Jeremy Pearson

Links for 2009-11-01 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-01T23:00:00-08:00

The Complete Guide to Google Wave: How to Use Google Wave

Links for 2009-11-01 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-01T23:00:00-08:00

The Complete Guide to Google Wave: How to Use Google Wave

Links for 2009-10-17 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-18T00:00:00-07:00

YouTube - Google Wave Cinema: Pulp Fiction

Measuring Technological Affluence

2009-10-03T17:30:00.002+01:00

Roughly a decade ago, Ian Nelson (@ianfnelson) proposed a measure of affluence for owners of computers and gadgets: count the number of devices with a CD player. The greater the number, the more affluent (and nerdy) you probably are.

This was an astute observation. At the time, games consoles and DVD players/recorders were proliferating, and it was becoming common to see households with more than one computer.

Times and technologies change, and the optical disc mechanism is fast disappearing, despite the emergence of HD content. Digital downloads are now cheap, legal and convenient, and the advent of the netbook has seen optical discs finally head the same way as the floppy disk.

So what to use as a new measure?

Connectivity Is King

Internet connectivity is perhaps the most compelling feature of any modern device, particularly for mobile gadgets. The Internet is becoming central to so many activities - social networking is a great example - and the wider availability of smart-phones and intelligent devices has transformed how we go online.

Using the Internet no longer means a planned visit to the spare room to power-up a PC (and make a cup of tea while waiting). Now, it's a more spontaneous, near-instant experience; pull out a smart-phone, wake it with the touch of a button, and hit an icon to go directly to a website.

I believe that this experience, once embedded in our lives, will strongly influence our future relationship with technology. The expectation will be that devices (including computers) can be turned on within a second or two, and that the battery will last at least a day or two. Cables and connectors will become too inconvenient. Anything with a lens or microphone must be able to transmit sounds, images and videos directly to a computer, or preferably directly to the Internet.

The enabling infrastructure already exists: wireless internet in homes and better coverage of mobile broadband provides the connectivity, it's now down to manufacturers to make the final step and incorporate wireless technology into their products. Premium goods will probably lead this evolution, with budget brands following as soon as the technology becomes cheap enough.

Applications Not Browsers

Internet browsers are not the software solution. We're already comfortable with applications on smart-phones which bypass the browser and provide direct access to mobile versions of web sites. The same idea could naturally extend to all digital devices; the simplicity of an application would be far more suitable for a digital camera than the generic desktop experience of a web browser.

The Challenge

Build Internet connectivity into every digital device, making sure to support the various protocols (802.11, Bluetooth, Wireless USB), and link with major hosting providers and social networks - YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter et al - to deliver a seamless digital upload experience.

How Affluent Are You?

So, how many wireless Internet connected devices can you count?

Links for 2009-09-30 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-01T00:00:00-07:00

iPhone and iPod Touch paper stand / dock
Singing Science Records
Tom Glazer and Dottie Evans

Links for 2009-09-21 [del.icio.us]

2009-09-22T00:00:00-07:00

Google Wave: Things you need to know

Links for 2009-09-17 [del.icio.us]

2009-09-18T00:00:00-07:00

How to Type French Accents

Links for 2009-09-13 [del.icio.us]

2009-09-14T00:00:00-07:00

The Buzz: E-Day 2009
Video made by pupils of the Five Islands School on the Isles of Scilly to promote E-Day (Energy Saving Day)

Recovering Deleted Photos

2009-09-10T21:29:00.003+01:00

Recovering deleted photos from a digital camera memory card is straightforward, although large cards or disks can take a long time to scan.

WARNING: THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARE PROVIDED FOR INFORMATION ONLY. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGE TO YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM OR ASSOCIATED DEVICES, HOWEVER CAUSED.

Background

Files (photos) are never completely erased. Instead, the space they occupy on the disk is marked as "available". This is important: don't take any new photos; they may overwrite the deleted photos which you're trying to recover.

Software

This process uses a free tool called PhotoRec. There are many others, although I've not have the same level of success as with PhotoRec.

