taimatsu | Entries tagged with geek assistance

I'm having trouble with Firefox 3.0.7 (which I think has recently updated itself) and Flash 10; just since yesterday Flash items have stopped working well with mouse-over. I play a lot of Flash games, and many of them have, for example, text that pops up when you mouse over an item - this just doesn't work now unless I double-click. Another game which usually has a round cursor doesn't work at all (cursor vanishes and is replaced by normal arrow, which then has no game effect) unless I hold down the mouse button.

What is going wrong here? Where do I start to find out how to fix it? It's very frustrating - several games are unplayable.

Edit:Reinstalling Flash seems to have fixed it. Lucy 1 - Revision Fairy 0.

Computer is being annoying and I cannot pin down why. Suggestions and advice welcome. (Reminder: this machine runs Debian Etch/KDE.)

Basically, it's mostly fine, except that sometimes it runs very slowly. When it does this, the 'hard disk activity' LED lights constantly, and I can hear "chug chug chug chug.... chug chug chug chug..." noises from it. I can't see anything using 'ps wux' which would indicate what was causing this. However, by trial and error, it seems to be something to do with my iceweasel browser. I have no idea what, and it's not as straightforward as 'iceweasel runs, thigns break', but once I start opening several tabs and doing other stuff - which the machine coped fine with a few weeks ago - things start moving at a snail's pace and the computer becomes almost unusably slow. How do I work it out? It's driving me nuts.

I am crap at email. Part of this is because I use mutt, and I am crap at mutt. I have been using it for well over a year now and I'm not getting any better, so it's time for a change. I always intended to go back to a graphical mailreader when I had my own computer, and now I do. Back in the day I used the Netscape mailreader on my iMac; now I am running Debian/KDE. I want something which will pick up mail sent to about three addresses, and allow me to sort it all into nice folders and things, and not be too complicated to configure. Any suggestions?

My computer is now less reliable than my timekeeping, which is saying something. It's a major source of stress and awkwardness. I really really need to assemble some sort of BETTER computer, which does not BSOD every few minutes or go phut if you nudge the power cable. It does not have to be a super-duper fancy machine - it needs to browse the web, run some sort of word processing program, and be able to cope with my camera, printer and scanner. A laptop is better but a desktop would be just fine.

I am on Reading Freecycle, but the group does not accept wanted ads for large electrical items like laptops/PCs, so I cannot just go 'laptop plz kthxbai'. I have responded to an ad for the bare bones of a PC tower - it has no hard drive and minimal RAM, but other bits (eg. graphics card, case etc) are there. I may or may not get it. Anyway it's in Earley so I'll have to get a taxi or a lift from someone to pick it up.

So this is a plea: if you have any computers or bits of computer that you think I could use to Build Something Better, please consider donating them to the cause. I offer hugs, biscuits, company and potential dinner in exchange - and perhaps some money if you have something especially good that you would otherwise sell. Additionally, if you think you have the sk1llz to help me repair my existing laptop, do say.

Oh yes, and, MP3 players.

I really want to get myself an MP3 player. I used to have a 20Gb iPod, which I loved very much, until I threw it on a train station platform and it broke. I was going to same up for a new 30Gb iPod, but my beloveds have reminded me that actually other MP3 players exist and might be a better deal.

Criteria:

I want something which will fit enough music for a 5-hour train journey at least. My full music collection (when Robert has the time to copy me our joint stash) will be well over the capacity of most players, so I can't ask to fit all my music on a thing. But I want lots to choose from.

Something that does playlists in the manner of the iPod would be nice. I want to be able to play sleepy-music or bouncy-music or none-of-the-Beatles or whatever.

I don't care about that whole video thing.

It must be able to cope with the kind of files iTunes uses (AAC?) as that's much of what I have.

Ideally it would work with iTunes, or with some other non-evil software that will not be lots of hassle to transfer to and which has similar features.

I don't use the iTunes Store, so that particular DRM issue isn't relevant.

So, what do you suggest? I am not spending over £200 on this at all, ever; suggestions in the under £100 category and the under £200 category would be good, though I recognise the former may have trouble with the first criterion.

Talk to me!

Ok, so it's AVG causing the BSOD, and tomorrow I will work out which of the six drivers it is, and reinstall things and stuff. Thank you all for your help and advice.

However! In my computer-fiddling, I made the grave error of updating the driver for my Netgear wireless card, via the Windows website, and it DOESN'T WORK ANY MORE, which *really* pisses me off. What happens is that when I start up all is well, but the icon for the driver utility software which is usually in the system tray, and turns green when it connects to the network, is not there. I can start the utility from the Start menu, and the icon appears (in red, not green) and the program comes up, telling me it's 'Associating...' and then 'Scanning...' but then it disappears and closes itself down after about ten or twenty seconds. It just exits, over and over. I found the Windows 'driver rollback' feature, but the previous driver has not been backed up, so I can't use it.

It worked before! Why would updating it make it fail? I am so cross! Anyone got any ideas? All I can think of is to uninstall it entirely and then make Windows find it again and download the driver from the web. But presumably it would install the same updated driver...

I have got the laptop to start up properly, by booting in safe mode and following instructions for finding out which drivers were not M$-verified, and then disabling the obvious recent bunch. Unfortunately this has involved disabling my virus protection software, AVG Free 7.5. Is re-downloading and reinstalling it likely to fix the problem, or should I do something else?

Argh, I have a computer problem!

I started up my rickety laptop this morning, and it got to the black Windows screen with the little progress bar, and then flashed a blue screen at me and restarted. It has done this repeatedly now. I have started in Safe Mode with Networking, and am hence actually online and functional, but this is plainly not ideal. I have had devce driver issues in the past, so I suspect that is the problem, but I am going to need advice on dealing with it. As a first step, I am looking up how to change the System Failure = Auto-Restart option as it is preventing me actually reading the blue-screen message.

Geeks: What do I do after that?

Am trying to understand image resolution in Photoshop.

I am producing a book cover at a specific print size - 18.1 cm x 11.1 cm. The resolution should be 300dpi if at all possible, with an absolute minimum of 150dpi.

I have created a canvas in Photoshop with the right cm dimensions and resolution, and I have pasted my photo into it. The photo fits, which is fine, but really I want to resize the photo to focus on a section of it. If I select an area and make it bigger won't I make it look pixellated when it prints?

Can anyone help me get my head round this?

If I wanted to buy myself a reasonable-quality digital camera for UKP100 or less this weekend, how realistic would I be being, and where should I look if it were possible? I want to buy it in person, not online. It's got to be easy to use and produce basic web-quality images. I'll want to be able to plug it into both Windows and Mac computers. If it were difficult to break, that would be a bonus. I have no idea how realistic my budget is.

Discuss.

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taimatsu no monogatari

tales of taimatsu

Entries tagged with geek assistance

Firefox/Flash problem

Computer behaving oddly

Email

Computer bits reqiured

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Geek assistance part THREE, separate problem

Geek assistance part deux

BSOD

Digital image manipulation

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April 2019

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