More on cars

Have gotten a third Jaguar, a 1991 XJS. Pretty color, "oyster", which is a metallic pale gold. Bought it locally, for $3k. Needs about $10k of work, a little of which I can do (easy stuff), and some that LA will do, a little that Rosenthal will do, and some that likely won't even get done.

It's a convertible, which wasn't my actual plan...need something fun to drive to work as I don't like driving the elephant all that much--partly because seeing out the windows is hard, unlike the truck, which had plenty of visibility. This is better visibility than the XK8, as the bar at the top of the windshield is higher, so it doesn't interfere. Otherwise, it's not as good a car.

More on the car...

Car has been driving well this year, this spring, but I have had a couple of problems. Had been driving every weekend, and occasional days to work. Took a trip to a british car show in Williamsburg, VA in April. Had seen some smoke from underneath the middle, before I left home, but all seemed fine the whole way down.

I still don't know what the smoke is about, but I suspect that a tiny leak of oil had been getting on the tailpipe. The tailpipe has since rusted through at a spot that looks discolored and is in just the right location to have had oil dripping on it. I'm sure that wouldn't be good...Having replaced the cam covers, the oil leak is gone, but I think the damage is done.

June 8. Had a flat today. Ugh. Same tire as last time, so I suspect this wheel has more pointy stickouts inside and needs attention. Easy enough to fix the flat, the spare was good. Took maybe ten minutes, but it was hot out. Well, at least not expensive to get *that* fixed.

The tailpipe is annoying, though. Thought I had found a nifty fix, this apparently heat-activated bandage/wrap thing that you'd use like an arm bandage, it's wet in a pouch, and it dries/hardens in place. That seems to have half-worked, because I was out in the car shortly after applying it, had the flat, and seem to have ripped off part of the bandage. Well, back to the beer-can patch; using soda cans, plenty around, they flex adequately, and I got U-bolts for it. Did this patch before, about 1979 or so, on the Comet. Worked fine. [later: although this time, not so much]

I'd like to replace the entire tailpipe, headers on back, with stainless steel equivalents. That appears that it will cost $2000+ installed. Headers are nicely rusted, so that part is not easy. I need to take it over to London Auto and let them look. I've seen the stainless parts on ebay, just not right now; I forget the pricing. I need to start recording some of that stuff for later reuse.

Later: stainless headers are $325. Seller offers $75 rebate if I get a good set of installation photos for him. LA agrees to do this, so we'll see. the mounting flange is not as straight as I think it should be, hope that doesn't become an issue. I'll want LA to test-install that solo, before anything else, so I can return them if need be.

Went to the Movie Theater

for the first time in a long time...to see

One for the Money

Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, first novel, as a movie. I was excited to see that this was being filmed, I love those books (funniest things in the english language after Wodehouse), but I wasn't too sure about the casting.

Katherine Heigl looks just right as Plum. Debbie Reynolds was good as the kooky grandmother (although I think Ruth Gordon of the 70s was more the right thing). The actors playing Ranger and Morelli I'm not so sure about. Ranger needed to look/be a little more mysterious, and Morelli needed to look less scruffy. (It could be that I misremember how they started out in the first book, been a few years since I read that) Vinnie Plum seemed less weasel-y than I think he should have...we didn't meet or hear about some standard things (grandma's interest in going to the funeral parlor for viewings and cookies), but Stephanie's car did properly explode at one point (this especially is a theme in the books), she had to go to Stark Street several times (a recurring location for trouble of one sort or another). They did do voice-over for what Stephanie is thinking, which is great for filling-in things that need a little explanation but not necessarily screen time.

Apparently this story had been made for TV ten years ago--I wasn't aware at the time, hadn't read the books yet; no idea whether that was any good or not.

I hope this did well enough that more are made...the characters take time to develop properly.

YAGB 2

So I was wondering if I could ever play Alpha Centauri again...highest rated game ever by PC Gamer, and it didn't even make the top 100 in this year's list.

