carbonel

Most mornings, I have coffee to drink. Sometimes regular coffee made with my Keurig coffee maker, and sometimes a latte, made with an espresso maker and foamer. In both cases, the vagaries of the devices means that the coffee comes to within about an eighth of an inch of the top of the coffee mug. In the case of the latte, there's another quarter-inch or so of foam above the liquid.

Is it just my imagination, or is my coffee less likely to spill when there's foam on top than when it's just plain coffee? Could the foam actually be providing some stabilization?

It seems that way to me, but I have no idea if there's any justification for that feeling.

Back in 2005 or so, someone recommended a little program called LJArchive. It downloads all of one's LJ posts (with the option to include comments as well), and includes a search feature. It's the perfect thing for tracking down that "I know I posted it in LJ somewhere" post.

Sometime between 2009 and 2012, it stopped working, at least for me. All the old messages were there as of 2009, but I kept getting an error message when I tried to download newer messages. In 2012, I went hunting again for either a fix or another program that would do the same thing. What I found was someone in Germany who liked the LJArchive program enough to pay a programmer to fix the problem. No guarantees, but indeed it worked, and I tossed whoever it was (I see no name on the page) some money via his PayPal link.

Fast-forward to today in 2015, when I wanted to find something on LJ using LJArchive. Which is when I realized that a) I hadn't installed LJArchive on the new computer I bought a couple of years ago, though I did still have the old archive file, b) the download file at SourceForge is the old bad version, and c) because I only had access to the old bad version, I couldn't search LJArchive for my post with the link to the fixed version, because that was posted in 2012, after the date the program would crash.

After a certain amount of manual searching on LJ, I finally found the post. Thankfully, the page is still up, as is the direct link to the fixed file. I'm not sure why my Google searches failed, but I'm hoping that by posting here and then doing an immediate update to my LJArchive archive, I won't have the problem again. I've also saved the fixed file in my downloads directory, adding "fixed" to the name.

The real way to keep this fix from total obscurity, however, would be to get the updated version posted at the SourceForge site. I don't have a SourceForge account, and have no connection with the fixed program other than as a satisfied user. The guy who posted the fix -- I don't have a name, just the e-mail address a.q@gmx.net -- didn't fix it, he paid a developer. However, both the fixed application and the source code are available at his site. Any idea how it could get updated on SourceForge?

My computer has BSOD'd several times in the past couple of days -- twice three times today. Each time, it occurs without warning. The blue screen appears, and says "KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR" at the top, then the computer restarts.

This can't go on, even though I'm getting paranoid about saving my work.

Any suggestions on a) what the problem is, b) what to do about it, or c) where to take it would be gratefully appreciated.

Note: The computer crashed again while I was in the middle of writing this message. Luckily, LJ remembered most of it. I rebooted into safe mode, and I'm going to try that for a while to see if it makes a difference. I hate safe mode.

I am humming, because I've been through my computer with a hard drive with no name.

To be more precise, I have this new 2 Tb USB hard drive that appears to have been installed properly via PnP, but isn't showing up as a named (or lettered) external drive in Windows Explorer. However, it shows up as a "My Passport" (the WD model) drive -- with no letter -- in the "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" dialog box.

And if I open the Devices and Printers dialog box, there are two My Passport drives that both claim to be working properly. The drive letter isn't shown there, so I can't tell which is the problematical one in that screen.

Any idea how to get this hard drive back on track? Rebooting the computer didn't help, and I can't think of anything else to try.

This is a two-part question, because my Internet is in two parts.

A. I've had ADSL from CenturyLink (originally Qwest) since the mid-1990s, pretty much as soon as it came available. The speed gradually increased, but at this point it's throttled to 1.5 Mbps, because they don't allow outside vendors to provide Internet via fiber optic, only via copper. Which brings me to part B.

B. I've been with the same ISP and its successors since I started using the Internet. Wavefront was acquired by Visi, Visi was acquired by T-something-don't-remember, and the T-Company was acquired by OneNeck. Mostly the service has been good, with occasional glitches. Lately, the glitches have been considerably more annoying. The site (or portions of it) keeps getting blackballed, and mail is blocked without notice by intermediaries.

As a result, I'm looking for a change. I want the following:

1. A provider that will support fast speeds (at least 5 Mbps speed, ideally more).
   
   
2. A provider that will support the weird retro needs I have -- specifically, POPmail and the ability to do vacation forwarding to another address essentially invisibly.
   
   
3. A provider that gives decent customer service.
   
   
4. A provider that isn't going to be hypervigilant about my torrenting habit. The stuff I download is mostly in the gray area (like already-aired TV shows) rather than pirating of commercial material, and I don't want to get little nastygrams every week or oftener.

I've heard good things about IPHouse, but my understand is that it mostly does web hosting, which is not what I need.

What about old-style providers like EarthLink or Panix?

Am I better off with something seriously mainstream like using CenturyLink as my direct provider, or Comcast? What's fast, good, and not hideously expensive? Note that I don't live in Minneapolis, so the city Internet isn't an option for me.

1. On Windows 7, in the Windows Explorer (not to be confused with Internet Explorer), I have a bunch of folders in the Favorites section. This, as it says, gives quick access to the most-used folders. A couple of days ago, the version of my Downloads folder in the Favorites section started acting as if the only contents of said folder were music: it displays Name, Track #, Title, Album, etc. -- but not file size, date of file, or the other things I actually want to see. There are some MP3 files in this folder, but mostly it's other stuff.

