Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Time to Clean up my Computer

The end of the year is one of those times where we think about changes in our lives that we plan to make for the coming year. A lot of people resolve to lose weight. In fact it is probably one of the most broken new year's resolutions. So instead of trying to lose weight yourself, see if you can't help your computer or mobile phone lose a little weight. It is rather simple and can be done quickly with immediate results.

Start with your screen desktop on your computer. Go through all of the files and see if you really need all of them. If not, go ahead and delete them. If there is a question as to if you will need it or not, simply move the file to another directory or onto some form of backup. Also make sure to review computer programs and applications. Most Windows computers come loaded with a number of applications that you don't really use or need. Simply uninstall them.

Now move to your phone. Do you really use all of those apps you downloaded. Perhaps you downloaded a game and played it a lot in the past but don't any more. Be sure to check your download directory on the phone to make sure you don't have any files there that are unneeded. Finally go through and delete any photos that are not wanted or needed. I am always taking pictures of whiteboards and then making notes from them. The photos can be erased once the notes have been sent out.

The best thing about helping your electronic devices lose weight is that you can do it while eating the last of the Christmas cookies and not feel guilty about it.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Online Recommendations

This afternoon I am working on a personal project related to a recommendation engine. I don't really want to go into too many details as there are plenty of examples that I can draw from without giving away any secrets. While I don't have a confidentiality agreement in place that prevents me from talking about it, I am working with friends and that bond is stronger than any signed legal document.

This example has nothing to do with the project but is something else I have been working on today as well and illustrates the project. I want to take my family on a vacation next autumn. We enjoy going in the month of October because the usual crowds associated with summer are long gone. However we can't do the usual summer things nor can we do the winter activities either. Shoulder seasons can be tough but I am looking for a good recommendation on where to go. There are some important criteria to take into account:
  • Price
  • Ease of travel
  • Level of fun
  • Not needing a vacation after the vacation
  • Flexibility to add one or two people
I am taking all of my children along with my wife and their spouses. Right now I only have one child that is married but that number could change in the next 10 months. I also have children in college and that may limit who can go, which is why I need the destination to be somewhat flexible.

Now I travel almost every week of the year and so I have a very good understanding of destinations that are easy to get to vs. ones that are difficult. I also understand that it might be a coin toss for certain destinations because of things like hurricane season in the Caribbean or early snow for places like Alaska.

So how does one distill all of the information into a helpful recommendation engine? If you look at how Amazon does it, they ask you to start with something and then show you what other things people have also looked at, starting with the most popular. In the case of a vacation, I might look at hotels in Hawaii and Amazon would also show me places like Mexico or Tahiti. It would then be up to me to weed out the best choice based on my criteria.

If you look at how online forums handle this issue, I would simply provide a posting with the criteria listed above and then leave it to other actual humans to give recommendations based on their previous experiences. The problem with this approach is that someone may have gone to Alaska at this time of year and had a wonderful time. However a freak snowstorm during my proposed dates could severely impact the "Level of fun" in a negative way.

If you look at other online vendors like Backcountry.com, they employ human experts that you can ask via chat windows to get their opinions. This is better than the online forums because the experts should know enough to filter out the "Alaska" responses. The only problem is that it requires paying people to answer questions and provide recommendations.

The Google search engine has sort of combined all of these methods with some extra smarts to give you the results of your online searches. Theoretically if 100 people all enter the same search criteria, the links near the top of the results are the most popular ones that have been clicked. For the first 10 searchers, the results are not nearly as accurate. However as more and more people click results, the better answers rise to the top.

There are a number of recommendation engine algorithms and some of them work better than others. Unfortunately none of them are perfect and so it is a matter of figuring out how much effort to put into my next project. I have some ideas and will post the results as they come in.

Monday, December 28, 2015

Technology Debt

This morning I was up skiing at Snowbird and it was rather cold. I had a friend coming up to meet me and so I stopped in one of the lodges to warm up and wait a bit. There was someone working on her laptop computer and it looked like she was writing code. I can't be sure that is what she was really doing as I try not to be one of those nosy people that reads other people's computer screens. However it got me excited to do some coding of my own.

One of the things that is fought in a high-tech job is that of technical debt. Sometimes we spend so much of our career specializing in one technology or another and ignore new ones coming out. If we do it too long then our own skills become irrelevant. That is why it is good to periodically look at one's technical skills to see if they should be enhanced.

I used to have a developer on my team that would never create a second version of any software he wrote with the same technology. Instead he would look at other computer languages and see if it could be done faster with fewer lines of code or in a more efficient manner. That can be a bit drastic, but constantly looking for better ways to do things is something we should all strive towards.

Seeing someone coding at the ski resort got me excited about the coming year and the new projects I will be working on for my job as well as my personal edification. It also has me focused on my own technical debt and what I can do to move forward with the industry so I don't get left behind. Nobody likes being left behind, especially me.

