Ryan Collins

🕹️ Do Something Great! 😄

Category: Geek

  • Freely explore 3D game maps and more – This Geek in Review for 7 Feb 2020

    Freely explore 3D game maps and more – This Geek in Review for 7 Feb 2020

    Playing 3D games are fun, but what if you want to explore the map. Usually, the game doesn’t give you a chance freely explore (Grand Theft Auto not included). But, there is now a genius website Noclip. The interface is a little confusing. To get started, select a game and then a level of the game. The game list viewer still shows, to get rid of it, click the red bar. Now you can freely explore the game using the mouse and WASD keys.

    I’ve already raved about Star Trek: Picard, and now CBS has put the first episode of Picard online for a limited time.

    Before you need to make small talk, be sure to memorize some of these little known but obvious facts.

    One of my favorites:

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    From the things we didn’t need department, Snapchat is releasing a Bitmoji TV Show.

    Virtua Racing was one of the first 3D racing games, and Pico-8 is a virtual game console that is used to make games that look 8 bit. Now we have a madman who has created Virtua Racing Demake on the Pico-8 that you can play online.

    Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and China has completed the construction of a 1,000 bed hospital in eight days due to the coronavirus. That number is impressive, but it’s not the fastest they’ve done it.

    Adobe Flash is dead come December, which means there are a ton of online games that will no longer be available. Archivists in Australia have worked to save over 36,000 Flash games that are playable offline. The question that has arises is if the games will still be playable after Flash goes offline. Since I still run my Atari 800XL, I’m sure they will be.

    This past week was February 2nd, 2020, which could be written as 02/02/2020. The date is the same backwards and forward, and the same whether you put the month first (US) or second (Europe). Look how great it is:

  • I finally found a desktop mixer that I liked enough to purchase

    I finally found a desktop mixer that I liked enough to purchase

    In my basement office, I have a desktop computer running Windows, an iPad, and a Mac Mini. I like to watch tv shows or movies on the iPad while I work at the desktop computer. Sometimes I will be working on the Mac. So, I started looking for a mixer I could use to mix the inputs.

    It’s really cool.

    Enter the FIFINE Ultra Low-Noise 4-Channel Line Mixer

    My spending goal was $20, so a lot of mixers were out. That is, until I found the FIFINE Ultra Low-Noise 4-Channel Line Mixer($). It was over my spending goal at $22, and I had to purchase some 3.5mm to 1/4″ jacks ($), so in the end I spent $31.

    Plugging it all in

    I plugged the speakers into the output, and then my main computer into input 1. The plan was to plug the iPad in to input 2 until I got an idea. Since I mounted my iPad above my monitor so I can watch Star Trek, I wanted to use Bluetooth. I had a Bluetooth adapter($) that I had bought to make an older pair of headphones wireless. The adapter wasn’t being used, so I plugged it into input 2 and plugged the USB into the computer to keep it charged. Now I could pair it with my iPad and play sound from the iPad wirelessly.

    Finally, I plugged my Mac Mini into input 3.

    In practice

    It’s pretty cool. I have a hardware dial for each volume, and can mix all three if I want to at the same time. No more plugging/unplugging cables.

    ($) Designates an Amazon affiliate link

  • A whole lot of Apple and more – This Geek in Review for 31 Jan 2020

    A whole lot of Apple and more – This Geek in Review for 31 Jan 2020

    A whole lot of Apple nostalgia for this week. Does Apple announce every major product in January? First up is the 10 year anniversary of the iPad. I have my thoughts from 10 years ago. It’s funny reading stuff that I wrote ten years ago. The iPad was the first (and so far, last) device that I have ever pre-ordered from Apple. I miss the lines that used to form at the Apple store for major releases. The iPad release was huge. There other retrospectives on the iPad for your perusal.

    One comment that I read about the iPad has really stuck with me. It was the last big device announced by Steve Jobs, and the commentator mentioned it’s the product that has suffered the most from the lack of Steve Jobs. The iPad has not come close to reaching its potential. Apple is pushing the keyboard attachment for most iPads, making the iPad look more like a Surface Tablet or laptop than a futuristic device. I’m all for reading articles on using the iPad for productivity, but the number of hoops one has to jump through does not bode well for getting work done. There are a number of features that Apple needs to add:

    • Multiple user support
    • Copy individual text from any app. There have been a number of times I’ve wanted to copy some text, but there isn’t away to do it
    • The ability to have a multiple item clipboard. Once you can store several items at a time in a clipboard, it’s hard to go back.