My installer doesn't get it done on Win7, but apparently GOG.COM has adapted it somehow, and the result works just fine. I was going to try to make myself a Win2k VM and run it there, or maybe even a Win98 VM, but it was $5 on GOG, and my time is worth more than that to try to figure out how to get a VM created and running properly. Won't be able to do this at all on my Mac, because SMAC was an OS9 game, and there's no longer any software path from there onto the Intel processor; I'd have to keep an older Mac around, not interested in doing that. (OK, and older Mini would maybe do it, and at least be small, but still...that'd be the only purpose)

So now I can play SMAC again--which is good, because that is a game with a lot of replayability, very challenging, especially at the higher skill levels, or smaller maps (wherein conflict stars a lot sooner).

Apparently you can also get Total Annihilation, so I did. Haven't tried that yet, and I didn't finish it way back when, but now I can try again. Also for $5. Hard to beat, esp given that for $5 NWN2 still sucked big time.

GOG is great.

Follow-up on the Jaguar

It turns out that when the oil-pressure gauge shows low, it means low oil. Seems obvious enough, in retrospect, but given that newer cars don't vary even slightly about what the gauge shows, I didn't know that...and with an older car, you could wonder if it means low oil, oil sender has probs, gauge has probs...no way to be sure.

So I eventually looked at the oil dipstick, and it looked way down. Added 3 qts (car takes 8, which is more than US cars). Things looked good after that, pressure varied from 20-40, and it sounded smoother. A few weeks later I added another qt--I don't know what my consumption rate is, although I certainly know I have several leaks. Two are the valve-covers, you can *see* the crack in one where it was over-torqued bolting it down; I have a replacement for that one.

Still...car is running just fine, have been enjoying the driving, even though it is winter and the heater doesn't work.

Another round on the Jaguar

So it turns out that the oil pressure gauge tells you exactly what it should be telling you: when the pressure is low it means you need to add oil. I finally checked it, needed to add quite a bit, and it was just fine after that. Problem is that unlike a modern car, which keeps/shows a constant reading until you are dry, this one varies based on speed, and given that it's an old car, I wasn't sure that it wasn't something else wrong...now I know.

It still leaks oil, but that's normal for this car...it's not very fast, but it does happen. And there's more than one leak, two of them are the valve covers; both are tiny, but not necessarily hard to solve. I have one replacement cover now, got for $25. As they are aluminum, that may be not too hard to weld back closed. The current cracks are from having been torqued down too tight.

Got the voltage regulator replaced, which was critical. Old one was misbehaving badly. No surprise, it's a crappy two-transistor design that doesn't really regulate voltage so much as reduce fluctuations. Still, better than a mechanical one, which is just turning one flavor of AC into a pulse train which is just a different flavor of AC.

Car drives pretty well, although more work is needed. As it's drivable, I do that unless it's bitter cold out, because I haven't gotten the heater repaired. That is a job for the spring--I think I can do some/most/all of it myself. I'm sure it's rusted sealed, and the motor doesn't turn. Can't work on it in the winter, tho. Too cold out.

But it's now at the point I wanted it to be at--I can drive it. That is good fun.

YAGB

"Yet Another Game Blog" entry. been several months...

During which time Skyrim has come out. I have played it a lot, and I haven't even started the main sequence about the dragons. Just about everything else, tho.

Thoughts: this is not as good as Oblivion, in a variety of aspects.

#1) it's buggy. I don't mean crash buggy, but rather that various tasks break irrecoverably. Example: "buy a house in Markarth" -- if you don't do this the very first time it is offered, it will never be available again, but the quest won't go away.
#2) the color pallette is bland. territory is bland.
#3) it lacks the overall variety of opponents, and map areas.
#4) too much emphasis on "crafting". no offense intended, but BFD. *pointless*
#5) magic is harder. in fact, it's really different. How is it that Morrowind has different magic from Cyrodiil from Skyrim? We're not talking about entire other planets or something.
#6) the "skills tree". BFD. also pointless.
#7) "shouts". pointless. you don't need them for anything. as I have yet to kill a dragon, I can't use them anyway, and that's not any hardship.
#8) no auto-attempt on lockpicking. sorry, just not interested in this little micro-game over and over. this is an FNV-derived thing, and I was tired of it there, too.

things that are good:

