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Glenn has a friend who's having problems printing their bank statement, from a web browser, on an HP printer — it only prints out the portion from the middle to the left side of the statement.
– Paul said there is nothing in a web page that formats it for a printer. It may print out differently from how it looks. Paul suggested looking at the 'print preview', which you can select from the 'file' menu. Glenn said he did that and the preview looked fine.
– Update the HP software. Go to the Start Menu -> Programs -> HP and look for HP software updates.
– Paul said it's a documented problem with HP products & Internet Explorer. It happened went IE went from version 7 to 8 and again when it went to version 9.
 – If you have a dialup connection on the computer that needs the update, HP allows you to just download the files when you happen to be at a computer with a fast connection. Go to the HP website & fill in the model of your printer & download to a flash drive and take it to the computer needing the update.

Paul said that laptops have become a lot more popular in recent years and you can have a setup similar to a desktop if you plug in an external monitor, keyboard and mouse. But there are some negative attributes.
– They have "poorer cooling response than a desktop machine".
– They are less sturdy. E.g. the CD drives are more delicate and subject to errors as well as breakage just by opening & closing them.
– The USB ports prone to damage by plugging & unplugging devices.
– Glenn likes the use of the smaller Micro USB ports with newer equipment because there's less mechanical stress than the big plugs. He also suggested that people avoid the various connector sockets when picking up or moving the laptop — only handle the body of the computer.
– Paul suggested use of wireless devices rather than those that plug in directly. Bluetooth devices tend to be more expensive but the Bluetooth dongle, the part that plugs into the computer, is usually cheap.
– When you put the laptop into its case, unplug everything — cords, wires, cards, etc — to avoid stress on the sockets.
– There are places that repair laptops but check beforehand to see if they're willing to work on your model — some are just too poorly built. Look on Ebay for these services and check the feedback ratings from their former customers. Paul is under the impression that service centers you find on Amazon have the backing of Amazon itself.

Paul mentioned the 3 A's of business: availability, affability and ability
   Should be reachable — availability.
   Should be not be rude — affability
   Should know what they're doing — ability

Paul mentioned that many do-it-yourself repair tutorials are available on Youtube. For laptop repair, search Youtube for the words… teardown laptop repair.

Jeff called to suggest that KVMR have a way people can txt (text) small donations to support the station, similar to disaster relief operations <as in Haiti>.

Dennis <he was not introduced, and it sounded like he was in the studio> wanted to know how to control the order in which applications launch in Windows 7. <presumably the startup programs>
– Paul doesn't know, but in XP "you bring up the cascading menus, right click on whatever is available and left click on sort by name". <I'm not clear on this, but that's what he said. Later he said he hasn't seen a way to do it with XP>
– Glenn thought renaming the apps by putting 1,2,3… as the first characters of their names might work.
– Paul said that apps can be started several ways e.g. from the registry or an autoexec.bat file
– While talking, Paul did a search for a method but didn't come up with anything definitive. He asked listeners to give suggestions.
– Paul then thought of using 'services' for controlling the order. Services is an application that runs before the users account is started <at boot time I think>. He said that using services you can make programs run conditionally — program A has to run before program B, etc. However, he thought that the programs themselves had to have been specially created to run as a service.
– Many of the applications and service that run at startup end up in the lower right hand corner in what's called the system tray.
– Spybot Search And Destroy has a tool called System Startup that lets you decide which applications run at startup. It doesn't uninstall anything, but can keep things from running. Paul said this method is preferred over using a Windows utility called msconfig <it's implied that it does something similar>
– Paul said it's rare that unchecking (preventing) a service or app from running, using Spybot, would prevent Windows from running. Something may not work propery, but he's never seen it "kill a Windows installation". Glenn suggested unchecking 1 item at a time and restarting the computer and then evaluating the effect it has.
– Paul remembered the site blackviper.com. It offers guidance for turning off services and it tells you which are required to run.

Scott called with a couple of Mac questions. He has a mac.com mail service and has received a notice that it's ending. He wondered if the guys knew more about that.
– Paul said it is part of a subscription service called MobileMe and he doubted that Apple would suddenly end the email service. Since you paid for the service, call Apple and find out what's going on.
– Paul thought that, with the new Lion operating system, the mobile synchronization will be performed using the new service called iCloud.
– Glenn looked at the Apple site and reported that MobileMe is no longer accepting new subscribers but the service will be available to currnet users thru June 30, 2012.
– He said go to apple.com/mobileme and click the 'facts' button to get the details of the transition to iCloud.

