Category Archives: Computers

Not in Canada – Cheap streaming options

Posted on by September 12, 2017  

Anyone visiting my blog, or following me on Twitter, or even just (gasp!) knowing me in person knows pretty fast that I like serialized story telling — movies with sequels, books in series, and of course, TV shows. Just under two years ago, I decided it was time to cut the cord (Cutting the cord – Conclusion). It was a huge decision for me. I was a slave to my corporate overlords for media consumption for home telephone, cell phone, internet, mobile data, TV, etc. And it was costing me a small fortune, even with bundling. I made a huge change. But every few months, I get an itch to have MORE choice that would stop me from having to make such all-or-nothing types of decisions.

And then today, I tripped over an article at How-To Geek entitled simply “The Cheapest Way to Stream TV: Rotate Your Subscriptions”. I don’t want to bury the proverbial lede too far so let me state clearly that the article basically asks why pay for multiple streaming options all year round when you could have one or two “base” subscriptions and just pick up a few of the others if/when there is something worth watching on that network. Like Game of Thrones, for example. [Source: The Cheapest Way to Stream TV: Rotate Your Subscriptions].

Is that why I was gobsmacked? No. It was because his matter of fact way of explaining the options he has to draw upon is simply not even remotely close to what we (don’t) have available in Canada.

For a basic streaming package, he uses Netflix and Hulu for a total of $22 a month. Let’s start with Netflix.

We do have Netflix Canada, so sounds good, right? Except we don’t have the same content as regular Netflix. They have first run TV shows added due to deals with networks. Very few of those shows make it to Netflix Canada until the next season. Current year? Not available in Canada.

Take Hulu or Hulu Plus. Another great basic streaming option. Lots of first-run series matching regular network broadcast schedules. Which is industry speak for saying when it airs on CBS or NBC or ABC or Fox, it shows up either same day or same week on Hulu. You don’t get EVERYTHING, but you get a heck of a lot. Great, sign me up for $12 a month! Oh, wait, not available in Canada. At least not legally. Lots of people are buying Hulu gift cards on eBay, and I’ve looked at it long enough to figure out it would cost me $20 to try it. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. Still pretty shady though, on the black side of the grey zone of legality (yes, it completely violates their terms of service, but that’s not “law”, that’s a company’s ToS, not far off from removing mattress tags). Don’t get me wrong, there are very STRONG advocates that will and have told me that’s the slippery slope to cable Armageddon, although they haven’t yet told me why that’s a bad thing. But I digress.

We do have four other options in Canada to get basic service.

One option is to go with Crave TV. It’s meant to be like Netflix or Hulu, except its “first-run” show complement is somewhere around new episodes of The Beachcombers (for non-Canadian readers, it’s a home-grown show that has been off the air for years). If Netflix was Tier 1, Crave TV would clock in around Tier 3 or 4.

We do have Amazon Prime now, isn’t that exciting? Well, not really, as we don’t get the cable options in it, just the Prime shows. Another “Netflix-lite” style of Amazon Prime. No one would pay for it separately i.e. if it wasn’t included with the free shipping account we did pay for earlier.

A third option, although kind of defeats the whole purpose, would be to get basic cable or a satellite dish. The regulatory board forced Bell and Rogers and others to offer a “skinny” package of a handful of basic channels for $25, which is better than paying 50 or 100 bucks a month, but they also ding you with their add on costs for equipment and any “extras” like sports. Or in one case, a remote to work the set top box.

The final option sounds close to the article’s options: VMedia and it’s wannabe clone Zazeen TV. Less than the cable providers, more flex, and all through streaming. Sounds great, right? Well except they can only do it if you are connected with encryption boxes to their networks. Think of it kind of like people running a bar and having a whole bunch of licensing problems about what they can and can’t offer — so they skirt the rules by creating a “club” instead that you pay a nightly membership fee to enter. Problem solved, they’re not a bar open to the public, they’re a private club. Well, VMedia and Zazeen have special boxes that let you connect to their streams so it isn’t “open streaming” and they’re not broadcasters, so they bypass a bunch of the rules. Except to have that club status, you have to use their internet. And both their internet and their TV options are flaky for service. A friend’s husband is a sports nerd, and he had VMedia. It was so flaky that on the night of a big game, he went to the local bar to watch rather than stay home because he didn’t want to risk missing it. After he paid for the package so he could watch it at home.

Yet when VMedia and Zazeen tried to ditch the encryption boxes and offer pure streaming (they don’t like them any more than the customers do), Bell and Rogers smacked them with legal proceedings and roomfuls of lawyers that they couldn’t afford to fight. So they folded their streaming-only tents and went back to the encryption boxes.

You can also do over the air (OTA) antennas, but not really the same technology. Still, an option in some cities.

Other options

After that, even though I can’t match his streaming options, and certainly nowhere near the price / options / reliability intersection point, things screech to a halt.

HBO Now? Nope, not in Canada.

Sling? Nope, not in Canada.

CBS All Access? Surely you jest.

But wait, you do have options. Like Microsoft / XBox or iTunes season subscriptions to shows, or Google purchases. No worries, just $15-20. Per season. Per show. Yikes. A viable option if you only want one show though.

So I love the article, even if I can’t do any of it.

Now if only the CRTC board would read the same article and say, “Hey, why can’t we do that in Canada?” rather than having so many people switch to Kodi, one of the few options to still get first-run shows after you cut the cable cord. Canadians are still willing to pay, it’s not that we suddenly embraced a pirate lifestyle like a virus, we just want a service that can give us what everyone already has for options in the U.S.


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The joys of network attached storage or not

Posted on by August 29, 2017  

So I had some fun awhile ago with my hard drives getting fried, and it looks like my Network Attached Storage went the same way. Not entirely sure, maybe it’s just a HomeGroup config problem with Andrea’s computer (the network doesn’t like me configuring homegroups, it only likes Andrea’s computer to do it). But I copied a bunch of stuff from Andrea’s computer over to the NAS before a computer tweak, and while the PC was in the shop, I tried to read the files on to my PC to process some photos. Nope, I could see them, but the NAS did not want to share.

Which means I can’t trust the NAS for the future.

Now, this presents a small but not insurmountable problem. I can simply get a new NAS. The question is if I want one or not. I have a 2TB and a 3TB regular HD that I use for backups. But I also like having a master that I can keep, just in case, on the NAS. It could be simply a third HD, but I prefer to think of it as a common resource. Plus I can copy any of my other PCs to it without tying up my computer, so kind of useful. But I’m not actually using the network functions on it.

Which means I’m at a small crossroads, with two needs:

  • a need for a third backup drive, preferably > 2TB; and,
  • a desire to stream music all over the house from a common source.

The third backup drive is REALLY simple, just over a $100, no muss, no fuss, done. The second element though is the one that creates a question, or at least some options to consider.

A. Keep the music on my main PC

While my main PC is usually on, I don’t know if I want it to be the source of streaming for any and every device. Mostly, I just don’t want it slowing things down if I’m working on something else. But, generally speaking, the person likely to be pulling things from the PC to elsewhere in the house is, well, me. I’m not able to be downstairs listening to music AND working on my machine upstairs, so maybe it’s not a real issue, but I don’t like the idea of having my PC being the main server.

B. Put the music on another PC

Jacob’s PC will not be stretched very far with his usage, and I could easily use it, but that’s a bit of a slippery slope to me, and in a few years if he’s gaming, that will change easily. Not a sustainable option.

C. Put everything in the cloud

I could, indeed, put the stuff in an internet-based cloud, but then everything I stream will be upload/download drains on my monthly usage. And really, it seems odd to stream stuff from the web when it is already on the network somewhere else.

D. Run my own server

Umm, how can I put this? No. 🙂

E. Copy the music to multiple locations

Most of the machines that I’m going to be streaming to have SD card slots, I could easily just make a bunch of copies and stream from the card. But if 3 backups is a pain to manage, 5 or 6 copies of the music library all over the house seems drastic overkill.

F. Repeat the network-attached storage

So I can go back to NAS options, but then I’m again facing a question mark:

  • Do I want a simple NAS that will allow me to stream about 250GB of data around the house?
  • Or do I want a more complex NAS that will hold all my current data, around 1 TB in total for active and some change for non-active?
  • Or do I want to go whole hog and get a full NAS with multiple drive bays for expandability, that will hold all my backups, can even create multiple copies of the backups with mirrored setups?

I’m leaning towards the simplest NAS storage I can do to put the music on it and leave the backups to straight drive copies. Not sure that’s the best solution, but it should work. The middle option is a good compromise but pushes me into the $200-$250 range pretty fast, and not really enough storage for the long-term. If I go the more complex route, I can easily push $300-400 for now, but with a huge amount of expandability for the future. But that seems like overkill.

Sigh. I know I’m obsessing over wanting to get it right, I just wish the “best” solution was obvious or that I was confident I was seeing the right variables.

 


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Computers, mental health and crashes

Posted on by August 3, 2017  

Computers are a major part of my life. I don’t mean this in the way that normal popular media overviews talk about technology infiltrating our lives, I mean computers themselves as a choice. I have been active with computers since grade 10 (1983/84)  and particularly so once I bought my first PC back in ’87. I use it for entertainment, I learn with it, I keep myself organized with it. It’s an active tool in my life. And recently, I realized that when it doesn’t work, it affects me more than it would most people because of that degree of integration.

I’ll start first with the integration. Looking back at my 2017 goals, I had eleven blue ones. The first three were reading goals, which at first glance might seem non-computer related, but it is actually doubly so. I not only read on a digital e-reader so I stop filling up my house with paper books, but I also then like to blog about them. Could I do the first with just paper? Yes, but that’s not the question. The question is if I use computers to do them the way I do, and yes I do. No computer, and my two reading goals are much harder (no ebooks to read, have to go to the library or bookstores, extra “friction” in the transaction to use the economic vernacular) and the posting of reviews is impossible. I also have goals around posting TV reviews, digital photography, and an online learning course. Call it six out of eleven that require the computer. For my goals around organizing and regular backups, that’s another two that are truly “digitally enabled”, if not “digitally required”. Leaving three — astronomy, finance organization, and my honey-do list — that are not tied to computers directly, although I do use a computer to help with all three. Call it seven overall that are computer dependent, and another four that are enabled.