The "actual" folder (c:\users\[realname]\downloads) is displaying the files properly. I tried the obvious step of deleting the Downloads folder from my Favorites, then adding it back in again. This failed to fix the problem. It was fine until just a few days ago, but I have no idea what I did to change it, and Google is failing me. Any idea how to get it back?

2. There is some university that every year does a reality check for faculty: the new students have never encountered a world without cell phones or the Internet or whatever changed about 18 years ago. I think it's an annual list. Where can I find this?

3. There is an SF (or fantasy, depending on how you define such things) story that claims that any group of people falls silent at 20 after the hour. The narrator theorizes that people are listening for something, and the final line of the story (without major spoilers) has the listeners being rewarded. I believe I read this in an SF anthology, but I can't remember which one. I'll post to whatwasthatbook if no one has it handy, but I suspect this is one of the queries that someone reading this may know offhand.

I remember my first podcast. naomikritzer mentioned she had a story on PodCastle. That was #39, and I ended up downloading everything on PodCastle and Escape Pod to date. It became a morning habit, just like (I suppose) morning drive radio for more normal people. I have a window most days of half an hour to an hour where a podcast is the perfect thing. It took me several years to work my way through the backlog, but I recently caught up, which means I get one new story a week.

Back then, I also subscribed to a bunch of recurring stuff from NPR: Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Science Friday, and This American Life. Also the Savage Love podcast. Pretty soon, I was several weeks behind on those, and had to unsubscribe. Then anghara mentioned the BBC's A History of the World in 100 Objects. It took several months to work my way through it, but I finally did. The very last item in the subscription was a promo for Shakespeare's Restless World, which purports to describe the world of Shakespeare in 20 objects. I just subscribed to that one.

But now I'm looking for more, and I'd welcome suggestions, particularly ones based on these parameters:

• Because it's a limited block of time, I prefer shortish podcasts -- 45 minutes or less. (The giant episodes on Escape Pod and PodCastle take me several days to listen to.)
  
  
• I have a preference, though not an absolute one, for educational material rather than fiction, because I listen to fiction (audiobooks) for my car/exercise listening on the iPod, and this should be something different.
  
  
• I am generally allergic to politics, unless the politics are at least 100 years old.
  
  
• It shouldn't be something where I'll feel as if I'm on a treadmill that I have to keep up with, or it will run me over (see NPR above).

Podcasts of fan fiction don't really work in this context, because I want new material, and in fan fiction podcasts, I'm usually looking for an audio version of an existing favorite.

I have an iPhone 3. It's running iOS 4.2.1. When I tried to update it to iOS 5 several months ago, I got an error message saying that iOS 5 isn't compatible with this model of iPhone. Okay, I can live with that.

But yesterday, I did something stupid. I had been refraining from updating apps on my iPhone because I was afraid the newer versions of apps wouldn't work on the older OS. Then I tried to install the brand-new Living Social app, and got an error message saying that I needed at least iOS 4.3. Okay, I said to myself, these apps are smart enough to know whether they're compatible or not, so I can update things after all.

And after I did that, Stanza (my e-book reader of choice) didn't work anymore. When I select it, it appears to open, but then it bounces back to the main screen. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling it, and that didn't help. I have to assume that the later version isn't compatible with my iPhone.

So -- is there some way to install an earlier version of an iPhone app? Or is only the latest and greatest (which seems to be incompatible with my iPhone 3) available out there in the cloud?

And approach two: While erikvolson provided the good news that Stanza still works in iOS 6, I do realize that its days are numbered, and I need to prepare for the evil day. The thing I like the most about Stanza is that I can control the way paragraphs appear -- I want them to be ragged right, no space between paragraphs, and indented. With Stanza, I can do that in the formatting options. It occurs to me, however, that ePub documents are editable. I've fiddled a bit with Sigil, which is a free ePub editor, but I don't really have a handle on how to do anything other than minor text editing. I suspect what I want is a basic style sheet that says plain text appears this way and not that way. Because I have certainly seen e-books with the kind of formatting I want, even if BlueNote and iBooks don't display that way by default.

1. Is this a reasonable approach?

2. Is there someone who would be willing to walk me through things, point me to a tutorial, or knock up a style sheet for me? I'm familar with them from Word (even if dd_b insist that they aren't real style sheets), but my HTML skills are pretty rudimentary -- and my CSS skills are nonexistent.

Help or advice appreciated.

I'd been meaning to back up the external hard drive that all my music is on -- all the CDs I ripped, all the LPs and tapes that I'd converted myself, everything. I finally got a large enough additional hard drive to put it on. And now my music hard drive, the one that hasn't been backed up, seems to have totally died. The light goes on, but there are no vibrations.

Is there anything that can be done that won't be hideously expensive?

So I'm going to Kenya next month. And I think I'm fairly well prepared for that. But the tour plane leaves on June 14 from JFK, and instead of worrying about trying to dovetail on the day of travel, I'll be flying from MSP to JFK on June 13. It's an early-morning plane, so I have most of a day in NYC.

1. I'll need a place to stay overnight. Does anyone have crash space on offer? Or a suggestion for an inexpensive hotel, preferably near JFK?

2. I'm looking for suggestions on what to do during the day. I've been to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and the Met a couple of times (but not long enough either time). But there's a lot of standard tourist stuff left. Additionally, I'm interested in anything that has to do with spinning or (to a lesser extent) knitting, especially exhibits. (The current state of my to-be-spun stash is a bit excessive.)

3. I'd like a dinner at a good restaurant. Michelin star level, if possible. I know it's awfully late for reservations, but I'd appreciate recommendations. I need one with a non-stringent dress code, because I won't be bringing anything fancy to wear.

4. Anything else I should think of that I'm missing?