Scott's other qestion was whether his verion of Photoshop (CS5) will continue to work with the new Lion operating system.
– Paul said, "I wouldn't worry about it". Go to the Adobe Macromedia site and check the compatibility list. Be aware that it may work even though it may not be supported (you won't get help support).
– Glenn said that Windows Vista had trouble running older programs so in Win7 Microsoft provided an XP compatibility mode to address the issue.
– Paul did a search for the words CS5 Lion and found some discussion on macrumors.com Some people said that it works (though some said it had a few bugs).
– Paul heard the recommendation that Lion be installed on a bare drive <rather than as an upgrade>. He also heard that Lion will eventually be sold on a flash drive.
– Paul suggested, after a disclaimer, that Scott back up his current hard drive using TimeMachine and then, after doing a bare installation of Lion, use TimeMachine to restore the backup.

Someone recently asked Paul why Adobe Reader, Java Runtime, etc are free. It's because those who write programs or content that utilize them pay for the privilege <or pay for the developer programs>.

Paul said that AJAX allows for web pages to have an enormous number of features without having to load special programs. For instance, users of Gmail, he said, have benefited from AJAX. The Visible Body is another example. It's a 3D human body tutorial that used to be sold as program that you load on your computer. Now, you can subscribe to it and get it over the net.

John called. He has 2008 version of Microsoft Home Office but there's no way to create a PDF file.
– Get the free program called PDF Creator at Source Forge. It acts like a printer driver but, instead of printing, it saves a PDF document.
– To use it, create a document in Word (or whatever), then use the file menu -> print and choose PDF Creator as the printer.
– PDF Creator works with all Windows programs that print, not just Microsoft Office.

John also wondered whether we are bound to use whatever operating system Microsoft comes out with next and will have to abandon XP or NT.
– XP is still available on refurbished computers.
– Eventually Microsoft will stop supporting XP. <in 2014, I think>

John said he's now struggling with Vista.
– Windows 7 succeeded Vist and works better.
– Glenn said the Home Starter Edition of Win7 doesn't come with some things he had expected — the media player won't play DVDs, just audio.
– Paul said that even XP lacked the content descrambler to play DVDs and you have to scrounge around to find free software to do that.

So, then Glenn asked what's a good free video player for XP for free?
– The best generic video player is not Media Player but one called Videolan. http://www.videolan.org
– "They all lack, unless you go thru various hoops, the ability to unscramble or descramble mass-published digital video disks…"
– You can buy a descrambler from Nvidia for about $19 or get a demo version of Nero. <Nvidia FAQ is here>

<There seems to be a claim that Videolan will decrypt DVDs on their web page. Click on the logo for your computer type to download it.
More info on Videolan (VLC) here.

If anyone has success with it or some other method of descrambleing DVDs, send an email to zen at kvmr dot org (say the mail is for me and the guys will forward it to me) and I'll add it to the Favorite Programs page.>

Lisa called. She has a Mac with version 10.68 OS and she can't delete email addresses using her email program. Each time she tries, they come back.
– Glenn tried to remember when this came up before and suggested clearing the cache, history and cookies.
– Paul thought that these addresses might be stored in a different place than the address book, that they're actually part of the preferences.
– The problem was not resolved and listeners were invited to give suggestions.

James called. He has 2007 vintage MacBook which now has Snow Leopard on it. He wondered what lifespan he could expect from it.
– Glenn thought it could last another 10 years.

He also asked what effect Steve Jobs' exit would have on Apple.
– Good question. All we can do is watch & wait

Then he said that Adobe Reader keeps popping up on his machine and demanding attention.
– Paul thought it may need updating. James has vision problems so Paul suggested he keep notes of what's going on so, when he has help from a sighted person, they can keep track of what needs to be done.

Last Update: 5:08 PM 1/13/2012 

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Remember, there's another show this month. 5th Wed 8/31/11 

Paul & guest, John Paul of Spiral Internet, were in the studio, Glenn called in.

