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How To Touch Type (for beginners)

July 27, 2013 in Tech by admin | No comments

Today I came across my old website which is hosted on the University of Manchester Compsoc server. I had an account on this server since I studied Computer Science at Manchester which was in 1999 (before I gave it all up to read music instead). I can’t even log on to my account, but I’m glad to see my account and therefore my webspace / website is still online. For posterity, I am salvaging some of the stuff I wrote back then when the word “blog” didn’t even exist, and blogging it here…

Introduction
It seems to have become the norm that in order to learn to type fast you should pay for a software package or take evening classes.

Well, I strongly disagree with this need for ongoing typing lessons. Perhaps they are necessary for some people – but if you are able to practise on your own and motivate yourself, then the only thing stopping you from typing at 80 words per minute is a lack of knowledge of the basic principles.

Health and safety
Goodness knows why the user manual for the Microsoft Mouse has in it the following advice:

“Eat a balanced diet and get adequate rest.”

Sounds like my mother. Oh well – even though it seems a little random, I’m sure Microsoft pay their medical consultants lots of money to come out with such gems. More importantly when considering the health and safety aspect of computing, however, you must ensure that your sitting position at your computer is natural.

  • Straight back
  • Don’t rest your wrists on hard surfaces (in fact not at all unless you have a wrist-rest: “rest not your wrists without right and ready wrist-rests”). Best of all, get a chair with adjustable rubber armrests
  • Both feet flat on floor
  • Forearms almost horizontal
  • Eyes at same horizontal level as the top of the viewable area of your monitor. (Tilt monitor up slightly.)

Know the default typing position
The basic tenet of good typing practise is found in the following directions:

  • Place your index fingers over the F and J keys. Thumbs over spacebar. There should be little bumps on F and J: these are useful if you are blind, but they also exist should you want to find the default position without looking (hint: you should want to do this).
  • Place all other fingers over the keys that are directly next-door to F and J. Your fingers should now be on all of the following keys:

A S D F J K L ; SPACE

Establish a personal regime
The following step is possibly the hardest because it involves re-learning to type, and also it involves making some critical decisions about your preference and the way your hands work.

  • Consider each key on the alpha side of the keyboard (i.e. excluding the numeric pad on the right hand side). When your fingers are in the default position, which finger is closest to each key? This step will take some time to figure out, but must be done in full. This step is vital to the process.
  • A S D F J K L ; …. all these keys have one and only one finger option. H and G will be pressed using only the respective index fingers. Shift buttons will be pressed by each little finger. T and V are pressed by left-hand index finger. U and N and possibly Y (preference) are pressed by the right-hand index finger.
  • Try to use both left and right shift keys equally, instead of just using the left one. This kind of variation is necessary to equally disperse the number of key presses per hand per volume of text.
  • Once you have established a regime for your typing presses, practise typing a sentence v-e-r-y (painfully) slowly. Be absolutely sure that each key you press is the one you initially thought should be pressing it. Be strict in this respect. Again tedious – but vital to the process.
  • Start slowly, and speed-up your typing by practise and repetition.

If you are a key-prodder (1+ words per minute!), the above should be relatively straightforward if tedious.

If you are fairly new to typing, but can already do it fairly well – be reminded that this is probably easier for you than for those who can type 35+ words per minute!

If you type over 35 words per minute, or you use computers a lot - but do not ‘officially’ touch type – this process will be exceedingly annoying. Indeed, you may be able to say the following: “I don’t officially touch-type, but I can do 60 words per minute”. That is a good result: now re-learn and attempt 90+ words per minute. You will probably be quite taken by the whole thing. You will probably see how much faster you could type if you try the above. You will probably want to give up after 5 minutes. If you want to type faster, you need to start-off properly, so don’t give up.

If you are already an OK typist, then you may simply not be able to re-learn properly (supposing you have work to do and can’t afford to type at 5 words per minute to start off with). In this case, you should try to set aside ‘typing time’ – preferably every time you use a computer, preferably for at least 5 minutes depending on your time constraints. When you get acceptably good at proper-typing (i.e. typing under your strict regime), then try to mix this in with your ‘old-style’ that you have been using till now for the sake of practicality. Personally, I see nothing wrong with this crossover approach. Learn properly alongside carrying on the way you were working before – and then gradually mix the dodgy old technique with the new with a long-term view to fully substituting new for old. It’s worth it. Because I’m worth it.

