happylife

The public library system

Lots of people say that the tax in Vancouver is very expensive but it is used effectively. We can see a good example in the public library. I can't evaluate how substantial its collection of books is, because I rarely borrow books from library. IT related books are difficult to find in library because of their short life time and I usually find, read and sometimes buy them in a bookstore. Anyway, what I admire concerning with the library is its well-designed computer system. We can use it via the Internet; search books, request booking them and pick them up at the nearest branch. Of course, some PCs are deployed in each branches and we can use them for free. There are three kinds of PCs: 60 minute Internet stations, 15 minute express Internet stations and library search stations. Internet explorer, Firefox and Open Office are installed in each Internet station through the network and they are safe because they are automatically rebooted after each user's logout. We can see various people using this system. An old man was writing a letter and printing it out the other day. The printout service is not free but it must be convenient for people who doesn't have a PC or printer. Young children are sometimes enjoying a network game on them. As far as I know, it was prohibited to type keyboards on our own notebook PC in the public library in Japan, though it was five years ago. What a difference!

OpenDNS

As you might know, DNS(Domain Name Service) is a basic Internet service which translates URL(Uniform Resource Locator) to IP address. It is one of the most indispensable services for everyone who uses the Internet and is usually provided by your ISP(Internet Service Provider). We usually don't have to worry about it except in case of troubles. As I sometimes mentioned, I' m not satisfied with the quality of the Internet connection environment in my apartment. It is too unstable and sometimes slow aside from its high cost. As the standard DNS server provided by my ISP was slow and unstable, I started to use another DNS service called OpenDNS. It works great and it is totally free. All I had to do to replace the DNS was overwriting the DNS address on my router with 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. OpenDNS looks faster and more stable than the original ISP's. Plus, it is safer because it warns us in case we are connecting to evil and dangerous sites. It really has made my Internet work better.

Online support

As you might know, I'm running a small business on the Internet and have been using a hosting service provided by a company in the U.S. The quality of the service was not so bad except for these past few months. I am recently suffered from server troubles almost every day, and I have to claim for a support every time. Stopping of the server means a loss of trust and money for me. The service I'm using is providing an on-line support service using a chatting board called "Live Help" instead of telephone service. It's good for me because I can say whatever I want on the chat system. It would be difficult for me to do the same thing on the phone. Anyway, there are more than four supporting members in the company and only one of them has a good skill to work properly with the server. In case of his absence, I sometimes have to wait for hours until the trouble is fixed. Though I have been demanding him to share his support information among all his colleagues, it doesn't seem he had done it yet and I have to repeat the same claims and instructions to the other supporting staff. I'm seriously thinking about moving my site to better hosting service, but it takes a risk of stopping the service for a few days as well as the money.

To search by lyrics

Thanks to music related services on the Internet, we can listen to music with its information such as its title, player and so on. However, what are you doing when you came across favorite but unknown music on the radio or in a cafe and you wanted to enjoy it again? My tips is using Google; just google the phrase you remember in the music with a keyword "lyrics." For example, when I came across a song which I liked but didn't know what it was in a cafe the other day, I googled "let the rain fall" with "lyrics" and I got to know the song information as "Come Clean" by Hilary Duff. Of course, I downloaded the song from iTunes Music Store and I can enjoy it with my iPod whenever I like. The great point of this tips is that we can get not only the song title but also the complete lyrics. How convenient!

Interference

I have been using a wireless router which I bought in Japan more than four years ago. As you know, the standard and the quality of industrial products is strictly controlled in Japan. This wireless router is not the exception. Of course it works here in Canada, its power seems to be weaker than any other routers used in my neighbors. As I live in an apartment which has eight rooms on every floor, and most of the residents are using wireless routers, I sometimes have interference. This is the list of wireless connections in which my router is shown in the top, but its power gauge is only 4 of 5. There are two other routers with full gauge in the list. Though my router is within one meter from my note PC, it is weaker than those of other rooms. Since the new resident moved into my neighbor room, the influence of jamming has become more terrible. I have to re-connect or change channels almost every day. What a pain in the a**!

AdWords

AdWords is a popular Internet advertising service run by Google. It is a so called text advertising system which is said to be way more effective than the traditional banner advertisement. Once you choose your budget, duration and key words related to your pages you want to promote, the system selects the suitable sites for your text ad and deliver them all in automatically. To our delight, the payment is based on the click counts; we don't have to pay for any view counts which were not clicked. It used to be the most powerful and reasonable advertising system. However, the situation seems to have changed recently because of the bad influence of spam sites which try to get illegal clicks in some ways. I made a small mechanism so that I can recognize where each click has come from, and I found that most of the clicks were coming from spam sites only to waste my paid ads. I was shocked very much because I don't know any other better way to advertise my site.

Between the heaven and the hell

I have been doing a programming work for these past months off and on. It is like riding on a roller coaster and frequently going up and down between the heaven and the hell. When the code created in my brain works as I expected, I feel not only happy but also feel that I can do anything I want. On the opposite, when I can't find out bugs in my codes for a long time, I feel myself to be left alone in a deep and dark world. The most scaring thing is that I can easily drop down to it. For example, I had been in the hell for three days looking for the reason of the strange action of my program. I had been scanning my codes again and again but in vain. It was really tough for me because I had lots of things to do but I couldn't start them before solving the problem. Fortunately, after three-day struggling, I found the bug which was really like a bug; just one typo in a configuration file out of the source codes. I was too tired this time to feel the happiness.

A deluge of information

It was almost one year ago when I started using SBM(Social BookMark) and RSS(Really Simple Syndication) reader. There is no doubt both of them are the key technology in the world of the Internet for the past five years. They are so convenient that I can't stop using them any more. To tell the truth, I knew about them more than three years ago, but I didn't leap at them at once for a reason; I was afraid of being flooded with too much information. The deluge of email filling my mail box every day was enough already, and I didn't want to accept any other information. I think this my feeling was correct. One year after starting using them by chance, my PC time has doubled and I am now drown in the flood of information. I really think that too much information ceases me and prevent my creativity. I have to reconsider my way of using these dangerous tools.

Contrasting desktops

There are two contrasting desktops in my room. One is the real desktop and the other is on the PC's display. What a contrast because the former is messy and the later is clean only with two desktop icons! It's one of the basic tips not to use desktop icons as much as possible. Too many icons on your PC's desktop overload the CPU and cause an unbearable slow response. It's a really stressful situation. How am I keeping the desktop on my PC clean? It's very easy; just create one new folder named "temporary" on you desktop and move all the desktop icons except for recycle-bin into the folder. That's all. The name "temporary" can be your favorite name. It's very simple and effective at the same time. I wish I had an easy way like this to keep the real desktop clean.

One time password

This picture shows the new security device for my bank account. It is as small as a key ring and creates a different password every thirty seconds. This system, so called "one time password," is said to be very secure because the password is effective for only thirty seconds, and it's no problem if it is stolen unless it is used in thirty seconds. Sure it is secure, but I don't like it because I have to carry it whenever I look up my bank account via the Internet. Every security system stands on a trade-off between security and usability, and I think this one time password system is too secure. Plus, we can't forget the fact that we are paying the cost for this system.