Download TestDisk (which includes PhotoRec) for Windows from the CG Security website

This download is a ZIP file. Save it to your desktop. The ZIP file is an archive which contains many other files.

Right-click on the new TestDisk icon on your desktop and choose "extract all..". Accept all the default settings in the wizard
A new window will open. Open the TestDisk folder, then the win folder

If you haven't done so already, plug in your camera memory card or USB flash drive. Close any windows which pop up.

In the win folder, run the PhotoRec program by double-clicking on photorec_win.exe
A black window will open with white text

Using PhotoRec to recover photos

Use the up and down arrow keys to choose the disk you want to recover photos from. The size of the disk should help you decide. Press ENTER to select.
Make sure INTEL is selected on the next screen and press ENTER again
A list of disk areas (partitions) is displayed. Just press ENTER again to choose the default partition
Press ENTER again to choose the default partition type (FAT/NTFS)
Press ENTER again to scan only for deleted files
The final prompt is to choose a location to save recovered photos. Type Y to save these in the win folder, or use the up and down arrow keys to save these in a different folder.

The recovery process will now start. This may take some time, depending on the size of the disk. Once this is complete, look in the win folder for any recovered photos. Press ENTER at any time to stop the recovery process.

A Day In The Life: Thursday 25th June 2009

2009-06-26T17:27:00.004+01:00

Ferris Bueller famously said "Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. " With this in mind I've tried to capture something of my daily routine - particularly with a birthday just passed - to preserve for the future..

Thursday 25th June 2009

7:45am

Not an early start, which is typical for a Thursday. Blame the night out yesterday with the girls who row the gig boat "Golden Eagle". I'm their cox'n, and after coming 5th in the triangle race - we were hoping for 3rd - it seemed appropriate to drown a few sorrows in our local pub The Atlantic Inn. A few post-race bottles of beer on Porthmellon beach beforehand was soothing, and one never tires of watching the sun setting behind the island of Samson.

8:55am

Off to work at the Five Islands School (ICT and Electronic Services Manager). 4-minute walk. Wander past the harbour. Blue skies and sunshine, Northerly breeze.

9.01am

School e-mail system non-functional. Re-boot the server. Fixed. Will plough through the event logs later to determine a reason for failure, meanwhile digital life can proceed as normal.

10.45am

Teach a class of 25 9/10-year-olds the fundamentals of digital movie making. Quick presentation followed by group filming & editing session. Success! After an hour we've got a short movie.

12:00pm

Meet with project manager to discuss ICT facilities needed in the new school we're planning to build. Make an ambitious wishlist with a £500K price tag.

12:40pm

Am a guest on the book show on local radio station Radio Scilly. Talk about Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicholass Taleb. Give a positive review and try to emphasise the humanitarian aspects whilst diminishing the focus on maths and jargon.

2pm

Internet feed into school stops working, disconnecting around 250 people. Not a good day for technology. Catch a taxi up to the TV transmitter mast on St Mary's to reset a box of electronics in the equipment room. Success! No taxis available for return journey - all collecting holidaymakers newly arrived on helicopter - so walk back into town (20 mins).

3pm

School fete. Have volunteered to go in the stocks for half an hour, to be pelted with wet sponges by the kids, all to raise money for the school's charity. Very refreshing after a long walk in the hot sun!

6pm

Cook dinner for some friends: chicken wrapped in bacon and cheese with vegetable rice and Mediterranean vegetables.

7:15pm

Go with friends to watch a performance by the local theatre club of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Superbly acted and thoroughly enjoyable; on the edge of my seat the whole time. The club have won regional awards for other plays in the past.

10:30pm

House party back at the flat. Pancakes and post-theatre drinks with two of the actors. Plenty of impromptu performances of key scenes in the play.

3am

Bed. Exhausted. Will clear up in the morning. Maybe.

Microsoft's Evolution

2009-01-29T23:35:00.003Z

See my comment in response to Ben Toth's recent blog post on The changing Microsoft eco-system.

