Tag Archives: computers

Software Isn’t Always the Answer

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I explain to a fellow computer geek that software isn’t a substitute for good writing.

The other day, I got an e-mail message from a computer consultant who writes for one of the magazines I write for. (Or used to write for; I haven’t written anything for them for so long I’m surprised they remember me at all.) He’d written a book about databases and he wanted to know what book proposal software he should buy to write a perfect book proposal.

Software to write a book proposal? Is this a trick question? Isn’t the answer Microsoft Word or some other word processing software? Is there such a thing as book proposal software?

I explained patiently that a writer didn’t need special software to write a book proposal. All he needed was (1) to know the components of a book proposal and (2) to be able to put those components into an acceptable format. If he could write a book, he could write a book proposal. With the same software.

I told him that there were literally dozens of books and articles about how to write a book proposal — including the eBook I’d written for David Lawrence’s 10 Quick Steps series last year. Don’t waste money on special software. Don’t waste time looking for special software that probably didn’t even exist. Just pick up a book proposal guide, read it, and follow its advice.

He e-mailed me back a day or two later to thank me and tell me he’d bought my book. How nice!

I wonder what he’ll say to himself when he gets to the part that urges nonfiction authors to propose and sell a book before writing it.

Clash of the Technologies

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I teach an old computer new tricks.

I have a 20th Anniversary Mac. I bought it about six months after they were released and got a pretty good deal on it. It sits on a table in my living room, a piece of functional art. It runs System 7.6 — if anyone can remember that. The cool thing about this computer — other than the fact that both a floppy disk drive and CD ROM drive are built into the monitor — is that it has a Bose sound system. It also has a stereo receiver and, somehow, my cleaning lady has learned how to tune in Mexican music while she works.

Anyway, I bought an iPod Photo a few months back so I could write about it. I really don’t need an iPod Photo, but once you have something like that, you try to come up with ways to make it useful. I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if I could attach the iPod to the Mac, play music through those Bose speakers, and show photos onscreen?

Remember, the 20th Anniversary Mac is old technology. It dates back to ADB, Serial, and SCSI ports. There wasn’t any USB or Firewire in those days. But it does have an S-Video port and a microphone-in port. So I started experimenting.

The iPod Photo’s dock includes both an S-Video port and an audio line-out port. I didn’t have an S-video cable with the multi-pin connectors on both sides. But I did remember someone saying that an ADB cable’s pins are the same configuration as an S-video cable. So I took an old keyboard cable from the office, brought it home, and used it to connect the Mac to the dock. Then I took a standard RCA-type stereo cable and connected it from the line-out port on the top of the iPod to the Mac. (When I connected that cable from the dock to the Mac, I had no volume control and I still can’t figure out why.)

I fired up the two devices and set up a slide show. The iPod’s music immediately played through the Mac’s Bose speakers. It sounded really good at any volume. But to get the video to show up, I had to fire up an application that comes with the 20th Anniversary Mac. I think it’s called Apple Video Player. It enables me to use the built-in TV tuner (which doesn’t work here on the edge of nowhere) or to take video from an external source. It recognized the iPod Photo’s signal and displayed the images onscreen as a slide show. The only drawback: I had to set monitor resolution to 640 x 480 to get it to work right.

So now, when I have company, I can entertain them with music and a slide show, playing in the background while we chat.

Needless to say, I use the 20th Anniversary Mac a bit more often now.

If It Ain’t Broke…

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I relearn something I’ve been telling people for years.

My production Mac, a dual processor G5, started acting up yesterday. It decided, out of the blue, that it would either restart or shut down whenever it felt like it. It seemed particularly fond of doing this right after I’d revised a page of my manuscript but before I’d saved that page to disk. At least that’s how it seemed. It got to the point that I stopped using it. I’d just let it run and start up programs, one-by-one, to see which of them would trigger the problem.

But I think I caused (and then resolved) this problem. I’d been playing with Nicecast (covered elsewhere in these blogs) and had discovered, by looking at the Console log, that some piece of software was unsuccessfully searching for a piece of hardware, in the background, while I worked. It wrote an entry to the log file once per second. That couldn’t be good. It must be using processor power. So I had to make it stop.

