Category: Office Tech

I was astonished to hear from D-Link that it has shut down its cloud that makes its smart plugs work.  Pictured at right is one of the three DSP-W110 smart plugs that I purchased from D-Link in 2016.  I still own the plugs and one of the plugs still has a device plugged into it — a table lamp.

But as of today, I cannot turn the lamp on or off using the app on my smart phone.  As of today, the D-Link smart plugs don’t do anything any more.  Continue reading “D-Link IOT cloud evaporates”

Many readers know that during World War II, military aircraft used red internal lighting.  Pilots used red flashlights to view maps while in flight.  The reason for using red is that if ordinary full-spectrum (white) light had been used, this would spoil the “night vision” (vision using rods instead of cones).  Red light does not harm night vision as much as white light.  This blog article talks about using night lights around the house that are red instead of white.  Continue reading “Red night lights”

I enjoyed immensely my first viewing of Glass Onion.  I then enjoyed immensely my second viewing of Glass Onion.  In this blog article I will reveal how you can get an identical copy of the digital voice recorder (seen at right) that appears on the screen in this movie at 42:14.  Continue reading “Heavens, the dog ate the caviar again”

If you are like most folks these days, you are getting ready to install an EV charger at your home.  You agonize about whether to get this brand of EV charger or that brand of EV charger.  And then just as you think you figured everything out about which EV charger to purchase, you smack into a wall.  The charger is available with two kinds of plug, a so-called “6-50” plug or a so-called “14-50” plug.  Which variant of the EV charger should you choose?  Which plug is the right one to pick?

It turns out that this is a trick question.  But if you click here, you can read a blog article by someone whose writing style you might recognize, who answers this question for you.

I recently received this handheld distance measurement device.  Like a laser pointer, it shoots out a narrow beam of red light, making a small red dot on a surface that might be 100 feet away.  It then uses a built-in telescope to view the red dot of light, and works out the distance to that surface.  The device arrived today, and I compared its measurement with that of a long fiberglass measuring tape.    The two approaches yielded answers that differed by only a tenth of a percent.  How does it work exactly?

Star Trek fans might be able to guess where I am going with this. There were episodes of Star Trek where an enemy had somehow found a way to bypass the Enterprise’s shields, at which point the captain on the bridge of the Enterprise would shout out “modulate the shield harmonics!” In the world of Star Trek, this modulation apparently restored the protection of the shields. And indeed this kind of laser distance measurement uses a modulation of a signal to accomplish its remarkable result. Continue reading “Modulate the shield harmonics!”

We recently started using a new VPN solution at OPLF.  It is faster than our previous VPN solution and has lower latency.  It has no recurring cost and the one-time cost to get it working was under $100.  In this article I will describe this new VPN solution in detail.  I will also explain how you could set this up yourself in your own office.  Continue reading “Making your office VPN situation faster and easier to use”

I realized that for quite a long time, I had sort of wondered how the tire pressure gauges work that have a thing that pops out.  Clicking around on the Internet, I have now learned what the common name is for that kind of tire pressure gauge. It is called a “pencil gauge”. And I have learned how they work.  Continue reading “How pencil tire pressure gauges work”

Pretty much the only periodical that I have made time to read diligently in recent years is the Economist.  A recent article in the Economist introduced me to ikigai, which is yet another of  many Japanese words that Westerners have appropriated and onto which much meaning has been grafted beyond the original Japanese meaning.  Continue reading “Thinking about ikigai”

Hello folks.  I am astonished to see the news (see court document) that a court case that had been grinding its way through the courts on for more than five years is apparently very close to being settled.  The result of the settlement will, it seems, lead to many people and firms that have paid fees to the Pacer system will get a lot of their fees refunded to them.  Our firm has paid many thousands of dollars to the Pacer system over the years.  I am sure many other firms can say the same.

I heard about this from alert listserv member Curtis Prescott (Linkedin page).  Thank you Curtis!

Hello loyal readers.  Here is a 4700-word article that I wrote about CCS charging of Tesla cars.