Becoming a designer
Boy, it’s been a while. An oxymoronic combination of being lazy and busy, I guess. Anyway, for this post I wanted to talk about design. It’s a topic that comes up a More »
Support for Windows 7 ends today
It is a sad day, as Microsoft is officially ending updates and security patches for Windows 7, the popular OS still being used by a large majority of PCs. Windows 7’s popularity More »
Returning Home: World of Warcraft Classic Comes Online
On August 26th, fans of the original World of Warcraft (henceforth referred to as WoW), and those who are just curious to see what all the hubbub is about, were finally able More »
The Lawnmower Man, and Vintage CGI
Inspired by a couple of Reddit forums to which I am subscribed, VintagePixelArt and VintageCGI, and being a fan of all things historical as it pertains to technology, I uploaded to the More »
Jony Ive leaves Apple
As someone who teaches extensively about design as it intersects with technology, and is also a computer and technology historian, I am conflicted about Jonathan (Jony) Ive leaving Apple. Mainly because he’s More »
Uh Oh, Girl Scout Cookies are Online
I’m surprised it has taken this long, but it turns out that the Girl Scouts have finally taken their cookie program into the 21st century. I couldn’t find it through research, but I recall reading a few years ago that the Girl Scouts Organization specifically didn’t want to have their cookie business go digital because of the interpersonal and business skills that selling face-to-face provided.
(Obviously, there is a digital construct known as a cookie, but that’s for discussion this Friday)
But they’ve had a change of heart, and their cookie operation is going digital! Now, sellers will be able to set up a website in which they can take orders, and there are apps for both iOS and Android that will let you locate nearby sellers and booths, as well as order, pay for, and provide shipping information for cookie orders, even indicate whether you want the order delivered to your door by an actual girl scout, which sounds a little odd. It’s no surprise that security is a concern, and the websites that are set up for the individual girl scout cookie sellers will be accessible via invite only, no identifying information will be disclosed publicly, and will be created under the supervision of an adult.
It’s Cyber Monday
This is a weird Black Friday/Cyber Monday year for me. Usually the big tech companies have rolled out one or two things that make me say “I have to have that.” Last year it was the Surface Pro 2, which also made me the first customer at Fashion Show’s Microsoft Store. This year, however, for the first time in I can’t remember how long, there just isn’t anything that moves me or make me say “One, please” (If anyone finds sticks of 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1866Mhz dual-channel RAM on sale, let me know. That stuff never goes on sale. Get it together, Corsair! I need more RAM!).
There are smart watches and tablets and PCs and 4K UHD TVs and all sorts of fun things that will make your life better, easier, and make you a better person. 4K TVs, especially, are expected (by some) to be a big hit. They’re all great devices and I love to see the forward march of technology, but this year I’m happy with my status quo. Especially with the final nail in plasma’s coffin having been delivered earlier this year, I’ll hold on to my plasma ’til the end; you can pry it out of my cold, dead hands!
Fashion Show Mall Santa Display
Today I went to brave the crowds at Fashion Show Mall, because although I’m not a huge Fashion Show Mall fan, I do like braving crowds.
While I was there, I saw what was easily the most amazing Santa (Shrek, actually) castle I’ve ever seen. Comprised of monitors more than anything else, it was a giant animated display made up primarily of what appeared to be DiamonVision screens whose seams were cleverly disguised by the scenery. The pixels were visible so the images weren’t being projected. I don’t know if that’s the actual setup, but form a cursory glance that how it seemed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgR9bwEfVsE&feature=youtu.be
Set up your own personal streaming video library
(This post will be sticky for a few days, so new posts will appear underneath it)
Based on some feedback I received both in class and via email, I decided I would write a post that walked through the steps of ripping and naming files and configuring clients. After taking around fifty screenshots and writing a whole lot, I realized it would be much easier for me to record some videos, and hopefully much easier for you as I could cram a lot of information into a hands-on demonstration that would provide visual context. .
Therefore, over the weekend I recorded three videos, each covering a particular aspect of setting up a media library, and I have embedded them below. I will also post them to their permanent spot on our brand new Videos page. Each is about 20 minutes long, and they’re easily digestible (I hope). The first covers riping and properly naming your media, the second covers using PLEX Server to set up streaming, and the third covers using XBMC as a dedicated media manager.
As I mention in the first video, the process isn’t necessarily complex, but there are steps involved and considerations that have to be made. Once you’ve you’ve gone through the initial setup, however, adding media is relatively easy.
A different view of XBMC than what you’ll see in the video
Feedback Needed
A lot of experimenting with the site these days.
As I was prepping the post about creating your own media service, I became aware that videos were no longer scaling properly. In order to rectify this, rather than re-scale videos on an individual basis, I increased the body width of the blog by 45 pixels, and widened the slider by the same amount. This has also allowed me to experiment with having videos embedded in the sidebar of the main page.
