crash/reboot

Today was an interesting day: I spent most of it at Kennedy Krieger hospital in Baltimore chatting with MRI technicians. I observed a research project involving MRI scans of the brain of a healthy young woman. I then had a chance to view for myself the files that MRIs created.

.REC files are compressed graphic-and-data files that you can't open in multipurpose software, but a fellow called Chris Rorden created a handy analytical program called MRICro that does the job nicely. I can't pretend to understand a lot about brain function and how MRICro's tools help analyze it, but I did take advantage of its ability to export scans to a series of JPEG files.

I then slapped the JPEGs into Windows Live Movie Maker and turned an hour's work into a sub-2-minute video. There are 271 frames in this video, representing three different MRI points of view.

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Brainscans.wmv (8.78 MB)

Sequence 1 is from the side. Sequences 2 and 3 are from the top. Sequence 4 is the longest and most interesting: It's from the front, and you can see the tip of the nose emerge, followed by all the inner workings of the skull, out through to the back of the head.

For my sins, I maintain a lot of computers operated by a lot of children, both in and out of school. The result? A whole mess of online game software gets installed that messes with the PC in the living room (or classroom). Sometimes it's deliberate malware, sometimes it's just terrible coding, but the result's the same: Kids' computers get hosed more frequently than most.

Here's my latest mess, and how I fixed it.

"The internet isn't working" said young Gen.

"Is that Blockland you're playing? That's an Internet game." said I

"But my Web isn't working." she replied,

And it wasn't. For the non-kids in the audience: I could ping Google.com (Start, Run, CMD, enter the words "ping google.com" without the quotes, and press Enter), but I couldn't raise google.com on Internet Explorer, Mozilla, or Chrome.

I ran through the usual troubleshooting regime: I repaired the wireless connection. No dice. I disabled the wireless connection and completely uninstalled it (Right click on My Computer, select Properties, Hardware, Device Manager, and right-clicked the Networking sections' Wireless option, and selected Uninstall.) I restarted the computer, the wireless connection reinstalled itself. Still no dice.

Then I turned to the dweeb squad on the Internet, and got my response: "Fix the TCP/IP stack."

So I went back to 11-year-old Gen and told her "Fix the TCP/IP stack."

So she did this:

1. Open a command prompt (Start, Run, CMD, OK).

2. Reset the WINSOCK defaults by entering this (followed by pressing the Enter key): netsh winsock reset catalog

3. Reset the TCP/IP stack defaults by entering this (followed by pressing the Enter key). netsh int ip reset reset.log

4. Reboot the PC.

...and presto! The Internet wasn't not working anymore.

 Tell your 11 year old to read this blog next time he or she says "The Internet isn't working." It'll serve the little tyke right.

You'd expect a media-aware site to handle things like Quicktime and MPEG and Windows Media format, for sure. But Ogg Video--OGV--anyone? Now that's impressive.

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NASAWF-AirplaneDesign.ogv (12.82 MB)

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globalpulse20070830_350kb.mp4 (11.47 MB)

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posterous-posts-the-most-xvktyBwbJgEtmFIaIkIp.zip (512 KB)

More than ten years ago, I set up a site at DirectNIC that has been serving me well ever since. It was nice to know back in the go-go years of the Internet boom and subsequent bust, and boom and bust and so on, that there was a set-it-and-forget-it option out there, and DirectNIC's bannerless hosting option was it. Fifteen bucks a year to register and host a basic Web site (with POP email or email forwarding) was pretty good; and an extra fifteen to take the banner ad off the top was even better.

That era is about to end.

I just got notice that bannerless hosting is being phased out in October. We old faithfuls must now decide what hosting option we want...if we want to stick with DirectNIC at all. The email notification was mighty cagey about actual costs, because as it turns out the cheapest option to replace the $15 bannerless hosting is a budget plan for customers that only have 1 bannerless hosted domain, offering about the same features (100 MB of disk space, 10GB of bandwidth transfer and 1 pop3 account) for $22.95.

Meh. I'll probably migrate to that plan before the October deadline, and take advantage of the current agreement ("you will not be charged until the current bannerless hosting renewal date") and see where to take my bannerless domain. I'm sure there's something better out there nowadays.

Any suggestions?

Transfer a domain to MyDomain.com for $7.61, they say, but they tack on 18 cents in "ICANN fee" making it $7.79 This is a somewhat misleading practice started by the blustering leader of the global registrar business, GoDaddy, and it's sadly becoming a standard practice.

Beware the price with the *asterisk by it!

Nonetheless, this is a pretty good offer (from ICANN-accredited registrar Dotster); one year renewal included. 

But how does Posterous handle posted PDFs?

Here's how!

Click here to download:

9_GetReady.pdf (609 KB)

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Click here to download:

9_GetReady.pdf (609 KB)

One blog; three media types; five file types.

We got your MP3s, your gallery of JPEGs, your FLV, your MPG, and your WMV, all in one place.

Does Posterous handle this with aplomb?

You have your answer. 

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tHE_wEREWOLF_vS._THE_vAMPIRE_wOMAN_(1971)_-_tHEATRICAL_tRAILER.FLV (6.17 MB)

Vincent_Price-death_by_..._.mp3

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Vincent_Price-death_by_..._.mp3 (925 KB)

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Click here to download:

attack-of-the-multimedia-updates-GphhcptasjscfbkiDohI.zip (204 KB)

The_Shins.mp3

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Click here to download:

The_Shins.mp3 (4.26 MB)

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Click here to download:

Roar.wmv (1.47 MB)

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Click here to download:

Roar.mpg (3.36 MB)

GoDaddy is running a special discount on .COM, .NET, .ORG, .BIZ, and .US domains until August 18th. To get 30 percent off your total, go to http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-409675-10815550 and at checkout, be sure to enter the coupon code fb30tld

We feel sure that Cisco’s Clean Access Agent is trying to report some kind of error here.

But whatever can it be?