Since March 2011, I had been using an iPad 2 as my travel computer. By design, it excelled at certain tasks: writing email, browsing the web and reading books, newspapers, and magazines. As someone who teaches a lot, my iPad was great for the classroom. I could populate my grade book with it. I could present my slides. I could look up information on the fly and show it to my students. I could also play video clips.
In recent months, however, I have outgrown my iPad. It could take several minutes to load and open a presentation from the cloud. Switching between apps, between Safari and Keynote for example, became a painfully slow process, even with the four-finger multitouch swipe gesture. And because I had so much stored on my 32GB iPad, I couldn’t load all the clips I would want to screen.
That’s why I sold it, on Amazon, to a woman from Minnesota.
I kept the box for a reason
The proceeds from the sale will go towards on a new iPad Air. Why not just go without the iPad you ask? In the four days since I sold my iPad, I realized a few things:
In short, I really miss having an iPad. Count me as a slave to the Apple cult. I’ll almost certainly be one of the bleary eyed suckers at an Apple Store on November 1, likely the store at Grand Central Terminal.
My aging MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009) has developed a new problem. The memory sometimes “disappears” and one of the two 4GB DIMMs stops working. The problem manifests itself when trying to wake my computer from sleep: it won’t wake up! The computer is still running. I can hear the fan running and feels warm to the touch, but the display stays black. A hard reboot always brings the computer back to life, although this is not an ideal solution.
A few weeks ago, when I tried to reboot the computer, I got the dreaded three beeps. I removed the bottom case, removed the memory, swapped their locations, and reinstalled it. That fixed the problem. Both memory DIMMs were registering but one of them was reporting only 7.75 GB of RAM. System Profile reports Slot 1 as empty, but I couldn’t tell which one was Slot 1. As far as I can tell, the slots are not labelled.
When you look in “About this Mac” and select the Memory tab, it shows that my MacBook Pro has two memory slots. One on the left, with memory installed, and one on the right, which is empty.
Which memory slot is which? On the logic board, the memory sits vertically, one on top of another, not side-by-side. After removing a few DIMMs and placing them in different memory slots, here’s what I figured out.
Bank
About this Mac
Physical Location
0
Left
Closer to Bottom Case
1
Right
Closer to Logic Board
When the computer is upside down, you can see both slots. One is at the bottom and closer to the logic board. That is Slot 1. Slot 0 is the one that’s closer to you and the bottom case.
This should help you concentrate your efforts in determining whether you have a bad DIMM, a bad memory slot, or the DIMM is just loose.
When teaching a class on digital media, I start the lesson by telling students that “computers are stupid” that they can only “understand” two things: on and off. This episode from the 1980s animated series, Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips centers around this important fact. Scooter thinks that Mr. Chips is smart, but in fact, Mr. Chips lets his pal in on a little secret.
Having grown up in the 1980s, I remember the series, and the melody of the theme song has remained in my brain since I was a child. I don’t remember this particular episode, even if its story, dispelling a widely held belief that computers are autonomous, informs my thinking about computers.
This was a particularly resonant for the early 1980s. Well-heeled consumers were bringing personal computers into their homes, and their children could learn that their computers were not thinking machines. All they did was execute instructions, faster than any thinking person could.
I know a lot of people read to help them fall asleep. But I don’t know how I fell asleep or wasted time before the advent of an RSS reader. After trying a bunch over the years, the one that made me a true RSS junkie was Silvio Rizzi’s Reeder. It had a great interface: intuitive menus, beautiful typography, and quick-and-easy sharing to other services, like Twitter, Instapaper and Pinboard. It was my most frequently used iPad app.
But on July 1, it stopped working. Like many other RSS readers, Reeder worked only with Google Reader.
Ten weeks after the shutdown of Google Reader, Reeder is back and works with current RSS services, such as Feedbin, Feedly, Feed Wrangler, Fever, and other services whose names play on the word "feed."
When Google Reader was taken out back and shot in the head, I subscribed to Feedbin. It was the first service that Rizzi added to the iPhone version of Reeder version 1, and it was priced at $2 per month. (It’s now three dollars for new subscribers.)
Since then, I had been using Mr. Reeder, which has been a great substitute for Reeder. It works really well with Feedbin, and it even has amusing sound effects, such as a "bike bell" after your feeds are refreshed. But the interface is a bit cluttered, and although it’s hardly unpleasant to use, I really missed the simple, clean look of Reeder.
And now my loyal friend that follows me to bed is back.
No one I’ve met has every said a bad thing about VLC. It opens just about every media format in existence, it has a lot of features to play video files (deinterlace is my personal favorite), and it’s free. After an extended absence, it returned to iOS over the summer and has been a great app for screening videos in class.
