Home Printers – Box O’Nightmare

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Mark Cahill

Over the time, we expect that technology will improve. The general notion is that gadgets become cheaper, with richer feature sets, and finely tuned reliability as they mature. We see this throughout tech, in computers, smartphones, tablets, etc. Everywhere, except printers. Let’s face it, home printing technology has become harder to use, less reliable and has generally been on a downward spiral since the invention of the ink jet printer.

Back in the 80′s, I could run thousands of sheets through my tractor feed dot matrix printer (I think it was an Epson LQ 590 or similar) a day. The thing might as well have had a hopper into which whole trees could be fed, it was that good at processing paper into printed material. Ribbons for the thing lasted forever, but at $5-10 you could keep a few extras in your desk drawer, just in case.

Then in the 90′s the laser jet became the thing. My experience with these was that you either got a good one or a bad one. I had one I liked a lot, an HP Laserjet 5L, that was capable of printing large manuscripts without jamming, so long as I kept feeding it paper. I bought the same model for a friend, and it was nothing but problems.

Now we’ve got a Lexmark Pro 205 wireless printer, which is mostly used for the kids homework, and it honestly couldn’t be a bigger piece of crap. Literally, every time one of the kids needs to print a report, I end up spending a minimum of 2 hours doing tech support trying to get the damned thing to produce a handful of pages. Fun stuff like:

The thing loses it’s ip, and doesn’t get a new one. So you can’t connect to it via wireless. Negating that whole “wireless printer” thing…
If you don’t use it for a couple weeks, you can count on a trip to the store to replace a cartridge.
If you need to replace one cartridge, you’re going to end up replacing them all. You just don’t know it yet.
The cartridges cost something like $25 for the black one, and $50-70 total for the colored ones. If you need them late at night, because SOMEONE didn’t tell you they needed to print a doc early in the evening, Walmart carries them.
I am now replacing cartridges monthly. Or more…
It has an annoying habit of burning through print heads.
A bad print head will turn your daughter’s science experiment write up into a Jackson Pollock-like presentation, as if the printer barfed random colors all over the document.

The short version: my experiences with both this printer, and it’s predecessor, a Canon All In One Pixma, are that Ink Jets are seriously bad technology. Neither one ever gave me even the slightest hint of reliability. I have a failure rate when I hit the print button of nearly 95% and run through reams of paper, gallons of ink, and too many hours of my time to count before I can cajole either into producing an even slightly passable printed product.

The long and the short of this is that I’ve gone over to requesting my daughters email me anything that needs to be printed before 5pm everyday so I can print it on the office printer. Eventually, I’ll go over to Staples and buy myself a nice, new dot matrix printer. Maybe there are still a few Epson LQ 590s around somewhere…

Taking Control of Your EVO 4G

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Mark Cahill

Simple Tips for the Cyanogen Mod of the EVO 4G

The problem: My Evo 4g Android phone ran out of space constantly due to the limited “on phone” memory (428 mb total). Most of this space was eaten up by apps my mobile carrier, Sprint, had added to the phone which couldn’t be moved to my SD card. Things like “Sprint NFL”, “Sprint NASCAR” and “Sprint TV” as well as a host of apps like Blockbuster, which I’d never, ever use.

With Android, your apps need to first be loaded to the phone, before you can move them to the SD card, so I literally had tons of SD space, but couldn’t move anything there. Over the past year, this became worse and worse, to the point where it was a real issue.

So, as suggested by David Churbuck and Alexei Vidmich, I decided it was time to root my Evo 4g and take back control. I was shocked by how easy it was to do.

For Evo 4g users, there are full instructions here. Here are a few tips from my experience (it took about 30 minutes, then about another hour of customizing and installing the apps I wanted).

You probably want to disable your screen password and make sure you’re fully charged before you start.

I did a full backup with HTC Sync before starting. I found I had to go to HTC and download the latest version to get it to recognize my phone. The one on the phone didn’t work with Windows 7.

No matter what the doc says, assume you will lose your voicemails and sms messages.

