Category: General Page 2 of 3

My technology life

On March 31, 2016

I think I have been the IT support person in all the households I have been in. From growing up with my parents to my current partial bachelor days (partial as having a 19 year old daughter live with you is not being alone), I have always maintained the infrastructure at my house and made the recommendations on what technology to get.

Since this is a Thursday and I usually talk about my interests, this week I will discuss my long term love affair with computers and similar technology. For someone that has liked accounting and finance since grade 9, I have managed to keep tinkering away with technology pretty much all my life. My first real technology project was building a blue box on a bread board using a schematic I found on BBS.

As I said in the Hello World entry that started my blog, my first experience with computers was on an Apple ][ + computer in high school. The first computer owned in my house was an Apple //c (I convinced my parents to buy it) and the first computer I bought with my own money was an Apple II GS. Even my first work computer at KPMG was a Mac. With all of that you might be surprised to know that all my computers since then have been Windows machines. I guess I can ascribe that to two reasons. The first is residual bitterness that the Mac won over the II GS (you have to be a real long term user of Apple computers to understand the Woz vs. Jobs days). The second is that I always liked to tinker with my computers and personalize them and the Mac just was not designed or built for that.

I have never owned a Windows desktop that I did not build myself. The first one was a little scary to build and overclocking my Celeron 300 to 450 (via instructions from Anandtech.com) as a big move for me. Even since then I have tended to buy the second fastest processor in the line that was the best at the time as the bang for the buck is higher. I had the AMD Athlon chip one generation of self built PC, but most of my time building PCs Intel has been the obvious and best choice. The last five years or so, the main processors have become powerful enough that there is little reason to replace them. My current processor and motherboard combo is over 4 years old at this point and it works more than well enough.

I am a very big fan of multiple screens and I use 3 now when I am home and using my main machine. I have an AMD graphics card, but I have rotated through the leaders for years. I was a big believer is 3DFx and their voodoo cards. I was even heavily invested in the early nVidia vs. 3DFX discussions on Silicon Investor and abandoned 3DFX after they invited me to their office and gave me a review unit of the Voodoo 5000. At that point I thought that nVidia just had the better graphics card and much better execution. Today AMD and nVidia go back and forth for who is best and I also buy the second best of their line and there is not that much difference right now. Having more than one screen is very important and I really enjoy having three to use. It seems like one big screen should be good enough, but once you try two or more it is really hard to go back.

The only other real change I have made in my builds in recent years is moving the operating system and the main programs I run to and SSD to I boot a little faster and the typical programs I run load faster. The technology there is pretty stable now and any of the main SSD are fine. I never pay for faster mechanical hard drives as I really don’t notice a difference. I have experimented with different mice and keyboards but for the most part think that Logitech and Microsoft make good enough models.

I do spend a little extra on my home router. The last few I have owned are ASUS routers. They have their own version of DD-WRT which is an open source router software you can use to overwrite the basic software that comes on many routers. I like the parental control features of the router and I am sad that my two teenage girls cannot out think their dad and hack into the routers and override it. I prefer to attach my media players and main computer with a physical cable instead of relying on wireless. I already wrote a blog entry on the networked attached storage(NAS) I use, so I will not go into detail here on the same topic.

My kids are Mac users through and through, so I have had to learn that as well, but I am not as good with MacOS as I am with Windows. No disasters so far and my NAS is a Time Machine target for backup for them.

I have had friends and family members ask where I learned how to put everything together. For example, I even can make my own Ethernet cables. The real answer is what Musashi always says – practice. I spent years being patient and learned it. Google is also an excellent tool. No need to seek out the latest issue of 2600 magazine for the latest cool hack, a quick search gets you answers. I am not so cutting edge as I do not have any VR googles, at least not yet. My main machine is getting a little long in the tooth. I do have the latest Apple TV and Roku. And a Fire TV stick all connected to my 3D TV. I chose 3D over 4K as there is more media on Blueray available. I was an avowed Plasma TV buyer but have reluctantly switch to LCD.

I was an early user of PDA, I had a US Robotics Palmpilot and even was buying and reading books via Peanut Press. I liked Blackberry, but was quickly an iPhone user and have been buying a new one every two years. I am typing this up using the MS Word app on an IPad Air 2 and I type almost all my blog entries on my IPad. This blog was typed in the car too and from my office and in the Camel bar in Suzhou while I was having dinner. I use a stand I bought from Amazon and a Bluetooth keyboard as I can type much faster that way. Again, not so cutting edge. I have owned some Android tablets but I am pretty locked into the Apple ecosystem at this point with much of my media purchases using Apple DRM.

I do think keeping up with the latest technology and experimenting and doing it yourself helps in your job as well. CFOs often run IT and I feel much more confident when discussing the latest network infrastructure build out since I know how it works. It does take some time to get it right and you do have only yourself to rely on for tech support if you try and build your own PCs, but there almost never are any serious issues once it is up and running properly. Who knows, you might even impress your kids.

AmazonBasics Adjustable Tablet Stand

AmazonBasics Bluetooth Keyboard for Apple Devices (iPad, iPad Mini, iPhone)

Book review – The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher

By Michael

On March 27, 2016

In Book review, General

As always for my Sunday reviews, I am picking a book or books that I think are very enjoyable and entertaining. The idea is that you are in the airport about to fly off somewhere and you want something to read on the plane and at the hotel for your trip.

This week I am going to review and recommend The Dresden Files series written by Jim Butcher. These books are modern urban fantasy set in present day Chicago and featuring Harry Dresden a private investigator that also happens to be a wizard. The series started about 2000, so when I say present day, I mean reasonably present day.

The books are a good mix of detective noir books with a tough PI with a heart of gold and a magical world where all the creatures and monsters from fairy tales exist. Wizards like Harry are policed and regulated quite carefully by a wizards castle and using certain spells considered to be black magic carries a death sentence. Harry escaped from an abusive mentor before the setting in the first novel (Storm Front) and he carries around a suspended sentence of death with no chances of error left to him.

