Mar 13 2013

New Year, New Direction

Image provided by Robert Tellier.

Image provided by Robert Tellier.

Over the last several months, I have struggled with continuing to write on my blog. It just seemed too much like effort to work as hard as I was at work, coming home and try to write about my lessons learned in some business context.

I have decided to continue to write, but about incorporating technology into daily life. The byline on this blog reads “A geek and his toys”… I have plenty of toys and gadgets and leverage their features every day, whether it be for work or for play.  I’ll share some of the ways I do that.

As a bit of an introvert (technically speaking, an INTP), I tend to be very passionate about technical things, and I love to explain the how and why of things.  Blogging is the tool of choice for many introverts, as it allows them to share with and connect with others on their own terms.

Refocusing this blog is going to make it easier to write, and I look forward to sharing many new ideas and experiences with you, the reader.

Aug 5 2012

Dealing with Overload

In a post back in March, I planned to begin writing a series of articles on cloud-based computing, highlighting some of my favorite Mac and iDevice apps. But alas, the best laid schemes of mice and men go often awry. My team at work lost three people over a six month period, while the amount of work increased. This was a “perfect storm“, a set of circumstances just waiting for sometime to go wrong… and go wrong it did.

Continue reading →

Apr 5 2012

More Power!!!!

2011 27" iMac

I just finished upgrading the Intel processor in my iMac from a 2.7 GHz i5 to a 3.4 GHz i7. There are a few guides on how to tear down your iMac on the web, one of the best courtesy of the folks at iFixit.  Enough has been written about the process that I’m not going to try and write it down here.  However, I will share some lessons learned while doing the upgrade.

  • You can’t differentiate between the left and right speaker connections.  Make sure you label at least one of the channels to avoid having to guess.
  • Check all the motherboard connections.  After you have reinstalled the display panel (a 15 minute job) is not a good time to realize you didn’t connect a heat sensor or fan.
  • Remove and reseat your memory.  It is very tricky to reinstall the motherboard, as the bottom edge needs to fit into four slots.  You will most likely knock your DIMMs around trying to fit the motherboard in.
  • Make sure your memory matches, and don’t use cheap bargain memory.  I installed Corsair memory in addition to the stock Apple memory, and had apps crashing continually.  Remove the Apple memory and all is good.
  • If you can, wear rubber or surgical gloves when handling the display, otherwise you will have fingerprints behind the glass.

Going from the i5 to the i7 gives a nice boost.  The i5 has a 6 MB cache, while the i7 has 8 MB.  A larger cache does help with the speed, but not as much as multithreading.  The i5 has four cores, each with one thread; the i7 also has four cores, but it has two threads per processor and supports hyper-threading.

I didn’t think that there would be a massive boost, but the multithreading does a great job.  You can see for yourself by viewing these Geekbench benchmarking results:

Well, that’s all for now… I need to go and open my iMac up again.  My optical drive fan is going full speed because I forgot to connect the heat sensor.

Maybe I should follow my own advice!

Mar 24 2012

In The Cloud

Clouds

If you've seen TV commercials from Microsoft showing how easy it is to edit, store and share pictures and videos online, then you've probably heard of “the cloud”.

What exactly is the cloud? Why would you want to use it? Starting in April, I will be writing a series of articles to answer these questions and more. I will also highlight some of my favorite software that uses “the cloud” to share data between computers and mobile devices.

That's all for now… visit again in April for new cloudy goodness!

 

Feb 20 2012

Double Trouble: How Not To Connect Your Router

I get my cable and internet through Shaw Communications.  All the special incentives Shaw was offering finally enticed me to move to digital cable.  It also made sense to upgrade my Internet service as well.  I’m constantly streaming media via iTunes or Netflix, and as an IT professional, I spend a lot of time online researching emerging technology and trends.

In order to get the blazing internet speeds that Shaw offers, I had to swap out my old Motorola modem and replace it with a new Cisco DPC3825 residential gateway.  The DPC3825 is essentially a DOCSIS modem combined with a wireless router.  For a new Shaw customer, this is a great combination because a separate router purchase isn’t required.  Previous Shaw internet service offerings only provided a cable modem, so a router was a must.

If you added your old router to the DPC3825, you could experience double trouble; not due to any shortcoming of the hardware, but to the way networking works.

Cisco DPC3825 Wifi Router

Cisco DPC3825 Wifi Router

When you connect a router to a cable modem, the router gets a single external IP address.  The router provides internal IP addresses to any devices connected to it.  When you visit a web site with your browser, the request is sent over the router, through the modem to the server and back to your computer again.  What happens if you have multiple computers on the router?  Remember, the router only has the single external IP address.

This is the magic of network address translation, or NAT.  As data is sent out to the Internet, the router translates the internal IP address to the external address, and keeps track of how to route the incoming data back to the correct device/computer.

Back to the DPC3825… it has a router that is already doing NAT.  Adding an additional router means a double NAT, resulting in the source and destination information being modified twice.  When data is returned from the remote server, the routers generally get confused.  In this situation, you will probably only be able to browse the web, and not much else.

So what was the fix?  It was quite simple, after an hour of web surfing; the DPC3825 had to be placed into bridged mode.  The DPC3825 needed to have firmware downloaded, so the only way to get bridge mode was to contact Shaw and request the change.  Fifteen minutes later and I was up and running with my old router.