First, create a new folder on you computer. Call it “Cyanogen” or something.

In that folder, create a text document and call it “phone info”. Save the file. Use this to copy in your phone’s serial number, the hboot version, your revolution beta key, etc.

Since you’re going to be pulling your battery out, I suggest it’s a good time to upgrade to the Seido Extended Life Battery (this WILL make your phone much thicker…).

I also suggest using the Seido Innocase Extended Rugged Hybrid Case – aside from it’s “Eastern Bloc” style, the thing makes your phone basically bullet proof. The iPhone crowd may laugh at you, but your phone is utterly protected and infinitely better than theirs are…

Instead of using Astro File Manager, use ES File Explorer. It’s much better.

When downloading Revolutionary, be sure to download AND generate your key at the same time. Otherwise, it won’t work. If you mess up, you’ll get the infamous “invalid beta key” error. If this happens, download it again and generate the key at the same time.

Definitely install the Google Apps at the same time. You will need them. After you have installed Cyanogen, you will need to use Google Voice for your voicemail.

In the instructions, there are three different recovery methods. I used the Clockwork Mod method via Recovery. It was simple.

Overall, the process is fairly simple. If you can access the drive on your phone to download pictures and know how to unzip files on a computer, you can probably handle it without issue. If you’re concerned, call your favorite geek and ask him to help. Be sure to provide a 12 pack of his favorite barley pops, or perhaps dinner, to ensure future tech support service.

It is VERY important that you re-calibrate your battery. To do this, go to the Android Market, and download Battery Calibration. You will need to fully charge your battery, then use this plugin to delete the battery stats file on the phone and then fully discharge your phone and charge again to 100%. While this seems like a fairly silly step, it is utterly crucial to getting the most out of your battery.

Okay, so now you have your phone rooted. It looks pretty bland with the default theme, and no apps on it.

You can grab themes here that will work with the ADW Theme Launcher that is installed in your system manager.
I personally went with the MacOS theme, not because I like the MacOS, but because it was clean and most fit the idea of what I wanted. Forget about the pink color…I use a background image anyways.
In system manager, turn off the animations. They use up battery and I consider them distracting.

In either you own photo albums or on Google Images, find a nice horizontal image at high res you can use as a background. The phone will scroll it across your screens…so a highwidth to height ration would be much better. I just like fly fishing at Monomoy…
Download and install the 3d Digital Weather Clock . Then install it’s widget on your main page. 4 columns by 2 rows is the proper setting.
Grab the Battery Indicator App, and the Green Power App (I have the free version, but am still testing battery management apps).
Install Elixir - it will give you an app that helps to see what’s really going on with your phone, but also provides a widget that will make it easy to turn on and off major services like Wireless, 4g, GPS, screen brightness (a big battery saver), etc. from your phone screen with a click.
Before you start pulling your apps onto your screens, think about how you organize them. I like to put system stuff all together, information apps like news sites, magazines, etc., and then my social stuff all on screens together. I also devote on page to work stuff, like my calendar, my Salesforce Chatter app, etc. I anxiously await the soon to release Rally Agile Development app.

A few apps I strongly suggest

Dropbox - it lets you move files from one machine to another via the cloud.
ES File Manager - A great way to manage files on your phone.
ES Task Manager - Manage what’s running on your phone.
Evernote - Files, pics, spreadsheets, everything on any machine.
WordPress for Android - unlike the iPhone app, this one really works well.
Currents - Yeah, I’m a fisherman and boater. Why wouldn’t I want all the Eldridge Tide and Pilot content on my phone?
Navionics Marine & Lakes USA - same reason as above, why wouldn’t I want all the marine navigational charts for the US on my phone? Honestly, this one is better on a tablet though.
Weatherbug - my favorite weather app, simple and easy to use.
BigOven - Recipes – I’m surprised how much I use this.
Google Translate - you may not need it, but if you do, it’s a life saver.
Google Goggles - lots of promise for visual search. I haven’t really had cause to use it much, but this is the app to watch.
Google Maps - with this, you have no need of a traditional GPS for your car again. Find anything and get directions, with turn by turn nav.

