JC - Technology and Stuff

I want to be able to watch movies on any TV or PC in the apartment and also be able to record them so that I can watch them anywhere too. I’m sure there’s an easy way to do this but so far nothing has jumped out at me. Maybe I’m not the average household and maybe I don’t have average requirements, but there’s got to be a fairly straightforward way to do all this without having either a degree in electronics or having to mortgage my soul for the equipment.

I drew up John’s World a couple of weeks ago but my drawing didn’t include my TVs; one downstairs in the main living room, and one upstairs in the bedroom. The main TV is HD and has a Comcast HD DVR attached to it, but the one upstairs just has a normal digital cable settop box attached. My wife is always asking why she can’t watch recorded programs on the upstairs TV and has even suggested getting another DVR so that she can record programs on the other TV. That’s not a route I want to take though as it would mean being tethered to whichever TV you happened to record your show on. There has to be a way to network the whole thing.

Of course there is you all shout at me. It’s such and such a solution. Well, if you have the name of it, tell me. I’ll research it.

In the meantime I’m thinking that I have to install another cable access point in the apartment (I only have the two at present), connect a settop box to it and then attach it to a TV tuner card (so I get an unencrypted cable signal) installed in one of my PCs. Then I would have to run some recording program, not forget to set the settop box to the correct channel and record the program. After that I would have to make sure the recording was on a network drive so that any other PC could access and play it. I don’t know how that gets the picture back on to my TV upstairs though? Any suggestions?

It all sounds so complicated. Isn’t there any kind of recording system that can ‘beam’ its programs to my TVs? In fact what I really want to be able to do too is to burn my DVR programs to my network drive (or a DVD). Can I do that too? I don’t know. Maybe I’m pushing the limits of my electronic knowledge into a world that is not yet quite ready for it all. No doubt if I had the latest technology TVs and PCs then they would have all the right connectors and I wouldn’t be writing this post. But, and like I said I am just an average Joe here (well John actually), my TV is probably 5 years old. My PCs are a little newer. I live in an apartment where I can’t go tearing all the walls up and I just want to be able to record what I want when I want to and watch it from wherever I want to. Please give me some suggestions.

Ten years ago I never used to get much email. One or two a day from friends. Life was good. Now I get well over two hundred emails a day and sometimes five hundred. Do I have that many friends? Of course not. As we all know, our email has been taken over by spam.

In the phone world there’s the ‘do not call’ register. Unfortunately there is no such list in the email world. In the phone world we are able to port our number across networks if we want to and that’s a good thing in that it enables our friends to not have to keep updating their address books. In the email world we ditch our email addresses with constant regularity and hope our friends and family keep up. Spam. It’s a pain.

If you’re like me you probably have a few email accounts you use now. There’s one for home, one for your account sign-ups, one for crap, and one for work. Email proliferation in the form of accounts and actual emails is huge. I’ve tried several ways to manage my emails over the years and never really found the thing that worked.

Well I am pleased to report that Google mail seems to be the closest thing to perfection so far. It has the best spam handler I’ve come across and can consolidate email addresses. You can pull all your email from other addresses to Gmail, and even send from gmail just as if you were in the other email address (Just go into Settings/Accounts). What’s more, with the addition of automatically assigning labels to incoming mail, you can instantly tell just where your email’s come from (see picture above). I now only look in two places for email: Yahoo! and Gmail. I finally feel like I’m in control of my email and not the other way around. If you’re struggling with email proliferation and multiple spam messages, give it a try.

Later…

Two minutes! That’s how long it took me to correct a problem I had on my home PC this morning. And I wasn’t even at home when I fixed it. Let me explain…

It seems that now I have my fast cable internet installed, my Yahoo! Messenger at home refuses to give up its connection like it used to. What I mean by that is usually I have Messenger loaded at home and then I come to the office and then reopen it on my desktop. What this normally does is close down my Messenger at home (well, takes it offline anyway) and I then carry on using it at work until I get home again in the evening where I reverse the process. Sounds easy. And it’s been working fine like this for a few years now.
But this morning after I got to work and connected to Messenger it decided to go offline by itself after a few minutes telling me it was online on another computer! Well, not to be outdone, I got it back online on my work PC again and carried on. Yet again a few minutes later the same thing happened and so the tussle continued for an hour or so. Hmmm, what to do?

