Hawk Software

Or, how Linux saved my stepmother’s photos.

It  started out as a simple project; recover my stepmother’s photos from her dead laptop.  The laptop had experienced video hardware problems and finally would no longer boot, so I was fairly sure the hard drive would still be working.  I removed the hard drive, connected it to a SATA to USB adapter, and connected it to my Windows XP laptop.  XP detected the new external drive and I thought I was in the clear, but of course, I was just getting started. Read the rest of this entry »

I scheduled this quick post just for fun.

Phil Frisbie, Jr.

Writing classes tell you that for writing to be most effective you must know who your audience is and write directly to them.  That is great advice, and much of the time it is easy to know who your audience is.  For example, if I am writing a programming article I can reasonably assume my audience is composed of programmers interested in the subject, and I can be fairly free with some technical jargon.  On the other hand, if I am writing user instructions for some software marketed to general PC users then I had better be VERY careful about using any technical terms, and if it is REALLY necessary I had better explain those terms within the text.

However, sometimes you just THINK you know who your audience is. Read the rest of this entry »

When we last left this topic I had just installed Ubuntu, but in reality you can run virtual operating systems on just about any OS.  I choose to install the latest 64-bit version of Ubuntu, and for virtulization Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox before Sun was acquired by Oracle).  While I could have used VirtualBox on Windows 7, I just do not feel comfortable  relying so heavily on a Microsoft OS, especially before Service Pack 1 Read the rest of this entry »

While I love the appeal of free-open source operating systems like Linux, and love the polish on MacOS (but not the associated hardware costs), I am still a Windows user at heart.  Since 1993 when I installed DOS 5 and Windows 3.1 onto a generic 486SX based PC, I have grown comfortable (in a love-hate kind of way) with Windows over the years.  Read the rest of this entry »