  • Whatever level you are at: start slowly, and speed-up your typing by practice and repetition. Do not let your speed overtake your accuracy at any point, unless you are ‘mixing’ techniques as described above.
  • I believe that the more time you can give to abandoning your current typing technique and adopting a systematic technique, the more time you will save in the long run. Be motivated.

Use shortcuts
This isn’t part of touch-typing, but if you class yourself as an efficient computer user you should at least be using the following Windows shortcuts (it should be second nature):

  • Ctrl-S (hold down control key and press S) to save your work
  • Ctrl-C to copy a bit of selected text (or Ctrl-X to cut)
  • Ctrl-V to paste
  • Alt-tab to cycle through the different programs you have open
  • Alt-F4 to close the program
  • Alt-S to send email (or save and exit items)
  • Ctrl-B; Ctrl-I to bold or italicise text.

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One week today

March 1, 2013 in Views by admin | 6 comments

The last seven days have been a blur. I have eaten and slept, but only because of the efforts of my nearest and dearest.

One week ago today, a kind man – a man I may never meet – was walking with his dog through an open green space in South London.

At first this man must have wondered why his dog, which had disappeared into the middle of a copse a few hundred yards ahead, was barking incessantly.

After a few minutes of calling and whistling, the man must have realised he could not bring his dog to heel and so went to see what the fuss was about.

Nothing could have prepared the man mentally or emotionally for what he was about to see.

For there, through a small opening into the copse in which the dog was barking, he saw a human body, hanging from a tree.

I never had the chance to tell my dear brother Steve how much I loved him.

I did not visit him daily in hospital.

I did not lock myself in a padded cell with him until his terrors were over.

I did not rugby tackle him to the ground.

I did not think up a master plan for his survival even more intricate and watertight than the far-fetched conspiracies he had built-up in his poor tortured mind over the years.

Why not? I was capable of doing these things. Because he didn’t let me close enough to see the signs? Was I simply not good enough to figure them out myself?

I have seen signs before in others. Like the dog with its killer sense of smell, you could not put me off that scent. I have called parents in the middle of the night to tell them to come to the hospital soon because their daughter may not make it – and please take a taxi.

I knew he was very ill; at Christmas time I tried to rally the troops around him to show a unified front of love and support. I failed.

I did not know he was that ill; since last week I have learned his family, my family, knew of his intentions. Since then I have heard his friends were party to the intimate details of his plans. Since then I have read diaries, letters, emails, text messages. Since then I have hacked his computer to find his final goodbye note.

Since then I have felt his darkness, hugged his children, reasoned with their mummy, cried uncontrollably.

Since then I have tried to reconcile this new Steve I did not know with the old Steve I grew up with.

My tears have turned to frustration at my parents’ inability to discern his truths from his lies. I have listened to every part in the play justify, defend, blame themselves, blame others, disagree, blame doctors, sob.

Since then I have identified the five stages of bereavement, related them to my own loss, tried to break free from them, in order to support my family, and failed. Like a rat stuck on a treadmill.

I considered myself enlightened and strong. I am neither enlightened nor strong.

Since then I have learned of his mantra over the last few months: better an end with terror than terror without end.

I have of course taken my mind to that dark place. Researched his hanging technique. Found out just how much planning was necessary. Walked through the procedure in my mind. Read medical accounts, reviewed statistics, and cried at the sheer terror of the fact that hanging was, for Steve, less painful than the mental torture he was suffering.

I understand mental illness this much: it is an entire mystery. I have not felt such terrifying depths of depression myself, but I have spent sleepless nights before Steve’s death trying to feel it. Trying to understand what it must mean to be unable to pull myself together.

I have heard hints in the past from Steve’s friends about how dark his thoughts had become. Nothing shocked me. I am not shocked by things which 99% of the rest of humanity would be shocked by. Why didn’t he talk to me? I am unshockable.

I imagine that Steve lost his battle with mental illness approximately twelve hours before the point he was found. Unbeknownst to me, this had a been a long battle lasting more than several years. How had I not known this?

Dear readers and friends, if you take just one thing from this, please contact a loved one, or even a distant friend, whom you know – or even suspect – struggles with depression or mental illness.

Go gently, but go. Ask questions until you are weary. Ask the difficult questions. Ask how bad it has been for them at its worst. Ask how they thought they might end it all. Go into the detail even if it does not seem appropriate. Just ask questions.

You may think they have people closer to them who are better placed to support them.

Forget that. Forget other people. Ask the questions yourself. Meet them in their darkest place, if you have the strength to do this. Of course, this can cause more harm than good if you are not prepared. But at least consider it. Consider opening up a dialogue.