#1) total map is huge. this is always good.
#2) plenty to do. except for the bugginess, which means some things can't be done, or can't be completed.
#3) your helper doesn't actually get killed (unless you do it, which I did a few times)
#4) chameleon is gone. just a flying disappeared after morrowind, chameleon is gone now. which means you have to be more careful, even at sneak 100.
#5) it's still possible, for some skills, to find a way to level them really really fast. sneak is one. armor is another (just the same way as in oblivion, too, which was good), summoning a Dremora runs that one up damn fast, even at the top end, although it only seems to count when it attacks something.

but overall, well worth the $50.

unlike NeverWinter Nights 2, which I just got (again). This time it was $5, on my Mac. Still has the same extremely annoying set of UI misfeatures and other failures. This game really is all about whether you like the D&D R3 details. Screw that, I have no interest. Bring me the story and the action. It's buggy, too. I've had it crash to desktop more than once. It doesn't autosave often enough--Skyrim autosaves every time you enter a new map area, or fast-travel; this is the
right approach. NWN2 doesn't really do first person properly, which means that other aspects of camera-handling suck big time. Sales is too hard (i.e., too many mouse-clicks), and the merchants NEVER have new stuff--always the same stuff. That is totally stupid--it means you are the one and only customer in the game. stupid.

even for $5, it's only worth your time for the purpose of figuring out how seriously flawed it is, and then taking those lessons to heart in making a better game. gah.

Back to the Jaguar

My car has been at the shop the past month, slowly getting some things fixed:

1) The alternator/charging system. Got a rebuilt alternator, and some wiring fixes. This is now working properly (exc see below). Have a new regulator coming, from ebay.

2) Cooling system. Got the hoses, thermostat replace, radiator core rebuild. This is working nicely. Engine block freeze plugs replaced.

on Oct 21, I got to have the car back for the weekend. The following notes are from the return email I send sunday night.

I was able to drive home ok (Chantilly), albeit slowly because of traffic...Then I drove north up Rt 28 to Sterling, south back to I-66, then to the Fair Oaks Whole Foods grocery, by which point I had a flat tire on the left rear. Because it was dark, we left it there overnight, and I put the spare on Saturday morning after bringing the proper tools. That all went fine, but it was a regrettable surprise. Therefore, I need the wheel that is in the boot repaired--not sure what is wrong with it, but that is the better rim (at least in terms of minimal rust and better appearance). I also put my last inner tube in the back, if it is needed. While going north on Rt 28, there was a thump underneath my feet while driving, like something hit the underside; my guess is that whatever that was caused the flat--it was dark, and I didn't see anything. I hope it was not something falling off the car and bouncing up off the road. I do not have an additional spare. When I got these tires put on the rims, it was at Radial Tire in Silver Spring MD, that could handle the wire rims. I'm ok with you all doing this if you can, else I need to see about it myself, don't really want to drive without a spare (although that is how I got it home in the first place). If it's just needing a new tire, I will get a matching tire (came from a Firestone place in Sterling).


They were very right about the throttle linkage being sticky--it cold-starts very high rpms. Saturday it was near 2500 rpm when I started it after changing the tire. Sunday it was nearly 4000 rpm at lunch time start-up. I had seen Dave poke on the linkage to fix that, so I did the same thing, and it was better, but this is something that needs attention before something goes worse wrong.

The voltage meter often shows something near 16 volts from the alternator, which is definitely too high. Saturday afternoon it was down at 13 for a while, which was fine. the 16 is alarming, not good for the battery. I will have the new voltage regulator in my hands in a few more days, probably time to replace that.

The speedometer is only partially functional--it doesn't rise above 40 mph, and doesn't always drop below 20 when stopped. I have bought a sender off ebay, perhaps we can try that out as a replacement. Or perhaps something is sticking there...

Oil pressure was somewhat variable, but was never down to zero--it ranged from 20-50 (what that really means) over the weekend. This seems ok for now, unless it's supposed to be a very steady pressure.

Headlights worked ok in the dark. I didn't look at the brake/turn-signal lights. They were ok 2 yrs ago.

Coolant/water temperature gauge looked great the whole time, on the low side of normal range, so great job on that. Keeps my feets toasty warm while driving.

There seems to be a low speed at which there is a motion resonance bounce...not sure if this means a tire is out of balance, or what. Noticeable on a really smooth road, elsewhere not so much.

