ctrl.altered.mind

Having switched from a desktop to a notebook as my primary computing device (not considering the PS3), being conscious about the added vulnerability of personal data is now imperative. It would be terrible if the laptop was lost or stolen, of course, but there is now the more probable risk of accidentally damaging the portable machine (not that I am sloppy, but it is reassuring to know that I am protected from hard drive damage due to dropping the laptop, or from accidentally yanking it off the coffee table).

Some habits are really worth adopting in order to minimize the pain of going through data loss and/or recovery - even more so in the case of theft (fact: about 97% of stolen computers are never recovered). There are scores of data recovery services available, but they generally seem to take advantage of the customers’ cornered situations and charge a heavy premium for fetching data from a damaged laptop (often more than the cost of a new computer). Of course, there are some pre-emptive solutions available such as PCPhoneHome or LaptopLocate.net, which can help track down machines by monitoring their location. With the iAlertU freeware application, you can even add “car alarm” or security camera protection for an iSight-equipped Apple notebook.

The first and most vital thing to do for any computer user, is to use a backup storage device. The simplest form of this would be to connect an external hard drive. Hard drives with encryption features allow locking down of personal information as all data stored on the drive is inaccessible without a master password. While it is possible to back up data on optical media like DVDs, this is a cumbersome repetitive chore and requires a lot of sorting and organization for the backed up information to be easily accessible.

External drives can play well with automated backup software, thus making what would otherwise be a daily chore an invisible background task for the computer. My external hard drive is network-attached, which eliminates the need to constantly plug it into a laptop, and additionally allows moving all media files to the external drive so they are accessible from all shared computers on the home network. On the flip side, this does have the disadvantage of not being able to access your media outside the home (unless you open up the drive for internet access).

I often find myself minimizing the kind of personal data that is stored on the notebook’s hard drive. I typically use my Gmail account as a network archive as this makes my files retrievable from any computer with an internet connection (more on how to make this process more convenient in a future tutorial). This benefits both security and accessibility, and prevents losing years of data and pictures along with the laptop. There are new web services cropping up now, that recognize this activity and endeavor to help organize data tucked away in your email attachments. Xoopit is one such service that ties in with a Gmail account.

What is your favorite strategy?

With no one to count on. Yet.

Image from the ProseBeforeHos weblog

When my wireless router started faltering with alarming regularity in the past month, I realized the little device had probably reached the end of its life cycle. The Netgear router has been pretty much running 24/7 over the past two years, and while routers typically last much longer than that, everyones mileage varies.

Therefore, instead of shopping around for an alternative el-cheapo router that would get the job of letting all of my wireless-capable devices talk over the internet done, I decided to take this opportunity to upgrade all the way up - to an Apple Time Capsule.

If you’re familiar with Apple hardware, you will realize that the Time Capsule breaks no new ground - it is simply an 802.11n Airport Extreme base station with a built-in hard drive, which is also its biggest plus point. Having switched from a desktop to using just a notebook computer, a new Macbook Pro, I quickly found the need to have a wireless network hard drive solution quite imperative. It is tedious having a backup drive that constantly needs to be plugged in, to be of any benefit. The Time Capsule steps in with network-attached storage (with choices of 500GB and 1TB), and also integrates seamlessly with the one-click Time Machine backup feature built into Mac OS X Leopard. Additionally, the Time Capsule can also connect (and extend wireless capabilities) to a USB printer or external hard drive. I picked up a 500GB Time Capsule, because the storage capacity should meet my needs for now. There are also web tutorials that prove it is quite simple to upgrade the internal hard drive yourself.

I was a little concerned about rushing out and buying a Time Capsule, simply because initial reviews of the hardware have not been excellent on the Apple website. People have voiced concerns about Time Machine backups taking exceptionally long durations to complete, impact on wireless browsing performance while backups are running (forcing them to turn this off while actively using their computers), and other issues such as unusually high heat generation and wireless device incompatibilities. Having read through all these reviews, I was prepared to purchase the Time Capsule in test-drive mode, ready to return it within the 14-day period if any such issues would raise their ugly heads. Thankfully, I am extremely happy with my Time Capsule.

I have not run into any speed or wireless bandwidth issues while running Time Machine backups or generally accessing the wireless drive (I did use an ethernet connection to perform the first backup, as most would recommend). The router functions excellently, plays well with all my devices, and efficiently utilizes my high-speed connection. I have not experienced overheating issues either, although a higher heat profile is not very unusual for a NAS/router appliance.

The Time Capsule also interfaces very well lacks DLNA server capabilities, but allows my computer to network well with my Playstation 3 (thanks, Daman). This was a very important requirement for me, as the PS3 is used heavily as my media center and not just a gaming console. Speaking of games, the console has not seen any connection issues (that I had started experiencing on my earlier router) while playing online first-person shooter games. Additionally, media streaming from my computer to the TV via the PS3 has been excellent (I use MediaLink ($20/free demo) and Mediatomb (free, open-source) for wireless streaming from Mac OS X to the PS3). One thing to note, is that the PS3 does not recognize a NAS - it only supports the DLNA protocol, and would require a computer that is running a media server application in order to access media files. The Time Capsule does not support direct Universal Plug-and-Play (UPnP), so if any of your devices require this protocol the Time Capsule is not an option for you.

The Time Capsule only requires a couple of screens of configuring the first time it is used - this is done via the Mac OS X Airport Utility. Once this is done, the router is ready to serve Mac, Linux and Windows machines. The Time Capsule hard drive is also directly accessible by Windows machines, which see it appear as an encrypted, password-protected drive on the network. There is an Airport Admin Utility available for Windows that should allow configuring the Time Capsule using a Windows machine, although I have not attempted this (yet).

As it supports the 802.11n standard, the Time Capsule also allows me to fully utilize the wireless-N capabilities of my notebook. While this does not mean much for casual browsing, it does allow better local networking and is future-proof as far as wireless standards are concerned (at least for a good while).

Feel like you could use a good joke? How about one custom-crafted to suit your exact taste of humor?

A team at the University of California at Berkeley has been running a collaborative filtering system for recommending jokes. It’s called Jester, and is currently at version 4.0 in its evolution. The idea behind Jester is to recommend jokes to the user based on their ratings of previous jokes. The system can begin recommending anecdotes once the user rates a training set of 8 jokes. Apparently my tastes make for textbook cases of classification, for I found the jokes served up by Jester to be spot on hilarious, right after the initial set. A significant portion of the content in the database has been in wide circulation, so chances are you have read them before - the system might eventually be expanded to allow user submission of content. Content-based filtering, which is a form of collaborative filtering, has become one of the central mechanisms behind pioneering current-generation applications on the Web today.

Jester uses an algorithm called Eigentaste 5.0, which dynamically adapts the order in which items are recommended. The basic filtering algorithm uses universal queries to apply real-value user ratings on a common set of items. Those familiar with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) will recognize the techniques applied to the dense subset of the ratings matrix. PCA helps reduce multidimensional data sets to lower dimensions for analysis.

The dataset used by Jester has been made freely available for research use, while the framework is also being used to develop new predictive applications.

Finally, here’s one of the anecdotes served by Jester that had me smiling:

A group of managers were given the assignment to measure the height of a flagpole. So they go out to the flagpole with ladders and tape measures, and they’re falling off the ladders, dropping the tape measures–the whole thing is just a mess. An engineer comes along and sees what they’re trying to do, walks over, pulls the flagpole out of the ground, lays it flat, measures it from end to end, gives the measurement to one of the managers and walks away.

After the engineer has gone, one manager turns to another and laughs. “Isn’t that just like an engineer? We’re looking for the height and he gives us the length.”