Computer Tips Related Correspondence
don’t need a lengthy response, as I know you’re always busy, but if I can just ask quickly… Have been getting more into video editing but realising that my little old notebook is not made for such heavy processor use. Recently I researched on the net about a laptop operating in very cold temperatures, and the only thing apparently to worry about is not to turn it on from deep cold after you bring it inside, for worry of condensation. Anyway, it occurred to me today, if I was editing a video and then wanted to export it (the most demanding on the processor), what do you think about the crazy idea about putting the laptop into a cold fridge (just have to worry about condensation, so slow temperature change or something) and then press GO for a conversion which may take several hours at full processor speed. My guess is that it will not harm anything as long as the temperature is kept down. I gather there would be no moving parts in a processor to wear down but its just a bunch of electrons flowing through wires etc. Am I right?
On another note, just landed inAthensand soon ready to launch a month’s tour ofGreece. Next stop is the mountains in Bulgaria where one friend offered me work to help him reconstruct his house, but I don’t think I’ll have time to help him much cause I’m getting a lot of translation work, which pays a lot more. But it will be nice to hang with some folks and drink beer with some friends. Or to have his job as a backup in case my own work dries out. It has been nice to find a Czech translation agency who appreciates my quality and is not intimidated by the fact that I work while I’m traveling. Put up an online database for Keta, which is now supposed to be the best lumber database in the world, so I hope that through that I’ll be able to get more of such intelligent work. Translations are good to pay the rent but I’m so sick of it. I feel like a factory worker doing the same repetitive and stupid work every day: unscrewing some complicated and bureaucratic Czech sentence to rescrew it into some nice flowing English sentence. I feel like, with every sentence, I am struggling againt the bureaucratic Czech mentality and I’m really rather tired and uninterested in it. But I guess it’s nice to be doing important translations for the EU, and that my customer’s level of English is so good that she recognises and values my quality, as opposed to the other bozos who might point to a word and complain that I left it out.
How’s business going with you?
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If your cooler has the usual temp between 5 and 10 degC, having the comp run in it cannot do any harm. It may actually help if its warm outside, such as 30 degC or higher. But I definitively would not cool the notebook in operation below +5 degC. Special computers such as automotive are designed for a wide range of operating temperatures, but typical notebook specs may be +5 to +45 degC. They recommend to let a notebook temper before turning it on, after being brought in from subzero cold, in order to reach operating temperature and let any condensation evaporate. I read somewhere that large companies are forcing translators to lower costs by using special software that remembers translated sentences, so if say an updated Czech manual is submitted for retranslation, the unchanged parts are copied automatically and not translated repeatedly. The finance business is tough as you can imagine: sale of our last remaining investment in the old portfolio has stalled due to industrial conditions, and closing a successor fund (for which we combined with another team) has been slow due to uncertainties in investment banks. Good luck, looks like you have a good plan in the circumstances. Dad
Thanks for your prefect and conscientious response as usual!
Yes, I know about the translation software and am almost a little bit of an expert with it. I believe I have the best software available and it’s pretty expensive, and I use it regularly. Many customers might not know about it and if I use it on repeating text I can translate quite quickly and make a lot of money in a short time. I’d like to use it if I were farming out a lot of translations. Talked about this to Jens a few years back that, if I had a lot of work in different languages, I could build up a lot of memory, eventually put it online, and create a sort of wiki translation site where customers could use the translation memory and pay 1 cent a word, while translators could contribute memory and get credit to use other translators’ memory. Rather complicated to set up but the way of the future. I think some major sites are starting to dabble in the concept only now. As usual, got some good ideas but haven’t been able to put them into practice.
Maybe my computer is getting clogged again and needs to be taken apart and cleaned with q-tips and alcohol (I do that once in a while). Think the sea salt air gets into it. Anyway, without my handy fan underneath the comp it seems to quickly rise to around 70C and turns on its own internal fan. With my fan I can usually keep it around 40. At full processor and in the fridge I think it would still be running at around 40, but I’ll experiment with it if I ever have a big video project, and a handy fridge!
Too bad about your work. Didn’t even consider “the crunch” when I asked you how it was going. For me I seem to be immune to economic swings. With globalisation the translation industry has been increasing about 20% a year I think (although, yes, moving towards software at the same time), I got customers all over, people will always need translations (especially the ever so bureaucratic monster EU). I came to the conclusion that I lost a lot of work because I let myself get arrogant (although the customers truly were total idiots and tried my patience beyond my abilities), and because Czechs can be idiots without imagination and were simply afraid that I am not capable of translating from a beach or somehow I lose my Czech because I am not Czech anymore. Other new clients don’t send me work because they like to phone their translators and find out immediately if they can take a job. I never communicate that way with my own translators. Many are online practically all the time, or receive an sms from their email account, so are capable of responding immediately, every time. But this is something that these bozos cannot understand. Anyway, often its nicer to find more intelligent customers, because then the cooperation is usually more pleasant and much less frustrating. In any case, I’ll try to keep my mouth shut with potential new clients and not explain my situation. With my new one I let the news seep out and she doesn’t seem to have an issue with it at all.
