My Latest YouTube Video

It has been a little over 2 years since I have started publishing YouTube videos in earnest. During that time I have learned a lot. Sometimes you post a video that you think will be popular only to get a handful of views. Then you publish something and it surprises you with the number of people watching it. I suppose after a bit of experience you can guess at what people want to view and may even be right.

I just published my latest YouTube video and I knew it would be popular, which is why I made it. My most popular video is of the Top 5 Steepest Ski Areas in North America. I actually threw in a ski area that deserved to be on the list but one that I expected to remove when I skied someplace with steeper terrain. Unfortunately I didn't find such a place until this year. I quickly put together a new video and published it on Tuesday. Since then I have watched the video's popularity grow and am pleased with the response. I hope that the new content receives as many views as the original which has been played over 100,000 times.

Now the real question is how to drive more traffic to my channel without constantly putting out new versions of the same video? I can go back through and look at my short films in order of popularity and work on a revision of the second most popular one, which is something I am doing. Ideally I need to come up with new content that is equally as compelling to watch as my most popular video. That is tough to do. If it was easy, we would have a lot more original content out of Hollywood and not nearly as many sequels. Fortunately I have found that controversial topics generate a lot more views than safe ones. Let's see if I can come up with such a topic.

Access to All Knowledge

A couple of nights ago I enjoyed a chat with my oldest daughter. The topic of Ivy-League schools came up and we tried to remember which schools belong to it. Then my daughter mentioned that I told her the name came from the Roman numeral 4 (IV) and represented the original number of schools. I didn't remember saying anything about that, but I could have. Naturally I pulled out my phone and looked up the information. Thanks to Wikipedia we discovered that the Ivy League started with 8 schools, not 4 and that it is an often quoted rumor. In the end we both felt enlightened knowing which schools are part of the Ivy League and that the name really does refer to the plant growing on and around the buildings on campus.

My dad works in advertising and often says not to ruin a good story by sticking too close to the truth. Unfortunately with everyone having access to the world's combined knowledge in a pocket device, it is more important not to stray too far from the truth. For instance, I remember hearing that my last name is the 6th most common in the United States. I made the comment, someone looked it up, and informed me it is the 60th most common last name. Okay, I knew there was a 6 in it but I was off by a factor of 10.

This evening my wife needed to know if her ski pass would work at a neighboring ski area. She looked it up and after a bit of searching confirmed what I told her. It does work and she doesn't need to do anything other than let the RFID scanner in the lift line scan her pass. Now she knows she doesn't have to do anything special to ski there tomorrow when she goes up with a neighbor friend. Why she didn't trust me and felt the need to look up the information, I don't know. I'm hardly ever wrong (see the previous paragraph for an exception).

I Miss My Sunday Paper

I came home this afternoon and saw my wife lying down on the couch reading some mail that we received during the week. It reminded me that I no longer receive a Sunday newspaper. I miss the Sunday paper.

I suppose I could replace a tree-killing paper with a virtual one using my Kindle e-reader. I just looked at the website that replaced my local paper and it has all of the news stories I would usually read when I received a printed newspaper. Truth be told, I actually read the comics first. I lamented this same problem about 3 years ago in a similarly titled entry. Back then, I found a website that lists most of the comic strips available. Unfortunately I have not kept up with my favorite cartoons as that requires more work than opening the door and finding new reading material on the front porch waiting for me to read. Perhaps it is a habit I just need to make.

Another thing I miss is a trusted source of information. Often times people get news from social media sites and the information is not always factual. You'll hear rumors of solving various maladies with snake-oil tactics such as consuming the latest nutraceutical, which has not be tested by the medical field in any way, shape, or form. You may even base your political opinion on events that never happened. At least with a reputable newspaper, facts are checked and editors don't let stories run unless they are confident in the content. That is a far cry from Facebook and other social media sites.

This probably won't be my last post lamenting the loss of printed newspapers. I really just need to make it a habit to read the daily news on my e-reader. I guess it is time to go bookmark that comic-strip page.

If It Is Not Broke

There are several ways to finish the title of today's post that begins with, "If it is not broke . . ." Some will respond with, "Then don't fix it," while others will say, "Then break it." Both are valid continuations of the phrase. Use the first if you are trying to avoid creating more work for yourself and the second if you are looking to improve something. The trick is knowing which philosophy to subscribe to for a given situation.