The existence of the wizards in the stories are important because many of the monsters, especially the vampires, are on,y held in check because of fear and respect for the power of the wizards. The series starts with a long term but uneasy truce in place and the situation quickLu spirals out from there and some of the books are outright wars between different factions while others use the detective story framework where a new client for Harry draws him into some sort of mystery centered around a magical threat.

The stories have good and bad cops, good guy knights fighting ancient evil centered around silver coins, vampires in red and white courts, the Faerie realm, werewolves and evil wizards, and that is not even all that happens. Harry is not completely alone, he has friends and at least allies and many are recurring characters that come back in many of the books. He does have some romantic interests in the books, but he is not all that skilled in that area so most do not work out so well for him.

Harry also has issues with authority figures. He is an official consultant to the Chicago police for strange and potentially supernatural crimes, but his natural instinct is to buck the system and push back against authority figures. This includes the police, the FBI and the Wizards council. It results in him having to overcome self made obstacles all the time, but his friends tend to be few but very close. He also has issues with using nay technology as magic disrupts computers and cell phones and even causes problems with cars, especially more modern ones.

I found that the series gets better as you get more and more books into it. The first book (Storm Front) is good, certainly good enough to make you want to buy the next book, but there is a bigger payback the more you read as the writing gets better. There is no mystery as to why. Storm Front was either the first or one of the first novels that Butcher sold (he wrote others but did not sell them until later). So the writer is learning his craft as he goes. As a reader, you get the benefit of interesting characters and a good story upfront and then later you get the same and ever better writing.

As a note, the Audible.com version of the book is read by James Marsters (Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer series). He does a very good job his voice and ability to voice many different characters with their own quirks and sounds suits the stories well. Even when I am reading books, I still here his voice in my head for Harry. The main link below is for the Kindle version (so you can easily find the book and download and read it before jumping on the plane) but in the center of the page at the bottom there is a link for Audible.com. Listening to instead of reading a book can be more relaxing and easier to do if you need to drive around. Audible has a free book as part of their initial subscription and they’re owned by Amazon as well.

Storm Front is an archetypical Harry Dresden story in many ways. He s broke. He needs work and the Chicago police brings him in to investigate a death that looks linked to the supernatural. Eventually we ends up pitted against an evil wizard with pretty major stakes at risk. The book introduces us to many of the characters that we will see in the series and we also get an overview of Harry’s basic power set. He is self proclaimed to be a strong wizard, but in the earlier books he leans on preparation and set spells rather than pure magic use. In later books you’ll get to see that he actually is quite powerful, but he tends to depend on brain power rather than magical brawn to win the day and even in his more full power, he often is against being far more powerful than him.

You can comment below, so feel free to comment here on the blog or on the social media site you found my link if you want. I am always curious what other people think of the books I recommend.

Storm Front (The Dresden Files, Book 1)

Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, Book 2)

Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, Book 3)

Airplane movie review – Creed

By Michael

On March 26, 2016

In General, Movies

One unfortunate part of my job is the fact that I am on planes a lot. Not for short flights, for long ones. I have the habit of watching movies when they come out if I am interested, so normally there is not many movies available on the plane that I want to see, so instead I listen to books or read comics or work or write a blog entry or two.

This flight was a little different. I had missed Creed when it came out and had wanted to see it. So when I looked at “recent hits” on the screen, preparing to be disappointed again, I was happy to see that Creed was available.

When I first heard about the film I was somewhat taken aback. I thought that the sixth film in the series, Rocky Balboa had pretty much summed up the character and there was no where else to go. He was done as a fighter and he had finally put Adrian behind him. Loved but now open to other possibilities. So a “reboot” didn’t make that much sense to me. Sylvester Stallone is far to old to play a fighter and his story had seemed to have ended in a good way.

Creed is the story Adonis Johnson, an illegitimate son of Apollo Creed, Rocky’s opponent in the first two Rocky films and who was killed by Ivan Drago in Rocky 4. Adonis starts the movie in some sort of juvenile detention system and he is fighting against a larger kid there. Mary Ann Creed, Apollo’s widow, comes to the institution and takes him in. The next you see of Adonis is him fighting and winning in Mexico and then going to his financial institution job. He decides he wants to be a fighter and quits his job even though he just got a promotion. His mother (they live in some sort of large house or mansion) does not agree with that choice and does not want him to fight and risk his life like his father did. Adonis tries to get accepted at Delphi Gym, the local high end gym with great boxers and connections to his father but he is rejected. He decides to go to the East Coast and find Rocky to get him to help. Up to that point, Adonis claims that he is entirely self taught (15-0 in Mexico).

The rest of the movie is a typical boxing movie, especially ones after Rocky. Donnie (Adonis) finds a love interest, a singer-song writer who lives in his building. He keeps trying and trying to get Rocky to train him. Rocky says no but after a scene where he visits the graves of Adrian and Paulie, he changes his mind and starts to train Adonis. After some training, Adonis gets challenged by a local up and coming boxer. Rocky does not think he is ready but Adonis wants the fight and Rocky starts to train him full time with full intensity, including bringing in an experienced fight team.

The story rolls along with a few twists and turns, Rocky is sick, trouble in the love relationship, and a challenge by the reigning champ who wants a fight because it is now known that Donnie is Apollo’s son. It ends with the big fight (which follows the first Rocky fight in many ways) and then Rocky and Adonis climbing the library steps in Philadelphia and looking down over the city.

As a boxing film, it is engaging. The formula of train and then get your lucky break where you have to dig deep and find a way to win is old but still works well. The boxing scenes are well staged. There are more and more brutal punches than I ever see in real fights, but they are exciting and the rounds are obviously condensed to highlights so the extra energetic fighting is not too jarring. Rocky turns out to be a pretty savvy cornerman and gives good advice to Donnie. I thought that Stallone turned in an excellent performance and deserved the recognition he received in terms of award nominations. Maybe he did a better job in Rocky Balboa and was over looked, but he does well in Creed.