I began my witch hunt with a few messages to programming types like Dave Mark (author of a great C book) and the makers of Nicecast. They are obviously better with Google than I am, because they both came up with a Web page that pointed to my problem: a Canon scanner driver. It seems that when you install the driver for the LiDE scanner, two drivers are installed. One driver runs the scanner. The other driver spends all its time looking for a scanner that isn’t attached. Now what rocket scientist at Canon thought that up? So I attempted to delete the drivers, just to see if I could get the log messages to go away.

That’s where I screwed up. I somehow managed to drag a driver from its folder without disabling it. Every time I tried to drag it to the trash, I got a message saying that it couldn’t be dragged to the trash because it was open. I tried restarting my Mac. I tried renaming the file. The damn file couldn’t be deleted. In the old days of Mac computing, you’d occasionally get a folder like that. We called them “folders from hell.” This was a file from hell.

Eventually, I gave up and went back to work. And that’s when the computer started acting up. The first time it shut down, I’d stepped away from my desk to retrieve something from the printer. I thought I’d somehow used the shut down command. I mean, who expects their computer to just shut down by itself? But when it started doing it while I was working, I suspected a problem. It was a windy day and I thought that maybe the wind was causing power problems. Although the computer is attached to a UPS to prevent power problems from shutting it down, I thought the UPS might be dead. They don’t live forever, you know. Of course, nothing else was shutting down and not everything in my office is attached to a UPS.

After fiddling around with the UPS for a while, I started to suspect a hardware problem. Not what I needed. The G5 is less than two years old. None of my other Macs have had serious problems, and I’ve owned at least ten of them since 1989.

Then I started thinking about that file from hell. Perhaps it was triggering something really nasty in my computer, something that would bring everything down. I became determined to get rid of it.

I tried starting the computer with the Mac OS X 10.3 Panther install disc. I used Disk Utility to repair the disk (no problems) and permissions. Of course, there’s no access to the Finder when you start from that disc, so I couldn’t just drag the nasty file to the trash. When I restarted from my hard disk, the file still couldn’t be trashed. So I opened Activity Monitor, found the file’s process, and terminated it. Then I dragged it to the trash, emptied the trash, and restarted.

The computer behaved itself after that. I’d like to think that that was the problem and that I’d solved it.

So let’s review this: I find an error message in my Console log, which I really shouldn’t be looking at in the first place. I act on what I’ve seen and cause a problem that causes spurious restarting. I lose about three hours of work time causing and then resolving the problem. And now I can’t use my scanner until I reinstall the driver(s). The moral of this story: don’t look in the Console log. Or, better yet, the golden rule of computing: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

It’s Too Cool

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I rediscover the cool things I can do with my Mac.

One of the reasons I got into the business of writing about computers is because I thought that the things you could do with computers were very…well, cool.

I got my start with Macs back in 1989 with a Mac II cx. My previous computer had been an Apple //c and the Mac was a huge step up for me. One of the reasons I wanted it was so that I could start a BBS. I needed a hard disk and a bit more processing power than the Apple //c offered. Back in those days, the Mac IIcx was hot. It was one of the first Macs to offer a color monitor option and it ran at whopping 16 MHz. I taught myself everything I needed to know about that machine and had a BBS up and running within a month. I also learned enough to get a per diem job as a computer applications instructor, so I quit my “day job” to pursue a writing career. I like to say that that computer changed my life. It did. If I hadn’t bought it and learned my way around it so quickly, I would never have developed the expertise to change careers.

Anyway, back in those days, shareware was a big thing. There was all kinds of shareware out there and much of it was pretty cool stuff. I distinctly remember the sound editing software I used — I believe it was called SoundEdit — which enabled me to record sounds and edit sound waves. Macs had “sound cards” built in from Day 1, so sound was always part of the Macintosh experience. Everyone had their own custom sound effects and used MacInTalk to get their Macs to read.

