It Took Seven Months

But I finally had my first major "working in the cloud" problem: Dropbox is Down.

The only reason that it's a major problem is that there's no "native" Dropbox app for ChromeOS yet. If there was, then my files would be automagically stored locally, in their most recently updated versions, and the only thing I'd be missing due to this outage would be automatic updating across machines of their latest versions when I finished working with them for the day.

Since there's no native app, my files are stored on Dropbox and Dropbox alone unless I take additional steps on my own. I load them from Dropbox. I save them back to  Dropbox when they've been edited.

As it happens I do make local copies of some key files on a day-to-day basis because, as mentioned in a previous post, I have to do so in order to FTP them to a server. But for various reasons relating to how my cloud apps work, it's a huge pain in the ass to actually do my editing work with the local copies.

So: Petition Time.

I Saw The Light

And it only cost me $4.99 (h/t Claire Wolfe).

I've indicated an interest in solar power on this blog several times, although not in such an interesting way that it's worth looking up those posts and linking them.

One of the problems with books about solar power is that they tend to be over-priced, and sold in a way that presages many up-sells and add-ons before you get to the good stuff.

A Solar Electric System On the Cheap, On the Fly, and Off the Grid is not overpriced. It's just $4.99.

Joel, the author, doesn't use the book to try to sell you a bunch of other crap, nor does he make you sit through 30 minutes of video raves about how great the book is for the privilege of buying the damn book (like one $59 joker did -- I didn't buy).

A Solar Electric System On the Cheap, On the Fly, and Off the Grid is also not the Bible of solar energy. But it doesn't have to be. It explains, in plain English, exactly what is involved in building a basic solar electric system. And it just so happens that that's precisely the information I've been looking for, and that people have been claiming they want to sell me for ten times as much money, but only if I'll sit through some kind of multi-level marketing schtick first.

If this is the kind of info you are looking for, I recommend it. You can get it here.

A Snail, Crawling on the Edge of a Straight Razor ...

That's my recurring experience with Microsoft Windows. It's just horrifying.

I understand why some people feel like they have to use it -- for example, gamers who have limited choices because game makers build their software for Windows. That's my elder son, who is in the middle of a Windows 7 re-install at the moment.

What I don't understand is why the industrial side doesn't just switch platforms to something that, um, works. If users will put up with Windows, it seems reasonable to assume that they'll put up with the transition to something better than Windows. And pretty much anything is better than Windows.