Or if you have yourself battled, I would like to hear from you. Have the courage to share your mental state with someone you know can be trusted.

We live in a culture which has, in the most part, banished shame from mental illness, and so there are no excuses.

To my personal friends: I’m not taking calls right now. I need you to be there for me when I do, though.

Please donate to the charity below:

http://memoryspace.mind.org.uk/MemorySpace/memspacemindorguksteve-smith

Surely nobody thought “Fiscal Union” was really a good idea?

July 10, 2012 in Rant, Views by admin | No comments

Far from being an Orwellian nightmare, I love the idea of greater fiscal and political union with our neighbours. Maybe it could even work… in 100-500 years?

But right now, as long as different countries within Europe teach different versions of history, value different types of trade, have different climates that affect their vastly diverse national identities – and not to mention different politics – I believe a single currency is a terrible idea.

Why? A given generation’s workforce in a given country (or ‘economic zone’) depends on the social values of its predecessor generation(s).

Example: let’s talk dinner parties. Your average dinner party of middle-aged professionals in Germany would hold an ‘engineer type’ in the same esteem we Brits hold ‘artist types’ (i.e. high esteem). The UK is largely numerically illiterate and, with the possible exception of medical professionals, we pretty much like to make fun of scientists.*

* I attend dinner parties (not with the middle-aged) with people who do like scientists. I am basing this on media representation, proportion of elected MPs who are actual scientists, the take-up of science subjects at ‘A’ Level or degree, school results in science and maths, and other soft statistics / observations.

If, within the global economy, money is to be made from science rather than art, then Germany is going to whip our asses, whichever metric you use to define economic success (GDP, GPI, etc.)

Now let’s say Germany and the UK were in some kind of hypothetical fiscal union. Given the above, the UK would need to become more competitive on a global scale, otherwise it would run out of money and not be able to buy drugs for the NHS or pay teachers to maintain a decent education system. It would have to ask Germany for a loan. Of course, it could go elsewhere looking for a loan, but I’m pretty sure Germany might have something to say about that.

Sure – in the short term, the ailing UK would benefit from being in the fiscal union, as it would mean it could pay for those drugs, teachers, police, prisons – and maintain some kind of status quo. But it really will need to buck-up its ideas. The problem is: how can it become more competitive? The UK can’t simply change its interest rates – they no longer exclusively control the bank! Businesses can’t magically pay their employees more to attract more talent.

British people won’t magically decide they suddenly like scientists over artists. Worse still, the position of Germany would ironically make Brits dislike scientists even more.

(Aren’t we already seeing the above phenomenon, where although a country is benefiting from being in union with stronger country, they are ironically resenting them at the same time?)

Eventually Germany would have to say to Britain, “right. You need to become more numerically literate if this is going to work”. Germany would invest in education programmes in the UK for decades, but this wouldn’t address the core issue.

This scenario can only end in one of two ways:

1) an amicable break-up of the fiscal union
2) full-scale … wait, don’t mention the war …

The above is of course a hypothetical, over-simplified version of the truth.

But tell me dear readers, do you agree with the basic analysis?

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How to configure your NTL 250 to work with wireless

July 9, 2012 in Rant, Tech by admin | 1 comment

If you are merely browsing this blog, don’t read the below. It’s dull as dogs. This is for incoming google searches.

(Hint. If you actually want to configure wireless for your NTL 250 cable modem, skip to the far quicker and superior “Option B”.)

This blog is for the benefit of anyone who might be going through the same problem as I did…

