RichC | July 23, 2021
Occasionally I still get calls from people asking me about shortcut key combinations. Most of the shortcuts are second nature to people who grew up using computers, but then again … what you don’t use, you forget. How about a refresher from Wired? Tip: Learn as many keyboard shortcuts as your brain can store. You […]
RichC | July 17, 2021
Slow progress on my home office as I continue to work in disarray; I am missing my accessory junk … including a small hanging TV. I don’t necessarily “watch” business television, instead listen to the stream via SiriusXM to my Aftershokz Aeropex headset. Occasionally though, do still find it helpful to have a video image […]
RichC | July 9, 2021
For the last few years, I’ve been using Google’s Backup and Sync software on my iMac to back up mostly archival data to my free Google Drive space that was part of my legacy Miami University EDU teaching account. I haven’t taught in Oxford, Ohio for decades, but did spend a few dollars for Taylor’s […]
RichC | June 18, 2021
Generally, I don’t use a VPN connection at home, but since I’ve been having slow connections on my laptop and iPad with VPN connections (both TunnelBear and ProtonVPN), thought I was test at home. ProtonVPN has been working pretty well and doesn’t restrict as much as the “warm and fuzzy” Tunnel Bear, but I’ve not […]
RichC | June 4, 2021
The Joanna Sterns review in the WSJ about the new Apple iMac highlighted a few plus and minus points last month … and started me thinking about a desktop computer replacement. It is difficult to imagine spending $2000 again to replace my aging late 2012 iMac 27” model, especially since I run a dual monitor […]
RichC | May 21, 2021
It is easy to get complacent in securing your online and computer lives, so use last weeks Colonial Pipeline cyberattack and the Statista image of “The Most Popular Passwords Around the World” as a reminder. Longer nonsensical combinations of characters help, but two-factor authentication when available is better. Oh, and stop using the same password […]
RichC | May 1, 2021
Either the Netgear Nighthawk R7000 router at our condo is glitchy, Xfinity is not giving my any upload speed or my Lenovo laptop is struggling to stay connected. No time to diagnosis, but I may end up chucking the router and switch to the cheaper mesh router sooner than I wanted. It is frustrating. Half […]
RichC | April 16, 2021
If you use a computer for any length of time (my “go-to” is an aging 2012 Apple iMac), you’ll find yourself cut, copy and pasting things on a regular basis. Security experts do not recommend using the cut/copy feature for secure items like user names and passwords, but that doesn’t prevent the habit of using […]
RichC | April 2, 2021
We have not had many Internet connectivity issues since switching to Cincinnati Bell Fioptic fiber and then added a mesh network instead of traditional router (although the Netgear Nighthawk was pretty good – we move it to the condo). Perhaps a lot has to do with companies building out the infrastructure with fewer buggy devices […]
RichC | March 27, 2021
This past week was an on and off work week. I’ve been struggling to update software and the latest Linux flavor on an old server while telling myself “I’m getting too old for this.” Right or wrong attitude, I think keeping up with fast-paced technology change is a young person’s game. On the plus side, […]
RichC | March 20, 2021
A technology friend of mine, Scott Bilik (who was considered my Twitter “Godfather in 2007), has recently wiped some of the mud from his hypothetical digital footprints and is systematically freeing himself from Big Tech’s shackles. This current Silicon Valley monopoly has increased its political clout and has enticed or entrapped most of us in […]
RichC | March 10, 2021
After having a server glitch and failed update this morning, it seemed like a good time to backup, updated Linux and test WordPress 5.7 “Esperanza” with a post today. For the most part everything has been running fine since setting up SWAP space, but any issue triggering a crash makes me question what I’m missing? […]
RichC | March 5, 2021
A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me about using Strikethru coding for a WordPress blog (or for that matter, almost all webpages) .. and of course it is a simple html code solution and is fairly easy … just add: The html coding started me thinking about a few other potential problems since we […]
RichC | February 28, 2021
Just marking server and blog updates to end the month of February 2021. I’ve put this WordPress 5.6.2 update off a few weeks in order to be sure I had a full backup, etc. Note to self, check on the Seagate hard drive attached to the iMac as Time Machine backups have been regularly failing […]
RichC | February 12, 2021
My friend Jeff is a cyber security guy and is regularly interrogating me about “best practices” online. I suspect he sees so much that it nearly frightens him away from putting anything online (which is nearly impossible these days). When I first started working with computers in the early 1980s (prior to being online), a […]
