Viewing Category: Geeky
I'm really surprised how quickly my local domain name servers picked up on the new server IP address...at least as far as regular web addresses goes. My email, though, is still going to the old server at FutureQuest, so I guess DNS MX records are a different sort of animal. I'm having a good time playing with this neat lookup tool to see what's going on. The mysteries of the Internet, made a little more clear :-)
It looks like a few comments got posted on the old server...I suppose I should have locked it down or disabled it entirely. I think I'll go do that.
This Saturday, November 18, is Barcamp Manchester. I was in the vicinity of a Barcamp in Austin last year, but wasn't a participant. This will be my first time. If I can get a network connection, I'll try liveblogging it.
Doors open at 10AM. We're capping the attendees at 100. There's a little over 100 people registered on the Wiki, we're thinking we'll see about 70% turnout from people who've put their name down. We'll see how it goes.
FOLLOWUP
Here's the flickr pool tagged barcampmanchester.
The conference was a success! About 75 people showed out of the 100+ who'd signed up. We had enough food. I also discovered that (1) my hairline has eroded far beyond what I thought (2) it is time to hit the treadmill and (3) I hate interrupting speakers to remind them about time...next year I'm bringing kitchen timers.
I didn't attend full sessions, though I caught bits of several and am feeling energized. Tired, but energized.
Ian Muir has been busy organizing the first BarCamp Manchester for November 18, right here in Southern New Hampshire. It looks like people are starting to register, so that rocks!
Spread the word! Ian is also looking for corporate sponsors to cover the cost of food and other sundries like shwag.
The poster is comprised of photos I took of stuff lying around my house, composited together quickly (and rather sloppily) in Photoshop before being dumped into Illustrator. The cool windows in the background were created by Joan, which helped get the whole poster rolling when I was stuck...thanks Joan! This part of New Hampshire is known for the old textile mills that still line the river. They have windows that are rather distinctive and tall, and most of the buildings have been converted into high tech office space.
I wasted a couple hours debugging a Kensington Pocket Keypad I had purchased to work with a 3D program I'm using. I use ancient Model M keyboards on all my PCs, specifically the 84-key Space Saver design that lacks a numpad. Geeky notes follow.
PC Keyboard Scan Codes
Every key on a IBM PC-style keyboard has a unique identifier called a "scan code". For complex applications with a lot of functions, it's not uncommon to use the numeric keypad for special uses. So while you might think typing a "9" on the numpad or the top row of keys doesn't really make a difference, they are two distinct keys. Each key has a unique scan code, and software can be written to take advantage of that.
I used a nifty utility called ScanCode Show to tell me what scancodes were being sent by the Kensington compared to the Targus keypad I just picked up. The Targus (model AKP01US, wireless) sent the correct codes. The Kensington sent the codes for the other number buttons at the top row of the keyboard. Functionally, this is OK most of the time, but it is 100% useless for what I need it to do. Back it goes!
It's really too bad, because otherwise it's a very attractive, compact, good-feeling keypad with extra USB ports.
Although I keep telling people I don't do servers, I'm looking into moving a friend's active Phorum-based BBS to a new host. I'm considering FutureQuest as the new host. I'd heard good things about them, though they're a little pricey compared to other plans.
This is a good opportunity for me also to evaluate new hosts for the blog. I'm currently using Pair Networks, who have been awesome for the past 8 years, but their database servers start pooping out when you get over a certain number of transactions per minute, and it's starting to become an issue.
This is the first time I've had to move a WordPress blog from one host to another, so I'm documenting the process. WARNING! GEEKY NOTES FOLLOW!
Different Server, Different MySQL Versions
Conceptually, it is as simple as uploading my current WordPress files to the new server, and then transferring the MySQL database that holds all my posts and stuff. POOF, it should work, right?
As it turns out, the FutureQuest DB servers are using MySQL version 4.0.x, and Pair is using 4.1.x, so I have to downgrade to an older server version.
