Solutions and services for business and home computers

A quick link to an Apple support page showing keyboard shortcuts – including startup.

A cardinal on the feeder last weekend seemed a good opportunity to test the 24x zoom on Amy’s camera. Here is the result:

A cardinal on our feeder.

After trying all summer to install the opensource ILS software Koha on our library’s Mac Mini, I finally succeeded in getting it installed on a Debian system I set up on a computer kindly donated by a client of mine. And even better, I was then able to import the records exported from our old library software. Pretty cool. But there are a few issues with the import and apparently I need to use a program called MarcEdit to clean up the Marc file. Trouble is, MarcEdit runs natively under Windows. To run under either Linux or Mac OS X, I need to install Mono on the Mac, or both Mono and/or Wine on Linux. Neither of these seem straightforward. I think I’ll run MarcEdit on the XP machine at the library.

And then I need to figure out what format the Patron file is in. But really – it’s getting close. Pretty neat stuff.

This is cool stuff. Largest ever hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold found in Staffordshire, UK.

VPN stopped working between two Symantec Gateway Security 360 routers. They both stopped recording any VPN stuff in the logs at the same time too. Puzzling.

Finally got a fax server working after uninstalling and then reinstalling the fax service. The problem was that the server realized a call was coming in, but would then say (in the logs) that “the incoming call cannot be answered as a fax call”. After the reinstall and reboot the server picked up calls just fine. Whew.

Struggled today to find the cause of a client’s browser choking on certain web pages that contain javascript. Not all pages with javascript fail to load but, for example, http://www.nytimes.com did. The problem occurred after upgrading to 10.5.8 and Safari 4.0.3. And, related or not, Mail gets no further than “downloading 1 of 31 new mesages”. Hmmm.

This fall I’ll again be teaching Adult Ed courses at Camden Hills Regional High School. Tim Dresser, the Director of Adult Ed, has asked which courses I’d like to teach. If you have any suggestions for courses you’d like to see me do, please email him and the link above. Let me know too and I’ll be happy to discuss it with you.

With Verizon Wireless taking over Unicel, my little Nokia N95 was going to stop working sometime in May. I’d been wondering what I was going to replace it with. Although the iPhone is very tempting, I really didn’t feel up to the “trick AT&T” routine that you have to do up here in Midcoast Maine to get one. And the coverage concerned me. So… last Friday I went to US Cellular and got a Blackberry Curve.

I’m liking it more the longer I have it. It does a few things I really wished the N95 had done – namely, if you get a phone call from someone, it’s easy to then call them. Or if you get a call from someone, you can look in the log, and easily email them.

I do miss the camera (both the video and still) on the N95. And I miss the radio, since I’ve had no radio in my car since 2004.