Category: Technology

Thinkpad function keys randomly pressed

Update: See the bottom of this post for updates.

I have a work-provided Thinkpad X60 tablet PC. Great little laptop.

It has an annoying software bug. With certain drivers installed on a Vista OS, the laptop will randomly do one of the following every 2-30 minutes:

  • The speaker mutes.
  • Keyboard light tries to turn on.
  • Screen zoom activates, drastically changing the screen resolution from the native 1400 x 1050 to 1024 x 768 then back.
  • Screen brightness goes to lowest setting.

When these happen, a green indicator briefly shows on the screen (except for screen zoom). It’s just like if I activated the function manually. For example, if I press the mute button, I’ll see this on the screen:

And if I hit Fn + 12, I’ll see this:

(It’s for a keyboard light, which is actually not on this model!)

Two drivers cause this bug:

  • Thinkpad Tablet Shortcut Menu, available through the ThinkVantage System Update software. (Strangely, it’s not available at this laptop’s software download page on their web site.)
  • “Lenovo – Other Hardware – PS/2 TrackPoint” as available through Windows Update. Even though Windows Update says it was released by Lenovo in April 2007, it never showed up until the following September.

As long as I don’t install either, I am fine.

Unfortunately, I did install “Lenovo – Other Hardware – PS/2 TrackPoint” a few days ago. Immediately after installing, I got the random function key activations. Worse yet, after uninstalling the driver and rebooting, my mouse stopped working. Installing the TrackPoint driver off Lenovo’s web site didn’t fix it, either. Neither did using System Restore to revert my system to before the Windows Update session that installed the driver.

Somehow I futzed around enough to get a working mouse, but it doesn’t work the same as before. I will probably just reload Vista soon.

Update: I wiped and reinstalled my ThinkPad in mid-December. I allowed System Update and Windows Update to install everything, and no problem recurred. I figure that Lenovo finally worked kinks out of its drivers or I had some unknown interaction with my laptop’s prior configuration.

Never mind

I have switched back to WordPress from Drupal. I thought I was going to switch to Drupal, but I’ve changed my mind.

First, I thought I had all this other data that would make sense in a CMS. In fact, I don’t. Well, outside of a possible academic project, which would require its own CMS separate from my stuff, I don’t.

Second, I could not get Drupal to work properly and offer all the features of WordPress. For example, I tried installing a component that would let you click on categories, but that product screwed up the whole site.

I am probably back to WordPress for the time being. It works, and it’s simple. Why not stay with it?

WordPress’s Mediocre Image Support

I’m unimpressed with WordPress’s image support.

With my old DasBlog blog, I authored my posts with FrontPage. Not only did this give me a rich editor, photo management was a snap. I could resize and adjust images that I dragged and dropped into the blog post without external tools. Transferring the blog post into DasBlog was simple.

I can’t find anything similar in WordPress. Despite many image plugins, image management is a stupid, cumbersome, multi-step process.

The best option appears to be integration with Gallery2 with the WPG2 and Gallery Image Chooser plugins. However, even this option has drawbacks:

  • No resize. Gallery2 is limited to a fixed-size thumbnail and the full-sized image. There is apparently nothing in between, and wait, there’s less! The thumbnail size is fixed for all images across the entire Gallery2 application. That is, there is only one thumbnail image size setting. Rumor has it that the next Gallery2 version, which was supposed to be out 4 months ago but isn’t even in release candidate yet, will have midsize image support. But even then, unless the midsize image is supported through URL parameters, I’ll probably have to wait for WPG2 and Gallery Image Chooser updates to use it.
  • No auto caption. Sure would be great if captions in Gallery2 could automatically and dynamically transfer to WordPress. This may need to be a WPG2 feature. Maybe I can hack this feature?
  • No image adjustment. FrontPage’s basic image adjustment tools were great. I could change the brightness and contrast on the fly and resample the image at will. No such luck with Gallery2.
  • No clipart. With FrontPage, I had access to a decent amount of royalty-free clipart. I have virtually no instant access to any clipart with this setup.

It looks like I am stuck fully finishing my photos on my PC with an image editor and then uploading them through the WordPress interface or dumping them into Gallery2.

Argh.

I may whine like a petulant twit, but this image handling problem is a barrier to to quick, casual posts with images. An image is worth a thousand words. That’s why I believe that the better blogs are full of helpful images. WordPress’s image support is a major shortcoming.

I still feel that I did the right thing getting off DasBlog, however. It’s a dead product, and there are almost no run-it-yourself Web 2.0 applications for Microsoft platforms.

I have a follow up post about my dishwasher coming soon. These image hassles have gotten in the way.

Welcome to my new blog

Ladies and germs, I am now on WordPress.

I tired of DasBlog‘s slow updates, poor features, and futziness. It got old.

This is a major change for a Microsoft fanboy like me. WordPress is totally non-Microsoft: runs on PHP, uses mySQL, and works best on Linux systems. Argh. Now I’ll have to figure out PHP. phpMyAdmin rocks. Linux still sucks, but since this is hosted, I don’t have to administer Linux directly.

I tried finding other reliable, mainstream, Microsoft-centric blog systems. The only realistic alternative is Community Server, and it’s way too complicated for a single blog.

We’ll see how this goes. I am still experimenting, so please be patient.

I was able to get most my old posts into this system. It’s way too much work to get the comments over here, so those will have to be lost.

I am not sold on this theme. Email me if you have any better ideas.

Kodak camera “hard drive” disappeared, but now is found!

I had another small computer victory today.

I have a Kodak DX7590 camera. It is a great camera. It has gotten me through 7933 pictures over 21 months, and last April, it survived a 4 foot drop onto asphalt with no damage.

When I connect it to the computer, it shows up as another hard drive:

From there, I cut and paste the pictures to my hard drive. Really convenient, and I don’t have to use the terrible EasyShare software. Kodak makes this software look good, but it’s really garbage that locks up your images in its awful interface.

A couple of weeks ago, the “hard drive” stopped appearing after I connected the camera. I was unable to get any pictures off the camera. I futzed around for quite a while, eventually thinking my system was messed up.

I finally called Kodak’s technical support line in desperation. After 10 minutes convincing the tech support representative I am not an idiot, she finally admitted that Kodak removed the “hard drive” feature in EasyShare 6.0, the latest version. At first, she spun some yarn about how Kodak doesn’t retain the old software and I would have to get by with this new version. After explaining that I don’t want the full EasyShare product, she relented and gave me a link to get the old software: http://www.kodak.com/go/ess5/.

After upgrading to the old version, EasyShare 5, my computer and camera are once again happy campers.