Geek

Airplanes require navigational data. Sometimes that data comes from the pilot, but in today’s modern airplanes there’s GPS systems that help. Back when I was a member of the flying club that owned two 1966 Piper Cherokees, it was my job to update the Garmin 530W GPS unit every 28 days with charts and other waypoint data. We purchased this via subscription to a company that provided that sort of thing, and I downloaded it to a proprietary card that was updated on the 28-day schedule. The file wasn’t very big but it was a bit of a hassle downloading it on a Mac. I’m not sure I would be able to accomplish the task on an iPad today.

Recently, a team of security engineers were allowed to look at the systems on a Boeing 747. While they found a clear delineation between the passenger entertainment systems and the aircraft’s control systems, no one is going to be able to hack into the cockpit from the monitor in the seat back in front of them, they also found that navigational data is still loaded into the avionics via floppy disk.

Hey, if it works and is reliable, why change it?

Of course, there are plenty of online “reporting” sites that are hyping this up as some sort of grave danger to the safety of the Boeing 747. Hyped up headlines generate ad clicks and everyone wants to get rich by belching out a few words on a website and raking in the bucks via advertising.

In that regard, we live in such despicable times.

The truth of the matter is, a floppy disk in 2020 is just as functional and safe to use as a floppy disk in 2000. Navigational chart data from 1995 is about the same size as navigational chart data in 2020. Honestly, I’d rather this data was loaded in a tried and true method rather than trying to connect a 747 to the airport wifi and downloading the data. That’s where you have problems; wifi signals are much more prone to errors or even “hacking”.

If a tried and true method has worked for decades without incident, there’s no reason to move to newer technology simply for the sake of change.

I think it’s quite nifty that floppy disks are still used today. It’s a critical part of what we’d call “sneaker net” back in the day, physically copying files from one computer to another.

Sometimes you just have to get the job done.

I loved being able to watch Crew Dragon Demo-2 return to Earth from the International Space Station this weekend. Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken undocked from the ISS late yesterday afternoon aboard the SpaceX build Crew Dragon capsule and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola, Florida this afternoon. Earl and I watched much of the coverage on YouTube.

In some ways it feels like we’ve started figuring out these things from scratch since the Space Shuttle Program was grounded nearly a decade ago, but humans have had a continuous presence in orbit for two decades and we are finally able to send astronaut to and from the ISS from American soil again.

Exciting times!

I’m hoping I’ll live long enough to see a human expedition to Mars. How amazing that will be. With today’s successful return from the ISS, and a new mission planned for just over a month away, space seems to be reachable again.

Reach for the stars!

Empathy is one of the greatest creators of energy.

Angela Ahrendts, former SVP of Retail at Apple, Inc.

Our world needs more empathy.

This interview with Angela Ahrendts is from 2017, when Apple was launching “Today At Apple” at their retail locations. 2020 has shown us a very different environment from the world in 2017, but I still find Ms. Ahrendts’ energy to be incredibly motivating. Even though she no longer works for Apple, I still find her to be a very inspiring leader. I would enjoy shaking her hand and thanking her for her contributions to the world.

I haven’t been able to get in for an eye exam due to pandemic concerns. My eyes must be changing a bit as I get older so I’m now wearing cheaters while I work. Thankfully I don’t consider this an awful look.

I do need to get an eye exam, though.

I cleared my work calendar yesterday so I could watch the Apple keynote at WWDC 2020 in its entirety. WWDC, or World Wide Developers Conference, is Apple’s annual gathering geared toward developers. This year the event is virtual. From what I’m hearing online it’s being well received. I’m happy Apple is able to maintain their momentum.

I’m not going to get into a complete rundown of thoughts and opinions on the keynote, fellow blogger Dave at Blogography does a fantastic job here. H/T to Dave.

However, I will touch on a couple of thoughts around the keynote. First of all, I LOVED the production of the entire thing. Obviously pre-recorded, the pacing was fantastic, the presentation was concise, and there were no time filling demos of games or other things just to, well, fill time. There were drone shots, zoom shots, and we were afforded the opportunity to see parts of the Apple campus not usually available to the general public. I hope this type of keynote is used as a model for future Apple endeavors, because I enjoyed this keynote more than any I’ve seen in at least the past five years. No pauses for applause and accolades, let’s show and go. It was fantastic.

Apple CEO Tim Cook opened up with a statement on the company’s stance on Black Lives Matter and I commend them for the $100 million dollars they are pledging to make this world a better place in this regard. It may be just a drop in Apple’s financial bucket, but it’s a heck of a lot of money and a bigger effort than their technological contemporaries. I have always loved Apple for their societal stances and the way they back up these stances with action and this is no different.

As the presenters moved through the new features of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, macOS, and the other operating systems, I couldn’t help but notice how much attention is focused on user privacy. As more and more of our lives move to digital platforms, user privacy is probably the most important element of our experience. While many like to crow about how great Google’s Android ecosystem is, I’m always concerned with the amount of information Google is scraping from user data for ad revenue generating purposes. And what happens if that user data ends up in the wrong hands? Bad things can happen.

