Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
– They’re tagged with #Zentech.
– When what’s said is unclear to me (or I’m unfamiliar with a topic) I tend to quote (” “) verbatim.
– Editor’s comments are delimited by < >

For a couple of months, the audio of today’s show is here. Recent shows are here.

The intro & outro music was by Pentatonix.

Glenn was in the studio today. Paul was on the road and didn’t get a chance to call in. Glenn spent some time trying to contact Paul so the notes are a little light today.

Glenn thanked those who are part of KVMR. <If you’d like to become a contributing member, you can call the business office at 530-265-9073 or go to kvmr.org>

He also invited listeners to call in with their questions and comments at 530-265-9555 or email the guys at zen at kvmr dot org.

On Tue April 17 at 5:30 to 7:30 Paul will be the key speaker at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Church Street in Grass Valley. “It will be a talk on the current Facebook Cambridge Analytica Gold Country UNA USA”.

Version 11.3 of the Apple IOS operating system has been released. Glenn has already installed it on both his iPhone and iPad, but he’s encountered a problem. On many websites and apps it no longer automatically enters his username and password. He hasn’t yet found a solution and asked listeners to call in if anyone has found the answer.

Marilyn called about changing oil in her 1972 vehicle. She has always used 20-50 oil but has been told that 30 weight would work fine. She wanted to know if it’s ok to mix viscosities.

Glenn was a bit hesitant in his reply but said that if it has “always called for that” (the 20-50), it would probably be best to stick with that. And as for mixing the 2 viscosities, he didn’t think that would be a problem if you do a full oil change — drain the old oil & change the filter.

She also a 2-stroke engine in a piece of garden equipment that uses a gas & oil mixture of 50:1. She found out that the oil was bad but was told that instead of throwing it out, she could use it in her car. Glenn didn’t think that would be smart. It would likely cause a smoky exhaust and the oil might not be good for the gas lines, he said, and suggested she give it to a neighbor with similar equipment. She noted again that the oil went bad, so that would be out of the question.

Dave “Buzz” Barnett, the KVMR engineer, came into the studio to add to the conversation. He too didn’t think it was a good idea to put it in a car and suggested putting it a lawn mower, but not at “full mixture”. For a gallon of lawn mower gas “put a pint of the oil mixed in” and “it will burn up..it will get rid of what you need to get rid of”. He said the lawn mower typically has a 4-cycle engine and it’s more forgiving than putting the stuff in a car. He also concurred with Glenn that she should stick with the 20-50 oil in her car.

Scott called from Southern California. He agreed with Dave. He has kept oil around for a long time and never had it go bad.

He also thought she should stick with the 20-50 oil. The “clearances start open up a bit” as an older vehicle puts on a lot of miles and a higher viscosity oil helps keep the oil pressure up.

Glenn brought up a problem Marilyn was having in the past in trying to open .pdf documents. She had the default set to TWINUI which, he thought, has to do with scanning. He said that to handle such a problem, hover your mouse over the file you’d like to open and right-click on it -> click on ‘Open With’ and you’ll be shown various apps that can open the file. At this point choose the app you want to be the default program that will be used to open that particular file type. In the future, that will be the program that’s launched whenever you double click on the particular file type (.pdf).

Gary called. He has old iPhone 5C and has never upgraded the operating system because he’s heard people complaining about problems they’ve had after upgrading. He wondered if he too would have such problems. Glenn replied…
– Yes, it will make a significant change in how you use the phone”. “Every major update has caused something new or different and in some cases actually caused older things not to work”
– He’ll probably have to upgrade by stepping upward thru the version numbers.
– Looking it up, Glenn read an article from last June saying that IOS 11 update ends support for the iPhone 5 and 5C. They will no longer receive software or security updates.
– Not updating a phone means it could be subject to security issues.
– The most recent update you can get for the 5C is IOS 10.
– If you haven’t had security issues, it might be best just to leave it the way it is.

Gary wanted to know how find what version of the OS he has. Glenn said to go to Setting -> General -> About -> Version. Gary found he has version 9.2.1.

Gary said he’s considering just getting the model SE. It has the same smaller size as the 5C and has all the bell & whistles. It’s still being sold new with technical support and the price is not too bad. Glenn thought that it may be a good way to go. He said to back it <the 5C, I guess> up on your computer using iTunes. Then you “can synch the new phone from iTunes, once you get it started and set up”.

