As someone who works in I.T., but is also into photography, I rely on bags for everything. Most cheap bags (hasn’t everyone had an APC bag in I.T.?) are great for storing laptops but aren’t so great at photography gear. Camera bags too are often not meant for computer gear. Well, thanks to some good fortune, I came across PeakDesign and their EveryDay Messenger bag. Frankly, it was a challenge to tell if this was going to be great at what I needed until I bought the thing, so hopefully, if this is on your mind, I can help. Here are my thoughts on this bag.
The pitch, as Karl Palachuk puts it, is that Windows users who are not locally administrative users cannot be infected with viruses. This is an absurd and wrong line of thinking from someone who professes to have been in the IT industry for more than 25 years. But, we can all be wrong, so I say own it Karl.
By now, if you’re new to using KeeWeb, you should probably have read my really basic intro to getting KeeWeb working from a place you host. You may have decided to host it on your own server or computer, but I thought putting it in Dropbox was a good primer for what’s next: Integrating this tool into Dropbox’s API and using that for storage. This can seem really complicated at first look, but I’ll show you that it’s not as bad as you think.
Blogs, sites, social networks, and news sites are all vying or your time. With all that noise, it can be difficult to ingest the most compelling and useful information out there. In the past, I’ve resisted the idea of being part of that noise because I didn’t want to contribute to it. Over time, I realized that a great portion of my time is spent weeding through the noise. I do it so you don’t have to.
Dubbed “The World’s Best Laptop Stand”, the Apex Stand arrived as a Kickstarter project. The stand was wildly successful, gaining $417,515 in pledges. I liked the idea immediately. Laptops are quite literally a pain in our necks, and this stand appeared to offer a way to make using them more ergonomic. So, in September of 2014, I backed the project. With its arrival on Feb 29th, the project was realized in a speedy 181 days.
I don’t often blog about banking in Canada; Because, let’s face it, I don’t want to put you to sleep. But, as I was reading today’s news, I came across an interesting turnaround by one of Canada’s larger banks: TD Bank. They appear to have been on a downward spiral of greed and customer gouging (the likes of which I don’t think I’ve ever seen).
Often I hear this: “How am I supposed to know when I see a fake? They’re all so perfect!”. This familiar refrain is often followed by the person explaining how “computer illiterate” they are or some other version of that idea. The truth is, if you know what to look for, you can often tell that you’ve landed on a fake page. It’s important to learn that you have to suspect everything you see in a browser.
The amazing web-based tool KeeWeb is perhaps one of the better ways to make Keepass databases work for you in a cross-platform environment. The challenge with using this tool, however, is that it’s not exactly the easiest to get running on your own hosting server. Yes, you can just go to app.keeweb.info, but if you want to try hosting it yourself somewhere, it may seem like a real challenge. For that reason, I wanted to offer some thoughts on how you get this thing up and running.
This morning has started randomly. While sitting down to drink a coffee and read the tech news, I ran into Oshawa’s Mayor John Henry. As a homeowner, small business owner, and an electric vehicle driver in his city, I had a few questions to ask. Naturally, he with with another person, so I tried to be cognizant of not being a dick by interrupting them.
The most amazing side effect of being in the technology business is working with all sorts of technical people. Most often, they work for manufacturers or vendors; but they sometimes branch out and start their own businesses. After more than 16 years as a consultant, I’ve learned a few things and sometimes get to pass on my “straight talk” to others who do what I’ve been doing so long. I want to do more of this when I can.