I also added a couple of new newsfeeds over there in the sidebar that cover a wider expanse of technology news. The first is from Engadget which is general/consumer tech news, the second feed is Ars Technica’s I.T. industry-focused newsfeed which has always been there, and the third feed is from ExtremeTech, which tends to be a hardcore, very technical site (If you’re interested in that kind of thing, you can also look at AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware). None of these sites’ focuses is singular, it’s just the way they generally fall out. For example Ars Technica often has very in-depth, very technical articles as well, however the feed is only their I.T. news. Hopefully these provide a more well-rounded source of current goings-on in the tech industry.
I have tested these small changes extensively, however if anyone notices any problems at all, please let me know exactly what happened so I can fix it. If it’s working fine for you even after the change, let me know that as well.
If I don’t hear any feedback I’ll likely leave it the way it is, although I’m still getting used to it myself. 45 pixels may not sound like a lot, but it’s a big change. If worse comes to worse, I’ll reset the widths, and do the individual scaling. We’ll see.
Something New!
It’s a small change, but something I hope will add a lot of content and perhaps even move the entire site forward. You’ll notice at the top of the page, where there have always been links for “Home,” “About This Site,” “How To Sign Up,” and “Student Blogs,” there is a new link for “Videos.”
I decided to add a video section because over the weekend I recorded a series of three videos, each about 20 minutes long, that cover setting up your own video library and personal streaming service. The first video covers ripping and naming files and folders, the second covers using Plex to stream your collection, and the third covers using XBMC as part of a home theater or TV setup to watch videos on the hosted device. After they were done, I felt that rather than having to search through posts or dig for that content, it would be good to have a central repository, an archive, of all the self-produced video created for this class, excluding lectures, of course.
I haven’t yet determined how the Videos page will be set up; specifically, I’d like people to be able to add specific comments regarding specific videos, but if they’re all on the same page that would be difficult, but not impossible. Maybe I’ll have categorical links, I just don’t know at this time. So I’m still considering it, but I wanted to let everyone know the “Video” page will go live tomorrow.
So the videos for the class will still get their own post where I can add specific details, and that includes the three videos mentioned earlier which will go up tomorrow as well, but I hope that by having a central location where they can all be referenced, they’ll be easier to find after the fact if someone wanted to use them as a reference later on.
Any thoughts are welcome, especially once the page is created and you’ve had some opportunity to see what it offers even at this early stage. You’ll be like beta testers!
European Union wants to break up Google
Those of us who were around in the 90’s may remember when Microsoft became subjected to lawsuits by competitors and even governments because of what was perceived as their monopoly status, their aggressive tactics in maintaining that status, and their stranglehold on the PC market, which was an issue of their bundling of Internet Explorer with their OS, and their use of Media Player. Speaking of the European Union specifically, they have sued Microsoft again and again and again. Of course, Microsoft can give it as well as take it.
While I always understood the concerns and the actions taken, I always felt the relentless pursuit of Microsoft specifically was uneven in the tech industry, when other companies were dominant in other areas, such as AOL / Time Warner. It wasn’t as though people couldn’t download other browsers, and the concern about browsers is long over with all of the options available.
This WordPress site is clean
And we don’t have analog TVs anymore, so that’s a plus considering we don’t want a visit from the ‘TV People‘ (If you’re not a fan of the scary, I’d be careful with that link).
Anyway, I noticed through the Ars Technica feed there on the right hand side of the page that researchers in Finland had discovered a bug in WordPress 3’s comment system that could allow someone to include malicious JavaScript code in a comment, providing the attacker with all kinds of fun things to do. As the article states, by using this code, someone could create a new administrator account with a new password, change the old password locking the old administrator out, and have complete control of the site to do anything they want, including attack visitors and commenters.
It’s exceptionally similar to the way an SQL Injection attack works (remember SQL?), which we’ll talk about in class, except instead of trying to get a database to fess up its contents it attempts to wrest administrator control from the actual site administrator. We need JavaScript, though – how can we get ants to chase our cursor without it?
Luckily for us, this site runs on WordPress version 4.0.1, so we’re not at risk of this vulnerability. I just wanted to make this short post in case anyone saw that and had concerns, which I suspect was exactly zero of you. Continue on, people!
Alienware releases their Steam Machine
That headline requires more explanation than you might think. You see, this is a tale of three separate companies all coming together to make PC gaming more accessible. I don’t know how well they’ve succeeded, but let me give you some background, some opinion, and you can make your own decisions about whether or not this is a step in the right direction or not.
The first company we’ll mention is the well-known PC builder Dell, formed by Michael Dell who built PCs in his dorm room, sometimes going so far as to scrounge components from dumpsters. The company had huge success in the 90s, making its founder one of the richest men in the world, however they have since fallen somewhat from that high point although they still do very well. I personally only used Dells for many years, and for the price they’re good machines.
Cox giveth, and Cox taketh away
I recieved an email from Cox telling me they had just given me ’10x more cloud storage,’ for a total of 50GB. I didn’t know I had cloud storage from them at all, but apparently I did and now I have more! Of course, my OneDrive account gives me one terabyte, which is 1000GB, while Google Drive provides 15GB to start, so 50GB is a pretty good amount, a somewhat middle ground of storage space. Either way, I was grateful they were going to up my quota which I never knew I had in the first place.
Here’s the email they sent. Looks pretty good!