A listener Paul called. He has an old iPod he’d like to donate, maybe to some senior citizen. He first wants to save the music from it to his computer.
– Connect the iPod to the computer. If iTunes doesn’t automatically start, then open it manually. You should then see what’s on the iPod and be able to tell it to “back up the music into iTunes”.
– Glenn thought he should then be able to move the music to other devices by using iTunes, but he wasn’t sure.
– On second thought, Glenn said to hold off and check the show notes in the next couple of days, Paul might have some suggestions. <Check some Apple forums or discussion groups for advice.> Or check back in 2 weeks for a more definitive answer.

Paul wanted to make his donation before some program expires. <Supposedly Glenn mentioned some program earlier in the hour that I didn’t hear — probably in when he read the calendar of events.> Glenn replied that “the collection continues thru Sat April 14” and suggested Paul email the guys (zen at kvmr dot org) to get a quicker answer. More info about the donation program can be found at tuneswork.org. It’s Music And Memory, an organization for people with Alzheimer’s or dementia. Donation sites are KVMR, Center For The Arts, Clock Tower Records, The Wooden Spoon and in Auburn it’s Cherry Records.

Steve called. He wanted to know the difference between an image and a backup. Trying to keep it simple, Glenn said and ‘image’ “takes a picture of the hard drive and duplicates it”. Typically that will involve another hard drive of the same size. In the past it’s been used to clone a drive so you can put a new drive into your computer, which generally doesn’t work if your operating system is on it.

With a backup you can choose what you want to back up and where. It’s recommended having target drive that’s twice (or more) the size of the drive you’re backing up.

Steve wants to back up a program he’s been using. But Glenn said backing up doesn’t work for programs, they need to be reinstalled. Steve doesn’t have the original disks for the program. So Glenn told him to call the company that created the program and ask how to install it on a new computer. Also, you can do a web search for an older program. You might be able to get it cheaply.

Last Updated 10:53 PM 4-11-2018

Busted Technology– where to start?!?
I love HIREN BOOT CD Described Here and
what’s on it
download it here and More Info about Fake Download Links etc.

Cambridge Analytica and you- FB Data Breakout!
Happy Birthday Viagra!

PodCasts, Flash and Old KVMR Radio Shows 

BitCoin, BlockChain Should I Shouldn’t I?!

is it a Currency or a security What is it so we can regulate it!

Car Battery Charging.. what’s the dealy?! (PDF)

Learning JQUERY for Web Pages Clever Demo Here

Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
– They’re tagged with #Zentech.
– When what’s said is unclear to me (or I’m unfamiliar with a topic) I tend to quote (” “) verbatim.
– Editor’s comments are delimited by < >

For a couple of months, the audio of today’s show is here. Recent shows are here.>

The intro & outro music was by Pentatonix.

Both Paul and Glenn were in the studio today.

Glenn reminded listeners that backups are critical to mitigate failure of hard drives. Paul added that it’s important to test your backups by trying to restore the data.

Paul mentioned things from the past that assisted the visually impaired. He noted that webpages are much more readable than they used to be by complying with the ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act). He recalled the software “Jaws”, which is a screen reader. But it had a bug that made it repeatedly read any flashing text that it encountered.

There also was a device that was basically a camera on a tripod. It would read whatever you put under it, like a book. Then it would perform optical character recognition and read it to you.

Glenn told us about an app, whose name he couldn’t recall, for the visually impaired that will read the ingredients on food labels. And that reminded Paul of the time he used Google Translate to read the instructions for a front door security alarm he got from China. It was all in Chinese, not a word of English, and though the translation was a bit funky, it was surprisingly successful.

Paul talked a bit about trouble shooting computers. His first step is to be sure the hardware is ok before diagnosing the software. So, how does one test the hardware?

The underlying hardware of PCs & Macs is now more similar than it ever was. They both use Intel CPUs and the PCs can also use the AMD CPUs. They have the same kind of memory and same peripheral ports: PCI & PCI Express.

The free Linux based Hiren Boot CD is a piece of software that comes on a bootable CD for diagnosing both a PC and Mac. <see link above> It bypasses the operating system and doesn’t touch the software on your computer. It tests such things as memory, hard drive, temperature sensors, the bus, camera, internet connections, wi-fi interface, etc.

