One of the most common computer problems I see people facing is a faulty or corrupted hard disk drive. In many cases, the solution to the problem is a reboot, and the OS automagically runs a utility like Windows’s chkdsk that repairs the errors.
Sometimes, the problem is a bit more severe than that and more drastic measures are required. Most people I’ve encountered were unnecessarily afraid of running any kind of tool to scan and repair their hard drive. But it doesn’t have to be all horror and blood and gore: with a little knowledge and a few specialized bits of software, you too can be a genuine Disk Doctor!
Now, this will not be an exhaustive guide to fixing all disk problems, cloning the data from a bad disk onto a new drive, and so on. That would take quite a bit of time to explain, and a lot of it simply requires some experience. What I can tell you, though, is how to diagnose a bad drive yourself. At least you won’t get taken for a ride by some money-grubbing repair shop if you end up needing a hand to finish the job!
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Scottie Computers, Do-It-Yourself diagnostic, hard drive, repair, sector
Over a month ago in my post on the Intel SU2300, I promised I would create a simplified guide to installing and configuring CrystalCPUID. Well, it took a lot longer than I had hoped, but here it is!
CrystalCPUID is a lovely little piece of free software that can allow you to really, severely underclock your processor. We’re not talking SpeedStep underclock here – we’re talking running your 1.2GHz processor at 98 MHz.
That may sound a bit crazy, but it is apparently quite possible since I’ve done it myself on my little SU2300-powered lappy. My battery life jumped from 3 hours and 50 minutes to a whopping 7 hours. Of course, if I start watching videos or something, the processor jumps back up in clock speed, thereby draining the battery faster and reducing battery life. But if I’m just reading a PDF or something or surfing the web over ethernet, well, who needs their processor cranking along at anywhere near full speed?
So, without further ado, this is how you get CrystalCPUID working on your machine to extend your battery life!
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Scottie Computers battery life, laptop
I used to hate CSS. I mean, I really, really hated working with CSS at all. Then, one day, I was forced to actually learn it well to design a new web site. It was rough, but I survived.
Don’t ask me why learning CSS was so painful for me, because I can program in a bazillion different languages. For whatever reason, it was just painful. I emerged victorious, however, with the help of a lot of examples I found by searching online.
There was one little problem: the vast majority of examples I found included a little bit of code that will royally screw up all your hyperlinks. So, this post is about how to avoid the #1 CSS mistake: a, a:visited.
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Scottie Programming CSS, design, web
©1976, MGM
I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it any more!! (great movie, Network was…)
As if it wasn’t bad enough that Intel couldn’t write a driver that takes full advantage of the GMA500 in certain netbooks, now apparently they’ve resorted to sneakily “modifying” what “Enhanced SpeedStep” actually does.
I’m talking about the Celeron dual-core SU2300 processor in those fabulous “thin and light” notebooks that are quickly replacing netbooks so that everyone (except you) can make more money.
So, what’s the problem? The SU2300 does not have the “SpeedStep” that you think it does… which explains why no one can get it to work!
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Scottie Computers, Spare Me! Intel, processors
Everyone has run into this problem at least once: you are running a program, and you minimize it to the task bar. Later, you try to restore the window by clicking the program on the task bar, and nothing happens.
You’re program is running, but its window has somehow moved outside the desktop area. Firefox – bless its flaming little heart – just loves to do this to me.
Since it was such an annoying problem, I managed to figure out a couple of ways to restore the “hidden” window…
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Scottie Computers task bar, windows
If you have a Rails app that sends e-mails, you are probably using ActionMailer. Unfortunately, starting with Rails 2.2.2, you may have encountered a wonderfully annoying little error that looks like this:
OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError (hostname was not match with the server certificate):
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/openssl/ssl.rb:123:in `post_connection_check'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/smtp.rb:582:in `tlsconnect'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/smtp.rb:562:in `do_start'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/smtp.rb:525:in `start'
[...]
The are quite a few sites out there that give monkey patches for this problem, but those aren’t very useful because the next time you upgrade Rails, the monkey patch gets obliterated and you’re back to square 1. And then you have to remember how you monkeyed with it the last time to get it working again. Ug…
Instead, fix it the right way!
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Scottie Programming rails, ruby
So you’ve decided to be supercool and use jQuery. That was a wise decision you made, because jQuery totally rocks. Especially in Rails apps, jQuery makes life a LOT simpler. Yes, you have to learn some JavaScript and some quasi-new syntax, but it’s still seriously powerful and convenient.
There’s only one problem: if you’re like me (i.e. JavaScript-impaired), you just couldn’t get your forms to submit via an AJAX call.
You’ve probably heard of something called the jQuery Form Plugin. It’s a bit overwhelming looking at all the options and trying to extract just the functionality you need if you aren’t a JS Jedi, though. And so, without further ado, I present to you jQuery Form Submission for Dummies!
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Scottie Programming javascript, jquery
If you use Rails on a high-traffic site, you know that as your number of users increases, you have three main options:
- Add servers to handle the load
- Optimize your queries
- Improve your caching scheme
You may be surprised to know that most people go for Door #1. It’s a lot easier. You don’t have to really do tons of work to rewrite your code and actually make it efficient. You don’t have to ditch “the Rails Way” and start actually thinking about what the database layer is doing to slow your site down to a crawl. And you don’t have to think about how Rails’ cache expiry functions actually work. Finally – and best of all – you can just pass the costs on to your customer, right??
I recently read an article that really slayed me. It was about a “niche site” that runs on Rails. They get 50 million hits a month, and they have SIX servers to handle the load, including multiple dedicated DB servers. I designed a Rails site that now gets 27 million hits a month, and it runs Rails on a single 1.86 GHz dual-core server with 3GB of RAM. By my calculations, the site could easily handle twice as many hits as it does now. Most of the time, the load is very low and the CPU and disk accesses hover at a few percent.
Of course, to achieve good performance, you can use things like Phusion Passenger. But that alone ain’t gonna cut it. You also have to optimize your queries, stop doing things The Rails Way and start thinking for yourself, and of course optimize your caching scheme.
In this episode, I’m going to tell you one very cool way to turbocharge your caching setup!
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Scottie Programming cache, rails, ruby
If you have installed your own WordPress blog on your server, you may want to include some JavaScript goodness from time to time.
The bad news is that WordPress likes to screw around with tags when using the WYSIWYG post editor. That makes it kind of hard to, say, embed a video in one of your posts.
The good news is that there is a very easy way to embed any kind of JavaScript in your posts without the need to install any plugins, or change any configuration settings. And it works beautifully with the WYSIWYG editor…
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Scottie Programming javascript, wordpress
One of the most handy features in Windows is the ability to right-click on a file, and select an option to edit that file in a particular program, like so:
The big problem is that sometimes, your favorite program doesn’t come with a right-click context menu option. Or, maybe it does come with such an option, but it doesn’t work for some reason.
Whatever the case, you can very quickly and easily add whatever program you want to the right-click menu in about 30 seconds.
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Scottie Computers explorer, menu, windows