RichC | January 15, 2021
Years ago when RAM was expensive, it was common to set up a SWAP space file for additional memory on computers and servers with plenty of fast hard drive space … especially when speed was not as important as preventing crashes. As applications get a little more demanding and server traffic increases, memory use steadily […]
RichC | January 8, 2021
A simple blog upgrade project that I’ve been contemplating for a while now was one of my 2021 New Year’s resolutions … so I’m worked on it this past week’s Music Monday post. I’m not sure how long the new button and player will remain unchanged since I seem to keep testing and tweaking it; […]
RichC | January 1, 2021
After the previous challenging server update from years on Ubuntu Linux 12, 14 and 16 to a questionable 18 upgrade … I’ve been hesitant to upgrade the server to “Focal Fossa” 20.04 in the spring and summer … so I didn’t. But now that we are at the end of the year (actually by the […]
RichC | December 11, 2020
Not that it would ever be noticed in my “rarely proofread” blog, but for the past year I’ve been using a plugin app called Grammarly (it unfortunately doesn’t work with Open Live Writer, the aging software I use for blogging ever since Microsoft abandoned LiveWriter). So far it has been helpful in checking my emails […]
RichC | December 4, 2020
Although I only have one address accessible IP at the house, I can split it up via “Port Forwarding” on the cheap Cincinnati Bell router, rather than the home “mesh” network. After a little tweaking (ok, A LOT), I do have a work-around solution using a variety of ports to access different devices. For the […]
RichC | November 27, 2020
It is not uncommon for me to head down a rabbit hole when learning a little more about Hugo the fast static site generator (SSG). The experimenting from a few weeks ago on a 64-bit Linux ubuntu server had me wondering if it might work on a Raspberry Pi. Unfortunately with Raspian, the normal Linux […]
RichC | November 20, 2020
It has been a while since I’ve compared scanning format and compression option when it comes to down and dirty document scanning. For the most part I either scan straight to PDF and live with the document (or shrink it, but that’s another post) … or go straight to the old fashion universal jpeg or […]
RichC | November 14, 2020
This was a big week for Apple who started their business selling computers. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 40 years, you know what a Macintosh computer is and just how important they are in living in the age of technology. Cellphones and tablets may have surpassed the personal computer for […]
RichC | November 13, 2020
Recently I have been having problems with the Magic Mouse on my aging Apple iMac. The Bluetooth mouse once steadily held it’s connection until the AA batteries were getting weaker. I’ve cleaned the contacts with electrical cleaner and a Scotch-Brite pad but continue to have issue. A quick check on the Internet indicated that I’m […]
RichC | October 30, 2020
While doing some “self” tech-oriented education this past week, I ended up distracted after a friend tweeted and shared some information on “static site generators (SSGs)” .. so off down the “HUGO” rabbit hole I went (thanks A LOT Scott, #sarcasm – LINK to his Hugo powered Bilik.Family website). I’ve never really worked with any […]
RichC | October 23, 2020
My iMac computer running macOS Catalina has been off for several days using the “shut down” command before leaving town (normally just let it “sleep”). Upon return, it was booted up and opened without requesting a login or password to unlock – highly unusual and a security issue? I’ve never had this happen before and […]
RichC | August 13, 2020
There is no doubt in my mind that I would have tried to do this if Photoshop would have been as advanced when my kids were younger (or if I would have been has skilled – I’m basically a retoucher). As it was, I did include one of Katelyn’s computer art pieces (on my Mac SE […]
RichC | August 7, 2020
It is always concerning to use and recommended a software product for years and to hear negative news on the software from a reputable antivirus. Last month, Microsoft Defender marked the “crap cleaner” known as CCleaner as PUA (Potentially Unwanted Software) likely due to the “PC cleaning software’s bundling unwanted add-on and annoyance software. The […]
RichC | July 31, 2020
It has been a while since reviewing the stats of My Desultory Blog, but realized that one Tech Friday post in particular was getting quite a few looks. It is obvious that I’m not the only Apple Macintosh Magic Mouse user to have scrolling issue when using the popular Google Calendar and stopping the infuriating […]
RichC | July 10, 2020
As an Apple Macintosh user for nearly forever, I learned a new tip from a Verge article this past month that has not been widely talked about. It happened to come up when I was offering advice on how I rotate through and set up about 5-7 desktops and the second monitor Parallels Window side […]