Mentioned at various points during the show:
Nevada County residents can find local internet service at: spiralinternet.com
Spiral's phone # 530-478-9822
More info about the Fusion project for high speed internet (just in Sacramento for now): sacramentofusion.com
John's email: johnp@spiralinternet.com

John first gave us a bit of history about internet access.
– Early form of access was thru dialup.
– Then came ISDN. It was a little better than dialup but was expensive and harder to set up.
– Then DSL came along. It had the ability to put a digital signal over the copper telephone wires.
– Along with DSL came the ability to have internet access over coaxial cable, about 10 years ago. <Like the Comcast service>

He then talked about connection speeds
– DSL can go up to 6 megabits per sec downstream <toward the user> and 1 megabits upstream <from the user to the internet>.
– A DSL signal over copper wire starts to degrade pretty quickly with distance. You begin to "lose all kinds of speed" after about 15000 feet. The rural areas of Nevada County may get only 1.5 megabits/sec. Ironically, many people in Sacramento have the same problem because they're far away from the central office.
– Coaxial cable is a little bit better regarding the distance factor. The distribution point is brought right into the neighborhood. Because of that, the cable speeds are higher. But the users in the neighborhood share the signal so if everyone is watching movies, each user can experience a great slowdown.
– The telephone company (most likely AT&T) is trying to make the most of the copper medium. ADSL 2 Plus is the current technology. With one phone line it can give you about 20 megabits per second at about 2000 feet from the central office. At 8000 feet it's about 10 megabits per second. With 2 phone lines you can double these speeds. <Implied in the conversation was that the Fusion service uses ADSL 2 Plus>

Paul brought Glenn into the conversation. He joined in by a phone call from near Truckee.

With the Fusion service comes the regular analog phone service. And you get an unlimited plan with both the DSL & the phone line. Since this is the traditional phone line, it doesn't affect the bandwidth of the DSL, unlike voice over IP (VOIP).

There are 2 kinds of phone companies that can have access to the central office <of the copper wire provider (e.g. AT&T)>. The Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers — the original telephone company (AT&T, Verizon, SureWest). And the Competing Local Exchange Carriers — they are a result of deregulation and they rent the phone lines from the Incumbent Carriers.

Paul asked whether ADSL 2 can reach a greater distance <than DSL> and John said no. At first it actually degrades faster with respect to distance, and by the time it degrades to 1.5 megabits per second (mentioned above), the distance is comparable to regular DSL — "the quicker stuff end quicker".

John mentioned that AT&T is starting to roll out U-verse in Nevada County. In urban areas, U-verse gives you phone, internet and TV service, but in Nevada County they're getting phone & internet only. However, John said, that once a customer switches to U-verse, "they can't go back to anyone else because it's not part of the Telecommunications Act"…"part of the provision of the Telecommunications Act was if they moved to a digital technology, they would not have to offer those services because they were not really technically running thru the central office". <I'm not clear on this, just be careful to check out your options before subscribing to U-verse>

A service similar to Fusion is available in San Francisco and the response has been good there, John said. He also said that U-verse is not available there because the city council thought the equipment was too ugly.

Fusion is coming to downtown & midtown Sacramento first and, in four months, to the greater Sacramento area.

Glenn mentioned that he now has Digital Path wireless service after having been on dialup for a long time. He said he's been watching Netfilx movies and Paul expressed surprise that he's doing that over wireless. The guys expressed concern of doing that in the early evening hours and suggested that, out of courtesy, to avoid hogging the bandwidth during those hours when people who are, for instance, self-employed are trying to use it.

Paul brought up Google's project to bring 1 gigabits per second internet to some community in the U.S. Now finalized, the project invited communities to submit their pleas to gain Google's favor. Kansas City was the winner, in part, because Google had already bought a lot of pre-existing fiber cable in the area.
<Google's project was mentioned on the 3-22-10 show. John was on this show too.>

Case Western Reserve has been studying how people use this massive amount of bandwidth. John said if you search Youtube for "Case Western Reserve gigabit" you can find about some of the uses — like health care services and telepresence.

John said that many telehealth services, like one in California, are going on their own network that works separately from the internet.

Paul asked what speed you actually get with Fusion's advertised 20 megabits per second. John said that is the guaranteed speed 100% of the time if you're close enough to the central office. It depends on the distance.

Paul said that if you log on to your <DSL> modem you can see what the data rate is. But that's the connection rate and typically, he said, one would get about 90% thru-put. To check your speed use speedtest.phonepower.com.

A few people still use ISDN because it can reach greater distance than DSL. KVMR uses it for remote broadcasts like music festivals and it's pretty reliable for that purpose.

The Fusion service costs $39.95 per month for 20 megabits per second and unlimited nationwide phone calls (federal fees & taxes are extra). The price may become more than that when it's offered in Nevada County because of the low density of users. <There's not the critical mass of people to keep the price low>

John mentioned that AT&T DSL and U-verse now charge you more if your usage goes over a certain amount of data — a data cap. Paul said that started in May and was due in part to people streaming so much video like Netflix. John thought that we're seeing just the beginning of bandwidth deficit.