It has 300 to 400 utilities among which is one to recover your password. If you forgot the password to your Windows machine, it can look at the hard drive that contains Windows and reset the password. Paul’s favorite test is the hard drive SMART test, which performs a detailed diagnostic of your hard drive. Paul advised googling the test results from Hiren to get more details on what it found.

It’s such a sought after program that you should be wary of websites that you might find in searching for it. There are many pretenders that are up to no good. Use the link above.

Paul has been trying to change the way files as big as 50 or 60 megs are uploaded to <downloaded from> KVMR’s website called Podhawk. When Podhawk was installed in 2010, “Flash was the way to go”. But the tech industry is trending away from using Flash and many people have disabled it on their machines. So Paul has begun educating himself in using Jquery, <see link above> which is a library <of helpful code> that makes using Javascipt easier. The goal is to use a different method of file transfer.

In talking about transferring audio files, Paul mentioned audio.kvmr.org where, under the item called ‘archive’, there are KVMR shows that go back more than 10 years. You can play them directly or download. Assembling this archive is what led Paul to study Jquery. Right after the Jquery link above is a demo site that shows how it works.

The guys talked about Cambridge Analytica and how it acquired information on millions of Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica offered money to Facebook users if they allowed the Analytica app access to their profiles. It then went further and gathered info about all of the ‘friends’ of the initial user. Paul said he keeps changing the info in his profile to something that’s bogus — “just because a site asks you questions, doesn’t mean you need to tell them the truth”.
<How Calls for Privacy May Upend Business for Facebook and Google>

Glenn said he recently used the new iteration of Whatsapp on the iPhone. When he tries to ‘call’ using the handset & + icon in the upper right, where you put in the phone number, it says “New call. Whatsapp doesn’t have access to your contacts. Whatsapp needs access to your iPhone’s contacts to connect to other people on Whatsapp. To enable access, tap settings and turn on contacts”. Glenn has never given Whatsapp access to the contacts, but this latest version won’t work unless he does. <He didn’t say if he’ll continue using it>.

For over 10 years European law has entitled users to get all of the information a site has about them. Facebook has feature that lets you download all the data they have about you. It’s useful if you’ve lost photos that you put up on Facebook. And as a side effect, you get to find out all they know about you, not just what you’ve told them, Paul said. Someone found that by giving their phone number, the app had been able to access all their call records. Paul said that though he uses Facebook he doesn’t trust it.

Don called with a caution for Facebook users. He said just by using Facebook you implicitly trust them even though you think you don’t. You don’t know what their code does. Even if they ask permission for access to your phone number, you don’t know if they scrape all your information anyway, no matter whether you granted permission. Don thought it’s a good idea to move to a different platform that has better morals.

Marilyn called. She wanted to know that if you use your laptop at a public wi-fi, can your internet usage be associated with your laptop or only the wi-fi provider? Paul said that the IP address can be “traced to wherever it came from. If you’re at a Starbucks in Roseville, it’s traceable if somebody plugged in a computer there and the odds are very high, because of the use of cookies and so forth, that the next time you take that laptop and plunk it down somewhere else, they know where you are for a second time. And because of the use of cookies and so forth, they can then link together where the computer was with who the user was. So the answer is yes”.

Additionally, the Firefox and Chrome browsers have the incognito mode, which won’t send or receive cookies, supposedly. It’s not the same as being anonymous — you become “largely unknown, not completely unknown”.

She also asked if there’s a way to block incoming junk phone calls. Paul said, “if you have every contact that you know in there and the number comes up and it’s not somebody you know, it’s probably junk”. When you get a call from someone in your contact list, their name will be displayed. If no name shows up, it likely junk.

Marilyn realized she didn’t ask the right question. She meant to ask about junk text (txt) messages. Paul said he didn’t know a way to block spam text messages though there is software to block text from a particular sender.

Paul went on to say there is a way to block unsolicited phone calls. Some systems, including the one he uses called Voip.ms, “will require that when the phone rings and you pick it up that you press 1 to receive the call. So what will happen is that if it rings and rings and rings and then goes dead, the automated system on the other end didn’t know to press 1. It tells the CALLER ‘you must press 1 to continue'”.