I did other cool stuff, too. For a while, I thought I wanted to learn how to program, but I soon realized that it wasn’t worth the bother with so much good shareware and freeware out there. But somewhere along the line, I got pressed for time just trying to make a living. The time between books got shorter and shorter and I developed new interests such as motorcycling and photography, and when we moved out west, horseback riding and flying. Although I still spent the same amount of time sitting in front of my computer, that was mostly work time. I didn’t get to play around as much as I used to. The “cool factor” of the computer seemed to fade away. It was a tool for getting a job done and that job happened to be to write about using this tool. It didn’t help that I somehow became an “expert” on productivity software like Word and Excel. I’d hopped on the Web publishing wagon early on and had a book about PageMill Web authoring software that did very well. But when Adobe killed PageMill, they also killed my book. So the path back toward a cool aspect of computing was removed and I didn’t have time to cut another one.

Things haven’t changed much. I’m sill busy writing books — I think I did six or seven last year — and still interested in other things — primarily flying. But I’ve managed to crack open a door to start writing about cool things again. An eBook I’ve got lined up should be very interesting. And it has me thinking about other topics, other cool things I can do with my computer.

That’s how I stumbled upon Nicecast. Nicecast, published by a company named Rogue Amoeba, is software that enables you to broadcast from your Macintosh onto the Web and it’s very cool. To be honest, I’d seen Nicecast at MacWorld Expo last January and had thought about it as a way for the local radio station to get started in Web broadcasting. KBSZ-AM is a low budget station that isn’t particularly high tech. They have a wonderful studio with a computerized broadcasting setup, but their knowledge of computing is limited and some of their equipment is very old. In fact, Pete’s wife Jo still uses a Mac IIci (the next model after my old IIcx) to do word processing and other stuff! But Pete does surf the Web via modern PC in search of information to include on-air and to keep abreast of what’s going on in the world. Anyway, I’d seen Nicecast at Macworld and had brought back a brochure for Pete. But it didn’t seem like they’d make the hardware investment to get it all up and running. You’d have to sell a lot of ads at $2 each to get started.

A few weeks ago, I discovered a Web site that has live broadcasts from various air traffic control (ATC) locations throughout the world. It’s called LiveATC.net. You click a link for an airport and a small file is downloaded to your computer. A moment later, iTunes launches (if you’re on a Mac; I don’t know what it does on a Windows machine) and the live ATC feed plays through your speakers. You can listen to ground control at JFK directing 474s around the airport or the tower at Boston clearing AirBuses to land. Live. How cool is that?The Home page at LiveATC.net mentioned that they were looking for feeder sites. All you needed was a computer running Windows or Unix, a scanner, some relatively inexpensive software, and a connection from the scanner to the computer. Although I have a Windows PC, I don’t usually turn it on unless I’m writing about Windows software. But my Mac OS X Macintosh runs Unix “under the hood.” Perhaps I could get it to work on my Mac. Wouldn’t that be a hoot! So I e-mailed the Webmaster and told him about my setup. He responded within an hour with a friendly message that told me it could indeed work. Some more e-mail crossed between us and I had a list of possible hardware and software to get the job done. I put the hardware on my Christmas Wish List and started looking into the software.

That’s when I stumbled onto Nicecast again. And this time, I downloaded it to give it a try. I figured that if I could get it to work with my weird network setup, I could get it to work anywhere. I had to reconfigure it to use a different network port than the default 8000 (which was in use by my Web server software) and then had to reconfigure my Airport wireless station to send requests to the new port to that computer (my production machine). Then I began broadcasting directly from my iTunes playlist. About 15 minutes of setup and it works flawlessly. Not bad for $40 worth of software. I shouldn’t have any trouble at all getting it to work with the scanner.

Then I thought about recording things that I could play on my radio station. I went in search of additional software that would enable me to use my PowerBook’s built-in microphone to record voices and sounds. I wound up with two packages that seem to complement each other nicely: Audio Hijack Pro, which is a $32 product by Rogue Amoeba, and Audacity, which is a freeware product distributed by SourceForge.net. Audio Hijack is cool because it can “hijack” other programs and record their sounds. This makes it possible to record a soundtrack from a game or a video presentation, as well as from the Mac’s built-in sound sources. Although you can apply special effects, you can’t edit the sounds. That’s where Audacity comes in. Although it can’t hijack sounds from other programs, it can record from Mac sound sources and it has editing capabilities. In fact, it reminds me a lot of SoundEdit, the shareware program I used years ago on my first Mac.

