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I also noticed people taking a lot more photos with their digital cameras. Flashes were popping off everywhere. I saw stars half the night. Do people take more photos with digital cameras because they no longer have to buy film or pay to have it processed? Several (kind) folks commented that they thought I'm photogenic .. which I think means: 'You look better in photos than you do in real life.' =)
I don't usually do this, but your guides are excellent! I recently
built a computer with a 120-GB
Western Digital hard drive and was unsure about the best
way to partition it. I searched
Google and found your site. After reading your guide, I decided
on the following scheme: Mike C. I just read your Guide to Ripping and Encoding and wanted to say thanks! I've collected MP3's for years and never realized how complicated the issue of audio fidelity was. They're almost all 128-kbps. Thanks for presenting this info in such a clear, concise way! I downloaded EAC and RazorLAME,
and they both work great! It's taking me a while to re-do my whole collection,
but well worth the increased quality. Thanks bro! [Rad note: Perhaps I should mention that audio quality does not improve by re-encoding a lower bit-rate (e.g. 128-kbps) MP3 to a higher bit-rate (e.g. 192-kbps). You must re-rip the song from the CD and encode the original wave file. MP3 is a lossy encoding format, and you can't retrieve bits (quality) once discarded (encoded). It you've ever blown up a small photo, you understand the principle.] |
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| Hello. I found your site searching for info on Yosemite. Your description--with photos--of climbing Half Dome was fascinating. I want to do it this fall, but that is one steep rock! I'm 42, in decent shape, play basketball once a week and run 3X a week. Will I be able to make the climb? Are there steps built into the rock on the way up? Or is all cable and rock? I don't have the strongest upper body and I'm not the best with heights. (Maybe I've answered this one myself.) We're heading to Yosemite mid-October. I'd appreciate any advice or warnings. Your site is great. I'd love to have made half your hiking trips. Steve T. G'day Rad. Your site is intelligent and informative. Your Ghost guide is right on the money. I've gotten into the habit of creating an image of my partition before loading new drivers, so the occasional foul-up is only a temporary setback. Love the cat photos. Why is it cats enjoy lumpy surfaces like mixers or keyboards to parade around on? There's nothing like the 'chord of death' kitty can produce when you leave the synth on. Of course, the sound will startle him, so he'll spring off. Very avant garde. I don't encourage my cats to sleep on the monitor any more, because at some fatal juncture in a game, a big fluffy tail swishes across the screen & comes to rest right over the enemy's gun emplacement .. happened once too often. My
cats Mr. Rad, Great website. Excellent job at organizing an amorphous
and confusing mass of info. The ASPI
guide is priceless. Thanks for the effort. Hi. I found your site searching the Google Directory for info on backing up a partition: Computers > Software > Backup. I especially like your combo of technical info and personal philosophy. Thanks for really useful, low noise site. Kip W. Thanks for the excellent guides. I found them useful and easy to read. Dave E. Good day. I was having a strange problem with my hard drive. PowerQuest Drive Image Pro went nuts because of a Driver Overlay on my Quantum Fireball. I sent a request to Maxtor support, but they were unable to help. I got tired of trying to get assistance from people who know IT only a little better than me. I started researching the problem myself and discovered your page on deleting hard drive partitions. Wipe worked perfectly. Even though it appears I have a very particular case, it solved my problem. No one else could help. Many thanks
So I left the TV on and sat down at the PC to update the site .. when my eyes started burning. I mean, it felt like somebody rubbed them with 400-grit sandpaper. They started burning so bad I had to drive to the store at 11PM and pick up some Visine. They feel better now, but are still bloodshot. Half the bottle is gone already. (I keep it in the fridge.) That was weird. Maybe it had something to do with the power of suggestion. Needless to say, I didn't watch the rest of the movie.
I played Mr. Snoopy Private-Eye with the folks sitting near us and learned that you have to know someone who works for the city to get these premium seats. I have ordered tiks in the past thru the usual channels (box office) and told them to "give me the best seats you have", and still wound up in the nose-bleed sections. The Pageant keeps getting better. This year they added a four-man barbershop quartet-like group to sing some of the songs that accent some of the displayed artwork. The theme for this year was Seasons. But they mixed it up: summer, spring, fall, winter. In other words, they didn't lump all the "winter" works together. They also let you see how they create more of the works. Everybody seemed to enjoy this, because it seems like magic. In the past, they used to close the curtain between each work, so you coldn't see them changing the set .. except for one piece, where they show you how they do it. A 25-person orchestra plays accompanying music. First class operation all the way. I liked when they had fake snow fall from the sky. My favorite was a 4-panel Japanese geisha-girl-in-landscape. Each panel represented one of the four seasons. Jaw-dropping. Several others featured nude women painted silver and gold. They were also remarkable. I would go every night if someone would give me tickets. Everyone agrees that the Pageant is hard to describe. "They use real people to re-create art on stage" is the usual explanation. But what is so impressive is that, even tho you *know* that the people are real, they still look like inanimate art. Some claim that "it's all in the lighting," but it's more than that. In the end, no explanation can suffice: you simply have to see for yourself. You could see some people move slightly, especially if they had to hold awkward poses. And scenes that contained children were easy to see them blink. But most remain perfectly still and you can't even see them blink. Everybody brings binoculars to see if you can catch them blinking. It's hard. Anyway, I love the Pageant. It got out late, and I was pretty tired yesterday. Hence: no update. Before the show, we went to the Royal Thai (in Laguna) where I had yummy duck with basil, mint and other Thai spices. There goes my girlish figure.