She also said that she has suddenly been getting tons of spam email, she got very little before. Paul suggested she get a Gmail address. She said she’s using an old version of Outlook (from 2000) and Paul said it can’t be used with Gmail, she’ll have to get a later version. But that won’t solve the spam problem. Gmail, on the other hand, handles spam on their servers, she won’t be able to do anything about it on her home computer.

Paul said he’d like to do a special show about cryptocurrency (Bitcoin and blockchain) and bring in “our money guy” to explain.

Last Updated 8:10 PM 3-29-2018

Steven Hawking no longer with us : (

How good is “Captcha” at stopping Rogue log-ins to any site(s)?!
V1 Captcha Shut Down…(reading road-signs and street names)
V2 Long Live That! Solve some Puzzles and Google will Remember you are NOT a Robot!
(Thanks for your patience, Alex!)

Air Gapped Security? Wazzat?
EternalBlue- the Exploit. Wazzat?!
WannaCry Ransomeware- SMB Defect & WinXP
CryptoMining Viruses and JavaScript, Etc.

Old IMac Linux– Whooppeee!
CALIBRE– Ebook Read/Convert:

WordPress: a Stable set of Plugins..
Google ReCaptha by BestWebSoft.. etc.
Yoast..

Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
– They’re tagged with #Zentech.
– When what’s said is unclear to me (or I’m unfamiliar with a topic) I tend to quote (” “) verbatim.
– Editor’s comments are delimited by < >

For a couple of months, the audio of today’s show is here. Recent shows are here.

Both Glenn and Paul were in the studio today.

It was a rainy day in Nevada City and Glenn reminded those who were driving to turn on their headlights. If the windshield wipers are on, a California State law requires the headlights be on too. Daytime running lights don’t count.

Students were in the studio today. 24 of them from a combined 5th & 6th grade class were there to see how a radio station worked. Katie came to the mic to read the station ID and others were briefly interviewed. Hudson was impressed by the CD collection. Glenn said that the CDs were being digitized for easier access to the music, eliminating the need to handle the discs.

Glenn said there are KVMR apps for both Android & iPhone. You should be able to find the links to them on the front page at kvmr.org.
<The link to the Android app makes it a bit difficult to find. I found it more directly by going here>

Next it was Aden who came to the mic. He noticed the abundance of rooms at the station. Glenn said the studio doors are usually open during the Zen Tech broadcast to make it seem more inviting and to capture the ambient sounds (as long as they’re not too loud).

Lastly, it was Persephone who took a turn at the mic. Her interest in radio stations centered on listening to county music

Glenn reminded listeners that they can listen to this show again at archives.kvmr.org.

There have been changes to the Zen Tech website as well as the KVMR site. The Zen Tech website and KVMR now use secure certificates to keep the traffic between your computer and the website from being intercepted.

Also, when you login to the Zen Tech site, you have to prove you’re not a robot by completing the captcha challenge. This feature is provided by Google and has changed recently, version 1 is no longer available. You now have to use version 2, which involves identifying objects in photographs. You have to click on all photos that have cars in them, for instance. With this version of the captcha it’s hard to know if you’ve clicked the right photos and it keeps sending you more photos to identify. <I hate it, and it’s the reason I was so late in posting the last show notes. It may not be the last time that happens.>

Paul went on to say that once you pass the captcha test, a cookie is set on your computer, which is then valid on other websites that use version 2 to let you pass thru without the hassle of the captcha. He said that’s the reason they made it so hard. If you think you’re solving the captcha wrong, chances are it’s ok and that the system is just putting you thru the paces.

The captcha system Paul uses for the Zen Tech site is a plugin for WordPress, which runs the site. The plugin is called Google Recaptcha by BestWebSoft. There are several captcha systems he could have chosen and one of the things that helps him decide is how many time has it been downloaded. He’ll favor the plugin that’s been downloaded most often. Obviously, he also checks for compatibility for the version of WordPress he’s using — there were several in the last few months.

Paul started to talk about compiling site maps “so that Google will know where our site was”. The popular pluging for that is ‘Yoast’. It’s free and it analyzes the site to see how palatable it is for search engines like Google. It sounded like he didn’t say all that he wanted when he suddenly changed the subject to thanking supporters of KVMR.