For my green goals, one of the three is computer-dependent, one is enabled, and one is not. For the yellow goals, eight require the computer (four are writing, so could theoretically be done on a typewriter I suppose), and while the other two do not (cooking, baking), they are enabled with web-based recipes and blogging about it. For my five red goals, none of them are computer-dependent, but I do use a computer for keeping track of my progress (weak attribution).

In summary then, I have a total of 16 goals out of 29 that require a computer. No computer, and those goals are almost impossible to achieve. Could I do them a different way? Sure, for some, but likely not. It isn’t so much that they are technically “dependent” so much as that they are so entwined with computers that doing them any other way drastically alters the approach to one that I wouldn’t likely do. Of the remaining 13 goals that are not computer dependent, 8-10 are still definitely enabled.

What does that mean? It means when I have a computer problem, it’s major. It’s not “oops, my computer died, time to get on with my life”, it’s close to causing a mental health breakdown.

If you read that as “he’s too dependent on computers, blah blah blah”, you might as well stop reading now as you’re never going to understand what I’m talking about. I’m serious. That’s not what I said, and so if it’s what you got out of the first few paragraphs, that’s just your own bias and ignorance showing through. Go look at cat pictures, you’ll be happier.

Do I spend time doing other things? Of course, I do have a life outside computers. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about my goals. The “big” goals I’ve been setting for myself since the late ’90s, almost 20 years now. Each year, I spend a bit of time at the end of the calendar year reviewing my progress in the last year and setting my goals for the new year. It is a huge part of how I define myself, my self-identity. I don’t care if others set goals, it’s not a normative thing, but for me, not setting goals would be like asking me to stop being me. I don’t know who I am without my annual “check-in”, it keeps me, well, me.

In some ways it is the belief that an unexamined life isn’t worth living, taken to a bit of an extreme, and hardly original. In other ways it is about my stopping myself from drifting too far from my core beliefs, my sense of self, my values, my commitment to some form of self-actualization to keep improving.

For some people, that’s a physical goal like running a marathon. For others it might be a social goal, like performing stand-up or public speaking. Others might be about trips, parenting, a new job, a new skill, etc.

For me, most of my goals are cerebral, and as I said above, digitally enabled if not outright digitally entwined. If I don’t have my computer working, all of my goals STOP. A crashing, screeching, stomach-heaving stop.

I had never thought of it quite this way before, until my most recent crash. I have a pretty good setup for what I need / want to do, but I am regularly pushing my hardware to the limits in certain ways. And so when one drive crashed, I have backups and things in place to deal with that issue. Or at least I thought I did. More on that in a minute.

First let’s talk about the crash.

I have two hard drives in my system, both Western Digital, one black and one red (it’s a series of drives put out by WD), both with 1 TB sizes. C drive is my Windows operating system, M is my data drive. The nice part of these different series is that they are designed to run 24/7, something a lot of drives can’t do. And I have no patience for reboots, startups, etc., so my system is in some form of “on” pretty much continuously. 24/7, 7 days a week, close to 52 weeks a year. Sure, if I’m out of town, I’ll power down, but most of the time I don’t when it’s just through the week.

Awhile back I accepted the upgrade to Windows 10, and because I do a few things outside the norm, that’s presented a few problems. Things like the way in which it migrated Homegroups, or that I had an old parallel printer attached that I wanted to keep using. The printer is 20 years old, not surprising that it didn’t handle the upgrade well, but it’s a shame — that HP LaserJet 4L was a workhorse that did everything I needed it to do, just not super fast. I’ve had it repaired twice over the years, shame to have to jettison it. But Win10 doesn’t play nice with old hardware.

And two Tuesdays ago, my system ran the weekly update and installed the dreaded Creators Update. I am generally okay with Windows approach to upgrades, a cost of doing business, and I’m not one of the ones who gets too fussed about the fact that sometimes it totally fraks my Homegroup settings. I have two machines running Win 10 (mine and my wife’s), plus a laptop running Win8, and most of the time I can get them to work. Then a major update comes in, looks at the setup and goes batshit crazy resetting things to defaults. Whatever. Annoying, but it was a free upgrade, so there’s some pain that comes with it. (I’ll talk about alternatives later, but suffice it to say, there isn’t a viable one, so you dance with the one that brought ‘ya).

CU ran, my system seemed okay initially, and then Wednesday night was acting a bit sluggish. Thursday it was downright piggish, but I didn’t really have time to figure it out. I eventually did a complete reboot late Thursday night, and all hell broke loose.

My system should complete the initial boot in about 60 seconds, max of about 2 minutes to desktop loading. This time? 8 minutes to complete the boot, and it ran a full DSKCHK on my C or M drive for some reason. 22 minutes to fully load my desktop. WTF?

Okay, it finally booted, let’s run some diagnostics. Nope.

Umm, okay, let’s surf the internet and see if this is a CU-related problem. Nope.

Any program? Nope.

The system would not run anything. It acted like it wanted to, it really did, but it just wouldn’t. Weird.

Now, just for fun, this was a REALLY bad time for it to happen. I had volunteered (aka been guilt-recruited) into being the coordinator for the RASC star party for that weekend. I needed a few files that were on my system, plus, you know, a working system to send out the announcements, track replies, check weather maps, etc. I have a laptop to cover off most of that, but I still needed some files off the drive that I had received that week, and not a lot of time to play without them.

I was too tired to figure it out Thursday night, so I went to bed and figured I’d work it out Friday morning. With the upgrade to Windows 10, they finally put in place one of the biggest software developments of the last twenty years. If your phone gets messed up, you can press a series of keys and reset it back to the default bios and settings, essentially wiping everything. Same for your tablet. Just about every phone or tablet now have a “reset” option built into the system…while some people think this was a feature given to users, it’s really a boon for tech support. If you screw things up so bad that they can’t undo it easily, they just reset it. Windows didn’t have that functionality. If Windows (or DOS before it) got screwed up, they basically had to wipe the disk and reinstall from external media. With the phones and tablets, this “reset” is built in, no external media required, and Windows 10 has the same capability. You actually have three options:

  1. Wipe the disk entirely and reinstall from an external source (the old way — you lose everything);
  2. Wipe the installation and data, and reinstall from the built-in version (like a tablet or phone, again losing everything); or,
  3. Wipe just the installation, keep the data, and reinstall from the built-in version.

I have already done option 3 once in the past, and it works like a charm. It still has to install some updates, but that’s fine. It took about an hour last time, so I started first thing Friday morning, around 6:30 a.m. I figured I’d be done before I left for work.

Except it was giving me no end of trouble just to start the process. It was like I wasn’t “fully booted”. Eventually I tricked it into running, it started, and I thought it was good to go. I started getting ready for work, came back 10 minutes later, and now it had advanced to a second menu. It hadn’t been doing it, it was just taking that long to bring up the second option. Wow.

Okay, chose that, and waited. About another 7 or 8 minutes. Chose another option on that menu. Finally, it was good to go.

About two hours after starting, it was still only about 20% installed. I had a light schedule at work, I really wanted this fixed and running again, so I checked with my boss and she said no problem for staying home. Okay, my deck was cleared, even if it made a friend laugh that I was the only person he knew who would take a day off work to install a new operating system. More on that later, but it’s a harbinger of truth.

Finally, just after ten, it said, “Done!”, and I thought, “Finally!”. Except it wasn’t.

It was done the PREPARATION process, not the installation. Now it could start the install. WTF????

Okay, late afternoon, and the system is finally finished the re-install. Whew.

I reboot. It is EXACTLY the same as before the install. 8 minutes to finish initial boot, 22 for full desktop. And again, nothing wants to run.

Time for Level II intervention

At this point, I’ve exhausted my level I knowledge on how to fix it, and I’ve been actively searching online with my laptop and tablets to try and diagnose the problem. I’ve also started doing contingency planning for the star party, and managed to cobble together what I needed. Not everything I wanted or had planned, but enough to handle the announcement. That crisis was averted, although not without some brain cell casualities.

But the level II intervention is starting to look problematic. It isn’t a problem with my Windows, it isn’t the O/S upgrade, it is my hard drive. Likely just my C drive for operations, but I’m suspicious of my M drive. It doesn’t seem to be responding, and I can’t figure out why…my windows problem and the data drive problem shouldn’t be related. Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm.

Because while I’ve been going through all this, I realized a horrible truth. My backups are only partially intact. 1TB of data and I’m not as safe as I thought I was:

  • My “Documents” folder, which has some 17GB of data going back to 1993, is complete. I might be missing a small file or two, but nothing of consequence;
  • My “Music” folder is 176GB of files, and I initially think it is completely safe…except it isn’t, not exactly. I haven’t lost any files, that part is clear, everything is where it should be, or if it isn’t, it’s in iTunes and Google, and I can redownload it. Except then I have a small seizure and realize that I spent a good part of my spring completely re-organizing all my files. Stuff that was all over the place between iTunes and general Music folders had been completely resorted, and I cut the cord from Apple Music’s shady file management practices (Averting disaster with my music files). But is my backup before or after all that work? I can’t be sure, because I can’t SEE MY FILES! A potentially really annoying blow, but well, if I had to redo it, so be it…a first large blow from the original crash issue, but not crazy time yet;
  • My “Pictures” folder has three main sub-areas — “Current” pictures which has 9GB of data in it, and is mostly this year. I was worried that I had lost some stuff that had been uploaded to my drive from my phone and tablet, not yet sorted or processed, and not fully backed up yet from the previous time. It’s a gap, but well, that happens. A second blow, and a bit more painful — with actual loss of some stuff for Jacob including his birthday party and end of year at school. A few other things, but nothing life-shattering.  For pictures that are “Done”, there’s another 355GB of data in there of photos and videos. Almost entirely backed up in more than one place, all good. Except then I realized that I just spent a lot of time reorganizing my astronomy photos. Which are now in the wrong directory, unsorted. Nothing huge lost, but a small loss, if I can’t access. Non-Current is another 165GB of files, but those are fully backed up. Haven’t changed in the last three backups, I’m good to go there.
  • Applications is the e-downloads of all the programs I have installed, since most have moved away from “CD” installations, and that is not an insignificant set of files — 16.5 GB of files. But again, all backed up. I had them better sorted in another version that I don’t think made it into the backup yet, but again, mostly white noise.
  • Clipart is another directory of little concern — I have two or three clipart collections gleaned over the years when they were on sale or I needed a specific set of sub-files for something, but they’re fully backed up for the 10GB of data they represent.

