Diary of a Network Geek

With Apple's recent announcement that they're letting Aperture die, without really replacing it, photographers of all kinds are looking toward Lightroom as their photographic management and processing tool.

I, personally, have used Lightroom for years.  I can do most of the editing I would ever want to do faster and easier in Lightroom than I would in Photoshop.  Of course, I'm strictly an amateur and don't do any other fancy art stuff with my photography.  And, I try to follow Syl...
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Happy Independence Day!

For those of you outside the U.S., today is the day we celebrate our independence as a nation by barbecuing and carousing and having parades and, most of all, by firing fireworks.  All across the country, there will be fireworks displays, both large and small, and there will be photographers at everyone one of them with tons of gear trying to capture that feeling in an image.  My personal suggestion is to just go and enjoy the show,...
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I'm going to take a slight departure from my normal free stuff on Friday posts.

Don't worry, this is still free, but it's not just a "click here and look at this thing" kind of post.  This week, you'll need to actually do a couple of things to get the full benefit of this post.  Basically, it's a little Summer DIY project for the mildly geeky and social.

Have you ever been to someone's home and had to ask for their WIFI...
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No, those quotation marks aren't ironic.

Last year, in August, I wrote about a free service called LensTag that would help you track your camera gear if any of it went missing.  Well, they're back in the news for another service!  This one was discovered by accident by their president's wife who mistakenly turned on the tracking for her camera when a couple of flashes got stolen.  It turns out, she started getting notifications about where her photos taken with that...
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Yes, today is Friday the Thirteenth.

I'm not really a superstitious kind of guy.  Not really.  But, I've known a lot of people who are.  When I worked in the hotel industry, I once managed to "sell" room 666 to someone not from a Judeo-Christian background, until a co-worker saw it and made a face.  Then, I had to explain to the nice gentleman that some people found 666 to be an "unlucky" number.  But, man, if I had pulled that...
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As the kids get out of school for the Summer, why not "audit" a couple of culture classes for free?

No, seriously!
I know when I got out of school, I thought I'd never want to go back and learn anything new again.  But, times change and so do we.  I've done a whole lot of professional training, picking up some good certifications along the way, but there are times I wish I had paid more attention to the cultural courses I...
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Okay, this isn't exactly a new idea, but it's still worth sharing.

I got this from Lifehacker back in 2012, but I've been behind in my link sharing, so I'm just getting to it now.
The idea is simple.  Reading on-line is rarely the best, most comfortable, most convenient way to keep up with all the things we want to read, especially all the "long form" articles that really get in-depth on topics we care about.  That's where Readlists comes into play.

This...
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First, let me say that I don't endorse this as a way to avoid upgrading.

Second, let me fully affirm that this is completely awesome!  And, as someone who maintains a Windows XP virtual machine to run some older software for my camera, I am thrilled to have this option, for as long as it lasts.
The hack is pretty simple, basically just adding a small entry to the Registry.  First published by Wayne Williams at BetaNews a day ago, it's been all over the internet today.  I did it earlier on an old machine at work and it worked great.  Your results may vary.  The steps are simple and in that linked article, but I've included the 32-bit version of the registry file that you can just download and import to your machine or virtual machine.

Use at your own risk!
And upgrade as soon as possible!
(Here's the link to the REG file.)

This week I've got two very serious freebies for you.

Security, as some of you may know, is near and dear to my heart.
In my day job, I'm a system administrator and constantly worried about security.  It's a huge issue.  Lately, you all may have been hearing news stories about the "Heartbleed SSL vulnerability" which, in theory, could endanger your personal login information, as well as other account credentials or other things you'd want to keep private.  It's not entirely clear...
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Hey, for those of you who follow this sad, old blog closely, I know I missed this past Tuesday's post.  There's a reason for that, or, possibly several , but I can't talk about it right now.  Seriously.
But, it's a boring secret anyway and you wouldn't really want to know it.
(But, if you secretly do want to know, stay tuned and I'll eventually share it!)