MySQL Import Woes
There were three easy ways I found that would backup a Wordpress database, which I tried one-after-the-other.
First up was Aaron Brazell's WordPress-to-WordPress Import exporter / importer. WordPress doesn't come with a WordPress importer, so that's what this package adds.
The plugin exports your posts in an extended RSS format, which you can then upload via the import plugin from your browser. Great in theory! Unfortunately, my blog backup is 9MB, which exceeds the 2MB upload cap of this server for PHP. I may try hacking this to read the backup file from a location on disk, but I decided to try another approach.
Next, I looked at Skippy's WP-DB-Backup plugin, which is included with WordPress 2.0, gives you the ability to produce a SQL dump file from the convenience of your admin panel, without all that fussing around with the command line.
So I did this, and then tried importing the dump file into the new server using the standard mysql < dumpfile.sql style approach. It didn't work: 1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1'
Darn! This looked so promising.
I moved on to Lester Chan's WP-DBManager 2.05 plugin, which allows you to do a lot more with your WP database. It uses mysqldump to create a compatible SQL dump file, which you can then use to re-initialize a new WordPress installation. SAME ERROR in attempting to import. DOUBLE DARN!
Downgrading from MySQL 4.1 to MySQL 4.0
After some digging, I found that MySQL 4.1.x added a different way of handling character sets, and this was reflected by the DEFAULT CHARSET command added to the end of the CREATE TABLE statements in the dump file. MySQL 4.0.x has no idea what this is, so it throws an error.
The workaround I found was to modify lines 32 and 36 of Lester's dbmanagerdatabase-backup.php file. I added:
--create-options --compatible=mysql40
...before the '|' character on line 32, and before the '<' character on line 36. The first parameter tells mysqldump to use MySQL-specific syntax for creating the table, and the second parameter makes those problematic DEFAULT CHARSET commands go away.
The Backup Procedure
So here's what I ended up doing:
On the CLONE blog: Install WordPress 2.0.4, plain vanilla, uncustomized. This is the "blank clone" on which my old blog will be imprinted.
Install Lester Chan's WP-DBManager 2.05 plugin on both old and clone blogs.
On my OLD server: I edited the plugin as described in the previous section, so the database backup file created would be compatible with the new server. Again, my current server uses MySQL 4.1, and the new server uses MySQL 4.0.
On my OLD server: Created a database backup with the patched version of Lester's plugin. Yay!
Then, copy the database backup to the CLONE server. It's in wp-contentbackup-db if you've successfully installed the DBManager plugin; just copy it using FTP or SCP to the same location.
Preparing for Restore
First of all, my CLONE server has only a numeric IP address, not a domain name. I don't plan on transferring the davidseah.com domain over until I make sure everything works. So the URL I use for it is, for the same of example, is http://192.168.1.100.
WordPress keeps track of your blog's URL in the database table, and uses that to generate links to various parts of your blog. When you do a database restore with DBManager, it overwrites your entire database, including that blog URL setting. When that happens, you won't be able to use the admin page, because you'll be redirected to your OLD blog everytime you try to login.
To get around that, you need to be able to edit the database directly and reset the BlogURL setting. I installed PHPMyAdmin on the clone, to be ready to edit the database manually when I did the database restore.
- To the CLONE server: Copy the database backup file to the
wp-content/backup-db folder, where DBManager looks.
Now you're ready to restore the database.
The Restore Procedure
On the CLONE server: Copy all your plugins, template files, and so forth over to the new WordPress installation.
On the CLONE blog: Go to the admin page and click the DATABASE tab that DBManager has added. Go to the MANAGE BACKUP DB tab, and choose the database file to restore (you did copy it to the right place, right?).
Restore the database by clicking the RESTORE button! If everything goes well, you'll see a SUCCESS message. Congratulations! Your database has been cloned onto the new wordpress installation!
Visit the cloned blog server and see if the home page works. It's probably messed up in some ways if you've forgotten to transfer everything over, and you'll find that you keep getting re-directed back to the old blog if you click on anything. That'll be fixed next.