Most Visited Sites In Google's Chrome Web Browser

2009-01-24T19:52:00.004Z

I've been using Google's excellent Chrome web browser for almost three weeks, and one of the more interesting features is the pictorial display of most-visited web sites when opening a new tab.

For the record, here's the top five web sites in the list:

NB: This excludes all the web sites configured as application shortcuts:

Book review: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, John Le Carré (1963)

2008-12-31T18:47:00.001Z

Set in a time of heightened East-West tensions during the cold war, this modern classic novel tells the story of Alec Lemas, a British spy working in West Berlin. After being recalled to England in disgrace, Lemas is ordered to stay out "in the cold" - under cover - for one last mission: to defect to the East and provide false information to the Communists.

The mood of the period and the main characters are quickly established, and we're thrust into an already moving plot of exasperating complexity. The chilly fear of Lemas being followed, watched and scrutinised is conveyed with mouting suspense and expectation. Throughout the novel, Lemas's character is slowly revealed, but Le Carré always holds something back to keep the reader on the edge of the seat. Gone is the glamorous sophistication of James Bond's secret service; Le Carré depicts a brutal underworld of torture, bare-knuckle fights and desperate acts.

The real satifaction in the novel is of the reader being manipulated and led. The surprises and shocks are sudden and unsettling, and the final climactic scenes come all too soon as we become attached to Lemas and his awkwardness. Superbly constructed, this novel both defines the genre and stands out as a thrilling example of deception, espionage and gritty, matter-of-fact intelligence service business being carried out by real people with real fears and vunerabilities.

Hello World

2008-09-09T21:26:00.001+01:00

So this proves that blog posts created from an email is working
smoothly (from my new toy).

Expect a critical review of the iPod Touch some time over the next few
days.

The Internets Is Too Fast

2008-08-22T10:56:00.001+01:00

I'm working in school over the holidays, which means I have a 2Mb DSL internet connection entirely to myself. Yes, it's quick, but I never expected to see this when signing into Delicious (click for enlargement):

My Favourite CAPTCHA

2008-08-21T14:10:00.005+01:00

CAPTCHAs are fast becoming a standard way for web sites to determine if there's a real live human behind the keyboard, or not.

This is my favourite so far; click to enlarge:

Drink More Bottled Water

2008-02-18T22:32:00.006Z

OK, my turn. Bottled Water is a good thing, and I want to celebrate its existence for a few moments.

Over the past few years the bottled water debate has gained momentum, and recently a UK government minister launched a scathing attack on the industry, describing it as verging on being morally indefensible. This article in The Times newspaper is typical of many others, all making the same case against the consumption of bottled water.

But they're all missing an important point, and I really can't believe that very few others can see it (skip to the final paragraph for the abridged argument).

The current position against bottled water states that, given the cheap and plentiful supply of drinking water from the household tap, we consumers should not be encouraging the soft drinks industry to provide an alternative - bottled water - at an unacceptably high cost to the environment. And I wholeheartedly agree. However, this is not the end of the debate. If it were, we'd probably have reached a solution by now.

The simple fact is that bottled water is a product, just like any other soft drink. There it is, in the convenience store chiller cabinet, alongside the colas and fizzies, the fruit drinks, milk drinks, and various others. Bottled water is in competition for sales with all the other soft drinks, and should be considered as a soft drink, not merely as the plain old water we immediately think of.

The entire soft drinks industry, worth around £2 billion annually, exists precisely because we do not want to drink water; we now demand a more interesting alternative. Whether this demand is justified is another debate entirely, but the fact remains that a bottled or canned drink is now both convenient and highly desirable.

Coca Cola is probably one of the best-known brands in the World. In Africa, because of the scarcity of clean water, Coca Cola is probably consumed more often than any other drink. And here lies the main point of my argument: bottled water should be available wherever soft drinks are sold.

Bottled water is the "healthy" alternative to the sweet fizzy drinks on offer. I buy it whenever I'm travelling, simply because I don't want a fizzy drink full of sugar. I just want pure water. Any argument against bottled water is, ultimately, an argument against all bottled or canned soft drinks, which are all comprised mostly of water anyway. What does it matter that one particular type of bottled water is pure, and another type is carbonated, coloured and flavoured, and is sold as cola?

