Category Archives: geek stuff

Tech talk

Posted by terip on July 1, 2019 1 comments

To start out, here’s a few links with protecting your information online:

http://techland.time.com/2013/07/24/11-simple-ways-to-protect-your-privacy/

https://www.wikihow.com/Protect-Personal-Information

We live in an era, where words you posted on the Internet a decade ago can come back to haunt you. And there are people out there looking to rob you and dox you. (Doxxing is searching for personal information, like name, address and employer and using that information to hound and intimidate you.) I thought it might be time to go over the basics again.

The first rule is, be suspicious. I deal with customers that get phishing emails, popups asking for information and strange calls. I’m always happy that they called before clicking on those links or giving out personal information. If I get an email from Paypal, saying something about my account, I go to the actual Paypal site. If you move your mouse over the actual link, you should see something in the lower left corner of the browser (PC) that shows where that link goes. Most of the time, it doesn’t go to the site. Start by being suspicious.

Secondly, close out old accounts! I finally closed out my LinkedIn account the other day. I’m done with looking for work–I’ll retire from this job. There was just too much of my personal information available there. I also closed out a Twitter account. I used my name for the username. Again, that’s just too much info out there. I opened a new one, with a different name and email address. I still have several free email accounts out there, that I’ll never be able to log into.

Third, passwords. Everyone hates passwords. I see a lot more than you do, dealing with customers. It is typically a five character word with the number 1 at the end. Seriously. I have a lot of passwords, both work and home. I was setting up a new website for myself and had to set up passwords for all sorts of things. For you, I’d recommend a password manager (digital) or a notebook for passwords (analog). I’ve used Last Pass. It’s a great program, inexpensive, and doesn’t store your information on the cloud. You set a master password to log into your saved info and you can set a different password for each site. It will generate one for you which is the best route to take. You need more complex passwords for critical services, like logging into your bank. Passwords need to be at least eight characters long. Every site will have different requirements and no matter what you do, you will face the frustration of trying five or six different passwords with no luck. Happens to the best of us. The other advantage to password managers and notebooks is that you let someone you trust have access to the information, if anything happens to you. My husband was not able to get into his second wife’s email account, after she died. He had no idea what the password was, and there were people that he just couldn’t contact. And one last thing, do not use your work passwords for personal sites and vice versa. We all want to have just a few passwords to remember. But the fewer passwords that you have, the easier it would be for someone to hack into all of your sites and services. Keep track of your wifi password and change that periodically too!

Personal information. Try and give these sites the bare minimum. We try to be helpful, but really, why do they need to know some of this stuff? I went through Facebook and deleted all my work history. Fortunately, I’d never linked it to the official sites. Go back, take a look at the sites you use and edit what is kept online. It can be fun to do a search for your own name, just to see what pops up.

Tech. If you use newer equipment, keep it up to date. Do the operating system updates. Anti-virus and anti-malware software is a must on PCs. Do a regular scan and scan anything you see something suspicious on the computer. Macs are not immune to viruses. So far, there haven’t been a lot of cell phone viruses, but you should be aware they exist. If you have a router (and you probably do), you should know about firmware updates. If you own the router, you should learn how to check for updates and how to apply them. The reason I said newer equipment is that I find it useful to use obsolete tech. I have a Palm PDA that has Keyring installed. This is a free password manager. I can sync to my old G4 Power PC Mac for a backup. The program works just fine. I also use HandyShopper for my grocery lists and a couple of other programs. Cost for this tech is minimal. The old computers don’t work well on the internet because they don’t have modern browsers. They still work well for all sorts of graphics, documents, spreadsheets and other interesting programs. They aren’t a target any more, so typically don’t get hacked. I run Linux Mint on older ThinkPads for my work from home computers. And this technology is cheap these days.

