Category: Technology

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Patience has paid off.

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After many days of tweaking and patiently letting my computer do whatever the hell it needed to do, I now have an alternate backup.

Not only do I have an alternate backup, It’s working very nicely and for the time being all is peaceful in computer land here.

Getting the backup took days (Still scratching my head over that one…) But now the incrementals are quick, efficient, and on a par with the TimeCapsule. Even though they’re being made on a Western Digital NAS

I’m over the hassle for the time being. I’ll probably do something like put the Time Capsule into maintenance mode when I’ve got nothing better to do. For the time being I’m just going to take a breather. None of the other computers backing up on the TimeCapsule seem to be having problems. I can only assume the problem I was having is some kind of corruption in the backup for my machine alone.

I can’t stress how much everyone needs to have a backup of their computers or at least their data. That is one thing I can say Apple has done mostly right, The Apple backup system in it’s various iterations has saved my behind on a number of occasions. 

Were it not for the automated system I can’t tell you how many times I’d have been lamenting over losing all the stuff on various computers.

Whatever you do to back your system up, be consistent about it.

DAMN! 

As I was sitting here typing I pondered the question about why the WD drive was so slow. It occurred to me that I have several really fast ethernet ports on the back of my TimeCapsule. Those ports while nice, had never really mattered all that much because the rest of the devices in the network are incapable of capitalizing on their speed.

I wondered what speed if the WD drive? Sure enough, it can capitalize on the additional speed so I took a break from writing this blog and did a little reconfiguration. Now time will tell if I notice the different in access speed. 

When I plugged the WD in a year or so ago after the Buffalo drive died I just used the same port and really didn’t think about it. I was so focused on saving what data I could save I just wanted a drive that was online. In retrospect I probably should have given a little more thought to the situation.

Yet another time when I’m doing the Homer Simpson “D’OH”

Now before my non technical readers start bleeding from their eyes I’m going to change the subject.

OK I’m going to break yet another taboo… Gun Control!!!

I don’t know how many of you watch Piers Morgan… ( I don’t as a rule, I think he’s a pompous ass and wish that CNN would just shut him down.)

However, poor Piers has really been taking it on the nose the past few weeks.

Most recently he was pretty much outclassed, out thought, and out maneuvered by a young Attorney, Author, and supporter of the 2nd amendment named Ben Shapiro.

 You can view the interview here 

http://youtu.be/hJ8jcsaDK1k

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ8jcsaDK1k]

I like what Mr Shapiro has to say. He’s asking for a logical description of gun control. His point that relatively few murders are committed with AR type weapons is interesting and that if you’re going to ban weapons to be consistent you really should ban handguns. They are, after all used far more often in crimes of violence than assault weapons.

It’s an interesting point and In general I agree with him.

However I believe that banning handguns in this country is a lost cause. Therefore President Obama, Vice President Biden, and the congress are choosing a weapon to “Ban” as nothing more than simple theater.

It’s a way for the government to look like they care, and they’re doing something.

They may get assault weapons banned. Then what? 

Automatic pistols are sold in California with 10 round magazines

Depending on how good a shot you are that single magazine represents 10 people dead. I’ve posted previously that the people most likely to carry out the kind of insane crimes we’ve seen in recent history are planners. They think long and hard about what they’re going to do, how they’re going to do it, and they practice.

Remember Anders Breivik in Oslo? There’s evidence suggesting that he tested his bombs on a farm outside the city limits, prior to his rampage in 2011. 

Given the proposition that these people practice their murderous plans beforehand, nothing short of a complete ban on all weapons is going to stop the violence.

But then do you really think the violence will stop?

Even if by some feat of draconian socialist government control you manage to remove all firearms from this country. If someone wants to kill another person or multiple people… explosives, incendiary  devices, bows and arrows will do the same job just fine.

So are you going to outlaw gasoline? How about basic chemistry? Gunpowder is a really simple compound to make. I’ll grant you, it wouldn’t be high yield, but the Chinese were using gunpowder in explosives 1000 years ago. And the basic recipe can be found in a StarTrek episode.

Oh wait… One of the oldest human traditions is the good old fashioned club, There goes baseball bats and forget about Cricket bats. OH wait I guess we’ll need to cut down all the trees.

My point is this, a reasonably intelligent NUTJOB who wants to make a statement, or commit suicide by cop will find a way to express their violence or make their point.

The sad part is that a lot of these people are reasonably intelligent.

They may be crazy but they’re not stupid, unlike our politicians and TV pundits.

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Was it all a tempest in a teakettle?