Social Media Apps (if you’re into it, you’ve already got your favorite apps, but here are mine):

Tweetdeck - The app I love to hate. Nothing comes close, but it’s got some truly annoying issues. Such as it’s need to load everything chronologically, esp. when I haven’t used it in a fewdays. Why would I want to view 3 days worth of tweets?
Facebook for Android - a former weak sister of Facebook apps, but lately it’s become as good or better than the iPhone counterpart.
Foursquare - Enabling my cyberstalkers, one latte at a time…
Google + - Meh, a decent-ish app, but you absolutely must turn off auto-image upload, lest every picture you take end up in the clutches of Google.

Apps I haven’t yet installed but need:

A podcast player that works. I’ve tried a few and been less than thrilled. Suggestions welcome here.
Audible - I spend a lot of time in the truck and need to catch up on my reading.
Flickr, Picasa, or some decent cloud based image service.

Okay, let’s hear your suggestions in the comments.

You Want Fries With That? Journalism in a Changing World

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Mark Cahill

<This article was written in early September, and I can’t remember why I didn’t publish it then. Must have had more to say, but I can’t remember it now…>

A look through my archives here will show you that I used to cover a lot of the downward slide of the newspaper industry. It’s been a long time since I even bothered to write about Journalism and the not-so-slow downward spiral.

This morning a few things sparked my interest. I picked up a copy of the Worcester Telegram, the rag I used to write for, and I have to admit I was shocked…in the way one is shocked when one sees an old friend riddled with cancer, gaunt, and hollow, and barely clinging on. The weight of the newsprint, the general thinness, it was the mere shell of my once proud and noble friend.

Then I had my attention drawn to this article from Forbes the other day, in which Jeff Bercovici discusses layoffs from Slate.com the other day. Normally I don’t even waste my time pontificating on journalism layoffs anymore. This is different…this is an online flagship dismissing some of their top names. The statement it makes is truly horrifying…

So I’m bummed about this. And I also found something Shafer said to the Washington Post rationalizing his layoff to be telling. He said:

The Washington Post has done this. The New York Times has done this. It doesn’t necessarily mean a huge, unsolvable crisis. It just means we have to economize. Many publications have to right-size themselves in this current economic environment.

Shafer could just as easily have said “Gawker Media has done this” and that would have been true. But the comparison to newspapers was more apt. With an editorial staff of 40, Slate (which is owned by the Washington Post Co.) is a fraction the size of those papers, but it’s built on the same model: a general-interest publication that tries to hit all the news people are interested in every day.

The thing is, this isn’t a boring broadsheet laying off, it’s an online property, the kind that were supposed to be eating the lunch of the newspapers, magazines and any old media that happened to get in their way.

We’re proving that online doesn’t exactly pay either. If Slate.com can’t make quality journalism pay, then who can?

Have we conditioned readers to expect free content at the expense of quality journalism? I hate to think so, but the case is clear.

Veteran’s Day

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Mark Cahill

In the 11th minute, of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month…

Thanks to all now serving and those who have served.

Reflections of a Train Wreck

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Mark Cahill

Perhaps Mike Lupica summed up the last 30 days of Red Sox baseball best:

“It was like Mookie’s hit took 30 days to roll between Buckner’s legs.”

Any Red Sox fan with half a brain could not have been shocked by Wednesday’s epic failure. With the exception of Ellsbury, Pedroia, Aceves and Scoutaro, this was a team that either gave up in early September, or flat out never really cared to begin with.

I could get into the numbers, such as the 6-18 from Sept. 3, $160,257,476 team salary, the anemic OBP of some of the players, etc. In my mind, the real problem doesn’t come through in the numbers. We had guys who were seemingly incapable of making anything happen when it mattered. Adrian Gonzalez, for one, seemed to pile on the personal numbers at the times when we really didn’t need them. When we needed that hit, with the game on the line, his bat went silent. He was not the only one who was AWOL in the clutch.