Paul briefly mentioned that you no longer have to have a landline phone account to get DSL. John said that's only true for AT&T customers; for a service like Fusion you need to have a phone account. <I think I heard that correctly. Check it out before you buy>

Glenn asked John how long it would take to have a running Fusion service from the time it's ordered. John said it would be about 7 to 10 working days.

John said Fusion customers are asked to buy a new modem or wireless router. Technically, existing equipment can work but legacy AT&T modems tend to fail or cause problems. If you want the 40 megabits per second (2 phone line) service, there's different modem for that.

John said there about 18 features that come with the included phone service. Check their web site for details.

Zack, from Grass Valley, called in. He would like to ditch his AT&T internet service but he doesn't need a lot of bandwidth, as with Fusion. He said he'd like to keep it in the $20-$25 price range.
– That just happens to be the lowest price that Spiral Internet offers. You can call them at 530-478-9822.

Some Zentech podcasts (and those of many other KVMR programs) are available from a link on KVMR front page, or here.

Barbara called. She's looking for a very basic Mac laptop.
– The cheapest Mac laptop goes for $999.
– There are used Macs at geeks.com or amazon.com.
– Apple.com and smalldog.com have refurbished Macs with 1 year warranty.
– Make sure you get an Intel Mac. <That it has the Intel CPU>
– Also try powermax.com.

Last Updated 8:28 PM 8/24/2011 

PG&E SmartMeter! and the Kill-A-Watt Energy Auditor

Additonal notes

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Glenn went crazy at an Apple sale of older equipment. He bought a Macbook Air & a Mac Mini. These were for a friend but it didn't work out so he returned them both.

Glenn said if you bought a new Mac computer since 6-21, you will be eligible for a free upgrade to the latest operating system. Double check that this info is correct by going to the Apple site.

Being a sole proprietor of a business, Paul likes the applications he can get for the iPhone. He likes the banking app for the Chase bank that allows him to take photos of checks and deposit them. He took things one step further and ask a client to scan a check and send him the pic, thinking he'll then take a picture of the scan and send it to the bank. However, it didn't work and his account was shut down and the failure remains a mystery to him.

Glenn said there are other ways to expedite payments like billpay <a feature many banks offer> or ING Direct Online, which allows you to send a payment to another bank without creating a check: paperless check. Paul mentioned that in Europe they have Giro Bank where all you need to make a payment is the account number at the bank receiving the payment.

An iPhone app often doesn't process the data itself, like the free Dragon Dictate (search for Dragon in the app store) which allows you to talk into your iPhone and get back a transcript. The transcription isn't done on the phone but at a server, which then sends the transcript back to you. Similarly with the banking app, the character recognition is done at the bank.

Paul related a story where he deposited a check more than once and it took the bank 2 weeks to catch the mistake. He normally writes on the check that it's been deposited but he forgot. That led Glenn to suggest using a blue highlighter to write on a document to indicate whether it's the original (or in Paul's case, deposited) because copy machines don't generally reproduce blue.

Around the time of the Iraq War, Paul said, it was revealed that some HP color printers printed a pattern of yellow dots when the printer was used to make a copy. The dots indicated the serial number of the printer. Because color copies had gotten so good, this was done to defeat counterfeiters.

Similarly, Intel has produced CPUs with CPUID to uniquely identify the CPU. It was intended allow purchased software to be keyed to a particular machine. But this allowed the machine to be identified on the internet. On some machines, CPUID can be turned off in the BIOS.

Help support KVMR by becoming a member.

Glenn said he had to use dialup recently and that his computer slowed to a crawl because of all of the updates it was doing. Paul said that many sites now are difficult to use if you're on dialup because Flash requires so much bandwidth. And Mac machines that don't have an Intel CPU, like the G4 & G5, don't do Flash animation well either. Netflix, for instance, won't work on such Macs, and when software is available, like Flash for watching Youtube, the video is jumpy.

While Glenn had the 2 Macs mentioned above, he tried to download the Lion operating system for the Mac Mini using his iMac (he didn't want to plug in the Mac Mini to upgrade directly) but got the message that an Intel Core2 Duo was required and his iMac had only a Core Duo. He speculated that might be generally true for everyone.

Paul said Leopard was the last OS that would successfully installed on a non-Intel Mac. Such a Mac had to be 800 mega hertz or faster, too. There were hacks to get it to install on slower machines but Apple refuses to support such an installation. He also said there is a similar situation with old software — manufactures don't want to test old software on newer hardware and therefore refuse to support old programs. Office 2003, however, will install on a Win7 machine though it seemingly shouldn't, he said.

