Simpsonizeme Troubleshooting

I have been getting traffic through web searches for trouble-shooting of the simpsonizeme site about which I posted earlier. The site does have a very friendly error message system with messages like 'The doo-hickey does not work with the whatchamacallit', which is way better than Error 419. One cannot argue with such thorough explanation.

To be successful in your pursuit of simpsonizing yourself, you need to read the instructions, slowly. The best way is to get a picture in megapixel format and a format of 640x800 or better is recommended. Also a good contrast picture where the background is plain or of light colour is better suited. A prison mugshot would not work for the very same reason, I tried. If you get the doughnut for too long then it is better to start with a better picture. All the best.

Multiple computers? Synergy can help

I have a laptop and a desktop sitting on my not so huge desk and I particularly hate typing on my ancient (4.5 years old) laptop when few of the keys are missing and the mousepad is sticky. The conveniently placed keyboard and mouse of the desktop are very handy, so when I heard about Synergy it made things very easy to handle.

The small application lets you share your keyboard and mouse across all the monitors and also across multiple platforms, Windows, MAC OSX and even multiple variants of Unix (Linux, Solaris etc).

The small application runs on multiple platforms and is very easy to configure and install. It took me about 5 minutes to install and configure on both my laptop and desktop, but another 20 minutes to figure out how to connect them both. The problem was the firewall client.

The software has stopped evolving after 2006, may be some popularity will help.

Download link - http://sourceforge.net/projects/synergy2/

Ruby on Rails

I first read it on Wired about Ruby-on-Rails being the next big thing in web development. So, when I went to Borders last week and the geek that I am went straight to the computer's section and checked out the RoR book and bought it.

Most books, actually all books, leave out the error messages that I get. It is never smooth going with me and learning new software or systems. I had great adventures with installing mod chips on my Xbox, installing Ubuntu, installing Beryl on Ubuntu.. the list is long. The interesting thing about stuffing up is the solution is simple and there are many people who face the same issue, but the manuals turn up with blanks for the error messages I get. May be it was because of me not following the instructions (yes, I am the typical male) or just because I say 'Let me try this' and then it goes all awry.

I had to download and install Ruby Interpreter, Rails (the framework), RadRails, MySQL and MySQL Administrator just to start off. The Ruby and Rails went smooth, but MySQL started giving problems.

Errors with MySQL service starting:
When trying to start the service I got this message: "Could not start the service MySQL Error: 0", I looked up and found that running the command, "sc delete mysql" at the command prompt in DOS stops the already running service if it has been installed previously on the PC. I built the PC myself and I am sure that I have not installed MySQL before.

But that did not fix the issue, the "MySQL Server Instance Configuration Wizard" has to be run again, and you will have to select "Reconfigure Instance" and run the wizard all over to start it. That should fix the issue.

Errors with RadRails:
The instructions in the RoR book asked not to use a password, which I did read but did not follow and put in a password anyway. I have to admit I picked up a book in the Dummies series and that meant no password and all the easy options. That threw up a few surprises. When I created the table in the database through RadRails and then run Rake, I got "Could not connect to the database 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)", error message, that was simple to fix, as I knew that I did put in a password, when the book asked me not to, I had to go in somewhere and change it. Smart person that I am, I figured it out that the password has to be put in the database.yml file. In RoR parlance it is the yaml file. I had a smug feeling all over after I did that.

But after that I got another error message not letting me go through Rake: "28000Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)". This was interesting, I checked the password and it was correct in the yaml file. It had to be put in three times and all times it was correct. The fix is to leave a space after "password:" and then put in the actual password.

After this, I thought it would be all downhill and then I created the scaffold for my first database and tried to run it in the browser. The browser threw up a nice big error about "Access denied" again. Where do I change the password again? What do I do? I had to uninstall MySQL and MySQL Administrator and then reinstalled them, but the browser still will not run.

The solution was the restart the server on RadRails, so that it gets the new password details in, that did the trick. Now, I have to start my real studying of RoR.

My girlfriend was complaining that I was spending too much time with Ruby, little did she know that I was having so much fun. ;-)

I want Sandy too

Ok, a personal email assistant, who wouldn't want one? Technology, laziness blah:

These are the services that you get for free from Sandy:

• Turn your “email to self” into an actual to-do — and get it done.
• Maintain an up-to-date address book without even trying.
• Get appointments into your calendar without wasting time cutting and pasting.
• Automatically gather the web addresses friends email to you.

Go over to http://iwantsandy.com/ and she will do the rest. But only from April.

Microsoft over the ages

I have been around computers for pretty much all my life. The best pastime was when I first bought my own PC, the endless times I formatted and reinstalled the whole OS, for Window 98 installing all the drivers all over again. Misplacing CDs, partitioning hard drives, copying large numbers of music files from one Hard drive to another, changing hard drives from master to slave, upgrading to Windows XP and Windows 2000 and also trying out different versions of Linux. All of this without a cheap internet connection, which was used only to check email.

If I had access to cheaper internet, may be I wouldn't have learnt as much about computers.

So, these pictures from Wired of Microsoft OS have brought back fond memories of my PC adventures.



You can see the whole gallery of Windows history here.

Picasa Web Software

I am just back from a month long holiday and had to organise the pictures from my camera. Logged in to yahoo photos and uploaded about 45 of them. It was painfully slow. Then I downloaded Picasa web software available from Google Pack.

The installation file is only 5 MB. And right after installation finds all the pictures on the hard drive, I found a few photos I misplaced and then gives you very easy options to organise them. Also, this free software has image editing options for novices, the red-eye feature is very easy to use. Another feature I found was the timeline which gives an option to view the pictures according to dates.

The best feature of this software is the web connection feature, where you can upload the pictures to http://picasaweb.google.com if you have a google account. The one touch upload option is cool and very fast way to upload your pictures, beats the yahoo option. You get 250 MB of free space on picasaweb.

-Gyani

Free music downloads coming soon

According to this report in The Age Free music downloads is on the cards from Spiral Frog. While this is great news for all of us music buffs, it is just available in US and Canada for starters. The service has not started yet though. But it sounds too good to be true.

This site will be an advertising supported service. While popular sites make loads of money on the internet, I think this site is too good to be true. I always thought that the best way to make some illegal (non-serious, like illegal music downloads) operations stop is to make them legal and let the authorities deal with real problems.

Hopefully this will start a new trend for music lovers across the world. As for now only music from Universal Music Group will be available.

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