 

I have no idea what’s going on.

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This morning I’ve run across several articles in the Register saying that new data analysis of global warming data may suggest that all the hubbub was in fact static.

One article in The Register suggests that global warming has been stalled since 1998.. New looks at the data, suggest that since 1950 the overall global temp has risen by only 1/2 a degree. 

Like all news media, I’m not sure that I trust The Registers reporting or their ability to even understand what they’re reporting well enough to be accurate.

However It’s intriguing to me that after all the wringing of hands and wailing… Things may not be as bad as we’ve been led to believe.

Normally I’d call this a “one off” but then the same publication reports has two other articles where they quote other sources suggesting a direct conflict with “accepted climate change facts”.

This article says that there’ve been no increases in droughts since 1950. But the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in a 2007 assessment says “More intense and longer droughts have been observed over wider areas since the 1970s.”

The article says that as our data modeling gets more refined the statistics regarding global drought were over estimated.

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The IPCC 2007 report has pretty much been debunked as over blown and being wildly alarmist. However this new information will likely put a wooden stake in the IPCC report once and for all.

Another article suggests that yes the Greenland ice sheets are in fact melting. At the current rate of melt they’ll be gone in about 13,000 years. The actual effect on sea levels from the Greenland ice melt will be about a 5 cm increase in ocean levels by 2130. This is far less of a “lets scream and run around in little circles.” than has been reported in the media.

Yet Another article details the investigation into why Antarctic ice sheets are growing… This growth is limiting confidence in climate predictions. Scientists from NASA and the British Antarctic Survey have teamed up to see if they can unravel the reason for the ice growth.

None of this information is reason to go burn down a forest, or open a strip mining operation in Alaska. 

The publication of theses articles and the new data shouldn’t  be cause for us to stop being responsible inhabitants of the planet. We should continue to reduce our toxic emissions. We should search for energy sources that don’t damage the environment. That’s just being smart and responsible.

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The common thread in each of the articles is that the data used to support the Global Warming arguments, AKA “Climate Change”  is plagued with signal noise.

Think of it like when the radios in our cars were AM only.

The further you’d get away from a town the more static you’d hear until finally you were only able to catch a word or two every few seconds.

The temperature and climate data is like that. You could perhaps make a sentence out of the one or two words you heard every couple of seconds. The accuracy of that sentence would be highly suspect.

Climate scientists are re-evaluating their data and applying better software techniques to filter out the “noise”. 

Couple these techniques with more sophisticated satellites and monitoring equipment and you get much higher accuracy. Then if you take the data feeds from the Mars satellites and instruments you’ve got the ability to make comparisons and refine our data about Earth.

This is part of normal scientific process.

Another part of this process is that you need to have scientists who are free to ask questions and express their opinions.

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Consider for a moment how the press, governments, other scientists, and people in general treated scientists who questioned the claims that run away global warming was upon us and that the entire planet was going to burn… Next year!

Many of those scientists had their lives and careers destroyed. Simply because they chose to look at the data objectively and critically, which by the way they were trained to do. 

None of those scientists said it wasn’t a problem, they said the data was inconclusive. And they were right. 

Something to think about before you shout down someone with a different opinion than your own.

Just Saying…

UPDATE

Since I saw the articles mentioned above yesterday, there have been several new articles that say OH NO… the Ice is really melting.

The most recent one is Here

Which of course kind of proves the point. The data is full of noise. 

Given that there is so much conflicting data, obviously further study is needed to understand what exactly is happening.

Again I re-iterate Just because the data is inconclusive and changing doesn’t mean that we have any right to be irresponsible in our utilization of the planetary resources.

We must change, we must learn to use less, recycle more, and in general be more efficient in our energy use. 

I’ve long advocated that in a computer age, with our communication technologies we shouldn’t all be driving to our places of business. If your business is digital in nature you don’t have to be in a cubicle in the heart of an office block 40 miles from your home. You can do your job from your computer in your home office just as easily.

That alone would reduce the amount of auto exhaust daily. But thinking more “outside the box” could take us so much further. We need to change our way of thinking about work, management, and efficiency.

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I’m so in Love….

My shiny new Macbook Air is the best machine I’ve ever had.

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6 – 7 hours of use on battery. 

It’s fast, light, and I’ll admit it… Cool.

I’ve been working on writing a book and this machine is awesome for those times when I want to kick it at a Starbuck or a bar in Palm Springs and just type away.

If you were thinking of dropping the hammer on a new machine. Take my advice go for a top of the line Macbook Air. 

