Track a Tech

Ongoing data-loss with Lion

So I got an official response from the bug reporting team over at Apple about the Lion data-loss bug with non-local volumes (see here and here).

There response was short and extremely unhelpful.

Currently, if want to close and undo any changes, you must hit Cancel then Revert to Last Opened/Saved, or use Versions to revert. Then, when you want to close again, you should just hit “Close”.

I sent them a very frustrated response.

I’m sorry, but I can’t consider this to be anything other than a Microsoft level answer (which is not a compliment, by the way). We have 80 users who all work on a central Mac OS X File Server. And I am supposed to tell them that in order to work with ANY file on the server they have to remember to “hit Cancel then Revert to Last Opened/Saved and then Close again” a few hundred times a day as they work with their files on the server?

And while I’m telling them this I am suppose to continue to maintain that Apple is a better product than Windows, despite the fact that an Apple client OS cannot work with files on an Apple server OS without erasing their content?

Take 10 people who, for the past 20 years, have had the ability to close a document and click “Do not Save”. Don’t give them any instructions on how to do things “the new way” and see how many of them manage to overwrite their original content. The user interface is very confusing and a very poor design to not provide users with a way, visually, to know what to do. They have the option to “close and overwrite” or “cancel and leave open”. That is all they will see and all they will understand.

I am extremely disappointed with this kind of answer from Apple to a severe data-loss bug.

Sadly, at this point, if this is their official response I don’t expect to see this ever resolved. I fully expect Apple’s official stance to be, “That is the way it is now so get used to it.” They have made those kinds of changes before where people don’t like them (including me at times), but you get used to it because you don’t have a choice. However, none of those have resulted in a data loss. Changing the way iCal, Mail, Finder, Spotlight, etc. look does not cause you to lose data if you click the wrong (and confusing) button. This change does.

If you had 18 months to live, what would you do?

Over the weekend I was sick and left with nothing to do but sit on the couch, watch TV, try to eat, and watch the piles of trash grow. Sometimes it’s really nice being single. Being sick? Not one of those times. With all that time on my hands I had lots of time to think about stuff and this is one of the things that kept coming to mind. Not specifically the “if you had 18 months to live” part as I don’t know of any reason why I should die in the near future; but the part about “what would you do” differently with your life gave me a lot of reasons to think.

So the questions stands. Lets say you faint one day and they take you to the doctor just to be checked out. During the checkup the doctor finds something wrong with you and must give you the unfortunate news that you have a terminal illness that can’t be cured. You have 18 months to live, the last 6 of which you will likely spend in the hospital slowly fading away. Now that you have returned home you must decide what to do now. You essentially have 12 months left to live life. Do you just keep going the way you have been or would you change the way you’ve been living.

I think we would all say that we’d change the way we’ve been living our lives. It’s natural to decide that we want “the most out of life” and try to “live life to the full” if we realize that we are going to die. I don’t mean we want to go run around spending money we don’t have because we don’t have to worry about paying it off. But haven’t we always wanted to take a road trip across the U.S.? Haven’t we wanted to travel to another country? Didn’t we always want to do one thing or another? We intended to spend more time with our family, right? We meant to make it to more of those family dinners. Our plan was to hang out with our friends instead of working late to get that extra buck. It was our intention… We planned… We wanted… But we just never got around to actually doing it did we?

But why should we want to change the way we live? Doesn’t that mean we aren’t happy with the way are are currently living? I mean, you don’t change something that’s perfect, right?

I won’t say I’ve always wanted to travel to another country. It’s outside my comfort zone. But I have always thought it would be fun to go. I have, however, always thought going on a backpacking trip would be a lot of fun. Spending a week out hiking and camping with nothing but what I can carry. I’ve always wanted to help people. I have a servant’s heart, I find joy in doing simple tasks for others to make their lives easier. Because of that I’ve thought many times that I would enjoy helping out in a soup kitchen or with some similar group that helps people who don’t have enough.

If I was told that I was going to die, I think I would try to do as many of those things as I could in the time I had left. I wouldn’t be able to do everything I would like since I don’t have that much money. But I would sure try to do as many of the things I have always wanted to do but “just never got around to it.”

So why should I change the way I live? I’ve been on this world for 30 years. I would say that means I’m at-least half way through my “useful” life, in terms of what I can accomplish. I mean, I really don’t expect to be going backpacking out in the wild when I’m 60. So if I’m this far along in my life and haven’t accomplished anything in my life that I would like to; doesn’t that mean I don’t care about doing those things? So again, why should I change and suddenly start trying to do a bunch of stuff that I’m not already trying to do.

Why am I not already doing the things I’d like to do? Why do I wake up, go to work, go home and then sit on the couch until I go to bed and start all over again the next day. There are things I want to do. So why should I wait? Why am I not doing them now?

