Long gone, but now back… sort of. :)
A reader asks: “Why does Boston have so many universities compared to other cities?” Boston benefits from almost 400 years of continual investment in education. For example, Harvard University was founded in 1636, just six years after Boston itself. That wasn’t an accident: From its founding, up to the American Revolution (when the British occupied…
Reader Ross asks: “What’s your experience of Uber in Boston, Mass?” The Uber service and drivers here are OK; but (IMHO) Uber as a corporation sucks: known for bad business practices, criminal investigations, institutionalized misogyny, etc. Why give money to a company like that? I use Lyft instead. It has some corporate issues of its…
Reader Aaron used the Contact link to ask: “How can I reset my smartphone without losing data? It keeps restarting.” You’ll have to temporarily move the data to another device (eg your PC; or a cloud-based file storage service like Drive, OneDrive, DropBox; etc.) How you do this depends on where the data is, on…
Q: My new keyboard keeps on typing the same letter. I tried it on another PC, but there, it worked fine. I also tried formatting my PC, but it’s still an issue. How can I fix this? (via Quora) A: I assume you mean it’s doing something like thisssssssssssssss? I think we can fix that! …
Q: How do I remove a hard disk bad sector? (via Quora) A: Try chkdsk (Windows) or fsck (Linux); both can detect and repair some kinds of damage to a hard drive. But have a care: Although some software can restore some bad sectors to service, it may be best not to! Tools like fsck…
Q: Does Windows have a feature that can count my daily keystrokes? (via Quora) A: Not built-in, but there are many, many add-on apps that can. Here are just a few example apps for counting user-input activity — number of keystrokes and mouse clicks, distance of mouse travel, etc.: KeyCounter: KeyCounter – DonationCoder.com Keycounter (different…
Writing from the Netherlands, reader Maarten Woerlee asks (via the CONTACT link): Q: In Windows, sometimes there’s a pop-up window named “Application Starter” with the message “The parameter is incorrect.” What’s going on, and how do I fix this? A: We can figure this out by looking at the two clues in your question: (1)…
Q. Is it easy to find a public bathroom in Downtown Boston? (via Quora) A. It’s not hard, but they’re not always obvious. For example, many Boston streets have large, circular kiosks with advertising on the outside. These are actually public restrooms, although they are not obviously so, until you see the door. They cost…
Reader Geoff Komeya asks (via the Contact link): Hi Fred: Just wanted to ask whether you still ride motorcycles? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read and re-read your blog about your 10,000-mile ride on the ADVrider site. Such a great piece of travel writing. Thanks, Geoff Komeya Thanks for the kind words,…
Q: Did your hand writing go for a toss after using electronic keyboards? (via Quora) A: Well, any skill that’s not regularly practiced will atrophy. But in my case, there was little to lose; and I can’t blame keyboards! My handwriting was hard for others to read from grade school on. Formal penmanship was too…