Finally, you are never too old to learn! I’m saving something up for when I do retire. Fairly regularly, I get someone on the phone that tells me they can’t do something because they are in their 70s or 80s. I can understand physical limitations. When I am ready to retire, I will tell them my current age (68) and let them know how easy they have it. I have to keep up with new technologies, operating systems and applications like email. There’s no real excuse for not knowing the right terminology or how to check the settings on your email program. If you don’t know something, learn how to do a search online. You Tube is full of how to videos. Look up definitions, learn how to secure your computer or change those passwords. Lifelong learning is what keeps your mind young. Don’t decide that you can’t do something when you haven’t really tried.

Please take the time to change old passwords, update old accounts, and learn something new.

Where we went wrong

Posted by terip on June 25, 2019 57 comments

I started hanging out on the internet when I went back to college in 1995. I found the Knit List. It was wonderful! It was also my first experience with the mean girls gang. You would have these women insist that the list be run to suit them. They would complain and bitch about something. The people running the list would accommodate them, then they would find something else to complain about. It got old. I wound up starting my own website and my own mailing list. And complainers about my list were told they could start their own and run it any way they chose.

I hear that excuse from people that support the way Ravelry is going. But Ravelry is not a personal website. It is a business. And businesses have to play under different rules. Carriers, like your cell phone company, operate under a certain set of laws, because traffic just passes through them. Platforms operate under a different set as they monitor and restrict speech. Tech companies want it both ways. They want to restrict speech and be unregulated like a carrier. That needs to stop. We have Google taking down a video of how Google plans to stop someone like Donald Trump from ever running for President again. If you think this is a great idea, try reversing that where a conservative business plans to stop the run of a Democratic candidate. We can’t allow these companies to police themselves.

Let me make this plain as I can. You cannot slander and smear an entire group of people, just because you don’t like their politics. I have not seen a single instance of anyone on Ravelry that has been guilty of “white supremicist” behavior. No one, anywhere, has an example. It has all been guilt by association. Trump is supposed to be a white supremicist, based on biased and slanted stories from the main stream media. Therefore, you are guilty if you support that. This is wrong. Let me say it again, this is wrong and you should know that. Let’s stop pretending there are groups on Ravelry full of Storm Front supporters, If you have an example of it, fine. But you don’t. I am not on everything at Ravelry, but I do not see any political talk anywhere. I can see, just by description, which groups are full of social justice warriors. I avoid those groups. It’s the mean girls of the internet all over again, humorless scolds that want to tell you want to do and how to think. The fact that those groups exist doesn’t “trigger” me. I don’t require that they be purged. I just avoid them. The other side doesn’t feel that way. People must be brought into line or kicked off. The glee about this decision is sickening. People that have never interacted with me at all, encouraging me to leave Ravelry sooner rather than later. I’ve had people quote back the manifesto to me, as if it’s gospel. The people at Ravelry are lying. That document is to try and cover their asses legally. This is in fact a purge of anyone that doesn’t do what they say. Unrestricted speech for the Left, but no speech at all on the Right. Why would anyone want to stay under those terms?

I titled this “Where We Went Wrong”. People used to make private websites and run email lists. If you weren’t a techy, there were sites like Geocities that would make it easier to set up a website. You had forums like Delphi. All of these required effort, but it was your own space. You had some control over it. Social media promised that you didn’t have to do any work at all. But with social media, YOU are the product. Your information is used for marketing. You really don’t have an option to opt out. They can track your information way beyond your visit to their site. And social media has brought out the worst of the mean girl club. They are now basically online mobs. They don’t think twice about putting where you live online, pressuring the company you work at. Even the companies that created these social media sites have remarked on it.

We need to return to smaller, more manageable groups. We need our own places again. We don’t need some giant site like Ravelry. We need less unrestricted speech, not more censorship. We need places where we can discuss craft and put all political discussion aside. We need places where crafters come together. Ravelry is on its way to becoming a very ugly place, make no mistake about it.

The internet is full of dead links. Make Ravelry one of them.