Then I remembered I have Mesh and Home Server, both of which allow remote access to your PC. That is they are both supposed to. I found out there’s a little clause in the Windows Home Server documentation that says it doesn’t support a remote desktop connection to a PC that’s running Vista Home of any flavor. And yes, of course my PC, likes millions of others, is running Vista Home Premium and so I can’t remote desktop to it. Still, that leaves the ever trusty Mesh which I’ve blogged and blogged about before. This little application never ceases to amaze me. I simply navigated to mesh.com, hit the ‘connect to my PC’ button and lo and behold I got a login prompt for my home PC right on my screen at work. Magic. One password and one click later and I had my desktop in front of me and I was controlling my home PC from the office, just as if I was sat in front of it. I quickly opened up my Yahoo! Messenger and closed it down and then logged off my home PC. I re-opened Messenger on my office desktop and there we go, sweetness and light had been restored. No more interruptions!

This is exactly what modern day computing should be about. Doing simple clever things. Just a few years ago I read all these pitches to buy remote-PC (or some such program) and all these applications cost like $20 a month. Mesh is FREE!!!

Well it finally seems like my home PC network setup is coming together. Now that I have fast internet installed, and after some small adjustments to everything, I am fairly happy with what I have. I still need to get backups properly organized via Home Server; I currently do partial backups via that and other backups via a backup program that runs every day for me. My T-Mobile home phone is still performing flawlessly and now that they have introduced Discounted International Calling there really is no need for anything else.

One major change today. I finally gave in and converted my Verizon DSL to Comcast Cable. To tell you the truth the Verizon connection had been playing up recently. It forced my hand into an upgrade that I had already planned, only I did it earlier. At least when I call Comcast I get someone from this country who seems to care about what I am doing. My experiences with Verizon support have been less than stellar. I’m not a believer in outsourcing customer support to India (or any other country actually). It leads to phone scripts being used and there’s no way you can persuade them otherwise.

I received my self-installation kit from Comcast yesterday and so after I got home this evening I set to rearranging my office area and setting up the new internet connection. Of course, as in all these things, they never go quite according to plan. The self-install kit didn’t!  So I ended up on the phone to Comcast sorting it all out. One quick phone call later and it was all sorted. Excellent cutomer service experience off the bat.

So I now have 16mbps internet speed and I don’t even download movies! Maybe I’ll start watching a few now! Well, that’s it for this post. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

(For context, please see previous post: John’s World)

…and so should yours be.

Mathematicians tell us that most ‘normal’ distributions fall under a bell shaped curve. That is to say if you drew a bell (see diagram opposite) with quantity along the y axis and ‘whatever’ on the x axis, then the area under the curve at distinct points would be equal to certain pre-defined percentages. Put another way, most of us would exhibit a certain behavior a certain percentage of the time. Nearly every possible population set for any given set of circumstances results in a curve of this nature. That’s both reassuring and disappointing at the same time. Reassuring because there’s some predictability to it and it’s nice to know where the boundaries are, but disappointing in that we as human beings are at the end of the day so predictable after all.

Anyway I digress. I wanted to write a little today about careers (or my observations about careers, since I claim to be no expert in the matter). If my career was a bell shaped curve then I guess I’m over the hump. In fact I could apply some simple mathematics to work out exactly where I am, but that’s not the point. I only need to know that I’m over the hump. Maybe that means I’m ‘over the hill’ too, but that’s another totally unrelated topic! The hump of the bell curve is a good way to look at our careers. At first we are struggling for success (and wealth, and happinees, etc.), but as time goes on hopefully we improve and we start climbing that hill of the bell curve. New heights bring new challenges - normally in the form of stress. I am a firm believer in the theory that the higher in the bell curve you are (also factor in direction and gradient), the more stress you are also under. Wow! That really explains my late 30’s and early 40’s.

