Voice of the DBA

Tag: computers

  • When in trouble, upgrade

    When in trouble, upgrade.

    That’s what I did the other day, when I found my Corel VideoStudio X2 (v12), wouldn’t play any videos. It was podcast edit day, and I was on a deadline. I know this is the worst advice, and not necessarily what you want to do, but X3 had come out late last year, and I’d even purchased an upgrade this past summer. I didn’t think I’d get any support on the old version, and the new version had proven very stable for many people.

    I hadn’t upgraded until now because the last upgrade I did, from v10 to X2 had taken me a few days to reset some of my clips, reload settings, etc. I was worried about the time involved, but after restarting my machine a couple times and trying different things with the software, I decided to try the upgrade. I searched through email to find my license key, discovered the X3 installation file in my \Downloads folder, and performed the upgrade.

    The installation was slow. Unpacking the installation files to get to the EULA took 10 minutes on my quad core desktop. From there, it was a simple matter to agree, input the serial number, and let the installation run. I have no idea how long it took because I left my desk to run an errand, and came back 20 minutes later to find it complete. Everything went smoothly, and apart from a couple of buttons I use being moved, everything seemed to function as before. It was even a little quicker when rendering video!

    Running an upgrade to fix an issue is not necessarily what I’d recommend for most people. It’s a sledgehammer fix for a potential screwdriver problem. Really you ought to work through issues with your vendor, and if you are really stuck, perform your upgrades on a test system, and actually test the process.

    In my case, I had a backup of the video files, and I also had a fallback to use my laptop to edit the video. It would have entailed a little setup and probably burned an hour, which is something I need to do, but I had a backup plan ready in case this didn’t work.

     

  • CTRL Scroll and Getting Old

    The handiest thing that I’ve used lately for a computer is the Ctrl button and the scroll wheel on my mouse. If you’ve never tried it, do it now on this web page. Scroll different directions and you’ll see what I mean.

    Here’s the default view of my blog:

    scroll1

    It’s not bad, and from about 2, 2.5 ft away, I can read this. However if I CTRL and scroll up a couple clicks, I get this:

    scroll2

    Not a huge difference in the images, but much easier to read.

    As I get older it gets harder to read images on the screen, especially when I’m trying to get a lot done. It’s easy to scroll down, but I was finding myself scooting forward on my chair and leaning in. Not the best ergonomics. So I sat back (in my new chair), and made all my fonts bigger. I upped the default sizes in Word, OneNote, EditPlus, etc.

    Getting old is hard, but technology makes this easier. I even run a larger font in my Kindle apps than I Delaney because it’s just easier to read.

    And more fun than browsing the limited supply of large print books at the library.