Back in the day…..

Posted by terip on June 12, 2018 None comments

This used to be my go-to toy. It’s my Palm Zire 71, purchased new. It has the neatest camera ever. You slide the front up and the camera lens is exposed. It took pictures just the right size for webpages and you could be pretty sneaky about taking a picture. I have a 2gb SD card that I backed up all my programs on, and saved some free books and an album of music. I had a prepaid phone at the time, one of the green screen kinds, so I didn’t have anything that was always connected to the internet.

My Palm was like a time capsule of 2008. I had it with me when Jeffrey went into the ICU. I did not have any way to charge it. My co-worker was supposed to bring the charging cradle and never did. It stayed dead until I was finally able to get back to work after Jeffrey died. It left me distrusting digital solutions and I made sure that I always had a paper backup of important phone numbers somewhere. I just put it away. And I moved on to smart phones. But I really don’t enjoy them very much. I do use them a lot for the internet. I picked up an iPhone SE as I don’t really care for the large screen phones. I’ve noticed that they’ve re-written iOS for the larger phones now and it’s getting harder to type accurately. I’d go with something else, but I’ve never cared for Android. I’ve got two Kindles and an Android tablet. I just am not impressed.

I have a couple of Tungstens I picked up second hand, an E and a C. They both work. They don’t have cameras. The C can connect to wifi but can only use WEP encryption. And it has a keyboard. I like Graffiti a lot and I’m fast. I have a program called Teal Script that will let you use old style Graffiti letters and you can train it to recognize exactly how you write. I haven’t really done anything with the Tungstens, but have charged up one of them sometimes. I didn’t have a good charger for the Zire or the E. I got the wild idea to get charging cables last week, just for fun. I got the Zire working, but needed to get the backup program off the card to reinstall everything.

And that lead to great fun. I have a Thinkpad that runs Linux. I’ve used Palms on Linux before, but couldn’t get the conduit to work. I have an HP running Windows 7. I installed the Palm Desktop, but the conduit was 32 bit. There is a 64 bit driver another company wrote, but I needed to track it down. So..I pulled out my iBook G4, with OS 10.4 installed. I installed Palm Desktop. And I was able to sync and get the backup program installed. It’s not pretty because the conduit crashes regularly. But it worked. And when it restored from backup, it was all there. My carefully worked out system of memos in Pedit and Memoleaf. My copy of Bejeweled still works (and I keep playing it just to be sure!) I have used a LOT of Palm software and I have registrations for the programs I used most. I reinstalled a couple of them. I especially wanted to use Teal Auto again. We want to track mileage on the truck. (I can do this in Quik Budget too, but Teal Auto has nicer reports.) I found a copy of Carla Emery’s Checklist for Homesteaders, which doesn’t seem to be online any more. (I haven’t checked archive.org for it.) It has been an interesting experience.

I’m in the process of archiving and purging a lot of the old stuff and adding new addresses and memos. I am carrying my iPhone and Palm. I’ve taken a few pictures with the Palm but they aren’t as high resolution as the iPhone. I transferred a few new pictures over to the Palm and they look great. I even picked up a second hand Zire as a backup. I think I’m going to keep using this. So here are a few thoughts: I like writing much better than using my fingers. I can be more precise and I think faster when I’m writing than when I am tapping things out on the iPhone. I’m a fast typist, but you don’t really type on a smart phone. Steve Jobs was wrong. Styluses work much better. The Palm software community was amazing and some of the programs still blow me away. I wish Pedit was on another platform. It is such a great text editor. One of the lessons I learned was to use text files. It’s a format that doesn’t change and can be read on any platform. Pedit even has a scripting language. I’ve forgotten most of what I learned, but still have a few scripts I can mess around with when I have more time.