Glenn asked for alternative to using Office on a Mac.
– Office is available for the Mac.
– Open Office suite will run successfully on a Mac.

The latest Mac operating system will read drives formatted for Windows — the NTFS format. There is software NTFS-3G that allows Macs to write to such drives. It comes in free & commercial versions. But ideally, one would use Mac formatted drives on a Mac. And to use TimeMachine for backups you need to have a Mac formatted drive.
For more info google: ntfs-3g sourceforge

Glenn had trouble with his HR21 High Definition Direct TV DVR and though it started working again, a factory rep suggested he try plugging in an external hard drive for backup, as is possible with the newer HR24.

As a side note about hard drives, Paul told us what SMART means. Hard drives made in last few years have SMART for onboard monitoring of temperature and reliability. He thought the warning Glenn got might mean the drive is nearing its end.

Next Zentech show is on Aug 24 and there is 1 more show on the 5th Wed this month — 8/31/11

Marilyn called and she has friend with a Mac Plus who can no longer get to the documents on the hard drive.
– Open the computer case and find the hard drive (likely a PATA drive). Take the hard drive and put it in an external enclosure. Then connect it to another computer (ideally another Mac) and you should be able to access it.
– It's might be a SCSI drive and you can get a USB to SCSI adapter; plug it into the hard drive & the other end into the USB port on modern Mac.
– If you have the original floppy disk, you should be able to launch the operating system using its floppy drive. You can then copy the documents to that floppy, given enough room. If you don't have the original floppy, you might be able to get a copy by doing an internet search.
– Take the hard drive to a friend with a Mac and ask them to access the documents.
– Paul found an Adaptec USB Exchange Storage Controller fast SCSI 1.5 megabits/sec USB converter for $33 from the CWC Group. To find more, google the words USB SCSI.
– The old Macs may require a Torx driver to open the case.

Glenn said there was an article about a Google's Street View vehicle that crashed and it mentioned that Google has automated vehicles that have logged 160,000 hours. The headline read "Google Self-driving Car Crash Caused by Human Error". Glenn thought that it was navigating by itself but Paul was incredulous — too many things to go wrong.
If you go to maps.google.com and enter an address you'll see blue lines that indicate which streets have been photographed by their Street View cameras.

Paul talked about house concerts — concerts at a private venue and by invitation. With the advent of Facebook & social media, house concerts have really blossomed. Locally there's The Tin House and they have a Facebook page for further info. Being of limited size, many house concerts don't issue open invitations but use an email address that you RSVP for a firm invitation. Paul loves house concerts for their intimacy and access to the artists.
More about Tin House here.

Betsy called. She's been trying to get the list of music in her iTunes to appear in the order that she purchased it.
– In iTunes go to view -> options and put check marks where it says 'date added' & 'purchase date'. That gives you 2 more columns in the list. Click 'ok' to exit.
– Then go to view -> list and click at the top of the 'date added' column. That sorts the list by date added. Click again & it reverses the order (latest added is either at the top of the list or the bottom)

Betsy also asked about having 2 laptops with the same iTunes files on both.
– Apple may allow you to do that but check with Apple or do a search.
– If the machines are on the same network, you can share the list on one machine and play it on the other.
– To do that go to edit -> preferences -> sharing and use 'share my library on a local network'. On the other machine "do a search for local libraries" and that should find the shared music.
Doing that she got an error that said Bonjour is not properly installed and to uninstall & reinstall iTunes. Bonjour & Rendezvous allow Macs & PCs to share libraries of iTunes.
– She'll likely have to follow the instruction to reinstall but, as a disclaimer, you're on your own.

Paul thinks iTunes is the best music management software. It can be used on both the Mac & the PC and you don't need Apple hardware <like iPod> to use it.
However, he has a friend whose music collection completely disappeared after an aborted attempt to upgrade to iTunes 10.4. It turns out iTunes uses a folder in the music folder. In the 'music' folder is a folder called iTunes and in that folder is a hierarchy of folders. There's a setting in iTunes that indicates where those folders are. On his friend's computer, iTunes was pointing to the wrong location. But even when Paul pointed it to the right location, iTunes couldn't find the playlist because iTunes also needs to know where the library is. To get iTunes pointed to the library, start iTunes while holding down the option key or the ALT key on the PC; it will then say "where's the library?".
  Paul said if you're having a similar problem <and you can't figure out what I just wrote>, just send him an email — zen at kvmr dot org

Rick called with an iTunes question. He has an external hard drive with .mp3 files on it and he wants to get iTunes to just play the files from the drive and not to "suck them in".
– iTunes can work in 2 modes. It can take the files off the drive and stick them on your computer ("suck them in")…or not.
– Go to edit -> preferences -> advanced & find where it shows the path to music files. If you click the change button, it allows you to change the path to where the music comes from. And there are 2 important check boxes…
  1) "Keep iTunes media folder organized".
  2) "Copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to playlists".
To do what he wants, he should keep both check boxes unchecked. That way the playlist (.itl files) on the computer's drive will stay updated but the acutal music files won't be copied from the external drive.