When it comes to computers, you may often feel you don't need to create more work for yourself. You know how to use your specific program and how to get it to do what you want. Then the only time you need to fix something is when it actually breaks. The only downside is that there may be a better way and you just don't know it.

As you spend time on your phone, tablet, video game console, or computer, think about how long it takes you to do a specific task. Things like responding to an e-mail or looking something up on the Internet should not take more than a single step. If you go to look something up on the Internet and first go to Google, you are adding an extra step. Simply start typing keywords into the URL bar and your browser will perform the search for you. If you are working in a specific program and find yourself spending a large amount of time on a single task, do an Internet search and see if it can be streamlined.

Unfortunately there are a number of cases where the designers of software want you to jump through hoops and there is no way to speed up the process. Recently my wife was working through a State of Utah application to get help for her aging mother. First she had to fill out a 25-page application online. Then she had to print out said application and initial or sign each page. Then she had to scan each page and attach it to the original application. Talk about a hassle. How many 82 year-old women do you know that have the technical skill to do that? Fortunately my wife filled out the application and submitted it successfully. Now I just wish the State of Utah would figure out they have a problem and fix it. Right now, it is definitely broke.

Happy Leap Day!

Today is unique in that February 29th only comes around once every 4 years. While you don't really get an extra day to get stuff done, it is a fairly unique day and so you want to do something special to mark it. Writing in my blog is always nice but something I have done before. As I mentioned yesterday, I am working on my taxes and think it would be great to have a filing date of February 29th and so that is my goal this evening. I am almost done and so it is a real possibility.

So what unique thing are you going to do with this extra day in the calendar? Hopefully something worthwhile and memorable.

Taxes Made Easier

It is tax time again and I have started working on mine. One benefit of using software like TurboTax to help as you file your taxes every year is the ability to import data. Starting your taxes is a matter of loading information from the previous year and then you don't have to re-enter data that doesn't change very often like your address and dependents. You only need to review it.

This year I have made an effort to do as much auto importing of data as possible. W2 information is readily available and I have used that in the past. This year I have gone one step further and auto imported my stock brokerage data. Once I figured out the secret of having the tax program log into my account, it greatly simplified that section of my taxes. The secret is knowing your account number and reading the directions provided by the tax program to have it log in correctly. Don't worry, you don't have to provide your password.

One area where this failed is when I tried to auto import one of my interest statements sent from a bank. The amount is less than $25 as banks don't really pay much interest any more. I tried several times to find a 24-digit number listed at the bottom of the 1099-INT form only to get an error when I entered it. In the end I gave up and entered the bank name and amount. I should have done that first as the bank name and amount came to less than 24 characters.

I still have a few more nights of working on my taxes as I go through my spending to try and find all of my charitable contributions and possible deductions. As of now that may be a waste of time as the standard deduction is more than my itemized ones. Unfortunately I won't know until I enter all of the numbers. Last year it paid to itemize. If it doesn't this year, I may skip that step next year.

The major lesson I am learning this year is to take advantage of importing as much information as possible. That reduces the probability of typing mistakes and ensures I am not going to be audited, something I have yet to experience and never want to. Hopefully this post encourages you to try something new that helps streamline this painful and annual process.

Map Directions on My Phone

Last week I spent 3 days in San Diego for work. I am fairly familiar with the area but still needed directions to find the quickest way from the airport to my company's office. I loaded the directions onto my phone before leaving the rental car lot. I drove straight to the office and arrived 30 minutes before my first scheduled meeting. The system worked well.

There is one unfortunate drawback to using your phone to help navigate. We become lazy and overly reliant on our mobile phones to help us get around. Once I made it to my office, I tried not to use any smartphone directions for the remainder of the trip. That required that I try to remember other locations in the area. I had a rough idea of where my hotel should be. Instead of looking up turn-by-turn directions, I drove to where I thought it would be and found it without any difficulty. When it came time to go to restaurants in the area, I found excellent places close to the office or near my hotel. One night a group of us walked from our different hotels and met without the need to drive around.