So, if you are experiencing the same issue, ask Shaw Customer Service Representatives to make the change for you.

 

Feb 15 2012

Being Wrong

I just love this TED Talk by Kathryn Schulz, the World’s leading wrongologist,

As an aspiring leader, I found the message that it is okay to be wrong particularly interesting.  When applied to a team dynamic, it’s an great approach to working together.  If you can accept that it’s ok to be wrong, and that being wrong doesn’t mean you’re stupid, you can avoid the friction that can often occur in a team.

The King of all Nerds, Bill Gates, was quoted as saying ”It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”  Getting worked up over being wrong often keeps us from an opportunity to learn from failure.  Embracing wrongness is just the first step getting it right next time.

Then again, I could be wrong.

Feb 7 2012

Sound Off! Redux

I documented in a previous post the issues I have had with coreaudiod continually respawning and crashing after an initial segmentation fault. At first I had thought the issue might be caused by using a minidisplay port to DVI converter on a Thunderbolt port to connect a second monitor to my iMac.

After reviewing logs using the Console app, I determined that it could have been one of two issues. The initial segmentation fault always seemed to occur during initialization for either the Kodak Easyshare drivers or the Dropbox timer.

The Kodak Easyshare drivers have been removed; Dropbox is still running. My second display has been connected via the minidisplay port adapter, and has been running for several days without loss of audio.

Reminds me of Windows… if in doubt, remove the offending drivers!

Update: February 19, 2012

It has been almost two weeks since I removed the Kodak Easyshare drivers, and I have had no trouble with audio at all.  Looks like these Kodak drivers, specifically the AIO 5300 series, should be avoided.

Feb 6 2012

The Medium Is The Message

Photo by Murray Thompson, used under Creative Commons licenseLast week I was trapped in an elevator for several minutes, along with some colleagues. The emergency phone in the elevator was not working. One of my workmates pulled out her BlackBerry and started to send an email, another was composing an email on his iPhone. I removed my iPhone, quickly opened my Contacts list and placed a quick phone call to our office so a message could be relayed to building maintenance. As I recounted this story to others, a colleague commented that phone calls were “so 90s”.

As IT professionals, it is our job to understand emerging technologies and to help our customers to use them. It is also our responsibility to help our customers understand when “bleeding edge” technology is not always the best choice. Using the example of our little elevator adventure, it is easy to see that using email or social media, while having a certain “cool factor”, would have been a poor choice for timely communication.

Are you helping your customers send the right message?

Feb 3 2012

Sound Off!

Originally posted January 1, 2012

The last few days I have had issues with audio on my iMac. The symptoms were quite odd:

  • The volume control on the menu bar is greyed out
  • Launching System Preferences and opening the Sound preference panel indicates there is no hardware available
  • The entire system ran extremely slow, yet Activity Monitor didn’t show any excessive CPU usage
  • Looking in Console revealed a number of System Diagnostic Reports files, labeled coreaudiod_yyyy-mm-dd-hhmmss_localhost.crash
  • The System Log Queries in Console contained reports of com.apple.audio.coreaudiod crashing and restarting the process every 10 seconds

There didn’t appear to be any obvious issues to identify in any of these files. In the end, I found a web page (will post when I find it again) that suggested that a corrupted iPhoto library could cause coreaudiod to crash. After deleting the library and restarting, my audio was back. I have since lost audio and restored it following the same procedure.

I am going to continue to update this post as I look for a root cause for the audio/iPhoto issue.

Updated January 3, 2012

Audio still flaky.  Reviewing Console logs.  First segmentation fault of com.apple.audio.coreaudiod occurs in two places; after starting timer for Dropbox client, and after initializing com.kodak.BonjourAgent for Kodak EasyShare printer.

Feb 1 2012

Shooting Your Mouth Off

iPhone Photo Mapping

iPhone Photo Mapping

I read this morning about a pair of UK citizens that were detained by the US Department of Homeland Security.

This once again underscores the need for people to be mindful of what they post online. Whether it is Homeland Security, a current or future employer, or even the burglar/psychopath/molester down the street, too much information online can bring negative consequences.

I have some simple rules that I follow online:

  • When signing up for online accounts, enter home address information only if it is really needed. If you just have to post your personal details on Facebook, take time to tighten your security to limit who can see them.
  • If you have your own blog, you may have registered your own domain name.  Your registration information, including home address, phone numbers, etc. can be seen by anybody.  Spend the extra money to pay for domain privacy, and then only law enforcement can retrieve your personal info.
  • Limit how much information you provide on blogs or in social media. Revealing too much information about your children or vacation plans, when combined with address information (see above)  can be an open invitation to “bad guys”.
  • Pretend for a minute that the Internet doesn’t make you anonymous. You’ll think twice about trash talking people on social media or web sites, and you may just avoid pissing off current or future employers.  Google yourself and check out what you find.
  • Selling on eBay, Kijiji or Craigslist? Watch how much personal information you reveal. If you are posting pictures of your goods, review them to ensure you haven’t inadvertently included identifying data like house numbers, license plates or dangly bits (NSFW).
  • If you geocode your photos, fuzz the coordinates so they don’t identify your immediate neighbourhood. The same holds true for smartphone social media apps that record your location, such as Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook Places.

I don’t want to sound alarmist but like the old saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Anything you post online is there for almost all to see and for a long time.

What do you want people to see?