    Also, 36 years ago this month Steve Jobs unveiled the first Macintosh. I don’t remember the announcement or hearing much about the Macintosh, I was too busy playing on my uncle’s Color Computer. Christmas of 1984 is when I got my Atari 800XL. Most people nowadays remember the Super Bowl ad:

    It is also the twentieth anniversary of Internet Explorer 5 for the Mac. What was amazing about IE5 is that it was anchored in technologies that were bleeding edge at the time, such as cascading style sheets. The public beta of OS X hadn’t been released yet, but Microsoft really nailed some of the features of the first OS X’s Aqua interface.

    For those still rocking an old Mac, you may have noticed that you can’t set the year to 2020. Well, there is a control panel that will help you with that. This affected me on my Macintosh SE/30 running System 7.1. The operating system supports later dates, it’s just that the default date control panel won’t let you set a year past 2019.

    The stop motion skills are strong with this one

    I can’t wait to stay in an Atari hotel. I’m hoping they install a 2600 in every room.

    If you’re going to go, then go out in a blaze of glory. The Mount Vesuvius eruption was so hot, one man’s brain turned to glass..

    And the next time you are entertaining, how about throwing up your own vj

  • Star Trek: Picard – Engage

    Star Trek: Picard – Engage

    I hope when I’m his age I look as regal.

    Last week CBS All-Access premiered the first episode of Star Trek: Picard. This series is notable for bringing back Jean Luc Picard, who is now semi-retired and running a winery. Some bad things have happened, causing Picard to resign from Star Fleet.

    I’m not going to say a whole lot yet. There are a number of questions from the first episode that I’m sure are going to be answered throughout the season. What I’m most excited about is the fact we finally have a new Star Trek property that is moving forward. We haven’t had that since Star Trek Voyager ended its run almost 20 years ago. Everything Star Trek since then as taken place in the past.

    Anyway, the first episode of Picard gets the spousal seal of approval, which is a pretty high bar to reach. We’ll see how well it does as the series continues. Also, if you get a chance, watch the Short Trek Children of Mars. It references a very important event in Picard, so you may want to not watch it until after you watch the first episode of Picard.

  • Tremors, emojis, and more – This Geek in Review for Jan 24, 2020

    Tremors, emojis, and more – This Geek in Review for Jan 24, 2020

    I didn’t get a chance to see it in the theaters, but I did watch it a lot on VHS. This year celebrates the 30th anniversary of Tremors. If you’ve never seen it, then as soon as you’re done reading this, go watch it. Tremors is currently available on Netflix. I should know, we watched it last Sunday night.

    Some people think I obsess about weird things, but I never thought about examining the physicality of whether the scissors emoji would actually work or not.

    What better way to kill time in an airport then playing videogames on one of the airport monitors.

    Popular tractors for sale are the newest tractors, but tractors that are 40 years old. Farmers are used to being able to repair their equipment, but the big tractor companies such as John Deere are making that increasingly difficult. Most repairs and modifications require a licensed mechanic at $150 per hour.

    Speed running is the act of playing through a video game as fast as possible. These usually don’t require much physical exertion, that is, until Nintendo released their Fitness Ring game for the switch. There are now people pushing themselves for over 24 hours at an attempt to finish the game as quickly as possible.

    I didn’t get to play with model rockets much when I was growing up, but I still new the name Estes. Model rocket pioneer, Vern Estes, celebrates his 90th birthday.

    I’m always on the look out for a good, monospaced programming font, and JetBrains Mono is my current favorite.