Unless of course you’re a PC Person… then I think if I were you, I’d check out that slick new Samsung ultra book 

Yeah I standardized on Mac for my personal use a long time ago… But I’m NOT a fanboi.

I keep an eye on the PC machines and that Samsung is pretty dang hot… I was playing with one earlier today…

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Whichever you choose go for the full boat upgrades.

If you can afford it go solid-state on the drive. No moving parts means NO waiting for the hard drive to spin up or down before you’re good to go.

I went full boat on my Air and am glad I did. 8GB 512GB drive and the fastest processor they offer. 

What brings all this up is that I’m sitting in a Starbucks as I write this and while it will be posted to the blog tomorrow, I wanted to catch the enthusiasm for the new class of ultra book machines. (Yep I consider the Air in that category)

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

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Interesting…

My web hosting folks are experiencing a problem at their end. By the time this actually gets posted the problem may have been resolved…

It seems the server that my sites are physically located on is losing data. (Story of my life)

This means that while my blog is up, my email from, and the ability to control the site is down.

They’re working on getting things back to normal and have been working on it since last night.

You’d think I’d be annoyed about it, but I’m not really. I think that the failure choice is pretty cool. 

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If you have to choose, better that the web site stays up and the back-end services are down rather than someone going to your web site and getting told it doesn’t exist. 

Just got an email from them, they understand now what the problem is, they didn’t last night when I reported the issue. And they’re working to resolve it.

That’s the problem with complex plumbing… it takes remarkably little to stop up the works…

Hope everyone has a great day…

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You try to get out… but they keep pulling you back in

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I’ve been trying to simplify my life.

Not having a job has actually gone a long way toward that simplification. I don’t have to buy gas too often (as opposed to every other day).

What’s ironic is that without realizing it I’ve become a network administrator / computer troubleshooter / general fixit man in my own house.

I have Wifi, here at the house (Who doesn’t these days?) within my computers range are three other WiFi networks all with enough signal strength to be useful. 

For years now I’ve been happy to provide WiFi to my next door neighbor. This is more a matter of public service since Verizon won’t install a DSL line to their house.

Recently, I was trying to do a little troubleshooting on the network and had a bit of a panic moment. 

There were a lot more devices connected to my network than I thought there should be.

I was sitting here counting the obvious devices like the computers. But that didn’t come close to the numbers I was seeing.  I mean I could count 3 computers but I had over 25 devices on the network. So it was a WTF moment.

Then I started really looking at the network and realized many of the connections were innocuous things like my smart phone, the DVRs, my BluRay players, the TV, the iPod, iPad, the godbrats devices, iPod, iPhone, etc.

Most of these devices were pretty static once I accounted for them. But a few came and went and I had no idea what they were or who they belonged to.

Here’s a list;

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The thing is, not all the devices are even turned on in this sample. 

There are other devices that come & go. I’ve identified everything and the spooky thing is that they’re all legitimate and authorized devices on my network. 

This brings up interesting points.

I’m now in a position to need network scanning and maintenance tools.

If I didn’t have my network set up the way I do, which Verizon HATES by the way, I’d not be able to have all the “Normal” devices in my house connected to the internet.

Verizon has, or had a limit. I think the last time I tried to configure my network the way Verizon wanted it… I could have 15 total devices online at any one time. Which means that someone in this list would get booted off the network.

I can understand Verizon having a limit on the number of devices they will allow to be connected directly to their network. What I can’t understand is that Verizon WANTS all the devices connected.

My suspicion is that some bright asshole in marketing fro Verizon was thinking that they could charge the customer per device. Needless to say, that’s not going to work when TVs, BluRay players, gaming consoles, and appliances all are being built to connect to the internet. There’s not enough IP addresses for that unless Verizon goes IPV6.

It’s amazing to me how many devices I’ve connected to my network without really considering the implications. I really didn’t think about how many devices are “Network Aware”. It’s also interesting to think that if the internet is down many of my devices will work in a limited fashion or not at all.

More amazing to me is that I’m doing network administration in my own house.

Many small businesses don’t have as many devices networked as I do.

So I guess all of us will become network administrators….

I wonder if thats a new business niche? Should I bill myself as a Home Network administrator? I wonder if I could get paid what a pool guy gets? With the right remote administration software,  I could actually handle things like software updates, and work at keeping systems running at peak efficiency. Hummmmm….

I think a little investigation is in order.

And yep… there it is…

I’m pulled back into the computer / technology world… I suppose if I could do the computer stuff on my own terms, it wouldn’t be bad. 

I do enjoy making systems and machines work better.