Category: Observations Page 39 of 90

Teaching basic computer skills

On December 8, 2014

Learning to code will not solve all problems. Teaching everyone to code will not solve all problems. Working in Tech, I see people scream the battle cry Learn To Code! It’s not a magic phrase. Sure, if someone has an interest in coding, encourage them. But for most people, that seems like an insurmountable task.

Start Smaller.

1. Teach basic computer skills.

In the course of my jobs, I run into people who lack even the most basic understand in how computers work. Where did that file go? What does this term mean? These people often work on habit. They have one procedure for doing something. And if that one thing does not work or if they have to alter it for any reason, they’re stuck. They cannot continue.

They don’t understand what they’re doing, only what their teacher told them. And they’ve followed the process ever since without variation. Teaching basic computer skills is enabling. It enables the person to know what they’re doing in front of the keyboard and mouse. It takes the power from the computer and restores it to the person. The computer should not hold the power a relationship. The computer is a tool, not a manager.

2. Teach basic troubleshooting skills.

Teach basic troubleshooting skills. Computers are less scary when they’re reduced to their working parts. What are those parts? Where are they? What do they do? We all know the basic jobs and location of our heart, lungs, legs and eyes. Why should hard drives, network adapters, motherboard and optical drives be a vast mystery?

Changing the computer from a black box run by fairies and hope to a machine with parts it’s less scary.

After hardware, move on to software. We don’t need to dive straight into boot records or how a BIOS works. But start with what the BIOS is. At a basic level. It’s a chip on the motherboard that has instructions to start and test the hardware in the system. Once you press the power button the BIOS turns on and tests the hardware. Then the BIOS hands the work off to the operating system software on the hard drive. That’s where you’ll see Windows, Mac OS, or Linux appear. This is where you start doing your work. You can think of it as the BIOS is the computer giving instructions to the computer. The Operating System is when the operator, that’s you, tells the computer what to do.

Was that a lot of information? Sure, especially if it’s foreign to you. But it’s not difficult. The BIOS wakes up the computer then tells the Windows to start. Start with a basic, technical overview of how computers work.

We’re not looking to teach a master class in computer repair. These are the basics.

What is it?
What does it do?
If it’s not doing it, what can happen?
How do I fix it?

3. Teach how to find information

No one knows everything. No one can know everything. I don’t know everything. I’ve never worked with anyone who did. We all look up information. We all reference documentation. Teaching someone the answer is great for that one time.

Teaching someone how to find the information is valuable forever. Technical work is all about information gathering. In the course of a day, I live in Google and dive through search results. Crafting a good search query and knowing how to sort through the results is how I fix problems.

Some of this is experience. I know to avoid anything that’s a sponsored listing. I know how to avoid results that look spammy or things I know to be useless. I try different sets of keywords. I always use product names and exact error messages. Official documentation and well-written posts always use the exact of the error message. The exact wording, capitalization and punctuation are important.

When hunting for why something doesn’t work, attention to detail makes or breaks finding a solution. Don’t ignore that period. Make sure the semi-colon is in the right place.

Finding information is not a technical skill. This is a skill that applies to every job in every walk of life. Sorting through piles of information to find exactly what you’re looking for separates you. It can be a way to stand out. Another trick I learned long ago was to make good notes in a place you can find them again.

I’ve kept paper notes and maintained wikis. I kept email folders and lists of links any way I could. Then, when I have time, I document them somewhere. Because I know I will need to find that information again and I will not remember what it was, nor where I found it.

When I’ve spent all day looking for a solution and finally find it, I think I’ll remember it forever. But I won’t. I never do. And in six months, when I see the same problem, or a co-worker asks me to help, I can reference my notes and provide the answer.

It doesn’t matter where you keep your notes. I’ve know people to write them down on paper. Others save them as bookmarks. I have a hybrid system of Evernote, Pinboard and email. The important thing is keeping notes where you can find them. Use what works for you. Armed with these skills, you can not only find technical support work, but keep that work and get better at it. The only difference between someone just starting out and me is a decade of time.