Option A

  1. Call Virgin Media and request a new wireless cable modem router, because yours is faulty. Argue with them over 3x 25 minute phone calls because they say they didn’t provide the original, and your only option is to upgrade your internet connection and take-on another 12 month contract because the NTL 250 cable modem is out of date and they no longer provide separate wireless routers.
  2. Choose “a bit of classical” as your hold music. Hey, I can choose hold music! Oh wait, they are playing “Jurassic Park”. #fail
  3. In a cavalier fashion, purchase a wireless access point on Amazon
  4. Review the “order dispatched” email and immediately KICK YOURSELF when you read the words “wireless access point”. You need a “wireless router”. Who the hell buys those things? The NTL 250 is a cable modem, and is not a router.
  5. Await shipment. Maybe the Wireless AP you purchased can handle routing as well. It seems to do everything else under the sun, it’s one of those TP-Link devices that seem to have taken over the low-end market. They have awesome chipsets and a web interface that doesn’t make you want to pull your hair out, which more than makes up for the unbelievably cheap plastic they are made from. Take THAT Netgear…
  6. Stop kidding yourself. Really, a router is a router. A Wireless AP is a Wireless AP.
  7. Out of desperation head to Maplin. Make sure you get a Wireless *Cable Modem* Router this time. Uh oh. The only wireless cable modem router in stock is a Netgear.
  8. Scream and struggle and tear your hair out because your Netgear web interface randomly hangs, you never know if it actually ‘applied’ the settings you painstakingly entered, and you can’t get the thing to play ball.
  9. Attempt to use the Netgear “auto detect modem settings”. Yeh, that was never going to work.
  10. Attempt to manually set the router’s IP address and DNS servers (even though they should be dynamically assigned) as if this will somehow help.
  11. Hit Google, pore over various VirginMedia broadband forum posts, none of which assist in configuring your NTL 250, all of which conclude with “Virgin will send you their new Superhub”. Call Virgin once again to say your wireless router is faulty, can they send you a “Superhub”, no they can’t, not unless you upgrade, take-on another 12 month contract, etc.
  12. Ask to speak to Virgin’s tech support team, you need assistance configuring a wireless router for your NTL 250 cable modem. “What is the make and model?” Netgear. “We are unable to support Netgear wireless routers”.
  13. Phone up again and lie, tell them you are setting up a Linksys. They tell you “set your router’s settings to ‘dynamic’. No need to enter any logon information. No connection username and password. DHCP will provide your router with the correct IP address, DNS, gateway”. ARGUE. Say you’ve done that but it is simply not getting an IP address. Angrily explain you have no way of getting online because they won’t upgrade your router and won’t replace your existing one, then eventually hang up because they can’t help you.
  14. Curse, Google some more, etc.
  15. … notice a setting on the Netgear. A strange setting, one that allows you to hard-code the MAC address of the router’s cable modem interface. Think to yourself “surely they don’t filter MAC addresses at the exchange, given they haven’t even bothered to set up any kind of connection encryption in the first place”. (Or perhaps it’s their way of helping NAT to actually work. Either way, it’s dumb.)
  16. Get online within a few minutes of the above.

Option B

Here’s how to set up your wireless cable modem router with your NTL 250 or 255 (thanks to Virgin Media for all their wonderful help):

  1. Make sure you buy a Wireless Cable Modem Router
  2. Find the MAC address of your cable modem. If you are lucky, it will be written on the underside of your NTL 250 or 255 cable modem
  3. Input this MAC address into your wireless cable modem router
  4. Most modern wireless cable modem routers should magically work once you have done the above
Easy, huh?

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Clicktivism or Slacktivism?

March 20, 2012 in Views by admin | 1 comment

I know, I know; the Kony 2012 subject has been done to death. I don’t plan to weigh-in too heavily on the debate, except to make a small comment on what the media has termed “clicktivism”. Or indeed what sceptics have termed “slacktivism”.

Before I go on: my viewpoint on the campaign. Naturally it goes without saying that a Brit such as myself sees the “Stop Kony” campaign – or rather the more bizarrely named “Kony 2012″ (more akin to a Presidential election campaign title, right?) – with a healthy dose of scepticism. I wouldn’t go as far as Charlie Brooker did in likening it to a cult, after all Kony is not a myth and his well-known LRA has been in operation for almost 2 decades, throughout which time numerous atrocities have been reported by the international media.

No, Charlie Brooker’s attack on the campaign was in itself egotistical, and attempting to make comedic capital out of the systematic rape and murder of kidnapped children by a man whose arrest warrant was issued by the ICC a decade ago is unfathomably stupid and shallow.

Satire should be relevant; as such Brooker might have focussed on the core debate which includes the organisation’s transparency, immediate fame, and efficacy. A little side-poke at the ‘cultish’ nature of the campaign might have been more palatable in this case.

Back to the matter in hand: “clicktivism” or “slacktivism”.

Although, in themselves, these terms are cringeworthy, they point towards a social phenomenon unique to the new Twitter/Facebook generation. That is, the belief that fame in itself can solve problems.

Over the last few days on social media, I’ve seen examples of this;

  • a young black English rap artist (early on in his career) tweeted about wanting to make friends with the rich in Chiswick, because he believes that by association this will bring more fame to his music career
  • a young New Yorker friend of mine posted a video on Tumblr of herself saying “our job is to stop Kony, we have the power to do something. As internet users, teenagers have the power to control how famous Kony becomes”.

Whilst the first is obviously a clear case of today’s obsession with celebrity over that of talent, the second is worthy of a little more debate.

