It is a graphic of the icons of the world’s top 300,000 websites. Considering that at the end of 2009 it was estimated that there were 234 million websites, then to be in the top 300,000 is quite something.
The graphic is a large one. I’m not going to post it here, as the copy I have is nearly 508Mb in size. You’ll have to make do with a reduced one –
What amazed me is that Head Rambles is in there. It took a bit of searching, but the Old Goat is in there, up in the top left hand corner.
As I mentioned about three weeks ago, I got myself a new laptop.
At my age, switching to a new version of an operating system can be a little daunting. Learning is not the problem. I have no problem with the learning. What I do have problems with is habit. I get into the habit of doing things a particular way, and if I am forced off that way, I tend to get annoyed.
I mentioned before that I liked my “Classic Menu”. I found a nice little programme (Classic Shell) that does exactly what I wanted. What’s more, it gives be a configurable dual option – left click (for example) on the Start button gives the new Windows 7 Menu, whereas right click gives the “Classic”. What I find interesting is that more and more I am using the Windows 7 version, and soon there will be no need for that programme at all.
For the last couple of days, I have been playing around with Firefox 4.
At first glance there is little difference from Firefox 3, apart from little tweaks such as the tabs now extending to the full width of the screen, whereas in the old version, they were moved to the right by the Bookmarks/History panel.
One area where there is a significant difference is in the way the tabbed preview works.
In the case above, the curser is over the Firefox tab on the menu bar, which gives a preview of the tab currently open.
In Firefox 4 however, moving the curser over the menu gives a preview of every tab open in Firefox. Moving the curser over the previews immediately shows that tab in the main screen, allowing for very easy and quick selection.
I don’t know if it is my imagination, but the screen seems a lot crisper in 4, as well.
Normally I only run Beta versions for test purposes, and will rever to the production version for normal use. I find with Firefos 4 though that I use it all the time, and would be loath to revert.
I have spent the last twelve hours transferring gigabytes of data onto it from the old one. Not a joyful task.
It has one or two quirks that will take a little getting used to – a very flat keyboard, that actually feels like a keyboard and not a slab of rubber, a smaller screen (same width as my old one but widescreen, so shorter) and keys in places I don’t expect.
The one major difference though is that it runs Windows 7.
I have never seen Windows 7 in operation before. Of course I have heard a lot about it, but as I didn’t have it on any machine, I didn’t pay that much attention. Now I am learning the hard way.
First impressions? On the upside, it is extremely fast.
On the downside, I find it terribly fiddly finding my programmes. I confess I always set my Vista to ‘Classic view’ menus, but this little feature is no longer available.
I suppose it is something I’ll just have to get used to?
I had an interesting problem on the spare laptop the other day.
There were two symptoms – the screen would go blank and the laptop would lock up, or else the Windows bar would develop streaks, as if it had been wiped with steel wool.
My first reaction was that the video drivers had become corrupted, so I replaced them. No luck. It was during that process (when I had to reboot a couple of times) that I noticed that the problem extended beyond Windows. On boot up, the laptops loading screen was badly streaked with horizontal thin red lines. As Windows hadn’t even started loading at this stage, it had to be something more radical. Either the screen was on the way out, or the BIOS had developed a fault.
I wouldn’t have minded the screen failing too much, as it would have been a fine excuse to buy an upgraded laptop, but I decided to tackle the BIOS first.
I don’t like updating the BIOS for the simple reason that it is the core of the machine. Screw that up, and the whole machine is screwed. Also there is no rolling back. However, I took the plunge, and found an updated BIOS file.
In fact, the whole process was quite uneventful. The new BIOS loaded, and since then the laptop has been running smoothly. No more lock-ups. No more streaks.
It just goes to show – weird problems can easily be fixed with a bit of courage.
Now I have to think up a new excuse to upgrade my laptop!
As I said in my last post, I rebuilt the operating system on this laptop.
It was a straightforward restore from the factory backup, which I had done before and had no problems with. This time however, I noticed a couple of strange things happening.
The first thing I noticed was that the Vista Sidebar wasn’t working properly. That didn’t unduly worry me as I don’t consider it an essential feature. Maybe something had become corrupted during the install, but it wasn’t worth the effort of redoing the procedure.
Later, I noticed that I was having a strange problem with my Live Writer – it would work for a short while and then literally, just disappear. A little irritating if in the middle of writing an article?
Later again, I was messing with some sound files, and tried to launch Media Player. It wouldn’t run. The icons and shortcuts were just so much useless decoration and nothing would induce Media Player to give so much as an error message. It was as if it didn’t exist.
One error is irritating but three is more than coincidence.
I did some research on the Media Player problem and ran into loads of solutions about upgrade problems and compatibility problems, but they were of no use, as it had worked before and I knew it was compatible.
Eventually I found the solution.
Click Start.
Click Accessories, then right click on Command Prompt and choose "run as administrator".
In the command box, type regsvr32 jscript.dll, and then hit enter.
Type regsvr32 vbscript.dll then hit enter.
Exit from Command and that should fix the problem.
Media Player ran straight away. Similarly the Vista Sidebar was now displaying its Gadgets correctly. Windows Live Writer is performing exactly as it should.
I don’t know why this procedure should have been necessary, as I have never had to do it before, but at least I’ll know what to look for next time….