So at this point, I’m feeling a bit antsy about my current install, but not terrified. I have almost everything, or at least so I think, and if I’m missing a few things, it will teach me to be more hyper vigilant with my backups. I don’t know that I’ve got two more blows coming.

Calling in the big techies

Saturday morning had me at the computer shop where I bought my PC, and I think that mostly what I have is a blown HD for Windows and I just need to fix that, but in the meantime, I’ll remove my data drive and be good to go. The tech pulls the first drive, and it doesn’t show up on their test machine. It just won’t read it. It doesn’t give an error, it just never completes. Weird, but no problem, that must be the Windows drive that is kaput.

Try the other drive, nope, THAT one is the Windows drive. The one that isn’t reading is my data drive. Somehow, they’re both fried. It’s not a malware issue, not a simple tech issue, the two drives are NOT working. And my simple plan to yank out the HD is dead in the water.

I decide to focus on the hardware, get myself going with an external drive bay with the data drive so I can work on it separately, close up the old box in anticipation of future repairs, and head on out. Over to another computer shop that sells last-generation tech. I can’t afford the premium machine that I now want and need, at least not new, but a fully refurbished PC with two HDs, decent graphics card (suitable for gaming if I need it, but I only need the video processor for photograph processing), and an i7 configuration that I’ve wanted for about four years and couldn’t justify. All boxed up by mid-afternoon, working by suppertime, and then I have to break to go to the star party.

A blow out of nowhere

I get back later that night, and of course, most of the time I’ve been out, my mind has been on the data drive. What’s missing? What’s missing? What’s missing? How bad am I screwed from the backups? I think it is just some photos, and even then, not all of them. I might have some other options. But I want to try the drive again.

I’m working on it late at night, and I suddenly realize that there is something missing. My book. My HR guide. While you might think I should have realized that first, I didn’t. Because most of it is online already, and versions exist in the cloud for other types of backup. But over the last week, I’ve spent a lot of time learning to format with a template that a super online friend gave me, and I’ve integrated my cover. I can recreate all of it, that’s not an issue. It’s that all the editing, rewriting, tweaking, and layout options that I’ve been doing for a week are gone.

I’m not expecting the blow that comes with it. So much of my personal identity is tied to my HR guide, I feel the loss like a punch to the gut. Yes, I can fix it. Yes, I can redo it. But it’s a second blow after the potentially lost music setup, and twice the size. Plus I feel really stupid.

Separate from the lost work, how can I not have backed it up immediately? How can I not have realized immediately? Rule #1 of any writer is to back up your work in progress (WiP). What kind of worthless piece of sh** doesn’t make a copy of their WiP?

Kind of going back to the early paragraphs above, I know that I’m digitally entwined for my goals. I know how to do proper backups. And here I am taking hits that are totally preventable. Stupid ones. Ones that cut to the core of my self-esteem.

I also know that it’s late at night, I’m exhausted from dealing with it for two days without a solution, and when that happens, I go into mental self-mutilation mode. I am never harsher than when I’m judging myself, and this is a perfect storm that has been brewing for two days.

I try to lock it down and keep working, when I should have stepped back, blew it off and relaxed. And then another blow hits.

I am checking backups, preparing for my reinstall to the new machine, and I realize the data on my Ebooks looks ominous. It’s fairly recent, should be fine, and up until now, I’ve not been worried about it. My ebook collection is rather static. A few files here or there might be missing, but nothing I can’t redownload from Amazon or the library. No issues, I thought.

But as I move from the music files potentially missing all the reorg work, I touch on the ebook directory and see a whole series of folders that SHOULD NOT BE THERE. I re-organized them all. And then deleted the old ones. There should be seven directories, and I’m seeing at least 30. Doesn’t sound like much, as I know the files are fine, but I’m staring at potentially hundreds of lost hours of reorganization. Gone. I didn’t do a new backup because, well, the files weren’t new. I had no new content, I just sorted them differently. I would have caught the backup in the next full mode, but I was another two weeks from that. And the differentials wouldn’t catch that type of change unless I triggered it manually. Which I hadn’t.

I crashed. Mentally. Physically. I felt like a complete and utter waste of skin. Lost photos of my son. Lost work on my music and ebook collections, potentially well over a hundred hours of work. And my work in progress, gone.

If I am supposedly a planner, I’m the stupidest one on the planet. I went to bed and glared at the ceiling for two hours. I was so frustrated, so empty, I wanted to scream. I slept, finally, but not well.

Starting the rebuild

I couldn’t change what “might” be the problem, I just had to triage the situation and assess the battle damage. I separated my mental energy into two halves — the first half started working on re-building from what I have backed up on two external hard drives plus my network-attached storage (yes, I have the tools, I just didn’t use them properly, f***ing idiot that I am).

So it might sound simple to just copy those back over, and each of them are indeed full copies — I don’t do proprietary format / encrypted / compressed backups. I do full copies of the files, fully browsable and active. Missing a file? Just copy it back. No muss, no fuss. Back when storage was expensive, those other formats were fine, but you also run the risk that a couple of corrupted bytes or so can ruin your whole backup. It’s slower, but copies are the only way to fly. But with the reorgs, different dates for backups, etc., it took a bit to figure out which versions to use.

The Documents folder was fine, as was Clipart. Applications is a bit disorganized, something I forgot I had already fixed one afternoon, but won’t kill me. My Pictures folder is a hit/miss proposition, mostly as I’ve lost a lot of organizing work on my astrophotos, but I have what I need in the cloud if I want to redownload at some point from SmugMug. And worst case scenario, I can redo the astro sort. I get a really pleasant surprise on my Music folders — the reorg has been backed up in April to the network. I thought I did some of the reorg in May, but apparently I was done before I triggered a backup on April 24th. Whew. And a partial surprise on ebooks. I ran a backup in May, and once I see the date, I vaguely remembering triggering it because I was about to try something big and wanted a quick restore option. And I stored it in a weird place as it was “temporary”. But it has almost all of my reorg work there. So I’m feeling like I can handle what’s been loss. My book can be redone, I can finish the ebooks, I can use the missing photos as a reminder to be more vigilant in my backups.

I still feel like an idiot though, because that recovery isn’t solving my problem. My drive shouldn’t be doing what it’s doing, and I should be able to fix it. Which is where the other half of my mental energy is focusing its time.

You see, the data drive doesn’t “crash”, it is just REALLY REALLY REALLY slow. Like tortoise slow. I download some trial software to start my deep level scans, and it starts to find stuff. Windows itself times out, but the deep level scan doesn’t. It can “see” the structure and even lets me recover some files. One of the first things I try for is my work in progress. My HR guide. I was up to version 3, and while I can’t quite get that, I get a decent copy of version 2. Or at least, a “version” of version 2, if not the final version before I switched to v3. One of the many saves I did. Not great, but hey, it’s not nothing either. And is promising. I buy the full version, and I’m disappointed with the final result. Once you get through the deep scan, which takes about 15 hours, the program lets you “save” the info so you can then just reload it later without doing a rescan. Except it won’t reload the saved scan. And once it finishes the scan, it won’t actually recover the files…they all come up, but with zero size. Even the ones it ALREADY found. I’m ticked, and disappointed, but honestly, it did find some worthwhile files, so I can’t fault it completely.

I do some more online searching, and I like the looks of a second program. I download it, pay the freight, and start it running. Very similar interface and operations, and 12 hours later, it shows me what looks like a full hard drive directory. What the heck…I tell it to recover everything to my external drive, and press “GO”. It doesn’t get everything, but it sure tried. 21 hours later, and I’ve gotten everything I am going to get.

Including the “lost” photos and videos of my son’s birthday party and final celebration at school. And golfing. And a bunch of other little things that I’m glad I got back.

And my final ebook “structure”, albeit with a few missing files that I had to manually find.

And.

Wait for it.

My work in progress.

My HR guide, version 3, in its entirety. Which I promptly email to myself, upload to two different cloud accounts and copy to a flash drive.

How much did I get back? I’m not really sure. Some files are going to be “bad” when I go to access them. Perhaps a video file that didn’t quite get fully recovered, or a photo that doesn’t want to load. But if it all works, close to 99% is back. And backed up twice at the moment.

What I learned about myself

It seems obvious now, but it was an unintended and unexpected truth bomb to see it in action. I knew that my goals were tightly entwined with a lot of technology, even if the rest of my life isn’t. Again, it’s not about computers being my life, it’s about the fact that I use them as a prerequisite tool when I’m doing my goals. And I know that my approach to self-improvement, as represented by my goal-setting, is a fundamental part of my self-identity, of how I see myself.

I just never realized how A’s link to B and B’s link to C in this instance means that maintaining my self-identity almost requires a functioning computer setup.

Sure, my wife and son will still love me tomorrow if my system crashes. Yes, I’ll still have a house, get up, go to work, all those things. But without the computer enabling me to keep working on my goals, I feel stagnant. And when I feel stagnant, that is not a good thing for my mental health. Ever. I know that.

When I crashed on the Saturday night after the 3-4 “blows” to my ego, I was pretty damn low. I spiraled like a chipmunk chasing a chestnut in a swirling toilet. I have a pretty healthy ego, and self-confidence, partly born out of my past successes in setting goals and achieving them. Or just a narcissistic personality. And although I’ve been a bit more vulnerable this year with a painful job search (50by50: Start a new job (#03)), I am pretty good at spotting triggers that can cause me to spiral.

A computer crash wasn’t on my spiral caution list. But apparently it should be.

And it means I need to be doubly pro-active in making sure my computer is working in a way that a technical crash doesn’t knock me out. But that’s already taken care of…

Interestingly, a friend noted that I’ve had lots of big computer problems over the years. Which isn’t quite accurate, or perhaps is a bit overly simplistic, but I realized with the comment, part of it is that when it does happen, it affects me more than most. Because my reaction isn’t about the specific problem, it’s about the link it has to my approach to my goals and how it affects those. Making me perhaps more hypersensitive to those problems when they happen.

But it’s not just about my goals

Part of the problem is what I’m trying to do on any given day. Two people on my FB list made the frequent facile comments made by all Apple users (insert smug nasal voice here to say), i.e. “You should get a MAC, there’s never a problem with a MAC”. Both people who made the comment know me pretty well, and likely know that there is zero chance of my ever using a MAC.