    We have to wait for the next season of the Mandalorian, but the internet will provide Mandalorian content in the mean time:

  • There is nothing wrong with Post-Its (well, except for one thing)

    There is nothing wrong with Post-Its (well, except for one thing)

    Do you need to remember the key sequence to do a task? Put it on a Post-It. Almost every program you use on your computer, whether it be a desktop or laptop, has keyboard shortcuts. These allow you to quickly accomplish a task, without taking your hands off of the keyboard. Keyboard shortcuts usually comprise a modifier key and another key. The most common modifier keys comprise the Shift, Control, and Alt key. On a Mac, the Command key (the one beside the keyboard that has what looks like a pretzel on it) replaces the Control key and the Option key replaces the Alt key. A modifier key is one that does nothing on its own. Holding or pressing the control key does nothing by itself. To use a shortcut, you hold down the modifier key and then press the shortcut key.

    You may already be using some shortcuts (C is the Control key, or the Command key on a Mac):

    • C-c – Copying selected text to the clipboard
    • C-x – Cut selected text to the clipboard
    • C-v – Paste the clipboard contents into the current application

    Here are some for the operating system:

    • C-tab – Switch between Applications

    For a browser:

    • C-l – Jump to the URL field, highlight the content. You can then start typing a new address
    • C-t – Create a new tab
    • C-PgUp/C-PgDown – Switch between tabs

    To find out more shortcuts, look at the help for the application. To help you remember the shortcuts, feel free to write the shortcuts on to post-its. Just don’t write your passwords down!

  • Y2K20 problem, Apple Computer, Airwolf and more – This Geek in Review for January 17, 2020

    Y2K20 problem, Apple Computer, Airwolf and more – This Geek in Review for January 17, 2020

    For those that can remember, January 1st, 2000 was the year that was going to crash computers, airplanes, and start World War III. The problem was that a lot of programs assumed 19 as the first two digits of the year. By using this assumption, programmers could save two bytes. Nowadays, two bytes is a rounding error with storage and memory, but in the 70s and 80s, every byte counted. To correct the issue, the good programmers switched the storage to 4 bytes, allowing the entire year to be stored. Unfortunately, there were some programmers that decided they had a better fix. Their fix was to assume that years 21-99 were in the 20th century, and 00-20 were in the 21st. The problem is that these programs are still running, and will think that next year is 1921.

    In 2000, Steve Jobs had only been back to Apple for 2 years and had already struck gold with the iMac. His next act was OS X, which he demoed 20 years ago. OS X is now called macOS, and every Mac, iPhone, and iPad uses it as their operating system.

    Speaking of the Mac at Apple, there is only one remaining usage of the word “Macintosh”.

    Here is the office setup that I need.

    The 80s were all about vehicles. Whether it was the General Lee, Kitt, the F15 in Top Gun, the top secret jet in Firefox, or the A-Team’s van, a lot of TV shows and movies had some cool vehicle. Not to be outdone, there was also helicopters. In a fight, who would win, Airwolf or Blue Thunder?

    The Sega Megadrive (Genesis for the US) can be used to create a pretty cool synthesizer:

    Did you know that there are secret codes that you can use to find movies and movies and TV Shows on Netflix?

    Do you have a lot of CDs you’d like to rip? And, do you have some Lego bricks? Maybe they could help you shuffle through the disks:

  • Shorten Amazon and eBay URLs with these two Chrome extensions

    Shorten Amazon and eBay URLs with these two Chrome extensions

    I spend too much time on Amazon and eBay, looking for stuff I don’t need but want. And, eventually, I want to share my finds with everyone. The problem is that the urls are longer than the bathroom line at a Journey concert. That’s where two handy extensions for Chrome come in to play.

    You can use any Bitly url shortener with Amazon, but the official Bitly extension wants you to create an account, but who needs another account. The Amazon URL Shortner for Chrome does one thing, and one thing well. When on an Amazon page, clicking the extension in the toolbar will create a shortened amzn.to link to the product. And, when on regular sites, it will create a bit.ly link, so win-win!

    You could use the previous extension with eBay, but the Short Item URL for eBay will give you a ebay.com/itm/ link. This is nicer for sharing because people know exactly what they are going to get when they click on it.

    Do you still use any url shorteners?

