I have a hard time reading books the past number of years, but I have managed to get through 4 in the last month. One thing was landing on some really fun reads (for me), but secondly, I purchased an Amazon Kindle earlier in October that has made reading during the random 10 minutes of free time so much easier.

FYI, I am talking about the Kindle 3 (the latest version).

If you haven't heard of it yet, the Amazon Kindle is an electronic book reader (e-reader). It is a pretty neat piece of technology. You download books (either free ones from on-line somewhere or you purchase them from Amazon itself). After that, you sit down and read.

It is a pretty amazing piece of technology. Some of your are probably asking why not just buy an iPad or use a laptop. Here are a few reasons why you may want to have a Kindle.

• Really easy on the eyes as the screen is not backlit and the LCD technology almost looks like ink on paper.
• Crazy battery life. They say around a month with the wireless turned off and I don't even know. I read 2 complete books plus fooled around with it looking at different features and the battery was only at 70%. You literally don't even think about charging it. You could easily leave on a trip and leave the charger at home and be 99% safe.
• A fraction of the price compared to a laptop or iPad. I paid $160 in total by the time it arrived on the doorstep.
• Very lightweight and can fit in most jacket pockets.

Now I only purchased the basic "wireless" version, but there is a version that supports 3G and one with a larger display.

It is so easy to carry around, I find myself reading for 10 minutes here and there. Next thing I know, I am through a book.

I also find it as a very cool portable library. I have reference books, the manual to my wife's car, random fiction novels, some pdf's, anthology of Calvin and Hobbes as well as Far Side, and a few other things. Makes it easy to just take a break and read whatever.

Extras

Some things you may not know that is does.

• Plays mp3's.
• Has a web browser (very basic).
• Will "read" books as it has text to speech built-in.
• Built in dictionary. As you are reading you can just move a cursor down to the word and the definition pops up.
• Add notes and annotations to books and pdfs.
• You can add bookmarks, categorize, and it remembers the last page you read to across all the books.

Negatives

Only thing I don't like about it so much right now is that that viewing PDF's is not the best. You have to play with the size and usually switch the screen orientation to widescreen to get the best viewing situation. Large PDF's can take a split second to load to the next screen too.

It isn't an iPad! They almost aren't comparable however. An iPad is a full featured device for apps, video, and web browsing. The Kindle is not very good at any of these, but it excels at reading.

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I had a formula the other day that needed to see if an asterisk - * was present in a cell. So the formula included a comparison for "*" in the syntax. Anyhow, turns out some formulas (not all) will treat the * as a wildcard and match it to any number of letters or numbers. If you are a programmer, like myself, then you are used to escaping letters with a backslash (\). However, Excel does not use this and the proper escape is a tilde (~).

I was a bit surprised how difficult searching the internet for this solution was, so I'm posting it here too. Hopefully I have good enough keywords and explanation that it will be easier for others like me to find.

So my formula that was giving me issues was a SUMIF. It looked like this:

My intention was to add up all the B column values that had a * in the A column, however it was adding up all the B column fields regardless. Once I changed it to the formula below, it worked just fine.

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I was frustrated using awk recently. I had created a awk file to do some batch processing of text file information. Anyhow, I had a large text section to create an SQL statement from. It spanned multiple lines and I had used a backslash "\" to indicate the string continued on the next line.

I had a syntax problem however. It was saying I had an unterminated string. I googled for the answer and checked to make sure every line of my text section had a backslash (which it did) and I couldn't figure it out.

Below is the error I had.

awk: query.awk:2: print "SELECT \
awk: query.awk:2:       ^ unterminated string

Anyhow, last straw was to go to everyline that had the backslash at the end and remove any spaces at that came after the backslash (so between the slash and the true end of the line). This fixed my problem.

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I was recently having problems getting my Apache web server to start up the other day. If I tried to start it with the Apache Monitor or in the Services window, it would just try to start and exit. No message and nothing would be left in the Apache log files.

So I went to the command prompt and tried to start it there. That is when I received the following error.

(OS 10048)Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted. : make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:80 no listening sockets available, shutting down Unable to open logs

Solution

Turns out the problem was with Skype. I had installed it recently and when I rebooted my computer, it took control of that port before Apache could. You can fix it by exiting Skype and then starting Apache, before starting Skype again. Alternatively, you open Skype and go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Connection. Turn off the checkbox that refers to port 80 and 443. Then restart Skype.

I found similar information on this problem on this page about Apache Not Working On Vista.

