Tech in the Trenches

Curated Lists

On May 2, 2011

I have a Facebook list, a Twitter list, a Tumblr list. I used to have a well-manicured LiveJournal list and to date myself and at the risk of geek cred, back in the early 00â€™s I had a Xanga list. All of these lists contribute to the information I get. Theyâ€™re the structure Iâ€™ve built to keep in touch with friends and to follow the writings and art of interesting people. But most importantly, they are how I consume data. These trusted advisors to my news gathering are my information network.

I donâ€™t watch traditional news anymore. I havenâ€™t in years. Probably since I was required to when I was an Advertising student in college. I hate the news. Most of what is on reported is spun and unpleasant. I donâ€™t care who died in a shooting today or a car bombing. I donâ€™t care what the Republicans and Democrats did or didnâ€™t do. Most of these things have absolutely no bearing on my life, daily or in the bigger scheme of things.

In Richmond, the nightly news contained murders. Lots and lots of murders. No longer atop the United Statesâ€™ list of deadliest cities, at last count it was still in the top 10. Do I need to know who got shot today? I donâ€™t. I know it matters to someone somewhere. But in my life, it does not matter to me.

What if something big and important happens? Then Iâ€™ll find out about it through my lists. I found out about Princess Dianaâ€™s death via someone randomly popping into the chatroom I was in and announcing it. I first saw the 9/11 attacks via instant message, then a roommate pounding at my bedroom door. I donâ€™t need the talking heads of our national and local news networks to tell me these things. If itâ€™s important enough to warrant my attention, someone else from my lists will bring it to me.

May: 31 Days of Words

By Carl

On May 1, 2011

In Announcements

May.

In the coming month, I am going to branch out a bit from purely technical issues. I am still wrestling with how much of myself I want on this blog and how much might be better served elsewhere. However, until I figure that out and make a decision you are stuck with me. All of me. The techy me. The emotional me. The Full Carl Experience.

I settled on the name Tech in the Trenches as a name for this site for two reasons. The first was that I am that tech in the trenches of IT Support day in and day out and I wanted to share my experiences, finds, workarounds and information I’ve come across and consider useful to my job. The second meaning is that I am the tech and my life is the trenches.

For the month of May, I am going to post something new everyday. It may be completely brand new and typed by me that day or it might be an older post from my old blog.

I decided I did not want to move over everything from my old space into this one. Instead I am hand-picking an reposting and in some cases updating the more interesting and still relevant items.

So for the month of May, it is my goal to have something new up on this site every, single day. Starting tomorrow morning, there will be something inside your RSS feed that will either enlighten, inform or entertain you.

It may be about technology. It may be about my life. It could be any number of things. I hope you like what you see and stick around to see where the month takes us.

Thank you for taking the time to read my humble words and take an interest in what I am doing.

Enjoy May!

Simple Tools: GParted

By Carl

On May 1, 2011

In Observations

GParted short for the Gnome Partition Manager is my savior application of the week. Before your thoughts drift to garden gnomes like Squatsie or the one from Amelie or even the strange world of Linux, GParted works on Windows for a very important task.

GParted main screenshot from GParted site

It will edit your partitions without trashing Windows. This weekend, I imaged my laptop at home in order to replace hard drives. Because I’m a geek, I imaged it to an external hard drive then swapped drives and sent the image back down to the PC so it would be exactly as I left it.

However, this left me with a problem. The image only used 150GB of the 250GB drive since that’s all it had before. So instead od my glorious free space, I was stuck with nearly nothing left.

I popped in my USB key with GParted. I booted it up. I dragged and resized the partitions on my drive and hit apply. Fifteen minutes and a reboot later I was staring at a perfectly usable 250GB hard drive.

GParted has become an essential part of my toolkit. There are instructions for booting off a CD or USB key. I’ve tried a lot of tools for Windows partition management and at best they are expensive and at worse, they trash your partitions. GParted is free, reliable and does the job right every time. It supports FAT and NTFS partitions perfectly.