  • Piracy, retro, flying cars, and more – This Geek in Review for Jan. 10, 2020

    Piracy, retro, flying cars, and more – This Geek in Review for Jan. 10, 2020

    For a blissful few years, the streaming shows meant subscribing to Netflix. Some would also use Amazon Video, because, why not? They were already paying for it with Amazon Prime. But then a lot of the media companies decided that they also need to get into the streaming game for those sweet, sweet subscription fees. So now we have Hulu, Disney+, AppleTV+, and HBO Now. This doesn’t include the “TV” services such as Sling and YoutubeTV. And coming soon is NBC’s horribly named Peacock (which, if they want to do it right, they need to get Katy Perry onboard for the song). All of these services are doing one thing, making piracy great again.

    I’m a big retro fan, which makes the list of 52 Fun Retro Facts I learned in 2019 even better.

    We didn’t get our flying cars by 2015, but that doesn’t mean we can’t imagine what they may have looked like.

    Over the years I’ve kept bookmarks with various services. One of the first services I used was Del.icio.us. This past week I found this gem from 2005, the Xbox 360 Has Nothing On Atari 2600.

    One of my favorite moments in the Sylvester Stallone Judge Dredd was the robot at the end, and I’m not the only one who likes practical effects. In some ways, the ’93 Jurassic Park looks better than the more recent movies due to the mixing of practical and CGI effects.

    Have you ever wondered what the consoles do in the Apollo Space center? Now you do.

  • Why Telegram is the best messenger service

    Why Telegram is the best messenger service

    I don’t take lightly to using the term best, but in this case, Telegram earns it. There are several reasons and features that make Telegram the best. Unfortunately, the state of instant messaging clients is always in flux, so if you see something out of date, shoot me an email!

    In the beginning

    In the beginning, besides talk on Unix systems in the 60s and 70s, there wasn’t much to interactive messaging on the computer. Email existed at the time, but it functioned pretty much how email functions today. You send a message and then wait for a reply, maybe a long time for a reply. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) came into the scene in the late 80s. For the first time, you could have conversations with one person or many, across the world interactively. IRC is a distributed messaging service that is still in use by hundreds of thousands of people today. Although IRC as a service is not well known, it was the birthplace of hashtags used on Twitter and Instagram today.

    AOL popularized instant messaging in the late 90s and 2000s with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). I remember creating a group in AOL messenger to chat about the episode of Friends we were watching, before that was even a thing. Unfortunately, while AIM was very easy to use, it was not very mobile.

    Then came SMS text messaging. At first, texts were expensive ($.10 per text) and only worked with people on the same provider. A Sprint customer could not text a Verizon customer. Interoperability came next, allowing people to chat across providers. SMS had it’s limitations, mainly through the feature phones at the time. The phones had limited space, so you had to delete texts once your phone started complaining.

    All of the texts you received were dumped into a list, each message listed separately. There wasn’t the back and forth, conversation style texting we have now. That didn’t happen until the iPhone was released in 2007. Now we had text messaging that looked like AOL Instant Messenger, and the world rejoiced.

    The decline of AIM and the rise multiple instant messengers

    AOL had a lock with instant messaging, but, they did not make the transition to mobiles as fast as they should have. This lead was given up to a plethora of instant messengers, all trying to be the most popular. Nowadays, the most popular messengers are Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, and coming in at around 7th, is Telegram. Since iMessage is only available on iOS devices, worldwide it is not very popular.

    The popularity of a messenger varies greatly by country. If you live in the US, then there’s a very good chance you’ll be using Facebook Messenger and not know anyone using WhatsApp or WeChat. Whereas, if you live in China, your whole life is going to be in WeChat.

    Enter Telegram

    Nice history lesson Goz, but why would I use Telegram? Well, I’m here to tell you, it has several benefits:

    It’s not spying on you

    I stopped using Facebook Messenger the day I started seeing ads for a topic I had only discussed in a private conversation. The app is removed from my phone, along with the Facebook App. Since you can’t escape Facebook, I try to limit its destruction as much as possible. I only use Facebook in an incognito or private browsing window on my computer or phone.

    It’s FAST

    When you send a message with Telegram, it’s almost instantaneous.

    It’s cross-platform

    Telegram has a client for almost any platform, from macOS to Windows to Linux, along with Android and iOS. It’s awesome being able to read/reply to conversation from any machine.