I haven’t worked particularly hard at it. I don’t hold piles of certifications. I don’t even have an advanced degree. I have a Bachelors’ of Science in Mass Communications. I majored in Creative Advertising, not technology.

I’ve gotten good at what I do by doing it over and over and learning ways to get better at it each time. Technology is always changing, but troubleshooting and research skills never go out of style. They’ll serve you well no matter what you do.

Did you know remote meetings can be good?

By Carl

On December 5, 2014

In Observations

Do you hate meetings that run like this? Do you know there’s a way to fix every technical problem in this video?

Are you an aspiring event planner?
Do you consider every detail?
Do you anticipate what’s needed before the organizer knows?
Are you patient?
Are you comfortable working in front of crowds?
Do you sweat the details?
Do you take pride in your work?
Are you OK with doing a great job, mostly anonymously?
Will you do what you need to do to get the job done and make a great event?

Are you reasonably technical and can work with such cutting-edge technologies as:
– Telephones
– The Internet
– Microphones
– Speakers
– WebEx
– E-mail

Are you eligible to work in the US?
Can you tolerate sitting near me for up to 8 hours every weekday?

Then you too could be a WebEx Support Specialist for the US Department of Labor! APPLY TODAY!

Seriously, our contract changed hands and there is another WebEx Support position to fill. You’d be working with me (perk or punishment depending on your outlook). You’d be setting up WebEx events large and small, answering questions about WebEx capabilities and assisting in planning large events.

If you’re interested, let me know. E-mail me at peroty@gmail.com. This is a real job we’re trying to fill.

Muting for a happier Twitter

By Carl

On December 3, 2014

In Observations

Everyone can talk about what they want, but I don’t have to listen to it. This is true in life and it’s true on Twitter. I interact with the service through Tweetbot on my iPhone and Tweetdeck in Chrome on the desktop (Mac and Windows).

When I’m on my phone, I want to dip my toe into the Tweetstream so I mute what detracts from my experience there.

When I am on a computer, I have more time and attention to pay to Twitter. Due to this, I have very few mute filters in Tweetdeck.

Tweetdeck Mute Filters

In fact, as of today, I only have three things muted.
– Muting “sponsor”
– Muting “clickhole”
– Muting “gamergate”

I don’t remember when I muted clickhole, but it was probably at a time when a lot of people were tweeting them. I tend to mute the Topic of the Day™. Though I mostly do that on Tweetbot.

I muted sponsor because I don’t need to see what you’re sponsoring. I’ll see it on your site, in your RSS feed. I don’t need to see it on Twitter too. And if I miss a tweet with the word sponsor in it, then it’s not a big enough loss to worry about. Life will go on.

Gamergate was the latest addition. I didn’t choose the #gamergate hashtag, nor GG. I chose the word because it got rid of most of the people talking about it endlessly. Yes, it’s my white privilege. Yes, I know I have the power to walk away from it and people are still hurting. But nothing I do will affect that either way, so I filter it out.

But what about Tweetbot?

Tweetbot is where I stick my toe into the ebb and flow of Twitter. I don’t want to engage in everything. I want to see if there’s anything new to read or answer people who’ve replied to me.

I don’t mute any users. None of you have raised that level of ire with me, yet.

There are a few keywords I mute. They do the heavy-lifting in reducing the noise to let the signal come through.

Game of Thrones no more

First, I mute Game of Thrones. I don’t watch the show. I don’t read the books. I don’t care about the series. So I don’t need to see everyone making jokes I don’t understand nor talking about the show.

I would add Doctor Who and Mad Men to this list as well, but those are vague enough terms, I don’t want to block those. And people just don’t talk about them as much.

Last Retweet (that I didn’t see anyway.)

Next, I mute LRT. I recently had to ask what this meant and learned it was Last Retweet. I don’t care to read your explanation about your last retweet.