There is no tomorrow for this team, and rightfully so. They wrote their own story, with multi-millionaires whining about their travel accomodations, unable to play when they were needed due to “discomfort”, and with plain old fashion piss poor performance. This team requires radical surgery if for no other reason than to redeem some shred of dignity in the eyes of the fans. We need to put a few of these curs down! Throw some heads on pikes! Geld those horses!

The mantra for the season, starting in April, was always “This was just one game. We’ll do better tomorrow.” It excused every loss. In the end, they got what they deserved: any one of those losses would have sent them to Tampa for a tie breaker. Two would have had them playing in October.

Perhaps the Red Sox should consider adding a special patch to the uniform of every single player who was on this club, to be worn until they retire, or until the expunge their shame with a World Series. Brand the bastards so that we might recognize them more clearly in the future.

Heads will roll, and rightfully so. I don’t for a second believe this was the fault of Terry Francona. The issue starts with management, and is reflected in the bloated payroll of the club. We’ve now got a massive payroll, aging players of suspect durability, and no clear vision going forward.

Find the problems and fix them now. We, the fans have a limited tolerance of multi-millionaires who fail. We made you guys, and you damn well owe us better than you gave this year.

Here’s a hint: stop with the excuses and own your shame guys.

Widgets – The Special Sauce for Android

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Mark Cahill

Since January I’ve been rockin’ the HTC Evo 4g after being a long term iPhone user thanks to a ludicrous encounter with AT&T’s braindead customer service team. In that time, I’ve found the Android experience to be a great one, and in many ways, it’s an improvement over the old iPhone. I finally pinned down the primary reason the other day: widgets.

You see widgets on the Android phone allow me to put the information I want to see right there on my phone’s display. I don’t need to load an app to get at the info. I can get a feed of what’s happening with my friends on Facebook, or from Twitter, or from all my social media. Or perhaps I want to see, at a glance, what’s happening with the Red Sox. My MLB At Bat app has a widget that lets me see the score of the game without loading the app.

That’s it: the information I want where I want it, vs. having to load an app to get at it. Instead of looking like every other phone, my phone now has the information I want, where I want it, vs. having it locked up inside an app. The information comes to me rather than me having to go and get it…

Strange that Apple hasn’t seen fit to provide this level of customization for it’s users…

The Forgotten 404 Page

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Mark Cahill

There’s a page on your site that never gets any love. You don’t really spend time thinking about it, your readers hate it when they see it and Google dings you for search if you don’t have it set up correctly. The lowly 404 page…

Admit it, you probably don’t even know what yours looks like. Why should you? You setup everything right on the site, then no one should ever see it.

Wrong…no matter how well you run your site, someone will end up seeing your 404 page. At that point, you can either give them a fighting chance to find what they want, or you can annoy them and send them running for the hinterlands, never to return.

Some serious 404 sins:

‘We don’t need no 404′ – Redirect to another page on your site, but don’t tell the user it’s a 404. Leave them wondering what the heck happened. This tells the customer you think you know better than they do. Users love that…
‘Show them the laundry’ - give them some error code and tell them to email it to the system adminstrator, who will promptly ignore it. Nothing says ‘we’re clueless’ better than asking your users to forward 600 lines of “stack trace message” to the “admin”.
‘You have reached the end of the Internet‘ – give them a cute, funny error, but no other option. They’ll laugh, while they’re typing in the url for your competitor.
‘Nah Nah Nah, you can’t find it‘ – Tell them the paqe they aren’t looking for isn’t there, and nothing else. Give them no options and they’ll find one…that doesn’t involve you.

It gets better. Google has serious issues with sites that implement their 404 pages incorrectly. Here are their guidelines…

So what should your 404 page be? Think of it as an intermediate stop for the wayward traveler. You need to be there, with something warm and inviting to help them find their way. Think of the it as the “Chamber of Commerce” page for your site.