I don’t think most people undestand bell curves (or really care) and therefore don’t understand that in the end it all has to even out. Many people keep trying to climb and climb, thinking that by the time they are nearing retirement they will be at the top (but how stressed will they be? - I’m thinking 60 year old CEOs here). So let’s think about it for a moment. If the area under the curve represents a big part of your life and you use it all up at work then you’re not going to have any of it left by the time you retire. One day you’ll be at the top of the curve and then very next day you’ll be at the bottom. I would hazard a guess this is the quick route to the next world (think heart attack or stroke). Life needs to be a balance. Bell curves work for a reason.

So, I’m on the down slope of my career bell curve. I need to work out the exact angle and area I have left so I can do a good job in managing it. I think I’ll plot it out so I can calculate it.

In the chart above the black line represents the ‘ideal’ career bell curve (the red line maps my career path to date) and is mapped with age in years along the x axis and percentage of career capability / effort / investment along the y axis. Of course you could be an early or late bloomer and the curve could be skewed either way, but for my example I am assuming a standard bell curve. Either way you have to understand that there is only so much area available under the curve and this area eats into the rest of your life. If the area is too large you have no life outside of work!! Consider that when the line is at 80%, you only have 20% of your life quality left to give outside of a work environment.

My early career was steep and precipitous. Then it plateaued out for a few years. Then it took a brief  downturn. Then it went skywards for several years. Then it plateaued out again. Now it’s taking a natural downturn. Not because I’m unemployed or anything (I actually have a very good job), but because I need to keep that balance - for my own health and well being. I don’t need the stress anymore. I have interests and committments outside of work. I have a life. I have other bell shaped curves I want to embrace. My mum used to say that you can’t burn the candle at both ends (well actually I don’t think she did, but it’s the sort of thing that mums say). What that means is that you can’t fit in more than a day’s stuff in 24 hours. If you try and do then something will suffer. Put it another way. If you spend all your energy and stress on work, then your social life is going to suffer. Or your marriage. You know where I’m going. There is only a finite area under the bell curve. Use it wisely!

Well gosh I’ve rambled on for a few paragraphs without seemingly having any purpose. But I do. I have real purpose. By starting that journey down the other side of my career bell curve I have freed up time in my mind and for my body. I am now paying attention to things I let wander over the last few years. My health is benefitting (let’s not even talk about what my blood pressure used to be), my weight is coming down, my diet is improving, and my mind has more opportunity to imagine the future. Heck I even have more time to devote to a better relationship with my wife and children. It’s all in the bell curve.

I hope I’ve given you a little food for thought in this post and maybe you’ll try and map your career path to this chart. No matter what age you currently are, try and keep to the black line. You’ll live a lot longer and have a much happier and more fulfilling life.

Today was the day the T-Mobile G1 phone was finally announced. There have been hundreds of posts already written about this new phone all over the Internet but I just have to add a little one of my own. I am SO eagerly awaiting MY chance to get one of these. I wish I was privy to a pre-release model but I am just a lowly employee who will wait his turn like everybody else. I’m sure it’ll be another 5 weeks or so before I have mine and it is activated. Until then all I can do is dream.

The best picture gallery I have found is here at Engadget.

Of course the day at T-Mobile was full of the announcement. Internal emails and websites are awash with the new iPhone contender. And so they should be. This is the biggest thing to happen in the cellphone market since the original launch of that alternative device! I am confident the G1 is going to be HUGE. And this is only a first generation, first model. In another year’s time the world will know it’s here to stay, and this phone / platform combination was first available on T-Mobile.

So, that’s my take. I promise I’ll stop writing about this phone now until I’ve nearly got one. In the meantime, here’s a final list of its features and a link to the official T-Mobile G1 website:

Touch screen

• Instant access to key information with the touch of a finger
• Just tap the screen and go

Real Web browsing capabilities

• Quick and easy access to the Internet one click away
• View more pages and rich Web content on your phone

3MP camera

• Capture key moments in high-quality fashion wherever you are
• Never worry about blurry photos with auto focus built right in

Customizable home screen

• Just drag and drop any of your favorite applications, photos, or folders onto your home screen for quick access to what you use all the time

QWERTY keyboard

• The built-in familiar layout lets you type messages easily without scrolling for the letter you want
• Hinged screen slides open to reveal keypad and closes to prevent accidental dialing

Easy access to Google applications

• One-touch access to Google applications: Maps (including satellite, traffic, and street views), Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, IM/text/e-mail
• All the ways you need to connect while you’re on the go

