Airtable 3

11 February 2016 by Roger Cavanagh Leave a Comment

The structure of my Airtable demo database continues to evolve. I changed the name from “Businesses” to “Clients” and have settled on these tables as the basis for exploring how Airtable works in use rather than design.

This simple diagram shows the tables and fields in the demo database.

I’ve decided to do this by describing different scenarios. I’m just going to write about these as they occur, so my apologies if there isn’t much sense to the organisation.

Previous posts about Airtable are here.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Personal Computing Tagged With: airtable, database

Airtable Part 2

9 February 2016 by Roger Cavanagh Leave a Comment

In a recent post I introduced Airtable, a cloud-based database app available as a web client and an iOS app. In this post I’ll describe building a simple database. I have not done any real design for this (making it up as I go along), but the basic idea is for a client management system for some company (I’ll call it ABC) selling some unspecified products and services. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Personal Computing Tagged With: airtable, database

Airtable

8 February 2016 by Roger Cavanagh 2 Comments

A very long time ago I used to earn a living writing database applications on PCs. One early project for a fleet transport system was won over competition from KPMG. I remember being pretty chuffed about that at the time. So I’ve always had a soft spot for database software. I first saw Airtable mentioned in a post by Federico Viticci on MacStories. When the iPad app version appeared, I decided to give it a try.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Personal Computing Tagged With: airtable, database, iOS

Don’t Be Hacker Bait: Do This One-Hour Security Drill

4 February 2016 by Roger Cavanagh Leave a Comment

Do this one-hour digital security checklist to boost your data privacy and protect all your devices from hackers.

Source: Don’t Be Hacker Bait: Do This One-Hour Security Drill – WSJ

Good advice from the Wall Street Journal.

Filed Under: Personal Computing, Work Smarter Tagged With: security, wsj

Adobe’s Sleazy Customer Management

20 December 2015 by Roger Cavanagh 1 Comment

I started to use Adobe Photoshop a good few years ago and spent a good chunk of money on upgrades over the years. When Adobe changed to a subscription model, I decided that a monthly sub of a bit under 9 GBP for Photoshop and Lightroom was reasonable. However, for various reasons, I used the software less and less: in the last six months, I’ve done no image processing with Lightroom and opened Photoshop maybe twice.

Nine quid a month for nothing isn’t reasonable so I logged on to my Adobe account see about cancelling my sub. Here was revealed the first bit of sleazy behaviour: there is no way to cancel on the account management page. You have to contact Adobe by chat line or phone. Already I’m expecting some hassle. Anyway, I elected for chat line and after a short wait, Chinthana appeared.

I explained I wanted to cancel because I wasn’t getting any value as I wasn’t using the software. This lead to the second sleazy manoeuvre: I was offered next month free if I carried on with the subscription. At this point, I should point out that the Adobe CC subscription is an annual subscription payable monthly. No doubt, I knew this when I signed up, but had forgotten. Adobe doesn’t remind you very often. I get an invoice each month that includes the line:

“Your Creative Cloud membership will renew automatically each month until you cancel.”

It seems to me it’s reasonable to suppose that I could cancel anytime with a month’s notice. Chinthana explained that the small print doesn’t say this: it says you can cancel, but you have to pay 50% of the remaining annual subscription— 32.48 GBP in my case. By this time, I was pissed off and responded:

“I will pay this under protest. I think this policy is disgraceful for a customer who has paid the sub for at least two years.”

Time for sleazy tactic number 3: I was offered two free months to see out my subscription. The conversation continued:

Roger Cavanagh: No. How many times do I have to repeat myself? I want to cancel. I am getting no value for my money as I do not use the software anymore.
Chinthana: Okay. Are you okay with the cancellation fee?
Roger Cavanagh: No I am not OK with the cancellation fee, but no doubt, the small print says I have to pay it.
Roger Cavanagh: The monthly bill you send says: “Your Creative Cloud membership will renew automatically each month until you cancel.” It does not say, “and you will be charged to leave”.

At this point, Chinthana said he would check with his supervisor. After a little while, he came back on line and said his supervisor had agreed to waive the fee. Now I’m sure than Chinthana does have a supervisor, but I’m not all sure that he asked permission to waive the cancellation charge. It’s more likely that the workflow got to a point that tells the agent to give up and let the customer off.

So I got what I wanted: cancellation. Adobe got almost one month’s sub for nothing because my last payment was only a couple of days ago and I have already uninstalled the software. But I am left with a much-reduced opinion of the company.