When I first started renting cars long before smartphones existed, I would get a paper map from the rental car company and use that to get around. Now we have a much better solution but I wonder how many people rely on smartphone navigation when they should be able to trust their own sense of direction. If you are brave and feel you have good navigational skills, trust your instincts and see if you can't enjoy the scenery more.

Writing Your First Computer Program

I have someone that I am working with and we need to write a complex computer program. We have settled on Python as the computer language and we get together frequently to work on the code together. While I have done some programming using Python, I am by no means an expert. Basically I know enough to be dangerous.

If I had 30 years slashed from my age and just started writing software, I would start with Python as it is such a good language to do a lot with using a minimal amount of code. That makes the programs easy to write and easy to understand. The only problem is that there are quite a few libraries to learn. Without the help of the Internet to help you look up possible solutions, doing anything useful in Python might not be so simple.

My coworker and I have a rather complex problem we are trying to solve but have broken it down into very simple pieces. The first thing we want to do is take an e-mail address and modify it. It didn't take that long to write the code. Next we expanded our problem so that we passed in multiple e-mail addresses and did the same modification to all of them. Then we worked on saving the results into a database. We have continued adding pieces to our code to ultimately get the program we need.

Our code writing is an iterative approach. We focus on one task and make sure the task is completed as designed before moving onto the next item. When we got the code modifying e-mail addresses and writing them into the database, my coworker felt a huge sense of accomplishment and thought we could be done. Today I reminded him that there are still a few more steps we need to do before we can say we have completed everything.

Should you decide to give coding a try. Here are these simple steps put into an easy-to-follow outline:

1. Write down what you want your program to do. This is often called a specification or spec.
2. Break the task down into very small steps.
3. Write the code for each step in the process and test it to make sure it works before moving to the next step.
4. When you think you are done, go back to your specification to make sure you have completed what you said you would.

Interestingly enough, these are the same steps to follow in trying to accomplish any goal you have. They work for more than just writing computer software.

Internet on the Move

Last week I had an important meeting I needed to take fairly early in the day. Normally I like to exercise before work and so I headed to my gym and made sure to bring my computer. Rather than rush home to make the meeting, I just joined from the gym. I thought they had Internet access but that turned out to be wrong. No worries, I just used the Internet connection from my phone and turned on "Personal Hotspot." While I had plenty of signal strength, I could see the video but not hear the audio. The easy fix meant using the phone portion of my smartphone and calling in manually to the meeting. It could have been more elegant but worked.

Before heading to the gym, I felt sure it had Internet access and surprised me that it didn't. Fortunately I didn't really need to participate in the meeting, just listen. Now I know that I should not plan on taking early-morning meetings in the gym. I had been tempted to take other more important meetings from where I exercise every morning and am now glad I haven't.

Then yesterday I got an e-mail about Starlink. It is Internet service provided by Elon Musk's SpaceX. Basically you buy the hardware for around $600 and pay a monthly service fee of around $120 to have a fixed Internet connection almost anywhere on land around the world. That is a bit more than I am paying for my current provider and so I am not going to change services any time soon. They do have other options though.

I have often thought about getting a camper and going out on the road with my wife. We could visit national parks across the country and Starlink has a service for that. You pay the same for the hardware but up your monthly commitment to $150 but can roam anywhere your camper will take you. It would allow me to continue working full time yet be able to spend my evenings sightseeing.

I have also thought about getting a bigger sailboat and heading out on the ocean. This is where Starlink has potential that isn't quite realized. First your hardware costs jump to $2,500 and your monthly service fee jumps to $250 per month. They also don't have service all the way to Hawaii. If all you plan to do is stay close to land, Starlink has you covered. It is those longer journeys where you may have to rely on other more expensive solutions.

Yes there are quite a few options for those looking for Internet connectivity on the move. Fortunately I don't need anything too complicated right now but it is nice to know what my options are.

Mac: App is Damaged and How to Fix

It has been a long time since I have updated the software on my Suunto Baro 9 watch and so I figured I would do it last night. Something that should have taken only a minute or two took over an hour of troubleshooting thanks to lies my Mac told me. Fortunately I figured out what I needed to do. Hopefully this post helps someone else. More than likely I will use it myself for a similar problem or the next time I need to update my watch.