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I have owned an Acer Extensa 5420 for basically 2 years now. I wrote an Acer Extensa 5420 Laptop Review and another article in regards to a Black Screen On Startup.

I had a new problem today. The power jack was pushed back further inside the laptop. When I tried to connect my power cord, it fit really loosely and the battery charging light would not turn on. I have seen power jack problems before, so had a pretty good feeling this was the problem.

Anyhow, I turned the laptop over and remove the small panel on the bottom where you gain access to the memory. I then removed all the large screws on the bottom have of the plastic case so that I could detach it. I was still unable to remove it, so I remove the top piece above the keyboard where the power button is and the power lights. Underneath there are two screens that hold the monitor to the upper half of the body. If you remove these, it also allows to pull back the bottom half.

Sorry if the instructions are confusing. I don't have pictures either. Basically, try to remove as many screws as possible that look like it holds the two halves together though.

When I looked inside where the power jack was, the tiny little plastic ridges that the power jack held against had bent back and/or broken off. My solution was to push it back into place, insert the power cord into the jack fully, duct tape down the power cord on the outside of the laptop so it stays in a good place and doesn't place any more strain on the power jack, and then apply as much super glue via toothpick around the surface contact areas that were plastic between the power jack and the laptop case.

Afterwards I put everything back together and left the power cord taped to the laptop to give it as much time to cure the glue as possible.

Hopefully it lasts for a little while. A new power jack definitely wouldn't have helped as the problem was with some plastic pieces on the inside of the laptop body.

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Note: This article is now outdated as iPhone OS 4.0 allows for multiple exchange accounts.

I have found two ways that I have used to download my Google Contacts list onto my iPhone. For those of you who don't know what Google Contacts is, it is basically a big address book on-line. Entries get created automatically when you email people using your Gmail account, but you can add tons of other information like phone numbers, addresses, birthdays, profile pictures, and even categorize them into groups.

If you are like me, it is quite developed and very handy to have on-line as well as on your phone. Both methods I have used will synchronize both ways, meaning that changes you make on your phone or on -line will then move to the other device too.

Free Way to Synchronize Your Google Contacts

The free way is to configure your email on the iPhone to work using the Exchange settings when you initially do the setup. Most people use the "Gmail" option as it is the most obvious, but it will only sync your mail.

There are specific instructions on Google's Google Sync for iPhone page.

The downside with this is that the iPhone only allows for one Exchange account to be set up at a time, so if you have another email account using this, then my paid option below might work for you better.

Please note, with this method you also get push email which means your phone will show your email as soon as it is delivered to your account. It otherwise checks the server on a predetermined interval (could be 10 or 15 minutes) to check for new email.

Paid Way to Synchronize Your Google Contacts

I found an app called Sync in a Blink that will synchronize your Google Contacts to your iPhone. It is quite a bit more powerful as it will let you specify more settings and only sync certain groups if you've defined them in your Contacts.

Basically, it allows you to not have to use your Exchange account on your iPhone if you are already using it for another account.

Word of warning, play around with the settings first for Sync in a Blink, because if you sync more contacts than you really wanted to (like I did) it is a bit of a pain to wipe the contact list so you can sync again. There are some tutorials on-line on how to do it though.

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I had a really annoying situation with my Acer Extensa 5420 laptop recently. It would not sleep or go into sleep mode. I would press the sleep button, close the lid, and would even try to do it through the Windows Start menu's Shutdown section, but the laptop would still be powered on and usually just go back to the Windows login screen.

The problem of it not sleeping came from setting up a Windows Media Extender (otherwise known as my Xbox 360). When you set up a Windows Media Extender as part of your Windows Multimedia Center, it will ask you if you want to enable or turn on Away Mode. This is what can disable your sleep functionality. It is probably more suitable for a PC than my laptop.

At first, I remapped my lid closing action and sleep button to hibernate. Hibernate is where the laptop truly saves power because it saves the laptop's state to the hard disk. Sleep just puts the laptop into power save mode basically, but is still using a slight bit of power to keep things in memory. The difference is that sleep will go into and come out of sleep mode much faster than hibernate. However, hibernate actually saves more power if the laptop will be off for long periods of time.

Disable Away Mode

This was the real solution I was looking for. Basically, you need to go change your Power Options settings:

• Go into the Start menu -> Control Panel
• Click on Power Options. If you don't see it, you might need to click on System and Maintenance to find it.
• There will be a power plan already selected (radio button). Click on Change plan settings for that plan.
• Click on Change advanced power settings
• Find Multimedia settings near the bottom and click the plus sign to expand it.
• Click on the plus sign beside When sharing media.
• There are two settings for On battery and Plugged in. Change the picklist to be anything other than Allow the computer to enter Away Mode. I picked All the computer to sleep.