Filed Under: Personal Computing Tagged With: adobe, cancellation, Creative Cloud, subscription

Georgia

2 December 2015 by Roger Cavanagh Leave a Comment

I’m not going to do a full-blown review of my new iPad Pro, which I’ve christened Georgia (it’s just easier to keep track of the all the iPads and iPhones when they have proper names).

This is what I wrote in DayOne on the day that Georgia was delivered.

These are some impressions from using the iPad Pro for a week or so. The Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil arrived yesterday, so I’ll gradually expand this post before I publish it.

Georgia is no lightweight. You can hold the iPad Pro with one hand, but I wouldn’t want to for any length of time. But I was surprised how quickly I got used to the size. The first evening I sat on the sofa playing with Georgia, installing apps, organising folders and just generally trying different things out. After a few hours, I put Georgia aside and picked up Nikki to take her to bed. Nikki—my iPad Air 2—seemed tiny. [Read more…]

Filed Under: apple, Personal Computing Tagged With: apple, iPad, iPad Pro

After Paris Attacks, Here’s What the CIA Director Gets Wrong About Encryption

17 November 2015 by Roger Cavanagh Leave a Comment

It’s not about having enough data; it’s a matter of not knowing what to do with the data they already have.

Source: After Paris Attacks, Here’s What the CIA Director Gets Wrong About Encryption | WIRED

An interesting article on Wired, it makes several key points against backdoor encryption:

Backdoors Won’t Combat Home-Brewed Encryption.
(There are) Other Ways to Get Information
Encryption Doesn’t Obscure Metadata
Backdoors Make Everyone Vulnerable

Filed Under: Life, The Universe…, Personal Computing Tagged With: CIA, encryption, Wired

More Reasons To Feel Old

26 March 2015 by Roger Cavanagh Leave a Comment

I have just started reading Becoming Steve Jobs by Brent Schlender and Rick TetzeIi. This early section made me feel very old. Clearly, the authors deemed it necessary to explain in very simple terms what mainframes and punched cards are.

After settling on the problem you wanted the machine to solve, you would painstakingly write down, in a programming language like COBOL or Fortran, a series of line-by-line, step-by-step instructions, for the exact, logical process of the calculation or the analytical chore. Then, at a noisy mechanical console, you would type each individual line of the handwritten program onto to its own rectangular “punch card”, which was perforated in such a way that the computer could “read” it. After meticulously making sure the typed cards were in the right order—simple programs might require a few dozen cards that could be held by a rubber band, while elaborate programs could require reams that would have to be stacked carefully in a cardboard box. You would then hand the bundle to a computer “operator”, who would put your deck in the queue behind dozens of others to be fed into mainframe. Eventually, the machine would spit out your results on broad sheets of green-and-white striped accordion-folded paper. More often than not, you would have to tweak your program three, four, or even dozens of time to get the results you were looking for.

Clearly, the authors expected that most of the readers would have no clue about this era of computer use. I’m not sure, though, why they deemed it necessary to put so many “words” in quotation marks. And the authors either never used punched cards themselves, or they have forgotten that a successful run by no means meant you got “the results you were looking for”.

There’s been a certain amount of broohaha about the new book with some complaining of hagiography, but people close to Steve Jobs, like Tim Cook and Jony Ive, claim it gives a more balanced and realistic view of the man they knew than the [official biography][4] by Walter Isaacson. Here’s John Gruber’s take on the issues with the Isaacson book and his response to negative criticism of Becoming Steve Jobs.

Filed Under: Books, Personal Computing Tagged With: biography, brent schlender, John Gruber, punched cards, Rick Tetzeli, Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson

BBC Video: Storedot turbo-boosts battery recharges

7 January 2015 by Roger Cavanagh Leave a Comment

The BBC has been given an exclusive look at a new kind of battery charger that can recharge a modern smartphone in less time than it takes to boil a kettle.

via BBC News – CES 2015: Storedot turbo-boosts battery recharges.

Gosh!

Filed Under: Life, The Universe…, Personal Computing Tagged With: battery, battery charger, bbc, mobile, Storedot, technology

Wireless Media Shenanigans

5 December 2014 by Roger Cavanagh Leave a Comment

This is a two part post. The second part was written several weeks after the first. They describe my attempt to get video playback of iTunes movies and TV programmes using a wireless hard disk.

Part 1: Pre Holiday

I wrote about the Seagate Wireless Plus just over a year ago. Since then I’ve used it occasionally, and on the whole, it has performed well. Problems of dropped connections and occasional flakiness seem to have been fixed by various firmware and software upgrades… Until IOS 8, which has somehow interfered with the playback of DRM content from iTunes. The selection of a film or TV programme from within the media manager correctly opens Safari for playback, but loading never completes and the movie never plays.