Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Posted by jamesviscosi on June 28, 2008
Once I got beyond reading five or six blogs, it became more or less impossible to keep up with checking them online and seeing if there were new posts; so I started subscribing to their RSS feeds using the Thunderbird mail client. This worked fine and made it much easier to avoid missing posts. However, today I became aware that a couple of my subscriptions had stopped functioning (sorry, Finicky Penguin and Cinema Gypsy). The folders were still there, but they looked empty, so I thought, okay, I’ll just add the subscriptions back in. Wrong! Thunderbird wouldn’t let me add them because it said I was already subscribed. I went through every single feed folder looking for the phantom feeds, but they were nowhere to be found.
Hmm. What to do next? I decided to try exporting all my feeds and then importing them again. So I created the export file (under Subscribe –> Export), deleted all my feed folders, and then imported the feed file (under Subscribe –> Import). Everything came back, except for the two missing feeds. So I thought, okay, I deleted everything, so I should be able to add the missing feeds back in now. Wrong! Thunderbird still insisted I was subscribed to them, even though it hadn’t pulled in any messages from them in over two weeks and they were nowhere to be found in any of the other folders.
Mutter mutter mutter. Okay, now what? After briefly flirting with going back to Opera and its wonderful M2 mail & RSS client, I opened the feed export that I created earlier (it’s an OPML file, which can be edited with any text editor), deleted everything out of it except for two entries, and then proceeded to modify them to be for the two missing feeds. Then I imported the hacked OPML file. Eureka! There are my missing feeds! I dragged them back to the “Blogs” folder under RSS feeds, and here come all the posts that I missed from those two blogs.
Oh no! Information overload! I’ll pick up commenting on the new posts as they arrive …
For those who are interested, here’s the OPML file after I edited it:
<opml version=”1.0″>
<head>
<title>Thunderbird OPML Export</title>
<dateCreated>Sat, 28 Jun 2008 15:38:33 GMT</dateCreated>
</head>
<body>
<outline text=”Blogs”>
<outline title=”The Show Must Go On” text=”The Show Must Go On” type=”rss” version=”RSS” xmlUrl=”http://cinemagypsy.wordpress.com/feed/” htmlUrl=”http://cinemagypsy.wordpress.com/”/>
<outline title=”Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Soda” text=”Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Soda” type=”rss” version=”RSS” xmlUrl=”http://finickypenguin.wordpress.com/feed/” htmlUrl=”http://finickypenguin.wordpress.com/feed/”/>
</outline>
</body>
</opml>
Posted in Free & Open Source Software, Technology | Tagged: blogs, bugs, opera, opml, rss feeds, thunderbird | 4 Comments »
Posted by jamesviscosi on May 30, 2008
So I haven’t done a “free software for writers” post in a while because, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve kind of run out of software that I use that I can plausibly label as “for writers”. If I do think of another writing-related package I will certainly post it, but I didn’t want to stop writing about free software until then, so I’ve decided to branch out and just write about other programs that I’ve used or seen (other than well-known ones like Firefox or Thunderbird) that people might find interesting. Today’s software is Stellarium.
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Posted in Free & Open Source Software, Linux, Technology | Tagged: aliens, astronomy, black holes, celestia, constellations, firefox, free software, galaxies, moon, nebulae, nemesis, open source software, planet x, planetariums, planets, science, stars, stellarium, sun, thunderbird, vi | No Comments »
Posted by jamesviscosi on May 17, 2008
I periodically Google myself, just to see if there are any new reviews or listings for my stuff. (No new reviews since I found that one for Night Watchman back in February. Oh well.) However, I did find this particular search result interesting:
James Viscosi * Tim Waggoner * Karl Edward Wagner, (1945-1994) * H. Russell Wakefield, (1888-1964) * Robert Weinberg, (born 1947)
…
answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080307233734AALw1Vt&show=7 - 61k - Cached -
Similar pages
Granted, the person answering the question appears to have just pasted in the list of horror writers from Wikipedia, and he didn’t even bother to weed out the dead ones, but still … look … Google says I’m one of the best living horror writers! Are you going to argue with Google?!