Music player

• With the 1GB memory card, you’ll never be without your favorite tunes

One-click Google Search

• Quick and easy access to the Internet in one click

Video playback

• Watch your favorite videos, even YouTube, anywhere

3G network and Wi-Fi access

• High-speed 3G network connection for surfing the Web or downloading information quickly and effortlessly
• Seamlessly transition to open Wi-Fi networks to surf the Web or download information quickly

Android Market

• One-touch access to Android Market
• Customize and personalize your device to fit your life with a variety of software applications like games, social networking, and on-the-go shopping
• Download the applications wirelessly with just a couple short clicks

As you get older you fall into the habit of reminiscing about your schooldays and similar long ago experiences. I was browsing Facebook last night, looking for a few groups to join when I stumbled across one for Poole Grammar School; a place where I spent 7 formative years, from the ages of 11 to 18. Like a previous post on Larry Norman, someone who left a lasting impression on my life, one of the teachers at that school also did so. His name was (Mr.) Chris Balgley. And I say it like that because all teachers were either addressed by ‘Sir’, ‘Mr. So and So’, or ‘Miss So and So’. Not Mr. Bagley. He encouraged us to call him by ‘Chris’ for most of the time. Certainly not when we were in Maths lessons, but certainly when we were in the 6th form (Junior and Senior grade High School equivalent). I learnt a lot about computers from Mr. Bagley. In fact I learnt everything I could from him. We even had ‘field trips’ to various computer centers to see the latest in technology (this was the mid-70’s so we’re talking mainframes here!). I remember with affection one particular trip to flight booking operations near Heathrow Airport. Just a handful of us went and I enjoyed the day immensely. Mr. Bagley seemed to me to be a young modern teacher compared to the other teachers we had at school. He tried very hard to ‘connect’ with some of us and certainly spent many extra hours out of school helping us with our computer studies. At least twice a week we would go to the local ‘technical college’ after school and do some programming, creating programs on paper tape. Later we actually got a modem in the school library and we were able to use it with permission either during lunch or after school. Mr. Bagley seemed the perfect teacher.

A few years ago I heard a rumor that he had been arrested on charges of ‘inappropriate behavior’ or something slightly worse. I was pretty shocked. Sure enough after investigating the ‘rumor’ I found the article in a local Poole newspaper and read the story. It made me think. Although this happened 28 years after I left Poole Grammar School, were there any tell-tale signs back then? Apparently it had been going on for a while so I am also thinking that maybe our class made up the early days; the innocent days, but nonetheless the time at which the seed was planted. It saddened me. It still saddens me. I was reminded of it all again yesterday as I browsed some posts written by ex-pupils.

It did get me to thinking however. When you’re young and you’re at school you don’t know anything about this kind of stuff. You don’t know what the tell-tale signs are. Heck, all you care about is getting through your exams. If a teacher seems to be helping you, you’re thankful for it. How can we protect our kids against anything untoward happening? Well, we can’t easily. We trust teachers. We trust all sorts of members of society. And so we should. If we went through life trusting no one it would be a very sad place indeed. We just need to be thankful that these kinds of incidents are few and far between.

Nothing ever untoward happened in my presence. In fact I would only ever have good things to say about Mr. Bagley. He made learning fun, was extremely knowledgeable and went that extra mile to help us succeed. Unfortunately my experiences are not the same as others. Others were scarred in very serious ways. That does sadden me. According to the newspaper article (linked here in case you want to read it), I guess he ought to be out of prison by about now, a 62 year old man whose life is a sad reflection of what it could have been. If there’s one lesson to learn in all this it’s that our whole life is something that is very much on show. Some people turn their life around from something bad, to something good. Others, as in this case, do the opposite. Which is better, and why? Who am I to judge? I’m trying to remember the positives, and even as I do, I am more deeply affected by the negatives. Is this another trait of being human?

Later…

Just in case you use Outlook and you’re looking for some information on getting the most from it, you might be interested in the following links I have stored away. Me? As I’ve previously blogged, I don’t use Outlook anymore. Still, I’m sure some of you do

Looks like it’s going to be a bumper week next week with all the new announcements of phones for the retail season. Me? I just want one of the new T-Mobile / Google / Android phones. Watch out iPhone!

