The idea is to use components that are universal and can be reused or replaced during upgrade without having to start from scratch. So, in the 2nd month of our s l o o o o w build project, we’ve selected and chosen our Power Supply. There were many to choose from, such as the winning PSU from OCZ . A Power Stream 520W will handle loads…

S’man and I are doing a s l o o o o w build on a new machine. It will replace our 1998 Windows 95 clunker. Not knocking. It’s just been left in the dust by the latest in planned obsolescence. In stage one of our project. I ordered the case Ah so! CoolerMaster – Wave Master deluxe all aluminium!

Free email from GOOGLE! Called GMAIL, it is currently in beta. Read a review

Microsoft should start being concerned. The last time I tinkered with LINUX I realized that they were in little danger of being displaced. It wasn’t for the everyday user. Linux still isn’t quite ready for prime time but it’s getting there. My install, though it crashed on first attempt, was a success. The installation recognized most of my hardware. I got the network configured too. Linux can be as complicated or simple as you want it to be and it’s nice to have the command console shell. The desktop rivals the Windows GUI. This competition is gaining some steam.

 Going to the public (free) library   

Wanting to discover what this LINUX thing is all about, I’ve undertaken a learning project. I tried RedHat Linux 6.0 a couple of years ago by purchasing their boxed installation. The technical support, which was what I actually bought (since LINUX by all standards is open source and therefore freely obtainable) lasted for 30 days or so. I found that my WINmodem hardware was not compatible with anything but Windows (surprise) and thus my LINUX OS, as cool as it would be couldn’t go online. A computer these days that can’t connect to the internet is crippled. Later, I resurrected the idea thinking that I could network RedHat 6 using my LAN. The network card however, was too complicated to locate drivers for and not supported. I bailed again. These attempts were abandoned, the disc partitions removed and WINDOWS back in full control.

Now I have the idea to try again only this time, instead of a dual boot machine, I will use a dedicated platform. S’man has traded up and his old box will have new purpose.

Starting with a fresh space from scratch, the first event was to wipe the C drive (and that felt good). I used format.exe on a DOS boot floppy disc. After researching the various distributions that are out there (i.e. SuSe, Debian, Knoppix, etc…) I picked FEDORA. Without buying some books on LINUX my only recourse is to learn what I can from Internet websites and most of that info is hit or miss, schetchy. For instance, the procedure calls for downloading 3 huge files (called iso images) that neatly fit 3 CDs. That’s a 1.9 gigabyte transfer BTW. I found a mirror site (Duke edu) which was reasonably fast at ~580 KB/sec., luckily, which is reasonably good for a home cable connection. The errata that I read said to burn these downloads to CDs and install from those. This failed. Back to the Internet to find out why, I dug deeper to find that not just any cd burner would do. Sure, I could copy the files to CDs, but that it would take more $ophi$ticated $oftware to handle things.

Maybe I’m just being thrifty but I am loath to spend money for an operating system that is supposed to be free. After all, after you buy a big fat computer book ($49.95), an at-cost CD set for shipping ($9.95) vs CD burning shareware ($29.95) you could have bought the shrink wrapped Windows XP. I poked around and found a freeware CD utility (well hidden) that did the deed. I also need a boot floppy disc and this effort required finding the Image file and downloading a DOS utility called RawWrite to convert it. The first floppy that I made failed. The second one too. The third one, after trying newer media worked a bit longer but then bombed out. I downloaded a different image from another site thinking that I just had a bad file. Nope. I downloaded another RawWrite file from another site thinking that might be it. Turns out, after more discovery, that the utility doesn’t work right from a DOS window in windows. You have to run it from outside windows. Too bad there isn’t a LINUX cookbook to tell me this stuff. I should write one. Day ONE is over and I now have some install discs. Ready to begin!

Struggling with the laptop, I was trying to swap the CD ROM drive for the floppy drive. These drives share the same bay and can be interchanged. An application allows a hot swap without dealing with a reboot or plug-n-pray. But, no amount of coaxing and repetition could convince Windows to recognize the new drive. I tried removing hardware and re-installing drivers. I tried google. No joy. I gave up. As a work around, I went to another pc on the network and enabled sharing of its media drive. Loading my CD on that one I was able to access it.

Next challenge: upgrade to Norton 2004. This latest includes anti-everything. For some reason the install did not overwrite my 2001 version. ( ! ) There was no explanation nor option just a single line saying that anti-virus was already installed on my system. Nevertheless I continued to follow the dialog box prompts out of curiosity to see the outcome (and partially because I thought I’d screw it up if I aborted). The end result was 2001 and 2004 in series in the system tray. Norton appeared to function but my outlook express, which is intertwined, balked. I used the remove programs utility to uninstall 2001 and then reinstalled 2004. This solved the email glitch but now the Norton app is hinky. Need some help here.

This is an image capture of an email from my inbox. Raised a big red flag. The tip-off is that they ask for personal information bank acct, credit card, password. It’s fraud.The message source reveals a villain:

<form action=”http://207.150.192.12/

This domain address is probably offshore and difficult to shut down, let alone prosecute. By now the crooks have vanished but I’m figuring that there may have been a few poor suckers — victimized.

I need a crosswind calculator. They are available for the PALM as shareware but not for the PocketPC so I’m going to roll my own. Crosswind component data is usually found in a table or chart in printed format. The first task will be to design the equation. The mechanics of the software application form will follow easily.

I google searched for a formula and found one that would duplicate these values.crosswind component = sin (angle between wind and runway) x wind speed.This, I found wouldn’t work out of the box. The sine function was looking for the angle in radians and not degrees. Go figure. To get radians you multiply the number of degrees by Pi and divide the result by 180. I’ll bet my kids knew this…

Example thus:
Runway Heading = 240 and Wind is 270 @ 20 knots
Theta = abs(270-240) = 30
Theta = (Pi * 30) / 180
X-Wind = 20 Sin(Theta) = 20 * 0.5 = 10 knots

this posting is from a t-mobile hotspot @ borders books. i am using a pocket pc handheld device and wi-fi card. unfortunately, since i’m w/o a keyboard. typing this msg is rather painfully slow. neat being able to connect from out in the field. not good for the store though — i didn’t buy any books !