More Pictures Lately I’ve come to the realization that most any photo will look much better after being processed in Photoshop. Here’s a post-processed image from my trip to Ghana: It has some technical flaws (it was taken through a window and is crooked), but it’s a pretty good shot technically… There...

SSD, Affordable Since Windows keeps hinting that I could use my CompactFlash card as a ReadyBoost drive, I was just thinking… My Thinkpad has an ExpressCard slot… ….and an 8GB Lexar solid-state drive* is only $90 at NewEgg. In theory, I could pluck it in and use it for ReadyBoost and as a paging file,...

Fileserver Thoughts++ I’d posted before about how my ‘dream computer setup’ would have a big fileserver with a bunch of disks… Something like 4-8 SATA drives, 7200 RPM, running RAID 5. The net result is several terabytes of storage, and, since RAID 5 provides striping, excellent performance. It would...

Idea of the Day Someone ought to make an application that will allow you to download files from sites, but submit the URLs to a central service that’s a BitTorrent tracker, and see if anyone else using the service is also downloading those files, or has recently downloaded them, to try to accelerate the download...

Police Call of the Day I recently came across our digital scanner, which I updated with a newer DSP firmware, and I dug up some good batteries. I’ve been keeping it on fairly often, and have to say that I’m glad I have. I think I kind of got accustomed to the Waltham/Boston scene, where it wasn’t that uncommon...

Proud to be from NH As usual, there’s no reason not to be proud to be from New Hampshire.

Getch Yer Firefox! Firefox 3, hot off the press! I’ve been using it in beta for a while and was quite pleased. Today it was released in finished form, and developers are hoping for a record. So download it and give it a try. Internet Explorer users, you won’t be disappointed! (And it can even import your bookmarks...

Defragging & Paging Files I just noticed that Piriform has released Defraggler, a free defrag tool. You may not recognize the name Piriform, but many will recognize CCleaner, their most popular product. Defraggler seems a little spiffier than the standard Windows tool, though I’m not yet sure how it compares with Diskeeper,...

Microsoft Innovation For a really long time, I felt like all I ever did was bash Microsoft. Not so much because I’m mean, but because I really didn’t see them doing anything terribly creative. I was somewhat impressed with Vista, mostly because it’s a ‘fresh’ attempt at Windows, one without...

Internet Time on Windows A quick tutorial on keeping accurate time in Windows… Double-click on the clock in the system tray (usually in the very lower-right of your screen). There should be an “Internet Time” tab. If the tab isn’t there, you’re either running an ancient version of Windows, or your...