RichC | June 26, 2020
Besides Google’s less intuitive cloud storage, Dropbox was the first cloud service that I gravitated to “back in the day.” I’ve posted about them before on TechFriday (2015 comparison) and they are still one of the best cloud storage services for the way I work on computers and devices. Unfortunately over the last few years […]
RichC | June 5, 2020
Size matters when emailing or just saving PDFs. It is easy to create them for paper-free archiving, but sooner or later most of them are larger than they need to be. Years ago in the printing world, almost every project was archived on CPPnet’s connected servers for our customers, usually in the Adobe PDF format. […]
RichC | May 27, 2020
Acknowledge scammers and you become a “live mark.” There’s no way around it, living with smarphones and computers makes life easier and more difficult at the same time. Scammers are busy targeting all of us and seem particularly interested in taking advantage of senior citizens and those often least experience with technology. A perfect example […]
RichC | May 12, 2020
After mentioning problems last week, the new webserver is up and running with a fresh install of Linux Ubuntu 18.04 “Bionic Beaver,” MySQL database and PHP 7.2 … well I actually decided to upgrade that to PHP 7.4 for a little better speed (who knows?) I’ve abandoned MongoDB for the time being for the Quickdex.net […]
RichC | May 8, 2020
Actually this is just a filler post while working on server upgrades. Hopefully when finished, the new server will be fully up-to-date with Linux (Ubuntu Bionic Beaver 18.04), PHP 7.2 and a current LAMP stack set-up. WordPress will finally be able to be updated to 5.4.1 and maybe eventually bring back a cache to speed […]
RichC | May 6, 2020
Today’s post serves as a test … since I’m having a few webserver and database problems. If you are a regular reader, this will also be a notice that this blog will likely be sporadic until it is fixed. Once my business sites are updated, then I’ll address my long-in-the-tooth (see below) Quickdex project site and […]
RichC | April 13, 2020
My friend Jeff, who is working from home due to COVID19, asked if Pandora was now free? (I hinted at that yesterday) I wasn’t sure, even though I often tune in a Pandora stream on our Alexa Echo devices. I couldn’t recall if there had been ads recently, but thought, “if they are still adding […]
RichC | April 10, 2020
Last week my son Taylor and friend Jeff both sent me their “homemade” stand-up or propped up (with books) notebook computers while working from home. I suspect they aren’t the only COVID19 “stay-at-home” workers trying to come up with comfortable ways to do their jobs? I know Jeff once had a stand-up desk at work […]
RichC | April 3, 2020
Above is a graphic sent by a friend, who knows of my long time Apple addiction … and it had me pondering the Steve Jobs vs Steve Wozniak struggle when trying to grow Apple Computer back in the early days (watch the Danny Boyle movie called Steve Jobs). One of the founders was an advocated […]
RichC | March 6, 2020
My buddy Jeff Pitts, who has recently moved from IT to a job focused exclusively on cybersecurity for a worldwide company, tends to error on the side of caution when it comes to privacy practices. He has moved entirely to the Mac (we used to have a fun debate when he was a 100% PC […]
RichC | February 21, 2020
If you’ve been on the Internet for any length of time (post from 2007), you have likely used, or been marketed VPN services, as a way to secure your Wi-Fi connection (especially public hotspots) away from the office or home network. I’ve pitched them as a security precaution to my customers and use them when […]
RichC | February 12, 2020
Here’s a tech tidbit for those noticing a high CalendarAgent CPU demand on your Apple Macintosh computer. For me, the process cranked up the CPU to 60-70% trigging high fan speeds and this process continued without finishing. I noticed slightly sluggish behavior AFTER a recent MacOS software update, although might have happened prior to that? […]
RichC | January 18, 2020
While working on post highlighting the DJIA crossing 29,000, I realized that the stock market has blown through that milestone and is rocketing towards 30,000 and that I’ll have to start over (probably a “worry-wart” post is coming). One of the big contributors to this Dow Jones Industrial Average is Apple ($AAPL). It just continues […]
RichC | January 17, 2020
Back in the late 1980s when I was starting in the commercial printing and eventually ‘small time’ publishing business (Consolidated Printing and Publishing Co), I didn’t realize how far ahead of the game we were when focusing on the subscription model. Early on we were able to capitalize on few people in the printing industry […]
RichC | January 13, 2020
