back after enforced absence

It has been a challenging few months. I have been off with a hand injury after colliding with the road whilst cycling to work, back in May. Well the choice was either collide with the road or collide with the car that had suddenly appeared in the cycle track. Ho, well, the police say I lost control of the bicycle and are not taking any action. Several days in hospital, and several weeks of physiotherapy before getting use back in my hand.

At least with a cycle helmet, gloves and other safety measures it was not too bad. Broken hand, bruises and a lovely black eye.
Just as I was ready to get back to the computer, my home laptop died a death, so I had to select a replacement and then reload all the archives and other material from backups that I regularly take. (You *do* backup your computer, yes?)

So here I am again, with one of my favourite pastimes - sitting in front of a computer.

call yourself a computer expert?

Well, no I didn't. But that has not stopped some folks posting their pleas for help on Linux as comments on my blog. I am flattered. As to getting help, I would suggest looking out a Linux support group near to where they live and posting there for help. I cannot answer some of the questions, particularly about hardware that I have never used, but I am sure there is someone with the answer. So, go on, put linux User Group into your favourite search engine along with the town nearest you. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Baha'is try to live by the principles of honesty, modesty, service to others, investigating the truth. You may find your computer support group has some of those same ideas. After all, they are none of them in it for the money!

SatNav - where goest thou?

I have just had a visitor who complained about the road signs in getting to my house. Talking of the problem, I discovered that he had relied exclusively on directions given by his SatNav system. It directed him along a road which was converted to "buses only" about 6 months ago!
What worried me about this was the fact that my visitor proceeded to follow the directions of the SatNav and ignore the road sign! Why are we becoming so trusting of a system that we ignore the warnings that are put on the road? This is not the first time I have heard of drivers who disregard road signs; because the SatNav tells them to go a certain route, then they will go that way whatever the road signs are.

Personally, I much prefer using a map and thinking about where I am driving. I would never hand over control to some device. Perhaps it is because I work with computers and know their limitations.

Security - what security?

Whilst working on getting my network moved from a wired LAN to wireless, I discovered a neighbour had set up a wireless lan also. Nothing wroing in that, of course, but then I saw the details - "encryption none, access control none". I also saw the name of the network device and sure enough there is someone with that name living locally. In fact there is only one entry in the phone book with that surname. Now, I ask you, how sensible is that? My router box is configured with a SSID that is neither the name of the manufacturer, nor any name related to my family. Not only is the access to my device encrypted. but it has a MAC address filter enabled as well. This means that only the devices that I have listed can gain access to my network.
May I humbly suggest that anyone who does not have security enabled get it set up as soon as possible?

are bloggers really bullies?

I read the other week that some TV critic had described those who write blogs as 'bullies'. Really? Do you (assuming anyone is reading this) think that my occasional thoughts and comments amount to verbal assault. I offer the comments in a spirit of co-operation and assistance, much like the help I give to colleagues at the office or email support.
Sadly there is still a large amount of misunderstanding, even mystique, surrounding computers, and I feel compelled as an 'insider' to spread knowledge about what computers can and cannot do, and also to look at the ways in which people (workers and managers) deal with writing computer programs and supporting them.
Does anyone care to offer a view on how useful, if at all, they find my sporadic comments?

Capacity planning

Two news items caught my attention this week. One of them was a report of a court case in America where, if I understood correctly, internet providers were being asked to keep a copy of every email and web page that passed through their systems. This put me to thinking about what that would mean in storage requirements. You see, testing a program does not just mean checking that the right text, icons and graphics are displayed, and clicking an icon performs the required action. Non-functional testing is looking at reliability, speed, and capacity.

So I started to think what is the storage requirement if an internet provider held a copy of all their traffic.

For one small provider with just two 64Mbit links, assuming that those links are mainly for business users (that is, traffic mostly between 8am and 6pm) with the links at just 75% of their capacity, then in one week the total traffic would be 64 * 0.75 * 3600 seconds in an hour * 10 hours * 5 days in Megabits. That comes to 8640000 Megabits (864 Gigabytes) per week. Of course, if the provider has a few hundred or thousand individual subscribers, each downloading emails, software and music files, and browsing the web looking for maps, video clips, reading and contributing to blogs, and so on every night then that figure could easily rise to double or triple that original estimate of 864Gb per week. Taken over the course of a year it approaches something of the order of 100 TerraBytes required for the storage.

If that is the figure for one small internet provider, just stop to think what the storage requirements will be for some of the larger providers who count their customers in the hundreds of thousands.

As you can see, bandwidth capacity and storage are important points to consider in planning any new service, or when upgrading an existing one.

Energy saving, who me?

So, the Live Planet concerts have come and gone, with all the controversy regarding the 'carbon footprint' of the participants. However, I don't think that was the point. It has made people think more about energy consumption, conservation and so on.

Of course, those of us who surround ourselves with technology use quite a lot, so who am I to talk of energy saving? After all, I have a network of computers at home and all the other usual gadgets. Well I regularly switch off all the devices that are not in use. But that is nothing to do with any new "green movement", it is the way that I was brought up by my parents. I travel by public transport whenever I can (every day to work, apart from when I cycle), have energy saving bulbs throughout the house, and recycle all paper,cardboard, tins and plastic.

Some time ago, I replaced the old computer that was running my firewall (you do have a firewall, yes?). It's power consumption was concerning me, and the fan was getting noisy. So I went out and bought a new router device that has a 4-port hub and wireless device combined. Very easy to plug in and get going and it saves me having two separate devices (hub and firewall) as well as consuming over 300 watts less power.

Two laptop computers have replaced the desktop computers, again with a saving in power, and the family share one printer.

Will I get a new flat screen TV? Nah, they are wasteful on power and would only see my electric bill rise again. Now, a combined DVD and video player, that is a thought. Let's get the booklets out and see their power consumption. can I save anything by getting one device to replace the two of them?


"Be anxiously concerned for the age in which you live and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements" (Baha'i Faith)