In fact, this argument could be extended to any water-based product sold in bottles, cans or barrels; for example: beers and lagers, themselves mostly made up of water.

Transporting plastic bottles long distances is clearly inefficient, but it would be hypocritical to ban bottled water and not ban other bottled or canned water-based drinks. It would also be nonsense to ban bottled water, when it is the only "healthy" alternative to sweet fizzy drinks. We consumers now expect convenience, and we're unlikely to be prepared enough to carry a drink from home. That's the reality, it's why the soft drinks industry exists, and it's why we need a choice at the drinks counter. Give us the healthy option, and let's keep drinking bottled water.

Backing Up Personal Data

2008-01-06T17:09:00.000Z

Computers currently fulfil many diverse roles, and consequently the data we store on our hard drives is very varied, in content, size and in purpose. Backup options - once a simple issue - have become increasing complex as the technologies involved have become cheaper, faster and available in larger capacities.

This article is aimed at Microsoft Windows users, although the general discussion is applicable to anyone who stores personal data on a computer.

Backing up: why should you care?

Backing up involves keeping a copy of your computer's data in a different, physically separate place. This is usually to guard against hardware failure; if the hard drive fails or if the computer is damaged or stolen, and if you have a recent backup, it's a relatively straightforward task in most cases to have the computer repaired and the data restored, with no real loss apart from the time and money involved.

Quite often the data we store is increasingly fragile; photos, for example, can never be re-created. Therefore, the only way to preserve this information is by keeping another copy, known as a backup.

Also, a backup is useful when data is accidentally deleted or erased, or when you need to keep a sequential or chronological history of your files. Sometimes it's not useful to restore the most recent backup; you might need a backup of a file from two months ago if changes have been made many times since.

Where is my data actually stored?

If you have Windows Vista, Windows XP or any of the predecessors, almost everything is stored in the My Documents folder. This includes all photos, music, videos and other documents. Having said that, it's possible to store data wherever you want to on the computer, and you may have chosen an alternative location.

Items on the desktop, internet bookmarks in the Favorites or Bookmarks menu of the web browser are stored as files elsewhere, as are emails and email addresses. These files can be backed up in the same way as your personal data.

Any configuration settings you've made for any other applications you use (for example: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Adobe Photoshop) are stored in a fundamentally different way, and cannot usually be backed up.

What should I backup?

"It depends" is the answer to this. It's possible to take a snapshot of the entire hard drive of the computer, which preserves everything at a particular moment in time. However, not only is this method of backing up very time consuming, it also requires very large external storage capacity.

Most importantly, it's probably unnecessary because (a) Windows and other software can usually be re-installed from CDs or DVDs, and (b) the only thing which changes regularly is the personal data that you hold. Having said that, some computers are used in circumstances where they must be available all the time, and any disruption is unacceptable. In this case, regular snapshots are often the only solution, albeit very costly.

Generally speaking, it's only necessary to backup personal data, which probably consists of the following:

Documents (the My Documents folder)
Desktop (the Desktop folder)
Internet Explorer Favorites (The Favorites folder). If you use an alternative web browser (e.g. Firefox or Opera) you should consult the product documentation to find out where bookmarks are stored
Outlook Express emails and Address book (The Application Data folder inside Local Settings). If you use an alternative email application you should consult the product documentation to find out where emails and the address book are stored

These folders are all contained inside your profile, which is a particular folder on the hard drive where each user's documents and settings are stored. When backing up, it's simply a case of opening the profile folder and choosing the folders above to be included.

Backup Technologies

As backing up involves keeping a copy of the computer's data in a physically separate place, we'll need some physical device on which to store the data. The choice of device depends very much on the data involved; there's no single solution for everyone, although I'm sure I'll regret saying this in five years time.

1. Removable USB Flash Drive (also known as a pen drive, memory stick or thumb drive)

These drives are small plastic sticks which plug into a USB socket. They come in different sizes, and typically a 2 Gigabyte drive (2,000 megabytes, or about 2,000 digital photos) will cost around £10. The largest size is currently about 8 Gigabytes.

