Isn’t it awesome?! No, it’s retarded.

If I read one more article about how “the PC is dead, long live the smartphone and tablet!”, I just may have to vomit. A lot.

Nowadays, it’s smartphones and tablets that make the news the most, and not without good reason. Yes, they are capable of some pretty amazing feats. And people are most definitely obsessed and/or fascinated with touch everything.

But there are a few good reasons why I believe that the PC is far from dead. It may evolve into something new and improved, but it isn’t going anywhere unless some new “killer app” in terms of hardware comes out, and smartphones and tablets are NOT that “killer app”.

As an interesting aside, I recently ditched Windows 8 and went back to Windows 7. The reasons for this are directly related to the whole “the PC is dead” thing, and how Microsoft has gotten it all terribly wrong.

But, I digress. First up, why isn’t the PC dead?

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Scottie Computers, Spare Me!

Oh boy, this one was a humdinger.

Of 12 computers running either Windows 7 or Windows 8, every single one of them was experiencing one of the following problems:

• Static, stuttering, and variations in playback speed when listening to MP3 or other audio files
• When typing, there would be a huge delay between when a series of characters was typed, and when they actually appeared on the screen. This happened in numerous applications, including Firefox, Word, and Thunderbird.
• YouTube videos would either not load at all, or the connection would crap out frequently and just sit there while “buffering”
• Skype! Oh boy, Skype was a real pain to use, if it worked at all

So how do you solve all these problems? It’s easy! Your turn off real-time web protection in MalwareBytes.

And if that doesn’t work, read on for more useful tips…

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Scottie Computers audio, malwarebytes, static, windows

So you’re merrily rolling along with your Android phone, and all is well…

Then one day, perhaps after an Android upgrade, every time you try to update or install any app from the Google Play Store, you get an error message like: Error retrieving information from server. [RPC:S-5:AEC-0]

This is obviously very annoying. These update errors started happening to me recently after I updated to Android 4.2.2 on my Nexus phone.

Fortunately, there are a couple of easy tricks to try to stop the error messages and get updating working properly again. One of these solutions in particular seems to work for everyone who tries it…

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Scottie Gizmos android, error, google, update

COO-KIES!

So, you’ve got a web server. It’s slow.

So, you optimize your app, and implement some caching. It’s faster, but not fast enough.

So, you decide to use Varnish, the popular reverse-proxy web application accelerator. It doesn’t work.

The reason it doesn’t work is that on your web site, you’ve got all kinds of Javascript-based goodies, like Google Analytics, or maybe embedded videos that set tracking cookies, or maybe things like AddThis that also set client-side cookies.

Well, client-side cookies are for the JS on your site; your application doesn’t actually care about them. BUT – and this is an annoying “but” – if those client-side cookies are set for “yourdomain.com”, then with every single request a reader makes to your server, those cookies are sent along.

And that means Varnish won’t cache anything, because it says, “Cookies?! EEK! No caching!”

So, how do you make Varnish happy with only the cookies that you want to keep?

Read on…

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Scottie Programming cookies, varnish

I just read an interesting article at BusinessInsider.com entitled Why Programmers Work at Night.

The article explains why programmers generally tend to prefer working in the wee hours of the morning.

Programming requires keeping a lot stuffed in your brain at once, and thinking about all of it all at once. This task can often be a tad difficult under normal work/life circumstances.

In short:

This is why programmers are so annoyed when you distract them.

Because of this huge mental investment, we simply can’t start working until we can expect a couple of hours without being distracted. It’s just not worth constructing the whole model in your head and then having it torn down half an hour later.

In fact, talking to a lot of founders you’ll find out they feel like they simply can’t get any work done during the day. The constant barrage of interruptions, important stuff to tend to and emails to answer simply don’t allow it. So they get most of their “work work” done during the night when everyone else is sleeping.

If you have ever programmed anything, you understand the above 3 paragraphs perfectly.

Still, there is a better way…

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Scottie Programming program, smarter

Oopsy!

On 25 December 2012, Ruby version 1.9.3-p362 was released. Is that dedication, or what?

Yesterday, I decided to upgrade to this new version of Ruby that contains only bug fixes.

Bad idea.

Sure, the site loads… But if you try to create a new record via the front-end UI, it craps out with an Internal Server Error.

Digging a bit deeper, it seems this new Ruby version causes a “stack level too deep” error in /active_record/transactions.rb – at least when using Rails 2.3.x.

So, how do we fix this little problem?

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Scottie Programming bug, rails, ruby

Pretty much everyone has heard of Adobe’s Photoshop software. It’s extremely powerful stuff that lets you create all sorts of graphics and images, edit photos at a professional level, and so on.

The only problem is, Photoshop has a very steep learning curve.

What are we left with? Microsoft’s Paint application? Ha! While it has improved over the years, it’s still pretty basic.

So, what do you do if you run Windows, and you want to do some image editing, create graphical elements for web sites, or otherwise play around with images on a computer?

You download the free Paint.Net application, because it rocks. Here’s why…

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Scottie Computers images, paint.net, photoshop

These days, it’s all about energy efficiency.

In some countries, you can hardly even buy normal incandescent light bulbs any more. You are left with a choice of slightly more efficient “a bulb inside a bulb” halogen options, or compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs.

Well, there are some problems with CFL bulbs, as we shall see.

Now, LED bulbs have made their big debut on the scene. They use even less power than CFLs, and supposedly they are better for the environment and all that jazz.

In some ways, this is true – but at a cost unless you are careful about which LED bulbs you pick.

And, since LED bulbs are so darn expensive, you need to choose wisely. Here’s how…

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Scottie Energy, Gizmos, How Does it Work? CFL, LED light bulbs, power factor

Okay, this one is VEEEERY annoying.

You have the 64-bit flavor of Windows 7 or Windows 8. You install Adobe Acrobat Reader.

You expect that on your desktop and in Explorer, you will see a thumbnail preview image of the first page of each PDF document.

Instead, you get nothing. NOSSING!

So, you search Google, and you find a bunch of tricks, fixes, and paid software that doesn’t work.

Well, after trying a million things, here’s what worked for me in both 64-bit Windows 7 and Windows 8…

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Scottie Computers acrobat, pdf, thumbnails, windows, x64

So, you got yourself a nice set of speakers, a good home theater amplifier, a fancy blu-ray player, and a giant flatscreen. Now you just want to hook it all together and enjoy the lovely 7.1 channel sound. Piece of cake, right?

No.

In fact, it is relatively easy to connect everything together and make it “work”, but it is downright mind-numbing to figure out if you are getting the full experience. Or, one thing may work, but other things do not.

For example, maybe Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks play nicely in surround sound, but 7.1 channel sound like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio do not.

And sometimes, nothing works at all.

Don’t worry, though: you are not alone. Do a simple search on Google, and you will find tons of posts on multiple forums with people who are just as confused as you are.

Frankly, I’m not surprised. There are so many standards and little technical details involved, you darn near need a PhD in electrical engineering just to enjoy a movie with HD sound.

And so, I present my quasi-guide to Home Theater Setup!

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Scottie Gizmos, How Does it Work? Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, HDMI, home theater