Category: Databases, Smartphones & Computers

I had a horrible panic today. My blog(s) disappeared. My whole server disappeared. I couldn’t even access the “back end” via SSH, nor could I reboot it on the hosting website.

I’ve been lazy, the past few months. I had no current backup files. The most recent backup was what I had made before leaving on the huge road trip, in November. That would be 4 months of blogging disappeared, if the server was trashed.
I opened a help ticket with the hosting provider.
After several hours, it turned out to be a problem at the provider. The host machine, where my virtual server lives, had some technical issue, I guess. Maybe a guy tripped on an extension cord. Who knows.
Anyway, nothing was lost. But it was a stressful panic.
I have subsequently created up-to-date backups for both blogs, and some other data on my server. I also decided to invest in a $5 / month backup plan. Who knows, maybe my server host arranged this crash to drive business to the backup plan business? *Shrug*
Such is life.

One thing I did when I was in Portland two weeks ago was I bought a new laptop computer. I wanted to buy in the US because I could get a laptop with the Windows operating system in English – if you buy a laptop in Korea, it will speak Korean to you (meaning all the system error messages, all the setup and config, etc.), and Microsoft has a ridiculous policy whereby if you want to change an operating system's language, you have to buy the operating system again!

The reason to buy in Oregon, specifically, is that Oregon has no sales tax. So I bought the computer there. And now I have it here in Korea.

After more or less being content with my Linux-based resurrection of my old Korean desktop, it's a bit rough transitioning my computer habits back to Windows. Of course, I use Korean-speaking Windows at work, but I won't be taking my desktop back to the US, so I needed a new laptop for all my home-based stuff, especially my geofictioning and server-development hobby, such as it is. 

Windows 10 is smooth and professional, of course, but it really gets on my nerves. It makes assumptions about the way a person might want to work, which run counter to how I prefer to work.

I have hacked the registry numerous times, already, to get it to behave the way I want. In each case, the steps are as follows: 1) hack the registry to make visible some system option that is already built into the system, 2) set the option the way I want. Why do they hide these options? 

First and foremost, I had to kill off the deeply annoying Cortana. What is this, Clippy on opioids? Smooth but insidious, I was compelled to kill it off during my first hours of ownership. I have since had to find ways to prevent the system from insisting on connecting to my Microsoft account (if I want to share things with Microsoft, I'll do so on a case by case basis, right?), to prevent it from going to screen saver when I leave my computer unattended (how is this not a default-accessible option?), and to better manage how it behaves with respect to its power-management options. 

Sigh. I'll get used to it. 

Meanwhile, just for the heck of it, I got it running dual monitors, by hooking the laptop up to my desktop monitor as well as the laptop's. Thus, in the picture below, I can do email and websurfing on one monitor, while I hack around on my server on the other monitor.

[daily log: walking, 7.5km]

I suppose I always have a bit of doldrums around the equinox.

This past weekend was singularly frustrating. I was trying do computer things, with my little server. Trying to port an application I was playing with to a different database. And I just failed to figure it out. I guess I'm doing this computer stuff partly to challenge myself, because I've grown frustrated with my other "hobbies," such as they are (e.g. learning Korean, the geofiction thing, writing). So then I feel frustrated with this, too. So I have to just back off and let myself be "unproductive" I guess.

I'll go out and stroll in the spring drizzle.

[daily log: walking, 7.5km]

Today is one of those typical middle-of-the-week one day holidays: Korean independence day (which is to say, on March 1, 1919, Koreans declared independence – but they didn't achieve it until 1945 when the Americans nuked Japan).

I celebrate my own potential for independence by sitting and lurking in my little 9th floor cave, spending far too much time "hacking" on my computer.

I guess I see the value in doing this, in that I keep up an alternative set of skills, should this current "career" as a teacher ever become unsustainable for whatever reason.