-------

Comments on the above: the oil system had been a little off, in particular the oil pressure gauge usually read zero or nearly so. I got a new sensor off ebay, it got installed. The speedometer used to work ok, I thought. I think the replacement sensor I am getting is used, so it may not matter. The throttle linkage fix is probably part of a larger system fix that includes better carb tuning.

I could not tell whether the front suspension was showing any effect from the ball joints needing work...related: probably ALL the rubber anywhere needs replacing.

Anyway...it was great fun getting to drive the car...once more things are fixed, it will be even better.

Best part at this point is that we have not yet even hit the halfway point on my budget, although we are close. Still...remaining budget should cover good territory.

I had replaced the stereo soon after getting the car. New unit takes a USB drive to play from, which works pretty well. I made an 8GB drive, which results in a really good lot of stuff. Only flaw: it plays in alphabetic order, A-Z. Would prefer random.

Another new compy...

Gad. My Shuttle died today. Sort of--it's not completely dead, but it ain't working worth a damn.

First thing I tried to do was wake it up, the wake-up screen was a BSOD, and reboot said there was no disk. I thought I had another disk that had Win7 on it, but apparently that disk, although labeled Win 7, just has files.

Now I'm already feeling panicky. I *think* I have a full backup, on my backup server, but I've never had to go look, or try to recover from it.

Tried re-installing Win 7 on another disk (1.5TB; this *was* in my Win Home Server box, but may have been flaking out, I replaced it already, so I had this just sitting around). This isn't working...got a fair amount through, it did some CHKDSK repairs, etc, was beginning to do updates, and that failed to reboot the first time it needed to, and worse still, trying again I can't even see the disk any more. Went by MicroCenter after visiting a friend, got a new 1TB disk, and that too fails to go through the install process, ALSO not showing the disk the 2nd try.

I tried formatting the 1.5TB on my Mac Pro. That went fine, it seemed to be ok; not sure what the deal is, but I didn't try it back in the PC.

This is all very alarming, and after what is now at least 4 tries to install O/S on more than one disk, and trying to view disks on my Mac (mostly failing), I'm feeling a bit alarmed. Looks like tomorrow is another visit to Micro Center for a whole new set of parts...

At least this time I think I won't get the Shuttle-size box, that, although cutely small, hasn't really worked as well as I wanted. I tried to get a new video card for the Shuttle as week ago, saw a good price, only to discover after I got home that the box said it needed two slots, which the Shuttle cannot provide for a video card.

But I will be able to get something faster: 6 core, more/faster RAM (8GB, DDR3-1333). And a better video card before Skyrim shows up.

I don't mind the upgrade aspect, it's the panic over maybe losing my files. That is really worrying me--I'm thinking about how to be even more certain I have backups.

new compy

Well, it looked like time to replace the old G5 Mac...because it was shortly going to no longer be possible to get an Intel Mac Pro with Snow Leopard on it out of the box.

And Snow Lep is important for me, as I need Rosetta in order to be able to continue to run old stuff I can't afford to replace. Lion is not going to come with Rosetta; it doesn't come with Samba either, and I still need access to the Win systems here.

So I got a quad-core Mac Pro with Snow Lep. Upgraded RAM to 16gb, for $160, great price. Upgraded disks to total of 5TB (2TB is Time Machine).

The G5 had Leopard on it, and that was as far as it could go. Q now is whether or not it can be sold for anything reasonable...or should I see about a school donation?

The Rosetta stuff works reasonably well so far...I have not tried a serious 3D game yet. Turns out that EV Nova runs ok, but that's low-res graphics behavior. Most other things have been fine. Only untested thing I think remains is the M-Audio PCI card in the G5. I'd like that to continue to work, too, but I'll have to go hunt for a driver, or give up.

Having a new compy is kinda fun, like a new girlfriend, all the discovery phase.

----

And just yesterday the new iPhone was announced. Sprint will finally have one, so we'll be switching phones finally, to a phone I actually will like (have not been impressed with the Android phone).

Steve Jobs died today. Man, that is sad. Quite possibly no one other single person had as broad a positive impact on the world in the past several decades (bin Laden clearly had a huge negative impact, but no one will miss him except psychos).

