technical issues

Chris Knight's avatar

So the other week I upgraded my iPad (it’s an iPad 2) to iOS 8.0 and since then there was some significant slowdown of apps, and Safari seemed especially effected.  Oh it worked, just not at the brisk pace that I’m used to.  Anyway, last night I finally updated to iOS 8.1

Never, never again will I do such an upgrade to my ever-trusty iPad 2.  And yes, I know that I should upgrade the iPad itself.  It’s three and a half years old, after all.  I guess it’s seen me through an awful lot so there’s that sentimental value.  If and when I finally retire it I’m thinking of putting it in a shadowbox and hang it on my wall.  But until then I’d still like to get at least a little life out of it.

Anyway, I started the update and went to sleep and when I ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

So for the past several weeks my iTunes hasn’t been up to snuff. iTunes starts up okay… but when it comes to the iTunes Store it did nothing but show a blank white page with “iTunes Store” printed in the center. And whatever has been the problem with that, it also has kept iTunes from properly updating my iPad. I’m still using Windows Vista (no jokes, please :-P)

I tried everything but nothing worked to make iTunes Store functioning on my computer. I even uninstalled and re-installed iTunes… three times! And still the iTunes Store wouldn’t come up. When I ran the Diagnostics tool it gave me some crap about how iTunes Store couldn’t make a secure connection.

Well, as of about an hour ago it’s finally working again! It took me the better part of three days of actively addressing the issue and a whole wazooload of Google ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Well, you do now! But be of good cheer: I’m about to tell you how to fix that.

I’ve had StarCraft II for awhile now, but haven’t played even anywhere close to finishing the first campaign. Among other reasons, I’ve been frustrated by what I have been certain is too slow performance for the high-end rig I’ve got it installed on. And yesterday, I finally set out to find out why (or if I was even right about that).

Turns out that StarCraft II doesn’t like multiple CPUs all that well. Optimally it should be running on two cores, not three or four. So Yours Truly went searching for a way to bring it down to operating on only two processors. Lo and behold: it can be done! Start up StarCraft II from the desktop, then bring up Task Manager (usually done through CTRL+ALT+Delete), go to the sc2.exe process and ...

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Two days ago I wrote how I was currently hooked on Fallout 3, Bethesday Softworks’ amazing continuation of the classic Fallout video games from the late Nineties.

Well since I wrote that, I had to take my copy of the game back to the Target store that I bought it from. Why? ‘Cuz my copy of the Windows version didn’t have the white sticker inside the box that had the Windows LIVE Access Key printed on it for that particular DVD. So I uninstalled Fallout 3, exchanged the original copy for one that did have the sticker with the key numeral, and installed the game fresh.

So everything was cool… except that the game “hung” shortly after the birth/character creation scene started, and would go no further.

Some reading on the Intertubes showed that a lot of people have been having this problem also.

Well, this morning I ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Very strange night of cult leader Johnny Robertson’s usual broadcast on WGSR this evening. The first hour was a recording of this morning’s “service” at Martinsville Church of Christ. And that in itself was notable because to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that I’ve ever seen Johnny Robertson praying. Except that his “prayer” was straight out of Luke chapter 18, in that it was practically the same as that of the Pharisee in the temple who prays “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers…” etc. Yes folks, that apparently is the substance of “prayer” among the cult (which again, is not the real Churches of Christ at all).

Then Robertson went on a vicious rant, boasting about how his “church is the most authoritarian!” among other things, and then devoted much of the rest of the “sermon” to evolution ...

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We bought a 37-inch LCD high-definition television set last November. It’s specifically an LCD screen because when I was doing research before we went out to look at sets the widespread consensus was that LCD screens don’t “burn-in” like plasma screens do.

Well, guess what?

I can’t show what this looks like because it doesn’t show up well in photos, but there are two very fine vertical lines running down the entire height of the screen: one line running equidistant from each of the left and right sides of the image. They are exactly where the borders of the “pillars” are when you watch a standard (not high-def) image without “stretching” it to fill the screen. Since most of the interesting programming around here is standard definition and I don’t like distorted images, the tendency is to watch television “pillarboxed”. I guess that’s how the lines got in there: ...

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