I could end the review here and just say that it is an excellent plane movie. Engaging and simple story that moves along well enough and ends with a nice emotional payoff. However, there are a few things that did not quite work for me. The first is the background story of Adonis. He has a big emotional issue over his father who died before he was even born and he appears to have had a hard time up to whenever the scene in the institution is, but he looks very young then and obviously had a good upbringing and loving relationship with Apollo’s wife becoming his mother. There is not really any grist for the mill for motivation there, so later when Rocky is telling him to channel all his frustration from the past, I didn’t get how he had anything to draw on.

The second is the physical build of the actor (Michael B. Jordon). He had worked with the director in a previous film, Fruitvale Station, but he seems too small to be credible as a light heavyweight. He looks well sculpted enough, but is very thin and the other fighters look much bigger than him. Finally, the style he is fighting with is a very Rocky style where he absorbs punishment and just does not go down, but it doesn’t fit the actual character there in the movie. It is not too bad, but it was a little distracting to me. The love interest also seemed a little superficial.

Finally, Rocky seems to have taken a big step back after the last film. His son moved away and doesn’t seem to have that close a relationship with him. Paulie is dead. He is once again visiting Adrian’s grave and no love interest or relationships from the past films. Almost like Rocky Balboa never happened. Rocky is definitely the supporting character here, but I grew up watching those films and it makes you wonder.

So the movie is good and I recommend it. The final scene in the steps would be a good send off for the Rocky character. Creed sets the stage for maybe a new film series but one that does not really need Rocky in it. I won’t give stars as I have no real benchmark, but is is not the greatest Rocky movie but it is solidly in the middle compared to the previous 6 and that is good enough.

Creed (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD Ultraviolet Combo Pack)

Book review – Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers

By Michael

On March 20, 2016

In Book review, General, Uncategorized

As always, my Sunday book review is presented as a suggestion just before you are going on a trip with a link at the bottom to the kindle version so you can download it right before leaving on your trip. I am picking interesting and easier reads to help distract and entertain, not meatier tomes.

This week’s book is a SF classic and Hugo award winning**, Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. The book is a very straightforward story about the creation of first a soldier and then an officer. We meet the soldier, Juan “Johnnie” Rico, in the midst of a raid on an enemy called “Skinnies” who are allies of the Arachnids of Klendathu who are at war with the the Terran Federation. The. First part of the book is a simple and action filled account of Johnnie conducting his raid as part of a unit of Mobile Infantry that use suits of futuristic body armor to augment their abilities to fight. The raid is meant to smash and terrorize the Skinnies in the hopes that they would abandon their alliance with the Bugs (as the Arachnids of Kendathu are called in the book).

The next two sections of the book are of Johnnie in high school, and in particular with his History and Moral Philosophy course, taught by retired Lt. Colonel Dubois and boot camp. That particular course in HS is important in the book and there is a theme of taking responsibility throughout the book. The discussions with Lt. Colonel Dubois are the main way that the philosophy of the Terran Federation is explained, not only in the chapter when he is in high school, but in flashbacks during the rest of the book. When I read this book as a teenager, the discussions had a big impact on me. As an adult, I can tell that many of the things discussed were somewhat set up as a straw man with the hero knocking down the straw man, but even today it makes me think. The high school section ends with Johnnie joining up for Federal Service and falling out with his father.

I do not want to spoil the whole book in this short review, but the pattern is similar to many other military fiction books with book camp preparing Johnnie for war and then his war experiences showing just how unprepared he was. He eventually becomes an officer and there is a good combat scene at the end of his training with several returning characters.

The book was first published as a serial and then as a novel in late 1959, and many of the foundation technologies that as discussed in the book are extrapolated from that time. For a book of that time, there are a lot of social advancements that happen without any real comment. Johnnie’s real name is Juan and he is a Filipino, but there is no mention or reaction to him not being white in the book. Although there are no women in the book’s Mobile Infantry (the film adaptation does have this), women also sign up and serve in active combat on the ships that transport the Mobile Infantry and ships do get blown up pretty often, so women in the story are dying in combat as well. Again, there is nothing special about this in the book.

The society Johhnie lives in is certainly militaristic. You cannot vote or hold public office unless you serve your Federal Service which is military service. There is a strong theme of appreciation for the common foot soldier, and Lt. Colonel Dubuis knocks down several anti-war straw men during his lectures. However, I do not feel the book glorifies war. Johnnie suffers person loss from it and the Federation has at least one major defeat. The role of the common soldier is held up, but more because they are putting their lives in harms way to protect others than anything else.

Heinlein is an excellent writer. He is quite skilled in writing dialog. Even the real technology bloopers he extrapolates are written well. The action scenes move along well and the fighting technology of the Mobile Infantry suits is well thought out and even amusing every once and a while.

There are few books I have enjoyed more than Starship Troopers and my youngest daughter recently read it and was fascinated by it as well.

** Hugo award is an annual award chosen by paid members of a large SF convention called Worldcon. I have never read a novel that won the award that was poor, but they certainly have picked books that compare unfavorably against other books with the passage of time and more critical thought.

Starship Troopers

The movie

There was a movie version of the book made. They do not have the powered fighting suits, but otherwise I have always thought that they did a good job with capturing a lot of the story and the society in which Johnnie Rico lived.

Starship Troopers (+ BD Live) [Blu-ray]

Book review – Brandon Sanderson’s the Reckoners

By Michael

On March 13, 2016

In Book review

As always on my Sunday review, these are books I recommend if you are about to go on a trip and are at the airport want to download something to read. I have tried to pick books that are entertaining and will help to pass the time, and all are books I have read myself.

This week, I am doing a mini-review of the Reckoners trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. These books are actually targeted at the young adult (YA) market, but the story and characters are interesting enough that I think that the YA target doesn’t detract from their appeal. Just be prepared for no swearing and where the lead character kissing one of the woman characters is a very big deal. At least if you like these books you can pass them onto your kids and not be concerned about what is in the books.