This is because I’ve turned off retweets for most of the people I follow. There are a few people I care enough about to read everything they share. (You do know you can turn off retweets, right? Click the gear icon on the user’s page on Twitter.com or in Tweetbot, and select Turn off Retweets.

Turning off retweets is the single best thing you can do to quiet noisier users.

This next filter comes from @sweatingcommas. I wanted to know how I could mute the replies in my main stream in Tweetbot.

While I do enjoy the conversations in Twitter when I’m on the desktop, I don’t want to see the replies go back-and-forth forever when I am on the phone.

^@ mutes replies

By muting ^@ it mutes everything starting with @ as the first character of a tweet. This keeps my main stream in Tweetbot to only the top-level tweets. I see my replies in the reply thread and if I want to see who replies to something, then I can swipe to follow the thread.

Muting replies is the second best thing I’ve done to boost signal to noise.

Any clients on the mute list?

Just one. Foursquare earned its place on the mute list years ago. I don’t care where you are or what you’re doing. I use Foursquare/Swarm fairly often but I don’t need to share that with Twitter.

#Hashtags

I ignore hashtags for the most part. I will often mute a hashtag for seven days when it’s linked to a TV show. When a TV shows asks people to vote on something, or enter a contest with a hashtag I mute it for a week. By that time, it’s usually gone in a week.

The only temporary mute I have still on my list is #AddFishToSciFi, which has three days left. I don’t need to see 50 tweets about it.

Also on the mute list is:
– #BWENY
– #depressingsitcoms
– #eurovision
– #GetGlue
– #OveheardAisha
– XPNLOTL

I can’t even tell you what most of these are, or how long ago they were things. But they annoyed me enough to mute.

Make Twitter What You Want It To Be

I’ve long enjoyed Twitter since it can be whatever you want it to be. I always found it fascinating no two people’s Twitter’s look alike. It can be whatever you want it to be, and with a little work, it’s easy to remove a lot of noise and boost the signal that makes Twitter so valuable.

There are other people doing good work on the Tweetbot muting front.

Other Resources?

An excellent resource is from SilencedBots

It will mute things like jargon, SXSW, Celebrities, Spam, Hot Topics and other things.

It’s also possible to share your Tweetbot filters.

So go forth and make Twitter a better place to be. A happier, more sane place where you enjoy hanging out and not stressing out.

Hat tip to amazing photographer and writer Josh Ginter for the inspiration to write this post.

Bookmarklets I Know And Love

By Carl

On December 1, 2014

In Observations

I don’t use my bookmarks bar in Chrome for anything related to Bookmarks. I use it almost exclusively for bookmarklets. What is a bookmarklet? It’s a bit of JavaScript that does a specific function. Instead of linking to a URL, it performs a small command. You’ll see if you keep reading.

– Plex
I have a shortcut that adds a video from YouTube or Vimeo to my Plex queue. It’s my watch-it-later system for video when I want to watch a conference talk or interesting video later and know I’ll forget otherwise. If you have video hosted on a computer at home, I highly recommend you let Plex organize and share it. To get this bookmarklet go to the Watch Later Help page. Drag the Plex It! link to your bookmarks bar.

– KeepVid
In the course of running events, presenters will often send me link to YouTube videos they would like to play during their presentation. the idea of running a video from the web, with the possibility of advertising gives me nightmares.

I use KeepVid to rip the YouTube video to my computer and run the video from there. It allows me to show the video to the audience without running the risk of advertisements, network difficulties, related videos, comments of other undesirable things.

– Markdown Quote
After moaning on Twitter about the shortcut I had found, I longed for a better solution.

Rob Malanowski came to my rescue. Rob, who is my spirit animal, provided a wonderful bookmarklet that grabs the title of a page, puts it into a Markdown link and then grabs the highlighted text and pastes that in after a “>” which makes it a pull-quote in Markdown.

That sounds really convoluted. Here is what it does.

Markdown pull-quote bookmarklet in action

Now I have my quote and link to the page ready to write about. It’s a small thing but it’s quick and it makes me smile every time I use it.