So… I have been installing some development and deployment tools: I have both PostgreSQL and MySQL databases running, I have the mediawiki instance running, and now I have the nice Ruby-based open-source GIS web package up and running: the OpenStreetMap architecture, with both presentation (website with google-style "slippy map", but just on my desktop so far) and back-end (map tile generation – very rough, but working), though I haven't yet figured out how to customize or personalize it in any way – I have literally NEVER done anything with Ruby (website development language) before today. But… well, a website is a website, right? How hard can it be to figure out?

I think the next step is to install some kind of IDE. So far, I've just been doing everything with the linux terminal and gedit (a text editor like Windows' notepad).  I have never been fond of IDEs, but I doubt it's possible to work with anything of this level of complexity in the old, "hacker" style. I did use IDEs for my SQL dev work in the 2000s (mostly Visual Studio).

[daily log: walking, from directory to directory on my too-small hard drive]

One thing I spent some time on over my little holiday was in trying to cannibalize my old notebook computer.

I had this idea I could take out the hard drive and install it into my desktop. The notebook computer is the one I bought immediately prior to coming to Korea, in 2007, so it is 10 years old. The screen died a few years ago so I quit using it, but I had it lying around with this idea to salvage the hard drive, and I finally attempted it.

I succeeded in extracting it, and plugged it into my desktop (using the CD/DVD drive connectors – they're all standard connections, and plug together like legos). But the drive was unreadable. I guess it decayed or froze up or something.

Anyway it was fun taking the old notebook apart. In the picture: the hard drive on the lower right, the CPU is the little square thing in the middle right. It was a good computer, and served me well. At one point, I had it running three operating systems (triple boot: Linux, Windows 97, Windows Server). 

[daily log: walking, 7km]

This past week has been strange, as I took on – somewhat voluntarily – the challenge of "rescuing" my computer rather than just replacing it. I have a more-or-less functional Linux desktop working on my computer, but I've struggled with a basket of deplorable system configuration experiences. I'm stubborn, and I have this weird, "flow" state-of-mind that I get into as I try to solve software problems, that I don't particularly enjoy. I suppose it's why I was fairly successful in the computer and IT world, as I was last decade. But the negative aspects of the state bother me – affectively a bit "dead" feeling, and a bit too obsessive with feeling I must solve a given problem. These are the reasons I quit that career, and only a few days of returning to it, even part-time and in the context of my own computer at home, serve to remind me of why I quit.

I started having "code dreams" too, again, after their having faded away over the last few years. These are dreams that essentially consist of little more than staring at a screen and trying to solve some puzzling computer behavior. They're not nightmares, but they're plotless and vaguely kafkaesque-feeling. I call them "coder's fugue."

I had a whole string of them, all night last night. So I have decided to give this computer thing a rest, today – I mean, I still can use my computer, but I'm just trying to accept the aspects of its current set-up that annoy me, and not trying to fix them, and just getting up and doing something else if I feel frustrated by it.

[daily log: walking, 1.5km]

Mostly I don't post technical stuff on my blog, but I want to post this because it took a lot of googling and toubleshooting to solve the problem.

As mentioned in yesterday's post, for reasons having to do with a recent computer crash, I decided to give a try at using Linux again. I downloaded Ubuntu 16.04 and upgraded the never-used dual boot on my system, because my computer is currently USB-less, which has in turn left me mouseless. Linux offers more options for dealing with a mouseless computer, at least as a temporary stand-in until I can decide what kind of replacement or repair to do.

The reason I gave up on Linux before was because, as bad as I am at Korean, I still view having the ability to type in Korean on my home computer as an absolute necessity – a perusal of my blog will show why: I like to post my efforts at learning Korean, aphorisms, etc.

Ubuntu Linux (and other versions that I flirted with) has (had?) documented issues with keyboard internationalization. I had decided it was beyond my limited skills to deal with it. I couldn't get the "hangul toggle" to work: that is the keyboard button on Korean keyboards that lets users switch between ASCII (Roman alphabet) typing and hangul (Korean alphabet) typing.

This time, under 16.04, I gave it another try.  I did some googling to try to find if someone had found and documented a solution.

I found this page. It's in Korean, but the relevant Linux commands are there, and I could piece together the steps required to get things to work.

