Dunno why, a stray pion, maybe, but the backup program went down and locked up. I tell you, that is a good service. Got online with them with a friendly tech and managed to get the program uninstalled, reinstalled, and the backup underway inside 30 minutes.
Carbonite crashed….they fixed it.
by CJ | Jan 29, 2016 | Journal | 36 comments
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With a dozen, do you get a free rogue pilot who shot first?
Hmm, I wouldn’t mind a…. (…Whoops, brain’s wandering loose again. File that under things I never would’ve said/written publicly when I was a much younger blue being.) At this rate, I probably wouldn’t mind a free Wookiee. Cuddly….. LOL.
— Ahem. Reining in the wandering brain. (Igor, come back here!)
This morning’s computer hazard was feline operative. — I had just botted the computer and the desktop was not yet showing. (The computer is now nearing five years old and has as much RAM as it’ll take. But it works, still.)
Junior feline traipses non-chalant over the keyboard during the bootup process. The computer makes an indignant “boop!” as well it might. If someone with four big feet, a cat food snacking problem, and a case of Attitude were to walk across me, I’d be indignant too!
I thought, well, it wasn’t yet taking input since the desktop wasn’t showing, so likely all was well enough.
Not so! Cat has pussyfooted to the other side, quite pleased with himself for (yet again) getting away with keyboard-trampling.
The desktop appears and — The little scoundrel somehow succeeded in “renaming” my internal, boot hard drive! (To gibberish, of course.) — Sigh. Now, I’ve managed to do that before myself, and I expected Undo Rename to show up. — Alas, no. So…I re-renamed it back to what it was before. — So far, nothing has insisted it can’t work because it can’t find anything on a phantom renamed drive.
The little butterball, who has earned the middle name of Trouble on more than one occasion…cared not one whit for the potential trouble he’d caused. (At least it was only a Rename, and not something more dire and drastic. I’d be as upset if anything happened to my data drive.)
Why, I ask you, all and sundry, does a modern graphical user interface somehow let you tab or select your desktop’s drives so easily that an errant keypress of any kind could, even accidentally, get to your drives’ names and rename them? Oh, accessibility via keyboard is a fine thing, I heartily agree (since I sometimes require it) but this? From my *CAT*?! Oh, Le Sigh.
The little spoiled-rotten so-and-so didn’t know whyever I’d be so upset with him. Because clearly he is the cutest thing on Earth. He thinks so! :rofl: … OK, I love them both, but dang, you cats, enough with the keyboard walking, already. Sheesh!
But this all reminds me to do a backup of my data drive again.
I don’t think he sent out a signal to the mothership, or ordered a case of tuna or catnip…. Yeah, I’m wise to you two characters….
I am fairly sure one of them absconded with the plastic dish scrubber, which was new, as a purloined cat toy du jour. But I haven’t yet found it and wouldn’t really wish to use it now without running it through a heavy soak of bleach. So somewhere, the twosome have stashed my dish scrubber.
Such is life. Avec les chats insouciants.
Cut down a shoebox to 1.5″ thick and use it as a protective cover.
I am convinced all cats have a tropism for keyboards.
Claviertropic? Dactylotropic? Finger-dancing in the tropics?
Heh, a tropism for keyboards. You’ve got a thing goin’, there, Chondrite. :snicker: I think you’re right.
@Paul — A shoebox is too short. It’s an extended keyboard. — But you’ve got a good idea there. I think my next box from Amazon may get a reduce, reuse, recycle, repurposing as a temporary keyboard cover. It doesn’t have to be oh-là -là , just serviceable.
And as a user interface issue, I’d think you ought to have to press something special to get to cycle through the drives / devices on your desktop. Cat’s, toddlers, careless users who do something by accident…. As long as you can get to it easily once you press the special, “I meant to do that” key-combo.
Certain Evil Felines woke us up at quarter past 5 this morning because the cover wasn’t down on the piano keyboard, and we got treated to a rendition of Kitten on the Keys!!
We have had to put one of the small Fancy Feast boxes over the phone, lest someone dial China. I rest my case.