Saturday, December 26, 2015

The Best Gift I Gave This Year

Tuesday my son and I got back from skiing and were spending the afternoon playing video games when my wife got home from work. She didn't think it was fair that she spent the day working and then came home to clean the house while we continued to have the day off. She strongly encouraged my son and I to help with the vacuuming. My son was with me when I purchased my wife's Christmas gift and wanted me to give it to her 3 days before Christmas. Why? Because the gift could have eliminated our need to do any vacuuming. I got my wife an iRobot Roomba 655.

My son pleaded with me to give it to her then so he wouldn't have to stop what he was doing and help with the house chores. I explained to him that secretly my wife was trying to see what she was getting for Christmas. She knew that I wanted to continue playing my game and that a request for help might lead to a clue as to what she was getting. If I had told her to wait until Christmas, she would know she was getting a robot vacuum, as it was high on her wish list this year.

Today we came home from skiing and my wife immediately put the robot vacuum to work while we made lunch. About 20 minutes later the vacuum returned to its charging station and announced its completion with a few chimes. My wife then emptied its completely full dust bin. She then programmed it to wake up at 3pm every Monday and Thursday to automatically vacuum the main level of our house.

Yes I have to say that the iRobot Roomba 655 is quite possibly the best Christmas gift I gave this year. Now when my wife asks for help around the house at least it won't be to vacuum.

Friday, December 25, 2015

God Gives the best Christmas Gifts

Today is Christmas and this morning I received one of the best Christmas gifts ever: Christmas snow. There is something magical about Christmas snow. If you watch the "Frosty the Snowman" Christmas special, that is the important ingredient that brings Frosty back to life after he melts in a poinsettia greenhouse. In my case, I always have a wonderful ski experience with Christmas snow.

The whole family was up at 6am this morning opening gifts. We hung out eating candy from our stockings and then used Skype to talk to my son currently living in Armenia. Once we were done, we headed outside and had a serious amount of snow to remove from the driveway before we could head up the mountain to go skiing. That is always a good sign. It was especially nice to pull into the parking lot and immediately find a premium parking spot so close to the lifts.

We spent the next several hours skiing the wonderful fresh powder that has fallen over the past few days. It was glorious skiing where you could point your skis downhill and make the smallest of turns. There was so much snow, you didn't need to make a lot of turns to slow down. When you got to the bottom, you could look up and see your superb figure-8 ski tracks. It was as perfect as a day of skiing as could be. Life is good this Christmas.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Technology Musings on Christmas Eve

Today is Christmas Eve and I have spent it as I usually do by spending the morning up skiing. I enjoyed today much better than yesterday as more of the mountain is open to help dissipate the crowds. When the lines started getting too long, we called it quits and came home.

As I sit in front of my computer this afternoon, I find it difficult to comprehend that tomorrow will be Christmas. The day where the Christian world celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. Sometimes it seems that science or technology can often be at odds with religion. During these times I am reminded of a quote by Albert Einstein that says something along the lines of, "The more I delve into the mysteries of the Universe, the more I believe in God." Einstein was a pretty smart guy and so we might want to think about what he has said before dismissing the existence of God as easily as we do.

As you go about celebrating Christmas throughout the remainder of today and all of tomorrow, remember to keep technology in perspective. Technology is here to help us live more comfortably while Jesus Christ taught us how to live with our fellow man. Both benefit us all, but one may be just a bit more important.


Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Finally Some Video Game Time

This rarely ever happens but today was one of those days where skiing was just not that great. All of the new snow makes it tough for the mountain to get everything open in a timely manner. When there are only 3 chairlifts running over the Christmas break, lines can get pretty long. After waiting in lift lines twice for about 45 minutes, I decided I was done skiing and headed home. One of the benefits of a season's pass at a ski resort is not having to stick around all day if you don't think the skiing is worth it. Today it wasn't.

I find that I am much more satisfied with my Saturdays when I try to get some errands taken care of around the house. While today isn't a Saturday, it sort of feels like one so when I finished skiing, I immediately attacked some necessary errands. Only after they were completed did I feel I could play video games. My oldest son took a look at my video game collection and laughed at me because I have such a large collection of unopened games. He took one out an put it in my console so I could start playing it. Then he pulled one out and put it in the second console and started playing it. Remember that it is Christmas break and so we have two TV's and two video game consoles in the TV room. It is a temporary thing though.

I enjoyed the suggestion from my son but opted for a different game. We both sat down and played for several hours. One of the nice things about the PlayStation 4 is that you can plug a headphones into the controller. My son had on his while I had on mine. That way we were not distracted by each other's game. It was a great way to pass the afternoon. With tomorrow being Christmas Eve, I doubt we will be doing much game playing and so it was good to have some time today.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

The Risk of Buying Things Online

I have opted to forego a lot of the hassle of driving places to purchase Christmas gifts this year. Instead I have tried to purchase a number of things online. Most of the time this isn't an issue. However this year I am having to do a fair number of returns. I can't go into too many details as it is still before Christmas and I don't want to spoil anyone's surprise. There is one case where I did get something for myself: some active 3D glasses for a new computer monitor.