Most people know that Apple has less than ten percent of the computer market, and that’s not because 90% of the people just didn’t know Apple was out there. There are a lot of reasons why people don’t buy Apple, and only a handful why they do. The biggest reason most people don’t buy them is price. Three times the cost of a PC, for about comparable power/specifications. Another “separate” issue is really just the same issue by a different name — Apple doesn’t sell “entry-level” computers … you get the big guns at a high price, or nothing. The other reason so many don’t buy Apple is that the software they want isn’t available for a MAC. Literally hundreds of thousands of programs are only available in PC versions. Other people avoid it because MACs aren’t good for gaming. Reasons in favour include stability — the system never crashes. My Vic-20 never crashed either, doesn’t mean I want to use it. People also like to tout that there are no viruses, but actually that’s not true. It’s simply with less than ten percent of the market, there’s no reason for people to target them. But there are viruses that work just as well on MACs as on PCs. However, the real added value of the MAC is really about graphics, CAD, and video processing. It does all three excellently. And if you’re in advertising or communications, it’s a great tool. If not, most people buy medium-power PCs at 2/3 the price and can work with anyone.

But those are the “general” reasons people don’t buy MACs, they’re not really the reasons I will never have one. I wouldn’t even take one for free. I simply don’t like Apple’s approach to systems design.

They are very much a one-size-fits-all model. You cannot customize a MAC, Apple doesn’t want you to do so. Because then it might not work and you’ll want tech support. Which is expensive to provide. They also have maintained tight control on both the hardware and the O/S to force that “any colour you want as long as it’s black” approach. It’s also one of the reasons why the system is so stable. It is so locked down, you can’t possibly tweak anything that will cause instability.

That design is pretty good, more or less, when it comes to tablets. I bought Jacob an iPad, and recommend iPads for less-technology-friendly family members. An iPad will just work, straight out of the box. It won’t let you do anything to force it outside of its comfort zone, it won’t get up and dance for you in the way you want it, but if you press the buttons in the order Apple tells you to do, it will do some pretty great things. You’ll pay for that privilege and security, but it’s a solid product. Similarly for iPhones. I even had one as I wanted a bit more bling at the time, but it didn’t take me long before I was frustrated with default settings and had to jailbreak it.

But when it comes to my PC? No way in hell am I letting someone dictate how I do something or whether I can even tweak it. I’m not a hard-core techie, but I do have some special demands. For example, on a busy day, it’s not uncommon for me to be:

  1. Trying out new-to-the-market organizer programs while synching with my tablet, phone, and online websites;
  2. Editing a video down in size, or changing formats, and using three different programs to match my workflow;
  3. Sorting through hundreds of photos, customizing a few on the fly;
  4. Stacking some astronomy photos in the latest astro program, only available on PC;
  5. Ripping music from my CDs into my system;
  6. Running multiple browser windows simultaneously;
  7. Streaming shows;
  8. Managing multiple cloud accounts for storage, along with backup solutions on the ground;
  9. Managing my ebook library and transferring files to and from my Kindle, Jacob’s Kindle and Andrea’s Kobo; and,
  10. Using Office 365 for Excel, Powerpoint and Word documents.

Of those 10 main functions, I can use a MAC for part of b; c; e; f; g; h; and j. What I can’t do is customize the workflows I would use for each to the way I work — you have to use the MAC’s approach, because it can’t be tweaked. And I can’t do a, d, or i at all, because MAC doesn’t have the software for those, or when they do, it’s several iterations behind the PC version. With the exception of the videos and the photos, almost NOBODY uses a MAC to do those things because the software and the power just isn’t there.

And more importantly? I am often doing 3-5 of those things SIMULTANEOUSLY.

I don’t even like the way iTunes manages music (see above link about avoiding disaster), and it is endemic of the way Apple treats customers. Like stupid sheep that have to be herded in the same direction. You can be creative, but only with your output…not with the design of your system.

I’ll buy iPads for Jacob, and iPhones for Andrea, partly because I know I won’t have to provide any tech support that way. They won’t have the full power that I have available to me to do all the things I want to do, but they also can’t get into too much trouble if the system is locked down as much as Apple likes to do it. I would use Linux before I would go to Apple. About the only exception I would have to that rule is the full MacBook Airs. They are super light and lightyears beyond the sleekness of other manufacturers. If I was in the market for a high-end word processor and web surfing tool for travel or just out and about around town, the price is terrible but the product is perfect for it.

What I really find funny though is when people actually think a MAC would be a viable option for me. It would be like talking to someone with a motorcycle problem with their custom-built Harley, and suggesting to them they wouldn’t have the problems they have if they would just drive a nice reliable but really expensive Vespa scooter. Umm, sure. I’ll get right on that.

Moving forward

As I said, computer functionality and my frustration with it when it drops quality is now on my trigger caution list. I hadn’t viewed it in the same way as other triggers before, but because it was a downstream issue, I didn’t see the link.

I’m testing various new backup tools, and am closing in on a solution. I’ve repurposed my 2TB external drive into a relatively stable / not-much-changes drive, and made my 3TB drive my primary backup. Everything is backed up there twice — one collection of “old” backups, and one copy of the recovered drive. Just in case in future a file turns out to be corrupted and I can’t access it, those two old backups are now permanent copies. I’ll copy them to NAS storage too.

I haven’t figured out quite what to do with some OneDrive and DropBox space that I have. I don’t want it synching in the same way and making another copy, but I do want to “send” them some files for safekeeping.

And I probably won’t talk much about computer problems in the future. Because people think I’m really talking about something “simple” like a glitchy hard drive, when it is more closer to a full on mental meltdown that just happens to be digitally triggered.


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Version 4.0 of my website

Posted on by July 2, 2017  

In my last post about the server side of my website (Version 3.3 of my websites: the technical side of things and Version 3.3 of my websites: the software side), I talked about a problem I was having with GreenGeeks that they couldn’t solve. It was a lot more complicated than just one problem, or even their laissez-faire approach to changing settings on my site without telling me, it was more of a governance issue and I finally had to bail on them. I’m still using them for one site that has low traffic, just until the prepaid balance is used up, and then I’ll migrate it over to my new host.

Because I did indeed find a new host, as I said…I moved to WebHostingCanada. And things were going along pretty well with them.

I had an error at one point, one that I haven’t resolved yet, where my WP-CRON (the file that regularly runs a set command at a set time) doesn’t want to post “scheduled” posts. So, for example, if I write a post, and I want it to go live at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, you use the schedule feature in WordPress and at 8:00 a.m., or shortly thereafter when WP-CRON runs, it notices a pending post, and switches it to live. Or it is supposed to. For some reason, while some of the Cron features work for other things, it won’t “schedules” my posts to go live and actually make them live at that time (it schedules them, it just doesn’t do it). Like an alarm clock that just doesn’t go off when it should.

Not a giant issue, I rarely schedule posts that way, and when I do, it’s often part of a larger strategy that requires manual intervention anyway.

Then I upgraded to a new version of WordPress. Then another. All good.

Then I went up to a version where suddenly I couldn’t save my updates. It was like the auto-save would start as I was typing, and never complete. So when I went to later save, it wasn’t able to “activate” when I pressed “update”. Other people were having this too, with nobody seeming to have a solution.

Now, the normal way to resolve this is to go to your plugins and deactivate everything. Check again — if it works, then you have a plugin conflict; if it doesn’t, it likely means it is something else (* remember this asterisk). You then move along to themes, switch to a basic theme, see if the conflict goes away. Etc. It helps you narrow down to what is wrong. If you disable your theme and your plugins and your connections to just about everything, it might be a server problem, something wrong with your config.

Which is where I was looking for solutions. Because disabling my plugins and theme didn’t resolve the problem. But my server settings all looked fine.

Except for one small glitch. My server load was high. Now I had this before with Greengeeks when running Piwigo and WordPress, and they thought it was some sort of outside attack. Webhosting said “nope, not that”, this looked more like a config problem to them. So I got a phone call from them noting it was really high and asking if they could log in and check a few things. They weren’t spammers, they didn’t need my credentials, they just wanted permission before they started poking around.

I was like, “hell, yeah”. Greengeeks went in, poked around and changed things, without asking or even telling me. Here Webhosting Canada was, phoning me in person to ask if they could look around my setup and see if there was anything going on. I walked the guy through the background, stuff I’d tried in the past, and off he went. I wished him luck, as this could have been a rabbit hole.

He found the problem in less than 3 minutes. As soon as he saw one of the security files set up by Better WP Security, it was clear what the problem was. The file was HUGE, and it was calling itself. So every time I logged in or even loaded a page, it would go into an almost perpetual loop of constantly checking and then rechecking and then rechecking itself again. He tweaked the file, disabled the plugin, and the load dropped to normal. It was just that one plugin.

Now, back to that asterisk. Disabling the plugin hadn’t helped. Because disabling it didn’t undo the security file changes. The plugin wasn’t active, but the huge file was still being triggered. Undoing those changes and making the changes relatively straightforwardly with another security plugin to do the same thing worked PERFECT.

And my editing / saving problem went away too.

Their totally different attitude to solving the problem made all the difference for me. And while diagnosing WP problems is not their job, that’s a config problem, they did it at no charge.

I feel somewhat unfair now about the previous hosts. They had the same issue but no idea how to solve it, and all evidence was pointing to a server problem, not a software config problem. But the guy found it in under 3 minutes once he stepped outside the normal “not my problem” box that most tech supports have. Back when I was working tech supports, it was the same “not my problem” attitude of others that drove me batty. And my alternate “let’s see if I can help with anything else while I’m here” attitude is what made me popular with my clients.

Thumbs up to WebHosting Canada. The site’s working great. WP-CRON is still acting up, but I can live with that for now. And it gave me the confidence to merge the two sites into one (50by50: Who am I when I’m online? (#01)). I also reconfigured the categories and groupings into Government (Civil Service, Development, Government), Hobbies (Astronomy, Computers, Humour, Ideas, Learning, Photography, Quotes, and Recipes), HR (HR Guide and PS Transitions FP), Personal (Experiences, Family, Goals, 50by50, Spiritualism), Reviews (Book Reviews, Music Reviews, TV reviews), Writing (Libraries, Publishing, Art of Writing) and Links.

I’ve also decided to be a little less demanding re: the “one category per post” rule that I’ve been doing, it’s hard to find things sometimes where I’m talking about a goal that pertains to one of the headings, for example — is it a post about goals or a post about the hobby?