I’m actually enjoying my time off the internet. If I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep, I can play a quick game of Bejeweled now. And, I set an alarm on my Palm for my doctor’s appointment. I’d forgotten that my alarm tone is the Canteena music from the original Star Wars. I’m still carrying some paper with me and I am still using my iPhone. It’s just nice to have obsolete technology to mess around with for a change. And I like using my old iBook. I should upgrade it to OS 10.5 one of these days. The problem is that old technology that uses the internet is the tech that is obsolete first. When you can’t find a browser to use, it’s dead.

Lon’s birthday today! I hope he has many more.

Moleskine

Posted by terip on July 7, 2017 None comments

I started using Moleskines back when they became cool. I still really love the Reporter style. Like many others, I’ve noticed that the quality is terrible since they moved production to China. The paper was always iffy for fountain pens. It’s become unusable. And it’s rough paper. I just can’t justify buying them any more. I have both sizes of Midori Traveler’s notebooks. I like the regular size but it seems very heavy. And it’s an awkward size. I have been using the Passport, with a monthly calendar insert and a couple of blank inserts. It’s better and lighter, but it still doesn’t suit me. I do not have a shortage of notebooks. I’ve used Field Notes in the Passport and they fit okay if a bit big. I have a Quo Vadis Habanera and that size has worked well for me in the past.

The big issue is the notebook I use for journaling. I wanted a bigger notebook than I’d been using, so decided to use a standard sized Moleskine. I have to use a ballpoint to write, but I am close to finishing it up. I needed something new, so I ordered a Rhodia today. I’ve used one of their small notebooks. I was looking at it today and the quality is very nice. I may be buying more notebooks from them.

I really don’t have a lot of things to track, like in the old days. Most of it is dealing with bills and remembering what I’ve promised to pay. I’ve set things up in Evernote for now, as it’s nice to be able to have all the contact and account info on one page. I could do that in a notebook too, but don’t have the ability to encrypt my account information. So, I don’t know. When I retire, I should be able to simplify even more. I was tracking what I was eating, but stopped doing that for awhile. I should go back to doing that. It’s helpful to see how we were eating when we did Paleo. And we do need to get back to Paleo.

Still trying to sell stuff and get some earnest money together. Still making plans for a house we don’t own and swamped with work to do on the ones we do own. I would love to have Thanksgiving and Christmas at the new place. Will see if I can make some progress for us this weekend.

And I forgot one last update: Slobberpuss died at home. We had an appointment to take him to the vets to be put down. I went to load him into the carrier and he was dead in front of the refrigerator. RIP, Slobberpuss

Technology

Posted by terip on March 11, 2015 None comments

Here we have a Palm III, Zire 71, Tungsten E2, and a Tungsten C. They all work, although the Palm III doesn’t stay on. I bought the Zire new. The others were thrift store finds. Each one cost several hundred dollars new. Each one is obsolete, even though it still functions. And the purpose of the post is to remind you of this, when you go out to get the latest and greatest computer, phone, tablet, etc.

Back in the day, when we were playing around with our PDAs, there were a couple of analog GTD systems. There were Hipster PDAs, made of index cards, and the PigPog method, which used a Moleskine. And of course, the DIY planner series was another analog system. Are the analog systems obsolete? Did people have to throw out their index cards, planners or Moleskines because they couldn’t sync with their computer or couldn’t upgrade their system? It’s a silly question, but no. Companies deliberately make our electronics obsolete.

I still enjoy these Palms. I liked the operating system the first time I saw it. The Zire has a slider to hide the camera and it was fun to take sneaky snapshots. And I like my iPhone 4S, even though Apple prevents me from syncing it with my old Power PC Mac. Gotta encourage those upgrades, you know. I stopped trusting electronic systems, when Jeffrey got sick and my charging stuff was back at work. An uncharged Palm is a brick. You can’t access it when it’s down and all that information was locked away in it. My iPhone is no different. Think about this, when you consider buying the latest gadget.