Suunto created a software application that you can run on either your Mac or Windows computer. Rather than go through the hoops Apple requires to put it on their App Store, you can download it from Suunto's own website. The downside to that is Apple wants to protect you from malicious software and doesn't want you to run any software they have not reviewed. Instead of telling you that, you get an error when you try to run any program not downloaded from the App Store. The error says:

Suuntolink is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the trash. 

That is an outright lie and Apple should be ashamed of themselves for such a poor indication of what is wrong. Instead it should read:

Suuntolink was downloaded from the Internet and we don't trust that it doesn't have a virus so we are not going to let you run it.

At least then the user would know what the real problem is and be able to find a solution. Then to compound problems, the solution provided on Apple's support site does not provide correct instructions on how to run the program. Should you run into this problem or a similar one on your Mac computer, here are the instructions on how to get it working.

First you will need to open a terminal. You would think you could find a program called "Terminal" in the Applications directory but it is found in the Utilities directory that sits in the Applications directory. If you are not used to the command-line interface (CLI) on the Mac, this is where you find it.

Next you will need to go to the Applications directory in the Terminal program. This is as easy as running the following command:

cd /Applications

Next you will need to run the "xattr" command to clear all of the extra attributes that the MacOS assigns to programs and files on your computer. When you downloaded the Suuntolink application, the operating system decided it didn't like it and assigned certain attributes to keep you from running it. To clear all of those extra attributes run the following command:

xattr -c Suuntolink.app

Now if you are using the latest version of MacOS, which is Sonoma as of the time of this post, you may get an error saying "Operation not permitted: 'Suuntolink.app'." You will also see a dialog appear on the upper right of your screen saying something along the lines of "Terminal is trying to change the attributes of an application and doesn't have permissions to do so." Fortunately there will be a drop-down list that will allow you to change that. It will open the Privacy and Security control panel and allow you to change permissions for the Terminal program. You will have to run the previous command again and it should work fine with no acknowledgement that it worked other than not printing an error message.

You should now be able to double-click on the Suuntolink program in your Applications directory and run it without any difficulty. If it still doesn't run without giving you an error message, right-click on the Suuntolink icon and select the "Open" option. If your mouse only has a single button, then just hold down the Control (often abbreviated as CTRL) key and click on the icon.

It took me an hour to figure this all out last night and so I hope these instructions help you should you run into a similar problem. While I am tempted to say that Apple is to blame, the reality is that they have your best interest at heart. They really don't want you running a program that contains a Trojan Horse or Virus and so this is a safety feature. I would not use these steps on any program you do not trust absolutely. Otherwise you could really screw up your Mac.

My Latest Useful 3D Pring

I like to keep a box of tissues in my truck as it comes in very handy after a busy day skiing. Whenever I am done, it feels good to blow my nose as the cold temperatures makes for a runny one. Unfortunately I don't have a great place to store the tissues. I thought about putting Velcro or hook-and-loop fasteners to the bottom of the box and placing it on the carpet floor between the 2 front seats. My wife thought it a bad idea as it would mean replacing the Velcro for each new box. This is a great use for my 3D printer.

I decided I could print a tray that firmly holds the box of tissues and then put the Velcro on the bottom of the tray. The first thing I did was measure the box of tissues I keep in the truck. I took the measurements in millimeters as that is the unit of measure my drawing program expects. Then I went to TinkerCAD.com and drew a hollow box inside a solid one. I made the walls 5mm thick and about an inch high. Then I ran it through the 3D printer software to slice the design into commands for my 3D printer. Next I transferred the GCODE file to my printer on a small SD card and started printing.

The printer said it would take about 23 hours and so I went to bed. In the morning I woke up and checked on my print. I immediately stopped it when I discovered a mistake. I made the floor of my tray about an inch thick. That is way too thick for what I wanted. I also discovered I made the tray a hair too small. I modified my design in TinkerCAD and re-sliced it. Then I started printing it again. The new print only needed 17 hours and so I let it go making sure to check on it throughout the process.