I’m in two minds about the effect of fame on politics and international law. On the one hand I lament the fact that charities like Oxfam and Amnesty have been chipping away at this campaign for decades, and one single-issue movement gathers pace, produces a glitzy video, and blows their attempts on the given issue out of the water by engaging young people.

On the other hand, is this not just the new form of political campaign? Throughout the history of representative democracy, politics has been about issues and people gathering fame, whether this involved those on the campaign trail knocking on doors and delivering leaflets, or more recently making glamorous videos. Was not the Obama ’08 campaign the blueprint for the latter?

Head of Research at Oxfam UK, Duncan Green, blogs with scepticism about the issues of fame and charity. Whilst he makes some valid points about the absorption rate of human rights issues into the minds of young people, I can’t help feeling that his response focusses mainly on the style of the campaign rather than the effect it might have. He is “appalled” by the tone, the depiction of Africa, and the “feelgood schmaltz”. Whilst I don’t personally like these aspects of the Kony 2012 campaign, these are the very things that made it successful, and brought 60 million viewers to the cause. They are mere stylistic objections.

In summary, whilst I want to dislike the whole focus on glamour, the Invisible Children published a thorough response to current criticism of their campaign, detailing their breakdown of expenditure.

If the pie chart tells a truthful story, then I’m all in favour of how they are spending their money and running their ads.

Those who want charities to remain chipping away quietly at issues of human injustice rather than making grand statements that engage young people may have to start rethinking their position, because global, single-issue movements will play an increasing part in the future of charitable giving.

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Top Ten Grammar Peeves

February 1, 2012 in Rant by admin | 1 comment

I recently read one of those annoying graphics that are being ‘shared’ or passed-round Facebook.

What makes them annoying is not that they are faddy, inert, and positively dull, but that they are low resolution JPGs of plain text which have been resized to look like arse.

Anyway, the latest – which I simply couldn’t let lie – was this.

Top Ten Grammar Peeves

  1. It’s “I couldn’t care less.” “I could care less” means that you actually do care.
  2. An apostrophe is never used to form a plural.
  3. “Literally” means it actually happened, not that it figuratively happened.
  4. “Loose” and “lose” are two different words.
  5. “Your” and “you’re” are also two different words.
  6. “Their,” “there” and “they’re” are actually three different words.
  7. “nonplus” does not mean what you think it means.
  8. “Affect” is a verb. “Effect” is a noun.
  9. “It’s” is short for “it is” and “its” means “belonging to it.”
  10. “Irregardless” is not a word.

So I read this and thought “nothing gets up my hackles like a pedant who is wrong”.

Firstly the phrase “I could care less”, whilst a little American in tone, is perfectly acceptable. In fact it is rather subtle. It means “it may be possible for me to care less, in which case I might; however I do not”. Such linguistic subtlety has clearly passed-by the writer of this little ditty.

Secondly why has the writer consistently included punctuation marks not relevant to the sense within the quotation marks? Fowler’s A Dictionary Of Modern English Usage states that “all signs of punctuation used with words in quotation marks must be placed according to the sense”.

As for “literally” meaning “actually”, what rubbish. It means, “in a literal sense” or “pertaining to a literal”. In fact my dictionary says it is often used as an acknowledgement that something is NOT to be taken literally. Such is the flexibility and subtlety of the English language, and any true lover of language will appreciate this, rather than getting annoyed by it.

The word “affect” can be a noun as well as a verb, and in this form is synonymous with the word “emotion”.

Finally the word “irregardless” has an entry in my Concise Oxford English Dictionary, an edition from about 12 years ago. If that doesn’t make it a word in some official sense, I don’t know what does.

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The Pluralist Paradox

December 21, 2011 in Rant, Views by admin | No comments

Deep down inside of me, there is a swing voter waiting to get out.

A true British I-don’t-really-know-what-I-think voter, someone who could go both ways. Hell, I could go three or four ways.

I know, dear imaginary reader, you are thinking, “but how can someone so … so – political – how can you not be true and loyal to a single party?”

Don’t get me wrong. The swinger inside of me is not the typical British non-thinker. Not the common man on the street who waits until there is a critical mass of others to think on their behalf so they can chime in at the last minute and back the winning party. Not the fickle man on the street who just loves to complain about whichever party is in power and backs the opposition because, “there’s no possible way we could have four more years of the same old [insert current governing party here]“.

No, my swinging tendencies come from much, much deeper within me. My struggle is thus:

On the one hand, surely our socio-economic outlook looks far prettiest when people are allowed to do what they want whilst not harming others; a liberal, pluralist society? What is wrong for you might not be wrong for me, and therefore we should agree not to legislate for what you consider to be wrong, because it would be unfair for me. Instead we should just hang out / do business with people who have similar views to our own.