    Chat without sharing your cellphone number

    It’s gotten to the point where sharing your cellphone number with others is a dangerous game. The CEO of Twitter had his Twitter account hacked by a group that found out his cellphone number. Telegram gives you an url you can share to others so they can add you, mine is t.me/gozar.

    Keeping your cellphone number secret is very important in this day and age, and should be given out as little as possible. I use a Google Voice number for most things, and keep my cellphone number private.

    Telegram gives you a t.me address with your username. Others can contact you with this address and without either of you knowing the other person’s number.

    It offers groups and channels

    Our family has a private group with only family members which is used as a private social network. We can share pics and stories among family members, quickly and easily. This makes it really nice to share items that you would be uncomfortable making public on the internet.

    A channel is a broadcast only group, where only a limited number of people can post but hundreds of thousands can join.

    Fine grained control of notifications

    Is that family group flooding you with notifications? Turn them off for that channel. Same with people.

    Unlimited storage

    Telegram is a great way of sharing pictures, files, and music with yourself or others. I mostly use this for sending pictures from my phone to my computer. Storage is unlimited, but file size is limited to less than 1.5GB.

    Location capabilities

    You can attach all sorts of information in a chat, including your current location. Telegram can share your location, live, for a limited amount of time. This is great when you are in large public place and are trying to meet up with others.

    Telegram also offers location based chat and contact sharing. Going to a concert? Once you get there you can create a chat based on the area and chat with others in the current location. You can also share your contact information with nearby users.

    No smartphone, no problem

    Do you have a parent that doesn’t have a smartphone? They can still be involved in group chats with a desktop computer, laptop, or tablet. When creating an account you have the option of Telegram calling you instead of texting you, so others can get chatting on Telegram with only a land line phone.

    Pinned chats

    Family and friends’ chats can be pinned to the top of the list in Telegram, allowing you to quickly and easily find those chats.

    Text formatting

    Have you noticed that most instant messaging is boring text with now personality? Well, Telegram offers bold and italic formatting, along with preformatted text. Simply enclose your text in two * for bold, two _ for italics, and ` for preformatted text.

    Send messages without a notification

    There are times when you want to let a person know something, but it’s not important enough for them to get a notification. Telegram lets you send silent messages, so the recipient won’t get a notification on their phone when the message arrives. There is still a notification in the app though.

    Schedule messages

    Do you want to remind someone of an event? You can create the message now and schedule it to be sent automatically. This is a pretty cool feature, and comes in handy. Hold down on the send icon to activate.

    Stickers

    Ok, stickers aren’t a must have feature, but there are enough stickers that you won’t have a problem finding the one that matches your feelings at the moment you want to send a message.

    Bots

    Anyone can create a bot for Telegram. Bots are programs that can be used in a private chat or group chat to add other features. I’ve written two bots. One lets me send myself notifications from the command line. The other lets me add entries to my journal or items to my to do list.

    Most people will not be creating their own bots. For those, there are a ton of bots already created that add features to chats.

    Downsides

    There is a big downside to Telegram, and that is its reliance on basing your account around your cellphone number. Remember where I said not to give out your cellphone number? Well, you’ll have to ignore that advice to create a Telegram account. Account creation takes place with your cellphone number, and, if you want to find people you know, you have to upload your contacts. This isn’t as scary as it sounds, since phone numbers are hashed by Telegram1.

    You don’t have to upload your phone book to use Telegram. Once you are logged in, you can search for others to start a chat.

    I also don’t like the inability to send a reaction to a message. Instead, I end up sending an emoji or sticker to the chat, which appears to clutter things up.

    Monopolization

    The most popular decentralized messaging is email, but a lot of people don’t like to converse of email. What’s nice about email is that you have your choice of provider and address. Using any of the instant messaging services shifts you to their silo, where your are stuck. IRC can be a solution to this issue, but the learning curve is too steep for most.

    You have nothing to lose to try it

    Convincing people to try another messenger is hard. Convincing people to download an app is even harder. But, Telegram is worth it.

    1When you hash information such as a phone number, you convert it into a unique random set of data. This conversion is one way, you can not convert the hash back to the original information. As Telegram hashes the uploaded numbers, there is no way to convert that back to the original phone numbers.