sewing room is during a project.
cat cam. maybe i could aim the camera at the spot the cats best love: the very center of our bed, on top of the fuzzy white blanket.
pro: it could be very relaxing to watch the cats do what they do best -- sleeping.
con: the other thing they do there is perform personal hygiene. that you probably don't really wanna see.
julie sitting at the computer cam. self-explanatory, really.
pro: i am that fascinating.
con: i don't want to scare anyone who might be surprised by just how stupid my hair looks first thing in the morning.
as the spring progresses i may aim the camera at the front perennial bed so you can let me know when it's time to weed.
January 18, 2003
nice puppy.
we just got back from the grand opening of small dog's retail store. waitsfield is about half an hour's drive from our house, dangerously close. we've gone there frequently in the past and skulked around the warehouse while our orders were prepared. our faces are familiar to them: the guy who loaded paul's new computer into our car remembered exactly what i'd bought a few months ago. we've spent enough money there that i was surprised not to see even a modest shrine erected in tribute.
the place was packed. now, vermont has a higher concentration of, well, smelly hippies than most places. and those smelly hippies seem to have a lot of smelly dogs. today small dog simply brought them all together. i would have appreciated the moment more sincerely if i hadn't been so busy pushing the nose of an inquisitive poodle OUT OF MY CROTCH, GOD DAMN YOU.