On the CLONE server: Run the MySQL Administration Tool of your choice. Using PHPMyAdmin, I went to the wp-options table and clicked BROWSE. I edit the siteurl option value to point to the CLONE server (not the CURRENT blog).
Here's an example:
My old site is davidseah.com. My new clone site is, say, on a local server 192.168.1.100, and WordPress is installed in a directory called wordpress. The new siteurl (at least for now) is http://192.168.1.100/wordpress, so that's what I should set the siteurl to. Your new webhost should have provided you a URL that you can use to FTP files to, so just use that.
You should now by able to login and visit the CLONE blog's admin page. Go to Options and change BLOG ADDRESS so it's also pointing to the new server for testing.
After all that, the cloned blog seems to be working, but I won't be able to tell what genetic defects may be lying dormant until they manifest. Database performance seems a little sluggish to me, so I'm not sure if the way that I performed this database move somehow messed up the DB. Maybe some MySQL guru out there can give me some pointers.
Next Steps
Before I move everything over, I need to make sure that my .htaccess is set up correctly, get ALL the downloadable files moved over, update my basecamp FTP settings, and also ensure that my new email addresses are set up on the new server. What a pain in the butt!
My DNS is handled by another registrar, so I should be able to just change the nameservers when I'm ready and see what happens. If it doesn't work out, I can just switch the nameservers back, and resume operations at my current host.
UPDATE:
- My Server Move Log, which also details the different way I moved the database with straight
mysqldump and mysql restore commands from the shell.
A few days ago I wrote about reacquainting myself with mathematics. What started out as a mild recollection of past educational experience ended up raising negative feelings that flapped around my consciousness like angry ghosts. A buddy pointed this out, and after some reflection I laid them back to rest; there's no sense in remaining angry about the past.
While Math had been a source of frustration for me, it wasn't due to the math itself; it was the clouds of confusion surrounding the practice of Mathematics that so confounded me. This was exacerbated by my insistence on understanding something before doing it. Now that I know that there's something good to be said for "learning to recognize and reproduce patterns" before understanding something, I am a lot more interested to tackling mathematics once again.
So here is how I'm seeing the challenge:
- I like the mysterious qualities of Math, and want to be more fluent with the ideas and concepts behind that.
- To do that, I'll need to reconstruct the knowledge for myself, so I can have a clear picture of the relevant facts, principles, and standards of practice.
- However, there are barriers to reconstruction inherent in the presentation of the material: spotty instruction, missing/misunderstood key insights, ambiguous writing in textbooks, and misleading illustrations and diagrams. I groused about this at some length in my earlier post.
Turning the Tables
When I was a kid, I hated it when the facts weren't clearly presented. Today, I have much greater insight into how I learn, and am excited about trying to fix this perceived deficiency in my educational background. In fact, I could make this into a role playing game by thinking of education as a crime scene, where terrible wrongs have been committed against learning! The crime scene is a confusing, muddled puzzle: ambigious wording in textbooks obscure the true relationship between the facts, if they are indeed correct and unbiased to begin with. Key steps are mysteriously withheld, or buried somewhere in the back of the book. Upon cross-examination, key witnesses who spoke with confidence on the scene crumple in the face of sterner questioning.
Yeah, I'm totally going to be a Math Scene Investigator! I already am thinking of the cool notebook I'll get for it!
The Math Scene Investigation Process
Concidentally, I had stumbled upon the Taylor Series Expansion entry on Wikipedia a few days ago. I remember the Taylor Series as being a particularly odious waste of my time in high school, embodying all the qualities I didn't like about math:
- It expanded simple functions into VERY LARGE ONES...seemed like a net loss to me at the time.
- It introduced notation that was tedious to write out when showing your work, though I actually did like drawing those ziggy E things a lot.
- I had no idea really what it was good for, and because at the time I thought math was supposed to be about understanding rather than replicating process, I was very frustrated. The beauty of math was unknown to me.