I actually prefer his Mistborn/Well of Ascension series more, but the Reckoners is less involved and very entertaining to read. The series is set in an alternate version of our world where an unexplained explosion in the sky which came to be called Calamity gave some people super powers. These people are called Epics. Unfortunately, using the superpowers causes emotional changes and a form of madness where they become amoral tyrants.

David Charleston, the main character, sees his dad shot down in front of him in a bank by a very powerful epic called Steelheart. The explosion in space that created the Epics happened when he was 6 years old and his father was killed when he was 8. Steelheart is one of the most powerful Epics (a High Epic) and rules Chicago. He is able to transmute other materials to steel and he is invulnerable. Most of the top Epics are immune to any regular way to kill them. All Epics have a vulnerability that shuts down their powers. The story really starts with David as a teenager burning with the desire to get his revenge on Steelheart. A shadowy group called The Reckonors hunts and kills Epics and David forces them to let them join them because he knows a secret about Steelheart. When his father was killed, David saw Steelheart bleed.

That is the basic set-up. The world is a dystopia with the calamity explosion causing a permanent twilight and with the super powered Epics being tyrants all over the world with the basic governments all shut down and the USA now being the Fractured States. David wants to kill Steelheart in revenge and the Reckoners want Steelheart dead too. The action ramps up quickly and the small band of heroes goes toe to toe with powerful Epics. There is teenage romance, drama, misunderstandings and heroism. Secrets of the world slowly get revealed. Cliffhangers and heartbreak follow.

The books are comic book action in written form. There is some character development, but I would call it more plot development that changes the characters. The story is fun and lots of twists and turns happen throughout the books that keep you locked in and interested. The books are very enjoyable and I stayed up too late finishing them. I actually listened to them via Audible.com instead of reading them, but I ended up buying them in book form because my youngest daughter (13 years old) loved them and wanted to read them faster than just listening to them.

If you want a fun read and like a good mystery that is revealed, I highly recommend trying the Reckoners series.

(And for people who have been reading SF for a long time, yes, the notional origin and then people gaining powers is similar to the Wildcards series.)

Steelheart (Reckoners Book 1)

Firefight (Reckoners Book 2)

Calamity (The Reckoners)

Reading Comic Books the modern way

By Michael

On March 10, 2016

In Comic Books, General, Hobbies

With the recent success of super hero movies and TV programs, especially the Marvel Universe movies, liking comic books is solidly back in the mainstream. That is probably a little bit of an exaggeration as comic books have been widely popular for decades and decades. They are about the purest example of popular fiction out there and for a very long time the comics code authority kept them no worse than PG rated and a G rating was probably closer to the truth except for the violence.
What I think happened is that the mass market appeal dropped in the 1980’s and they started appealing to the collector crowd and not so much to the regular kid. Newsstand sales became much less important and specialty comic book sales became more important. There were still plenty of Saturday morning cartoons and I don’t think there ever was a period without at least a TV show that was super hero based in some way, but the comics themselves moved solidly up in printing quality and cost and moved away from dime sales to younger kids.
So there was a whole portion of the nerd population that was into comic books when the average person wasn’t. The late 1970’s and the 1980’s was my period of reading comics in a more classic way. I went to the comic store weekly and bought what I had allocated from my allowance. I quickly learned to buy a bag and a cardboard insert and I carefully read and saved my comics. I think I was a very typical cross-section of the group that would like them. I was playing D&D, reading SF and Fantasy, had just started programming on my high school’s Apple ][+ computers, and I was reading comic books. At the time, I was a big Marvel fan, and in particular, the X-Men and any comics associated with them. I also liked The New Teen Titans a lot and read the occasional Batman issue.
By the time I got to my last year of University, I had a pretty decent sized if narrow collection and I had some bills I needed to pay. There was a large comics book dealing in Montreal (called 1000000 Comix or something similar) that advertised in the comics themselves and I took my collection out to the West Island and sold it to them. That trip was important to me in a few ways. The first is that I was able to negotiate better than average dealer buy prices for my comics. The second is that I was actually at their warehouse, and I got a first hand chance to see just how big an industry comic collecting was. The owner had well over 1,000,000 comics there. I was able to find an interview of the owner from back in 1986 on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j03FeFuZkg
After I sold off my collection, I occasionally would buy and read a comic, but I was travelling and moving a lot after college and hauling around comics just didn’t seem like the best use of my time and space. I missed reading them, but they were not very convenient when on planes and packing suitcases as they were guaranteed to be ruined. The Batman movies came out, and that rekindled some interest in comics. I still had the same problem, though. Too many moves, too easy to damage the comics when on planes or in hotels. Plus, for the time it takes to read a comic, they take up a fair amount of room and add too much weight to your luggage. I had pretty much resigned myself to reading only the occasional “blockbuster” series that came out in graphic novel status, until maybe 5 years ago I found a new way to buy and read comic books called Comixology. Comixology not only had real comic books from Marvel and DC in ebook form, they had a very good reader for my iPad. At that time, you could even buy the comics directly from your iPad (today you need to visit their website).
Comixology developed a very good method to read comics on a smartphone screen or on an iPad called Guided View. Basically, they give you the choice of reading the whole page on one screen similar to how it would look on the actual comic book page or by naturally zooming in panel by panel (even word balloon by word balloon) . On top of that, they had regular sales of back issues for 99 cents each.
I now had a way to buy comics and could buy them anywhere I had an internet connection and my storage worries were solved. What followed over the last 5 or so years was an explosion of me buying comics, both new issues and catching up on back issues. I now have over 5,000 comics in ebook form and new comics Wednesday is a day I look forward to again. Comixology carries the comics from many publishers, not just DC and Marvel and their back issue library keeps growing and growing.
If you used to like reading comics when you were younger, or even if you never did, I suggest that you give it a try. The maturity level of comic books writing and the art has greatly increased compared to the time before the 1980s. The comic code authority is gone, but the mainstream comics are still owned by major media companies (Disney for Marvel and Time Warner for DC) so they still are tame enough. Many titles are solidly in the PG range, but only smaller publishers make comics that would be R rated.
I had dropped out of reading comics right when many of the smaller, independent publishers were springing up and starting to gain market share. A good example is Image Comics that publishes The Walking Dead, the source for the popular TV series. Image was founded in 1982 by several artists to try and keep ownership and copyright of their creative work. Another example is Mirage Studios which published Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I actually started reading TMNT when it first came out, but I think it was the only independent comic I did read back then. Comixology opened up those comics publishers to me and I was able to greatly expand my comic book reading horizon.
The Comixology app on a tablet makes it very easy to read and enjoy the comics. You can drop in and out of guided view if you want to see how the comics were originally laid out on the page. The artwork looks very good and you can carry many comics on your device with all the books available on the server if you want them. I was a little worried that maybe they might go bankrupt and I would lose access to them, but then they were bought by Amazon.com and I am a lot less worried today.
I could go on for quite a while describing which series I like (the main character/series I buy is Batman but I buy quite a few others regularly) but I think it is better that you try it yourself if you want to take a look. You can download the app for iOS or Android tablets or read the comics right on your computer screen if you want to.
www.comixology.com
If you used to read comics when you were younger and now are coming back to them, I should warn you that DC and Marvel have had several events where they have blown up and reset their universes. For example, as of this writing Batman is Commissioner Gordon, not Bruce Wayne and Thor is a woman. They also have taken a jump to much more of a PG rating and there are plenty of publishers that go past that. Comics have always been a place that pushed the boundaries of social acceptance, and this is even more the case today. The X-Men have featured bigotry and the effects on the mutants since their very first issues, and the comic has carried on that tradition to the comics today. A good example is homosexuality. There are many openly gay characters in the mainstream comics today (Midnighter by DC features a gay main character). Someone wrote a letter to Marvel a few years back complaining about a gay couple in the X-Men comics. Marvel responded by having them get married and that was on the cover and the main story that issue. I don’t think anyone should get offended by such stories, but the language and open nudity and sex scenes in some titles from the independent publishers might not be appropriate for younger readers. I even have to be careful on planes from time to time in case something is too explicit.
I have had to slow down my buying a little as I have a few too many back issues to catch up on, but maybe I’ll be sitting next to someone reading this one day in the future and then I’ll know that my blog helped someone else become a fan or rediscover their fandom.

