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Welcome to my homepage. I became blind at birth from retinopathy of prematurity. I developed an early interest in computers and radio. I use Linux, MacOS, and iOS. I have an extra class amateur radio license. I practice Qigong daily. I consider myself a Taoist. I don't drink alcohol, eat meat, or gluten. It makes me feel optimal, and helps with migraines, which I also have to deal with. For the rest, you'll have to read my articles.
Electrical Freakout!
November 25, 2008I just had one of those experiences that makes you feel very thankful. The other night, the humidifier leaked water into a power strip. The strip did its job, and shut down, tripping the circuit in the process. Today, I got someone sighted over here to diddle with the circuit breakers. We got the power going again, and I plugged a salt lamp into the strip. As soon as I turned the power strip on, it shorted out, and a huge spark leaped from its depths. You could hear it, like a freaky electrical lighter. The smell of burning plastic filled the room.
My years of meditation and amateur electrical training came in handy, as I yanked my hand away immediately, already feeling on edge. By the grace of Goddess, I had the strip switched off initially! If it would have remained on while plugging it back in, the spark would have happened with my hand much further over, by the socket. I feel so grateful I did not get more hurt. Goddess definitely watched over me there! I still feel freaked out, and probably can’t plug something in for a few days. Wow.
The FiOS Chronicles
October 29, 2008I will chronicle my experience with FiOS. I just got it installed yesterday. Verizon FiOS provides a fiber optic line right to the house. The technology has moved a rung down the social ladder. As a kid, I remember long distance telephone companies advertising that they now use whisper-quiet fiber optic lines, and now the end user has this technology.
I can’t believe I’ve gone to Verizon for my Internet, but there you go. A guy called and told me I could get 20mbps down, and 5 mbps up, upgradable to 20 mpbs up. That sounded great, plus telephone and television would all come on one bill. I love Speakeasy, but they have a nightmare accounting department, and I just can’t battle with them every month. Mom got FiOS and loves it, though of course we have very different computer usage patterns. I held my nose and entered the labyrinth of Verizon FiOS!
I wanted a static IP of course, since I actually do things. I also didn’t want any port restrictions, which a tech support person confirmed exist – port 80 outgoing and port 25 incoming. Nice. So beware: if you actually use your Internet connection for servers, you’ll want the business FiOS Internet, as opposed to the residential FiOS Internet. You will still want residential television and telephone services, however. This makes things nice and confusing. Originally, the guy pitching the promotion told me I could get all three for $145 or so. I asked about getting a static IP and he said I just had to call ahead of time. Wrong’o! I called over the weekend before the installation date, and they told me that I needed the business Internet. They had to cancel my original order, then make separate business and residential orders, then join them together on the same day, moving it back to the morning. So now with the services as described I pay around $200 for all three.
I feel amazed at the Internet speeds. The business connection gives a guaranteed speed, and it appears to deliver on that. The telephone sounds great. I worried that they’d just use some crappy Vo/IP, but they assured me that they use real fiber optics, suitable for data use even. I do feel worried that it has a battery backup, giving me eight hours of talk time. If the world comes to an end I won’t have telephone. It sounds great, noticeably better than copper. The same applies to the television, going from old-style Comcast crappy cable to fiber offers a vast improvement in audio. I don’t care about picture. I don’t care about HD! I feel absolutely overwhelmed with the television channels and can actually use the DVR to at least pause and rewind shows in real-time. This takes the stress away of missing your favorite show. Too bad as a blind user I can’t access the nifty neato functions which require using a menu. Come on, guys!
I do have to bring up another issue for tech savvy folk: the moronic router they tell you that you have to use. Don’t you believe it, though I still do as I write this, that may soon change. Sure it works, but I have already started getting errors going to one of my machines. I also had some trouble changing the initial admin password, which annoyed me, so we had to reset it, then reenter in everything, which necessitated a call to tech support. We had to enter in the info in the Ethernet as opposed to the Coax network, if that saves someone out there some trouble. I also felt confused by the port forwarding setup. Protocols have rules, and you have to configure it from the point of view of the router, i.e. you want to configure the incoming ports for most services. You then have to go and apply the rules, the protocol, then go back and select your protocol in the forwarding rule, then apply that and then apply your changes to the application which you have just applied. It always bothers me when designers
try to make something for advanced users so simple that a fool can use it, but obfuscate it so those of us who know what we want to do and how we want it done can’t. Give me some textfiles and a simple console interface any day!