The Taylor series is a good candidate for the Math Scene Investigative Process, which is proposed below!
Divine the modus operandi of the Mathematics
This is right out of the crime scene reconstruction article I was reading. I pulled up the Wikipedia entry and let it flap its gums for 8 paragraphs of irrelevant detail; they were descriptive facts, but not helpful at all in understanding WHY the Taylor Series even had a place in Mathematics to begin with; I really wanted the big picture first. If I don't know what something is for, how can I evaluate it? Instead, the article told me "what" it was, in terms of mathematical detail. That doesn't really help.
Around paragraph 9, the article came clean: by breaking down a difficult-to-transform function into simpler components, one can actually transform things more easily. That is pretty cool, just not in the context of high school mathematics; for me, it was just another one of those lame exercises you need to do that cramps up your hand and uses up a lot of paper. It's only NOW that I can understand that there's actually some kinds of interesting analysis buried in there; the harmonic analysis, for example, is what's behind all those cool MP3 Player spectrum analyzer displays and other cool digital signal processing tricks. But I digress...I have a little bit of the story now: The Taylor Series has the power to break down tougher calculations into easier ones, a special kind of mathematical solvent. And there are all kinds of interesting side properties that opened up entire new fields of analysis. Pretty serious stuff. Time to move on.
Reconstruct the Facts and Events of the Mathematics
Apparently, I had stumbled in the middle of a pretty serious piece of mathematics; a kind of universal solvent that has far-reaching implications throughout the field, with fingers in modern computer consumer technologies. I would have to step carefully; this was no two-bit axiom I was dealing with.
The rest of the Wikipedia entry turned out to be pretty dense. If the first 8 paragraphs were hard going, paragraph 10 and beyond were incomprehensible, filled with self-referential assumptions and inside jargon. It was a jigsaw puzzle that I would have to unravel piece by piece, reconstructing more than just the Taylor Series knowledge, but its relation to other fundamental players like Power Series and who knew what else. The material certainly wasn't written to explain, in nice bite-sized chunks, what the heck was going on to a newbie MSI like me. Still, it's my job to wade in and extract the real story. If there was a tome called "A History and Timeline of Mathematical Insight and Philosophy", that would help a LOT. Instead, I would have to do things the hard way to figure out what the math was supposed to be telling me. That meant tracking down and explaining every piece of detail on the page, from the funny notation to the significance of every fact. Some of it, I imagined, would be irrelevant in the big picture, but even the tiniest shred of evidence might shed light on another mathematical principle.
This would take some time. I decided to move on to something else.
Interview the witnesses and get their testimony.
Who are the witnesses? People who actually use or teach the mathematics. By talking to them, I'll gain a better picture of what's happening in the world of the Taylor Series, and probably mathematics in general. That perspective will allow me to put together more pieces of the puzzle and form working hypotheses as I build my case.
It's a known problem that witnesses are notoriously unreliable in their observations, and are subject to biasing influences that make their testimony subject to unintentional falsification. A seemingly-confident witness at the scene may crumble in the face of sterner questioning; I've seen this happen over and over. It's important, though, not to hold that against them: people generally mean well, and their testimony and experience provides important clues in understanding just what happened at the crime scene. If anything, you'll be getting new ideas from those witnesses, so treat them nicely.
Still, I have to remember that their testimony, no matter how well-intentioned, may have some flaws or misinformation in it. It's my job to piece together a story that makes sense to me, is supported by the facts as they have come out, and explain the modus operandi of the mathematics. And...it's all got to convince a real math teacher that I have a strong case.
Another challenge is that it's very hard to explain things, especially to someone who isn't familiar with your work and the context in which you perform it. Teachers will have an advantage, as an "expert witnesses", but even their testimony may be inaccessible or flawed. Like I said, it's tough to keep all those details straight. I've got my job cut out for me.
