On Google+

Author: JoshMiller

Jul 24

All the buzz lately, Google’s new Facebook killing Social Network has finally arrived!  They are calling it Google+.  This has some vague connotations of “Google only better”.  They seem to be gearing it up to finally better unify Google’s multiple products which certainly would be “Google only Better”.  It’s too bad they didn’t go with Google++ and get the nerd angle.  In the C and C++ programming languages, you increment a variable or number by adding ++.  Who know, I suppose that the single plus may work in some other programming language.  Also, most people wouldn’t get the in joke and it would just look funny.

I’ve been a huge Google Fanboy for a long while, probably ever since I got a Gmail account.  I’ve used Gmail for years, I used Reader religiously until I stopped caring about RSS and News, I get irritated when my wife tries to run directions through MapQuest over Google Maps.  I’ve done the Homepage thing, I use my YouTube account, and of course, I run all my searches through Google.

I still can’t really get myself into Google+.

Maybe it’s just too early.  It’s hard to envision how this is going to actually merge everything together, if at all.  They have some Picasa integration going on, and I could see maybe the option to push your Reader feeds into your stream, though that would get really cluttered really quickly.

Maybe I just don’t have enough friends on the thing yet.  I started really adding random folks a few years ago on Twitter and I found my stream quickly became unreadable.  I trimmed back very quickly.  When I finally managed to get myself into using Facebook I was reasonably selective on adding new folks.  Basically I either already knew them, or they seemed like they would be an interesting and decent person to follow.  The general rule I use now for adding total strangers is that I’ve had to have noticed them elsewhere more than a few times, then I check them out and see if they lists any interests.  This applies to Twitter and Facebook and I’ll likely push it for Google+.  What I mean is, as an example, I follow Team Fortress on Facebook.  If I see a person comment on a post and they seem interesting or I notice them somewhere i make a note.  If i notice them again a few more times, i check them out.

Most of the people I follow now on Google+ are people I already know and follow on Twitter or Facebook.

There is also a problem about where it fits into my whole online mess.  I sign up for a lot of services I don’t use.  I used to sign up for more but I actually went around actively shitting down some of those accounts after a while.  There are two philosophies at work.  First, if the service becomes a hit, I want to be there.  Two, if the service becomes a hit and I want to be there, I want to secure my username before some other joker comes along and takes it.  As yet, Google+ doesn’t really have the username issue, you can bet when they roll it out I’ll be securing @joshmiller immediately.

The final snag and hangup I have is that Google+ still does not support Apps for Your Domain email accounts.  Apps for our Domain is basically the ability to make an gmail address and Google account using your domain, ie, @lameazoid.com.  I’ve been suing this service a long whole, for a while I was filtering all of this email to my @gmail account.  A couple of years ago i went to a lot of effort to port @lameazoid to be the primary account.  I transferred all my contacts, all my calendar information, all my reader subscriptions, I flip floppwed around my Youtube accounts so that @lameazoid would have control of YouTube.com/lameazoid instead of lameazoid2. I don’t use Blogger anymore buy porting those and getting them to work was a pain.

The point is, if I really want to take advantage of Google+ as it grows, this need is critical.  If they add say, “Anything your star or share on Reader shows up in your +stream”, I’m screwed because I don’t use Reader on my @gmail account anymore.  How about the ability to invite people to an event using Gcal?  Oops, nope, my Calendar is on my @lameazoid account.

Comments Off
Filed under: 2011, Blogging and Social Media | Tagged as: , , , , , , ,

Procrastination Isn’t Always Bad

Author: JoshMiller

Nov 20

I almost always have a couple of dozen projects I’m working on.  These are not projects for work or even household projects that my wife wants me to take care of.  These are personal projects of varying importance though generally of little overall *real* importance.  For example, at the moment I am working on:

- Building a solid automated online streaming radio service.

- Playing through several video games.

- Burning old family VHS tapes to DVDs

- Building a small corner shelf for putting my games and DVDs on in the bedroom to reduce the clutter in the closet.

