Simple Trouble Shooting Application Now Fixes Everything

I've re-packaged last week's trouble-shooting checklist as an online application.

It's javascript based, web 2.0 friendly, has gradients (but no rounded corners, so it's not fully W2C*).

In case you missed it -- here it is.

I've given some (okay -- way too much) thought to this and have a rough idea about a complete expert-system for trouble shooting all computer problems.

Expert systems that I learnt about way back, in those crazy school days, seemed to be largely focused on medical topics ("male? definitely not pregnant. spots? might be measles."). More recently, circa 2002?, I recall a nifty expert system that could guess any 1970's television show you were thinking of. (Provided it was 'Happy Days' -- which it was).

How about computer problems?

I can envision some kind of wiki-like system where people who have solved their problems can contribute further Q&A to a huge tree of diagnostic trouble-shooting possibilities...

Let me get you started...

Q.1: Is the power on?

A="N"?: Return "Turn the power on."

A="Y"?: Continue to Q.2;

Q.2: Did you turn it off and turn it back on again?

A="N"?: Return "turn it off and turn it back on again."

A="Y"?: Continue to Q.3;

Enough theorising. Check out the trouble-shooting checklist, share it with your loved ones. Use it to solve your computing problems. And be good to each other. Once in a while. Please.

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* W2C = Web 2.0 Compliance.

'Stephan Leclercq' on Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:14:57 GMT, sez:

Hello, nice one, but... I got a list of useful tips.

tip one was:

html encode it and escape all apostrophes

On my iexplore, tip 3 was displayed like this:

"check that pump's suction pipe is elevated "

Maybe you should apply fix n° 1 :-) :-) :-)

'mike' on Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:48:39 GMT, sez:

Hey, it's like a Magic 8-Ball(r) (Magic 10-Ball?(not-r) of computer questions! Sort of. I note that it does not say "Try flowers and a movie" anywhere. Bit of an oversight, that.

'lb' on Mon, 22 Sep 2008 04:56:06 GMT, sez:

@Stephan
he he -- yes, but i can only repro this on ie, so maybe the fix is to change browser. wonder if i included that?

'Matt' on Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:40:33 GMT, sez:

There is nothing to prevent the same array element from being selected more than once. I had "recalculate statistics" appear 3 times in the same list. Other than that small oversight, it's a fun little app.

I'd fix it myself, but I'm not the greatest with javascript. I can't figure out how to dynamically resize the for loop when the same array element is selected more than once.

'lb' on Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:39:45 GMT, sez:

@Matt
>I had "recalculate statistics" appear 3 times in the same list

I noticed that early on and then decided to deliberately leave that bug in there ;-).

I decided there was some small humour-value in having the list tell you to repeat steps an arbitrary number of times.

'cland' on Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:13:12 GMT, sez:

Brilliant!!!

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