I’m liking the new design, and trying to be a bit more flexible.


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50by50: Who am I when I’m online? (#01)

Posted on by July 5, 2017  

I mentioned in an earlier post that not all of my 50by50 commitments were going to be “bucket list type” things. Some of them, in some ways, are really just getting myself squared away. Deciding who I am, I suppose.

And I’ve been struggling with one aspect of my identity for quite some time. Who am I when I’m online?

Way back when I started engaging on the internet, I shared jokes and humour. I ran a trivia contest by email for a very long time. I wrote movie reviews and shared those. But I always wanted to get to the point where I was sharing my own writing online. I struggled though between writing stuff that was essentially “for me”, or more accurately, “about me”, and stuff that was more business-oriented or professional. Like writing about my own jobs vs. writing about HR processes.

I waffled on how it looked online. Awhile ago, I switched to having two sites — one personal, one for writing. Yet are those really different? Are there two sides to me? I wasn’t even sure I got the split right. I made the writing one the “PolyWogg.ca” web domain, as I liked the idea of being PolyWogg for my writing. Yet that left ThePolyBlog as my personal area. Then I would go to write something about goals, and I couldn’t decide — was it “polywogg” as it was about a serious approach to goal-setting, something I am fairly knowledgeable about, or was it “thepolyblog” as it included my own goals?

I’m heavily influenced of course in that division by lots of writers out there who have a “professional” site for all their books and things, and perhaps a “personal” site where they share recipes and stories about their families. Or knitting patterns. Links to Instagram, etc. I kept telling myself if I was going to ever get to that professional writing stage, I should plan now to have the two sites, keep them separate, never the twain shall meet.

Which I have realized is ridiculous. One of the reasons writers often do that is so that publishers and editors and agents (oh my!) can see their “work” all together, not cluttered with personal stuff. But I don’t care about publishers or editors, and don’t get me started on my feelings about most agents (think lawyers and used car salesmen, and drop a level or two). So why am I separating things?

There is me. Only me. PolyWogg, with a blog that I call the PolyBlog. But it is all me. And it is far less work to have one site than two, even just on overhead management.

So I decided to merge the two websites and put everything under PolyWogg.ca. I could have just as easily called this “Fixing my website”, but that is just the activity. I’ve embraced the totality of who I am electronically, and jettisoned some other elements in the process too.

I have struggled a lot with my social media presence. The short version is that I don’t “get it” for certain types of interactions, how to scale up so to speak. I have tried more postings, less posting, more content, less content, different days, different times of the day, different types of content. On Facebook, where I have limited myself to about 100 friends and am not looking to expand that number drastically as it is primarily for friends, I have extremely limited engagement on my posts.

Take my memes for example. I loved the idea of trying to create my own little brand of meme, following in the footsteps of some giants on the ‘net who have created little shareable cards with their logo and some text. I did quotes, I did jokes, I did lunchnotes for kids. The vast majority by far received ZERO response. Most of them not even a single like outside of my wife, and those are often pity likes. 🙂

I stopped them when I was getting no response. I switched my focus a bit to sharing my TV reviews and photos. I watch a lot of serialized TV, review episodes, and post the reviews to Twitter. Since I was actually clicking to NOT share them on FB, I started letting them go through too. I figured a handful of people would start liking the shows they watched. Nope, one or two, occasionally, but not very often. Even though my occasional posts about cancellations, etc., attract some comments, I get nothing on my TV episodes. So I have gone back to Twitter only for those. I’ve even tweaked my setup a bit on those for what makes sense for me, even if it reduces my hashtag pickup occasionally.

I’m almost finding FB to be a negative influence on my life. I’m not talking about people who are obsessed with it, constantly refreshing etc., I mean that while it is a good tool to reduce feelings of isolation, those feelings do not diminish if you’re posting into the wind and there is no echo coming back. I actually have felt more isolated at times with some of my posts, particularly where I have shared something I felt really strongly about, and received nothing but silence. I feel like sometimes I’m craving the likes too much, too much desire for acceptance or positive feedback.

So a week ago, I withdrew from FB. I didn’t delete my account or anything, I just stopped posting. I have logged in each day once just to scan for news announcements from friends, liked a few things, a couple of small comments for the week, but nothing substantial. I read things where I was tagged, that’s about it.

It’s just not my focus, since I get almost nothing out of it. I feel almost the same way about my blog at times. I wrote 50,000 words about previous jobs, and even though I know a bunch of people read the various posts (I have stats on the site), I received 3 comments in total across 17 posts.

I thought about killing my blog entirely and just saying “screw it”. Moving on to something where I get more pay-off for my time investment. Except here’s the thing.

I like writing the posts. Even if people don’t “like” the posts. Even if people don’t comment. Even if people don’t share. There’s a Pearls Before Swine comic strip about writing on the bathroom wall generating more eyeballs viewing it, and it’s true. But I’m going to keep writing. And I guess it comes down to a simple reality.

I’m writing for me. It is a creative outlet for me to say “this is how I see the world”. And when I get to the fiction stage, or bundling up my non-fiction for something into an actual book form, I’m keeping it all on this site.

Because this is who I am. I finally feel like I’ve found my persona for online, one that has been there all along.

I’m PolyWogg.


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Averting disaster with my music files

Posted on by July 2, 2017  

One of my goals for this year was to improve some of my digital setup. Some of that is for photography, some of it is for astronomy, a few other things here and there, but the three big “techno” areas for me this year are my laptop/writing setup, my TV subscriptions / antenna options, and my audio files. Namely, my music collection in digital form.

I’ve been delaying a deep dive into the world of MP3 management for some time, partly as I’ve been burned before. Several times, I thought that I had found a solution, everything seemed to be working, I was making some progress, and then BAM! The app stopped being supported. Or I had a crash and lost a bunch of work. Not the actual music files themselves, I’m pretty good at backing them up, but having a good file structure with a good management program and a player? Not so much.

I used to love programs like WinAmp. Simple interface, could handle the synch with my iPod well, heck it even would synch with a Sony Walkman (yes, they used the name for a small line of MP3 players at one point too, and because it is small, lightweight and functional, I still use it as my music player of choice when portability is the main factor). I almost never use my phone or tablet for music playback as it is just a license to suck battery life. I’ve struggled with ripping from time to time, finding a good setup, good parameters that didn’t produce overly large file sizes that I wouldn’t notice the benefit of cuz I have basic system for playback and no real discerning ability with my ears. I have an old boss that has more money tied up in high-end audio WIRING then I have in my entire stereo collection.

But I was determined to do it right. Now, just to be clear, I wasn’t looking for a perfect solution, nor even a solution to a “problem” per se, I was just wanting to update my approach, maybe find some baby steps that I could take. Wow, was I in for a surprise.

50,000 reasons to hate iTunes

While I was starting to figure out how I wanted to sort my library with as few “layers” as possible, I updated iTunes just to keep it up to date. It is after all a good store. I had pushed everything over there in my last go around about 18 months ago, and I had decided pretty much at the time to go all in on iTunes, right up until I noticed a couple of files seemed to “change” quality and size after I synched with iTunes. It seemed odd, so I started looking at it more closely. In addition, in one case, iTunes even changed the filenames of two files — assigning the song name for Track 7 to Track 8, and visa versa. Weirdness in naming and how did some of the files shrink? WTF?

I then starting looking around online and found out that iTunes has a unique little feature. By default, when you synch, if it finds the file in its library, it doesn’t “upload” and save your copy. No, it just uses its copy (to save bandwidth and file size). No biggie, right? Except it then goes a step further in the synch and REPLACES your copy with the file from its database since it knows it is safe and sanitized. Which isn’t a huge deal if the files were the same…except they weren’t. I had ripped at a higher quality than the iTunes version, so my files were originally larger, and now they were “downgraded” to a lower quality and smaller size. Would I notice? Probably not when actually listening, I don’t have an audiophile’s ear nor the equipment. You can turn the setting off with a little tweaking, if you know to even look for it, but the default is to replace all existing files with the iTunes version. I found a few horror stories online where someone had some specific backups of old recordings that got replaced by iTunes with no warning or notification, and after a couple of subsequent backups not knowing there was anything wrong with the originals, their backups were now just the iTunes version. Bye bye sweet memories, hello commercial pablum. While these problems stood out, there were lots of other quirks people had found and posted online, and it made nervous enough to want to manage my music files myself without an auto-synch taking over. I manage my ebooks the same way — myself with my own software, not Amazon’s or Kobo’s or Nook’s, etc.

So my commitment to iTunes was done, and it slowed my music-organizing work in 2015. I tried Music Bee, but it wasn’t really jiving for me, and I eventually completed stalled. Until this past week, when I got back into it. I checked the iTunes install, and now it was REALLY weird. While I had some 3500 files stored in the iTunes media folders, only 35 were showing up in the actual iTunes app. I had them all in there before. I had done massive work to upload, sort, tweak the meta data, etc. Gone. So my hope of exporting and importing was gone. No biggie, it hadn’t been finished anyway, and I wasn’t sure what I was using now anyway.

Except then I noticed another problem. Those 3500 files. It seemed like a lot, well structured, but there were a few odd things missing. Like Jacob’s kids songs. I had four or five CDs ripped, and they weren’t there. Then I noticed some collections missing from the 1940s and 1950s. WTF? Where are the rest of my music files?

I had told iTunes back in the day that it could have permission to manage my music folders. Which meant it imported everything from another directory that was a bit chaotic. I never noticed at the time, too busy working within iTunes to notice that when it imported it into the directory, it DIDN’T actually complete the job. I knew it hadn’t uploaded everything, and in fact I hadn’t wanted it to until better organized, but I thought it had at least COPIED everything and that it was now all IN the directory. Nope. Not even close. I have another 40K files that just aren’t there. No, not another 40K songs, there’s a lot of chaff in that mix, with lots of duplicates, but probably another 10K active songs. I knew they weren’t in iTunes, like I said, but they should have been in the iTunes media folder. Nada.

Small panic. Maybe they’re elsewhere in the drive? Nope, I cleaned those up LONG ago. Cuz iTunes had them, no worries. Except it didn’t. So I checked my backups…of course, 18 months ago, my backups would have had those secondary directories. But now? I’ve completely rolled over 2 or 3 times since then. So my backup is JUST what iTunes has. Yikes. 50,000 down to 3500? That’s a big reason to hate iTunes a little, even if it isn’t entirely iTunes fault (I should have verified that it copied what I told it to copy!).

