Category: Office Tech

I was intrigued to learn that apparently Android 10 (wikipedia article) does not have a formal name.  Continue reading “Android 10 does not have a name?”

Before all of this work-from-home happened, I’d guess that most of us very very little thought to the extreme asymmetry in the internet service provided by our internet service providers.  Continue reading “Asymmetric bandwidth”

Here is something about heat-shrink tubing that I bet you never thought about.  If well designed, it shrinks only circumferentially and not axially.  Yeah!  That’s the part I never thought about until somebody told me.  And then my reaction was, yes of course.  You would never want it to be any other way!   Meaning that the material, although visually undistinguished in one direction or another, is extremely anisotropic as to the two directions, the circumferential direction on the one hand and the axial direction on the other hand, in terms of what it does when you heat it.  So how does the manufacturer make that happen?  Continue reading “Heat-shrink tubing!”

Many of us are at least sort of vaguely aware that “the world is running out of IP addresses”.  And by this we mean IP addresses like 162.255.116.157 — four numbers each in the range of 000 to 255.  These are called IPv4 IP addresses.  But there is also a newer kind of IP addresses called IPv6 IP addresses.  I was fascinated recently to find out that my firm has some of these newer kind of IP addresses.  Continue reading “IPv6 IP addresses!”

These days everybody seems to use Zoom for videoconferencing.   But it is all over the news that Zoom has many privacy issues and security issues.  This has prompted tech writers to write articles such as The best alternatives to Zoom for videoconferencing.  Some of the alternatives cost a lot of money.  One of them requires that everyone be using Apple products.  One of them works only for two participants.  Most of the services pass the video and audio streams through a server controlled by the service provider and you do not know who might be eavesdropping on the streams.

And then there’s Jitsi, which is what I recommend.  Jitsi is open-source, and it is encrypted, and you can host it yourself.  Our firm recently set up our own Jitsi server.  So we can host our own Jitsi videoconferences at a cost per minute of zero and a cost per month of zero, and the connections are about as secure as any videoconference could possibly be.  But even if you use the public Jitsi server (“Jitsi Meet“), you are still far better off in terms of privacy and security than if you were to use Zoom.

Have you used Jitsi?  Would you like to try out our firm’s Jitsi server?  Please post a comment below.

This blog article talks about “power over ethernet” or POE.  Those who are affected by work-from-home arrangements might find it helpful to learn a little bit about POE even if you have not been trained in electrical engineering.  This article talks a little bit about POE. Continue reading “A new work-from-home skill – wrangling power over ethernet”

In an earlier article I offered some tips for making work-from-home work well for you.  Here is one more tip.  Make use of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. Continue reading “Another work-from-home tip – MBSR”

This article talks about things that you can do in your home to get the best possible work-from-home results. Continue reading “Tips for best work-from-home results”

It is fascinating to see the various things that companies and organizations are doing in the face of the Covid-19 problems. As one example, my firm’s favorite voice-over-IP telephone company, VOIP.MS, has expanded its tech support hours to 24 by 7 (blog article). And now Comcast says it has reconfigured some of its Xfinity wifi hotspots so that they are available to everyone for free. Continue reading “Some Xfinity wifi hotspots now available to all for free”

What follows is a reminiscence about how I learned to write.  Be advised that this blog article rambles.  Set this article aside for some time when you are having trouble getting to sleep. 

The main point of the article, I suppose, is that in general we take too long to think of saying “thank you” to those teachers and mentors who invested in us.  And if so, then the only thing we can really do is try to pay it forward and try to be good teachers and mentors for those who come after us. Continue reading “A long and rambling story about learning to write”