Map Making from Space
I went to TerraServer at Microsoft and got some old, but accurate space images of the house. It shows the playset in the background as well as the house, court, street, etc. It's a great map to the house, and I thought it'd be nice to add it to the web site so that we can point people to the site and they can get the picture which would lead them right to our door.
Well... that turned out to be interesting to say the least.
I'm trying to piece these together in The Gimp and while this is a fine tool for the job, the machine I'm doing it on, mao, isn't really up to the task as much as I might like. There was considerable thrashing of the disk and much slowness of the machine. It makes me want to get a new machine...
But I have to hold back... we also have a need for my limited hardware dollars for a new monitor for my NeXT slab, wally. Last night, the horizontal lines were getting so bad that I had to power off the system and take my chances. I knew it'd be likely that I wouldn't be able to power it back up, but I had no real choice. So I powered down and sure enough, the monitor didn't come back up with the slab.
Now this is an odd phenomenon... the Hitachi 21" monitor that seems to come back from the dead if I take off the black plastic case, blow the dust out of the inner metal cage, and put it all back together. Since I know I don't really do a thing in this operation other than blowing dust, I thought I'd try to skip the disassembly/reassembly and just let it sit for a while and cool off.
That was last night... to be sure, I left the cables off it as well to closely simulate the "cover off"experience. When I plugged the cables in this morning I got the exact same bahavior - the power LED comes on for about 1.5 sec, during which time you can hear the capacitive charging of the circuits inside the monitor, and then the LED goes black and we see nothing.
What I'm concerned about is the cost of getting a new NeXT 21" monitor... I have no desire to have a headless machine, but I also know that it's close to $300 to get a refurbished Hitachi, and while under normal circumstances this might not seem bad, it's right at a time that I'd like to be getting a new laptop, or a new desktop, for the office. Life is always giving me challenges to overcome.
So... the thing to do is to fire off a question to both the DeepSpace Tech guys and the Black Hole, Inc. crew to see if they know of this problem and have a more permanent fix for me. I'm hoping that a final disassembly/clean/reassembly will do the trick, but if not, then it's a new monitor at a time I'd rather not be getting one of those.
Well... I heard back from DeepSpace Tech, the guys I got the monitor from, and their assesment was that the monitor is shot. Crud. They pointed me to Black Hole, Inc. and I called them to get the low-down on the monitors. He said that they didn't have any 21" Hitachi monitors but they had a bunch of 17" Phillips monitors. Now I probably had a Phillips in the beginning, that or a crummy Fimi, and it went out in a flash of smoke and light. I got the 21" Hitachi becuase it was supposed to be "better". Yet this one died too... I'm very disappointed in these monitors.
That having been said, I ordered a 17" Phillips for $79 (+$65 shipping) and used my PayPal account to make it easy to keep clear of the rest of the family finances. When this guy arrives I'll throw out the 21" and hopefully keep this 17" for a long, long time. I mean I've got PC monitors that have been with me and working for more than 8 years! What is it with these NeXT monitors that they die out so darn fast?!
This guy sounds nice, and I'm hoping that he's going to pick me out a nice one that will last a very, very, long time. Here's hoping...
OK... I've been working on a lot of little things today, but I keep coming back to the NeXT Monitor. I think tonight after Liza goes to climbing class I'll spend some time doing one last clean-up. I have the 17" monitor on order, and when it arrives I may have to use it, but if I can clean this guy up and make him work, I'm certainly going to give it a try.
It's gotta be worth half an hour, right?