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Archive for February, 2012

Windows 7 Driver Conflicts Drove Me To Distraction

February 29th, 2012 Comments off
I have an older now Dell Inspiron M1530 XPS laptop, which I upgraded to Windows 7 in 2010. I found it incredibly brain-dead that we as engineer, let alone an end-user consumer, are suffering from driver conflicts. 

HV40 Camcorder

The first discovery of this mundanity was a simple firewire port IEEE 1394 with Windows 7 no longer works, and it was not just my laptop, but other people discovered this issue. For many video editing such as trips to conferences like the Java Posse Round-Up, Devoxx and JavaOne I use my trusty HDV Canon HV40 camcorder, which is one of the last pieces of kit that supports Mini-DV tapes. I had no problems connecting it to computer using a firewire cable several months ago, then a few nights ago, whilst here snowboardng in Austria, I wanted to do some editing and then I found connectivity problems! 
I was astounded and slightly surprised. After connecting and reconnecting the firewire cable, I found that Windows 7 failed to recognise the camcorder. I did a windows update, search Canon HV sites for a driver, and trawled through the Internet. I found other people who also discover the issue here, here and here. Actually Adobe had the best information on their troubleshooting site, I suspected that there was driver issue. The best advice was to update the 1394 to the legacy driver. Really? At this point, I voted with my feet. 
Luckily I traveled with a Linux Format magazine Ubuntu 11.10 DVD as a potential life-saver. (I once lost the ability to boot in my machine whilst I was abroad in foreign lands, long distance from home, and a Linux live-boot disk got me out of the woods. I subsequently repaired the master boot record and the active partition!) I booted Ubuntu Live and plugged in the HV40. Lo and behold it was recognised by firewire IEEE1394. I was a able to capture using Kino.  I was able to control and capture footage using this simple program. I only wished it could capture and output MPEG2 as well. The only two capture options are Raw DV and Quicktime Movie  files.
 

iPhone 4S

After the debacle with the HV40, I next plugged in my iPhone 4S. You could now hit me in the face with a salmon. I discovered driver problems with Windows 7 and the iPhone 4S. Was this not working at Devoxx 2011? Of course it was. It turns out there is conflict between iTunes 10.5.3, Apple Mobile Device Drivers and a Samsung Mobile MTP driver. The problem is that the phone is no longer recognised as a legitimate DCIM and USB Storage Media device. Therefore, it was impossible to transfer some of the wonderful Austrian mountain footage directly to the PC. I removed all the Samsung programs and features. Again lots of other people have found this issue with Windows 7 drivers here, here and here.
Rather than waste time, in configuration, trial and error, I voted with my feet. I went straight to the Ubuntu Live partition and then decided to install Ubuntu over the old LTS 8.3 partition that I used to have in the Windows Vista. I had used Linux alot in 2008 to develop and test Java server side code. After booting in to Ubtuntu 11.10, I also found driver errors [1], but the different is that I found solution that actually worked eventually [2].
> sudo apt-get install libimobiledevice2-dbg libimobiledevice-dev libimobiledevice-doc libimobiledevice2
> idevicepair unpair && idevicepair pair

Benefits of Alternative Operating Systems

Don’t get me wrong, just like some many other developers, I also thought that Windows 7 was a huge improvement over Windows Vista and was the proper advancement from Windows XP Service Pack 3. It worked in 2010 and now these failures have shown that you cannot trust yourself with only one egg in the basket in terms of operating systems. It is really good to have alternatives!  It is also impressive to see how much open source development, the engineers have solved some of these proprietary connectivity problems. Linux got me out of hole. Twice! Competition is good, even if some of the competitors are free. 
Going forward with any new machine, I personally buy, I will always reserve a partition or two for Linux, because you never know what Windows driver is going fail on. It is pity because I use the Adobe software for editing content and therefore need to have Windows around.
In a way, I always hope there will be general purpose operating systems out there, even if the rest of the human race is moving to tablet and embedded consumer devices. For content producers, software engineers, and architects, we must always have, in my belief, the possibility of choice. If the manufacturers take away our choice or freedom to solve issues, and/or work around them then we will be in trouble.
 