Take careo and hope the business picks up. k
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in response to your suggestion to buy a BlackBerry, even had one purchased but perhaps I’m lucky cause these Greek boneheads said they didn’t have their system set up for this device. I think it was possible, but anyway decided to trade it in for an HTC diamond. Trust Windows more cause I know how to hack into that and get lots of free programs, and generally better support. Serves as a 3G modem for my computer as well, but lacks the fancy physical keyboard, boohoo. Oh well, can’t have everything. Found that the BB needed some exchange server and generally more restricted. Windows is open guts and I can always find a solution to that. Its different inEuropewith every piddly country having their own quirks. But I’m getting used to the phone and its not so bad. Seems my Turkish cheapo 3G modem is locked, contrary to what they told me, but in time I hope to hack into it and unblock it. latero
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Still not rolling in the dough but the last few months were fairly good and it has given me the opportunity to chip away at some debts. If it keeps up like this, which it may, I will hope to have paid back all my debts within about 7 months. Concerning your communication script (CS), a friend of mine gave me an idea that I should offer it to other translation companies, which I think I will try. Charge a small fee per every word translated through the system but not actually sell the software itself. For this I’ll need to set up special administration rights that can do pretty well everything the administrator can except erase projects and only have access to the projects they set up. I thought I’d try this myself, because I still do not have enough cash, but it may become an interesting revenue stream. Anyway, I was wondering if you had any quick pointers. Such as a quick tip which files I should be working on, how to get mysql working on my computer so that I can test it, and anything else you can think of.
Glad to hear from you. About MySQL: you can setup “Denwer” – http://www.denwer.ru/ – sorry, it’s only in Russian. It’s package of Apache+MySQL+PHP. May be very easy installed on local computer. It starts virtual web-server. And with denwer I created all sites local. About files: honestly, I don’t remember. I tried to name files with sense. For examle: notify.php, login.php, delm.php (delete message). “u_” – as I remember – functions for users. “c_” – general functions.
sounds like we are doing similar things. I decided recently that I wanted to try the approach of Mr. Google and Mr. Facebook, meaning to make a living from some web project and not really have a boss. Even a customer is like a boss and can be tedious to deal with. But by setting up projects I am applying my creative mind in different ways and I don’t really have to deal with anyone, if I don’t want to. Or just respond to emails. I find the variety quite interesting. Once I find the time I think the project with your script could be quite interesting and looking forward to learning how you did it and working on it.
thanks for the tips. Already been looking at your scripts and things seem to be named pretty logically. Before when you or my Perl programmer would send me scripts I would enjoy skimming through them and following the logic. Now I download scripts from the net, study them in much greater detail, and enjoy learning even more. So it will be an interesting challenge! Think I may have found a “portable mysql”. I would suggest to you sqlite, as I remember you couldn’t set up the mysql database for me. sqlite is real easy and works well with php. I have a really small portable program that can work off a memory stick or CD, for portable presentation. I can send you that as well if you like.
Thanks for suggestions. Now all my projects I test at my hosting. Otherwise I have no many projects for programming – only my own. I try to create own sites carefully. One site had about 7000 visitors a day. 🙂 Almost all my time I spend on SEO. It’s more interesting for me. So I don’t use different local servers any more.  best regards, Yuri. P.S. I? you will have any questions about my scripts – I’ll try to remember the code and help.
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just read your email that you don’t know how to add users. Quite important info. You don’t store this or what? You know it’s a really easy and quick process to copy/paste such info into a Word file and organise it (certainly a lot less painful and time consuming than spending half an hour perusing through a kzillion emails). I wonder how you can run your business if managing everything from your memory. Anyway, just to torture you, because that is more fun and deserving, heh heh, I’d suggest you go to your ftp account on my server and look at the folders and file names and figure it out that way. And if you forgot your username and password, I think I’ll shit in my pants, scoop it out with a spoon, put it in a paper bag, send it to you by post, but make sure to stuff it first with a hand scribbled note with your login details! (heh heh)
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Hey bumblehead,
well, the problem is that the amount of time it takes me to dig up the information, cause I’m organised, is about the same as if you actually stored it yourself somewhere (even a simple bookmark for God’s sake), which is even less time than your beautiful groveling below. It’s not really fair for other people. I feel I spent quite a lot of extra time repeating myself in long emails, and it certainly didn’t seem to emblazen in your memory. Anyway, this was a small favour but at least I’ll know how to deal with customers in the future.
For example, with my Firefox I can export all my bookmarks into an html file, which I then put up on my server as a backup. After my harddrive crashed and I lost so much valuable information, I try to backup absolutely everything. This is an easy way to backup, and when I log into my protected folder, I can go to that exported html file and browse it, going to all my important links if I’m away from my computer etc. Or generally I’ve gotten into the habit of carefully storing tidbits of information somewhere because, in the past, it happened a few times that I was rushing, didn’t really know where to put something, so I just threw it somewhere and figured I’d find it when I need it. But six months down the road I found myself spending up to four hours looking for some stupid piece of paper I really needed, and cursed myself for not taking a bloody minute and think of some logical place to put it. Learned my lesson dattaway. k
Yes I am a bumblehead. Yes I work from memory. Yes I should have instructions, except that I know HOW to do it. I haven’t added anyone for so long (boo hoo) that the address fell out of my history. The Keta bumblehead way of operating in the big scary universe is to, once in a while, go through cumbersome and embarrassing questions such as this to whoever the magnificent, all-knowing genius that knows (in this case yourself). Its amazing how it gets emblazoned into my memory for all time after that!! I tried the looking at docs in the ftp yesterday (except I was using mine instead of yours). Just did it know, and you may call me a super-bumblehead but I went to http://translationstop.com/dbase/signup.php there’s also a http://translationstop.com/dbase/signup2.php which seems to me what I want but am getting a “file not found”. I know it’s probably something retarded like the www. needs to be there (that didn’t work) or it has to say ftp. instead of http:// (which I also tried and doesn’t work) so I need your masterful reply as soon as you guy so I can sign this guy up. he is anxious to start work. As I said, you have sufficiently shamed me so that this tidbit will never, ever again fall out of my head, haha. Luckily I get to avoid your shit-scooping bag with hand-scribbled note. But not because i remember the password, my ftp client does! oh me oh my I am an incompetent boob. that’s right I said boob.
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