Thursday, August 30, 2012

It's back to school time

books
It's not just the bricks-and-mortar schools that are starting up classes again, online classes are beginning again too.

LifeHacker recently posted their list of notable online classes, check it out at LifeHacker University.

I enrolled for the Sustainability class at Coursera, where many colleges and universities offer free classes. Another web site that brings together many schools is the Open Courseware Consortium. MIT offers classes at OCW.

Are you taking any classes online?


Graphic Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Snail Mail Still Slowly Going Away

mail box
U.S. Mail box via WikiMedia Commons.
Just another sign of the slow obsolescence of snail mail.

I went to mail a few letters, ol' fashion paper letters, and the envelopes I had were so old that the gum on them was useless. It had dried out or something.

Photo Credit: WikiMedia



Monday, August 27, 2012

The Residuels - Pretty Girl

 

 

tags: punk blues fuzz garage garage punk Philadelphia

 

Sunday, August 26, 2012

My how things have changed at Apple

Steve Jobs once said something like Good artists borrow, great artists steal. But now that Apple has stuff worth stealing, stealing is wrong.


Saturday, August 25, 2012

How the 'news' really works



Which is why I do not watch the 24/7 cable news networks or network news. It's been almost a year and I'm probably better informed now.

Turn off your TV!



Friday, August 24, 2012

ESPN 3 & Xfinity Problem

Technology is wonderful - when it works. Cord-cutters take note.



I have watched sports online with ESPN for several years now. First they called it ESPN 360 and now it is ESPN 3 and you can watch at WatchESPN.com (oh what a clever URL). Briefly if your TV service provider (that is if you pay for TV) participates (that is pays ESPN) then you can watch ESPN's online services. Comcast/Xfinity started a few years ago.

So anyway last night I went to watch a Canadian Football League game (don't judge me!) and I got the message above. Of course there is no way to message anyone at ESPN and Comcast/Xfinity 'help' via Twitter is not much use either. I found things were working sometime in the second half.



Thursday, August 23, 2012

EasyWallet Less Than Zero: A Negative Bitcoin Balance?

EasyWallet graphic
How does this happen?

How did I get a negative Bitcoin balance in my EasyWallet account?

I thought I was just transferring out the BTC I had in the account, taking into account the slight fee of course,  but it should be zero not less than zero.

Don't know what Bitcoin is? Check this out: Bitcoin.org.


Wednesday, August 22, 2012

I'm liking my new external hard drive

A few weeks ago I bought a Western Digital Passport external hard disk drive and so far I really like it. It's 500GB which is larger than the HDD in my PC. Also it's USB 2.0 and 3.0 so when I build or buy a new computer in a few years I can get the benefit of USB 3.0 speed.

The WD Passport comes with what looks like back-up software on it but I just plug it in and manually send files and folders to it. In the future I may look into the back-up software or, more likely, try Windows back-up application.

Anyway $50.00 and no complaints from me.