Tonight we're off to the Pageant of the Masters .. one of my favorite entertainment venues (second only to Cirque du Soleil). These are the best tickets I've ever had (5th row), which we received from (the wife of) a local government official (friendz in high places). Seems like you have to know someone to get decent seats. Usually I have to sit up in the nose-bleed section, cuz it's so hard to get good tickets (any tickets). I discussed the Pageant back on August 5th. The last show is Saturday (the 30th). They've been performing every night, all summer long. The Pageant is what Laguna is known for. When you enter the town on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), a sign reads: "Welcome to Laguna Beach: Home of the Pageant of the Masters".
He also mentioned receiving 1057 virus-containing-emails yesterday .. "and those are the ones that got thru my spam filter" .. which means a lot of people aren't using virus protection. "No Radified readers" I assured him. =) He's using Norton Anti-Virus, so "none got thru".
My money is on Jason. But the kids all say I'm crazy. They think Freddie is too smart for Jason, and that he'll slice dumb-ass Jason to ribbons. "Brains always beat brawn," they say. But you know Jason: he keeps on coming .. cuz he just doesn't know when to quit. Might have to load up all the neighborhood kids this weekend and take them to the movies (late, when it's dark out), and settle this once and for all. Go Jason! The computer? Ahh, don't ask. But thanks for all the letters of encouragement .. and the suggestions. Anyone know where I can find a good sledgehammer?
Noticed that the power supply unit was unusually hot. Suspect it may have cooked the motherboard. This is similar to the same thing that happened to that last system this PSU was in (system got very hot and died). I recommended purchasing a new PSU with the new system. They are so inexpensive these days and can save you so much grief. And it's very hard to trouble shoot bad PSU's. The old one is 300-watts. It feels light and cheap, with a brand I never heard of before (ACME?). I use an Enermax-430 myself, and like it. I recommended this unit, but he tried to save money, saying, "The old one *should* work, right?" I said, "Yeah, it *should*. But you don't have to use PCs for very long to know that things don't always work the way they should." (Can I get an Amen, somebody?) Doesn't make sense to spend all that money on a sweet system, with the best motherboard, CPU and RAM, and then skimp on a measly PSU. I even use a UPS on my system, because California power is not the best in the country. Anyway, we have a few more tricks up our sleeve, but it looks like we're going to have to box up the motherboard and send it back. We have no POST .. only an illuminated power light on the mobo and the CPU fan runs. Nothing shows up on the monitor. No beeps. The parts are listed in the post for 14 August. The bottom line is: WE DON"T KNOW what is wrong. Can you say, "frustration"?
But it would quit after downloading only a small part with an error that said: "The following items failed to install. Try installing them again." At first I thought the MS site was overloaded, but after a few days of the same thing, I searched the Net and found this to be a common problem. Seems that MS incorporates many checks and balances into their Update service, which makes it easy to flag a problem and terminate the update. Long story short: I resolved the issue by re-naming the directory CatRoot2 (not to be confused with a similar directory named simply CatRoot) .. to CatRoot2_old. This directory is located windows\system32. I rebooted and the problem was gone. Since Windows can't find the CatRoot2 directory, it creates a new one. So I updated the operating system with all the latest security patches, downloaded the latest drivers,.. defragged and created a Ghost image. Ah, peace of mind.
Joshua posted a follow-up about Prime-95 vs Hyper-Threading.
I wrote to George, who is in charge of Prime-95, and asked if he planned to modify the code to take advantage of Hyper-Threading. His response:
This mobo came with *black* IDE and floppy cables. I've never seen black cables before. Very cool looking. Little things like that really get me excited. I also noted that the Intel memory controller hub chip [on the mobo] came with it own installed heatsink.. a fairly large headsink. That also impressed me. It also supports Serial-ATA hard drives. Anyway, we're going to try to assemble this badboy without breaking anything. When it's all said & done, we'll run Prime-95 over night to test the system's stability.[P-95 runs the CPU at 100% power.] If we wake and the PC is still running .. we're golden. It's exciting.