Marvel Encyclopedia

The DC Comics Encyclopedia, Updated and Expanded Edition

In case you want a preview of some upcoming movies:

Captain American vs. Iron Man
Civil War

Batman vs. Superman
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

Infinity Gauntlet
Infinity Gauntlet

Book Reviews – Larry Correia’s Grimnoir series

By Michael

On March 6, 2016

In Book review, General

As a reminder, my Sunday book reviews are with the idea that you are in the airport and about to leave on a trip and need something to keep you entertained or informed while travelling. I link to Kindle versions (could just as easily be Nook or whatever is popular in your home country) so you can just buy and download them if you decided to give them a try. I prefer not to travel with paper copies of books if I can avoid it for weight and clutter reasons.

Larry Correia is famous for his Monster Hunter International series (and political cause reasons that have nothing to do with enjoying his books). I enjoy the Monster Hunter series, but I actually prefer the Grimnoir series instead.

These books are set in a fictional period after WWI. The world is essentially a derivative of our world, except that an event in the past triggered the ability for some humans to use magic. Exactly what the source of magic is for the world is a mystery at the start of the series and it is slowly revealed through the trilogy.

The series pits a secret society called Grimnoir that tries to stop and fight against improper use of magic. The main foe in the series is the Prime Minister of Imperial Japan and his agents. The Japanese have a more advanced understanding of how to use runes to augment the innate magic of their agents and they are more technologically and magically advanced in their weapons of war.

WWI was ended through the use of ‘Tesla” beam weapons which for all intents and purposes can be thought of as being a nuclear death ray. So there is somewhat of a standoff between imperial Japan and the rest of the world powers because of fear that the Tesla weapons will be used again. They were used to end WWI and the devastation is still scarring Europe.

Although the point of view switches between several more characters, then two main characters are “Heavy” Jake Sullivan and Faye Vierra. Jake is a hard boiled P.I. in full noir tradition. Jake is a very interesting character in that he is a physically large character, and his magical ability (localized gravity control to make things heavier or lighter) typically goes with slower thinking people but not true for him as he is as smart as he is large. Although the cliché of the hard boiled detective with an unbreakable code of honor is the foundation for his role in the books, he becomes more complex as the books continue.

Faye is a little bit of a Mary Sue character as her abilities grow and evolve as the series goes on as needed by the plot. Overall the magic system in the series is reasonably consistent, but the heroes are able to break previously established rules and their powers scale higher as the series progresses.

Mr. Correia is also a gun enthusiast and occasionally the narration gets slightly derailed as he details out the latest hardware one of the characters is using. This is nowhere near as constant as happens in his Monster Hunter International series, but it is a little distracting when it does happen.

With the above caveats in mind, this series is just about epitomizes what is needed to meet “entertain you on a flight”. The action is pretty much non-stop, well written and fun. The characters are not exactly multidimensional, but they are fun and easy to identify and they certainly do move the story along. The villains are interesting and have their own motivations that are not “be pure evil”. The source of the magic is the world is slowly revealed and opens up the final quest in the book. The ending is satisfying and I stayed up late a few times to finish the book that I had started.

I give the series a very good rating for pure entertainment value and I think pretty anyone looking for a fun read will enjoy it.

I originally “read” the books by listening via Audible.com and I found the narration good and entertaining.