I followed the steps, and after a reboot (which had some frustrating, unrelated issues related to the weird way the Ubuntu-installed GRUB loader interacts with a Korean-speaking BIOS), the keyboard entry works!

After this, I also found this English-language discussion of a slightly different method, which someone can be free to try as well.

And now I can say, from this Linux window: 문재를 해결했습니다!

[daily log: walking, 7km]

I'm having kind of a horrible day.

My computer had a weird kind of crash, this morning. I think the hard drive is fine, but the ports bus seems partly burned out, so a bunch of the devices have become "invisible." Based on some rudimentary troubleshooting, I think it's a hardware problem rather than a software problem, since the problems are the same under Linux as they are under Windows.

I'm running under Linux at the moment, because it's easier to use Linux with a non-functioning mouse – which is one of the fatalities of this problem. I have no speakers, no mouse, no ability to plug in external storage – nothing USB works. I might be able to get a functioning mouse if I could find one of the old PC style mouses, but they're not sold in stores anymore – I have a quite old PC style keyboard I'm using, but the spacebar is "floppy" and the backspace is erratic. I am FTPing my most important files to my rarely-used server, because I guess I need to buy a new computer, and lacking USB ports means I have no other simple means of extracting data from my harddrive.

I went to the store earlier intending to shell out and buy a new computer, but changed my mind at the last minute because I feel such a major investment needs to be better thought out beforehand. Anyway, buying a Korean-speaking, Microsoft Windows computer is a major undertaking. Korean Windows is really the only option here – English-language Windows is possible as a pirated version, but every time I've tried to do an "official" upgrade I've been driven away by impossible-to-understand websites mediating the process – not to mention the exorbitant price MS charges for the English version in Korea. Korean Windows will mean spending a day with a dictionary in one hand and the system set-up windows on the screen, as I walk through getting it all working they way I want. Maybe I'll give a try at going to Linux full-time, again – it's been a few years since I last tried that, which might be enough time for them to have sorted out the truly annoying language-support issues that drove me away from it before.

I'll sleep on it.

[daily log: walking, 3km]

When I was in middle school, we had an Apple ][ computer. I messed around with programming – not very seriously, but I taught myself the rudiments of the MOS 6502 Assembler ("machine language"). The 6502 is perhaps one of the most famous CPUs in the history of personal computing, since not only was it the CPU in the first Apple computers, it was also the heart of early Nintendo and Atari game systems. Even today, there are "6502 fan clubs" and "retro computing hobbyists" focused on the platform.

Later, in college, I took a few computer science courses (enough to make a minor), including an assembly language programming class, at that point in time based on the platform of the Motorola 68000 (the CPU in the Macintoshes of the era). I'd had some chance to experience one of that chip's ancestors when in middle school, too, because my uncle had brought home a project he was working on involving a Motorola 6800.

That assembly language class was undoubtedly the most valuable computer science class I took, because if you can make something work in assembly language, you have a genuine understanding of how computers actually work, and this provides an excellent foundation for any future programming efforts.  I have long believed that assembly programming should be a foundational course in high school curricula – for all students, at the same level as courses like math, physics or biology. 

During the time I was taking that course (1988?), I dug out an already-at-that-time antiquated Apple ㅍ, and with some help from my friend Mark (who at that time was starting his career in embedded systems), I began writing a Lisp language interpreter for the Apple, using the 6502 Assembler directly, and using my battered, red-covered reference manual preserved from the middle school years (the picture at right was found using an online image search, but it looks exactly like my old copy).

I didn't really get much further than the rudiments of my interpreter – I think I got it to respond to some kind of "hello world" instruction, in the vein of

(DEFUN HELLO ()
"HELLO WORLD"
)
(HELLO)

I was unable to solve the "garbage collection" problem (memory management), and I never took the Operating Systems Design course that could have given me the understanding necessary to do that. But it was fun. Recently, remembering this activity, and aware that your average internet browser tab has much more abstract computing power than a 6502 chip, I was curious if there were 6502 emulators available.