Glenn continued by thanking the contributors and underwriters and he thanked the members who support KVMR thru their donations. <If you’d like to become a member, you can call the station at 530-265-9073 or go to kvmr.org>

The guys noted the passing of Stephen Hawking, a famous mathematical physicist.
<A brief history of Stephen Hawking’s discoveries.
Stephen Hawking: pop culture icon>

Glenn has been educating himself in using Word and Excel recently. He said there’s a lot more to Excel than just spreadsheets. One of his projects is creating name badges. He found that the border color can change depending on what is entered in certain fields. He was using the 2013 version of Excel but thought that earlier versions might be capable of the same thing.

Paul mentioned the possibility of getting malicious code when someone gives you a Word <or Excel> document. The document may have macros (mini programs), which enhance the functionality but can be made to do strange things. Your Excel application should warn you that there are macros in the document you’re about to open, and ask you if the macros are to be executed.

The macros are in English and Paul said you can look thru them to see if the words like ‘delete’ are present or a website is mentioned, which might hint at something malicious. Glenn said the main Excel file has the extension .xlsx and the macro files are .xlsm. Otherwise, just be aware where you get your document and what it’s supposed to be doing.

A long time ago there was defect in Windows that would allow code to be executed if you clicked on a .gif file — “the picture viewer could be tricked into overrunning the code.” The .gif picture file could be longer than what it was meant to be and code could be stuck on the end, which would then cause what was called “arbitrary code execution”. Adobe .pdf files have had a similar problem. And the worst of all have been .swf, Shock Wave Flash files, which exploit defects in the Flash player.

Next, Paul talked about crytocurrency viruses. A lot of computer processing is needed to manage cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. So someone came up with the idea of using the computers you or I have to help out — to distribute the processing out to the computers on the internet. The virus will use your computer’s spare time to do a small fraction of the processing that would otherwise require a huge array of computers. Paul reasoned that it shouldn’t use more then 50% of your computer’s time, otherwise you’ll suspect something’s going on.

Paul found out how such a virus can get on your computer. It appears that some Windows machines still have a flaw despite all of the recent patching. The flaw is called Eternal Blue that exists in the “networking stack”. It was first developed by the NSA and is now used by the cryptocurrency miners and also by the ransomware Wannacry virus.

Microsoft came out with a patch for Eternal Blue. If you have Windows XP and are keeping it off the internet for security reasons, you can download the patch to a flash drive and then plug the flash drive into the XP machine to update it. You should also have an updated anti-virus program to protect it from compromised flash drives.
<Further info from Microsoft.>

Glenn invited to call with their questions and comments at 530-265-9555. And they can send email to zen at kvmr dot org.

Paul has a Kindle app for his Android tablet for reading books and such. And though it can read .pdf files, it’s pretty rudimentary. So he discovered a free app called Calibre, which is an ebook reader and converter that runs on a PC or Mac. It can convert a .pdf file into a Word document, which you can then edit. In fact it can convert between 20 different formats, including..mobi, the native format for the Kindle.

Calibre has a bit of a learning curve and the interface is clunky, but it’s a far better program than he first thought. It also lets you subscribe to various free magazines, news sources, periodicals and documents. And it comes with a list of websites where you can get all of this free stuff

Caroline called. She has an iPhone 4 and keeps getting the error message “Can not get mail. The mail server ‘IMAP Gmail.com’ is not responding. Verify that you have entered the correct account info into mail settings.”
– Paul said the email app on your old phone is out of date for what Gmail expects. Google has started imposing a a more stringent authorization scheme called OAUTH.
– Use the Safari browser to go to Gmail and get your mail. Though eventually Safari will become out of date and fail to access the mail.
– It’s not obvious, but there is a setting in Gmail to permit less secure authentication. But then you’ll get warnings saying something like ‘less secure applications are accessing your account’ <referring to your email app>.
– Get a new iPhone.
– Gmail is the least hacked mail service and this problem is the price you ‘pay’ for more security.

Last Updated 12:59 AM 3-15-2018

Hello!

Ryan is In the Studio Today!
https://www.freecodecamp.org/

https://github.com/

Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
– They’re tagged with #Zentech.
– When what’s said is unclear to me (or I’m unfamiliar with a topic) I tend to quote (” “) verbatim.
– Editor’s comments are delimited by < >

For a couple of months, the audio of today’s show is here. Recent shows are here.