Field Notes

Posted by terip on December 12, 2014 None comments

I used to be a big Moleskine user, but I don’t like the product since they started making them in China. I wanted an alternative and started trying other notebooks. I have mentioned before that I started using Field Notes. I am a fan of old time notebooks and I just like the style of these. But I think I may have found my favorite Field Notes ever. It’s their latest edition, entitled “Ambition”.

There are three notebooks. They all have gilding on the title and edges. The first is a ledger. This is perfect for tracking spending.

The second is a weekly planner. This year, I’d purchased a planner from Word, but found I really didn’t use it. I track most of my appointments on my iPhone, but I like to have a paper version too.

The last notebook is a grid style. I use these for reference items. I like to use the plain Field Notes grid notebooks for things I don’t want to keep. I have been tracking things like grocery prices, phone numbers for things we pick up on Craigslist, just any general things that I won’t need to refer to again. I have been carrying four Field Notebooks and that will probably continue this year. I am planning to buy at least two more sets of these. It took them several years to come up with another ledger notebook. I want enough of these to get through the next dry spell.

More notebooks

Posted by terip on March 25, 2014 None comments

I’ve used Moleskines for several years now. However, since they moved production to China, the paper quality has gone downhill. I continue to buy Reporters, but I prefer the Quo Vadis small Habanas for notebooks.

I have not been able to resist Field Notes. I like to collect old notebooks and I like the vintage feel of Field Notes. It’s not really fountain pen friendly paper but then it’s not a notebook that makes you want to write with a fountain pen.

So I ordered the latest notebook, which arrived today!

The cover of these is a thin cherrywood veneer.

It’s really nice stuff! And look at the paper.

I like these. I realize that the cover will be on the fragile side. I use the plain brown ones for most things. This is the sort of notebook that you can do a mind dump in and not think twice. I just like their style.

Blogs

Posted by terip on November 27, 2013 None comments

I’ve been on Delicious since 2004. 2004 is a lifetime on the internet! I have 3500+ bookmarks there. The internet has always been a fluid place and sites come and go. It seems to me that I am seeing more dead blogs than normal this year. I wish someone would look into it. Is it that people burn out? Do they find it easier to do a quick Tweet or write something in Facebook? Have we moved to all picture blogs, like you’d find on Tumblr? I just don’t know. Blogging is an odd thing. You write for yourself, with the understanding that people out there may actually read it. I always think about that when I comment on someone else’s blog, especially if I’m commenting on an old post. When I find an interesting blog, I sometimes read all of it, starting with the new stuff and working my way back. That’s a different viewpoint, to be sure.

I will be paying my webhosting for another year. I sometimes think about giving up one of my blogs. Quinn’s Cove is the one most in danger. We don’t go down to the river that much these days. (Remember when I said we were moving down there? Looks like another false alarm.) I think, in some ways, we are really starting to dis-engage from there. I’d like to see it sold. It’s a lovely place, but it’s pretty pointless to have river front property when the state won’t let you have a dock. Just think, people that don’t own property there can have boats, even houseboats. We can’t. Yet another reason why I’d like to leave this state.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow. It will be a meal for just the two of us. I have the turkey thawing out in brine. I put on yams for tonight’s dinner. These are huge yams! I could eat yams every day of the week and I don’t put anything on them but butter. I will make cranberry relish, with orange, and start a sponge for rolls. Those will be baked tomorrow. We’ll have gravy and mashed potatoes. If I remember it (and I think I’d better get those on now) I have a couple of small pumpkins to use for pie. It will be a feast, a little non-Paleo, and we will give thanks for the blessings we have.

Finally got Lon’s computer working!

Posted by terip on May 19, 2013 None comments

It’s taken a couple of Saturdays, but he finally has a working computer again. I was not able to get XP installed. I was using recovery disks and they just wouldn’t work. He has Ubuntu for now.