If you want to use this bookmarklet, grab the link below and drag it to your bookmark bar.

Instapaper

Instapaper changed how and where I read. As a commuter that spends most of my hour commuting underground, I can’t read anything online. So I dig into my reading queue. To find the bookmarklet, go to Instapaper’s Save page and drag the Save to Instapaper link to the bookmarks bar.

If you’re curious what I’ve read and liked, I keep a list at Carl Likes which also posts to Twitter at @CarlLikes

– Fever feedlet
This is my shortcut to add a site to my local installation of Fever where I read all of my RSS feeds.

I used to have bookmarklets for Pinboard and HuffDuffer but I now use Chrome extensions for those. I often change the bookmarklets I have in my bookmarks bar. I’ve downloaded and used most of what Brett Terpstra writes because they’re useful and fun.

I hope you found something useful in this smattering of links. Do you use something that makes your life a little bit easier? Tell me about it on Twitter.

Remembering the year

By Carl

On November 30, 2014

In Observations

Each year Annie and I collect Christmas ornaments during our travels. We write the year on them to remember it.
I always think I’ll always remember when we took that trip to __________. And the next year I never do.

This year was a good year for travel. Pulling them out at Christmas time reminds me where we went and what we did in the past year.

It’s a good reminder of the fun we had and places we visited.

Cherry Blossom Festival

Despite (or perhaps because) we are natives to the area, we usually avoid the festival. But this year we decided to walk around the tidal basin and see the blossoms. It was a lovely spring day and a perfect time for a walk and to enjoy the blossoms.

Being from a small town near Winchester, VA I always catch myself saying Apple Blossom Festival. It was closer than DC and it was also a time to avoid the city since thousands of people would flood the town for the festival just as people flock to the tidal basin to see the Cherry Blossoms.

Annie and I took this opportunity to walk around the Jefferson Memorial, which I had never been to, despite driving past it every day for years. We also walked through the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial It’s a moving tribute to the man.

But the most surprising thing of the day was walking through the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. This sprawling memorial is one I had never even heard of, but is by far one of the most beautiful memorials in the city. It winds along the water and through the cherry trees. In full bloom, with blossoms covering the ground, it gave the whole area the feel of a snowy day in spring.

The monument is practically a biography of FDR’s life and accomplishments. It’s one I have never seen pictures or nor mentioned anywhere. Stumbling across a completely unknown memorial was a real treat. In the age where everything has been photographed, videoed and shared, it was refreshing to walk through something I had never seen before.

Our next trip was more of an impulse than planned travel.

Niagara Falls

Cave of the Winds
Maid of the Mist

We had talked about a trip to see the falls. And when our anniversary came around and we found a deal on a hotel we decided to go.

We drove up the same night a meteor shower was supposed to be visible to the east coast. But it was a cloudy night so we kept driving and driving and never did find any meteors.

We did finally end up on a rural road on some small town in New York sitting on folding chairs. We stared up at the sky on the chilly May morning. We hoped to see something shooting across the sky. But alas, never did.

We eventually found a truck stop to pull into and sleep for a few hours before driving the last leg of our trip. We had originally planned to spend the night somewhere halfway there. But because of the cloud cover and our determination we were about an hour from the falls. With no hotel until the following day.

The falls were fantastic. It was a beautiful thing to see in person. We took the Maid of the Most boat ride under the falls.

We went through the hurricane deck twice. It’s an area under the falls where the icy water splashed down upon us. It was such an amazing feeling to feel the power of the falls up close.

After exploring the falls on the U.S. side we decided to visit the Canadian side the next day.

There were fireworks and a daily light show that was better seen from the Canadian side.

The next day we took our car across the border and parked it. We walked all around the touristy Canadian Niagara Falls area and went up the huge Ferris Wheel there.

We didn’t venture more into Canada since this was only a weekend trip. But I can claim I’ve been there. And enjoyed the fireworks and lights on the falls that evening.

It was a wonderful trip and I am very happy we took it.

