Day: March 15, 2020

My Week Ending 2020-03-15

by dougpete, posted in Just Rambling

Here’s a summary of some of the things I learned and published this week.

Readings 

You can follow my daily readings as they happen here.  Below are a selected few, with commentary, from the past week.

  • If you ever needed a scientific reason to wash your hands, here’s one. Science rules.
  • If you’re unhappy with your programming experience in Python, it might be because of the editor that you’re using. Here are some alternatives.
  • I’m glad that I got my lifeguarding years in as a high school and university student. I’d hate to be replaced by a robot.
  • It’s hard not to smirk at the decision to go back to white backgrounds on Ontario license plates when we all heard the minister refer to them as Liberal plates.
  • I don’t own AirPods or AirPods Pro. Quite frankly, they look kind of goofy. But, here’s the difference between these expensive ear pieces.
  • I was surprised to read this. I would have thought that the government would have had the best IT infrastructure but apparently not.
  • Lots of negative things to read about Windows 10 these days. Knock wood but I haven’t experienced issues lately. Nonetheless, this is filed under “I might need to do this someday”.
  • I was excited to read about this tool but it’s not new to me. I’ve been using it for quite some time – from DuckDuckGo.
  • I totally agree that mandatory e-learning will be an issue. Even those who select e-learning as an option aren’t always successful.
  • That Google did this should come as no surprise. In fact, of all the companies in the world, you’d think that they’d be in the best position to make working from home work.
  • There will be a class of retirements from teaching in 2020. Here are some tips for the first day.
  • It’s always a good story when the bad guys get caught in the act. A big malware ring taken down by Microsoft in this story.
  • I know the title says that you shouldn’t do it but I did read the things, guessed, and then tried a few. I didn’t have the interest to do all 24 though.
  • A tip of the hat has to go to Microsoft, Google, and Zoom for all their efforts to make working from home possible.
  • I’m not sure that I would think being enclosed in an elevator and then shot to the top of the CN Tower is a good idea even at the best of times. Call me chicken – or at least afraid of heights.
  • I’ll be the first one to confess that, if I ever lost the password to my Password manager, I’d be lost. I might as well get rid of all my technology.

Blog Posts on
doug … off the record

My daily contributions to this blog. If you’re looking for a week in review for doug–off the record, you came to the right place.

#FollowFriday – March 13, 2020

https://wke.lt/w/s/xsDa2L

voicEd Radio

This week on voicEd Radio, Stephen Hurley and I chatted about Awards, Equity, Innovative Things, Recording, and Libraries.

This week’s show – https://voiced.ca/podcast_episode_post/march-11-awards-equity-spring-and-canadian-books-and-more/

Intro Song:

All of the podcasts are archived here.

Blog posts this week came from:

  • Alanna King – @banana29
  • Mark Chubb – @MarkChubb3
  • Will Gourley – @WillGourley
  • Diana Maliszewski – @MzMollyTL
  • Beth Lyons – @mrslyonslibrary

Technology Troubleshooting

My Chromebook saga continues for yet another week!

Despite a couple of upgrades, the unit fails to return to laptop move when I switch to tablet mode and back.

I can avoid the problem now but logging out and back in. For the majority of the Android apps I use, I just use them in laptop orientation.

It’s just not the same.

Exasperating.

Video of the Week

Nevermore.

Photo of the Week

This was a screen capture from Beth Lyons’ blog post from TWIOE. I ran across it three times this past week. It’s a powerful message for all of us.

Thanks for reading. Please join me daily for something new and, hopefully, interesting.

dp

This blog post was originally posted at:

https://dougpete.wordpress.com/

If you find it anywhere else, it’s not original.

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Whatever happened to …

by dougpete, posted in Just Rambling

… desktop and tower computers?

My last desktop computer was actually a floor standing tower. It was made or assembled by MDG when they had a store in Windsor. I remember the purchasing experience; basically I started with this case and added components to it. I think I started with a Pentium 5 processor and then added memory, hard drive, video card, etc. It was a great computer.

The one I had before that was an IBM Aptiva. It was my first computer after owning a Radio Shack TRS-80 for years. It was a consumer product and it came with whatever components IBM thought would be good for me. All I can remember was that it came with an AMD processor. I remember it being more affordable than the Intel processor.

Obviously, I’ve outgrown both of these machines. But the MDG still does a good job as a holder for my DataShield and my old monitor serves as a second display for my laptop computer when I’m sitting at the desk.

A quick browse through the BestBuy store shows that desktops/towers still exist for sale with some pretty impressive specifications. They appear to be geared towards the gaming community. They had fairly large price tags but not as big as the Mac Pros. Don’t forget that you have to buy a monitor too!

These things were not exactly portable! I remember my early years at OSAPAC and our meetings where the first hour was spent lugging the computer and monitor in and setting them up. Power cords were everywhere because you had to plug in the computer, the monitor and sometimes an external device like a CD-ROM writer.

These days, I have a more portable computer. Companies have been fighting for years to come up with something lighter and more portable. The lightest of the light around here is an Acer R13 which is both a Chromebook and an Android tablet. The nicest thing though is that it doesn’t require a fan to keep things cool. The older computers could get really hot and the fan distracting when I was working to debug a program I was writing.

For a Sunday, what are your thoughts about desktop and tower computers …

  • do you remember your very first desktop or tower computer?
  • do you currently have a desktop or tower computer in your workspace?
  • does your school still have desktop or tower computers for student/staff use or have you migrated to portables?
  • for the tablet users, does your tablet address all your needs?
  • the desktop and tower computer takes me back to a time when I would install software on a regular basis! What was the last piece of software that you installed?
  • is your smartphone the most powerful computer you use these days?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

This post originated at:

https://dougpete.wordpress.com

If you read it anywhere else, it’s not the original.

OTR Links 03/15/2020

by dougpete, posted in Links

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.