These are a good all-round solution for many people who have small to medium-sized files. The benefits are that they're fast, they can easily be removed to use with someone else's computer, and they're easy to grab if you need to leave the house in an emergency.

2. Optical Media (CD, DVD and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Disc)

This is possibly the simplest and cheapest method. Buy a re-writable CD or DVD, then every week erase whatever's on the disc and burn all your personal data onto it. Most CD or DVD burning software (pre-installed on your computer) has a specific backup option to help with this.

The main drawbacks with this method are the slow speed and small capacities, although the very low cost of the discs makes it a convenient method of mailing your files to other people.

3. External Hard Drive

This is a small box containing a hard disk drive, which plugs into a USB socket. It operates in exactly the same way as a USB Flash Drive, except that very large-sized drives are available. For people with large amounts of data (usually lots of photos, music or video) this is often the only option.

A 500GB external hard drive currently costs around £88, and would be large enough to back up the entire hard drive for most people.

4. Backing up files over the internet

This is only practical for those with a broadband internet connection. For a monthly subscription, usually around £10 per month, your computer's personal data is stored online, and is synchronised regularly.

This can be expensive and is slow to use, but does guarentee a safe location for your personal data away from your computer.

Conclusion

Ultimately your choice of solution is dependent on the amount of data you store, but in most cases a USB Flash Drive (option 1) will suffice. Note that in each case you'll need to perform the actual backup manually, by copying files onto the device.

This process can easily be streamlined, and can be scheduled to happen automatically. Alternatively, commercial software for around £30 can make the process even simpler; just search for "backup software" on the internet.

How Do I Contact Thee? Let Me Count The Ways..

2008-01-03T12:38:00.000Z

As 2008 dawns and I look to send new year greetings to my friends, it struck me that the range of options for communicating a short message have never been so wide and varied. For example, I could:

Send a letter, card or postcard through the mail
Phone the person's land line, or mobile..
..and leave a voice mail message if they're unable to take the call
Send a fax
Send a text message to a mobile or land line
Send an email
Send an instant message or voice message using one of the many IM clients
..or hold a voice conversation over IM
..or a video conference over IM
..or send a nudge or a wink
Use a Social Networking website to send an email
..or write on someone's wall
Start a discussion group, using Google Groups or Yahoo Groups (many others also exist)
Post a new blog entry
Put a personal message in the newspaper
Send a greeting through the local radio
Delegate the task of contacting everyone to a personal outsourcing client, who will greet everyone on my behalf

The laptop doesn't matter anymore

2007-11-18T13:31:00.000Z

I'm asked with increasing regularity for buying advice on personal laptops, which I suppose happens to anyone who "works with computers" (which most of us nowadays, right?).

Being in an IT support role for a school, I probably come across four or five different types of laptop computer every day, each with different screens, keyboard layouts and trackpads. Which do I prefer? The clean ones!

Other than that, I'm finding that it really doesn't matter about too much else. The technical specification of the machine, the size, shape and weight all seem to be almost irrelevant, as long as the machine is responsive.

Even budget-level laptops are now feature-complete and uncompromising, which means I can do whatever I need to regardless of the machine I use. More importantly, almost all my productive and creative work has, for at least the past six months, been conducted though a web browser, so even the software configuration has become largely irrelevant, as long as a web browser is available.

So what do I recommend to anyone buying a new laptop? Consider the form factor. Choose the machine which just seems to look right, and go for sensible mouse buttons. If you write, pay attention to the keyboard layout, particularly with the INSERT, DEL, HOME and END keys. And make sure the ENTER key is large enough; the iconic MacBook Pro has a nasty, thin ENTER key, and the whole keyboard has a cheap, rattling feel.

Other than that, don't worry. It'll work, and it'll do the job. But if you'll be playing games just buy a desktop instead, or a console. Laptop gaming performance generally sucks.

Spell-Checking

2007-09-25T21:08:00.000+01:00

The increasingly-ubiquitous "check spelling as-you-type" facility, seen here in GMail and Blogger (also a Google property), seems bizarrely unaware of a few very important internet-related words.