The box that bottled water comes in ought to be about the right length for your keyboard.
I must be weird — I hardly ever get bottled water. But there must be a box around here that would do the trick.
(By the way, a couple of months back, “Action Movie Kid” on YouTube had a great “rocketship” sequence where James (the animator’s little son) gets to fly around in a great cardboard box rocketship. He (the dad) does great animated effects with his son as the star / culprit, and the mom and dad occasionally appear in the videos. Very cute, very funny, very creative, and a super gift for their son (and new daughter) when they grow up.
Y’all gotta see this, an animated flyover of Ceres!
Here at CSMonitor, a reputable source.
Very nice indeed!
Really liked that. Wow, at the level of detail they can get now. — I’ve been watching “The Expanse.” Good sci-fi. Makes me wish I could see some Cherryh fiction on the tube. Er, flatscreen, that is.
Very neat!
A gosh-wow piece.
I wonder what they used as a naming convention for the various features. People who participated in the Dawn program, or perhaps mythological beings from various cultures? After all, Ceres was the Greek goddess of agriculture.
Since Ceres is the Roman god of agriculture, most are other gods of agriculture and similar concepts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_geological_features_on_Ceres
Yeah, I couldn’t remember Demeter’s name for some reason…..
Ahuna Mons looks very out of place; I wonder what geologic processes made it, or if it was a captured rock.
Was Ahuna Mons that sudden, tall mountain? I too found it different from the rest of the features on Ceres and got wondering if Ceres had one “Earth-like” volcano and no more, but then I got wondering if it was large enough to have ever been volcanically active, at least by the processes here on earth.
My initial reaction was of a soon to be eruption, like a swelling boil.
A bit more info on Ceres’ Ahuna Mons, its “stand-out” and apparently 4 mile/6 km high mountain: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/?IDNumber=PIA19631
(I got this link off APOD’s post of today 16/2/5 which features Ceres).
P.s. APOD is NASA’s daily astronomy photo posted on Astronomy Picture of the Day.
That photo makes it look like an out of place iceberg. An iceteroid?
I did notice they said that was false-color (“enhanced” color). Part-way into it, I got excited, thinking, “Is that water-ice in a frozen lake on Ceres?” until I remembered they’d said “enhanced” color. They do give an explanation of the color-coding at the end.
It’s a nifty video. If they do find water-ice, they’ll be tickled, er, blue!
—–
Wiki has had a note up that researchers (in California?) have found evidence of a “9th Planet” out beyond Pluto. So that would make it the “10th Planet” or “Planet X” if Pluto hadn’t been relegated to a “dwarf” planet. Poor Pluto, much like Tyrion…. Very interesting if there’s a 9th planet out there. The note said it’s estimated to mass about 10 times the size of Earth. Personally, I’d have thought that would be worth a picture on Wiki’s main page, but I guess they don’t have photo images yet, unless it’s a few fuzzy pizels. Hard to get people excited over jaggy pixels. But a new planet? Wow!
Has anyone yet noticed that left control, right alt, and delete perfectly match a cat’s stance? Do we think it’s a conspiracy?
cats conspiring? Aw, not possible! They’re so lovable, they wouldn’t dare conspire against us….until you look at all of the crazy ways people dress their cats and then post the pictures on the internet. No wonder they would be perfectly able to do a CTRL-ALT-DEL to prevent us from seeing any of those pictures and possibly getting “ideas”…… 😉
Hmmm…
Keyboards! Aarrgh! — My keyboard’s Backspace key has just died. Really died dead. And the letter between U and W. I habe a new keyboard on order. A cheap non-Apple keyboard. I just bought this one in August. Ugh. Not happy!
Might hae a spare. Looking. Wretched keyboard….