John’s World is not quite as crazy as Wayne’s World; but sometimes it feels a little like it! I’ve been thinking a little about my home setup over the last few days and then ‘future thinking’ it. Apparently future thinking is one of my strengths, therefore I might as well embrace it! Anyway, in order to work out where my home setup was going I needed to record exactly where it was at present. So I started drawing. After about 30 minutes or so I ended up with the drawing that is replicated below. I have to admit it, I like the drawing!

The drawing has helped me to put things into perspective and understand what I rely on and what is connected to what. Also it has shown me where the areas of vulnerability are and where there are opportunities for improvement. All in all it was a very worthwhile exercise.

John’s World is primarily concerned with access, backup and redundancy. That is to say I need to make sure I can get to any of the files I want from wherever I am; I need to ensure all my important files are backed up; and I need to ensure that if I lose one of my critical means of access I can continue working without panic. Some may argue that the last two are one and the same, but I disagree. There’s a difference between having a backup of something and being able to carry on when something fails. When I look at my setup I think I’ve managed to achieve all my requirements. I am a long way further forward than I was just 6 months ago. I think the turning point was Microsoft Mesh. I’ve gone on about this piece of software several times but, you know, it’s just so good. Not only does it replicate important files (and synchronize them) to different PCs if I want, it stores other synchronized copies in the Internet cloud. Furthermore, it allows me to log on remotely to any of my ‘mesh’ PCs and do things as if I was actually logged on myself. I know it works, I’ve tested it, but I haven’t had to use it in anger yet. It’s one of Mesh’s stealth features that I’m sure some users don’t realize exists, but it’s an amazing added feature. So much so that it’s a feature Windows Home Server uses as a selling point. Mesh just has it and it’s free. Hmmm (go Microsoft Marketing!).

So, a little more detail about John’s World. I connect to the Internet via a Verizon DSL router. It only delivers me 1.5mbs of speed, but for now it’s enough. (I am trying to decide whether to wait for FIOS which is supposed to be coming ’soon’ or to switch to cable). My Verizon router connects to my T-Mobile @Home router which I’ve configured as a bridge. I made this configuration change in order to make things easier for my Windows Home Server which is very particular about how it connects to the Internet if you want to access it remotely. My @Home bridge basically has everything hanging off it. Firstly there’s my home phone! As I’ve blogged before, I use T-Mobile’s VOIP service for my home phone and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s great! Further, when I’m at home my cell phone connects to my @Home router and uses UMA technology for all its calls (both in and out). This means I don’t have to rely on which parts of my apartment have good or bad signal coverage, I always use the Internet for my calls, just like my home phone. I love technology that just works! Apart from the phones, everything that’s hanging off the bridge is normal stuff. There’s the network printer/scanner, a network drive (which I got before I installed Windows Home Server), my desk Vista PC, and lastly my latest addition, the Home Server (a converted Windows 2003 server) which I’ve also blogged extensively about. The @Home bridge also supports wireless connections and so I use it for the other PCs in the apartment to connect to. I could have chosen to connect the wireless (or wired) devices direct to the Verizon router but the T-Mobile router has built-in prioritization for the phone connections and so it makes sense to let that unit make the decisions about what traffic takes priority over the Internet. After all I wouldn’t want to lose a call because I was downloading a huge file on another PC. Clever stuff.

I also manage several websites and these are hosted by 1and1.com and so I need access to these at any time. Mesh also manages the offline copies of my websites nicely for me. Then lastly zoho.com manages my ‘online’ documents (which actually aren’t backed up anywhere else at present. That’s another project for a rainy day. I need to install Google Gears and then I can have these documents available offline and backed up via Mesh or Windows Home Server). All in all, I think I’ve taken most possibilities into account. I’m no longer reliant on any particular PC for access to things. I no longer need to have the latest greatest speed demon or mega-hard disk PC. I’ve moved to the world of only needing something that connects to the Internet and functions at a relatively decent speed. Lastly I can travel the world and confidently access anything I need in a variety of ways without having to think about it beforehand. I can even travel and not take my PC with me. Now that’s a scary thought for someone who’s had a PC attached at the hip since the early 1990s!

There you have it - John’s World.