I hope everything goes well, since I recommended the components. I haven't built a system in over a year. Should be fun .. if all goes well, that is. If not .. weeping & gnashing of teeth .. or worse.
I remember when I first posted the guide, two years ago. It debuted way back on page 8 (position #80). Each month it slowly worked its way up the rankings. About six months ago, it hit the first page (top 10 results), and requests for the guide soared. As it climbed from the bottom of page #1, the guide became increasingly popular. Amazing how much of a difference Google rankings can make on a site's popularity. It began as a meager email to a friend who was having problems ripping CDs. Google keeps the details of their ranking system a secret, but we know it's based on the number of referring links. Whatever the specifics of Google's inner-workings might be, I try to concentrate on providing the most helpful and well-written guides on the Net (content). I update them frequently and incorporate reader comments. Google software engineer Matt Cutts seems to agree when he says, "The best use of a webmasters time is building good content." [from the paragraph titled "How does Google Rank Web Sites"] People who run other sites have seen fit to link to my guides, and include them in their FAQs,.. Knowledge Base,.. Resource pages, and Tech support forums. Even foreign language sites link to them. Supposedly Google sees these links and consequently raises its ranking of my pages. I do no self-promotion .. beyond what you see posted here. The Ghost guide is still more popular, tho. Try searching for 'Norton Ghost' and see what you get.
I know people who modified their PCs by cutting a hole (Dremel) in the side of their cases, and connected rubber-insulated hoses (1 supply and 1 return) to a mini beer-fridge. It keeps their system components cool and running stably. Computer electronics don't like heat. The trick is to avoid condensation. Speaking of stable systems, a buddy is designing a new system around the Asus P4C800-E motherboard. It comes with the Intel 875-P chipset and sells for ~US$195. He's looking to power it with a 2.8-GHz P4 CPU (800-MHz system bus). He might call today and order the parts. Joshua recently did something similar. S'cuse me while I get back to perspiring. Might listen to Music in the Park tonight.
He gave us his card, which contained his email address .. and a gold seal beside the title State Senator. I probably should protect his privacy, but I can say his state is north of the Mason-Dixon and east of the Mississippi. It's also Sharon's home state, so they had plenty of common ground to discuss. Being the skeptic I am, I looked him up on the Internet, and, sure enough, that's the guy. He seemed like a regular chap .. huffing & puffing in the thin mountain air .. just like me. His wife was down to earth and we even liked his son. In fact, the Senator took this photo of us. If I remember my US Government correctly, each state has two senators. Anyway, I received a note from him today, thanking us for the pics. Maybe someday he'll return the favor by taking care of a parking ticket for me.
We get lots of letters from people who are inspired by the chronicles, and even from those who apply to graduate Film school at USC. But it's a rare treat to get a letter from someone who has actually been accepted. Note his mind set: I won't be outworked. That's the right attitude. Filmmaking involves more perspiration (sleep-deprivation) than inspiration. Even a bad film requires a lot of work. We expect great things from him. He has an advantage over students who don't know what to expect. Some day, when Dave is a famous director, you'll be able to say, "I knew him when..."
The whole season, which lasts all of July & August, with performances every night of the week, sells out before the first show. You have to know someone to get the good seats. But decent seats can usually be had from scalpers out front. Another trick is to line up at the box office an hour before they open. There you can purchase cancelled tiks for face value. The night before, they will post [on the box-office window] how many will go on sale when they open [9AM, I think]. Limit 2 per person. So if they have 10 tiks available, and you see 5 people waiting in line, you're too late. Most people bring a chair to sit in, along with a copy of the LA Times. Last show is August 30th. Bring a pair of binoculars .. to see if you can catch one of the performers blink. Hard to believe they're real people on stage .. until they step down and walk off. You want a nice restaurant before the show? I can recommend Sorrento Grille. [My favorite] It's walking distance from the Pageant .. which always concludes with da Vinci's The Last Supper. If you know someone in the show, you can get tiks for free. I wonder who is playing Christ this year.
I previously had an old, clunky Epson ink-jet that was noisy and slow. It finally quit after several years as my primary workhorse. The Brother was up & running in minutes. Simply install the toner cartridge, fill the paper tray [with 250 pages], load the drivers, and you're good to go. I run mine on the printer port, but this model also supports USB 2.0. Comes with 8MB RAM and a standard 1-year warranty. Got mine at a local OfficeMAX for US$229 [minus $50 rebate = $179]. The persistent check-out girl tried to work me for the $29 extra year of warranty. I declined .. about 10 times. A 6,500-pge replacement toner cartridges goes for $65. That's a penny a page. |
31August2003 - Went to a garden party last
night. Noticed lots of digital cameras there, but no
film cameras. Saw some Canons (I own a 
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