World Community Grid

You may have heard of Folding@Home or Protein Folding projects which use spare time from your computer for science calculations. I've been running this project for a while using the World Community Grid software. I use products from Terabyte Unlimited, so I signed up with their team. Here are my real-time stats:

Windows' hibernate restarts computer

It used to work... Then one day it didn't. I clicked on Windows XP's Hibernate button in the Start, Turn off computer menu. The computer hibernates, and then restarts, instead of turning off.

To the Google machine! Hmm, I find a few other reports of people with a similar problem even in Windows Vista. Like these articles: Reboots from Hibernate - Flexbeta and Hibernate won't power off...it' restarts!. No solutions there.

I hadn't installed any new software or updated drivers, so those suggestions did not apply. I considered the USB tree, and tried unplugging some devices to see if they affected the reboot after hibernate. They didn't.

Then I eyed my APC Back-Ups... It uses a com port instead of USB. A week ago I had disconnected the battery because the UPS indicated it was bad. I could live with the UPS essentially being a surge protector, but it would beep insistently and long at random times. There is perfectly good error light on the unit which is labeled "battery bad".

Anyways, if you have read this far you deserve a solution. Unplug the UPS from the computer (or replace the battery). Problem solved and hibernate works. I plug the com cable back in and the reboot problem reappears.

My guess is the UPS is indicating that there is some kind of problem so the UPS service prevents a shutdown. It seems backwards since a hibernate would be safer than running on a UPS with a failed battery.

If you do not have a UPS, I would try the solutions in the links above, or look at your USB devices. In Windows' Device Manager, some devices allow you to check off whether it's safe to power them down, so a USB device could hold a system hostage that way.

Do I look like Bob Saget?

%1

Bike Up racks me up

I had a great experience with a company called Bike-Up Bicycle Parking Systems Inc. out of Nepean, Ontario, recently that I wanted to share. I had been searching for over a month for a 3-5 bicycle rack for work so we no longer had to double lock bikes or fight over the one hitching pin affixed to the building. Their standard 4-ring rack (at right) was a little big, so they custom made a 2-ring version. I didn't choose the powder coat as I wasn't sure what colour would fit the best where it was being installed, so we may add some colour later.

They were great at answering my questions, and the time from order to delivery may vary, but in my case, it was less than a week! What a great experience after "dealing" with another company who after two feedback attempts and a voicemail, did not have the courtesy to call back. I even had to go to the City of Kingston to find a local bike rack manufacturer. I asked my own city where they sourced theirs, and did not receive a reply.

HTML Editor

I've developed a handful of web sites (mine is woefully out of date) and I help maintain one at my job using Dreamweaver, but I wanted to give some free site editors a try. NVU looked to be a good contender, and as a WYSIWYG editor it's not bad - however, it has mangled enough pages to put me off from using it as my primary editor, especially with the CSS editor. I've tried a few text-based HTML editors, and one that rises to the top is HTML-KIT. It has many shortcuts for HTML code and even includes a rudimentary FTP and file client, so I can stay within HTML-KIT and do most functions. It's integrated with HTML Tidy so I can code without worrying about formatting, then clean it up for readability and standards compliance. I have a bit of work to fine tune the site, especially for more consistent CSS styles.

You can see my results at my friend's web site Trump Homes. I've put my Google skills to use and for a brief time it was the #1 search results on "trump homes" (without the quotes). With the quotes, it is #1 on Google and Yahoo search. Other search engines, such as AOL and AllTheWeb appear to use Google and Yahoo, respectively, so they're already covered. Google also has an interesting Dashboard in their Webmaster Tools which can be used to track how they are scanning the site and how effective the keywords and rankings are.

Gary Fisher Wingra

My new commuter bike, a Gary Fisher Wingra:


I cycle over 20K per day to and from work. I figure it was time to semi-retire my 20+ year old Fiori Excela and also change to a more rugged bike for day-to-day use on the city streets. (Not that London's bike paths are the smoothest in spots!)

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Update: After a few weeks I have put over 400km on this bike, and aside from a minor tune-up needed after its shake out rides, I'm liking it!

Bluetooth connection problems - fix

When it works, it works pretty well, but my Bluetooth phone and PC adapter can give me headaches. I will pair up my phone with my PC using a PIN and the connection will work... until sometime in the future when no manner of unpairing and disabling Bluetooth both on the phone and on the PC will get them to talk. Restarting the computer would probably help, but that's not a workable option as I would have to reload all my programs. The error message on the phone (a Nokia 6133) will be something like "Bluetooth connection not available". The PC will time out even after a successful pairing. My phone will even be "connected" but won't talk (in this case I'm trying to synchronize. I use a Jabra A320s USB Bluetooth device.

However, I have found a way to reset the connection without having to restart the computer. This is with the Nokia PC Suite, so your mileage may vary with other devices. In the PC Suite, go to Manage Connections, and uncheck the Bluetooth (WIDCOMM) option, and check it off again. Click on Close and reconnect your device. If you are using the Synchronise application, you may have to use the Phone Selector to re-select your phone.

[Update] Alas, it was too good to be true. This fix does not immediately work sometimes. You must also unpair the device in your Bluetooth Places, and pair it again. On that note, I find it annoying with my Nokia 6133 that it does not recognize more than one computer. If I sync at work, and take it home, it uses the same computer name/sync pair. So if the passwords do not match, the sync does not work.