Digital packrat

I dug out two old backup drives, ones I’m loathe to just ditch even if they are not part of my regular backup routine now. I loaded them up and started working my way through them. One was relatively empty, easy to wipe and set aside for a future secondary or tertiary backup of some key files (it’s a 500GB drive but requires power, so not simple USB mobile device). The second is a 2TB workhorse. Killed tons of crap that I don’t need anymore, long since improved or reorganized, but then I found my old music files.

They’re relatively a disaster in terms of organization, no question about it. But the extra files are there. Some overlap with what I already have, but surprisingly not as much as I might have thought. What did I find? 3000 folders, 40K of files and 160GB of music related materials. Ah, so that’s why my Music backups didn’t take up as much time or size as I would have expected. I should have twigged to it earlier, but I trusted the wrong app.

Which means I have to copy all of those over, sort them, and figure out what I’m going to do with my new apps.

New apps

I mentioned that I had Music Bee for awhile but it just wasn’t “singing” to me. Then, with a cellphone plan that I have, I got Spotify for free for two years. Instant music, no need to organized, synch, or do anything else. It was just there. Or at least it is there for two years in total, another six months or so. I’m not totally comfortable with subscription based music consumption, partly as I don’t use it anywhere near enough to make it worth it, and at the end, you don’t own anything. It is just “temporary”. Why rent when I can buy?

Except of course I need to rip a lot of stuff, and I want it in a good format so I only do it once. Plus I want to be able to upload it somewhere where I can access it via the web. Oh, and I want to be able to synch to my Walkman, play it on an old tablet connected to my stereo, and just for fun, synch the music to an old iPhone or two. Easy peasy, right? Let’s break it down in order.

For the streaming, it is relatively easy. While there are a number of apps and sites, the three biggest are Spotify, Google Play Music (GPM) and iTunes. I already ditched iTunes, and I already have Spotify but it isn’t doing everything I want nor does it have great options for my own music so much as just using their existing library. Which means those two are not high on my list.

Since I use Google for everything anyway, I started looking pretty heavily at GPM. I can upload up to 50K of my own songs. And then I can stream them. And it’s free. If I want to upgrade to the full streaming system, it is $10 and I can have up to 10 devices. Colour me sold. Why didn’t I do this LONG ago?

So that left me merely with finding a good music manager for my desktop. Most of the big ones would work fine, and most of the real differences between a lot of them are graphical user interface choices. I prefer a simple list layout, something relatively like Windows Explorer even. But the real kicker for me is to where I want to be able to transfer the music. I almost never listen on my PC itself, partly as it is in a shared office with my wife. Instead, I want to be able to transfer it to six separate devices:

  1. My Sony Walkman — as I mentioned, it’s an MP3 player that Sony slapped the Walkman rubrique on for branding, but it is small without being like an Apple nano. Good size, works well, good battery life. I load it up with my music and then it sits on there until I get bored with it and want something else. Not very quick to be changed, I mean. But I want the app to recognize it;
  2. My old iTouch — I have an old iTouch, and I want to be able to just dump a ton of stuff on to it and plug it into my bedside clock radio/stereo. I could stream off of Google Play through my network, but really I just want it to be a physical storage device with direct loading; and,
  3. Andrea’s old iPhone — she has an old iPhone 4 or 5 that had a cracked screen, so I got it repaired with the intention of giving it to Jacob as a simple camera and portable app toy. The synching with iTunes for apps isn’t very functional though, with the software getting a little long in the tooth, so I’m looking at repurposing to be another portable music player. I’m also going to try using it as an underwater camera in one of those sealable pouches, and well, if it dies, no great loss;

The other three are a bit different though as they are three fully functional Android devices, which means I can either stream or synch with them direct.

  1. My phone — I have a 32GB SD card in it, so I could just copy it over. Or I can run the Google Play Music app. It would be great though if I could synch wirelessly with my phone, the way I do to upload my photos when I want to transfer them to the PC;
  2. My big tablet — My newer tablet is wireless, and like my phone, I can either synch the music and carry it with me on the SD card or I can just stream GPM. But either way, it would be great to synch wirelessly with the PC; and,
  3. My old small tablet — I have an older slower Samsung tablet that is basically collecting dust in my office. It isn’t fast, it isn’t fancy, but it still runs everything on Google. So my plan is to copy everything over, either wirelessly or not, and / or install GPM on it, and hook it up to the computer in our family room. Instant stereo feed.

Now, with those six devices in mind, I fully expected I would not be able to do it with one app. I thought, “Okay, one app to synch with the first batch” and hopefully I could find another that would handle the second. Or I could just use GPM to stream it. Except as I was reading online of the top 10 music managers from 2016, I came across Media Monkey again.

Media Monkey

I had seen this app before, back in the day, and I ended up with Music Bee and iTunes. But as I went through a good review over on Tom’s Guide of music managers, I was dropping some of them fast. Won’t synch with iDevices? Gone. Trouble with other MP3 players? Pass.

Wait a second. It says Media Monkey will synch with regular MP3 players AND iDevices? Hold the phones — it will also synch with Android WIRELESSLY? Holy cow, that sounds like the perfect app.

Sure, it’s a bit of a pig for display, a little small here and there, without much opportunity to fix it. The skins are terrible (had to revert to Windows). But it does have a file tree-like view option. Text for the rest. Recognizes my Sony device. Synched wirelessly with my phone.

And if I rename a heading in the music view, it renames the actual folder in the hard drive. Outstanding.

This will bear some careful examination, but I think I’ve found my tool.


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Adding extra Linux software to my Netbook

Posted on by June 21, 2017  

In my previous two posts (Installing Linux on a Netbook and Tweaking Lubuntu on my Acer Netbook), I initially created a dual boot option with Windows XP and Lubuntu, and then fought with the netbook’s BIOS that was in conflict with the Linux approach to power management stuff until I had both working, or so I thought. The last step for the one was to re-flash the BIOS and that accidentally took out my Windows install somehow (not too surprising, crap happens when you mess with the BIOS!). I could have tried reinstalling Windows, but really, who has the time for that? Like XP was worth the effort? 🙂

With dual-boot, it was almost 2 minutes to get Windows fully up and loaded, Lubuntu was about 55 seconds (or 1 minute 5 sec, if I let it run the wait delay of choosing Lubuntu to start). I hoped that after the reinstall, I might be able to get that 55 seconds down to something a little quicker considering part of the reason of doing all of this in the first place was to have “lighter (and faster) overhead” on the system when I was done in order to rejuvenate a tired netbook. After the complete re-install? Oooh, I got it down to 53 seconds. Still way better than Windows, but not quite what I had hoped for. I wonder if Puppy Linux would have been faster.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not completely looking a gift horse/processor in the mouth/CPU. I’m quite happy to have it up and running, and looking stable. On to installing extra software! Well, once the software updater is done. Finger tap, tap, tap.

I’m only looking to run through installations once, so I might as well take a look at all the options now…

  • Audio: I’m really only interested in options for playing back audio files from time to time, or at least having the option. Audacious and GNOME Mplayer are already installed, but I added Banshee and Musique just to give me a “full” and a “basic” option too for the future;
  • Education: There’s no real reason for me to install Stellarium on this machine when I have a full laptop that has far more powerful stuff, but it’s free, and I have room. The grouping also includes a weather app, so why not?;
  • Games: I’m not really looking for games, but from time to time, it’s okay to pass the time…like Neverputt for 3D golf, Mahjongg / Xmahjongg / Mastermind / Yahtzee just because, Pentobi which is like Blokus, AisleRiot Solitaire+Hearts+Tali for card games, skipped emulators for now, Berusky and Xsokoban for ones like Sokoban, Four-in-a-row aka Connect Four, Mines like Minesweeper, and Tetzle for odd-shaped jigsaw puzzles;
  • Graphics: I already have Image Viewer and ImageMagick installed, don’t need anything else for now;
  • Internet: I already have Sylpheed for email and Firefox for browser, but I snagged Thunderbird (for email), Filezilla (FTP), and Browser+Chromium (extra browsers). and QbitTorrent (just in case).
  • System: I already had a FileManager, so I limited my additions to KDE partition manager (just in case).

For most of the other headings, the defaults are already installed, and that’s all I need. The big “open” area that was missing was office suites.

Now, since I’m mainly focused on word processing, I passed on calendars, charts, contact management, databases, dictionaries (no linguistic ones available, except maybe Verbiste), email, finance, flow chart, presentation, project management, and publishing. Under viewer, I grabbed FBReader and Okular, but passed on Calibre even though I use it on my main PC. That left me with:

  • Spreadsheet: I already had Gnumeric installed, which seemed sufficient for now; and,
  • Word Processor: I already had AbiWord, TypeWrite, and two text editors, but I grabbed FocusWriter too as it is designed to be low overhead and distraction free. I also snagged Freeplane / Labyrinth / VYM for mind mappers, but not really critical. And, just for fun, I grabbed Plume Creator too to give it a try.

Where does that leave me? With just about everything I need except a full office suite that is fully integrated together. I can use MS Office online or Google Docs, but far too often I am outside of wifi land nor do I want to always turn my data plan into a roaming hotspot burner. Calligra looks good, but more for backup option at some point maybe. But since everyone and their brother recommended LibreOffice, of course I had to grab that as the main suite.

Which seemed like a good start. And then I realized I also had two other lists where I had already looked at various apps and identified a few I wanted too. It seemed obvious to cross-reference the three lists — what I had, plus a list from LifeHacker, plus a list from MakeUseOf.com — and see if I missed anything.

There were a few:

  • Substitutes: Chromium installed instead of Chrome (small differences);
  • Extra options to add: Shotwell (for photos), Clementine (music), Deluge (bittorrent); and,
  • Not available through Lubuntu auto-install so I will have to find them: Gimp, DigiKam, VLC, Dropbox, Peazip.

Oops, apparently the missing ones weren’t available through Software Centre, but ARE through Synaptic. Easy enough to find them that way and install. A little more “manual”, but worked okay for almost everything. Which just leaves me trying to figure out DropBox and/or integration for Google Drive, and PeaZip.