Put it all together
This is one of the best parts of Monk, when he gets to explain how everything fits together despite his debilitating neurosis. Um, I'm not quite there yet with this Taylor Series thing...the investigation is just beginning!
Wrapping Up for Now
Essentially, I'm thinking of approaching Math without the skepticism I've had in the past. Now that I'm older, I'm confident that there is some logic underneath all the obfuscating jargon and material; I just need to treat it like evidence at a crime scene. In the past, I had assumed that everything printed in a book or came out of teacher's mouth was guaranteed to be 100% accurate and true, and if I could not literally understand it there was probably something wrong with me. I know now that understanding comes in many forms; by taking a more investigative approach to with the assumption that the facts are not out in the open, I may be able to make some additional strides.
There are a couple of important resources I have now that I didn't have then:
The Mathematics Wikipedia Entry, from which I can skim the world of mathematics to build my own "big picture" view of how it's all related.
Access to Mathematic Frameworks for all 50 states, a byproduct of the trend toward National and State Standards in Curriculum. For the first time, I've been able to discovery just what we're supposed to be learning, and why. That's important context to have, representing a "pragmatic view" of math education in this country.
It would be interesting to look at a real college-level mathematics curriculum, for people who major in it. I'd be curious to find out how it's different. I guess I need to track down some real mathematicians. Anyone out there?
After installing the pre-release version of Bad Behavior Alpha 3, I have seen the amount of spam blocked by Spam Karma 2 drop from about 3000 to 5. Wow.
I have also noticed that the website seems to have sped back up...was it possible that all that spam hammering was slowing thing down?
UPDATE June 03: A temporary lull: "There have been 1807 comment spams caught since the last digest report 1 day ago."
UPDATE June 04: 1307 comment spams (karma above -20)
UPDATE June 05: 214 comment spams (karma about -20)
However, how many comments with karma BELOW -20? Not sure.
It has been 14 years since I've wanted an Apple for its sexy hardware. I'm not talking, mind you, about Apple's industrial design (when Jobs is in charge). Nor am I talking about Mac OS X, which continues to delight me. I'm talking about the guts: the processor, memory bus, video card, and integration with the operating system.
Finally, the first Mac I could buy without feeling ripped-off on performance is here: The MacBook Pro, with Intel Inside. Glee!
Now, I am not saying that Intel Rules over PPC... the Intel architecture is rather kludgy compared to, say, the much-loved Motorola 68000 series of the original Macs. However, the Mac has been trailing PC hardware (not the OS, the hardware) for over a decade. In 1992, when the first 486-DX2 PCs because available at 2x the performance for 1/2 the price, the Macintosh has been outclassed in terms of raw speed. I should know...I was facing that decision in 1992, and reluctantly went with the PC. Full disclosure: The LucasArts game X-Wing was only available on PC at the time...that may have had something to do with my decision as well :-)
Anyway, speed still didn't matter as much because all the good graphics software was still Mac, but around 1995 things started to turn the other way when Adobe made a usable version of Photoshop (version 4) available. The rise of 3D gaming and the Internet further pushed the Mac into a game of catch-up. Great software design and a loyal user base is what kept the ball alive, not speedy hardware.
Despite all that, I've always wanted a G5 box. They just look so cool, and OS X is so sexy. But as soon as I touched the mouse and felt the lag, I just walked away and kept my money. I did succumb once and bought the cheapest PowerBook I could (a 12" 1GHz G4), and it's easily my favorite machine in terms of personality. But fast it ain't. My 1GHz Compaq Presario notebook is noticeably faster.
No more! The MacBook has a dual-core Intel processor in it (2 processors in one = faster data processing), a faster frontside bus (better cpu-to-memory speed = faster data handling) , and PCI express (quicker graphics transfer = faster screen refreshes). I imagine that some of those sluggish 3D acceleration issues will go away too, because now 3rd party vendors can incorporate portions of Intel-native hand-optimized driver code. It's all good...hooray! Mac OS X and speed. Together at last. At a competitive price. Someone pinch me.