Rick then asked if iTunes will then be able to find the music files with the asterisk next to them.
– There's another setting under file -> library -> organize library. Experiment with those settings, but go easy and do a back up first, in case something goes wrong.

Last updated: 5:20 PM 1/13/2012

Apple NEws: Thanks Mikail!

Free Healing Music! : )

 PLUTO is even Weirder than you can imagine

More on The Curious Forge!

Delusions or Illusions: The McGurk Effect: (Thanks, Reinette) and what we do technically & otherwise to maintain a coherant view of the world

More on Tim DeChristopher.

Additional notes 

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They're tagged with #Zentech

Editor's comments are delimited by < >

Paul briefly mentioned that the dwarf planet Pluto is a strange object. See the above link.

He then went on to talk about what an operating system is. It's software to get between the operator <usually the user> and the hardware. It handles things like storing files on the hard drive and the input from the keyboard or mouse. He said the human brain is much like an operating system that takes care of the minutia so you don't consciously have to. That led to his talking about the perceptual blindness test illustrating the McGurk Effect. He played some of the video from the above link. It showed that watching a person's lips move influences what we hear.

Paul then went on to say that, since the Zentech show involves trouble shooting, one has to be aware of perceptual blindness. He said, "When trouble shooting you tend to see what you want to see and it overrules, sometimes, what's actually happening." And, the troubleshooter shouldn't ask the user what the user thinks is wrong. Instead, one should ask what exactly the user observes when the symptom occurs.

Glenn said there is perceptual effect where words can often be discerned by just noting the first & last letters even if the interior letters are wrong. Paul said authors need an independent proofreader because the author's brain will continue to interpret their poor writing as being correct.

Witnesses in our judicial system, Paul continued, are notoriously flawed when they're presented with something they didn't expect to see. He also said it's easy to plant ideas into people's heads. He thought it would be interesting, for instance, to ask people coming from Disney Land where it was they saw Bugs Bunny. If you ask leading questions, many will "remember" seeing Bugs. Of course, Bugs is not a Disney character but from Loony Tunes.
<Here's an NPR segment about how people can miss seeing the person in a gorilla suit. And a Sciam blog post>

Bottom line, be as objective as you can when troubleshooting.

Glenn related the time he was thinking one thing and his fingers typed something else. The spelling was correct but the words were unintended so his spell checker didn't flag them. One should proof read for context not just spelling.

Glenn's remark led Paul to remember that Jim Baird <I probably heard the name wrong> from Parc Xerox, who helped develop the mouse and keyboard, was on the show and claimed that using a keyboard is the worst way of getting data into the computer because perceptual blindness can lead us astray.

Paul said he saw a demo at the San Jose Tech Museum that illustrated how you can pack words and sentences into your mind at an incredible rate if your gaze is held at the center of a screen where words zoom out directly at you one at a time.

Bonnie called to say she had downloaded a printer driver and wanted to know how to install it.
– She said it's an executable file (.exe) — so just double click on it and it will install itself as needed. She said she did that, but after rebooting the MF Wizard <I think that's what she called it> can't find the driver.
– In that case pick the option "Not at this time" in the wizard.
– Paul added that when installing a network printer (a TCP/IP printer) "you have to tell it it's a local printer of type TCP/IP". This, Paul said, appears not to make sense because TCP/IP is a networking protocol.
– In relation to that, Paul mentioned cognitive dissonance — we are averse to doing the opposite of what makes sense.

Paul found some free healing music used by massage therapists and the like. See the above link. Glenn speculated that the therapists use the music to cue themselves to how much time has passed into their session.

Paul said that XM Radio (satellite service) and CDs may not be played in a business without paying a royalty. Be careful playing music in a public environment that you bought for private use. If the medium specifically says ok, then you're safe — like the software Logic Pro, which Paul just got, that comes with a huge number of royalty-free sound samples.

Glenn directed attention to the Apple news link near the top of this page, one to Curious Forge and also to the Tim DeChristopher link. DeChristopher is the guy who made illegal bids for oil leases to keep them out of the hands of the oil companies. Paul ended this segment with the quote "when good people do nothing, nothing good gets done".