Of course we should have high taxes and good quality public services. This isn’t a matter of politics, it’s a matter of economies of scale: pooling resources allows us to reduce overheads. (I’m talking theoretically, of course.)

But on the other hand – and please excuse my Newtonian worldview (blame my Christian parents) – given that humanity, if left unchecked, tends towards selfish and greedy behaviour, perhaps after all it doesn’t look that fabulous when people are allowed to do what they want.

Here I cite the global financial crisis as being caused by unfettered or poorly-regulated capitalism.

Or what about society and the family? It is horribly non-liberal to interfere with matters of the family: married couple tax breaks between man and woman, making it legally difficult and expensive to get a divorce, reducing benefits to single mothers and punishing walk-away fathers who don’t take responsibility.

Whilst the above may offend our sense of social liberalism, let us hypothesise what their long-term effect on society might be, and therefore the effect on our economy and, eventually, our wealth as a nation of individuals. In economic terms, those societies defined by people pulling together (be this around the traditional unit of the family, or otherwise) are the ones that generate wealth for their futures. Those societies that are fragmented and socially disorganised are the ones that get poorer.

Given humanity tends towards greed and ultimately destruction (we agree on this, do we not?), and given in my example of the family above this would mean men will love women then walk away from them unless there is a compelling financial reason not to, perhaps a liberal society with fewer rules is a less successful, inferior one?

I used the construct of family to make my point, but this could equally apply to other constructs.

And this is the crux of my indecision. Conservative rule is too socially prescriptive. Labour rule causes too much fragmentation of society to allow for growth or progress. Liberal Democrat rule… well, our party just gets laughed-out or shouted-at most of the time.

What is my problem with political loyalty? Why do I mistrust staunch Labour party members, staunch Conservative party members, or staunch Any party members?

Is it that my world view espoused above is essentially flawed? Is it that I’m merely a liberal mind trying to get out of a conservative body? Or is it because my politics derive too directly from the existential questions in my head? Or is this a common Paradox of Pluralism?

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eBay – the final straw

September 29, 2011 in Rant by admin | No comments

This will be a short post, in point form. Because the subject of eBay is a damned boring one.

The history of eBay as per Mat:

  • 2003 – eBay seems cool, amazing way of getting a bargain
  • “Buy it now?” – surely that defeats the object of an auction?
  • Hmm, teaming up with evil Paypal. Paypal evil because they pretend to be bank. Paypal not real bank. Paypal not registered with FSA. Paypal naughty people with bad reputation for freezing people’s accounts and denying them access to their own funds.
  • Wait, I am required to offer Paypal? Two sets of fees. Kidding?!
  • Wait, I am now required only to use Paypal? But – *voice wells up with tears* – they still aren’t even registered with the FSA …

… three years later …

  • Hrmm, at least I can still use this thing as a buyer to consume disgustingly cheap electronic accessories from Korea or Japan
  • What’s that you say? A replacement battery for my camera that lasted 4 times as long as my original Canon one, costing less than a tenth in price including delivery from Taiwan?! A USB cable car charger thingy for £0.26 plus £0.85 postage? All hail the global free market! (Gah, I hope nobody was … like … tortured or abused during its production. Right?)
  • I find the security features of this site increasingly … draconian? Verify by SMS text message every time I log in? Automatically logged out after 10 seconds of inactivity? Purlease!

… final straw …

  • Ok I really need to sell something. Start writing auction. Craft the wording. Wait, I haven’t checked the fees in 7 years. Let me check the fees.
  • TEN PERCENT of final value? As in, TEN? 10%?
  • PLUS AN INSERTION FEE?
  • Plus other fees for screwing with my listing, allowing big photos, and making it purple and bold and shit?

It appears there are alternatives to the monolithic beast that is eBay. I shall be investigating those.

Maybe even one that allows me to interact in such a way with my customer so as to allow them to actually pay me with real money?

How Sociable is Facebook towards Developers?

September 22, 2011 in Tech, Views by admin | No comments

If Facebook wants to be the social ‘platform’ on which the web resides – a grand vision, but an attainable one – it had better start being nicer to web developers.