The intro & outro music was by Pentatonix.

Both Paul and Glenn were in the studio today.

Glenn was a bit late coming into the studio because he had a problem with his Canon MX922 printer, He didn’t put the ink cartridge in quite right and it got stuck. He had to call tech support to get it resolved. The printer was under warranty, but he didn’t even have to verify that with them.

The rest of the show was an interview with Ryan Trauntvein who is part of the Github enterprise and he told us what it’s all about. Git is the guts of Github and git is a derogatory word in England that refers to someone who makes stupid mistakes. Github is a website where you can collaboratively work out your mistakes, Paul quipped.

Ryan said Git is a version control system and Github is a host <the website> for version control using Git. It’s a way for 2 or more people working on something, like writing a computer program, to prevent changes made by one person from being lost when another person makes changes to another version of that program.

The old way of doing this is to allow only one person to “check out” a file and work on it, thereby not allowing anyone else to work on it until it’s checked back in. With Git each person can work on their own copy at the same time and, when the file is sent back up to the server, the choice is made about how to merge the two (or more) versions. It’s not just for writing software, it can be generalized for use on many collaborative projects.

For instance, in writing a novel, if 2 people edited a paragraph, Git will highlight changes made by each editor while noting who made which changes. It will then be up to the editors (or project managers) to decide which changes to keep or delete.

Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, also created Git. When Linux was created, the version control system he used was called Bit Keeper and it was proprietary, so he created Git.

You can create a free account at Github. You don’t need to download anything to your computer, it can be run from their webpage using their editor. If for instance you want to work on a novel, you create a project on the website and proceed to create sections for your chapters. Other collaborators on your project will than have to first create an account on Github and be invited to contribute to your novel. Alternatively, there are desktop applications available that can be used for collaboration. Collaborators can be restricted to work on just a certain portion of the project, like just a particular chapter of a novel.

Many of the projects on Github are open source. Of those let you only look at the contents of the project. Some, however, let you make changes without being formally invited to the project. The changes you make will create a ‘fork’ of the original project and be kept separate from it.

Later, your fork of a project can be submitted to the original project with a ‘poll request’. Those running the original project can then look at the changes you’ve made and make suggestions on how you can improve your fork. Eventually, your fork may be merged with the original project.

Paul mentioned another open source repository called Source Forge.

Github is a for-profit enterprise. If you are creating a non-profit project, Github is free to use, as long as you keep it open to the public. If you want to close it to the public, then you’ll have to pay to use Github.

Paul asked Ryan if musicians could use Github to work on their music. There are a number of music projects, Ryan said. One is called Sonic Pie. Images & 3-D printing models also have their own projects

Paul then asked if Github keeps track of all the changes made on a project. Ryan said there are different ways to go back and compare parts of a project as they’ve changed over time.

A project with plain text is easy for Github to keep track of, but what if the collaborators use something like Microsoft Word to create the content? Ryan said that Github can only display a limited number of formats online, and the rest has to be sent to the collaborators for display on their own computers.

On a related topic, Paul mentioned the meetup event that happened yesterday at Quietech Associates in Grass Valley called the Nevada County Free Code Camp. They have a Facebook group. And you can find them on Github if you search for Nevada County Free Code Camp, where you can see their repository.

There are “mini modules” thru which you can progress when learning programming at Free Code Camp, which is a global organization. There are 3 areas of certification: front-end web development, data visualization and back-end development. The entire free learning experience is covered in 400.

The certifications offered are for skills that are widely used in industry. There are thousands of testimonials from people who’ve gotten jobs after going thru the program.

Paul wondered where the big demand for jobs is, Ryan said there’s a big demand for documentation and, perhaps, back-end development (cloud services).

Glenn said that if you go to freecodecamp.org and click on ‘map’ in the upper right-hand corner, it lists the various projects.

Paul asked what sort of [Github] projects there are for non-profit organizations. Ryan thought that modernizing what they already do would be helpful — things like data visualization or mobile apps. And many organizations need a membership database, Paul added.