Ellen called to say there's documentary about music remixing and mashups in relation to copyrights. She said it was on the documentary channel.

Ellen also asked about making backups of her movie data using online backup services like Carbonite. She wanted to know if hackers can get to the data.
– No form of backup is completely safe but some are safer than others.
– Movies are huge. It may cost more than the base subscription rate of the service and take a long time to transfer big files.
– Paul suggested using an external hard drive and to use Firewire for the connection, leaving your USB ports free. Paul has seen 3 terabyte drives for about $179.
– Use 2 external hard drives of the same size. Connect them together & to the computer using Firewire.
– With version 10.5 or higher on the Mac, use TimeMachine and tell it to back up the 1st drive to the second drive.
– Use the newer Firewire 800 if you have it, it's faster.
– It's appropriate to turn TimeMachine off while you're engaged in rendering a project. Then turn it on to do the back up afterward.
– The same drives are sold for both the Mac & PC. The one you buy may be formatted for the PC, just reformat for the Mac.
– Firewire is a cascading technology. You can plug in devices along a chain and then into just one port on the computer.
– Check that the Firewire drive has 2 ports unless it's going to be used at the end of the chain. Some drives come with both an '800' port and a '400' port.

Sally called. She got notice that her Google account was accessed from China and she knew it wasn't her.
– The notice may be a specially crafted bit of socially engineering trying to get you to click on it or give up information. But, she said, it was not an email but rather a notice that was part of the Google web page. This gives it more credibility.
– Go into the account settings & change your password. Change it often.
– Fill in additional information to use as secondary authentication (alternate email address or a cell phone number, for instance). These are known as password recovery options and will help if you forget your password or the account gets hijacked.
– Use a strong password — a mixture of upper & lower case, numbers and symbols, if permitted.
– It makes a difference to report gmail spam to Google. They aggregate the reports to determine what to block.

Daniel called. He has trouble with his AT&T cell phone reception where others don't.
– It is possible that of 2 people next to each other, one will get reception and the other not.
– AT&T has been giving out a device to put in your house if you've been getting a poor signal indoors. It uses your internet connection to carry the call. <This may be what's known as a femtocell>
– Try holding phone away from head/body — use BlueTooth or wired earpiece.

Sierra Makers is now The Curious Forge. They're a local Maker group of about 40 members and they're looking for a home. They have a meeting coming up a week from today. See the above link. You can still use their old Facebook page here.
<Zentech show about Makers Fair>
<Zentech show about Makers Fair & Sierra Makers with guest Liam Ellerby>

The Zentech show also has a Facebook page here.

Support KVMR, become a member.

Next show Aug 10, 2011

Last updated: 9:15 PM 7/27/2011 

Intro; WHITE AND NERDY Rap

Detecting Power Bill Anomilies using For Example the "Kill A Watt" device

Additional notes 

Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart
They're tagged with #Zentech

Editor comments are delimited by < >

Paul was in the studio, Glenn called in from Sacramento after some great difficulties in the studio.

Scott called about power line network adapters <these use the wiring in the house to carry the data between devices>. He's house was built in the '40s and all of the plugs are 2-pronge — there's no separate ground connector. He wants to know if the adapter will work in his house.
– Pauls thought it will work better if there's grounding but will probably still work without it.
– Buy it and try it. <Presumably making sure you can return it if it doesn't work>
The distance Scott has to span is about 30' to his workshop and Paul thought Wi-Fi should work if:
1) You get the units as close as possible.
2) You keep them away from cordless phones.
He's already tried using a combination modem/router from AT&T that has an internal antenna and Paul suggested getting one with an external antenna or a range booster.

Scott asked if the power line adapters are faster than wireless and Paul thought that his lack of a ground, old wiring and possibly having to go thru more than one electrical panel can make it slower (theoretically they might go faster Wi-Fi, under ideal conditions). He said a range booster could make wireless go up to 100 megabits/sec.

Paul kept trying to receive phone calls but some problem prevented him.