Over time, I’ll cut a lot of these out as either a waste of space or just not applicable to my needs, but for now, they’re installed. Now to do some actual work and see how it handles a real life test.


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Tweaking Lubuntu on my Acer Netbook

Posted on by June 21, 2017  

In my previous post (Installing Linux on a Netbook), I played with the initial setup to get Lubuntu installed on my ACER ASPIRE ONE netbook (model AOD150). I expected to do it as a solo install, dumping Windows in the process, but the installer gave me a dual boot option that seemed like a pretty good option, so I left a partition running Windows XP. The default boot is Linux, but if I change the menu selection in a prompt window that lasts ten seconds, it will switch to booting Windows.

When I finished off last night with the quick install (start to finish, just over an hour), I had five things on my to-do list to label it “ready”. Today, I started trying to tweak those five “little” issues.

The first issue was that there was something going on with my power management settings. Here’s what would happen — I would boot, it would start the Linux option, and then about 15-20 seconds in, my netbook would go into suspend mode. Easy enough to “revive”, enter my password at the lock screen, and it would continue. Then, once “active”, it would go about another 20 seconds or so, and go back into suspend. Even if I was typing or moving the mouse, it would go into suspend mode about every 30 seconds. Not a lot you can do in 30 seconds, right?

I did a bunch of searching online and found out that others had encountered the same problem on multiple devices by multiple manufacturers, particularly with netbooks, and they had narrowed it down to one of three things going on:

  1. My operating system thought the lid was closed even when it wasn’t, so it was going into suspend mode as it thought I wanted it to do so;
  2. My operating system wasn’t interfacing well with the BIOS, and the BIOS was telling it the lid was closed and thus to enter suspend mode; or,
  3. My power management module was conflicting with normal power management on the device, and hence thinking it was time to enter suspension mode.

While the first one looked a bit like a sensor problem, the solution was basically to tell the operating system to ignore the “input” from the sensor so to speak. In other words, “If the lid is down, don’t suspend”. The problem of course is that if the lid really WAS down, it still wouldn’t suspend. I can work around that issue, but I couldn’t work around the system shutting down every 30 seconds. So I gave it a go. Or at least I tried to.

First of all, I had to find the file /etc/systemd/logind.conf and edit it. I could open the file manager, click to get to etc, and then the system would suspend (30 seconds were up!). Revive, enter password, scroll down, click on systemd, and suspend mode would activate again. Revive, enter password, click on logind.conf, enter to open. Suspend/Revive/Password, keep going. I’m going to call that S/R/P so I don’t have to retype it again. Scroll through the file looking for a specific phrase called “HandleLidSwitch”. S/R/P. Edit it to be “=ignore”. Try to save. S/R/P. Try to save again, overwrite, but nope, don’t have permission to overwrite this file. S/R/P.

I did some more searching on my main PC. Turns out that I didn’t have full root privileges opening it that way, so I had to go to the terminal mode. I thought I would be in terminal mode going just “RUN” and entering command, but no. Several S/R/Ps later, nothing working, realized I wasn’t actually in terminal mode. Figured out how to get there, several more S/R/Ps in between, entered the edit command I had. Nada.

More searching, realized the commands I had were for a specific flavour of Linux, not Lubuntu. Close, but not exact. The correct command I needed was: sudo -H leafpad /etc/systemd/logind.conf and once entered, and another S/R/P later, I could edit the file and save it. Which I did, rebooted, and it died half way through reboot. S/R/P, and then it died again on live mode. Grrr…

I re-edited the file, and looked for other settings. I didn’t want to go too crazy and shut off all the controls, but I did see one that at least said 30 seconds, changed it to 90 at least, and rebooted. It died during the boot, S/R/P later it got me to live mode. And stayed on. I waited 90 seconds, still on. Five minutes, still on. Okay, half the problem solved.

Option 3 was a potential conflict, but I checked and I didn’t have another power management software choice running, just the default. So that left me with option 2 above — my bios and my operating system didn’t like each other. Marriage counselling was out, and I had already changed the O/S. Which meant I followed the options for updating my BIOS on the netbook.

Normally this would make me flat out freaked. Upgrading a BIOS, really? I’m really doing this? Well, I had some positive experiences with reflashing tablets in the past, and honestly, it was equivalent-to-bricked earlier, so what did I have to lose? I found a link to the ACER download site, used my main PC to get there, entered my model, it gave me three OS versions (Win 7 in 32- and 64-bit versions, or Win XP), chose WinXP to match what I had, downloaded the one file, put it on a flash drive, and rebooted the netbook in Windows mode (see, I knew there was a reason I kept it!), and ran the installer. Website said one to seven minutes, it was done in less than one. It gave me a giant warning to say, “Hey, idiot, this is the BIOS that you’re messing with”, clicked through, completed with no errors and rebooted.

I chose Linux for my boot, and it made it all the way through with no power outages. While I’ve been typing this, the system went blank after ten minutes for screen blanking, but no suspension. I may reset everything back to the way it was, as I seemed to have found the conflict and resolved it already. Which means if I want to turn the lid sensor back on, I can!

The second thing on my original list was to test the Windows boot. Essentially, I already had! All working fine, no problems.

The third thing was to connect to the network. Now here’s the thing. It already figured it out on its own. It gave me no end of problem last night; today, oh there’s the network, thanks, here’s the password, connected. Not the most stable of connections, it dropped a few times but immediately reconnected each time. Tick!

Fourth on my list was to run Firefox (it was originally fifth, but I moved it up), so I booted the browser. And I was able to access Gmail, no problem at all. Everything is working EXACTLY as it should. Which leaves only the fifth item to address — installing any additional software I need. 🙂 Let’s call it another 2 hours so far today, and a bit of real frustration in there for the tweaking (rather than the initial install) with the constant S/R/P process. But it’s all working relatively well.

EDIT: I spoke way too soon apparently. I was able to reset the settings back to normal for Lubuntu and get rid of the lid sensor problem, but the earlier reflashing had apparently created a conflict with Windows XP — it won’t boot at all. I had tested it before the reflash, everything worked fine. Now? Won’t boot in safe mode, not by last known config, not starting normally, nada. Which means I have to reinstall Lubuntu from scratch and take WinXP completely off the system, no dual boot. Just make it a full Linux machine. Wish me luck!


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Installing Linux on a Netbook

Posted on by June 21, 2017  

I have an old netbook, an ACER ASPIRE ONE. Not the most powerful of tools, and it is almost ten years old. It worked at the time for what I wanted it for — a simple laptop to use at a coffee shop, do some basic wordprocessing, maybe some web surfing, a bit of email. No graphics, no games, no media really, mostly just a portable wordprocessor.

Back in the late 90s, I was convinced there was a market for this type of product. So I went looking for it. Including a trip to Toronto to see if I could find a stripped down laptop, not too large, preferably without a giant CD-ROM adding bulk and heft to something that didn’t need it. I tried a bunch, but all were either too big, or WAY too expensive (I’m looking at you Sony!). In the end, I gave up. I tried upgrading my palm pilot to have a keyboard too, but the screen was just too small to be worth it. I ordered a wordprocessor-like device from Toronto to try it out, and for the cost of shipping, they let me try it with option to fully return it. It was okay, but the screen was only a few lines, and while the weight and size were perfect, the power just wasn’t there.

I even exchanged emails at the time with David Pogue who was the tech writer for the NY Times to see if he knew of any devices out there that fit the bill. Nope, there weren’t any. There just wasn’t enough market to make it worthwhile to a producer — the market was heading towards desktop replacements and anything else was falling by the wayside.

Fast-forward almost ten years, and there were netbooks flooding the market. Small, compact, ran Windows, exactly what I had been looking for previously. More or less. Speed was still an issue, but the chip (the Atom processor) that made netbooks possible by reducing battery drain was also the reason for a limit to speed and user power. But I wanted one, the price wasn’t bad, and it would finally let me be able to take notes in class (I think I was still doing my MPA at the time), surf at the coffee shop, take it with me on weekends, etc. In the end, it was good, but from time to time, I struggled to be truly “functional” because of the speed. Sometimes even scrolling through large Word docs or a PDF would almost feel like it was grinding to a halt. My needs shifted again, it was okay but not great, and the slow speed was challenging me when I could just do the same task later on the big computer at home, so instead I would just read when I was in a coffee shop. Like I said, the netbook was good, but not great, and I eventually stopped using it.

The big change that killed it was my smartphone, and later, my tablet. Suddenly, I could surf easily, quickly, and even if I couldn’t type long docs, email and surfing was WAY better on it than trying to struggle on the netbook. I have a keyboard for the tablet too, although I rarely use it.

Awhile back, I tripped over the netbook when I was doing some clean-up, and although it works, I wondered if perhaps I should add it to the recyclables sometime. Or dump it on ebay and let someone have a toy. Then, not too long ago, I was going through some news items for a tech feed I get, and there was this simple yet glorious heading — “Installing Linux on an Netbook”.  I thought at first it was someone doing it as a “toy” project, no real functionality to it, more like doing it just to see if they could do it. Since I have plans to get into Raspberry PI stuff, I thought I’d read and see what it was like as a project. Imagine my surprise to find out people have done lots of this stuff already, and not just as a toy, but to strip away the Microsoft bloat and to have a real, live, functioning Linux machine that boots rapidly and runs quick because there is no overhead.

Sure, there have been challenges in the past. Missing drivers is the obvious one…if the system isn’t widely used, Linux drivers may not exist for the pieces of hardware you’re working with. And honestly, I’d be dead in the water if that was the case. I know so little about drivers and hardware, but give me software to configure, and I’ll make a lot of it dance. Even way back in the 90s, I was running a Windows 3.1 machine long past when everyone else had killed theirs, and it was still more than meeting my needs.

But if others had met those challenges, and we’re running Linux on a functioning netbook, and considered it actually “good”, was it worth a try? Apparently it was.

I read a few other articles, and as with all things Linux, realized the first question was going to be the same as with any machine — choose your flavour of Linux. Lubuntu looked like a working model for a number of people, including among people who were writing comparative articles with the pros and cons of each. While many of the subtle differences seemed lost on me, not being an afficionado of desktop clients in Linux, I did notice that the authors themselves had ended up their search with Lubuntu and liked it. A nice combination of power and simplicity. Puppy Linux was my second choice as a “easy for newbies” version, but I thought I would start with Lubuntu.

