JB's Blog

I had the delightful experience of informing one of my Users today that he’d lost a days work.

Scenario was I receive a call from a pleading user who had a Microsoft Project file ‘that wouldn’t open’ and I had to try and fix it.  A cursory look at the file showed that it was indeed corrupt as the file-size was a pint-size 8kb and the headers were all garbage.  ( Hot-tip for UNIX admins, fall in love with the file command )

The only option to recover the file was going to backups and this site only had overnight backups.

I was curious on why Microsoft Project would write garbage out to the file and talked with the User to retrace his steps.

Step 1) Logon in the morning and double click on the MS Project file

Step 2) Unplug network cable and walk into a meeting room to work with others for the day

Step 3) After a day of dealing walk back to his desk and plug in the network cable hitting ‘SAVE’

Now the Samba logs aren’t that detailed in this site but I’m guessing he hit the SAVE button prior to his machine receiving DHCP, logging on the file server, any of that jazz.

It’s an honest mistake.

To the computer literate and those that know what the floppy disk symbol of a save icon represents.

It raises a question though.  It’s 2011, why do we have to keep clicking ‘Save’ files?  I hope in the next decade I can look back and see progress.  In the meantime, there’s dropbox.

One of the gamers in the LanSmash forums posted a question about these new fan-dangled Gunnar Computer Glasses so I thought I’d have a look up and give my internet opinion.



By reading the marketing blurb it makes me think that these glasses will give me super powars!




Let’s go through the features…
—– i-FI lens coatings
They say: Our proprietary nano-filters help capture all of the good light coming from the computer screen while diffusing the bad reflective light and glare…

JB says: We tried to come up with something other then Polarized glasses and failed, so we started playing connect the dots.

I think you’d be better of by reducing the glare in your work environment by say closing blinds, moving monitors and tables, and having anti-glare non-reflective screens.

If all else fails just wear a set of Polarized glasses or move to an underground bunker.

—- fRACTYL lens geometry
They say: Aiding the natural focusing power of the cornea, our lens geometry eases eyestrain caused by near distance computer viewing.

JB says: We thought it would be cool to magnify the lenses so you wouldn’t have to sit so close to the screen; but then our marketing department figured out a way to make it sound like these glasses will make you focus so hard your eyes will become superman style laser beams.

—- iONik lens tints
They say: iONik lens tints take harsh artificial light and precisely tune it to match the anatomy of the eye. Our custom organic dye compounds condition and shift transmitted light into the preferred color spectrum, increasing visual contrast, detail and resolution…

JB says: We coloured our glasses amber to make your computer terminal look like it’s from the 70′s.




It is true though, Amber coloured glasses do help you with high contrast. Gun nuts have been using amber glasses for decades.




That all said, if you’re struggling with contrast with your computer you should probably change the settings on it to a high contrast settings.




Your desktop will look like shit however.

—- diAMIX lens material
No existing lens material had all the properties we needed. So we gave our lab techs the task of developing the lightest, most optically pure lens material possible

JB says: We sprinkle dust over our glasses and make sure no less then three unicorn’s pissed on the lenses.

Dining alone sucks. Whenever i’m out of town by myself I always loathe the lonely nights. Especially at wagamma’s in Sydney. They have a special table for us unfortunate chaps tucked a away in a corner facing away from the cheerful vibrant conversations flowing over their delicous food.

Dinner is a meal that should be shared, with family, friends and occasional drunk business deals.

Speaking of drinking, I need to stop writing and start the former.

Actually forget this post, I just found a lovely Asahi to strike a conversation with….