Apple focuses on doing as much as they can in the way of processing user information locally, on the user’s own device, and as anonymously as practical. Does this hamper some of their efforts when compared to companies that do this processing in the “cloud”? Yes, it does. But I believe the trade off is worth it. Unless you’re running your own cloud, with all of the administrative tasks that come along with that endeavor, the closest thing you’re going to get to solid user privacy and have a digital presence is to do it through Apple’s ecosystem. I appreciate that focus and that’s why I always recommend Apple’s iPhone and iPad to friends and family looking for a routine, casual digital experience.

iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and macOS, as well as the other things announced during the keynote, look rock solid and very compelling. I’m excited about the releases coming out later this year.

While I explore Linux and my Raspberry Pis and the like, I’m always happy that I still have my Apple devices as well. Apple helps me look forward to the future.

Let’s face it, in technology years I’m very old. I’ve been online in some way since early 1986, when I used my Commodore 64 and a 300 BPS modem to connect to the online service GEnie. To this day I’m still not the biggest fan of point-and-click or touchscreens, especially when it comes to everyday tasks like managing email or scheduling meetings or conversing online. If there is a command-line interface available I’m going to try to use it (unless there’s media involved). Hence, one of the reasons why my love affair with Linux never ends, though I do use other systems all the time. With Linux I can just get back to a classic interface and go with it.

It’s probably because of my weird tendency to focus and fixate, but the use of certain fonts in applications can be a distraction or an inspiration. When looking at columns of numbers I want the font to be simple, consistent, and I feel best when it has a “classic” look to it. I detest “Courier New” found in Windows but I *love* “Courier” found elsewhere.

When working with databases at work I use a variety of Database Management programs but I always set the default font to one that I purchased, and that’s called “Amateur Typewriter“.

I like Amateur Typewriter because it strongly resembles a font found on sales receipts printed by NCR cash registers in the late 1970s (the first scanning cash register, the NCR 255 being one of them).

Amateur Typewriter is not identical to NCR’s typeface on those old impact printers but it’s pretty darn close. And this gives me a geeky-comfortable feel during the workday, which in turn makes me very productive.

Sometimes it’s the little things that can make all the difference in the world.

My mid-2015 15-inch MacBook Pro (the last version before the butterfly keyboard was introduced on later models) has been slowing down over the past couple of months with updates from Apple to MacOS Catalina. To be honest, I haven’t really been a fan of MacOS Catalina since it was released in 2019; it asks for my password way too often, Airdrop is not reliable at all, and it rarely unlocked with my Apple Watch like it was suppose to do. All first world problems, I know, but when you invest more than average money in hardware and software you hope for a more than average experience. I kind of think MacOS Catalina deserves the “Windows Vista of Apple” reputation that’s been building on the Internet.

It’s been a number of years since I attempted to install a Linux distribution natively on any Mac. I’ve been playing around with Ubuntu Linux (and a couple of other distributions) in Virtual Machines on the Mac, but they run very slow and they don’t give a fair assessment of the actual performance of Linux.

So last weekend I decided to bite the bullet and see about setting Ubuntu Linux up natively in a dual-boot configuration on my perfectly fine 2015 MacBook Pro.

It was surprisingly easy.

Apple packages a program called Boot Camp with Mac OS so you can set up a dual-boot configuration with Microsoft Windows. While older versions of Boot Camp allowed you to use this same program to setup a Linux partition on the hard drive, the latest version of Boot Camp doesn’t allow for this. It demands the presence of a Windows 10 ISO image. Maybe a way around this is hidden somewhere but I sure as heck couldn’t find it so I ended up partitioning the hard drive by hand. Once I backed up my important data that isn’t stored somewhere else (primarily my flying raw footage) I set about moving some space around to make room for Linux. It went easier than expected and in no time I was booting Ubuntu Linux off a USB drive I had created and I was off and running.

I decided to stay with the stock desktop environment that comes with Ubuntu Linux. It’s called Gnome 3. There’s a huge number of different desktop environments you can install on any distribution of Linux. It all depends on what you need, what you want, and what your resources are. The default setup works just fine on this 2015 MBP and the computer boots up in about a third of the time as MacOS Catalina.

I poked around the Internet after getting things installed and found a black/dark theme with gold highlights that I find amazingly pleasing to the eye. The default Ubuntu orange and purple is just fine, but I wanted to find something a little more distinctive. Back in the day of text terminals I always opted for an amber-on-black screen (versus green on black or white on black) and this color combination is a modern twist on the experience.

I’m still installing the applications I need, all at no cost by the way, and making some tweaks here and there but I haven’t felt this engaged with my laptop in a very long time. Battery life is stable, the fans aren’t screaming in agony, and the Retina display under Linux power is absolutely gorgeous.

I’ll be including updates as I continue to delve further back into the Linux experience and I can always answer any questions to the best of my ability, or at least steer you to the resources I use as well.

Happy computing!