I played with all this last night. I recorded my bird, Alex, saying some of his usual things

So that’s where I stand now. I have the tools to record and broadcast. But I don’t have the time to set anything up. (What else is new?) But maybe one of these days, you’ll tune into Flying M Radio and be able to hear these blog pages.

Busy Busy Busy

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I realize that I’ve been so busy that I haven’t made a blog entry in nearly a week.

I’ve been busy this past week. Too busy to write in my blog.

I’ve been working hard on my latest book, Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide. I was moving along at a pretty good rate — about a chapter a day. I expected to finish it on Friday, but a sudden storm moving in sent me home early that day. I arrived home to get the horses out of their lower corral in the wash just as the water started flowing. So I finished it today. This afternoon and tomorrow, I’ll be going through the edits. The index should arrive from the indexer on Thursday. The book goes to the printer on Friday. I’ve lost count again, but I think this is either my 59th or 60th book. I dedicated it to Ted Waitt, my editor on this project. I’ve kind of run out of people to dedicate books to.

The book has a picture of Ted in it, too. Chapter 17, I think. I don’t remember the page number. There are a few other interesting photos in there, including the one Bert Monroy helped me cook up for Flying M Air marketing materials.

Speaking of that, the postcards I ordered arrived and they look absolutely fabulous. I spent part of today distributing them around town. I picked up the slides last Monday and dropped one of them off at the movie theater when we went to see The Incredibles. (What a really great movie!) It should be in the tray by now.

I also talked to my editor at Informit and she’s very interested in getting some new articles from me. I told her the best time to get work from me is between books, so I guess I’ll have to start producing this week. I figure I’ll knock off 2 to 4 articles for her. I also have to write one for FileMaker Advisor.

Vertical wants to publish my jumper article. I had a nice conversation with the publisher, Mike Reyno, the other day. But I’ve spoken to the folks at Papillon and they’re not too happy about the article coming out. So I’m not quite sure what to do. I certainly don’t want to piss them off.

I ordered and received some Robinson R44 materials, including a maintenance manual, parts catalog, and passenger briefing card. This is all stuff I need for my Part 135 certificate. I haven’t done any work on that since my meeting at the FSDO last Monday.

Today I stopped by Kwikprint to get a tabloid-size document printed (my printer doesn’t print on paper that big). Later I went back with a new order for business cards and letterhead. With luck, that’ll be ready by next week.

On Sunday, I met someone who has read all of my blog entries. She’s married to someone Mike works with down in Phoenix. She and her husband and his mother came up to Wickenburg for the Bluegrass Festival at the rodeo grounds. I didn’t go with them. I’m not much of a bluegrass fan. Anyway, she already knew what I looked like from photos in my blog. She talked to me a little about my entries. It was kind of weird. I didn’t think anyone read what I wrote here. She’s probably reading this right now!

Hello Barbara!

Right now, as I write this, I’m listening to a live audio stream from JFK Ground/Tower. You can listen online via a link on www.liveatc.net. JFK tower is kind of cool because the controller has an unbelievable New York accent. It’s like being back there again. I didn’t think it would work on my Mac, but when I clicked the link, it automatically opened in iTunes and started playing. Way cool.

I also spent a few minutes bothering my brother via MSN Messenger. Why people use chat software when they can just pick up the phone is beyond me. My brother types very slowly. I’d much rather talk to him on the phone than wait for him to type messages to me.

He and his wife and their dog are coming with my sister on Saturday. My mother and stepfather arrive on Tuesday (next, not tomorrow). They’re all coming for Thanksgiving Dinner. So I have to get all my work done this week so I can spent the whole week with all of them.

Two days after all of them leave, Mike’s mother and her friend come for 10 days. Then it’s his turn to do the entertaining. I have to start another book.

Busy busy busy. No wonder I’m so tired at the end of the day.