Glenn asked how one should prepare themselves to attend a Free Code Camp meetup. Ryan said there’s usually an initial short talk on something like a coding topic or how a company has been using a software product. Then there’s a freeform class where you can immediately start learning and where people can help you thru challenges. <Bring your laptop was implied.>

Paul said you can find various meetups in your area by going the meetup.com and search on your geographic location.

Every Thursday there’s a meeting of Coffee and Code which is put on by the Nevada County Hackers meetup group, a spin-off of Free Code Camp. It’s more of a heads-down working session.

Glenn asked if Free Code Camp is for people who want to develop mobile apps. Ryan wasn’t sure but thought there are a number of people who have that interest. He thought that’s something that will be addressed in the future.

On the other hand, a lot of the design done at Free Code Camp is mobile friendly. The term for that is ‘responsive design‘. This is where the website will display differently based on the device you’re using — it will to fit better if it determines you’re using a small screen. The Zen Tech web site is like that. WordPress, the content management system it uses, makes it display properly.

If you’d like to program apps for the iPhone and iPad you can get the free Xcode developer platform and run it on a Mac, Paul said. It also lets you collaborate on a program with Github using the ‘check out’ ‘check in’ method. If you then want to put your completed app into the Apple App Store, it will cost you $100.

The best way to reach Ryan…
– On the meetup website.
– On Facebook
– On a Github-related chat site called Gitter.
– Or come to one of the meetups.
<Other info about him…
At Github, here and with his picture here.
– On Twitter>

Listeners were invited to write to the guys with questions or comments, even those they’d like to be forwarded to Ryan: zen at kvmr dot org

Paul closed with this thought: Education is when you learn more and more about less and less until you know everything in the world about nothing at all.

Last Updated 4:25 PM 3-1-2018

Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
– They’re tagged with #Zentech.
– When what’s said is unclear to me (or I’m unfamiliar with a topic) I tend to quote (” “) verbatim.
– Editor’s comments are delimited by < >

For a couple of months, the audio of today’s show is here. Recent shows are here.

The intro music was by Pentatonix.

Both Glenn and Paul were in the studio today.

Glenn thanked listeners & supporters of KVMR. <If you’d like to become a member, you can call the station at 530-265-9073 or go to kvmr.org.>

Glenn was given a 9″ tablet made by Digital Reins recently. It runs the Kit Kat operating system — version 4.2.2 <but their webpage says it 4.4>. He said it’s kind of slow and that he might add an external SD memory card (up to 32gig) to it. You can get it at Amazon for about $100.
<This might be the tablet>

He said it sometimes displays the message “cannot start android.google.(something) upgrade”. It seem to be trying to do something in the background, but can’t.

Paul said people should keep in mind that products you buy to experiment or have fun with may not be adequate for your need to get work done. He’s cautious about buying new off-brand products. Brand-name products that are similar can cost twice as much, but that doesn’t mean you get twice the performance.

There are various benchmarks <apps> you can get to check network performance. video rendering, etc.

Off-brand manufacturers get permission from Google to use the Android operating system without having to pay a royalty. Google expects to make up for it when people come to Google for resources and products — apps, email, media, etc. That will give Google the opportunity to gather information about the users.

You can learn more about your tablet by going to Settings -> About. Toward the top you’ll see the model number. Glenn’s tablet shows it’s model m920. Paul said the company may have put the firmware made for a different model with the same chipset into this tablet. He speculated that might be the reason Glenn was getting the error message.

Paul went on to say you can upgrade such tablets. There is a hacker community that will offer you recompiled images <of the operating system> that you can put on the flash card. You can then upgrade the OS from the flash card.

The cheaper tablets have a more reflective display because they don’t use an anti-glare coating, Paul noted. And several years ago cheap tablets would have a resistive display, which is less responsive to finger movement. This type of display is what you’ll find on GPS devices. The preferred type is capacitive display.

Taking tablets apart can be tricky. Paul bought a tool that looks like a pair of plastic tongs with suckers on them. You’re supposed to wet the suckers and put one on the front and one on the back of the tablet and squeeze the tool. If you patiently exert a fixed amount of force, eventually the glue will give way and the two halves of the tablet will come apart. You can speed up the process by using a hot air gun or hair drier but be careful not to apply too much heat. The glue will start to loosen at about 160 degrees F.