- Repairing several laptops i have that don’t work.

Etc…

Anyway, Several of these projects I’m “working on” are continual, like playing through various games.  Others I have not even started on, though I still would say I’m “working on them”.  Some I may never start.  The point is that I tend to think about a large string of projects in the back of my mind almost constantly.

Often when i have “free time” I do something completely different when I should be doing “a project”.  I have a tendency to procrastinate on these things.  Often this procrastination though is good because inevitably, I get an epiphany on some project that makes it extremely simple and quick and it’s the best possible solution.

The latest example, which inspired this rambling blog post involves my home network.  It’s not huge but it is larger than most people’s home networks and it “evolves” much more than most people’s home networks.  Currently, the phone line feeds the cable box thing (we’ll call this the Residential Gateway or RG for lack of  better term though I’m not sure it’s actually accurate).  It comes out of the RG and feeds a router.  This router was put in by the cable guy when he came out to replace the RG when it broke.  The thing is, he left the old router in place (also provided by the phone company).  This initially created some issues since it gave me two IP address sets which is annoying when you’re doing a lot of NAT translations for things like streaming radio and VNC access to half a dozen machines as well as hosting FTP, HTTP, etc.  I also own a switch and a hub, though I don’t use the Hub because "hubs suck”. 

I lived with forwarding all ports to the internal router for a while but inevitably I swapped the Hub for the switched, changed the IPs of all my machines and rebuilt the NAT table.  it was a one time pain but it makes things simpler.

I put the old router aside until I discovered the the new router does not support the older less secure Wireless protocols that my Nintendo DS requires.  So the old router went back in almost exclusively for use of the NDS, whoes IP address I don’t care about.  It also serves as an access point for guests or whatever to keep them off of the main network.

The issue I had recently however involves a remote location in the house in my wife’s office.  She has a PC out there for “office use” and I put a second PC out there recently with a KVM for my “experimenting etc” use.  Currently it hosts Lameazoid Radio, an OpenSIM server, a session of Outlook that is attached to archives of all of my old email PST files and I use it for downloading Torrents.  The main point is, it creates a lot of network traffic.  The problem is, there’s only one physical cable running to the office and running a second one would be a pain.  the obvious answer is, put in a switch.  I could use the hub but I fear the high traffic of the one machine would cause lots of issues for the office computer and visa versa.

I’d pretty much resolved myself that I can afford a 30 dollar switch to throw out there.  The problem is that i just got off of a huge backup with my “personal budget” from buying several expensive items “in advance” and then paying back the budget.  I’m tired of being broke for the past 2 months on my personal budget.  Also, Black Friday is coming up and I intend to have a chunk of change to spend on good deals.

So I can drop money and be short on BF, or i can wait a few weeks and listen to my wife occasionally complain that the office PC doesn’t have internet access.  So I decided to “sit on” or procrastinate this project.

Then I had the epiphany.  I can move the main Router over to where the switch is now and swap them out.  The only thing plugged into the main router besides the long network cable running across the room tot he switch is an old laptop I was trying to project but i can’t keep running anyway.  It can be dropped.  I was going to plug a media center PC into it for Hulu but Netflix on the Wii eliminates the need for that and I already have a long cable running back to the TV area from before the newer Router was there anyway I can use.

The point is, that I don’t NEED it to be where it is.  Then I get my switch back.

The real point is, because I didn’t rush into putting in the hub or rush out to buy a switch, i came up with the best solution AND it doesn’t cost me anything. I do this a lot.  I did it at my old job all the time.   I’d sit on a project until I’d realize I can combine two obsolete items into something useful or whatever.  The point is, sometimes it’s good to procrastinate.

Comments Off
Filed under: 2010, Programming and Hacks | Tagged as: , , , ,

COMODO EasyVPN

Author: JoshMiller

Jan 22

You always hear about good programs, why arent’t here more negative reviews of these things? I guess it’s hard to rip on a free program. You didn’t pay for it, it didn’t cost anything other than time to use it, why bad mouth it?