While Freddy Fender was not on my music palate back in the 1970s, it is hard not to recognize his timeless music … so for today’s Music Monday AND semi-painful iMac macOS postponed update to Apple’s Catalina here’s the 1975 song, Wasted Days And Wasted Nights. For those who maintain computers and struggle to know […]
RichC | November 29, 2019
With the advent of decent quality inexpensive home security products and cameras, it has never be easier to keep an eye on “motion” that happens around a business or home. The key for most of us is to find the least expensive quality “small” product … in our case the Wyze cams have beat out […]
RichC | November 22, 2019
So … you’ve survived pretty much unscathed after a couple decades of identity theft, credit card fraud and everything moving online … but at some point, you realize that you’ve been lucky. Most of us are pretty lax when it comes to locking down our data, securing our digital access points and devices. So perhaps […]
RichC | November 21, 2019
Hello World! It is frightening to think that I’ve been using computers for FORTY years and have used and have seen the slow evolution in input devices clustered around a device called the Computer Mouse. So for ThrowBack Thursday #TBT this week, the above is a photo of the original “mouse” in 1964 by Douglas […]
RichC | October 12, 2019
It isn’t easy to see this little magnetic bracket I made to hold my new Amazon Echo Auto low on the dash of the BMW X5 35d. I opted to make a little aluminum bracket that straddles the pushbutton switch blanks to the right of a few other buttons. It is fastened with automotive trim […]
RichC | September 20, 2019
Today’s Tech Friday tip is something that has changed in recent weeks likely due to an update that is suppose to make reading on devices easier on the eyes. Based on lighting conditions, automatic settings will filter out blue light — a lot more when the room is dark. The problem is that this can […]
RichC | September 6, 2019
Perhaps it is just me, but I’m growing tired of the software development trend to make every piece of software resemble a smartphone app. I spend a significant amount of time using a desktop computer with plenty of display real estate, yet apps and webpages are all trying to make their mobile apps, notebook computer […]
RichC | August 23, 2019
Some excellent and “do-able” ways to maintain reasonable password security in this Lifehacker article: One of the best things about having a solid password is that you don’t have to change it. If it’s strong, unique, and hasn’t been compromised by an attacker, you gain no security benefits by modifying it according to some arbitrary timetable. […]
RichC | August 14, 2019
Our current NetGear Nighthawk R7000 router has been exceptionally stable considering the issues I’ve had with cheaper routers and networked devices in the past. I’m pretty happy with it, but in order to get solid coverage, had to add a WiFi Range Extender to cover the detached garage and poolhouse (and yet still have weak […]
RichC | August 9, 2019
Currently, I pay for a few subscriptions. Some pricey (Wall Street Journal, Barrons, etc) because I avidly read them. Others, like monthly magazines, I continue to pay for and rarely get around to reading, especially online only subscriptions. Several others, I occasionally receive a link or click on one from those annoying “reader apps” that […]
RichC | August 2, 2019
Even if you don’t regularly using cloud storage services (likely your smartphone is), most of us are at some point backing up data from our computers or using services online that store our data on major cloud storage companies. I’ve personally had a growing concern over the race for quantum computing which eventually will make […]
RichC | July 26, 2019
The race for quantum computing superiority has been on my mind and in my discussions lately. State actors like China, North Korea and Russia are all running projects sponsored by their governments to be the first to harness such computing power that will make today’s encryption nearly worthless. Here in the US, our biggest tech […]
RichC | June 16, 2019
My good friend Jeff Pitts, a network and IT expert, and most recently IT cybersecurity expert, constantly update me with the latest threats to computer servers. He manages the computers and networks for a Cincinnati-based international company that is constantly under bombardment from hackers. Most of the attacks are directly from China and according to […]
RichC | June 15, 2019
Brenda and I watched the movie Interstellar (2014) once before, but we watched it again this past week, and as often happens, we picked up on a few more interesting facts that made our brains hurt … well at least mine: General relativity, The Science of Interstellar, Black Holes and Time Warps. Thankfully I could […]
RichC | May 31, 2019
If you are using Apple’s Photos app, you’ve probably noticed the software attempts to identify faces of people (not just Apple either). This can be helpful for “you” to sift through photos, but also seems a bit nosy when the app also builds a pile of “facetile” photos on its own. Most people likely will […]