Hard Magic – Book 1

Hard Magic – Kindle version

Spellbound – Book 2

Spellbound – Kindle version

Warbound – Book 3

Warbound – Kindle version

Pressing Words – How I started my blog

By Michael

On March 3, 2016

In General, Hobbies

This blog entry is going to be self-referential, because it is about what I did to get this site up and running and what I discovered along the way. I am brand new to this and I have never done most of the things I am going today, so all of it is new to me. I did have a website on Geocities ages and ages ago, plus something hosted by Comcast well over a decade ago. The only real HTML I had ever done was in notepad, and I cannot say I was all that skilled, but I did learn the tagging system at least.

A few years ago I received some form of Black Friday advertisement from GoDaddy.com for what was essentially a free domain for a year (you needed to pay some small ICAN fee, but otherwise no real cost). I reserved mgpotter.com for no reason other than vanity. It is my name, after all. I had some vague idea of using it for something, but I was pretty busy and never got around to doing very much.

About 6 months ago, after yet another month of intensive work to get a financing for a solar project over the finish line, I decided that I needed a little more investment into myself. I have already written a blog on starting to play D&D again, and taking the time to actually write was one of the things I wanted to do. I thought that I had enough experience as a CFO of public companies (12 years now) to add value in sharing my experience and I also wanted to write about the different things I do for fun.

The past Black Friday there was another sale email that came about hosting WordPress on your own GoDaddy site and I decided to try that. I had absolutely zero experience with WordPress but it looked like it was the leading blogging product out there. I now know that it is actually one of the leading website or content management systems in widespread use today, but it certainly is pretty powerful for blogging.

Once I had bought the WordPress option, I decided to start writing. I wanted to get at least a few weeks done in advance so if my schedule became too busy I would not lack content. I’m not a few weeks ahead now, but that is OK as I’ll have some time to bank some more blogs soon.

I decided to post Tuesday for CFO topics and Thursday for other topics. I decided on the very first topic while drinking some beers after an SCA fighter practice. One of the other knights there was interested in my put selling strategy and that was my first blog I wrote. Over the Christmas break I wrote most of the first month of content. This was just typing into Word on my iPad, I hadn’t done more than initiate the WordPress option at this point.

Now that I had some content done, I turned to actually getting the blog part working. I decided that instead of reading a book on how to set things up, I would just try and do it cold. I had deliberately chosen to host under my own name and to keep away from politics as a topic to write about because I spend about ½ my time in China and wordpress.com is blocked there.

There are many different hosts that support WordPress. GoDaddy has a nice and integrated approach called “managed WordPress” but I even could have hosted it on my Asustor NAS if I had wanted to. By using an external site, I was able to outsource the bandwidth and the maintenance of the WordPress program itself. Managed WordPress means that WordPress itself is always kept up to date. The releases for the major NAS are not as regular as WordPress itself, so you may have more security issues if you self host. If you just want a small, local version of a blog or a website, then hosting on a NAS could be a good solution.

The first step seemed to be choosing a theme which seems to be the look and feel of your blog site. I initially used one of the prominent starter themes called 2015, but I didn’t like the multi-column look. I searched through for something simple and found a theme called Lovecraft and decided that I liked it. There are thousands of free themes and lots of themes that you need to pay for as well. I have marked exploring themes down as something to do in the future.

My chosen theme used a horizontal picture across the top and I made my first design choice and picked a picture of the effigy of William Marshall that I had taken myself at the Temple Church in London. I have always been fond and interested in him and I was able to figure out how to upload the picture onto my site. WordPress uses a media repository and serves up pictures from there. You also can use a URL to a picture if you want that instead.

With a theme and a top picture chosen, I clicked on “publish” and now I had live content. I used wechat to get a colleague in China to check if my site would load. A quick test later and it did work. I puzzled and puzzled over how users were supposed to login to make comments. I even contacted GoDaddy customer service and they helped me to figure it out. Nothing appears on the main page, but there is an option if you go to the individual blog page (click on a headline on the front page if you did not use a link to go directly there).

A blog with no readers is not that useful, so I posted the link to my page on my Facebook feed. I did that manually, and noticed that the picture of William showed up as a preview.

The next thing I experimented with was publishing into the future. WordPress makes that easy with an obvious scheduling option. I tested it out, scheduling my post to show up the next mornings and, sure enough, when I woke up, there was the post published for the world to see.

I grew concerned that perhaps with the comment system turned on, that I might attract spam. So the first option I looked for was something to handle spam. There was a prominent option called “plugins” on the left menu when I signed in as the editor of the site (you can have multiple editors). Just like themes, there is a powerful built-in search I was able to use. A simple search for spam and I was able to find a plug in with a very large number of users called Akismet. It was pretty simple to install and I quickly had spam protection.

The next thing I wanted is something that would track users. I know that Google has quite an extensive suite of options to track visitors to websites called Google Analytics and I search for that in plug-ins . I found one called Google Analytics for WP Dashboard. I later found out that Yoast is probably the most popular, but the one I picked is near the top in popularity as well. That plug-in inserted the needed tracking code into my website and now I could see statistics on the tens of people visiting my blog.

I also knew that there was something called Search Engine Optimization of SEO, and I searched for a plug-in that does that. I picked All In One SEO Pack and it seemed to do what I would expect such a plug-in to do. There is a Yoast version of that as well. I am still not 100% sure what all the options do there, but I have slowly started using the different features.

By now I was several weeks into the blog being posted and was posting links on my Facebook and LinkedIn. This was completely manual at this point. I knew I would be travelling and I needed more options. I again did a little searching in the plugins and some Google searching as well, and discovered that Jetpack which is by the same company that does WordPress is a very popular option. It can automatically post to many popular social media sites but does have some limitations like it does not post to LinkedIn groups. Since the few groups I belong to have the broadest reach anyways, I thought a more manual touch was appropriate and that did not bother me.

Jetpack actually adds quite a lot more features than just posting to social media . It adds a much better commenting system but it is hosted on the WordPress site so it is not a good solution for users in China. It adds the option to subscribe to new posts but the final step to that involves the WordPress site as well. I may turn that on anyways. Is does add the sharing buttons which are now on my site and an optimized theme for mobile devices which I am trying out. If you are looking at starting a blog or a content-rich website, you may want to consider using all the other features of Jetpack.