Playing a clip of Un Chien Andalou using VLC for iOS.
It’s much easier to add videos to VLC for iOS than it is for the built-in iOS Video player app. With the latter, you can only add videos from the iTunes store or through the desktop iTunes application. VLC provides more convenient options for adding videos, such as…
Opening a Network Stream
Downloading a video from a website (works with WebDAV, too)
Uploading a video from a desktop computer over WiFi
Adding a file through Dropbox
Using VLC for iOS keeps my bag light for class. It allows me to leave the laptop at home. It also spares me from carrying a stack of DVDs and trying to find the relevant clips for class. To use an iOS device to present videos, you might have to buy a VGA adapter for your iOS device. There are two versions, one for the older 30-pin connector and one for the new 9-pin Lightning port. As long as the connector fits, it should work on an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.
The DVD must be in the library of a college or university’s film or media studies department.
The extracted content must represent only a excerpt of the DVD.
The extracted content must be used in a classroom for educational use.
It specifically exempts media studies and film professors.
Add files using drag and drop.
You can extract the clips using Handbrake and libdvdcss. And once you have them on your computer, you just upload them to VLC. The easiest way is to use the WiFi upload feature. You can drag-and-drop your video files or you can use the upload button to navigate via the file system.
There are two benefits of using VLC over the Videos app. First, compared to the built-in Videos app, you are spared the trouble of adding the files to iTunes and having to sync the files with your iOS device. Second, while you are using VLC and connected to an external display or projector, only you can see your VLC controls. The audience only sees the vidoes as you play them. It’s a great feature since I prefer not to show my students everything that I might have on my iPad. Although I have only used the MPEG–4 format, it supports MKV and other formats that Apple doesn’t readily support.
The above links to Amazon are affiliate links. If you buy something through those links, I will earn a commission fee.
I can’t remember when I turned on two-step authentication for my Google accounts, but I’ve adopted it for every other account that supports it, including Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, and WordPress. For those who are not familiar with two-step authentication, it is an extra layer of security that requires you to provide two keys: something you know and something you have in your possession. Accessing a protected account requires two steps, hence the name: entering your account password (something you know) and entering a random code from your phone (something you have).
Google Updates Authenticator
A popular and widely supported iPhone app for generating these codes is Google Authenticator. Earlier this week, Google updated Authenticator, which was a surprise to me. It hadn’t been updated in over a year and had an annoying bug that prevented you from editing your existing accounts. I feared Google had abandoned it because it also didn’t support the nearly-year-old 1136 x 640 iPhone 5 display.
As welcomed as the update was for me, it turned out to be a hot mess. When I updated the app, it deleted all of my existing accounts. Without those codes, I could not access them because I need both the account password and the Authenticator code to log in to those protected accounts. Once the app was wiped, I couldn’t get any of those precious codes.
Fortunately, for me, it was more of an inconvenience than a disaster because I accessed my accounts using the emergency backup codes that I had safely stashed away.
WordPress and Google Authenticator Plug-In
There was however one account that doesn’t have emergency codes. It is the Google Authenticator plugin that adds two-step authentication for this self-hosted WordPress site. I’m unsure if you can add this plugin to hosted WordPress.com sites, but I suspect you cannot since there’s no plugin area for those hosted blogs.
To regain access to a self-hosted WordPress account that has been locked due to two-factor authentication, it requires you to have SFTP or SSH access to your web hosting account.
Log in to your SSH or SFTP account.
Navigate to the wp-content directory.
Create a directory called disabled or something else that won’t interfere with WordPress. This will be a temporary measure.
Navigate to the wp-content/plugins directory.
Rename (or move) the google-authenticator directory to the wp-content/disabled directory. Type something like… mv google-authenticator ../disabled
On your web browser, load your wp-admin page. You’ll see that you will not be prompted for a Google Authenticator code.
Using SSH or SFTP, move the google-authenticator directory back to the plugins directory. If you are still in the plugins folder, type something like… mv ../disabled/google-authenticator .
Delete the disabled directory. rm -rf disabled
With your web browser, go to your Dashboard and then to the Plugins area. Reactivate the Google Authenticator plugin.
On your Profile page, scan the barcode to add this WordPress account to your Google Authenticator app.
Or you could stop at step five, delete the plugin, and be done with two-step authentication altogether.