Provide a clear message – “Sorry, the page you are looking for doesn’t exist. Maybe we moved it…”
Provide a solution – “You might find what you need in our search engine, or possibly in the other links we’ve provided below.”
If all else fails, let them contact you – Perhaps I’m old school, but I believe their should always be an email address associated with a website. If you’re really worried about getting spammed, have them send to you via a contact us form that has anti-spam measures in place.

WordPress gets it…their latest default theme has most of this built in. Take a look at my 404 page, by going here. It is the stock page, with the exception of the gremlin image I added courtesy of our friends at TheOatmeal.com.So what am I missing…what else would the perfect 404 page have? You know where the comments form is…

Gone in 60 Seconds – Survival at Sea Edition

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Mark Cahill

I saw the video on the news the other night of these guys who’s boat sank and one was able to film the entire episode with his helmet cam. It was truly scary stuff for any boater, but for me, having been through the same ordeal, it was utterly terrifying.

Many of you may have heard the story, perhaps told glibly after a few too many beers. The truth is, that’s generally the only way I can tell it.

On August 14, 2005 at 1:00 pm in the afternoon in 2-3 foot seas off Sakonnet Point in Rhode Island, while fishing for tuna in my boat, I turned to see a monster wave that had appeared out of no where. The boat filled with water when the wave broke over the stern and in about 60 seconds, my companion Jacob Kasper and myself were in the water. No distress call, and suddenly our safety gear, all of it was now under water. You can read the full story, as well as a long thread about the incident at Reel-Time.com .

What you don’t get from the video is the sense of dread right after the boat sinks, that feeling that happens when you realize this one, cold, hard fact: at this moment of time, no one knows you are in trouble and no one is coming to help. You’re on your own.

In the coming weeks after the event, I realized how backwards most boaters are on safety gear. Yes, perhaps they have it all, but can they really get it if they need it? If you’ve got a 35′ sportfisherman, the last place you want to go is up to the anchor compartment to get your crash bag as the boat sinks.

Here are some tips that every boater should use to be prepared should things go horribly wrong:

Have the right safety gear, and have it accessible from the cockpit.
Remember that the number of flares you’re required is a minimum. That number is low. Carry more…both handhelds and rounds for your gun.
Before the boat leaves the dock, give everyone the airline safety speech:

The life jackets are here…
The flare kit is here…
The radio is here. On top of it are written instructions about how to contact the Coast Guard…
Anything else someone might need to know about your boat in the case of emergency.

Carry a handheld, waterproof radio on your body, and attached by a lanyard. This may be the single most important piece of gear besides your life preserver.
Make sure you have a life preserver close by. I usually sit on a seat cushion type so I know right where mine is at all times.

My congratulations go out to both the boaters who were fished out, as well as the captain and crew of the Patience who rescued them.

A couple of other things to consider:

Have you taken a Power Squadron boating course? If not, you ought to. I consider it a requirement for stepping behind the helm, and have always encouraged my crew to take it.
Sobering thought: do you realize how few boaters actively monitor channel 16, the distress channel? Do you?
How would you pull a disabled boater out of the water? This is a huge problem, and many of us have never, ever considered it. Especially on big boats…

Be safe out there…

WordPress Scalability

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Mark Cahill

I know why I turn off many of the “tech experts” and “internet celebrities” – they’re wrong so often it makes my head spin. Take Chris Pirillo today on Google + pitching Tiki as a CMS, as an alternative to WordPress or MediaWiki.

The statement as to why he doesn’t like WordPress was very plain: “it doesn’t scale”.

Bullshit on that I say! It most certainly does scale and I’ve proven that over the years. Geek.com alone used to withstand regular slashdottings, trips to the Digg homepage, etc. The site regularly took massive traffic, although it was a long learning process to get there.