The finished tray looked fabulous. Then I encountered my next problem. The tray stuck to the bed of my 3D printer and it took Herculean effort to get it off. Finally I got it separated and got some Velcro to stick to the bottom. Then I put it in the truck only to discover one final problem. The latest Velcro does not stick to automotive floor carpet. At least not the stuff in my truck. I need to find some of the cheap-no-name-brand stuff and that should work well. Right now there is enough friction to keep the tray from sliding around too much but I want to make sure it is firmly attached and won't slide around as I go around sharp corners.

I talked to my youngest son who also has a 3D printer and we discussed how to modify the design of the tray so it will be easier to remove from my print bed. We have some ideas but right now the tray is working perfectly, as designed. Once I put the correct hook-and-loop fastener on the bottom, it will be finished and I don't need to print another one.

Practice makes perfect and there are a lot of little lessons you will never learn unless you play around with the tool you are using. This story is a great example of that.

A Dedicated E-Reader

One of my Christmas gifts from my wife was a Kindle Fire or E-Reader. It is something I wanted and appreciate her getting it for me. On Monday I headed to California and used it instead of bringing a number of books and other reading material. I have to say that I really appreciated having a small electronic book. Had I brought paper copies, I would have added a lot of weight.

My wife and I are preparing to hike Mt. Rainier in July and the recommended training guide can be found in a book called "Training for the Uphill Athlete." My wife purchased the Kindle version of the book and because our Amazon accounts are linked, I also have access to it. It is a rather hefty book and I am glad I didn't have to carry the paper copy. I started reading the book while waiting to depart Salt Lake and made great progress before even getting on my flight. I continued reading while headed to Los Angeles. Then I read on the way back home. I am now about half way through and have enjoyed the experience.

While in Los Angeles I had some other personal reading that I like to do at breakfast. I brought my e-reader to the hotel buffet and enjoyed a leisurely pace while I ate and read. I liked not having to carry a second book with me.

Now there is a problem with using an e-reader before bed. The Kindle Fire is really a small Android tablet and I am concerned about blue light keeping me up and making it difficult to sleep. While reading on the flight home, the screen seemed to almost have an e-paper look to it. This leads me to believe that the device shouldn't keep me up any more than reading a book. I will have to do some more testing though.

I feel like I had a successful first trip with my Kindle and look forward to using it more often. Any time you can cut down on the stuff you need to bring on a trip, you should. I always try to carry just a small computer bag and a small backpack. If I could condense everything down to a single bag, I would. The Kindle is a small step towards that direction.

Fixing E-mail SPAM Filters

One of the new benefits from my company I am receiving this year is identity protection. I received an e-mail from our service and it had all sorts of warnings on it that indicated the message originated outside of my company's network. Before setting up the service, I had to review my benefits to make sure it came from the company actually providing the service. Our IT department loves to test our Phishing skills and sends us bogus e-mails about once a month. When we flag it as a Phishing e-mail we are told if the e-mail really is a test. Once I verified the valid e-mail message, I logged in and set up my account.

Our identity protection company suggested using a personal e-mail address. They then asked to verify it. I did and they sent a message with an 8-digit number they wanted me to enter into their website. When the message didn't arrive quickly I looked at my SPAM filter which didn't have the message either. While I waited for the verification code to arrive, I investigated my SPAM filter settings. I don't know why I have not done that before.

Whenever I go through my SPAM report and see an e-mail that should have made it to my inbox, I click the "Allow" button. I assumed this would allow all e-mails from that sender through. When I checked my filters, I had a number from the same companies but with different senders. I didn't realize that companies changed the senders based on the message being sent. While I would have loved getting a message from anyone at Disney.com, the sender looked like:

123abc@disney.com

Furthermore, there were a number of subdomains like:

456def@email.disney.com

What I really want is to receive everything from any part of Disney. In order to do that I had to go into my SPAM filter settings and created rules for "Allowed Domains" and not just "Allowed Senders". I went through all 57 allowed-senders rules and converted them to allowed-domains rules. Then I went back and deleted the duplicated rules in allowed-senders.

I have been spending several minutes a day going through the message subjects of the e-mails caught in my SPAM folder because no matter what I tried, I couldn't figure out why clicking the "Allow" button wasn't allowing all messages from particular companies through. Now I know why and will be proactive in making sure I create the correct rules. In the future, I hope to not have to spend any time reviewing my SPAM messages.