Monday, July 09, 2007

Conquering technology

Another in my list of things other people have probably known for years, but that I just figured out is: some players won't play a translucent CD. Specifically, this computer's disc drive can't see the thing.

NO DISC IN DRIVE
STOP CLICKING RETRY, YOU IDIOT
NO DISC IN DRIVE, AM I TALKING TO MYSELF HERE?

Presumably the light beam goes through instead of being properly blocked.
.
And another demonstration that I'm not very observant has taken place because I've owned this disc for at least a decade and never noticed. You gotta hold it up to the light, like this, and by Jove, the problem becomes, uh, clear:


So I grabbed the first piece of scrap paper at hand, cut a circle in it, Scotch[TM] taped it to the top of the disc:

... and the drive finally recognized it and let me pull off two tracks for a homemade compilation.
.
I can color in the lines too. Mostly.

Between houseguests (one batch leaves tomorrow. The next, for whom this disc is intended, arrives Wednesday) I'm assembling a nice photo essay on Graymatter. It'll go on the cat blog. Stay tuned.

3 comments:

ronnie said...

Oh, now see that's the kind of ingenious solution that wouldn't occur to me in a trillion years.

That's why I still eat with my hands and roll to work in the morning.

I'm assembling a nice photo essay on Graymatter. It'll go on the cat blog. Stay tuned.

Oh my. I think I know someone who is going to find that most interesting.

Sherwood Harrington said...

Re: Graymatter photo essay:

Yes, I think I know someone who will, also. I absolutely cannot predict his reaction, however.

Nostalgic for the Pleistocene said...

ronnie - you don't know how rare it is for me to encounter a tech problem, diagnose it, and think up a solution - usually i just short out and emit lots of [saturn boxcar]ing. 8~)

Sherwood - we're all still trying to figure out how to react to Graymatter. Oh and meanwhile, you are assembling your own animal history as promised...right? Hoping it's still a go, at least whenever your schedule lets up!