The final thing I added to my blog was advertising. Google and Amazon seem to be the most popular advertising options out there. I did not want to make any advertising too obtrusive. Far too many posts on LinkedIn and Facebook are just click bait with ad after ad in the middle of the article you are trying to read. I am trying to keep the ads out of the way. Because Google is blocked, I decided to go with Amazon.com. I signed up for Amazon Associates which gives you a special ID and the ability to generate links with the ID embedded. I first used links for books and then tried to figure out how to post a more generic ad as well. There are plug-ins that help, but I found that using the text widget with the HTML in it is the best. I still have not figured out how to place the more natural link for products that is generated, online seems to refer to posting them in HTML mode but I seem to have visual and text as the two modes to post in.

I guess I am now a professional blogger as I have made $0.65 as of this blog being posted.

This has been my process so far, trial and error by someone that has seen some concepts mentioned (like SEO) but never actually had to do anything about it. I keep discovering extras like featured image which allows each of my posts to have their own image plus the SEO package has it’s own way of populating the OpenGraph (Facebook standard) excerpting.

If you are wondering if I really am a technical CFO, this blog and the process I just described is typical for me. I am fine with someone showing me what to do, but I like to struggle through things myself to learn. It really is not that hard or expensive to do. You can write only on social media, but I feel you have more control and reach on your own website.

As a quick summary – find a host that you trust that can provide the WordPress program. If you use WordPress itself you limit yourself to non-China visitors but maybe gain additional functionality. Pick a theme and add in the plug-ins you need. Publish and publicize. Don’t be overly annoying when you do the publicity. Unless you are a large and well established blog, you are unlikely to make any real money from your writing, but there are easy to use ways to monetize yourself a little.

Next up for me is to turn my blog posts into podcasts. Something else for me to learn from scratch.

Book reviews – Flex and the Flux

By Michael

On February 28, 2016

In Book review, General

People that know me know my travel schedule is very demanding. I fly back and forth to Asia far too often. One thing my schedule give me is time to read and I thought I would use my site to occasionally post reviews of what I have read recently. For my blog, I will only post about things I liked. I want to give recommendations of things to try with the idea that the person reading it might buy the book right before jumping on a plane for a trip. So I will provide links to the books, but Kindle versions only as I am imagining you buying the booking online in the airport right before you board.

I decided to start with two books by Ferrett Steinmetz, the first two books in his ‘Mancer series. I chose them for a few reasons. They are good and they are entertaining and certainly will help a flight go faster. My daughter Rachel loved them so much that she wrote her first ever fan letter to Ferrett. Finally, I actually know Ferrett personally. Not really as close friends or anything, but someone I have met a couple of times in real life and who I have followed his online writing via Magic the Gathering editing and articles, web comic and blog for years. He was someone that I always thought would end up being a good fiction writer and he certainly deserves a boost.

Ferrett has created a very interesting world where people who are obsessed with something can, in the right circumstances, harness their obsession to break the laws of reality and use magic. People can be obsessed with many things, and usually the obsession makes the characters loners in some ways. They certainly need to hide their magic as it is illegal. Magic is dangerous for two reasons – the first is that there always is a negative consequence to using magic call The Flux. The second is that powerful enough magic, especially when more than one person is doing it, can tear reality and open a hole to a malevolent dimension. Europe was destroyed because of reality being torn there. The government actively hunts and stops people who use magic.

The main character is Paul Tsabo, an insurance adjuster that can harness the power of bureaucracy to perform his magic (I am sure you can see why an accountant like me would like that). A personal tragedy caused by an improper use of a powerful drug called Flex (distilled magic that can be used by anyone but you cannot escape the consequences) forces him to be much more aggressive in using his magic.

The two books so far have an interesting cast of characters and they come in all shapes, sizes, colors and sexual preferences. Certainly no stereotypical backgrounds here.

Flex 5/5 (book 1)

I’m not so into video games as one of the sub-themes in the work requires and I really did not feel the gel between the main male and female character, the reasons for friendship really were too flimsy for me, but the story and the characters were well done. The writing also was quite developed and it had a good and enjoyable rhythm. It was hard to put down once it got going.

The magic system fits somewhat together but does not quite click for me. It needs a little more fleshing out and the “flux” doesn’t seem really proportionate to the magic being used at times. I also wonder that considering the flex that the main character is able to make – magic with no consequences – why he was not able to get better help. That is the problem with any magic system, though. It is magic and logic just breaks down at a certain point.

The book was very entertaining and I am comfortable with a “five star” rating as I think that it really does deserve to be read by more people. I rarely give books a 5 star rating, but this one was fresh and interesting and a good read.

Flex – Kindle version

The Flux 4/5 (book 2)

I enjoyed the book, but did not think it was quite as good as Flex. I really thought the scenes in the Institute dragged on too long and then were wrapped up too abruptly in the end. The ending almost felt like it was written differently than the middle section of the book, felt like the book maybe was a little too short or something and was padded or edited differently in the middle.

The story itself did move along OK, with several set piece fights and confrontations. We learn more about the world the stories are set in and some more information on what happened to Europe and why it happened. Really not much change in the main characters compared to what was happening at the end of Flex. I did not note any real growth or change in them which was a little disappointing. Even so, I liked the ending and I am looking forward to book three which should be out soon.

The Flux – Kindle version

What is network attached storage and why should you use it?

By Michael

On February 25, 2016

In Computer hardware, General

I have had a keen interest in computers even since grade 9 when I started to have access to the Apple ][+ computers that my high school had purchased. This is not meant to be an article on the old history of personal computers, but Apple was one of the very first companies that got a few basic things right and that laid the foundation for their early success. One of these things was the introduction of floppy disk drives for their products and the leap in usefulness that happened when you moved from cassette tape to a floppy disk gave them a big advantage. The speed and storage gave them a big advantage.