Fallout New Vegas

Been playing this for a couple weeks...it does of course have the same flaw I didn't like about F3, the bland color scheme. Given the length of time that has past since the "war", you'd think people would again have paint to color things with, and that there would have been some foliage recovery, at the least along the CO river valley.

One very good feature in this is that you can have a companion, who can't be killed. So you can let the companion do the dirty work a bunch of the time, or at least be a distraction...which is good, because the companion is probably going to stand between you and the target, so that you can't shoot it.

You have to spend overmuch time on repairing your weapons and armor. Granted, in Oblivion, you did need to do that a good bit, but it wasn't so hard--this is of course the same as F3, which means that while you can repair everything yourself, you have to do it by collecting additional items to do it with--either the same item (repair a 44-cal pistol with another 44-cal pistol), or pay someone else rather a lot to do it for you.

I made a tactical error early on, in a little town called Tipton, in which I was grossed out by the Legion jerks slaughtering everyone, and then acting proud of it and daring me to attack. So I did--and killed them all. Of course, that meant that Legion assassin squads were after me regularly after that, which made for some awkward episodes later, and needing to watch out for them quite a bit, and make sure I didn't let them get into a town or NCR area--because those squads seem to be quite a bit stronger than most NPCs. Mostly the squads came after me, but they appear randomly, sometimes right when you land someplace via fast travel or entering a door, in which case there's going to be some serious carnage you maybe didn't want...if I could do that over, I'd follow the original group and lay waste to their entire location. I want to go to the Hoover Dam and wipe them out now, instead of waiting for whatever it is I'm waiting for.

The map is plenty big, so you get your $ worth, esp if you only spend $15 for it on Steam.

The Congressional Budget Battle

and the debt ceiling...man what a psycho episode.

Made worse by the spineless president. That was not what I voted for. I would agree with a post I saw online today, where someone wrote that Obama should have acted more like LBJ would have, by saying something more like: "You want cost of gov reduced? I'll halt all the projects in your district tomorrow--that'll reduce the cost of government." Which can be done...USG can issue a stop-work order at any time, on any contract, and you as contractor cannot bill any further. The executive branch makes those kind of decisions regularly.

Which means that of course the executive branch can always turn off expenditures anywhere, at any time--so even if the President can't make the budget law, he can simply not spend all of what's allocated.

What continues to amaze me is that so many folks are complaining about how we can't raise the retirement age on Social Security--it has been clear for years that the eligible retirement age needed to go up. It really ought to be 70 *now*, rather than sometime next decade. *I* expect to have to work until I'm 70 (or die at my desk, whichever comes first). The economic downturn over the past several years I think pushed back my retirement opportunity a few years.

Recall when SS started? 1935? The retirement age was set at 65 because that was the actuarial expected lifetime for someone in America at the time. So you could retire at that point, and start getting $, until you died, which probably wasn't all that far off (not to suggest that folks couldn't live longer, IIRC both John Adams and Ben Franklin lived to be 90, more than 100 years earlier). Now, thanks to all the medical improvements, we can now expect to live well past that, the actuarial average death age is about 80 (from USG website). Which means that you are likely to be able to collect 15 years worth of payments. Or more. That really isn't sustainable.

While it sounds good to say "well, let's index the retirement age to follow the actuarial numbers", it's a near certainty that your work years past 70 aren't going to be as productive as those just before. We all are starting to slow down at that point, so 80 isn't really a feasible date. I think 70 is good, now, however, because we can all do better at living healthy lives to that point. That said, I know folks age 80 who are pretty active, but not like they were at 60.

If retirement age rises, that should let SS be stable for any foreseeable future.

Means testing is critical on this, too. If you believe what you hear, most folks will face retirement with only around $50K in savings--which means that SS is critical for them, the only thing separating them from poverty.

Of course the Republicans, for all their scare talk of Death Panels, would prefer that anyone who can't take care of themselves just die, that no "social safety net" even exist in such a way that they are taxed for any of it.

Two Worlds 2

Yeah, another game entry. Steam had a two-fer deal recently, where you could get Two Worlds 2, and Fallout New Vegas both under $20. Hard to skip that one.