Timehop scrubs through your social network accounts and offers a summary of what you did on this day one year ago, two years ago, three years ago, etc. It’s really not as creepy as you might think, since you posted your thoughts, activities, or whereabouts to Facebook, Twitter, or Foursquare in the first place. It often jogs my memory about trips I took or friends I hadn’t seen in a while. At the end of your feed, it includes a story of interest (though not always an interesting story) from the pages of USA Today of what happened on this day some years ago.
Although the television signals we use today are for the most part digital, most television stations today transmit on the UHF band. That band was designated for television channels 14–69 and was established in 1952. Television receivers and antennas have fully supported that band since 1960. Television antennas, both the rooftop and the rabbit ear kind, can still receive the new digital signal and pass it to your television set. The only problem is that if your television set is older than 2000, then it won’t know how to decode the digital signal.
Cable and satellite companies took this as an opportunity to sign up new customers thinking that those that received over-the-air television would be doomed. Instead, they were just duped.
Before I list all the parts I had to repair, a big shout-out is due for L2 Computer in Hell’s Kitchen. I’m glad to see that a computer repair and parts shop stills exist in Manhattan for cash-and-carry business, although judging from their pile of Priority Mail packages, it appears that a sizable chunk of their business is through the web.
MacBook Pro Keyboard
As I mentioned, it appears that the coffee I spilled took its tool on my keyboard. After six weeks, the entire home row of Latin alphabet keys stopped working entirely. Without plugging in an external USB keyboard, my computer became entirely unusable because I use a combination of those keys to log in to my computer. I took apart the entire computer and “cleaned” the keyboard with some rubbing alcohol. It’s not something I recommend doing, but it did help restore the keyboard to health for almost three months. Whatever corrosion the coffee caused must have returned because those same keys stopped working in mid-April.
Someone on the web said that fixing the keyboard requires replacing the upper case. That’s hard and expensive. The iFixit Guide lists forty-two steps for removing the upper case and putting it together requires the same steps (in reverse). Also, the case lists on iFixit for just under $300.
Since I had already removed the keyboard once, back when I cleaned it, I was brave enough to see if I could just find a keyboard to replace the bad one. L2 sold me one for less than $30. Replacing it took about ninety minutes.
SuperDrive SATA cable
When I replaced my optical drive with a solid state drive, I used one of these adapters so I can fit a 2.5” drive in the large optical drive bay. Since the day I installed the SSD, I had gotten intermittent I/O errors. Sometimes, after taking the computer from one place to another, the computer could launch any apps. If the computer was off, the ominous folder with question mark icon would greet me at startup instead of the reassuring Apple logo. The only way to “fix” this problem was to open the case and secure the cable back to the optical drive. I basically had to carry a #00 Phillips screwdriver with me like a big dork.
In short, I had to buy a new SuperDrive SATA cable to replace the one that was either broken or I broke myself.
MagSafe DC Jack
In putting together the computer after replacing the keyboard, I drove one of those tiny screws securing the logic board into DC jack cable. In short, the computer would not receive any power from the AC adapter. To replace it, I cycled to L2 Computer and bought a used one for about $15. You can also find one on Amazon.
Battery Indicator cable
And as a last straw, when I was replacing the MagSafe DC Jack, I severed the battery indicator connector. I had thought that the indicator wasn’t a critical function so I had just let it go, but it turns out that the cable also controls the sleep and wake functions on the computer. Have you noticed that every time you “close the lid” on your computer it goes to sleep and when you raise to open the display, it wakes up? The battery indicator connector is critical for that function to work. Again, I rode my bike to L2 and replaced the battery indicator connector and cable with a used one.
My dad is an auto mechanic. When something broke on one of our cars, he would visit the local junkyard to find the part he needed. I remember when I lived in Santa Barbara and the fuel pump on my car stopped working, he came by one day to fix it, but we first went to the local junk yard to find a replacement. Yes, I am following his lead, but I should keep in mind that he didn’t break anything when replacing that part. I did.
The above links to Amazon are affiliate links. If you buy something through those links, I will earn a commission fee.
Today, I discussed digital convergence to my Introduction to Electronic Media class at Fordham. It’s one of those concepts that’s challenging to discuss as part of a single class because it is like explaining the role of money in a capitalist society.
One of the ways that digital convergence impacts electronic media is that it has added a new that could potentially replace the existing distribution of television programming. Whereas the only way to receive a video was to receive a television signal over radio using an antenna, the Internet provides another conduit for accessing television programming. The Business, a weekly radio program on KCRW in Santa Monica, covered the topic of video streaming for consumers. While the discussion reviews the pros and cons of the available gadgets to stream video over the Internet, they also address the possibility for this system replacing traditional cable/satellite distributors as our main gateway to video.
And to their credit they do not once use the word “disrupt.” I really hate that word.
