Steampunk and the SCA

People cope with the technological world in a variety of fascinating ways. Some, for instance, live a good deal of their time in the past - or an invented past.

My three children are all members of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), which endeavours to re-enact the more fun parts of mediaeval times (ignoring the plagues, famines, poor health care, hovels, etc). So they regularly don armour and knock the stuffing out of each other in tournaments. Their big event is a week-long Canterbury Fair at Waipara over Waitangi weekend, which is well worth a day's visit. The costumes are amazing. Others get into Steampunk Tech, which puts a Victorian spin on modern technology. There is even Steampunk music, which comes in a wide variety of colours. I particularly liked this YouTube cartoon movie about a Steampunk duel. A little reminiscent of Will Smith's film Wild Wild West.

The Black Screen of Death

I don't know whether it's coincidence, or whether I've become a victim. Just days after reading that many people round the world have apparently suffered a Black Screen of Death on their PC following the latest Microsoft patch download, the same happened to our home machine this morning. Software firm Prevx claim millions have been infected; others say the victims number only in the thousands, and Microsoft denies that it's latest patch release is responsible. Because my computer would not even boot, I could not try my own usual run of resuscitation techniques, so I've rushed it to the repair shop, and I'm still waiting to hear the diagnosis. But if you suspect you have been similarly caught, Prevx have a fix here, that might work, provided you can see something on your screen.

Embedding video and audio in PowerPoint

I've spent much of the last couple of weeks building a presentation in PowerPoint for my organisation. The aim was to create an interactive presentation that would play video and audio clips automatically at some points, while allowing viewers to choose options and links at other points. It's been a high learning curve, but I think I've largely cracked it. While PowerPoint is a bit clumsy in the way it does things, it can do them. However, after sending a copy of the presentation to a colleague, I discovered that while PowerPoint embeds photographs and graphics, it does not embed video or audio tracks. This means they do not play on any machine other than mine. After some online searching, I have discovered that the solution is to place the audio and video clips in the same folder (directory) as the presentation, which then happily links to them. You can then place everything in a Zip folder, cut to a disk, or send on a memory stick, and the recipient can happily play your creation.

Sharing documents online

In the brave new world of cloud computing, when you have several colleagues all needing to access the same document as a work in progress, there are several options now available. Email attachments is the most obvious and basic, but other newer file-sharing tools are quicker and easier. Pattie Pegler gives a run-down on some of them.

Coping with a new mobile phone

The staff of the organisation I work for have just been given new phones by 2 Degrees as part of a sponsorship from the phone company. The Nokia I have chosen is a world away from the old very basic Nokia I have otherwise had for the past 3 years. But I need a week-long seminar to learn how to use even the basic features. Fortunately, we have a 19-year-old Chinese young woman boarding with us who needless to say knows all about these things and she has been schooling me up. Whether I will ever use all the higher-end features is problematic. One thing frustrating me, though, is that some of the basic features of the old model are either missing or much harder to implement. Take, for example, adding details to Contacts. The old phone allowed me to enter home, work and mobile numbers at the one time. The new phone allows me to enter only home and mobile numbers at the first attempt. I thought initially that it was not possible at all to enter work phone numbers, but have just discovered it is possible - along with many other details - but it is a two-stage process. After entering the first set of contact details, click on the Options button and then choose Add Details. Voila, new fields come up. I presume something similar is the case for most mobile phones these days.