Diary of a Network Geek

My wife and I officially upgraded our laptops this month, which means we’re now running Windows 10.

Personally, I like Windows 10. I think it’s got all the best features of Windows 7 with a minimal amount of new junk that Microsoft threw in to justify a new version, and charge for it.  Now, my wife is just happy that it’s brand new, and runs smoothly, while giving her access to her old files, thanks to our Western Digital My Cloud NAS, and is pretty.  Okay, so she may like it mostly because it’s pretty, but also fast.  I like the quick start and the fact that they haven’t made it impossible to find things, like other updates and upgrades have.  But, the thing is, I’m pretty much what you’d call a “power user”, even at home.  I don’t feel comfortable unless I can get down into the guts of the system and make it work the way I want it to work.  To do that takes a little extra effort, but, thanks to the first tip in article linked below, I have most of what I need via “God Mode”.  The rest of the tips cover everything from improving your privacy to controlling the look and feel of everything from your desktop to the menu.
It makes some really interesting reading, if you’re a geek like me, and if you use or are moving to Windows 10 at work, you can actually claim you were studying not goofing off!

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/191541-windows-10-the-best-hidden-features-tips-and-tricks

So no more map posts this month, but some good stuff anyway.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post titled Hey Siri, which had all kinds of tips and tricks to using Siri, the personal assistant on the iPhone.
I’m back with more.  In fact, I think this very well may be the definitive guide to what you can get Siri to do or answer for you.
Everything from posting on Twitter to getting directions to converting miles into meters.  Siri can do a lot of amazing things for you and all via voice command.  We live in an age of miracles.  And, over at Hey, Siri! What can you do for me?, they’ve collected pretty much everything you can think of in one, searchable, website for you.  It’s nothing short of miraculous.
Want to know how many seconds are in twenty-three years?  Just say, “Hey, Siri, convert twenty-three years to seconds” and you’ll know.
Want to know how many days until Christmas?  Just say, “Hey, Siri, how many days until Christmas” and she’ll tell you.
Want to add milk to the grocery list? All the commands you need are at Hey, Siri! What can you do for me?
Seriously, they’ve got everything you might want to do. Go look!  But, I’m not responsible for your co-workers getting annoyed at you talking to Siri all day.  That’s on you.

And, again, for those of you who don’t have Siri, you can still enjoy Shit Siri Says, which is funny no matter who you are!

This post originally appeared at Use Your Words.

One more aerial view thing next week and I’ll have an actual theme for the month.

Once upon a time, I used to watch a lot of the food and restaurant related reality television that seemed to run on the more obscure cable channels. One of my favorites was Bar Rescue. And, one of the coolest things I saw them do was setup a kind of “virtual window” system in this one bar that had really uninspiring night views. Basically, they were huge monitors that looked like windows and would loop these gorgeous displays of apparently live views from around the world. I loved that! And, ever since, I’ve kind of been looking for a way to recreate it.

Well, I still haven’t found a way, really, but I think I do have a very nice substitute. A developer by the name of John Coates whipped up a cool screen saver for Apple TV called, Aerial, which he offered up for free on the open source source code sharing site GitHub. And, that would be spectacular, if I had an Apple TV, which I don’t. Luckily, thanks to Mr. Coates releasing this code under an open source license, another developer, Dmitry Sadakov, reworked the code into the Aerial for Windows screensaver. It’s awesome! Installation is a little hands-on and manual, but the link, which is also to GitHub, has both the download and installation instructions.

So, go, grab it and enjoy your weekend!

This post originally appeared at Use Your Words.

Or, better living through data mining satellite imagery.

Seriously.
I’m not a big fan of the goofy, “Web 2.0”, startup-app naming convention that drops vowels out of words to make domain names, but, in this case, I’m going to make an exception.  Mostly because it’s free, but also cool, in spite of the name.  Besides, since WLPPR relies on freely available satellite imagery gathered by scientific agencies funded by the U.S. government, I figure we all have this one coming.
What it is, is a website that gathers up some of the most beautiful, and pretty abstract, images shot from far, far above the Earth and crops them to the right size for you smart phone’s wallpaper.  (That’s where the vowel-less name comes from; WaLlPaPpeR, get it?)
The site gives you the previews and there’s a link to the app for your iPhone, with an Android app in development.  The iPhone app is free, too, by the way.

So, hey, why not check it out and pretty up your phone with government data your tax dollars already bought?
And, have a great weekend!

This post originally appeared at Use Your Words.