Sure enough, there are. Many, many emulators – google is your friend, if you're interested. 

Not only are there emulators, but someone has taken the time to construct a fully-functioning "virtual 6502" which is visual – meaning you can watch the signals step through the fully mapped processor as it executes its instructions. You could run Space Invaders on the emulator (if you could find a compiled code for it), and watch the processor step through the execuation of the classic game.

Given I am a nerdly geek, this was interesting to me.

[daily log: walking, 7km]

I have to say this – the “Windows Update” service sucks.
Perhaps there is some technical way to control when it decides to run its various processes. I was never able to figure it out – perhaps I was somewhat hindered by the fact that the computers I was working with are Korean language versions of Windows (and it should be noted, Microsoft charges money to change the language of your operating system, which strikes me as a cruel scam), and my Korean just isn’t that good.

The experience I have had with Windows 7 is that the Windows Update kicks off various memory-intensive processes basically whenever it wants. These processes, linked to what is called the “TrustedInstaller,” are not the same as the timing of the download of the updates, which can be scheduled (see screenshot, above).
These processes use so much memory (the amount of which I couldn’t seem to regulate, cap or control) that it essentially prevents one from using the computer while they are running. As I said, these processes kick off on what seems an essentially random schedule (some experimentation showed that it was often, but not always, within the first few hours of connecting the machine to the internet after having been turned off or having been disconnected). It’s a common enough problem that you can find other people complaining about it online with google searches, but most commenters seem seem to relegate it to the category of an annoyance, rather than considering it a major problem.
For me, it was a major problem. I don’t use my computer all the time at work – obviously, when I am in the classroom, I’m not using it. But when I need to do something on it, I need to do something right then. I can’t sit around and wait for some Windows Update trustedinstaller.exe doohickey to finish monopolizing the memory. I’m on a 4-minute break between classes, and I have run to the staff room because need to go on my computer to print something for a student, or I need to search for a file on my computer, etc. I would keep the “processes running” window open my computer, just so at least I could decide right away whether my computer was going to be useful to me or not.
Lowering the priority on the process thread connnected to the svchost.exe process that encloses the trustedinstaller services involved in these processes didn’t prevent them from making my computer unusable. Killing off any of the svchost processes isn’t an option, as they tend to bundle things you really need, like network connectivity, with things you really don’t need, like Window Update. The only solution is to disable the process.
So, finally, I simply disabled Windows Update. What is it doing, anyway? All these alleged virus vulnerabilities… sometimes I feel like it’s just so much technohypochondria, really. If I have a major problem on my computer, I have it all backed up – I learned my lesson long ago, about that. I would never lose more than a day or two’s worth of work. I put everything important and long-term in google-docs. Maybe I would be best off at this point with a chromebook. But I need Windows because this is Korea – Microsoft owns the Korean OS space, and so I get too much stuff from coworkers, bosses, and students, that is Windows-reliant, Internet Explorer (i.e. ActiveX) -reliant, and/or MS Office-centered. I actually have Ubuntu Linux installed on my work computer, and sometimes I open it just for a breath of fresh air, but the interoperability issues quickly end those experiments.
Anyway, disabling Windows Update prevents these memory-intensive processes, and I can use my computer when I need to, without these annoyances.
Sometimes, I leave my computer on and turn the Windows Update back on when I leave work, so it can still do its update thing if it wants.
Since I disabled Windows Update, I’ve experienced a noticeable improvement in my mood at work. I no longer dread having to run to my computer to do something for a student between classes. I no longer have to tell a student, on a nearly daily basis, “I’m sorry, I’ll get that paper to you later, I can’t open it on my computer right now.”
For anyone reading this: 1) if you’re having the same problem, just disable Windows Update – you’ll survive fine; 2) if you have some advice for how to get my (Korean-speaking) Windows 7 to only run these memory-intensive process on some fixed schedule, please let me know – I gave up trying to figure it out.
Posting this here is probably inviting some various denominations of fanboy trolling, but I guess I’ll just deal with that – comments are moderated and often ignored.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]