Cleaning out some dust!

I’ve been irritated about some dust particles that had appeared between the screen protector and the screen itself on my Toshiba Tecra M4. I remember that I’d read something about this a while ago at the TabletPCBuzz.com. The only problem was that the forum’s search functionality is broken at the moment, so I couldn’t find the pictures that showed how to remove the protector and clean up the screen.

Since I thought that I already had read enough about the issue to perform the removal and cleaning, I finally decided to take the chance on doing it without any references.

First I removed the two black plastic things covering up two of the six screws around the screen. Then I removed the four silver squares at the bottom of the screen. The removal was done with a very small screwdriver, and can be accomplished without leaving any marks on neither the plastic nor the squares (not to say that I didn’t leave any marks…).

Then I unscrewed the six screws and started to gently peel my fingernails in to split the screen apart. I remember that I had read something about someone managing to break the screen protector by doing this to hard, so I payed special attention to be gentle…

After managing to separate the screen and the protector, I used a cloth primarily targeted to clean glasses to remove the dust. This worked very well, and can absolutely be recommended. I did not use any liquids or solvents in the process, and the screen looks very clear and bright, with practically no dust at all anymore!

Separating the protector and the screen

 

Cleaning up

We're playing tonight

Just wanted to tell everyone that we’re playing two gigs this weekend at the Blue Monk Club, tonight and tomorrow night. We’ll be playing with March Brown. The concert starts at around 11:30 pm, hope to see you all there!

Ink Gestures - a short review

I read a post from Warner Crocker about a small program called Ink Gestures from a company called Jumping Minds. Since I'm curious and interested in tools and utilities that helps me work more efficiently, I downloaded the tool to try it out (it costs $39, but a trial is available). The first thing I look for in Tablet PC utilities that uses some kind of text/gesture reckognition, is the support for Norwegian language (you may have read one of my rants about this earlier). To my big surprise, Ink Gestures just worked! I pressed the "Start Gesturing" menu, and went through the quick tutorial before trying a few gestures. Without any problems, I was able to navigate, select and format my documents. Since I'm not using Micosoft Word a lot, chances are that I want be buying this utility, but I hope other developers will learn from Jumping Minds and create tools for us foreign Tablet PC users that just works!

Great article about themes in Office 2007

I was reading Jensen Harris' blog, and saw that he posted an article written by Howard Cooperstein about the new Theme support in Office 2007.

What I found interesting was the limitations they had put on themes. Allowing only two slots for fonts in a Theme is a great solution, the same goes to the way they're handling colors etc.

I'm currently working on something similar in PDF, and the need for some limitations regarding defining templates was a great input for me and my team.

Optimizing my Tecra M4

I've been very happy with my Toshiba Tecra M4. As many other M4-owners has noted, the computer runs a bit hot, leading to some noise from the fan. Last night I decided to see if I could get rid of it, and started up a small utility I've had running on my laptop for months called Notebook Hardware Control from http://www.pbus-167.com/chc.htm

The program has a lot a small tweaks and utilities, and among them are a concept called undervolting. This is basically about giving the processor less voltage without telling it to slow down. This saves energy, minimizes heat and could also possibly make the cpu last longer.

I turned down the voltages for the speed multipliers a lot, all the way down to the following values:

Multiplier     Voltage
6              0.732
8              0.812
9              0.956
10             0.988
11             1.020
12             1.052
13             1.084

This calmed down the fan a bit, making my Tecra a bit more silent.

The next thing I did was to remove some system components that I noticed was stealing a lot of resources:

Swapping Norton Internet Security with AVG

Installing Windows Defender (for anti-spyware)

Removed a few services, especially those marked as resource hogs

Ok, I don't have the Electric Blue theme anymore, but that doesn't matter. My Tablet feels a lot more snappy now, and that's the biggest point.

My New Guitar!

I just realised an old dream... Having been a Fender Stratocaster man for almost 20 years, I finally decided to convert an become a Gibson-man. I got a tip from my brother's girlfriend Marianne about where to go to look for a new guitar.

After borrowing a beautifull black Gibson Les Paul 1986 Standard and bringing it to our thursday night rehearsal, I was sold. The guitar played nice and sounded wonderfull. I bought it first thing in the morning the day after!

I'm sorry Jimi H.
And please stop applauding, Jimi P.

More On OneNote, Tablet PC, Video, And Auditions

Warner Crocker has posted a great story about how he's using the Tablet PC when auditioning actors. Great use of his Tablet PC!

Read more here:

Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2: More On OneNote, Tablet PC, Video, And Auditions

More On OneNote, Tablet PC, Video, And Auditions

Warner Crocker has posted a great story about how he's using the Tablet PC when auditioning actors. Great use of his Tablet PC!

Read more here:

Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2: More On OneNote, Tablet PC, Video, And Auditions