Aha, one spare. I’ll be using its box for a keyboard protector when not in use. I’ve ordered a new keyboard, *not* from Apple. This one lasted only 6 months for $50. I can buy 3 Mac-compatible MacAlly or Logitech keyboards for that, and an Amazon Basics keyboard *might* work. One MacAlly keyboard and one Amazon Basics keyboard ordered. I’m not thrilled by the MacAlly’s layout, cramped with the cursor keys too near the main keyboard. But one or both will work, and this fancy spare will stay the fancy spare, when the new ones arrive. Wow, scheduled for Monday or Tuesday. Good.it’s
Since I’m using my last graph paper pad and I’m doing fonts in good time now, I needed to order graph paper pads or loose leaf paper. Whew! Paper prices, especially for something specialized like graph paper, have really gone up! I found 2mm, 4mm, and 5mm graph paper pads and loose leaf paper. The U.S.-made 2mm loose leaf, in 2 packs of 100 sheets each, has a note it’s being discontinued in 2016. I bought from them.
An imported Japanese graph paper pad was the most expensive. I didn’t buy it. I saw a competitor, country of origin unspecified, that was next-cheaper. The *best* prices I found were from an import from Spain, offering A4 or A5 pages in a “recycled leather” bound notebook with 200 or 300 sheets per notebook. These were still $21 to $24 per *notebook*. So the prices I found all averaged out to 8¢ to 13¢ per *single sheet of paper*. The best deal was the Spanish 300 page notebook, 5mm grid square graph paper. (Or 4mm.) At $24 per pad, it’s still 8¢ per sheet.
I knew prices had gone up, but sheesh!
So I will be happy to buy a Spanish imported notebook. En que se puede escribir mis piensas y desiñar (?) mis esquinas (?) … Oh, my Spanish vocabulary is rusty. IIRC, it’s desinar or desiñar or diseñar for “to draw, sketch,” and las esquinas for “scenes, drawings, sketches.”
I shall forgo the cigarillos but shall not mind an old-fashioned beret. Classical guitar would be welcome, as would something more rockin’.We need not trouble ourselves over the quality of the food, if the company is good, mis amigos y mi querido…. (Heh, OK, went a bit over the top there, did we?) (Heck, I hope I didn’t get this-here liberal arts major fer nothin’!)
But really, 8 cdnts per piece of paper? ¡Ay, que lástima! — Now I know the penny and the nickel should be discontinued. When did I last pay a dollar for anything at the dollar store? Heh. Five and ten cent stores…oh, halcyon days of forgotten, wasted youth! — Oops, sorry, it’s that liberal arts thing again. You know, that undergraduate angst and ennui going on, all that outrage at the state of the world. Heheheh, oh, kid, you didn’t know how good you had it, even on that college budget!
Keyboards: $11 and $15, better than $50. Graph paper pads, $24 and $21. I may have just exceeded the margin for error in my February budget. I’m working hard on font production. Missed my month-end goal for submission, but I think I can still reach mid-February. Making good progress, but I need more income now, not later.
I don’t mind ramen, if I add some veggies and meat. — I am fortunately not quite that far down. Still doing OK on groceries. But other budget items are not so good. — Making it by a hair, but I am still making it. JUst gods-be worried and trying to get things done.
Creatively, however, I’m getting good to great results on my font designs. I’m very hapy with them, anyway. I think tey’ll even sell. :-/ Yes, I shall sell my art gladly. Heck, I’d even halfway consider selling me, but I don’t think anyone’s buying that….. (Heh.)
Yes, shocked at the price of graph paper. Freakin’ shocked.
If you print graph paper on a laser printer, it’ll be cheaper.
Does a Mac not have the capability of a login screen? That should solve the kitten on the keys problem.
Ben, I bought a legal size storage crate to protect my laptop when I have it open to listen to streaming music. It’s open enough to discourage the cats from jumping on it and lets the ventilation works. I paid under $5.00 for it at one of the local dollar stores.
Walt, I never though of printing graph paper! Thanks!
@smartcat — Thanks, good idea! I’ll try that. (This is a desktop computer, but the principle is for the keyboard.)
@Walt — Heh, make your own, eh? That’s simple, if I can get my printer and drawing program to agree on scaling 1:1. (Duh, now why didn’t I think of that?) (I have an old drawing, but the file format’s dead: Freehand.)
