Author: Jeff G

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REMINDER: Philly Mini Maker Faire is THIS WEEKEND! Sunday, October 6th 2019!

Just a reminder that the Philly Mini Maker Faire is this weekend on Sunday, October 6th!

Location: Pennovation Works, 3401 Grays Ferry Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19146
Time: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm

I highly recommend checking it out if your a maker, tinkerer, fixer, or just interested in technology or mechanics. Maker Faires are not limited to computers, electronics, and other “nerdy” activities, they’re all about making, which includes things like clothing, jewelry, glass blowing, knife making (iron works), food, snacks, and any other “making” activity.

Note that parking for the event is a couple blocks away from the event itself, and there are free shuttle buses available that take you back and forth.

Buy your tickets early for a discount! Web site: https://philly.makerfaire.com/

See you there!

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Interesting Pics: Broken Hand Dryer

This is the first in a series of random pics I find interesting or cool, or whatever. I am not a photographer, but sometimes see things I’d like to share.

This one was taken at a diner in Central Pennsylvania. I guess its sort of a selfie too!

The combination of checkered floor and broken hand dryer just made this..complete?
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Cinema I & II Movie Theater – Plymouth Meeting Mall 1992

I figured I’d share this to get a copy posted up here. My sister sent me this since it was shared on Facebook recently, and as a nostalgia nut this is the kind of stuff I LOVE finding. This is the movie theater at the Plymouth Meeting Mall, in Plymouth Meeting PA, likely around 1992 (due to the movie poster you see – the movie was “Boomerang“.)

Cinema I & II – Plymouth Meeting Mall circa 1992 – Credit Unknown
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Life and Lawnmowers and Livewire

As always life gets busy and I haven’t updated in a bit, so I figured I’d get something posted up. Life has been crazy busy lately, with a bunch of traveling mixed in with a bunch of working, lol. Sadly labor day has come to pass, and I didn’t get to Wildwood or many amusement parks this year, but for good reason: I’ve been traveling a bunch this year, and I’ll likely post up some pics and fun things from my travels later on. This week I set aside my nerdy computer things to focus on more gas-powered fun…

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At&t Tech/Archive Channel on Youtube is Addictive!

So the past few days I’ve been poking around in the Youtube channel “At&t Tech Channel”. Within that is the “At&t Archive” that hosts tons of old videos from At&t, Bell Labs and MA Bell. These videos are awesome for a variety of reasons; but other than the retro-futurism of them, it shows just how much MA Bell either “thought” or “was” the technology provider of the people back then. (At least until the Carterfone Decision)

It’s really interesting to see the concept videos showing paging for farms, how the “central office” was obsolete and going away, leading to *gasp* DIALING (and later push-button dialing), amongst other things.

It’s also interesting how a handful of these videos are somewhat local to the PA/NJ area, as the NJ Bell labs building was a substantial part of them back then, and (if I’m not mistaken) where a number of major innovations, including the invention of the transistor happened.

If you’re nerdy like me and need a new time waster, definitely check out this channel!

At&t Tech Channel (and archive): https://www.youtube.com/user/ATTTechChannel

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Windows 10 Media Creation Tool Errors Out

Figured I would share this tip, as it’s so simple (and really shouldn’t happen), but it does and drives me nuts every time.

The Windows 10 Media Creation Tool downloads a Windows 10 install, and let’s you create an ISO or bootable USB stick to install Windows 10 into a computer. I don’t generally use it much in an IT realm as we use the corporate installer tools, however when working on a home computer or re-gearing an old laptop for home use for someone, I use this to quickly get Windows 10 installed.

As always, there’s a catch. I pop in a USB stick, open the tool, select “Create installation media”, and it will show the E drive or whatever drive my USB stick is. Great! Hit go and it spends some time downloading Windows 10 and starts working on creating the stick.

Then it fails.

Ok maybe it was a fluke…do it all again, wait another 15 minutes, it fails again. ARRG! It usually comes up with some cryptic error that sounds like a media/disk error, in addition the USB stick usually now is corrupted and you have to re-format the stick. What is going on with this??

Turns out the answer is an easy one, and really, it shouldn’t even happen. Once you click “Create Installation media” – it brings up a screen with your USB drive showing, for example E:\. For all intents and purposes it looks like its already good to go. Thing is…you haven’t PICKED that drive yet! Even though it looks like that’s where it’s pointing to, and yes it seems to access the stick, you have to actually click on the drive letter before clicking Next.

Gets me every time!