I’ve been having a lot of problems when I try to watch Flash videos on my computer. Sometimes Firefox stops the movie after 2 seconds. Sometimes Firefox and Internet Explorer just close.
It’s been very frustrating. I’ve been blaming the problem on an incompatibility between Flash and Vista.
It turns out that the problem may be with Flash and HP. The same problem seems to happen on HP XP computers as well.
Last week HP sent out an update to try to fix the problem. If you have an XP machine, the update may install as advertised. However, it’s a little more difficult on a computer running Vista.
The upgrade must be run as administrator. Here are the steps for installing the upgrade.
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Tags:
Firefox,
Internet Explorer,
Microsoft,
Microsoft Windows,
Mozilla Firefox,
Vista,
Windows,
Windows Explorer
You probably know that I’m a big fan of Jott. It makes your already indispensable cell phone even more useful. It’s a great service that turns voice messages into text messages. You can send text messages to your contacts from your cell phone. However, my favorite usage is to send reminder messages to myself.
The messages are also sent to your email account. I’ve found this very handy for keeping myself on track. Besides sending myself grocery lists, I also send myself snippets of plot ideas or scenes I need to write or fix. My muse seems to be most active while I’m driving.
Some of the ways I use Jott
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I’ve learned senior health care and terminology because of my in-law’s medical problems. But, I’ve also seen some things that help me to create good characters in my writing.
The term “control freak” was created for my father-in-law. He needs to be in charge of every situation. Since my mother-in-law’s stroke, he can’t control anything.
He’s 93 and his short-term memory is bad. We’ve stepped in and are making decisions he feels he should make. We are keeping him informed and involved. However, we visit care facilities, talk to her doctor, talk to his doctor, and general manage everyday decisions as well as major medical decisions.
If I wanted to rip his heart out, I couldn’t pick a better way than to take decision making out of his hands. His memory problem makes the situation worse, since he can’t remember that we’ve discussed the issue with him before.
Good storytelling means that you need to make things as difficult as possible for your characters. Find your character’s wounds and weak spots. Then hit them where it hurts the most.
How can you use your observations to create good characters?
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Tags:
character development,
creating characters,
writing