Here is what you need to know to make WordPress scale:

To truly scale on epic levels, you’ll need to have the ability to cluster webservers, cluster databases, etc. Few sites really need that level of hardware, but some will. If you do, you’ll need to drop your uploads on a common mounted drive, then use a CDN to distribute the images so you don’t really create a single point of failure.
You need to install and use the Super Cache plugin.
For massive sites, with lots of commenting, use HyperDB to separate your reads and writes.
Plugins: for the love of screaming monkeys, stick to only a handful of known, scalable, plugins. Avoid anything that’s going to hit your DB every single time someone loads a page. Also make sure the plugin obeys Super Cache.
Actually turn on Super Cache…really.
If you’re getting hammered by a traffic spike, turn on Super Cache lock down mode.
The real truth about WordPress scalability is this: most people don’t have hosting accounts that allow them to get traffic on this level. Often the host will shut them down for bandwidth abuse, or simply throttle them, making it seem the system isn’t scaling.

So let’s review – scalability issue in WordPress come down to three things usually:

Issues with the host
Poor server setup
WordPress plugins

If you need more specifics, catch me on G+ or email me and I’ll be happy to help.

America at a Crossroads – Death of Privacy and the Rise of the Machine

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Mark Cahill

We live at a critical juncture in history.

Technology has reached a point where it is not only tool which we use to control the world around us, it is now potentially becoming a way for the world to control us.

Yes, I sound like I should be wearing a tinfoil hat as I write this. But the truth is that right now, in Massachusetts we have the state police actively scanning the cars on our highways for wants, warrants, parking tickets, everything, automatically, without probable cause.

The computerized scanners, known as Automatic License Plate Recognition devices, instantly check for police alerts, warrants, traffic violations and parking tickets, which cops say could be an invaluable tool in thwarting crime. (Boston Herald – 7/21/2011 – as linked above)

When I posted this to Facebook the other day, I had three separate friends report that they had either been stopped by the police based on this information, or had friends who had been.

Indeed, it’s a wonderful technology for the police, but unfortunately the potential for abuse is simply too great. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has already taken the first step over the line, by attempting to create a database of where and when every license plate has been seen by a scanner, regardless of whether that plate was the subject of a warrant or not.

Civil libertarians are raising the alarm over the state’s plans to create a Big Brother database that could map drivers’ whereabouts with police cruiser-mounted scanners that capture thousands of license plates per hour. (Boston Herald – 7/21/2011 – as linked above)

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Last month a Newton man was denied a drivers license when the state ran his license through Federal Government facial recognition software and he was identified, incorrectly, as someone else.

And apparently, he has company. Last year, the facial recognition system picked out more than 1,000 cases that resulted in State Police investigations, officials say. And some of those people are guilty of nothing more than looking like someone else. Not all go through the long process that Gass says he endured, but each must visit the Registry with proof of their identity. (Boston Globe article 7/17/2011 as linked above)

That’s just the start. In September, police forces across the country, MA included, will begin to use handheld facial recognition systems.

The rollout has raised concerns among some privacy advocates about the potential for misuse. A fundamental question is whether or not using the device in certain ways would constitute a “search” that requires a warrant. Courts haven’t decided the issue.

It is generally legal for anyone with a camera, including the police, to take pictures of people freely passing through a public space. (One exception: Some courts have limited video surveillance of political protests, saying it violates demonstrators’ First Amendment rights.) (Wall Street Journal – 7/13/2011 as linked above).

Current versions require them to snap a pic from within 5 feet, but we can expect that envelope to increase. Will they begin actively scanning faces for potential malefactors? What is to keep them from scanning everyone entering a large sports event such as the Super Bowl?

Lump in the privacy concerns that are created by Google and Facebook storing as much information as they can possibly grab via tracking cookies, etc, and it’s beginning to look like a guy (or gal) can’t get a break.

As has so often been the case in the last decade, the argument for these services comes down to combating potential terrorism. Think about the arguments that were made for the Patriot Act – that it was a necessary for fighting terrorism. However, in practice, it has primarily been used as a tool in drug and organized crime prosecutions.

The truth, to me, is that these tools are simply to easy to abuse. We cannot allow our government and police to use them against us.

Choose now…do you want an America with the freedom your parents had, or do you want to live in a police state where literally everything you do is watched and recorded. Because that is exactly what these systems do, and I fear that unchecked, this ends up like so many bad sci fi movies…

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