Bonnaroo

Bonnaroo was three days of being a musical nomad. I loved it.

Bonnaroo

This ornament we had made from one of the very few photos we took there. It was a blast. We had never been to a music festival before. We camped out in the Tennessee summer and loved it.

California

California was our last trip of the year. We went out for a friend’s wedding but made it a week-long trip to explore the state.

Yosemite National Park

Yosemite was beautiful. We took a day trip out there from San Francisco and it was absolutely worth it. I got a kick out of the weather report the morning we left. There was a forty degree difference between the bay area and Yosemite itself. I think we drove from the 60s through the 100s and landed somewhere in the 80s in the park itself.

Yosemite though… It’s absolutely stunning. Given the single day we had, we didn’t see much of the park or take any long hikes. We did hike back to one, small waterfall that was mostly wisps blowing in the wind.

We did see Half Dome from Glacier Point and got a panoramic view of the valley belong with a couple of water falls. We also saw something else that wasn’t common in our trip, green. We passed so many dead hillsides en route to the park, the green was a welcomed change.

We finished the trip with a short trip to see the Redwoods in the southern part of the park. Words don’t describe just how massive they were. To see trees so many hundreds of years old and growing so massive was awe-inspiring. Unfortunately, due to time, we didn’t get to hike as far into the area as I would have liked, but what we did see was worth it.

If you’re ever close enough to take a day trip to the park, you should. It’s worth the trip!

Muir Woods

Before going to California, I didn’t properly understand the difference between a Sequoia and Redwoods. Now I know. Redwoods grow huge trunks. They’re the trees that can be wide enough to drive a car through. The sequoia on the other hand are tall and slender trees.

You could never hug a redwood, but you could wrap your arms around a sequoia.

Muir Woods was a peaceful experience. It was a very quiet park and I felt serene the entire time we were in the woods. I would have loved to spend the day sitting under the trees. Due to their height, they covered the sun and made a hot day, very cool and pleasant.

I would visit Yosemite for the splendor and Muir Woods for the serenity.

Cable Car

This last one is a bit of a cop-out. I have never ridden on a cable car. Sure, we saw plenty of them in San Francisco. But we mainly walked around the Fisherman’s Wharf area and went out to see Alcatraz. We did visit Ghirardelli Square, where we purchased nothing more than ice cream cones and this chocolate-filled ornament.

Look back at the trips we took this past year can help with the holiday blues. I tend to feel down over the holidays so it helps to remember the great things we’ve done over the past year.

There are also small trips not commemorated by ornaments this year. Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park mostly obscured by fog was a wonderful day. I have pictures from that day to remember it.

Our tree is covered in ocean life from trips to the beach and Baltimore Aquarium. There is an ornament from our first Christmas together as a married couple. Some are gifts from friends and family. Others we bought because we liked them like the multiple octopi and the original bird in hat.

When I wake up on a cold winter day and the rain and gloom is overwhelming, I love to sit by the Christmas tree, with its lights and good memories reminding me of all the great things we’ve done. And how lucky I am to have everything I do. To have found the most wonderful woman who agreed to marry me.

We have a couple of Dave & Busters things we’ve made into ornaments on the tree because that’s where we went the night before I proposed to Annie.

I never thought much about traditions and when I thought about it, I’d be hard-pressed to name many I treasured from my childhood. But I love this tradition we started. We didn’t start it our first year of marriage, so we don’t have anything from our Honeymoon in St. Thomas, though I remember looking in a K-Mart where we shopped before the hurricane blew across the island knocking out our power.

I love our Christmas ornament tradition. It’s a fun challenge to try to find something when we travel. Not just any old ornament or attraction, but something we’ve actually done. This isn’t to show off. This is something special for Annie and I to share and enjoy.

And I’m sharing it with you because making traditions with your family can be a lot of fun and rewarding. If you had asked me what holiday traditions I have now, I would struggle to remember anything. But since it’s on my mind as we decorated our tree last night, I’m sharing it with you now. Hopefully you can make your own tradition with your families, old and new.