Google … all is forgiven for that whole “forbidden” incident.
Posted in Technology, horror | Tagged: best living horror writers, egosurfing, google, googling yourself, search results, yahoo, yahoo answers | 9 Comments »
Posted by jamesviscosi on May 15, 2008
A few days ago, Goodbear asked about free video editing software. This isn’t an area in which I have a lot of experience, as I don’t do much video editing (all my video is perfect as shot … :-P), so I did a little research. Linux users have a number of choices in this area, including Cinelerra and Kino; these are the only ones I have tried (although see Blender, below). OS X users, of course, have iMovie built in as part of the iLife suite (I’m not going to get into the whole iMovie ‘08 vs. earlier versions of iMovie controversy). But what are Windows users to do?
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Posted in Free & Open Source Software, Linux, Technology | Tagged: aviedit, blender, cinelerra, fedora core, ilife, imovie, jahshaka, kino, Linux, macintosh, os x, ubuntu, virtualdub, wax, windows, windows movie maker | 1 Comment »
Posted by jamesviscosi on May 11, 2008
It’s been a while since I did a “free software for writers” entry, mainly because I’m kind of running out of free software that I can label as specifically for writers; I may just switch over to doing “free software for anybody” posts. However, I do have at least one more program to write about, and that’s Audacity. Audacity is an audio recording, editing, and mixing program. I’ve mainly used it to fix glitches in audio files (such as MP3s with a skip in them) or to change sound levels; the local Arthur Murray uses it to change the tempo of songs without introducing distortion so that, for instance, a ridiculously fast samba like “Jazz Machine” can be slowed down so that mere mortals can dance to it. (My wife insists on the full-speed version.)
So now you’re probably thinking, “Well that’s just fascinating, Jim, but what makes Audacity free software for writers?” To which I reply with one word: Podcasting.
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Posted in Books, Free & Open Source Software, Linux, Short Stories, Technology, Writing | Tagged: arthur murray, audacity, audio, audio editing, boundoff, free software, jazz machine, mp3s, open source software, podcasting, podiobooks, sambas, serialization, sound recording, tempo, the new yorker | 3 Comments »
Posted by jamesviscosi on May 10, 2008
Posted in Linux, Technology | Tagged: botnets, cheap shots, google, Linux, paranoia, spyware, ubuntu, viruses, windows | 4 Comments »
Posted by jamesviscosi on November 16, 2007
So last night in the midst of the usual connection slowdown, I decided to take matters into my own hands and switched the router over to use OpenDNS servers instead of Cox DNS servers. The time to establish connections to sites immediately improved and there were no further timeouts. We will see how it works tonight.
The reason I suspected a DNS issue was because (as Cox determined) the modem signal was fine, and all the speed tests — when they would run — reported normal or near-normal download speeds even while sites were completely failing to load. The main issue we were having was that it was really slow to start a session with a new site, often timing out or giving “address not found” errors on the first try but working on the second or third. Once on a site, things were generally reasonably quick. This suggested that the difficulty was in either resolving the host name (i.e., turning “yahoo.com” into Yahoo’s IP address) or in negotiating the initial TCP connection (i.e., getting “directions” from here to Yahoo). Reasoning that Cox’s DNS servers might be saturated by the kid next door downloading porn, I took them out of the equation. So far it seems to have worked.
So go ahead, kid. Download the entire Star Wars series and every episode of Family Guy. See if we care.
Posted in Technology | Tagged: cox, opendns | 4 Comments »
Posted by jamesviscosi on November 15, 2007
So lately our cable broadband has been getting really slow in the evenings, starting around 6pm. In the morning it flies (18mb download speeds according to DSL Reports speed test), but come prime time, pages won’t load, valid addresses are not found, form submits time out — we’re talking narrowband stuff here, like a 28.8 modem from 1994. We don’t have anything better to do in the evenings than surf the Internet (except when we’re at the Arthur Murray or Dance North County) so this is kind of annoying.
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Posted in Technology | Tagged: broadband, cable, comcast, dsl, ethernet, internet, networking, skynet | No Comments »