Paul mentioned that another KVMR broadcaster noticed her electricity bill went up substantially for no apparent reason.
– Ideally, call in electrician, if you can afford it.
– You can do some research yourself but don't interfere with the wiring in the house, you shouldn't have to in your initial investigation.
– Go around the house and make an accounting of everything plugged into the electrical outlets. Just because an appliance is off don't assume it's not drawing current.
– Keep a daily record of your utility meter reading.
– Keep in mind that there can be a huge difference in electrical consumption of appliances — e.g. stovetop burner vs. fluorescent lights.
– Each day, turn off a suspect appliance, including outside devices like well pumps (check for safety issues first). Then compare your record of meter readings to see if there's a substantial change.
– Old refrigerators may have deteriorating insulation or the refrigerant may have leaked causing the compressor to work more than it should — using excess energy. Check for similar issues with other thermostatically controlled appliances <e.g. air conditioner>.
– Paul said he's found a probe thermometer on Ebay for a few dollars that you can use to monitor the temperature inside a refrigerator or freezer.

<Paul didn't actually get around to the Kill A Watt device, whose link is above. Two previous shows mentioned it, too: May 19 2008 and May 5 2008.>

A clip from WHITE AND NERDY by Weird Al was played. See the above link.

Paul next talked about key cameras or spy cameras, which can be bought for about $10.
– They function as well in low light as full-scale tape video recorders of 5 to 10 years ago.
– They're about the size of USB flash drive and come with a tie clip-like bracket that allows you to attach it to, for instance, a dog or a kite. <To get interesting footage>
– They generally run at 30 frames/sec so they're not very good for rapid motion, but there may be some that run at 60 frames/sec.

Paul rebooted the Comrex system used by KVMR to receive phone calls.
<I think this may describe it. The company is here.>
– Paul said that computers (which is what the Comrex is) that have been running continuously for a long time may need to be rebooted, even the iPhone may benefit from a reboot every week or two.
– To reboot an iPhone hold down the power button on top of the phone for several seconds and slide the slider to the far right — that will shut the power down for a cold reboot. This is useful if you want to conserve power for a few days without a recharge. This is unlike a typical shut down where you push the button briefly and where the phone still receives calls.

After rebooting the Comerx, the phone system came back online we were able to hear Glenn calling in.

Glenn talked about the new-to-him iMac he bought recently, it's actually a couple of years old. He said he just upgraded the operating system to 10.5 and will eventually move it up to the latest — Lion.
– Access to the App Store has been added to the Mac computers so you can now buy and download Lion for $29.
– Paul said he's heard that when upgrading to Snow Leopard on a blank machine, you can use the previous version's, Leopard, CD to satisfy the licensing agreement, and complete the installation.
– Paul said that when you think you've closed an application on a Mac, the menu bar is left at the top and you have to go to File -> Quit or Option + Q.
– In the dock (on the Mac) are aliases <a particular type of icon> and there's a small mark under the alias if an app is still running in memory. If you hold the mouse button down while on the alias, you're given options to deal with the app — quit, force it to stay in the dock, or start at login.

The 1st step in diagnostics is to define the problem. If you can do it in 4 words or less, and they're unusual words, Google will have the answer. Youtube also has short tutorials that may solve your problem; use the same strategy to search for them.

Glenn's ultimately unsuccessful effort to fix his iPhone <mentioned in the Apr 27, 2011 show> was inspired by a Youtube video.

Paul warned people not to leave their cell phones in their hot cars, as he had done. It still worked but there was damage to the LCD screen.

Glenn received a message from Mike. He's using a Novatel USB 760 3G CDMA wireless to connect his laptop to the internet. He wanted to know if there is a device that can create a personal 3G hotspot.
– Yes but you have to be sure the one you're buying supports the model of your USB modem. These are called Mi-Fi units.
– It may be smarter to contact your carrier and ask them about the cost to convert your existing contract to Mi-Fi.
– Be aware that most providers now have data caps and it's easy to go over with multiple users on the hotspot.
– For $149 virginmobileusa.com has the Mi-Fi 2200 that has pay-as-you-go pricing for 3G.

Jay called. He's using XP Pro and would like to combine 2 logical partitions without losing data in the other partitions. He doesn't want to use Partiton Magic because of the cost. <Info about partitioning here.>
– Back up your files first.
– There is a free utility but it doesn't run under windows. It has to be booted from a CD. It's called Gnome Partition Editor or Gparted. <Read more about it here. You can get it here.>
– It comes as an ISO image file & you have to burn it to a CD using Nero or FreeUtility before using it. <I think he said FreeUtility but I couldn't find such a thing.>

<A couple of other ISO burners:
Infra Recorder…download here
ISO Recorder>

Vern called. He has a Macbook Pro upgraded to 10.6 & he lost his address book except for 1 entry. However, his mail program can see all the addresses.
– Paul thought some of the data files got moved and the data path was lost.
– Do a Google search for the words: data path mac address book

 Last Updated: 8:48 PM 7/13/2011