Normally I wouldn't buy anything for myself before Christmas except that I got a really great deal on a 3D monitor: $50. I knew it didn't come with the required glasses at that price and so I ordered a 4-pack of them from Amazon. Interestingly enough, the glasses ended up costing more than the monitor. Yesterday the glasses arrived and I was excited to test them with my monitor. Three of the four pairs work perfectly. The 4th pair needs to be returned.

Now Amazon has this awesome guarantee where if you are not satisfied, you can return the purchase for a full refund. The problem is, I don't want to return all of the glasses, just one pair. So I am trying to work with the seller and they want me to send back the bad pair on my dime. It is kind of a giant pain in the butt. Had I purchased them from retail store, it would just be a matter of driving to the store and getting them replaced.

Now if this was the only case of things not working the first time around this Christmas, I would chalk it up to a fluke. However it isn't and I am rather jaded with online purchases this year. Hopefully your experiences are different this year.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Fixing a Slow Internet Connection

It is Christmas break and so my oldest son and I spent the afternoon setting up our PlayStation 4 consoles so we can kill bad guys together. Last night we saw the latest Star Wars movie and so naturally we plan to spend a fair bit of time playing Star Wars Battlefront.

This afternoon we got done skiing and decided that instead of playing split-screen coop we would each try playing on our own consoles. We set up a small monitor next to the big screen in the TV room and worked through the difficulties of having 2 consoles so close together. When we tried to initiate Share Play, we were told that my home Internet connection was too slow. So we pulled out some tools to see if we could fix the problem. The first was to bring in a laptop and run a speed test over the WiFi network. The tool of choice can be found at SpeedTest.net. I then ran another test on a computer hardwired into the home Internet connection. The wired connection tested at over 50 Megabits per second. The WiFi tested at only 2. That is a huge difference.

The next course of action was to try and figure out how we could speed things up over WiFi. My son introduced me to a tool on his Android phone called WiFi Analyzer from farproc. This showed us that all of my neighbors have their 2.5 Gigahertz WiFi routers all set up around channel 11. Guess where my WiFi connection was set? It was on "Auto" but was really using channel 11. My router only does 2.5 Gigahertz and so I manually set the channel to 3, where nobody seemed to be. I then reran the speed test and got much better numbers. Unfortunately they were not good enough for Share Play.

When trying to use Share Play you are told that it is best to use a wired Ethernet connection. Fortunately I have a large spool of CAT-5 cable and the tools to make Ethernet cables. We measured everything out and made 2 cables capable of reaching from the hub in my office to the PlayStation 4 consoles in the TV room. We tested the connection and the network ran sufficiently fast to use Share Play.

We got ready to play and then discovered that with Share Play, my son could watch me play or I could watch him. However we each couldn't play Star Wars Battlefront with only a single copy of the game. That was a bummer. Fortunately we each have a copy of the game and so we popped in the 2nd disk and have enjoyed several survival games together.

It is good that I now have enough network speed to use Share Play but the real problem turned out to be that we each needed our own copies of the game. I am glad we went through this exercise though as I now know a lot more about WiFi networking and have the tools to fix problems when they arise. Hopefully someone else finds this useful.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

My 2015 Christmas List

Normally at this time of year I like to put together a Christmas list to give people ideas for the season. Last year I took a departure from the norm and wished for small and simple things that didn't have anything to do with computers nor technology. I figured it is only fair that I try to go back to a regular list and provide some good ideas for those last-minute shoppers:

New Video Games: There are 2 games that I can recommend this year: Star Wars Battlefront and Fallout 4. My recommendation comes from playing one of the games at home a lot and the other comes from talking with other gamer players and listening to what they are playing. Both games seem to be a lot of fun and will bring countless hours of entertainment.

Old Video Games: I have a huge collection of older video games and have seen these for sale at rock-bottom prices in places like Target and Best Buy. My two favorite games that I have played this year have to be Tomb Raider and Red Dead Redemption. Both provided hours of enjoyment. I enjoyed Tomb Raider so much, I returned the copy I borrowed from a friend and purchased a version for the PS4 at Game Stop during a Black Friday sale for $15.

Television: I hate to recommend any one brand or model as everyone has such varying requirements. However I think that if you are in the market for a new TV you should consider upgrading to one of the 4K models. A normal HDTV has a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. The new UltraHD TV's are 3840x2160. That is the equivalent of 4 HDTV's. Furthermore they are coming down in price so that they are actually affordable.

There are a number of other smaller gifts that you might consider. In the past I have recommended USB thumb drives. I don't see a need for these as much simply because there are a number of online places to exchange large computer files. You can never have too many memory cards though. The only trick is making sure you get the right ones. While it used to be safe to pick up SD cards in the past, there are a number of different format cards for different devices. I would love to add a memory card to my Android phone and my kids are always running out of space on the cards used in their DSLR cameras.

Another small gift recommendation in the past has been USB cables. I now have a huge supply of them but find myself lacking HDMI cables. HDMI cables are not that expensive and I would definitely appreciate having a few extras.

Hopefully your Christmas shopping is done and this list is useless. If not, I hope I have given one or two good ideas to choose from. Merry Christmas.