Coding Frenzy

2007-06-24T13:23:00.001+01:00

Novell have just produced an open source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight application development framework. But just look at how they did it (see below). I expect each and every developer involved will be sueing Novell in years to come for RSI complaints..

clipped from arstechnica.com

In a blog entry, lead Mono developer Miguel de Icaza describes how his small team of globally dispersed developers managed to conjure up their entire Moonlight prototype (almost 25,000 lines of C++ code and over 13,000 lines of C# code) in only 20 days by giving up weekends and working 12 to 16 hours per day in a remarkably epic "hackathon."

I need CAPS LOCK

2007-06-03T13:45:00.000+01:00

An internet campaign to eradicate the CAPS LOCK key from computer keyboards seems to be gathering some momentum, and whilst I'd agree with much of the rationále and sympathise with the endless vitriol on the subject, I do still feel that the small minority group to which I belong - computer systems administrators - rely heavily on this key, and would miss it's departure.

During the course of my work I regularly need to type passwords and serial numbers, many of which happen to be a combination of digits and upper case letters. Product keys and license codes, entered during software installation, are also usually entered in capitals, and having the caps lock key makes the whole process that little bit easier. That, and the fact that over the past few years I've somehow begun to memorise many of the 25-digit product keys which Microsoft use.

Perhaps a better solution is a software one, where each computer user can turn this key on and off as needed in the Windows control panel.

A USB or BlueTooth foot pedal for operating the shift key, or for scrolling through documents and web pages would be even better.

Older Blog Posts

2007-06-02T13:47:00.000+01:00

Older blog posts can be read at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/jeremy73.

Goodbye Bloglines, Hello Google Reader and Blogger

2007-05-29T02:12:00.000+01:00

As a news (RSS) reader and blog host, Bloglines has served me well for a long time - about two years in fact. But needs change and technology improves, and having experimented with Google Reader for a few days I've been easily converted. In fact, in making the switch I've gone completely Google, switching to Blogger for my blog and iGoogle for my browser home page. I'm now uttlerly dependent on Google for much of my online identity; they host my mail, blog, home page and documents. Should I have spread the risk by using different providers for these things, or is the overall convenience worthwhile? So far, I believe it is.

So why switch?

Bloglines has the annoying feature of marking all posts as read as soon as a feed is opened, which is very irritating when there are 200 unread posts and I only want to read the top 20 or so, leaving the rest for later. In contrast, Google Reader marks posts as read only when I've actually read them; that is, when I scroll past them. Very sensible, and very typical of Google design. Google Reader also has the marvelous "list view", showing just the title and first few words of a post on one line, making it easy to scan a whole number of posts. Invaluable when I probably skim read at least 100 posts per week.

The blogging functionality of Bloglines has begin to irk me over the past six months or so too, not that I'm the most frequent blog poster. The pop-up window is a no-no for starters, and the editor has the most erratic formatting and cursor movement I've ever come across.

I do feel like a deserter. I generally consider myself mostly loyal to many other brands and products, but I also feel it makes no sense to persist with failing and inconvenient tools when better alternatives exist. I'm probably late to the party on this one, but as they say, better late than never.

Jeremy Pearson

Links for 2009-11-01 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-11-01 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-10-17 [del.icio.us]

Measuring Technological Affluence

Links for 2009-09-30 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-09-21 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-09-17 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-09-13 [del.icio.us]

Recovering Deleted Photos

A Day In The Life: Thursday 25th June 2009

Microsoft's Evolution

Most Visited Sites In Google's Chrome Web Browser

Book review: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, John Le Carré (1963)

Hello World

The Internets Is *Too* Fast

My Favourite CAPTCHA

Drink More Bottled Water

Backing Up Personal Data

How Do I Contact Thee? Let Me Count The Ways..

The laptop doesn't matter anymore

Spell-Checking

Coding Frenzy

I need CAPS LOCK

Older Blog Posts

Goodbye Bloglines, Hello Google Reader and Blogger

The Internets Is Too Fast