Category: Uncategorised

Posted from: ON L4S 2E4, CanadaAnother hopefully constructive rant.

I just spent more than 6 hours aggregating photos from our Far East cruise and vacation from this past fall. And I think I only processed about 20% of them so far. I think the photos were taken with over 5 different cameras of various form and quality. The trip had over 25 individuals, and as you can imagine there were many cameras amongst us.

Many photos were blurry and others had weird colors due to improper white balance settings.

With today’s photo processing and sharing technologies, my advice is that when going on vacation with a large group, just have two designated cameras and photographers who know what they are doing. They don’t have to be pros but at the very least should understand the notion of shutter speed and focus.

Okay my rant is over and now back to processing the pics. Arghh!

Posted from: ON L4S 2G6, CanadaAfter seeing the following TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_chan…

By Clay Shirky on the topic of cognitive surplus, I was reminded of a discussion this week on Facebook. Parties to the discussion thought users of Facebook are sharing private information without knowing the full consequences of their deeds. Although this is a common argument that I’ve heard of countless times, it does have its merits. This is a popular argument against the use of social networking sites like Facebook by parents, trying to ward off their innocent teenagers against unknown threats. However, after watching this insightful video and the idea that we are transitioning from a crowd of information consumers to a population (or dare I say a generation) of content creators, I now see platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to have the potential of being the general enablers of cognitive surplus, which Clay Shirky defines in the video.

Another idea that I noted when watching the video is that the quality of the content is less important than the ability to generate and share the content. This brings me back to some of the same ideas introduced in the book, “The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations”, published in 2004, written by James Surowiecki. I bring this up because it is easy to criticize mundane and stupid tweets on Twitter, such as when people tweet what they eat and when they go to bed. However the same pointless information may be useful in a different context. For example, a study on dietary habits or sleeping patterns. I guess in the world of cognitive surplus, it is better to have more information diluted by a spectrum of quality, than to have restricted information perhaps curated by a biased party.

Just jotting down some random thoughts after watching another inspirational TED video.

Last night I had trouble getting email from my iPhone.  It kept on reporting that it couldn’t communicate to the server.  I thought it was a server issue, so I left it overnight, but this morning it was exhibiting same symptoms.  We use Exchange 2007.  I proceeded with a few sanity checks.

• The email on my desktop function normally.
• The email via Outlook Web function normally.

With the above two checked, I knew that I was using the correct server and my login credentials were correct.

I’m using iOS 4.2.1 on an iPhone 4, so I started to Google for some answers, and came across this post.

• http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2656735&start=4

After backing up my iPhone, I fully reset the phone and erase all contents and data on it.  I then register the phone with iTunes as a brand new phone.  Before I sync anything to it, I checked my Exchange connectivity, and everything was back! I follow this step with a restore from the previous backup, and the Exchange account did not work again.  Therefore, I repeated the fully reset, but this time I skip the restore and setup everything manually again.

Note that just a full reset and restore will not work.  Neither does deleting the account and reset the account.  I also tried changing my account’s password, and that also had no effect.  Another symptom to be aware of is that while trying to setup the Exchange account again, the phone was unable to verify the account. From all of this, I concluded that the registration as a new phone was a critical and necessary step.  I don’t know what the root cause was, but it sure was a pain.  It literally started to happen. For a guy who travels a lot, I’m glad this didn’t happen while I was in transit.

Sidney Crosby Pyramid trick

When I first entered the workforce back in 1991, all you really needed to know was how to read and write English. Email wasn’t even in yet.  Memos were still printed and distributed by management as the primary means of communication.  We had voicemail, but it was rarely checked, but it slowly permeated into our working ethics. Microsoft Office is just beginning its world domination, but was still competing with Word Perfect and other office productivity suites.

Today, with the prominence of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instant Messaging, and other forms of social media, it is becoming more important for workers to understand and use these technologies within the workplace.  For example, support personnel can leverage the use of Twitter to gain a tighter relationship with the clients that they are supporting.  They can also use YouTube to provide instructional video on how the product or service can be used. The use of Facebook and Twitter is also being used more and more for marketing and corporate communication, either building and enhancing an internal workgroup, or creating a working community, such as a user group for a particular product.

As our social behavior expands from our physical environment into the virtual world, communicating using modern social network mechanisms is more essential than ever.  I think members of the workforce who entered the same time frame that I did, need to embrace these technologies. Otherwise, they will be left behind when the onslaught of the texting generation gains a firm foothold in the workplace. Perhaps they already have!

I have now used the three dollar case from eBay for more than a couple of weeks as well as traveled with it. As mentioned previously,  I purchased an iPhone 4 bumper case, and found that many of the third party chargers from my iPhone 3GS days did not fit the case.  This was discouraging to say the least.  Since my wife also has an iPhone 4 and has purchased 3 different silicone cases from eBay ranging from one to three dollars, I tried one out and found it to be infinitely more useful than the bumper case.  Although the bumper case is more aesthetically pleasing, it had other faults as well.  I noticed that HSUPA speed was significantly hampered when the case is on.  I have no signal issues with the three dollar silicone case.  In the case of cases, the price is certainly not a good representation of the value of the case. No puns intended!

In conclusion, if you have previous iPhone 3GS accessories, then I would steer clear away from Apple’s iPhone 4 bumper case.  As for the silicone cases, just make sure it doesn’t cover the flash, so that glares from the cover does not ruin the photos that you take when you have the case on.

Here is an online resource that contains many basic Internet concepts but depicted in a book that is fit for the children’s section of any book store. If you are afraid of the Internet or would like to learn more about it, then this site can help you demystify many of the magic behind the Internet. Have fun reading it here: http://www.20thingsilearned.com/

I never got around to this when I first learned how to drive. Recently I had to plan a trip to the UK and thought I may end up with a manual car from the car rental place, so I thought I better learn how to drive one. I found this place called shifters from Toronto ( http://www.shifters.ca/introlevel.htm ). They provide an introductory program to the stick.

My first thought was how hard can it be. Change gears based on speed and RPM, what’s the catch? After an hour session, I should be a pro. Well I’m a bit off base. It took 5 sessions for me to be comfortable with everything, the traffic, the hills, the highway, the downshifting, etc. In the end I was able to shift smoothly without the typical jerky feeling when I get in a manual with someone else.

Unfortunately, it does feel like it is more work than I care for. Luckily, Hertz had an automatic available in the UK. I think driving on the right side of the car and on the left side of the road will be distracting enough, so fingers crossed! Europe here we come!