Hopefully that works for you as well. I was sick of closing the lid on my laptop to come back and find that it had actually been running the whole time and killed the battery.

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I had a scary moment on my most recent trip. My card appeared to fail after I had taken a week's worth of pictures in Nepal.

My Nikon D70s started flashing "For", which indicates the compact flash card inside needs to be formatted. I was unable to view the pictures and if I put it into a card reader and tried to access it on Windows, it just wanted to format the card.

I waited a month, until I arrived home, to try and recover the pictures. I tried 8 different programs and I found two that were able to do it.

RescuePro was one of them. They let you download a trial of it and see if it will actually work before you have to buy. It will access the flash card and then scan it. After awhile, it shows you thumbnails and will let you recover a small number of the files for free. If you see your files and think it is worth it, then you can pay the US$40 for a license.

Active File Recovery is the other one that worked. This program is a little more full-featured. It can recover files on hard drives as well. RescuePro was strictly for flash cards.

Anyhow, if you have ever deleted, formatted, corrupted, or had some other failure with files or flash cards. Don't just erase the card and start from scratch thinking you lost everything. Download a trial copy of RescuePro from the link above and see if you can spot your missing items. It will be well worth the $40 in a lot of cases.

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Just to give you the run down. I recently purchased a different computer and in re-wiring everything, my monitor start to have fuzzy horizontal scrolling lines that would move slowly down the screen all the time. There were usually two on the screen at any given time and would takes several seconds to move to the bottom before another one would start at the top.

It seemed intermittent and I tried moving the cables around, but eventually it settled into being permanently there.

Solution

Anyhow, a friend of mine suggested that it could be interference as I was using the old VGA cable to connect to my computer. This is an analog signal and is subject to interference that digital cables are not. So I hooked up a DVI cable, since my video card also had that output on it and my monitor also had that input. That completely cleared up the problem and with the DVI cable I have none of those fuzzy lines moving down my screen.

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I finally upgraded to a new computer. My last new desktop was purchased in November of 2002, which is a long time ago in the computer world. I have done a couple of upgrades, but for the most part it was pretty original. It was a Pentium 4 2.4GHz with 1GB RAM, an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB video card, 160GB hard drive, DVDRW, and that was pretty much it. It didn't even have USB 2.0 on it.

That being said, I could still photo edit with it, do some video editing, watch videos, and even play WoW. I sold it for $80 the first day I listed it in the Buy 'n' Sell.

The New Machine

I am quite impressed so far with my Studio Slim. I found it used in my city for only $400 so getting a bit of a deal was even a better find for me. Anyhow, here are the specs.

• Intel Quad Core Q6600 (2.4GHz)
• 4GB PC6400 DDR2 RAM (4 X 1GB)
• Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit
• ATI Radeon 3650 512MB DDR2
• 320 GB Hard Drive
• DVDRW
• 15 in 1 card reader
• Bluetooth
• USB2.0 jacks front and back
• Firewire
• spare PCI slot
• spare 3.5" internal bay

All-in-all, I feel it is a decent machine, especially considering where I came from with the old one. It seems a lot quicker and now I can actually watch some of those high-def video files I have.

Slimline

It is half the width of my old tower, which is pretty neat. One thing I notice with this is that there is only 1 PCI slot and 1 3.5" bay. So upgrading is a bit hampered. The PCI cards that do go in it have to be the slimline models. My ATI Radeon card is one of the models that have that availability.

Noise Factor

My old PC had become brutal for the noise from the fans. I could have fixed that somewhat by just purchasing some new ones, but I wasn't investing any more in into it. The new machine is very quiet I have to say. Fans intake/outakes are on 3 sides of the machine too.

Current Issues

I currently have some fuzzy horizontal lines that scroll down through the monitor. I have had a few times where they are not present, but for the most part they are always there. Going to try a few different cable configurations to check for interference and then go through some settings and driver checks with my video card. Not sure why it is is doing it.

It came pre-installed with Windows Vista 32 bit. This means the 4 GB of RAM installed can't actually be fully used, because it is unable to do so. I will probably consider upgrading to 64 bit at some point. The difference isn't really between the 3.5 it is capable of and the 4 installed, it will be when I actually upgrade to more RAM.

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