I see that there's a new iMac too too, that's supposed to be 2x faster. The cynic in me was analyzing the ad copy on the iMac page: it sounds like with the dual-core CPU, it's of course 2x faster than the single-processor version. But there are so many fundamental improvements under the hood, I'm wondering if it's actually capable of more speed than they're willing to admit to, say, people who just bought a PowerBook or G5; sorry if that's you...it's one of the hazards of being an Apple person! And think of this: the 2x speed may be referring to emulated PPC code, not Intel-native versions of your favorite apps. I eagerly await benchmark results of a totally-native software suite. There will be dozens of announcements over the next few weeks.
Now it feels like 2006! There are new Macs! Will 2006 will be the year to switch?
My Dad has been having some trouble with his Windows PC...apparently some programs "disappeared" from his desktop under mysterious circumstances. He requested Remote Assistance, the Microsoft Windows XP feature that allows you to control a computer over the Internet. However, first we had to get Remote Assistance working. Compounding the problem: Dad lives 13 time zones away, and communication over the telephone is impossible because of his hearing disability.
I thought this would be a good opportunity to give Fog Creek Software's CoPilot a try. Like Remote Assistance, CoPilot makes it possible to control a computer over the Internet, except it uses a regular web browser to kick off the entire process and (this is important) works through firewalls automatically. Remote Assistance possibly needed some configuration on Dad's router, but since he hadn't set it up himself I was anticipating some issues.
I'd heard about CoPilot on Joel on Software; it's a product put together by the best interns Joel could find. Helping Dad with his computer was a great excuse to try out the latest from Fog Creek Software.
The CoPilot Experience
Setting up from the browser was very easy. The logistics of communicating what to do, however, still proved difficult.
Synchronizing: Some concepts, like using signals to coordinate and acknowledge action, are actually pretty geeky. Just coordinating a time when both of us would be sitting in front of the computer was surprisingly difficult, mostly because I was confused about what time it actually was in Taiwan. So I'd send Dad an email saying, "around this time let's try it, so send me an email when you're ready so I can start the connection" and then we'd miss each other. I ended up being off by an hour, or Dad would be waiting at the computer and not send me the email, or he'd send the email and I'd miss it in the flurry of other emails I get. We finally got it down after a couple of days. This could have been fixed with a quick phone call, and in retrospect we should have used that to signal. However, it's expensive to call, and it never occurs to me anymore because we can't communicate effectively via telephone in the first place. Used just as a signalling device, though, it would have saved some time :-)
Explaining: The CoPilot sign-up process requires that the person requesting assistance to enter a special code, then download a small program. This program is keyed with the special code, and allows only the helper with the same code to connect.
There were two problems. The first one was just a matter of Dad knowing that he had to download a program and then run it. Not as simple as it sounds. First of all, where does the downloaded program go? I told him it was on the Desktop, which is....what? And of course downloading a program off the Internet triggers all kinds of warnings with the anti-virus software, which doesn't make it seem like anything GOOD is happening. Eventually any sane person just loses patience and clicks OK to everything...it's no wonder that this is such a problem. Sheesh. Making matters worse was that long label of the file itself...it's FogCreekCoPilot.Exe or something like that, and it ends up being shown as FogCree... on his desktop. First we were at CoPilot.com, but now he can't find a file named CoPilot. Gah.
The second problem was that the downloaded CoPilot program does not identify which code it is using when you run it. The first code we used was for the two-minute trial, to ensure that CoPilot actually would work. It did, so I bought a 24 hoursday pass and sent Dad the new code link via email. Dad ended up using the wrong one the second time we did a connection, because he didn't know he had to use a new download. His desktop became quite cluttered with old versions of the program. We eventually get this sorted out, and he runs the right one (FogCreekCoPilot (5).exe).