By the way I wrote this entire piece in Blogilo [3].
[2] Ubuntu Forums : unable to mount ipod (QueryType failed, error code: -256)

Categories: alternative, Quality, Ubuntu Tags:

Contemplating Social Networks

February 28th, 2012 Comments off

I have taken some time out from social networking to contemplate life and existence. Don’t worry I am not going religious or start delivering edicts, rants, or sermons. I just concentrated on being an observer and I asked myself the question, why do people tweet, write blogs, and push content on Facebook, or Google+? Is it to become an alter ego? Is it make their voice heard? Is it to show others or, perhaps, themselves that they is some sort of existence?

I am divided personally by publishing tweets, or blogs, or any content that is not truly meaningful. The issue here is what exactly characterises meaningful or meaningless. Well it depends on who you think is going to listen otherwise what is the purpose. Social networks are a modern form communication there are ground rules for being successful in the traditional  sense.

In the first couple of months of this year 2012, I have been practising my listening and observation skills. I found that with soul searching they are better and worse producers of content on the Internet. Those, which are in my opinion are in the poor category, I get rid off. I switch it off by unsubscribing, blocking, or by disabling feeds. I do think there is a capacity for the brain to fully engage efficiently and economically all the data that it absorbs. By turning off the loud and the verbose, helps me to concentrate on the important.

I have in no way been a perfect or good listener in the past. In fact, I readily admit that sometimes I showed disgraceful platitudes, during dinner, pretend-listening, which may have meant that I lost potential opportunities like connecting with good friends, building relationships, and being more approachable. It is hard to being hard on yourself. I am being that here, because it is the path of contemplation I am willing take to improve myself, skills and be approaching 100% effective in whatever I want to do with the rest of my life.

The world bombards us every day with information and with infinite time we could process it all. However we do not have time. This luxury of infinite time is unattainable by anyone, and our bodies age everyday and then we die eventually. Eliminating the waste is the most important discovery that I have had so far, because it allows me to finally listen to my soul, and start asking questions about that one fundamental journey that we all have in common. Life.

At the same time, I could go to the other extreme, filter out exactly everything. I do not think that is great idea either. Nor would I advise you to do so. I believe a balance of forces in the key to the social networking quagmire. I am going to ask myself three questions, namely: is this content valuable? Have I evaluated the collection of my content recently? How can I seek out better content that is pragmatically, informed and educational than those controls that I already have? Let me paraphrase

  • Avoid waste – Decide on the content there and then – it is something that I will serious listen to a week, a month or a year? Will I forget that I actually bought in to it?  Is this an impulse buy that I could do without? Am I being confidently distracted by somebody else’s reality distortion field? – On the other hand, some distractions and diversion are valid. If you get a laugh, positive emotional involvement, like music, poetry or art then it is probably a good thing. Sport can be that way too. The main thing is mental capacity to process all the feeder items. If it is too much then it is a waste.
  • Check your existing collection for waste items that can be discarded – our brains can take a certain work capacity. My brain also works like that too. If the content can be shuffled to a memo, a diary, a bookmark, a document reference or stored later then prefer to do that, rather than putting up an endless twitter feed. I am also allow to change my mind, evolve a new attitude. Here I get in the process of periodically evaluating the content.
  • Always seek better quality – I miss many ideas and concepts, because I do not follow or read every single tweet or blog entry. It is impossible to do this. I do search for people who have something to say of  high quality and when they do it tends to be infrequently so. If I find that inspiration then I add it to the pile of mental consciousness and knowing that some other content is now waste.

 

The bottom line is about treating social networks as products that you can change, rather than have them control you and your life. Having the control means that you ultimately manage the time and are responsible for it. It is certainly the deliberate way I am going to treat them going forward.

One pragmatic way to eliminate waste in social networking is to exercise self-control, discipline, and quality control whatever you tweet out, blog or produce. Treat this new media as a very public conversation that is going to be remembered by electrons in different hard disks, computer systems, and future storage technologies for a long time. By long time, I mean this could be decades.

Categories: Lean, Philosophy, Psychology Tags: