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As I mentioned in a previous post, Vista is overly aggressive about powering down the wireless network interface on my new tablet notebook.  Vista seems to want to disable the wireless when it loses connectivity, when wireless network strength is less than excellent, when the wireless network interface is idle for too long, or if it gets tired of me being productive. 

Losing the wireless capability on a Lenovo tablet/laptop (because power-savingness is close to godliness, or something) shouldn’t be a problem. There are a couple of utilities and control panel widgets for turning wireless back on again.  The infuriating problem with my tablet is that either Vista wireless or Lenovo’s wireless managers seem to get themselves, or each other, royally screwed. The easy methods of getting your wireless card turned on again become completely unresponsive. Sometimes they fail to show the correct state and hang when you try to disable or enable wireless again.  The result is extended periods of wirelesslessness.

With Vista’s ambition, though not-terribly successful (compared to Mac OSX) attempts to quickly wake from sleep and power-conserving modes, I would think that getting wireless back should be fast and simple.  It’s supposed to be.  Sadly, it’s not so.  Usually it takes a reboot (which, under Vista, also isn’t that fast) to restore wireless capabilities to their former, precarious, glory.

After searching for answers and persevering with Vista throughout its insistence that I save power foremost through the loss of my wireless connectivity, I finally decided to side-step the problem.  Basically, I excluded my wireless adapter from any power saving scheme. 

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Today I updated my iTunes software to version 7.6 on Windows XP and Vista, hoping to see if I could rent “300″ and play it, and get an idea of whether I liked the whole rental idea. Sadly, though I can play music fine, iTunes 7.6 doesn’t want to play audio from my TV Shows or Movies anymore.

This “no sound” experience happens on both my Vista and XP machines.

US$3.99 down the drain, and only 30 days left to rescue my movie hire.

I’m baffled. One more gripe to add to the list.

A while back I learned something that I think is interesting for anyone who is interested in reliability. The reliability of solid state components in computers is related to the Arrhenius Equation. The Arrhenius Equation describes how the rate of chemical reactions is affected by temperature. A theory of reliability about solid state components of computers says that the reason they fail (after DOA and child mortality failures) is primarily due to chemical reactions, like oxidation.

In Wikipedia’s inimitable style:

The general rule of thumb, without solving the equation, is that for every 10°C increase in temperature the rate of reaction doubles. As with any rule of thumb, it does not always work.

Theoretically that means that for every 10°C you can cool your computer beyond its nominal operating temperature, you can (according to the unreliable rule of thumb) increase the mean time between failures of solid state components in your PC by a factor of 2. Another way of describing this is that it doubles the reliability of those components.

Now, a question: Should I freeze my backup DVDs?

www.omfg.com should have much funnier content.

This game looks like an end-run around WoW’s strengths: storyline depth, spelling, grammar, good localization quality and intentional humour.

From the Elf Online newbie quest database:

Quest name: Meng San’s worries
Quest level: 6~99
Rewarded goods: Fatal Wrath Kerchief 7J?21001?
Procedure: 1.Go to Uncle Lin in Sunset Prairie to buy a bottle of Injure Curer for Iron Arm Meng San in West Carefree Village.
[...]
Quest name: Beat elf
Quest level: 1~99
Procedure: 1.Go to HaiLiGe in North Wulong Village after killed 10 Snot Elf in Tranquil Seacoast 1.

And having agreed to join up, this is displayed after the “congratulations!” message:

Play Elf Online, Earn Cash.
Rare Items for Your Choose.
Cashes Points Rare Pets.

And, err, the download instructions look pretty frightening for Vista users:

1.Client latest version 2.0.2.496, about 890 M;
2.You can use either BT or HTTP to download. BT is recommended;
3.If you use the Vista O/S, please don’t install the game in disk C;
4. If you can’t login the game after downloaded and installed the client, please download manual update patch.

Even now I feel strangely drawn to play.

h/t Broken Toys

Update: Caution… you can’t delete or cancel your account details so be sure to use a pseudonym and a disposable email address during registration. And I can’t figure out how to… err… get an ID for this free game. Impenetrable grammar has its downsides too…

I work with a US-based manager called Jane with über-project-coordination skills.

One of Jane’s management super hero talents is a tireless ability to bring warring development groups together on the phone and gently negotiate agreement within minutes of observing email sniping or any of the other usual symptoms of project discord.

I watched too much of a TV show during my early childhood called Mr Squiggle. The show featured a puppet character called Mr Squiggle “the man from the moon” who…

…was a cheery, scatter-brained character who would often be distracted and would occasionally go for “space-walks”, and his assistant would need to calm him down to get him to focus on the task of drawing.

Mr Squiggle always had a female assistant to help him, and give the show some narrative consistency. There were several assistants during the show’s lifetime, but the assistant I remember most fondly is Miss Jane.

Even though he was easily distracted Mr Squiggle was a brilliant artist, as puppets go. He could change a piece of paper with some random-looking lines and curves into a complete picture by drawing with his pencil nose while talking about how nice the moon is this time of year.

Before starting to draw he would say “Hold my hand, Miss Jane.”

This seemed such a fitting parallel to our project (as the creative scatterbrain, Mr Squiggle) and our Ms Jane (as a stabilizing influence) that I thought I should share this parallel with her.

I was about to compose a Happy-New-Year-how’re-you-doing? email to Jane with background links to the Wikipedia article on the show when I noticed that there is also a short Wikipedia entry for Jane Fennell, the actor who was Miss Jane.

I read it and decided against drawing any parallels.

Now I think I need someone to hold my hand.

“Because I have nothing to show, nothing to say, we shall try to speak about something else.”

I’ve watched a lot of TED videos, but this one is the most fun. Philippe Starck designed that citrus juicer, and a whole lot of other very special everyday items. Even though he has nothing to say, his humility, outlook on life and motivation are well worth 20 minutes of your time.

Via Metacool.