After we got the program up and running, everything was OK. CoPilot is based on VNC (the source code is available, as it's open source). I could see JPEG artifacting as screen chunks were transferred over the net, but it worked. We encountered a few problems:
If both Dad and I tried to use the mouse / keyboard at the same time, we would disconnect. At least, that's what seemed to trigger the disconnect.
If I moved too many things on the screen, or caused too massive a screen update, we would get disconnected.
CoPilot is designed to automatically reconnect when the connection drops. In practice this didn't work for us. My side of the connection would display the "reconnecting" prompt, and nothing would happen except for the program entering a "not responding" state. If I force-quit the program and restarted, it would usually reconnect, and I would see a dialog box on my Dad's computer saying "The Fog Creek Copilot service can not connect because another user with your invitation code is already connected from a different computer. If you are sure that no one selse is connected, please wait a few minutes and try again." Some kind of race condition exacerbated by the long distance connection across half the world? Dad's laptop was purchased here in the US, and still has the US Version of Windows XP on it, so I'm stumped. The Testimonials page lists someone in India who had no problems, so there must be something fishy going on in Taichung...
Overall it was a usable experience, brought to the edge of frustration by the three problems I list above. Screen updates were pretty slow; Dad is on a high speed DSL line in Taiwan, I'm on Cable. His uplink speed is probably around 128-300kbps (12-30K/sec), which is going to be slow when screen-sized JPEG-encoded bitmaps are being sent back . The interactive performance between Dad's computer in Taiwan and mine here in the US averaged about 0.5 frame per second, with screen refreshes taking 10-20 seconds when a lot happened. This may not be typical for US-based broadband, but I didn't have an opportunity to try it out.
The Remote Assistance Experience
After using CoPilot to fix the immediate problems with Dad's computer, the next thing I did was install MSN Messenger, which I thought was one of the requirements of Remote Assistance. I set it up so would only see my MSN screenname, with his profile invisible.
We then worked out how to connect via the Remote Assistant Wizard built-into XP. This was fairly straightforward, with some gotchyas:
I'm using Trillian 3.1 for my MSN connection instead of the real MSN Messenger client. Trillian does not accept Remote Connection requests. Therefore, Dad had to use the "send email" function instead. This sends an attachment with a Remote Assistance "shortcut", which I can double-click to launch. Next time I'm on his computer, I'm going to nuke MSN off the machine and install Trillian instead.
When creating an "invitation" for Remote Assistance, the requester has the option of entering a password. The idea of the double password fields ("enter your password", "confirm your password") was confusing to Dad, and he entered only one password before clicking "confirm". The wizard complained, and did NOTHING to highlight the missing field. Crappy QA. The dialog could have been better design...small text just looks like background texture to Dad, and he's not in the habit of reading every bit of text on the screen. Who wants to? There's so much of it and it does a terrible job of explaining what to do. Instead it just describes what to do, which isn't the same thing. Useless!
Different generations assume different default capitalization rules for passwords. He automatically capitalized the words, because to him that seems more natural. I automatically typed mine in all lower case.
We kept CoPilot running at the same time so I could watch him. That was cool! It allowed me to watch Dad establish the remote connection from scratch. When he needed help, I'd send him an instant message through MSN.
On a side note, Remote Assistance is considerably faster than CoPilot in interactive performance. CoPilot was painfully slow at times; the update rate was on the order of half a frame per second at best. Remote Assistance could manage maybe 2 frames a second. A lot of it depends on how much screen is being redrawn, because all those bits need to be shipped back to the assisting computer; with CoPilot, a full screen refresh would take up to a minute if we didn't lose the connection. Remote Assistance seems to be a little smarter about refreshes (it's based on the mature Windows Terminal Services technology), which is where it picks up the speed advantage.
I was surprised that the Remote Assistance setup didn't have problems traversing our firewalls. While reading about firewall support for RA, I found out what the the UPnP router setting helps with automatic forwarding of ports injust this situation. I had never turned it on before. The receiving computer (the person being helped) needs port 3389 forwarded. That's a pickle! There should be a version of RA that's called Demand Help, which puts the onus on the EXPERT to handle the port forwarding :-) My Dad's router must have this UPnP feature enabled.