Re: the login screen — Yes, in fact, the Mac gets very antsy about its login screen, any time it goes into sleep and wakes up. The Mac OS X is Unix-based under the hood, ultimately, so yes, there’s a login.
This was right between the time I’d entered my username and password to login, and while the desktop is booting up and displaying. (It takes a few seconds to a minute. Mostly, I think it’s making sure its devices are where it last thought they were. The cat jumped up on the desk and dashed across the keyboard and…là voilà , renamed internal boot hard drive. Oh, thanks, kitty.
Apparently, the Mac has some (too) easy accessibility feature whereby one can cycle through and select the items on the desktop; drives and printers, mainly, and likely the Trash. I have accidentally selected the drive and its name before, but don’t know the access key combo that does it, or what usability situation. That anyone, newbie user, veteran user who slips, toddler, pet, could so easily access and rename a drive is…too easy and therefore not a help to users. It should be easy enough to get to each drive / device and open / use them, but not rename them so easily. A chorded key combo might do it, or a sequence, required to rename devices and drives. (Chording keys (multiple keys pressed simultaneously) are a problem for some folks with neuromuscular conditions, and can be awkward or hard to remember for those who don’t have a difficulty.) … Hah, got through nesting my parentheses OK after all. Heh.
Re Ahuna Mons, I kind of wonder if it’s an asteroid impact at a lower V than would happen infalling Earth. I think asteroids have to be something like 500 miles diameter to slowly crunch something down to roundness, and Ceres is around 600. Maybe Ahuna Mons is something in mid crunch, that came in too slowly to pulverize the surface.
Interesting conjecture. If it were that slow the only way I can see it happening is if Ceres has no rotation, or is it revolution, angular momentum. 😉
Earth’s rotation is about 1000 mph at the equator. The rotation of Ceres is about 50 mph at the equator. (LOoked it up, but unlike Bren, I’m not a great on-the-fly mathematician, so check it.) I do have this mental image of Ahuna the object rolling gently along until it hits a bump and sticks and crushes. With a great big 8 painted on it. But I kind of doubt it.
But if one watches closely around 1:40 into the animation, there’s no sign of a “trench” where it would have rolled, and it’s right next to a deep crater. One should expect the material on the edge of the crater to have been broken up at impact and subject to collapse as such an object rolled by. There is a transverse “ridge” on the other side. Things would have had to be “just so” for this thing to have just “plopped into place”–not impossible, no, just somewhat improbable. Ceres isn’t being gravitationally “massaged”, like Jupiter’s moons, to expect a liquid interior, unless possibly in the aftermath of an impact’s kinetic energy. Just hard to say without any data but the image, but I lean to something like that.
It seems fairly bright.
Wonderful, no, astounding to have these images.
Infalling in the direction of the rotation just a little faster than that rotation? The pictures in my mind are rather like a dance where one partner is the center, swinging the other partner at arms’ length and slowly drawing them nearer. Then the outer partner trips.
Hi, everyone. I have been very busy making web pages, in addition to making fonts.
I have just started my font design website. The email is not yet up and running. I still have to do that.
I do not yet have fonts for sale. Those will be sold by 3rd-party vendors when the fonts are ready. I do not plan to sell directly from my site. At least not yet.
The pages that are there should all be complete so far. I have quite a lot more waiting for when they’re ready to post.
Welcome to my new font design site!
http://www.fontstylus.com/
More update news as it becomes available. When I have fonts up for sale (by 3rd-party vendors) I will have updates on FontStylus.com and I will let people know here.
—–
Note Also: I’ve updated my personal website with a PayPal Donate button, available on the main area pages, such as Audio Voice Work.
http://www.shinyfiction.com/
Thank you all!
Email for FontStylus.com is up and running.
I see that WordPress has changed the page around…the comments used to be on the left side of the page, now they’re on the right side, and the archives, which were on the right side, are now on the left…..
and Dave’s Whizmatronic Progress Calculator is no longer there, nor the status reports of the various books either at publisher, in transit, or in progress……hmmmmmm