Storage has always been a niche but crucial part of the experience of using a computer, even if a computer is disguised as a smart phone or tablet. With exception of terminals that were just a screen and a keyboard connecting to a remote computer that had the storage, most home users have relied on local storage, or storage located in the device or computer you use. The main reasons for this has been speed and ease of access. If you want to watch a movie or listen to a song, the huge drop in speed to download over slow connections compared to it just starting to play immediately.

The problem is that media files take up a lot of storage. So you either need to have larger and larger hard drives in your computer, pay for more storage memory in your mobile device, or rely on outside storage and download over the Internet which can be slow and hard to access. If you have a family with kids, everyone will want more and bigger hard drives and sharing files can be either a drop down to the “sneaker nets” that always seem to exist (copy onto a flash drive and walk over to the other computer) or opening up your computer hard drives to sharing and dealing with it computer by computer.

The first time a hard drive crashes and you do not have a back-up is all most always the motivation to make backing up something you want to do on a regular basis. The first solution many people try is a USB drive plugged into their computer and manually copying files. This also only covers the one computer it is plugged into. Multiple back-ups means either multiple back-up disks or moving the sub hard drive from one computer to another.

Another reason is because you want access to media files and you don’t want to have multiple local files. With many devices that can now play media files to TV’s or audio systems or some other playback device, it makes sense that you would want one access point and source within your house instead of keeping many copies that all take space.

Finally, you may want access to some files when you are traveling. You can again use a USB drive or make local copies, but you need to plan in advance then and know what file you want to bring with you.

Since this post is about NAS, I am sure that many readers might expect me to jump right to the different main companies out there, but there actually is an intermediate step. If it is just back-up and file access you need, your router may already have a built in solution. Many higher end home routers come with a USB port and the ability to share files if you plug a USB hard drive into it. Even if your current router doesn’t have that feature, that fact alone probably means that you have a lower end router. If you are moving a lot of data around, a higher end router that lets you plug in and share a hard drive might be all you need.

If you will have multiple people streaming or using files at the same time (or multiple devices), then a dedicated NAS unit may be better. There are two main companies that provide NAS and quite a few companies that are not the leaders but do sell dedicated devices. You can even build your own. The two main companies are Synology and QNAP. Some examples of smaller companies or companies that also provide NAS are Asustor (the company I chose), netgear, and the main hard drive companies like Western Digital and Seagate.

When you buy an NAS, you are essentially buying a small, dedicated server. Small as in size of the device compared to a normal computer, not small in storage area. Typical HD configuration is either 2 drives or 4 drives. I suggest 4 TB NAS drives which means 8TB or 16TB before the effects of RAID (is any). The main NAS on the market all have a modified version of Linux in their firmware. What they have done is add a “skin” or outer layer that you can access via the A web browser that allows,you to configure and use your NAS. They have tried to make configuring the files as easy as possible compared to straight Linus.

The basic function of serving files comes from SAMBA, a well developed service. The file services generally available are SMB (server message block) and CIFS (common internet file system) both based on protocols that Microsoft introduced. You don’t need to know all of this to use your NAS, but it should work fine with standard Windows and Mac computers. All of the mainstream NAS allow the NAS to be a Time Machine back-up target. That means that backing up your Mac should be easy and automatic. All of the major NAS allow you multiple accounts for different users and allow you to even determine how much disk space each gets.

One of the very first choices you need to make when first setting up your new NAS is what RAID you will use. RAID stands for redundant array of inexpensive/independent disks and is a technology that allows several disks to be seen as one logical unit and may also help in integrity of your data via mirroring of data across several disks. The most commonly used RAID is RAId 5 and it basically allows a 4 disk array to keep working even if one disk goes bad at then penalty of losing 25% of your storage (it actually is n-1 disks available so 3 disk means you can lose 1 disk but you lose 33% of your storage).

Before I get any further, let me state clearly that RAID is not back-up. Even if only one drive does fail, there is a reasonable chance that something else will go wrong when the drive is replaces and a new array is built. RAID can help partially protect your data depending on what type you choose. Some RAID like RAID 0 are very fast but one disk failure will result in data loss in all drives.

My general advice is this. RAID 5 or no RAID. I personally use RAID 5 and sacrifice the space for a little pice of mind. No matter what you choose, back up the files on your NAS. You need at least 3 disks to run RAID 5, so if you go with a 2 disk model for your NAS you need to make another choice. Let me assure you, what RAID to use is almost a religious decision. There are quite a few people that strongly dislike RAID 5 and they would disagree with my advice here.

You will want to connect the NAS via an Ethernet cable to your router. Most do not come with built in wifi capability, so you need to do that anyways. Since they do not need a screen or keyboard, they can be put just about anywhere that is handy for them to be connected to the router. Many come with 2 Ethernet connection ports. If you use both they will try and balance demand over both ports to keep throughput as good as possible.

Once the NAS is up and running, you should explore all the additional programs available over and above the basic file service. You may also have to forward a few ports in your router if you want to access the NAS from outside your home network.

Some example programs that are available: surveillance camera software (all that storage is good for something), iTunes server (unfortunately does not work with Apple TV), ERP, customer service ticket systems, media servers such as Plex, photo file servers, personal cloud software, Teamspeak servers, anti virus software and sophisticated back-up software and many more.

You can always use an online, cloud service to back-up and it might be the right way to make occasional offsite back-ups of your NAS. However, this can be slow to do on a regular basis and you can serve files on your local network much faster from a local source than an external, internet based source.

I like using my NAS and I recommend that you consider getting one for your own home. I probably will return to this topic in a while with a lot more details on a few areas.

Some home or small office NAS I recommend

I personally picked the Asustor 5004T for my own use but I like all three I recommend here. This was mainly because you get a little more hardware bang for the buck. The user community for QNAP and Synology is much larger. Each of these should be able to handle some media transcoding.

Asustor NAS 5004T

QNAP TS-451

Synology 415+

NAS Hard Drives

I recommend the WD Red 4 TB drives.

NAS hard drives

Category: General Page 2 of 3

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