For years, Facebook has been a taker, not a giver. What other platform begs you to feed information into it in the form of personal user data, communications, shared web content (and its corresponding metadata), provides proprietary mechanisms for you to identify your own independently-hosted web content to Facebook, and then refuses to let you feed anything out again except by using a tiny suite of ‘widget’ style, iframe-based pieces of javascript: unstylable, uncool, and uncooperative. God forbid you should try to scrape anything to create your own feeds from these stubborn widgets – or from anywhere else – lest you put your own Facebook account in jeopardy for violating their terms.

And should you ever try to interpret the meaning of anything that isn’t ‘being a friend’ – for example you need to engage users with your company – you really must let Facebook call the shots on these interactions, too. It was only a year ago Facebook decided you would rather “Like” an entity than “Become a fan” of it. And now – subscribe? Is that the same as like? Is it similar to what you do with an RSS feed? I don’t have a problem with the evolution of change, but it’s frustrating seeing businesses having to tweak their social media paradigm just because Facebook didn’t get it right first time.

Facebook has taken a lot of unfair flack in the last decade, mainly because of their refusal to be pigeonholed into either a platform for private data (e.g. email) or one for public data (e.g. blogs). Despite a number of iterations in its privacy interface (ranging from the bizarre/arcane to the really-quite-sensible), Facebook still struggles to convince its users that controlling the privacy of their data is not exactly rocket science. It was solely because of its popularity, and the fact it became lowest-common-denominator for personal communications online (read: “it attracted stupid people”) that Facebook suffered an exponential amount of bad press regarding its ‘security issues’. I shudder even writing those words, for one thing Facebook has not had major PR problems within its lifetime, at least as compared with any other social network you care to mention, is security – in the technical sense. It’s merely the media’s interpretation of the word I’m using here.

Of course, Facebook was absolutely right to keep strong tabs on its data and interface early-on. I’m sure it wasn’t as much a branding reason as the fact Zuckerberg didn’t want to get sucked in to the same issues MySpace did, where users were encouraged to ‘personalise’ their pages, ultimately resulting in a social network that was unusable for all.

But surely the time to open-out (I’m not talking about styling one’s profile page) came and went about three years ago? Instead, at this time, Facebook was buttoning-down its strategy so as to retain as much data as possible whilst making it slightly more interactive with the rest of the web. And so was launched the adoption of the “Social Graph” model.

I’m hoping that any changes taking place over the coming months may involve Facebook adopting an open standard. Not the kind of “open” mentioned in Zuckerberg’s blog post from a year ago, but a real kind of “open”.

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Amazing Robocopy

August 30, 2011 in Tech by admin | 2 comments

There was a time when my home server was a large computer with RAID drives and loud fans that stayed on 24/7. Gladly that time is no longer, and I’ve moved to a more power-friendly netbook-based thing which generates hardly any heat and can therefore be left in a small cupboard without airflow concerns. The disk performance is, naturally, horrific, but it serves files up fast enough for me to stream music around the house.

I now do pretty much all my photo editing work on my laptop, which I take around with me.

As I still have the requirement for archiving large volumes of data to the desktop PC with hardware mirrored drives, unfortunately this machine has to stay. But I can keep it turned-off for 95% of the time, and only turn it on to copy / archive my data to it when needed. As well as saving energy, this should increase the lifespan of my disks by a long way too.

My netbook also acts as a web server from which I am hosting a simple ASP.net application to send WOL (wake on LAN) magic packets to my desktop PC. This is secured using Basic Authentication over SSL. It is therefore now possible for me to securely start my computer up when I’m away from home, then log on remotely using RDP (or establish a VPN connection). However – this is unrelated to my post.

I tend to do the large file transfers when at home, and given the regularity of these transfers, I’ve set up a directory on my main laptop into which I can dump everything ready for transferring, then run a robocopy batch file to move this data across.

Cue: “Amazing Robocopy“. (This is a super batch file which runs the robocopy routine and does a load more. I may have wasted an entire evening writing this batch file.) Hopefully the above gives you the context you need to fully appreciate why I need such a thing.

“Amazing Robocopy” does the following:

  • Checks if the remote machine is on. If not, send a WOL Magic Packet
  • Keeps pinging the remote machine until it responds, then attempts to check the fileshare (CIFS) visibility
  • Verifies some level of stability to the network connection before continuing
  • Run the robocopy and log to a file.
  • Provide the prompt at the very beginning as to whether user wants to shutdown machine when done
  • Provide feedback throughout the process
  • All timeouts and response limits set using variables
The screencap says it all:

 

Amazing Robocopy goes something like this.

It may be best to paste this into notepad before attempting to read.

Notes: download Depicus Wake On LAN for command line, and put it somewhere in your PATH. You’ll need to set the WOL arguments manually, as they can’t be configured with variables.

