Under the hill and far away

Experts and foresighters keep telling me the PC is dead as a platform. My personal PC is certainly at the end of its lifespan: No reasonable upgrades seem to be able to make it last just that little longer anymore. I will have to get a new one.

So – although I somehow doubt it — I have been forced to construct what might be my last classical PC.

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Design is important.

When choosing a theme for this blog, I realised a couple of things:

1) I really dislike most of the generic blog themes I found. They are too newspapery, too boring, to corporate or too messy. Few read well.

2) Most theme designs look corporate or newspapery, or they look very personal, nerdy or teeny. Neither appeals to me.

3) Very few designs combine good accessibility with — well, any other quality.

In the end, I found out that I will need a custom design to fit my demands. In the meantime, I chose this design as a temporary holder look.

So, why this design?

1) It is simple both in looks and code. It has little mess, and was easy to edit and adapt.

2) It sends a signal that this blog is not to be taken too seriously, it does not look corporate or professional, which is very much intended. If it disencourages people who look for professional looking stuff, this is part of the intention.

3) It has some (I admit not too subtle or appealing) relationship to the blog title. Which again comes from the street I live in. I don’t really mind that it is a bit tired with Tolkien-thematics, or fanboy thematics in general.

So, in due time, this blog will look better, as well as more serious. And due time does not mean tomorrow, I’m afraid.

Ebooks can be fun, too. But creating them is still a bit tricky.  I have been playing a bit around with the formats, and tried to convert a couple of books set in Word and PDF into kindle/mobi and epub (for iPad, Sony and everything else). It turns out this was pretty tricky without having Office/Word or InDesign installed — and I have neither at my private computers. Neither can I install any converters at my locked-down work computers.  It turns out that all the cool converters I tried required one of those packages installed. No juice for Apple Work or Open Office users.

The solution was to use a little known shareware word processor called Atlantis, and use the Word-formatted originals (not PDF).

So step by step, on a Windows computer:

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This has been a devastatingly cold winter in these parts. Or at least, colder than any other winter in a generation or so. Thus, the topic of insulation has been on everybody’s lips and todo-lists, including mine.

Our 120-year old 19th century-bourgoisy-apartment in the middle of the city is already pretty well insulated by Oslo apartment standards: Hi-tech insluation materials all over and dual windows which still hold their own after 120 years.  The door however, is also a 120 years old, and still has single pane glass (although of a modern anti-burglary type). In time, we will replace or refurbish the door completely, but in a historical and protected building that’s at least a €10.000 job. In the meantime, fixing those single pane glasses could really help keeping the hallway warmer and heating bill low.

So, what was the fix?

Instead of 6 complete and new, high-insulation window panes for the door (also €1500 job or more), I opted for plastics.

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Being thrifty is not very fashionable where I come from anymore. Protestant heritage? Check. Puritan sentiments still rampant around? Check and underscore. But that old protestant thriftiness has certainly taken a popularity hit around here this last decade.

Our repairist was shocked to be called out for fixing a five year old washing machine — it is highly unusual, she said, people just buy new ones. “This kitchen is eight years old”, said our local property agent, it will be described as total refurbishment needed if you want to sell the apartment.“ People laugh in scorn at my ancient cross country skis (five years, mostly unused, for obvious reasons).

Then again, I have to say that I only practice moderate thriftiness myself. New and shiny has its allure, especially in hi-tech. But I do think it is a virtue worth aspiring too, without taking it too far.

Most of all, it is a question of resource responsibility, lessening your footprint in the world and the negative impact your lifestyle has on others . This is also the new thrifty: Shifting your spending from resource wasting consumption to consumption of services and virtual goods.

So I try to fix things that break before I buy new ones. I try to upgrade my computers and gadgets instead of buying new ones, perhaps extending their life with a year or two. It is not very difficult putting that new hard drive into your iPod, actually, and it is a good way of learning more about the tech world. And it’s fun.

Often I get good help online on how to do these little things. So, in good spirit, I’ll jot down a few notes documenting my own experiments now and then — at least when they work, and when I’m not familiar with any other good documentation.

Last year we bought a dual-SSD EeePC 901 in Singapore. It seemed the perfect size and tech for an ultraportable, and I have to say it is way cute and lovable, too. It has been a serious attention grabber in airplanes and meetings around the world. What surprised me, however, was how much the little, square snowyboard gets used and how often it gets preference over the other laptop.

Still, it is undeniably more than a tiny bit slow. A few months ago, I upped the RAM to 2GB, which was a cheap way of getting rid of the worst lagginess, but fast it is not. And worst of all, with every Windows update, the boot SSD filled up and the computer needed some serious attention for a few hours before it recouped itself. And those Windows updates just keep coming and getting bigger. Ubuntu, you say? Not in my job.

Well, it was time to stop the misery and get a new SSD. And that was really a good idea. Now the Eee is actually fast. I am a bit awed right now.

So, to the chase: This is how I installed a new SSD without re-installing Windows:

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