The steps to install are pretty straightforward in general:

  1. Install Linux ISO on a flash drive using your main computer;
  2. Boot your netbook from the flash drive;
  3. Choose install;
  4. Follow the prompts and menus.

Seemed simple enough, so I started working on Step 1.

INSTALL LINUX ISO ON A FLASH DRIVE

Kind of like the old floppy disk days of Windows or booting from a CD now, you put a bootable operating system on the drive, tell your netbook to boot from the drive instead of the hard disk, and Bob’s your uncle. Sort of.

First you need to get it on the flash drive. You can do a lot of it manually, but a bunch of articles mentioned “Universal USB Installer” as their tool of choice, and since it seemed to automate Linux installs, I thought it sounded good to me. Free download, started the app, got it going, and it gives four questions to start:

  1. Which distro you want…I’d already chosen Lubuntu, so easy enough;
  2. Where the ISO file is…wait a minute, I thought it automated things? Yes, but you have to download the ISO file separately. Not what I had read, but whatever, easy enough to download myself. Grabbed the torrent version, just over 5 minutes of transfer time, no biggie, clicked back to tell the installer where the file was, and continued;
  3. Which drive your flash drive is…lots of warnings about getting it right, but well, you are FORMATTING A DRIVE, so you always want to get that right anyway; and,
  4. Set a persistent file size…umm, WTF does that mean? No clue. Well, I mean I do, I just don’t know if the considerations mean anything significant with Linux/Lubuntu. It says it’s optional, so I went with the default setting.

Didn’t take too long to install, just over a minute I think, with another 30 seconds in there to format the flash drive, a 4GB version I was using.  I kind of expected that there would be some sort of “congrats, now test this or do that” message when it was over, but there wasn’t. Just “Done”, and when you click it, it closes. Umm, okay.

BOOT YOUR NETBOOK FROM THE FLASH DRIVE

This step seems to freak some people out for some reason, but I have no idea why. Have they never seen a bios message on their main PC before? Never had to tweak a hardware setting? Anyways, I had no concerns about this step. Which is why I went “Huh?” when it didn’t work. I went into the bios, it told me to reorder the boot priorities to change it from IDE first to Flash drive first, I did that (even though my screen says press F5 to go up and F6 to go down, and it’s actually the reverse, but I moved USB FDD to the top) and booted it up. Nope, ran Windows again. Hmm. Double-checked the priorities, nope, it accepted the changes, hmm. Looked online, found a reference that said to put USB HDD first. Except my flash drive isn’t a hard drive, it’s a flash drive. Wouldn’t FDD go first? That’s what the other articles said. Nope, it was right, it should be HDD first. Changed it to try it and everything booted fine.

CHOOSE INSTALL

This part was a bit of a surprise. There were six or seven options, including testing various hardware pieces, trying out Lubuntu without installing, etc. Nice choices. But I was already reasonably committed, others had tested things before me, so I went for the full install.

That’s where things started getting weird. I chose to try to connect to the internet to download some stuff as it went. Except I had two problems. First, it didn’t want to connect to my router for some reason. Router was there, it asked for the password, tried to connect, and nada. I’m not entirely sure of the backward compatibility of the new router, but would have thought it should handle this okay. Second, I started having power problems. It was clear what was happening — after about 60 seconds of not pressing the keys, the system would go into sleep mode. I don’t remember having such draconian defaults for my power management, but it was possible near the end. Really annoying. I tried skipping it, and Lubuntu booted, but I wasn’t sure I had everything.

I played with the Lubuntu install just enough to find power management, reset everything to what I thought was more reasonable, and restarted the install, but I connected to my phone this time as a mobile hotspot — hoping that it would all work since most of the installs are small. Either that or I’m going to get warnings this month about being over my data limit. 🙂

I told it to install, pull updates as it went, and install third party software so that I would have all the basics to start with when it was done installing. And I got another surprise. It asked me if I wanted to dual-boot the machine and keep Windows as an option. At first blush, I was about to say no, and then thought, “Well, why not?”. I lose disk drive space, but I’m not talking huge media needs anyway, and if I need it, I have portable USB drives I can use not to mention lots of flash drives. And, most of the time, I just store to the cloud or email files to myself. I reset partitions, told it to proceed, and it gave me 105GB for Windows and 55GB for Lubuntu. I’m sure that’s more than enough for a small linux install, and I get to keep my Windows option in case I ever need it for something else, or someone else wants to use it without trying Lubuntu.

Took awhile, completed all the install and the post-install cleanup, and other than entering language choices, keyboard layouts, local time and my name / password, it just bopped along until it finished. I rebooted, and this time I had 4-5 options, the first being Lubuntu and the last being to boot in Windows. It waited for my choice for a few seconds and when I didn’t do anything, it went to Linux by default (kind of like what happens on a SAFE reboot of Windows). The other three choices are one for advanced options for Ubuntu and two for different memory tests.

But midway through the boot, it died on me. Not crashed, I mean the power manager kicked in again and shut down. I thought it would be something in the bios settings, as it looks like it is over-riding the Operating System settings somehow. But I checked the bios and there’s no settings to help. The desktop settings work exactly right. And if I press the power button, it resumes just fine. But it’s annoying and I’ll have to do some searching to get that figured out.

But other than that? It’s fully installed. It took me a little over an hour, and that included full download of the various files so I could run the installer to create the Flash drive. Not a bad hour’s worth. Now I have a netbook that is charging, and tomorrow I’ll play with it.

I have five things on my to-do list:

  1. Fix the power management time-out during boot;
  2. Test the Windows boot;
  3. Get it to connect to my network;
  4. Install any additional software I need; and,
  5. Browse in Firefox to see if I can get it accessing Gmail, etc.

I have to say, that was way easier than I expected.


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Looking for data visualization tools in all the wrong places…

Posted on by June 21, 2017  

So I confess that once upon a time, I paid for some of my living expenses through the fact that I knew how to work a computer for things like graphics and formatting. No, seriously, back in the early 90s, it made me stand out from other people, the fact that I knew how to work Lotus 1-2-3, Word and WordPerfect, dBase IV and, drumroll please, Harvard Graphics. At the time, I think it was version 3.0, and while people could do very basic graphs in Lotus, the real trick was to choose a variety of simple graphs in Harvard Graphics, add your data, and voila, you were good to go. Back in ’93, for my first job at DFAIT, we did a presentation for Cabinet where all the graphs were done in HG, in colour, and there were about 30 of them. Blew the Cabinet people away, colour slides. In government. Bear in mind that most departments had barely switched over from DOS to Windows, and we gave them a 60 page deck on the future of the Asia Pacific region. Bound.

Now, of course, most people do their graphs in Excel or Powerpoint. And I wanted to do one this week. I have 29 or so “goals” that I am tracking against “Level 1” progress, and I wanted some sort of cheap visualization of how I am doing towards reaching level 1. I started in Powerpoint, which really just replicates the software functionality of Excel, and while it was decent enough, I’m not a graph tweaking expert anymore. I used to be able to get HG get up and dance and look amazing…compared to the Excel graph I did, I feel like I regressed in technology.

So, I was curious. Are there any other data visualization tools out there that people use easily and, more importantly, are free? My friend Aliza mentioned Google Charts and I confess that I had heard it mentioned in passing, but since I had little use for it, I had never looked at it.

I should step back for a second though. I *did* experiment with a WordPress plugin or two a few months back, and well, I was never too satisfied with the result. I would love a simple visualization tool that keeps my data in WordPress, doesn’t add a lot of overhead, and has lots of tweakable options. The experience reminded me a lot of that saying about things being cheap, fast, or good, and you can only pick two. I never quite found what I wanted.

But Google Charts is pretty darn near it. You basically code a function in javascript, and while that may seem a bit more daunting for some, you do get nice code snippets to just copy and paste. Not as intuitive though when it comes to customizing the look and feel…a single page with all of the options would be great, but they are spread across multiple themes. I was using a DIFF Chart, and it was the best I saw…overlapping a bar chart on a previous bar chart, or in my case, putting a light colour to show the “goal” and a darker colour to show actual progress. In the end though, it was a struggle to get it to format properly and to fit properly as an inline block within WordPress. It was decent, lots of power, but it renders itself each time it is called, and it wasn’t quick. Plus, for some reason, it was adding a big gap at the top and the bottom of the page. I liked the embedding, but the rest was too much.

I moved on to a variety of other options:

  • Zing Chart — highly complex, and the options were not as intuitively laid out as Googel Charts;
  • Tableau — this is only available for download, and I haven’t tried it yet;
  • PowerView — a Microsoft option, but not available in the version of Excel I was running;
  • D3.js — A live data tool, I couldn’t even claim to understand how it worked or what I was supposed to do;
  • Fusion charts — looks pretty solid, but linking to it from WordPress wasn’t obvious, and thus a dead end;
  • Visual.IS — in addition to having to create an account, it had strong links to paid versions;
  • High charts — the type of chart I wanted wasn’t there;
  • Chartist — good mentions of it elsewhere, but the website is just on GitHub, and not as friendly to access;
  • Piktochart — although it requires an account to be created, the real challenge was that it is also aimed at infographics more so than simple charts, and for some reason, it starts with asking you about infographics vs. presentation vs. printable, i.e. you’re choosing your design and function before you choose anything about what you want to create and put into said presentation, etc.;
  • Ubiq — data visualization running with MySQL, and I was hoping to avoid a database element;
  • Vizydrop — pulls data from a datafile (CSV JSON or Excel), which I was also hoping to avoid, but may reconsider;
  • Plot.ly — no clue what it did as it just kept crashing;
  • Datamatic — uses Google Drive, which doesn’t sound problematic, except that GD is blocked by our firewall at work, so visualizations wouldn’t work if I wanted to put them on my screen as a reminder; and,
  • Hohli — I really liked this one, but it seems to be geared towards replacing the interface (or lack thereof) for Google Charts, yet with 1 time creation (i.e. couldn’t seem to save or edit / re-use later).

Which put me back in the world of Excel. I did a graph, and it looks fine. I have room for future expansion of data, which could be useful (kind of stacking option for Level 2). Not exactly quite what I was hoping for in terms of quality, but maybe that is just me needing to spend more time with Excel to make it pretty. I would LOVE to be able to recreate the DIFF chart look and feel of Google Charts. But it met my need for the day (to update on my progress on goals in Goals – Weekly roundup (#2017-01)).


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