Showing posts with label Surface Pro 3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Surface Pro 3. Show all posts

Thursday, February 5, 2015

2014 Annual Report

Had a lot more work to do this year than I anticipated, but it is finally out. Comments and corrections appreciated as usual.

See http://hargrove.org.

My old laptop, that was set up for web maintenance died before I could record all the settings. What a pain setting everything up again, especially on my new Surface Pro, where everything is just a little different. That added a solid week into the schedule.

After that, I got a nasty surprise right out of the gate. The interface I used from PHP to MySQL was "deprecated," meaning that I had to switch to the new one. Unfortunately, that meant converting all the older annual reports, mostly a boring exercise in global replace.

Along the way, I found several errors in the older reports, especially those for 2006 and 2007.

Then, with three major birding trips of photos to deal with, not to mention four adorable grandchildren, it stretched into February.

This seems harder than it used to be.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Surface Pro 3

The old laptop was starting to show its age. Its disk (really static RAM) was almost full. Just like the old joke about when to buy a new car (when the ashtray is full) I felt it was time for a new machine.

After some research, I settled on a Microsoft Surface Pro 3.

  • It's lighter than my old laptop, by almost a pound.
  • It will run Birder's Diary, the program I use for bird sighting records.
  • It has enough memory and power that I think I should be able to use it for web development, namely the famous Annual Report.
  • It is much better for reading a Kindle book on the plane.
I considered a Lenovo Yoga 3, which is cheaper, but not as powerful.

I am now almost thru the first week using the machine. I am happy to report that it is working OK. There are a few quirks, particularly dealing with Roboform, the password manager I have used for years.

It took me almost a day to reproduce the old style interface I was used to, but now I have that. Now, I am trying to learn the new, smartphone-style, version. 

I am looking forward to using this on the road to see how well that works. So far, I have only ventured as far as Philo, CA, not a true test.