I've played Two Worlds 1 already, and while the 3D there wasn't as good, I think it worked better overall. TW2 I got tired of it about halfway through; I found the UI awkward, parts were essentially pointless (crafting: unless you specifically like that, it isn't really going to do much for you--you'll be able to find/buy better loot plenty soon enough.

TW1 was originally billed as an "Oblivion-killer" but of course it was no such thing.

TW2 was ok as filler until Skyrim comes out later this year, but not really interesting enough to finish. Nowhere near enough caves/ruins/dungeons to investigate. It's a real button-masher, and my hands aren't really up to that any more...

The one thing I did like was the personal teleport stones. They were much like the teleport rings in Morrowind, something I wish had been in Oblivion (at least for loot-selling, especially if you included the patch that put new merchants/buyers within touch distance at the various teleport targets).

Dungeon Siege 3

So Dungeon Siege 3 came out a couple of months ago. I was excited about this in advance, and when Steam offered the early-bird deal that would get you Both DS 1 and DS 2 AND DS 3 when released, that was too good to pass up.

So during the spring I re-played DS 1 and DS 2. Still worth the original cost, for sure. It took me nearly 100 hours to replay DS 1. Probably my 2nd fave game (after Oblivion, of course). DS 2 took a comparable amount of time.

Dungeon Siege 3, however, commits the cardinal sin of being short. WAY short for the price. It was pretty, no doubt, but short. Opponents respawn pretty quick, so you can run over various areas a bunch of times for XP/leveling/loot/cash, but that's artificial. The game itself is just short.

I recall DS1 being originally billed as a 40-hour game. I don't think I've ever played it less than 80. DS3 seemed more like a 20-hour game, even for me. So it really needed to have cost 20 dollars.

If you look at the Wikipedia story on DS3, I'd say that's right on the money. In comparison with DS1/2, DS 3 hasn't much territory.

Another game discussion...

so PC Gamer's latest DVD had "Alganon" on it...Alganon is an MMO kinda game, rather like the others...My experience with these things is limited, played Guild Wars for a while a couple of years ago.

Guild Wars you buy the game (which I did for next to zip), and it's free to play after that. You can cover a decent amount of territory solo (well, by hiring NPCs for your team), but ultimately it's not very interesting. There were a fair number of folks playing at any time, each "town" had some dozens of players standing around looking for a group, or various Guild players. Random self-selected groups don't work too well. A couple of folks seemed a bit too Leroy Jenkins to me.

Alganon is of course similar...but without all the players. I think I maybe saw 3 or 4 total. It seems heavily oriented around the "crafting" crap, which does not interest me. Opponents only occasionally drop anything interesting. I happened by a beach in one area where the opponents, which looked a lot like green gorgons without the snake hair, were the same level as me--level 8. A little further south, they were blue, and level 30. ???!!! How can you have a level 8 area next to a level 30 area?

I got killed a bunch of times...actually that aspect is kinda cool: you turn into a spirit, respawn back in town, the world is now black&white/gray-scale, and you can run back to your body--or go exploring around a bit, because as a spirit, you can't be re-killed, in fact for the most part you can't even see the opponents. Once you are back to your body, you can reclaim it exactly as it was.

It is entirely too easy to sign up for quests that are WAY above your level, which does argue for a team. So let's have some NPCs to hire to form that team--I realize the MM part of MMORPG means other players on your team, but I prefer solo gaming, so I don't embarrass myself or anyone else. (GWs hire-able NPCs weren't all that great, they didn't level up as fast as you, so after a while they tend to be more cannon fodder to distract an opponent.

Alganon's crafting stuff seems really complex, time-consuming...forum posts do indicate that's where the best loot comes from, but seriously...the game is about crafting???

So at Level 10 I ran into a disastrous bug...I had just bought a chunk of training from the Ranger Trainer in Adrok, and decided I would re-arrange my skills bar (bottom center), and I managed to simultaneously delete every single one of them with some tray mouse-click...that is a serious bug. Basically killed the game for me. I have reported it, but I don't expect to get much resolution. In fact, if there isn't one that simply restores me either to right before the training "purchases" or simply puts my lost skill items back on the bar, uninstall occurs later this week. At least I didn't pay for it or anything.