Have we forgotten what games are for?

By Carl

On April 30, 2011

In Introspection

Game definition

1. an amusement or pastime: children’s games.

2. a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules, usually for their own amusement or for that of spectators.

I love to play video games. I have spent many, many late hours rolling about the streets of Saints Row, leaping to my death in Crackdown and (more recently) Halo 3. I love gaming and love even more to play co-op games with friends. I will play pretty much anything co-op.

If you see me on Xbox Live please feel free to drop me an invite or a friends request. However, my gaming is rather limited at the moment as my Xbox 360 has decided to only read certain games because of an issue with the CD-ROM drive. Which will be replaced my Microsoft.

Assuming the people in the Loudest Call Center Ever ™ can understand my perfectly clear English, ship a box to the correct location. So far, this has proved impossible. But enough of that, what I want to talk about are video games. And my love for them.

I love to game. I’ve played many hours of Perfect Dark Zero with my friend Scott and Beautiful Katamari with my roommate Megan. There was even a time (before my Xbox stopped recognizing Saints Row) that I was playing nearly daily with a group of 4-5 people for hours at a time. I had never had so much fun gaming as I did when I knew all of my teammates well enough to play together and succeed.

I’ve been playing a lot of Halo 3 lately and there’s something I need to say. I suck at First Person Shooters.

I do. I am terrible at them. My reflexes aren’t quick enough. My aim is not true enough. I can get some shots in but I usually get killed first. This does not ruin my enjoyment of them. I have a ton of fun playing, especially on a team or co-operatively through the campaigns (in the case of everything except Saints Row which NEEDS a co-op campaign!)

There are some games I do take seriously, especially when it’s a ranked match and I’m playing on a team of people I know and we’re trying hard to win. Though most of the time when I’m gaming. I’m having fun. It is a game after all. I do not get all bent out of shape if I lose. I do not scream at my teammates if they do something I don’t like. I am not a bad sport.

I do laugh a lot though. I love to game and even if I am getting royally owned by every single person on the opposing side, I’m still laughing. Perhaps that makes me a maniacal freak but I love to have fun!

People take gaming way too seriously. It’s not about winning and losing or how big a virtual dick you have. It’s about fun. Granted, like I said, there are times for competition and while I am very competitive sometimes. But even then, I have a ton of fun and love to play.

Gaming is not the end all and be all of the world. It’s not that serious. If you lose a couple matches or one of your teammates drop out or seemingly walk away from their controller mid-match the world still goes on.

Gaming is not cancer. Gaming is not AIDS. Gaming is not life threatening.

Gaming is fun. Can we all please try to remember that and take it all a little more light-heartedly? Gaming is fun.

Not serious business.

All images screenshot by the author, white mage cat photo taken by Megan.

iPad is a shot across the bow of Google Chrome OS

By Carl

On April 30, 2011

In Observations

It hit me walking to the metro this week. The iPad is a Chrome OS competitor. It is a closed, managed, internet-based computing device.

It is computing for dummies. No malware to worry about (yet). No updates to manage. No underlying OS to play with, infect or break. It is a media machine. An internet machine for consuming media, composing text, and communicating.

All the joy of the rich media Apple empire at half the cost.

Of course, all of my speculation on Google’s Chrome OS is just that since it is still unreleased. However, I imagine the Google OS is a similar walled garden of Googly goodness. Integrated Picasa, YouTube, Gmail, Blogger, etc in a malware-free playground.

Google is no Apple when it comes to media. However, if Chrome supports Flash/Silverlight/HTML5 then Hulu, Netflix and YouTube can begin to fill the gap. Pandora and Last.fm will aid music playback in addition to any locally stored app.

The real question is how will these web-dependent platforms do going forward. Is the trade-off of freedom and openness worth the worry-free, managed environment?