Sunday, November 28, 2010

Keep the CD Drives Empty





One of the cameras that I use from time to time is one that requires mini CD's to record and store the images.

I find it easier to pop the CD's into the drive on the CPU than to hook up the USB cord to get the images onto the computer.

Well, since I only use this camera occasionally, I tend to forget the CD is in the drive and it just sits in there.

Now, this is not a problem for normal operation of the computer or for booting up or shutting it down.

But, when I hook up my other camera by USB cord and try to transfer the images to the computer, the whole system freezes.

And I spend time trying to figure out why - the computer won't even shut down properly.

And then it dawns on me - is there a CD in the D drive slot.

I look to my left and see the empty CD case that confirms my suspicions.

After rebooting the system and removing the CD, everything works just like it is supposed to.

There must be some glitch or conflict in the programs that upload the images.

I am not going to even try to figure that one out, but I really must remember to keep those drives empty.

I would write myself a note, but I know I would just forget to look at that too.













Monday, November 15, 2010

Why Google





In my opinion, I think that if anyone is going to be doing anything at all online, it is important to have an account with Google.

They offer so many services - with the biggest one being email, for the average user.

If you like to take videos and upload them online, they have the market on that with their youtube service.

Many bloggers use their blogging service.

Many others store and use picasa for their photo sharing.

All of their services are free.

You can even use their services to make money with their adsense program.

If you have done a search on the internet, chances are you have already used one of their services.

One thing I do like to keep in mind though, being that they are a free service.

At any time they can stop offering a service or change how it works.

So keeping backups of what you have with them is a good idea - especially for the bloggers.

But that is for another post.













Friday, November 5, 2010

Bookmarks in Browser





On my older computer I have been getting a message about the browser bring unable to find certain bookmarks.

I do admit that it has been a while since I went through the hundreds of bookmarks that I have stored in folders in my firefox browser.

I guess they can go bad, and the browser recognizes them when it is loading to browse online.

Over the years I have bookmarked a huge number of websites, and I know that on occasion, when I try an older one, they come back with an error and the pages are no longer around.

When the browser is searching to load these bookmarks when it is opened, it takes forever - certainly the sign of a problem.

Guess I need to do some housecleaning in the bookmarks section.