I bought the motherboard, CPU, CPU fan, and RAM from Free Geeks. Then it turned out my old power supply wouldn’t work, so I made another trip for to replace that. I couldn’t get it to boot up, so let it set for a week. The CPU fan wouldn’t seat right and the little plastic pins had splayed out and broken. Back to Free Geeks, where I found a new one, still in the package to replace that.

I went through all of it again yesterday, finally got the fans to spin. When I hooked up the monitor, I found that it wouldn’t turn on. It’s probably a power supply issue, but I decided to see what I could find second hand. I was going to check out the local second hand stores and pawn shops. That’s when I found out it was the day for the Hazel Dell parade. I couldn’t get to any of the stores I wanted to check out. So I went back to Free Geeks. I picked up a very nice Sony monitor (and a charger for the ibook project I’ll tackle next.)

When I was trying to install a version of Linux, they all kept complaining about a broken bios. A friend suggested that I use the CMOS battery from the old computer, which helped. I was able to install Ubuntu and Lon can surf the web again. I’m going to see if I can salvage anything off the old hard drive, but I suspect that the restore disk has managed to screw that up, even though it never really formated the drive or installed XP.

If I’d known it was going to be this crazy, I might have looked harder at just replacing the computer. It was a good learning experience though. I haven’t done much hardware, and I’d like to learn about newer computers. The ibook is going to be interesting. I haven’t worked on a Mac. This one doesn’t have a hard drive. To install one, you have to strip it back to the guts. I found out that the battery does seem to hold a charge and everything else seems to work. It was $30. I know it’s an obsolete computer, but I wanted one back when I worked at Charter. I think it can be useful again. Any old computer can be used for writing. This laptop needs work, so having another laptop will give me time to work on this. And I’ve been talking about volunteering at Free Geeks for awhile. They have a laptop hardware class that I’d like to take. I’ll save that for another day.

the latest Ubuntu

Posted by terip on October 28, 2011 None comments

I upgraded to the latest Ubuntu version. I think this is 11.10? Anyway they still use the Unity desktop. They have a version that works on low end computers like mine. And I do really like it! The upgrade was very smooth. It resolved some of the issues I have with the remote session to my work computer. (Typing used to lag really, really badly and letters would get transposed all the time.) My network card works, the sound works, and I can even sync to my iphone. This works so well that it will probably be at least two upgrades before I upgrade again. The only thing I have problems with is Firefox, which seems to crash too often. I have problems with Firefox on the Win XP machine too, so I think that is just a Firefox issue.

And my web hosting company finally sorted out the issue with this blog so I can post again.

working from home and linux

Posted by terip on May 15, 2011 None comments

I worked in a unix environment for two years and really enjoyed it. I’ve been trying to find a way back to it and finally, I’m able to do it working from home. I use my trusty Thinkpad T23 with Linux Mint. Now most of the time I’ve spent with computers, I’ve spent more time learning operating systems, than I’ve spent actually using programs. It’s been fun to try working in different programs and sort of settling in. I did download and burn a copy of the latest Ubuntu. (For non-geeks, there’s a bit of a buzz about this. It’s very, very Mac-like and they are developing their own music and app stores.) I dealt with Ubuntu for a long time and I’ve found that every other update breaks something, badly. So I won’t be installing Ubuntu. Mint is Ubuntu based, but is not going to be using that new Unity desktop. Since I use my computer for work now, I really can’t afford to have downtime.

I am likely going to be spending some time with Free Geek in Portland. I’ve decided to volunteer and go through their build program. I could use a computer dedicated to work (so I can play on the laptop again.) It’s been a long time since I’ve done hardware and this will be a nice way to learn. They also have Mac and laptop training, and I’d like to do both. I’m sure that fiber time will continue to be short. I’ve had a lot of arthritis issues with this cooler than normal spring and there are times my hands just plain hurt. Just part of getting old, but it does mean that I need to find some new interests, in case I can’t do the old ones.

NotSoThoreau

On the plains