Tag Archives: computers

it’s baaaack…

04 Saturday Aug 2012

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My good deed for the day was setting up a user account for Peter on Shadow this morning. Because even as bogged down as Shadow is at the moment (must clear out files soon) he is still much faster than Sexy Beast, which is what Peter has been using. And I was rewarded for my time when I was looking at programmes on Shadow to see what was no longer necessary and suddenly saw “Fuentes” and thought… aha! So I copied my Century Gothic files onto Dropbox and then installed them on the Greyhound and I HAVE MY CENTURY GOTHIC BACK!!!

I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this before. I feel seriously duh. But also so pleased to have all my blogs back to looking as intended. Except now of course I realise that a rather lot of you guys are probably not seeing the sites properly…

But welcome back, Century Gothic. How I’ve missed you!

meet the greyhound

28 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by in computers, gadgets, geekiness, retail therapy, work

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I had a feeling this was going to happen this week. On Monday after uploading more photos into Shadow I had less than 10 GBs of hard disk space left and thought that if FNAC put on one of their “Día de Socios” (members’ day) I would go and get a new laptop, as I would get 10% off. Two days later I got a text message from FNAC telling me about the next one and so on Thursday morning I showed up ready to get the steel-blue 15.6″ Toshiba I’d been looking at. And then I saw The Greyhound. It’s the same one that I mentioned here but as it was now in stock I could actually see what it looked like. And I have to say it looks pretty sleek and the cover is also quite attractive, like silver and grey tiny-square graph paper under glass. I think the salesclerk was a bit surprised when I asked him to confirm the specs for me and then said, “okay, I’ll take it”. The entire transaction took less than five minutes. But of course I’d done all my research previously.

I have to say I’m very pleased with the new beast, though it will still take me awhile to get him all set up (bookmarks are taking forever). It’s quite nice having a big screen (17.3″) again and, with all my photos and programmes installed, I still have 470 GBs of hard drive available. Yay! But it’ll take some time to get used to Windows 7. One very annoying thing about it is that it doesn’t come with Century Gothic installed, which is the font I use on all my websites, including this blog. It’s actually quite disturbing to think that everyone on a Mac or using Windows 7 doesn’t get to see my sites as I’ve set them up – in another font it just doesn’t look right and the spacing also goes wonky. So I immediately got online to download Century Gothic, somehow chose a dodgy site in my haste, and ended up with a malicious browser highjacker called Babylon, which was a bugger to get rid of. Thanks to Sledpress for the additional help with Firefox!

Also thanks to Sled for suggesting this name. I’d been going back and forth between a couple of possible computer names, but as this one is grey and sleek and fast “Greyhound” fits. It also fits because Pat used to foster rescued greyhounds, and was as gadget-crazy as I am, so this is yet another way of keeping her in my thoughts.

time to upgrade?

11 Wednesday Jul 2012

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I’ve been thinking of upgrading lately and am just ever-so-slightly miffed with myself for buying the iPad before a new laptop, but oh well. Shadow’s hard drive is pretty overloaded by now and I’m at a loss as to what files to eliminate (gosh, 3 years ago 250 GBs seemed like so much space!) and so I’ve been looking around. I still like Toshiba though lately their designs have been, well, kinda ugly. I did see a nice brushed metal one I liked, another 15 inch like Shadow, with pretty good specs. Then the guy at FNAC told me about this Satellite L870-10Z. For the same price (700€) I can get a 17 inch screen and a whole whack of RAM and HD. Which I think makes more sense than getting a smaller one as I really just want this one for working at home. When/if I travel I can either take the iPad or else a wiped-clean Shadow.

Thing is, this one has to be ordered in and I don’t actually know what it looks like. From this photo taken from the FNAC website it just looks plain dark grey, like Shadow is, which would be fine. But what if it ends up with some dodgy pattern on it? I know this shouldn’t matter, but it does. What I’d really like is another Sexy Beast, but ever since they discontinued that model Toshiba stopped doing sexy. So as long as this new beast isn’t plaid or anything I’m thinking I might go for it. I could probably have it paid off by Christmas if tapas tours continue to go well (and my flatmate gets some work!). But then I wonder if I should wait until after the next PET scan in September… what do you think? I hate putting my life on hold like that, but if the worst happens then I’ll need the extra cash to live on. On the other hand, having an efficient computer to work on from home would also help. Anyhow, you can see the specs below…
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computer clean up

14 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in computers, gadgets, photos

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Time to bite the bullet and spend most of the afternoon doing what I’ve been dreading… cleaning out my photo files. Yes, I know I could just delete entire files without looking at them since I have them backed-up on an external hard drive but I’m loathe to do this for two reasons: the hard drive back-up might fail, and I prefer having easy-access to all my photos by keeping them in the laptop files. But poor Shadow is clearly overburdened and has been slowing down a lot lately. Funny how I remember thinking how massive his 250GB memory was! These days the norm is 600GB.

Of course that is my other option – to upgrade my laptop. Which is probably what I should have done before splashing out on a new iPad, but that one has already sailed.

And so there will be several hours of mind-numbing tediousness ahead of me (after I get back from the gym). Here I go…

backing up

05 Saturday May 2012

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How often do you back up your computer files? I’ve been doing  back-ups on this cute little external HD quite regularly, about once a month. Is that enough? And do you then erase what you’ve backed-up to HD in order to make more space on your computer? I’ve always been a bit nervous about doing that – just in case! – until now. Mostly because I’m really running out of space on the laptop.

Hmmm… maybe it’s time to buy a new laptop? People keep telling me I should get a Mac Pro but I’ve never had a Mac before. Would rather have another sexy Toshiba.