In any case, it appears to be a game that very few people are playing. The map stuff shows a pretty darn large territory to wander through, which would be great if there was a good way to avoid quests that are way to far above your skill level, and if others were playing such that you could get onto a team, and if there were better loot drops.

The game also seems very oriented around getting you to pay for things on the outside, things which would make you considerably stronger. Lots of things in the in-game economy are obscure at best, and you have to buy a lot of training.

Oblivion is so much better than this...

Can the iPad do a blog now?

Yes, it can, but you have to go to the "edit" tab to do it, and then you're editing the raw HTML. But still, it's better than nothing, which is what you have otherwise.

And I'm finding that I type better with just a couple of fingers rather than the whole hand, on this virtual kbd.

Using preview works fine, result look ok. You can always go edit later on a real compy.

Changing employers

So I've changed employers this month. I had not done that since 1993...which was essentially before the World Wide Web even existed (except on a very limited basis).

I had essentially run out of billable work for the foreseeable future where I was the last 17 years. Sad, but true. I'd been doing solo stuff most of the last several years, was disconnected from other things.

Now was a good time to do the change. I recall when my dad retired from the USAF he said to me at the time: Want to be able to say I can do at least ten years with a commercial employer, and staying in the USAF for the remaining possible 5 years would violate that idea.

So for me, retirement is approaching at about that same pace. Dad was a year older, was planning to officially retire at 65 no matter what. I expect to have to go closer to 70; while that's still a ways off, it's a lot closer than the beginning of my professional career (1978).

Key thing with new employer is whether the work will be enjoyable. At the moment, it looks so for the next several years.

Java and EXIF data

I have recently needed to try to read EXIF data from Java. Easier said than done, unfortunately, and finding out how was not easy.

A few months ago I dug up what looked like a good approach, but it's old code (~2002), and calls classes/methods that are no longer accessible. I think they're still present in the runtime, but you can't use them yourself.

So I went hunting again, today. Found something called Imagero, which claimed to read the EXIF, but it didn't really look like it did, and the license statement was too burdensome.

Something called JExifViewer also looks good. It's a little bit too much GUI as opposed to callable functions, but it does seem to work ok.

I also found this:

Java Forum Link

which explains how to do it relatively easily.

The key thing is that you have to install a separate tool (the TIFF tool), and that turns out to have a quirk in that there are multiple variations, and you really need to install the JDK variation *and* the JRE version, because you probably aren't running your code in Eclipse from the runtime in the JDK.

Anyway, the code in the forum works great, does exactly what you are hoping for, and this code is way smaller once you install the other library (which comes from Sun anyway, so it's a good thing to go ahead and do).

The only flaw with all this is that EXIF data is most non-standardized, there are implementation inconsistencies...you know the drill, and it only applies to a few file formats, primarily JPG.

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Later: well, this bit of java code is less than perfect. I was able to break it pretty quickly.

Looks like "exiftool" is the better approach, as a callable program.

Ain't Windows wonderful?

So in general it's a good idea to do the O/S updates from Microstink when they are issued.

but not always...

and I got burned by that two days ago. I have two PCs, both are the neat little micro-boxes...I like the size, the lack of noise, etc. Anyway, one runs XP and one runs 7. I don't have space for multiple kbds and monitors, so I normally have XP open via Remote Desktop.

So these latest updates from M$ broke Remote Desktop. I cannot connect to XP from 7. This is awful!

Surely it doesn't take an Advanced Degree (tm) to figure out these kinds of things before releasing software !?!?!?

I realize you can't test against all possible combinations of softwares someone else might have...but surely you can test against all your own stuff ?!?!

So Win 7 is now showing what are probably the same updates...maybe I'll get really really lucky and that will fix the problem...nah. not gonna happen.

Favorite restaurants

My favorite chinese restaurant in this area has closed: Hunan Lion. The facility has been stripped to the walls, even the lions are gone. That almost suggests they are moving...went by last night hoping for dinner, but no.

This is a sad day...there really isn't one as good that we know of around here.

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[Later: Sept 15] In a weird turn of events, I've changed employers, and I'm now going to be working in the building where Hunan Lion used to be. Same bldg used to have a TGI Friday's, but that's been gone for years. It is just now getting replaced by an Indian restaurant. If it's a good one, that will be like heaven.