My aging desktop system (333 MHz Celeron, circa 1999) is ripe for replacement. I would have purchased a new computer months ago, but I promised my wife I won't buy a new machine until I've filed our overdue tax returns (we're due refunds on all of them, so it's not as dire a situation as it sounds. Still, they are quite late, and I needed some motivation to move the task higher on my list of priorities, so this is what we came up with.) In preparation for converting my existing system into a home media server, I purchased a 120GB hard drive and installed it this weekend.
Trouble is, the ancient BIOS on this machine doesn't recognize anything over 32GB! So, after futzing with master/slave settings and figuring out that I had to disconnect my internal Zip drive (I now have five IDE devices -- the Zip drive, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, and two hard disks -- which is one too many; I'll transplant the Zip drive into my new machine, if I ever get our taxes done), I discovered that I'm now the proud owner of a new 32GB drive.
Next stop: the ABIT Web site, to download the most recent BIOS update. Thankfully, flashing the BIOS was easy (I had never attempted it before) and came off without a hitch. Unfortunately, however, it didn't solve my capacity problem.
Finally, I decided to try running the hard disk setup utility from DOS rather than from within Windows. Success! The utility recognized the full capacity of the drive, and installed a dynamic drive overlay to work around the BIOS limitation. So now I have oodles and oodles of disk space; this must be how owners of the original IBM XT felt when they contemplated the seemingly limitless potential of their new 10MB hard drives! Only took me five hours to install...
I also bought a 128MB Secure Digital card for my Palm Tungsten T. No drama there: I popped it in, and It Just Worked™. But when I tried to use HotSync Manager to copy some music files to the card, it crawled along at a glacial 1MB per minute. That's when I discovered this amazing utility: It allows you to treat the storage card as a removable disk on your Windows PC! I used Windows Explorer to drag-and-drop files to the card in a matter of minutes. Well worth the $20 registration fee.
Update: Turns out updating my BIOS had solved the capacity problem, I just didn't see it because I had installed the capacity limitation jumper in order to get the original BIOS to recognize the new drive. I removed the jumper and had the updated BIOS autodetect the drive: Primary Slave: 122GB! Next, I re-ran the hard disk setup utility to remove the dynamic drive overlay, and held my breath while I rebooted: Everything works!
While checking my referer logs today, I discovered this. Cool, huh? Why didn't Google think of that?
I grew tired of that sad little calendar staring back at me from my weblog, silently berating me over the fact that I've been writing only about once a month (or less!) -- and besides, does anyone actually use the thing for navigation? -- so I replaced it with links to monthly archives. Much better!
One minor wrinkle that made the change more challenging: Radio Userland (the software I use to produce this masterpiece) names its index pages "index.html". This site, however, is hosted on a Windows server configured to look for default pages named "default.aspx/asp/htm". Now, I could have simply included the file name in my archive links, or asked my ISP to add "index.html" to the server's list of default pages. But what I really wanted was for Radio to generate archive pages named "default.htm". Here's how I did it:
First, I went into user.radio.prefs.indexFileNames (in radio.root) and changed fname2 and fname3 to "default.txt" and "default.htm", respectively. Then I modified "on getArchiveFilePath" in system.verbs.builtins.radio.weblog.publish so that it returns a file named "default.txt", rather than "index.txt". That's it!
The downside, of course, is that the next time Userland updates the code in question, my changes will be overwritten. Wouldn't it be nice if Radio exposed the default filename as a preference?
Will Durant: "One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say."
Unhappy with the state of VB.NET? Here are two things you can do about it:
Jupitermedia acquires DevX.com.
I started with Fawcette Technical Publications in February, 1999, to work on developing its growing network of Web sites. In January, 2000, that network was spun off as a separate company -- DevX.com -- and I with it. I stayed for just over a year, then returned to FTP because I wanted to work with .NET (DevX was transitioning to ColdFusion).
It was interesting and educational to work for a Silicon Valley startup during those heady days of the dotcom boom. I'm thankful for the experience, and wish DevX continued success (as long as it doesn't adversely affect my current employer! ;-)
I've been enjoying four beautiful days and nights at a beach house in Neskowin, OR (about 15 miles north of Lincoln City). I don't have a digital camera (yes, I'm the last remaining geek without one. I'm also the last geek on earth who hasn't seen The Matrix: Reloaded), but there are some photos of the house and the view here. I was way overdue for a vacation; it's been delightful to relax, eat, drink and watch movies with a few close friends.
One feature of the house they don't mention on the Web site is the wildlife: a family of deer has been foraging nightly in our backyard, and a very precocious racoon has adopted us (our fault for giving him some food); he was peering through our patio door until I went to bed at 1:30 a.m. last night.
The only things that could make this weekend any more perfect are a broadband Internet connection and a smokin' home theater system... ;-)
OK, I'll admit it: When I read this, I feel like this.
Here's another cool tip from Andy Smith: Don't like all those tool windows cluttering up your VS.NET workspace? Shift+Alt+Enter, baby!
