DNA0101 – the Man Machine blog

At first you might think I was swearing with Â’ , NO… but perhaps I should.  I did a WordPress update and it was not that clean. All through my 50 odd posts are –  Â – where ever there was a second space and-  â€™  - for every colon  I used. Boody hell, how to removed them!

Trying the standard Find and Replace trick did not work yet. I Exported the file and fixed the typos but could not import the changes. I tried doing a replace at the database level but could not figure out my way around.

So I put it out there for anyone who knows how clean up my text to say so. For the other readers of my blog, appologies for the text, I am fixing it one post at a time…slowly  AGhhhh!  Â’ Â’ &$#@*!

….A year and a half later I found a fix. Yup I found a Find and Replace tool within a cool free  Wordpress plugin Ultimate TinyMCE  . Then I wisely passed on the task to my kind sister to proof read the whole site and correct the nasty characters. Be gone with you, evil ones.  ZAP!

Now that it is fixed I feel motivated to write again and have more pride in my work as it has become legible.

Sooooooooo I am a Windows user, shoot me. Kidding …Mac’s are great, kidding… with that out of the way I will proceed to give a general, honest review of Windows 7.

Now I do have 20 years of Microsoft OS (operating system) behind me and I would like not to remember most of it. Early attempts at running a computer using Windows was a risky endeavour. You just did not know when it would crash and how bad. Every day was a new day full of opportunity and chance, till the day death came knocking and you were so SOL. Time for the full computer hell re-install.

Anyway, much has improved since those pioneer days of half-ass programming. I am seeing less crash and burn and less full doom and gloom re-installing. Hurray! Computers are getting smarter. That’s really what you get with Windows 7  (lousy name), less fuck-ups and more reliability. Which is what we all need, computers that understand what’s connected to them, what to do with them and how to fix issues. The last point is the main short-coming I have seen. A computer encounters B weird unknown problem and hangs, totally clueless where, what to do with issue and give you an error message in Klingon dialect.

Upgrade? - if you dare

I just upgraded from XP to Vista for a month then to Windows 7 and I see no need to do that unless you want a smarter OS. Save your money! Stick with XP. (unless your a high-flying gamer, which I am not) What I encountered as a user of XP for many years is frustration at how things changed in Vista and 7 for the sake of change.

Here is how it works. The boys at Microsoft refine and tune under the hood the OS to give you fewer Blue Screens of Death.  That’s a good thing. All these improvements go unnoticed by Joe and Jean consumer when they buy the upgrade. How can MS sell you stuff if you can’t see anything different?  Where is the sizzle? In comes the software architects to mess around with our familiar operating environments we know. They change this, they move that, they even remove options you like! It’s all window dressing that drives me nuts. My familiar  tools in Explorer gone, my preference menus moved, my Outlook Express changed, my favorite icons gone. Why would you remove tools in a program? Arghhh! And worse, NO option to switch back to them!

Cool new themes, new icons, new menus, new sounds…who cares? A computer is a tool to get things done. And to get the job done you need efficiency and speed to move through the task. Microsoft has just added a few days extra time to anyone who has upgraded to Windows 7  to learn where their familiar tools have moved and work that into their personal work flow. Did we really need this?

…more details on Windows 7 in future rants, you can be sure ;^)

I just finished my bathroom reno and was pleased to see that my call to put in sub-floor heating was a good one. At a cost of $400 dollars plus the task of installing, I had a hunch that putting in a heated floor under the mosaic tiling was worth it. You don’t notice it on, but you sure do when it’s off.

Lay out of heating cable

Every, and I mean EVERY woman I mentioned this to gets Ooohhhs and Aaahhhs about it. LOL. That tells me that for resale of my home this is definitely a plus feature. Also it scores well with the girlfriend and so does the whirlpool tub for two.

At first I was going to heat the floor by connecting into the hot water system that heats my rads but was convinced by plumbing suppliers the task would be tricky, expensive and with more unpredictable results. Supposedly it might get too hot to stand on! Forget that….

Comfort and convenience always score well with women. The modern age has come around to give us all sorts of devices that put a smile on our face or an exclamation of pleasure. It has given us a sense of luxury that we all desire in our busy lives.

I was staring at my coffee maker starting to percolate a new pot of java early (6am) one morning. There I was, half awake,  thinking how simple a function brewing is. This pot has just one button to turn it on.  No confusion there: ON/OFF …OFF/ON….This heats the base for the carafe and the cold water in the reservoir.  As it heats to a boil it bubbles up into the basket of grounds and drips down into the pot. Pretty basic stuff for sleepy-eyed me.

One Button Coffee

Such a simple task has over the years gotten very complicated. I was thinking that morning of replacing my caffeine maker with a smaller more modern looking one. A quick scan of store shelves found no direct replacement. All coffee makers have endless features that I don’t want.  With it, I am sure, an owner’s manual that I do not want to read and remember either.  Just the thought of setting the timer to brew on time and not in the middle of the night concerns me. Who needs the hassle? The simple life I say. Well trying to keep it simple is not always easy, as we spin into the world of Sci-Fi movies gadgets.

And so my stream of thought, as I sip on my cup (black, double soya, no sugar) is that simple devices have gotten complicated just because we humans can make them so. Just wait, one day we will have nuclear powered can openers.  This is what happens when design, engineering and marketing depts. have too many meetings and run wild with concepts that we likely don’t need.

This coffee maker is called the Black & Decker Smart Brew. Smart !? it only has 1 button boys how smart is that. Other brewers can make latte, espresso, whipped-up mocha grande BS… Uh-ohhh! I get it, so smart it only needs one button to make a perfect cup.  :^)

Thought it might be fun to share with you photos of all the crazy iPod players found while doing a quick search. It’s nice to see how a device can get so popular that it creates spin-off industries (and employment).

Human design certainly has a broad and imaginative vision of what an iPod user might like to buy. Truly, the main goal a manufacturer has is to sell the damn thing to make money on a product. Regardless as to whether it works well or intuitive to operate is secondary. And then do you actually need it or was it so cute you had to buy it as a gift for a friend.

Cosmic! But does it sound good?

Old look meets new tech

LEGO - kids love this

Lovable with cute buttons

Ugly? Play oldies or metal

High end Hi-Fi tube amp

Purple bowling pins

Ugly mutant thing

Strictly functional

Groove on the throne

And it has fake woodgrain too