Category: Personal Computing

Volkswagen ID.Software Updates

Post author By davehamby
Post date August 11, 2022

With the ID.Generation, VW has brought over-the-air updating to key system software of its battery electric vehicles. This process updates the MIB-3 user interface, various electrical control unit software, and importantly, the traction inverter and other important software giving your ID its personality.

Every European car v-logger seems to feel he (it’s almost always a he) should make an ID.Software Version 3 update video. But I’ll bet not a one of them has actually applied an update to an ID.3 or ID.4. Why, because they almost always use a press vehicle to make the video and not their personal daily driver.

So I spent some quality time with the Duck to find this actual page of information from the actual VW folk and not the 10 insanely great ways to update your VW’s software people. You know them. The ones killing the Internet for enthusiasts or just the actually curious. Following the break, the link and some highlights.

Personal Computing Photography

Luminar Neo HDR

Post author By davehamby
Post date August 6, 2022

Skylum developers remain at work in Ukraine. Women and children have evacuated while military age males remain in the country to be called up to fight if needed. Skylum collaboration tools are hosted internationally allowing a measure of safety from acts of Ivan. Remember Ivan? He’s back. And worse than ever.

Boy do I miss Khrushchev! When he invaded a neighbor, he just seized the joint. Putin, medieval siege warfare. He is leaving rubble, mostly destroying the economic value of the contested territory.

Anyway, Luminar Neo is now Version 1.2. Version 1.2 adds bug fixes but also integrates most of the RAW HDR development capabilities of Aurora HDR, another Skylum product.

Personal Computing Photography

Apple Photos Gripe

Post author By davehamby
Post date July 9, 2022

We begin and end most days by taking a photo of the dramatic Dismal Dominion skyline as viewed from Dismal Manor. The Staff finds clouds fascinating and is pleased to have an editing tool that does them some justice. While editing such an image, Staff foolishly put the iPhone 11 on to charge by connecting it to the iMac’s Thunderbolt Dock. Photos abandoned the edit to import something from the phone. But, normally, there is nothing to be imported. Said Apple ID has “Use iCloud Photo Library” enabled. And we pay for extra storage like good Apple dumplings. So, what happened and what was the lineup.

Personal Computing Photography

Mylio Photos

Post author By davehamby
Post date June 26, 2022

Featured image courtesy of Mylio.

Mylio Photos is a new device independent and operating system independent image asset management tool for MacOS and Windows 10 or later. Mylio’s architecture and design is based on the premise that tech comes and tech goes but that your images are unique and irreplaceable. Mylio offers well-conceived image management by date, geo-tag, people-tag, categories, and keyword tags, etc. Mylio works because file formats are standardized and long-lived. As a result, images can be edited and rendered multiple times over their lifetime if they can be kept safe and located. Mylio’s design allows you to work with its internal editor or an editor of your choice.

Mylio is offered as a service for $100 per year software subscription. Your images stay “within the lifelines”, that is, on your local machines. Mylio is a non-destructive editor. That is, Mylio keeps your images using standard file formats for image encoding and image editing specification encoding. Mylio preserves the unedited original and reconstructs and presents the edited version upon request. Edited thumbnails are available for browsing. And all of your portable iOS and Android devices can participate. Read on to learn more.

Personal Computing Uncategorized

SOHO Storage

Post author By davehamby
Post date June 1, 2022

Three sizes of small server computers — TrueNAS Mini Family of Servers

This post comes out of a discussion with the folks at Take Control Books who write a line of topic and capability oriented Apple product guides like Taking Control of Your Digital Storage. This is a big topic that Jeff Carlson capably explores. NAS (network attached storage) is among the topics he considers. There are 3 sorts of systems available in this market space,

Those targeted to small office and home offered by Synology and QNAP (the two best know) and some others.
Professional products offered by the global IT vendors at departmental scale. EMC, NetApp, DELL, HP, IBM, the usual suspects.
Cluster computing products like those offered by IBM Red Hat and various Linux distributions. These systems provide a single file system view to numerous computers formed into a capacity or reliability cluster. 45Drives, ix Systems, and others are in this space with hardware, drivers, CephFS scale-out file system, etc.

In this article we will consider the essential capabilities a small NAS should have. The intent is to prepare my readers to venture into the world of marketing slicks, spec sheets, and white papers.

Personal Computing

Updating TrueNAS from V12 to V13

Post author By davehamby
Post date May 17, 2022

Earlier this week I updated Peabody and Sherman to TrueNAS 13. Following the update, I discovered a couple of issues. First, replication from Peabody to Sherman had stopped. That is, Peabldy was no longer transferring backups to Sherman. And Time Machine had stopped. What the hey.

With some community help, it turned out that I had made a mistake in doing the update and that I ran into a somehwhat hidden design feature.

Citizenship Personal Computing Technology Twittering

Mastodon, the New Kid in Town

Post author By davehamby
Post date April 29, 2022

Featured image by Eugen Rochko at Github used in accordance with the AGPL

Dismal Manor Gang has pitched its social media camp at Mastodon.Online. Mastodon is a new federated social network similar to Twitter in many ways but improved in important ways.

Personal Computing

On Computer Access Security

Post author By davehamby
Post date March 4, 2022

Masthead image courtesy of YubiCo.

How secure is secure enough in this age of phising and breakins? Is a security hierarchy possible as not all accounts support all security methods. And what about the accounts that are still mired in the 1960’s days of shoulder surfing? Read on.

Personal Computing

A Tale of Two Password Managers

Post author By davehamby
Post date February 27, 2022

Dismal Manor tries to be somewhat security conscious. We try to use unique passwords for all log-ins, keep passwords in an independent password manager, and to use 2 factor authentication, preferably a physical key where we can. In this article, we look at BitWarden and explore the possibility of migrating from 1Password to BitWarden.

Personal Computing

Peabody is in the house

Post author By davehamby
Post date February 17, 2022

Photo courtesy of TrueNAS

As you recall, Sherman needed two disks transplanted. This work is complete and we have a third disk on hand in anticipation of the third going colicky. The long term plan is to add a second server and use Sherman as a backup machine via TrueNAS replication. The new server has arrived and is updating software. Read on for the rest of the story.