Is There Money in This?
Despite the issues we had with CoPilot, I like what it's capable of doing. They have flexible subscription models that allow a person to help any number of people. It's similar to a cell phone plan: buy the number of minutes you need at a certain level, then pay a per-minute rate if you use more than that. There's also pay-as-you-go, and you can choose to bill the person receiving help using either PayPal or a credit card. There's also the 24-hour day pass, which allows you unlimited use for a 24 hour period starting from time of first successful connection.
While I would hesitate to ask a novice computer user to pay a bill over the Internet, I could see using CoPilot to do virtual computer consulting and one-on-one training. You can see almost everything that the other person is doing; combined with telephone support, you could really do an effective training session without having to leave the house. Even the slow update rate is an advantage, as experts tend to type and move the mouse too fast for novices users to follow.
Unfortunately there's no Macintosh version of CoPilot; Timbuktu is probably the next most usable solution, though the version I last used had overly-complicated setup and firewall issues to work around. VNC is free, but do you really want to put Grandma through the setup process? We love Grandma! I like the idea of CoPilot's web-based setup far better: it's a clean and simple solution, once you handle the inherent lameness in downloading and running programs. For now, I'll stick with Remote Assistance for Dad because its quicker and more stable for my application, but it wouldn't have even been possible without CoPilot. That was totally worth the 10 bucks...beats the price of an international plane ticket handily!
For my birthday, I met up with some friends for Dim Sum at the China Pearl in Woburn. Normally I am a little grouchy on my birthday, but my mood quickly lifted when I saw my present: a Master Replicas ForceFX Star Wars Lightsaber.
I'd come across Master Replicas before, when I was ogling their delectable Star Trek Classic Communicator (sadly, it isn't on their site anymore). The company specializes in making high quality movie prop replicas. From their website:
“Master Replicas are a bunch of lunatics who watch too many movies, work too hard, have no lives, but make cool stuff that helps collector’s dreams come true. Word.”
The handle is made of metal, beautifully weighted and detailed. There are some plastic elements, but they're not in places where you'd be offended. There are no cheesy decals except for the labels that tell you where the on switch is. Overall it's a little light, but it is a real object.
The blade is a single piece of clear plastic with an inner luminescent coating. It's quite nice; the thickness of the plastic gives it that "iPod" look if you know what I mean. As you power it up, the blade doesn't just light-up...the blue glow illuminates from the bottom to the top. Sweet!!! When I powered it up held high overhead, the entire place quieted down. Little kids turned green with envy, and the manager came out to tell us that light sabers were not permitted out in the dining area. He admitted though that it was super cool.
The saber has all the sounds you expect: powerup and hum. For interactive effects, a sensor detects when you swing the saber, which plays the louder humming noise. There's another sensor that detects when the blade strikes something, so you get that clashing hit effect. Simply awesome.
The saber is powered by 3 AA batteries. Even the battery module is a work of art. The AA batteries are fitted into the notches on the side of the cylinder, and then the entire cylinder is placed back in the handle. It feels like you're really putting in a power cell! The position of the cell is at the very end of the handle, which I think contributes to the saber's excellent balance.
The battery cap on the end is beautifully detailed...check out the lettering! A metal ring unscrews, which allows the entire battery module to slide out.
This is simply the coolest Star Wars toy ever. Perfect for the geekus supremus in your life!
It's sitting on my desk right now in the display stand, power switch up and ready for emergency activation. The display stand is nice; the bottom has rubber feet, and there are also holes in the back of it to allow wall mounting with screws!
I shot some grainy video with my digital camera so you can see and hear the power-up effect. You'll need Flash8 player installed.
For real drama, check out this saber duel using the toys! It's good to know that Master Replicas tests these things out for real! QuickTime required.
P.S. HOLY CRAP CHECK OUT THIS ALIENS MOTION TRACKER!!!
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