If you venture into upgrading your tablet, you’ll notice that newer versions of Android don’t demand much more from the hardware. The current version of Android is 7. And you shouldn’t have much trouble of installing most of the common apps on an older tablet.

Paul said most of the apps you would need would be able to run on version 4.2, so why would you want to upgrade? One reason is better advantage can be taken of the hardware resources. For example, Google made version 7.1 more responsive to touch.

Talk turned to cord cutting. Until recently, the content you got over the internet tended to be prerecorded, like Youtube. Now there’s Google Live, which lets you watch live TV relays of sports, political events, news broadcasts, etc.
<Maybe its Youtube TV
Engadget article
The app for it.>

Glenn’s experience was that he watched only a small fraction of what was available thru his cable subscription. Then he got the least expensive package from Direct TV called the Family Pack, which gave him something like 28 or 48 channels. But it was still kind of pricey. He’s intrigued by the internet channels but thinks the cost can still add up by the time you subscribe to enough services to meet your viewing desires. Glenn’s had some success bargaining with cable companies for better rates by claiming he can’t afford to pay more than the introductory rate he started with, and then settle for a marginal increase in his fee.

Steve Baker entered the studio to give an update on the shooting in a Florida high school. There are a number of fatalities — one source said 14 dead. The gunman is in custody.

Paul said there is feature in Google Maps to find the distance between 2 points in a straight line (as the crow flies) rather than driving distance. He thought the feature is available on the mobile app for Google Maps, too.

If you use your computer to go to Google Maps, you can discover other features you might not have been aware of. Google Earth, Street View are now integrated into Google Maps.

In the upper left corner of Street View is an option to see a particular street view from the past — different instances of that view photographed over time. Metro areas get photographed more often.

Glenn reminded listeners that they can call in with their questions &amp; comments: 530-265-9555.

Glenn was impressed by the scenery of the opening ceremony from the Olympics and recommended listeners check out the recorded videos, wherever they can be found on the internet — maybe on Youtube.

Paul thought people might like to know how to watch the Olympics online for free. If you signed up at Google Live, you can watch for free during the 30-day trial period. After that it’s a $35/mo subscription. Otherwise, he hasn’t found any good options to watch the Olympics for free.

There was some chitchat about Elon Musk & Space X. There was mention of the recent launch of the Falcon Heavy and how the boosters do a soft landing on a barge.
<Watch video of the launch and landings if you missed it live earlier, or if you just want to watch a rerun.>

Douglas called. A mouse ate the fuel injection wires in his car. He thought a car would have to be parked for a long time before mice can get to it. He uses his car often and the mice needed less than 13 hours to do the damage. It cost $1500 to $2000 in repairs because the engine had to be partially disassembled to get to the wires. When the tow truck came for the car, the driver said <maybe jokingly> that he should put a bar of Irish Spring under the hood because the smell will keep them away. It didn’t help that in 2012 the auto makers complied with European laws that demanded the wire insulation be biodegradable and, perhaps more attractive to mice.

Glenn related the story of how Ivory soap was made to float. One of the vat tenders accidentally let it go too long and it got too much air in it. First thought to be an error, consumers were impressed.

Paul’s humorous contribution was about a workman at a factory that made glasses who fell into a vat of molten glass. The news headlines: glass worker makes a spectacle of himself.

Douglas also said that mint oil and the sonic devices you plug into a wall socket also keep mice away.

Paul mentioned a local company called Sonic Technology that discovered a way to modulate ultra sound in such a way that it drives rodents away and they don’t get used to it.

Adding to what was said before, Paul said you don’t have to drop your cable TV subscription before you experiment with the alternatives. You can get a Roku box for an “Android TV unit”, which he just bought for himself for $28. <He didn’t give a model number of the Roku.>

Robin called. She thought Douglas said menthol would keep the mice away. Glenn clarified by saying it was mint oil.

She also asked about where to have her broken computer looked at.
– Locally there’s Rod’s Computers.
– She was asked to email the guys to get a reply for other repair shops.
– Call the shop in advance to see if there’s a charge to determine if it’s worth repairing. Understandably, shops generally have a service minimum.
– If you want to recycle it, that’s usually free. Take the hard drive out first to protect your personal info. The best way to get rid of it is to take a hammer to it <or keep the drive & put it into your next computer.>

Last Updated 12:47 AM 2-15-2018