And why should I really? On the other hand, maybe there’s ome hope that the creator fo the program will hear and may look into some of the issues that a user has had. This free program, EasyVPN (Free for personal use) is one that I’ve had issus with lately. So I’m removing it.

This program will create a “Virtual” VPN connection betwen two computers. Hey, you just said “Virtual Virtual Private Network, isn’t that some sort of double negative style issue?” Maybe so, but that’s the best term for it. Generally a “real” VPN involves two firewalls, or a firewall and a program. The point is, at some point is a piece of physical hardware that manages this thing. This is two pieces of software that communicate over a 3rd party’s management.

I’ve used a few solutions similar to this, the problem is, they often don’t quite serve the same need as efficiently. For example, I use Live Mesh for syncing files in real time between several machines. It’s great for backing up as well. I use Sync Toy at hoem to make back ups of the “My Documents” folders on my PC to a secondary larger hard drive.

I picked up EasyVPN for one purpose. I wanted to sync my iTunes library between two PCs (work and home) using SyncToy. With EasyVPN, I could map shared folders between these two machines over the internet securely. The sync can be a bit slow since there’s some delay in the folder scanning across the internet so I set it up to run in the middle of the night.

The problem is, for whatever reason, the connection seemed to break every night. I’d wake up and find that SyncToy was sitting on my desktop telling me that it had failed to run. Neither machine is set to go to sleep or anything since I strongly dislike “Sleep Mode” and “Standby Mode” so that’s not part of the issue. IT’s just a straight reset of some kind, every evening.

So I’m dumping it. I’ve used LogMeIn.com’s Hamachi in the past and will probaly go back to using this since it works better anyway. I just was hoping for a slightly more efficient solution. Why iTunes doesn’t let you do this on it’s own (or just allow you to sync an iPod to more than one library) is beyond my comprehension. Part of that annoying “Apple Control” issue.

Comments Off
Filed under: 2010, Technology | Tagged as: , , , , , ,

Building a Better Network

Author: JoshMiller

Sep 2

As I mentioned previously, I set up a new server running Ubuntu.  It’s also a fun machine to putz with to learn more about Linux though I’m sure most network admins would frown on the idea of running games or programs on your file/web server.

Whatever, I’m not trying to make big bucks here.

Anyway, This server brings the total number of desktop style PCs in my home to 4. We have the Server, my main machine, the media center, and my wife’s office PC.  I’m not counting the tghree laptops since a) 2 of them don’t work, b) they are all pokey and more or less useless for anything but word processing.  Also i can never get any of them to reliably connect to the network due to thier age.  For anyone wondering, the newest fo the three is a Pentium 3, the other two are P2s.  The P3 has a jacked up screen, one P2 needs a new power brick and the third one is just slow as hell, I think it’s 233 mhz.

The server is working well though and that’s sort of the focus of this post.  My wife gets irritated anytime I screw with the computers because inevitably, something breaks.  I keep telling her though, I have a much better solution in place now.

Ok, technically that solution isn’t fully implemented yet, but there’s no need to worry anyone over that.  I’ve loaded all of my personal files, photos, music and misc files onto the server.  This means she can get to them on any machine if needed.  I plan to run Sync Toy once I get her office PC on the network to sync her my documents back and forth.  I’m going to sync my stuff as well.  I also have an external firewire drive that I’ll use to sync some backups to.

Backup is the key word to all of this.  Automation being the second key word.  I don’t want to be manually copying files all the time.

Access is probably the third key word, because I want all PCs to be able to access the same files.

Heck since I’ve got my files better organize I have the hard drive space at home to once again use Foldershare to sync my work PC files.  Sure I can Logmein.com to see them but it’s much more convenient if they are already at home.  Plus I don’t have to remember to copy all the crap I save fromt he internet to home with a flash drive, it’ll just “be there”.

Comments Off
Filed under: 2008, Internet and the Cloud | Tagged as: , , ,