Archive for May, 2005

05.18.05

A Stuck Disc That Didn’t Exist

Posted in General at 8:09 pm by Nicholas

Just in case anyone else ever runs into this problem: a couple of days ago I found that I couldn’t insert a CD into my PowerBook’s slot drive—it stopped short exactly as it would if a disc were already in the drive. But there was no disc in the drive. Neither rebooting with the mouse button depressed nor obscure command-line wizardry could eject what wasn’t there.

Google turned up a few offhand references to a paperclippable eject button somewhere inside the CD slot (either just next to the right edge or an inch and a half from the left), but that didn’t work. But a very thin screwdriver (size 00, the same one I used to remove the tiny philips-head screws on the memory bay on the bottom of the PowerBook) inserted into the slot found the bar that was stopping the CD —which I was able to push out of the way by sweeping right to left with the screwdriver. The drive now works fine.

Of course, I don’t guarantee that you won’t permanently destroy your optical drive if you try this on your own laptop. But it worked for me.

05.16.05

Arrested Development Gets a Third Season

Posted in TV at 6:18 pm by Nicholas

Somewhat miraculously, the funniest show on television has been renewed. Here’s hoping Fox will release the Season 2 DVDs soon.

05.10.05

WordPress 1.5

Posted in WordPress, Web Building at 8:26 pm by Nicholas

So I’ve finally started the switch to WordPress 1.5, largely at the behest of my dad. I haven’t upgraded his site yet, though, because I found out in the process of upgrading my own that version 1.5 uses themes—which is great, and terribly convenient, but makes upgrades a bit troublesome if, like my dad, you’ve gone to all the trouble of making fancy custom templates featuring carefully arranged family photos.

So I’m waiting to find out what he wants to do about that, and also I’m going to have to figure out what I want my own blog to look like now. I had been using a few lightly modified WP 1.2 templates I found somewhere, and in my haste to get rid of the default look I’ve now switched to an overly-elaborate WP 1.5 theme, but I’ll try to come up with something a bit more “me” in the near future.

05.09.05

At Last, I’ve Found My Brand

Posted in General at 10:09 am by Nicholas

A new hot sauce made of pure capsaicin is so hot that it’s potentially lethal, according to the Sun Online. At 16 million Scoville units, this stuff’s hotter than pepper spray, which generally ranges from 2-20% capsaicin. Limited quantities available, for some reason.