How to buy a Lenovo server

Perhaps the title for this post should contain a question mark, because, as you’ll see, I have no idea. We needed a new server at work. We always buy Dell, but The Powers That Be request that all purchases over £3000 require at least three quotes. So off I went to Dell’s website, where I spec’d up a server and they gave me a price on the screen there and then. I then emailed a Dell reseller the same spec, …

Eaten by a bear

Today, I was pleased to see that online music “experience” and music streaming service Last.fm were doing their bit for carbon dioxide emissions and bandwidth reduction by pausing the radio if they detected I may have been eaten by a bear. After all, there’s nothing worse than letting the creature who has devoured you waste your precious internets.

Google Buzz: Am I in Shaun Conway?

Google Buzz was unleashed on the world this week. I can’t see the point yet – it’s like a more accessible, but clumsier, Google Wave. Brought to you in the form of a clone Twitter feed. Sort of. The mobile version lets you add your location. Unlike Twitter’s map reference, Buzz displays your position as an address; a street name, shop, or business. Or for me, it thinks I might be inside a man. The thing is, I know Shaun …

iPad Needage

Yesterday, Apple announced the iPad. Not that anyone was really surprised, as all bar the nitty gritty specifics had been leaked already over the last few weeks. And, although I was looking forward to the reveal, I didn’t think I was going to be especially interested in the product. After all, I’ve had tablet PCs and PDAs and an iPhone and laptops and netbooks and stuff in the past. So it wasn’t going to be anything new. I was wrong. …

No Airport Card Installed problem with a MacBook

Horror of horrors this morning: the wireless on my MacBook disappeared. It didn’t get physically removed, it just… vanished. The icon I have on the menu bar just kept saying “No Airport Card installed”. I thought two things: either it’s physically fried, or my daughter’s “tinterneting” (that is, banging the keyboard) has made it pop loose. Both would require a dismantle, and it isn’t a job for the impatient. Thankfully, there was another, less intrusive, thing to try first – …

Conditionally colouring merge fields in Word

We all know that when you want to do conditional formatting in Office, you use Excel. Right? Or maybe Access. But what if you want to merge some data from Excel into Word, then conditionally format some of the fields? Word doesn’t do conditional formatting! Except, of course, it can. For this I’m going to assume you have some data in Excel. Two columns headed “Data Number” and “Letter”. The Data Number is just 1 to 10, and the Letter …

Creating Dress-Up Mannequins in Illustrator

I’ve created a helpsheet for everyone who has ever wanted to create digital dress-up dolls! This shows how to import images to use as fills for clothing, so you can scan in some material and use if as a dress or something! [issuu layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml showflipbtn=true documentid=091126100916-9a77928acc34455fb42f78bedaf9efc0 docname=creating_dress-up_mannequins username=deKay loadinginfotext=Creating%20Dress-Up%20Mannequins%20in%20Illustrator width=420 height=297 unit=px] (Download the PDF here: Creating Dress-Up Mannequins) I realise this may seem like a bit of a random thing for me to produce, but it was something I …

Volume Erase Failed

I tried to format a Buffalo 1TB external hard drive on my Mac today, to HFS+ (journalled). But it failed, over and over again with the error “Volume Erase Failed with the error: The underlying task reported failure on exit”. It was a brand new drive, already formatted as FAT, so I assumed it was faulty. Turns out, however, there’s a simple reason for it not working: you can’t format HFS+ partitions on certain external hard drives if the boot …

Wave with me!

I have a Google Wave account! Sadly, Wave is pretty much broken. It’s confusing, inconsistent, unreliable and slow. And broken. Very broken. But! If you have an account, you can Wave With Me in the Wave below! Probably. [wave id=”googlewave.com!w%252BQtrt0eJoI”] Update 07/10/09 – might actually work now!