Despite all this router monkey business, I definitely love the speeds I have started getting. I started downloading a 10GB torrent at around 1500KBPS at its peak! wow! amazing! I remember getting DSL for the first time, and a friend downloading music with Napster, and us feeling amazed that we’d get speeds around 100K. Now it has moved to the next level. Just watch that router, and to quote Hunter THompson: “Don’t take any gup from those swine!”
My Continuing Battle with the Elago 2.5mm to 3.5mm Adapter
August 20, 2008Previously, I wrote about this adapter, and how it almost broke
my phone. I may have to amend that by removing the word almost.
My cordless phone still works intermittently. The tip broke off,
and now makes contact with the jack. This really bothers me.
This two dollar adapter (supposedly on sale for $14) may have broken my
phone. Now I will have to spend money on a new cordless phone with
talking caller ID, and a $150 or so phone patch to do this properly. At
least it will cause me to use it less and reduce my exposure to
radiation. Remember to stress-test your adapters. If it breaks, throw it
out. Cheap solutions rarely work as planned. They piss me off!
My Review of the Elago 2.5mm to 3.5mm Adapter
August 15, 2008I would have posted this review on Amazon, but their new review system makes it impossible to post one with a screenreader. You need javascript. The Bane of the Internet! Mark my words!
Recently, I wanted to make a cheap phone patch by using a 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter, then splitting that into my mixer. I’ll have more details on that when I get it working. I purchased the Elago 2.5mm to 3.5mm stereo adapter from Amazon. This adapter takes the mini jack of a cordless phone or cell phone, and allows you to plug in a standard 3.5mm (eighth inch) plug into it.
I opened the package to find the adapter, two little plugs held together by a very thin wire. This made me nervous, cables represent the most important part of a setup. I tried it by first plugging it into some standard Ipod earbuds I had lying around. Immediately, I noticed the unreliability of the adapter. I could not get a solid connection, it came and went. I had a bad feeling about this.
I inspected the plug, and to my shock, noticed that the little 2.5mm end had started to bend. Already? After less than two minutes? I straightened it out, my hopes dwindling. “It’ll break off in your phone.” I heard my inner voice warn as I tried fiddling with it again. I couldn’t get any sound, the adapter had broken. I pulled it out, and lo as the voice had predicted, the end had snapped off inside my phone, making it silent. I used a pipe cleaner and fortunately that worked to fish it out. Leave it to a smoker’s ingenuity to solve the problem.
All and all, I would NOT recommend buying this product. It almost permanently damaged my expensive cordless phone. I do not know how it lists for $14.99, but do have a good idea how Amazon can charge $1.99. Caveat Emptur!
A tip for M-Audio MobilePre USB Users
July 24, 2008I just got a hot new mixer, which I will shortly write about. In the mean time, I wanted to just share a quick tip for users of the MobilePre, a beautiful USB-powered audio preamp made by M-Audio, which I use as one of the components in the mixer. I have it both as an output and as an input. To do this, first turn on direct monitoring. You can do this in the volume control, under playback controls. Make sure that under “advanced” you have the “1-channel input” option unchecked. Hook the mixer or whatever you want to use to the line input on the MobilePre. Now the kicker: The two gains on the front control all audio data coming over all inputs, not just the xlr microphone inputs. This really threw me. At first everything sounded all muffled, and in mono. I couldn’t figure it out, it certainly did not seem on par with M-Audio’s respectable reputation. After some fiddling around, I realized this property of the gain controls, which seems somewhat obvious in retrospect. So, first connect the line, and connect
headphones to the headphone out. With the direct monitoring on, you will hear the audio coming over the line-in. Carefully adjust the two gains on the front – one for the left channel and one for the right. Use your brain to balance out the sound until it sounds perfectly balanced. There you go. Turn off direct monitoring, then hook the line-out to your mixer and enjoy. I wanted to post this on my blog in case someone else has this problem, then they will hopefully find it through a search engine and save themselves a few moments’ panic. No, you don’t need to buy a new sound device just to record your beautiful mixer’s output. Have fun!