Also you’ll need to set the robocopy parameters to suit you.

 

: This script does a basic robocopy, but also it does the following:
: - test connectivity to the machine (ping). Send WOL Magic Packet if it doesn't respond.
: - after WOL, wait until the machine appears on the network
: - regardless of whether or not we got the machine up using WOL, we still verify a level of ping response consistency before continuing
: - verify the network path is visible before continuing
: - prompt at the start whether you want to shutdown the machine when finished
: - no further prompts during the process

@ECHO OFF

: SET THE FOLLOWING VARIABLES

: Set robocopy destination into two variables. They are used individually to test CIFS and PING connectivity then combined to insert into robocopy command
: We'll strip quotes from the outsides of these, so feel free to use quotes around each varilable - or not. 
Set remotemachine=mat-pc
Set copytoshare="f$\transfer\in"

: Time to wait after sending wol packet, before bothering to try to do anything else (approx startup time of remote machine)
Set timetowol=30

: If, after sending wol and waiting, there's still no response, we'll wait 1 second and try again.
: This is the total number of tries. TBH, may as well set this really high and Ctrl-C if you get bored.
Set pingfaillimit=25

: What do you consider is a good number of ping receipts to get back before deeming your connection to remote machine is stable? 1 = impatient. 10000 = paranoid. 10 = normal.
Set stabilitysatisfaction=10

: Once stability, by the definition of how many pings specified, is attained, we check the copy-to network path is available
: Frankly, if it isn't, it probably won't become available. And you'll have to figure out the problem separately.
: But this gives us the option to keep trying x number of times before continuing.
: Note: this number doesn't correspond to an amount of time. Windows is unpredictable when trying to check fileshares.
Set filesharefaillimit=15

: NO MORE VARIABLES TO SET NOW

CHOICE /M "Shutdown when done?
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 SET copyshutdown=1
IF ERRORLEVEL 2 SET copyshutdown=0

Set consecutivepingcheckcount=1
Set consecutivepingfailcount=1
Set filesharetestcount=1

:pingandcheck

ping /n 2 %remotemachine% | find "TTL=" >nul
if %errorlevel% == 0 goto reply

@echo No Reply on that IP! Tried %consecutivepingfailcount% of %pingfaillimit% times

IF %consecutivepingfailcount% == 1 (
@echo Let's try to WOL...

wolcmd.exe 001320164898 192.168.0.5 255.255.255.0 9
@echo OK ... WOL Magic Packet was sent. Let's wait for %timetowol% odd seconds then try to ping again...
ping 127.0.0.1 -n %timetowol% >null
@echo Fine - let's try to connect now.
Set consecutivepingfailcount=1
)

Set consecutivepingcheckcount=1
Set /A consecutivepingfailcount+=1

IF %consecutivepingfailcount% == %pingfaillimit% (
@echo We didn't get very far did we?
@echo I sent a WOL, waited, but nothing!
@echo Increase the pingfaillimit variable?
GOTO fin
)
goto pingandcheck

:reply
@echo IP Replied! Checking connection stability... %consecutivepingcheckcount% of %stabilitysatisfaction%
Set /A consecutivepingcheckcount+=1
IF %consecutivepingcheckcount% == %stabilitysatisfaction% (
@echo Connection appears stable!
GOTO checkfileshare
)
GOTO pingandcheck

:checkfileshare
@echo Now checking fileshare
IF EXIST \\%remotemachine%\%copytoshare% (
@echo Fileshare is visible. Good to go. Starting copying.
GOTO docopy
)
@echo Couldn't find fileshare - tried %filesharetestcount% of %filesharefaillimit% times.
Set /A filesharetestcount+=1
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 2 >null
IF %filesharetestcount% == %filesharefaillimit% (
@echo Failed to find the fileshare. Oh no!
@echo Maybe verify the fileshare is accessible yourself?
GOTO fin
)
goto checkfileshare

:docopy
:first three lines strip quotes if found then combine the machine name and share to give path
for /f "useback tokens=*" %%a in ('%remotemachine%') do set remotemachine=%%~a
for /f "useback tokens=*" %%a in ('%copytoshare%') do set copytoshare=%%~a
Set destination=\\%remotemachine%\%copytoshare%
ECHO on
robocopy f:\transfer\out\ "%destination%" /E /R:20 /W:10 /MOVE /NP /LOG+:logfile.log /TEE /XF *.bat *.log

IF %copyshutdown%==1 (
ECHO off
shutdown /m \\mat-pc /s /f /t 0 
)

:fin

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