Friday, July 31, 2009

Google Adsense Tips

I signed up for Google's AdSense advertising service (mainly to see what all the buzz was about). I found this post by Philipp Lenssen that gives 10 tips for good utilization of the service. And not garbage, useful and legitimate information!

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Porting My Blog

I'm porting my blog from {unnamed service} to Blogger. Wish me luck!

UPDATE: The port went fine... So far, I like Blogger!

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The DTV transition finally bit me...

...but not for the reason you may think.

For a few years now I have grown accustomed to listening to my local TV channel 6 on FM radios (at 87.7MHz). This was good if I was traveling throughout Central Florida for work during news-hour, as I could listen to the news while driving. I see that this is common with most channel 6 stations across the US, as 87.7MHz is the frequency on which channel 6 operates.

Well, the DTV transition has had an unfortunate (and quiet) side-effect. As the analog broadcasts stopped, so did this audio "bleed-over" that I enjoy so much. This means that channel 6 no longer "simulcasts" on my FM radio. My only hope for local news on the radio now is to catch an occasional headline reading on one of the music stations (or I can wait for a natural disaster--like the typical hurricanes we get in Florida).

Currently, channel 6 is broadcasting a DTV help-video on the analog airwaves, which many stations have been allowed to do to alleviate consumer confusion over the transition. This broadcast does play on my radio; however, it doesn't tell me how traffic is doing on I-4!

Linux virgins take note...

Blogger lecterror posted an interesting list of Top 10 misconceptions about linux, which should be good information to give to Linux novices. While his views are decidedly anti-Microsoft, his list definitely represents the advancements Linux is making in the PC community.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Windows 7 and 4GB RAM

WARNING: Long post ahead!

I tried the beta of Windows 7 x64 back in January on my main PC, set up in a dual-boot scenario with Windows XP SP3 x86 (my main OS). It worked well, and I used it for a couple of days.

I purchased 4GB of 2x2GB Dual Channel RAM (Corsair brand), since XP was always sluggish even on 1GB. After installing the two modules, I was unable to start Windows 7. Windows XP never complained (although since it is 32-bit, it only reports 3.25GB of RAM installed). It complained "The bios in this system is not fully ACPI compliant".

Friday, May 22, 2009

Font issue in Windows

Recently I had a problem with fonts in Windows (mostly Firefox) suddenly showing up as serif instead of sans-serif. Anyone who uses computers often enough will notice the difference when sans-serif fonts are substituted with serif fonts or vice-versa. Another side effect was that the dots that normally show up for the password textbox on the Windows login screen showed as boxes one day, which usually means the character can't be rendered. The next day the dots came back, but they looked as if they were set for subscript (lowered), and it looked all wrong.

I found a solution by following this link on About.com, found through my friend, Google. About halfway down page two, there is a section called Could your fonts be corrupted? This got me to thinking...