Tara: 'Your One-Stop Spot to Shop for Lots of New-Age and Occult Items.' Catchy. Giles: Think so? Tara: Uh huh. In a... hard to say sorta way.

'Sleeper'


Buffistechnology 3: "Press Some Buttons, See What Happens."

Got a question about technology? Ask it here. Discussion of hardware, software, TiVos, multi-region DVDs, Windows, Macs, LINUX, hand-helds, iPods, anything tech related. Better than any helpdesk!


Jessica - Oct 09, 2008 3:29:03 am PDT #7804 of 25501
And then Ortus came and said "It's Ortin' time" and they all Orted off into the sunset

So I checked the log for my OSX install yesterday, and as I suspected, it was hanging on the printer drivers, which is apparently A Thing with Leopard installs.

I'm trying again today and hoping it goes more smoothly, but in case it freezes up again, where do I click to tell it to skip the printer drivers since this computer doesn't have a printer and almost certainly never will?

[eta: Nevermind, it worked this time. Am now crossing my fingers that the FCS install will go smoothly too, now that this computer is, OS-wise, clean and new.]


tommyrot - Oct 09, 2008 5:04:47 am PDT #7805 of 25501
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

System lets your plants blog their daily existence

The "Midori-San" is a system that allows a normal houseplant to write entries in a standard blog. In a similar way to its distant cousin, the "Botanicalls" project, the Midori-San uses surface potential sensors to read the bioelectric current flowing across the surface of the leaves. As the current fluctuates in response to environmental factors such as temperature changes, humidity, vibration, electromagnetic waves and nearby human activity an algorithm translates the data into sentences which are posted to the plant's blog. Owners can subscribe to the plant's blog to follow it's story, and even earn the plant some cash by clicking it's Google Adsense Ads. I guess there is such a thing as easy money.

This is cool - I'm tempted to get a plant and do this. Of course, I'd probably end up accidentally killing it... or my cat would intentionally kill it. And then people reading the blog could watch my plant die. Hmmm... would it be worth all the hate-mail?


Tom Scola - Oct 09, 2008 7:51:35 am PDT #7806 of 25501
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

It looks like I'll be buying a new notebook next week: [link]


meara - Oct 09, 2008 8:26:57 am PDT #7807 of 25501

Oooh. I hope it's exciting and fun news, and not just "ooh, fancier insides. Yippee"


tommyrot - Oct 09, 2008 8:28:36 am PDT #7808 of 25501
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

There are rumors of an Apple laptop that starts at $800... so maybe not a netbook, or at least not a cheap one....


Jesse - Oct 09, 2008 2:08:14 pm PDT #7809 of 25501
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

I have Vista and am using IE 7, and fairly often, when I close a window, the whole shebang shuts down because "Explorer has stopped working." Well, of course it stopped working -- I told it to! Anyone know what this is about/how to stop it?


Dana - Oct 09, 2008 2:16:49 pm PDT #7810 of 25501
I'm terrifically busy with my ennui.

Explorer is different than Internet Explorer. Explorer is kind of what runs Windows.

Can't help with the problem, though -- I run Vista and IE7 on this laptop, and I've never had that problem.


Juliebird - Oct 09, 2008 2:47:25 pm PDT #7811 of 25501
I am the fly who dreams of the spider

TV question:

my mother is visiting, and as she always does, she pressed buttons on the remotes and screwed something up. I now have no volume on my TV. I put in a DVD and the volume works fine, but from the cable TV, nothing.

On the bright side, I didn't have to listen to her news shows and (news) talk shows. Actually, maybe I shouldn't try to fix the volume until after she leaves...


Tom Scola - Oct 09, 2008 2:49:47 pm PDT #7812 of 25501
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

What kind of cable box do you have?


Jesse - Oct 09, 2008 3:04:47 pm PDT #7813 of 25501
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

Explorer is different than Internet Explorer. Explorer is kind of what runs Windows.

I definitely mean the browser, but will double-check the error message. It's just so weird.