Why should each of us not be doing the things we want to do? Why do we waste away worrying about today, worrying about tomorrow, worrying about every little thing. What we should really be doing is living for today. Living for tomorrow. Living for every little thing. We still need to keep all the other things in mind, but we can’t make worrying the thing we live for.

For me, I have the chance to go to Africa on a missions trip with some I.T. guys from a few other churches early next year. Our goal is to help a school and hospital in Kenya get a new phone system installed (although maybe it is just a phone system as I’m not sure if they currently have one).  I don’t know how it will turn out. I don’t know if I will end up glad that I went. But I’m tired of just sitting around thinking of the things that I would like to do. Instead I want to do some things.

There are other things I’d like to do. Other things I think I’m going to try to actually do.  I know I can’t just do them all at once, but I want to make an effort. I want to try to live my life doing things instead of just thinking about things I’d like to do.

I want to change the way I live so that if a doctor ever tells me that I won’t be alive in 18 months I will be able to smile and say “so what? It won’t change the way I live.”

Anime Review: El Cazador de la Bruja, Spider Riders, Fairy Tail

El Cazador de la Bruja

Nadie is a bounty hunter who is after a young girl named Ellis.  Ellis has blanks in her memory and doesn’t really remember what she did or why people are after her. Ellis has powers that she doesn’t understand but thinks they are the answer to her lost memories. Nadie goes with her as they travel south to find some answers. The appearance of their surroundings gives the feeling that they are traveling through Arizona and Mexico area on their travels. Nadie and Ellis run into various dangers including other bounty hunters and a secret society, as well as a few re-occurring friends that help them out from time to time. And don’t forget the super tasty tacos!

Summary: Great show with some good story plots as well as some simply fun episodes. I really hope they someday make a season 2.
Seasons: 1
Season length: 26 episodes
Episode length: 23 minutes
Content: Mostly clean. There is some violence in it and was probably some inappropriate material, but it has been awhile so I don’t remember clearly.

Spider Riders

11-year-old Hunter Steel has always heard from his grandfather about the “inner world” and one day decides to go find it. Following the hints that his grandfather had left him Hunter travels to an old cave and has a bracelet attach itself to his arm. Hunter immediately falls into a hole and finds himself in a place called Arachna, where warriors ride on giant spiders to defend themselves. Through a series of adventures Hunter and his friends battle to save Arachna from the invaders who are trying to take it over. Now, this is completely a kids program but is very entertaining for myself to watch as well.

Summary: A great kids show that still has entertainment value for adults.
Seasons: 1
Season length: 52 episodes
Episode length: 23 minutes
Content: Completely clean.

Fairy Tail

In the land of Fiore, magic is everywhere. Sorcerers are like skilled tradesmen who band together in “guilds” and take on paying assignments for non-magic wielders, like hunting monsters, retrieving lost items or running odd errands. Natsu, Gray, Erza and Lucy are a group of wizards in the guild Fairy Tail who have banded together to take care of larger jobs as well as their friends. There is not a single storyline that the series follows but rather multiple story arcs that each last about 8-12 episodes. Between each story arc is usually one or two stand-alone episodes. While each story arc is very interesting and has a great plot, what really puts this show over the top for me is the great music. The music is simply fantastic and really adds to the excitement of the show. The show is currently only available in Japanese with English subtitles (and is still being developed and created). This is also one of the few shows whose soundtrack album I really like. Most have 2 or 3 songs that are good and catchy. More than half the tracks of Fairy Tail’s soundtrack are catchy and in my regular playlist.

Summary: A great show, with a great plot and great music to back it up. It’s hard to go wrong here!
Seasons: 3 (and counting)
Season length: 48 episodes
Episode length: 23 minutes
Content: 99.9% clean. I’ve watched 80 episodes so far and only one has had anything inappropriate and it wasn’t explicit.

Automatically forget wireless networks

Our wireless network uses WPA Enterprise, which requires users to enter both their username and their password.  We do this for two reasons. First we like the extra security.  Second, we like to be able to track down who was doing what on the network if an issue ever comes up.

We also have a number of “general use” laptops that people can use for various purposes, powerpoint presentations, weekend services, working away from their desk, etc. As such, on these laptops we don’t want the system to remember and automatically reconnect to the wireless network with the previous users identity credentials.  Here is the documentation for what we did to make this possible.

First, you will want to go into the System Preferences, Network, and go to the Advanced settings on the AirPort adapter. The Remember networks this computer has joined should be turned off. You know that little checkbox that asks if you want to remember this network that is checked by default? This makes it unchecked by default. Not perfect, but much more helpful. Second the Disconnect when logging out should be turned on. This will, as it says, disconnect from the airport when the user logs out. Just a helpful cleanup.

Next we use a LogoutHook script to reset a few things on the laptop. There are actually 2 scripts, but one just calls the other. I decided to create a single LogoutHook.sh script that calls all the other logout hook scripts, in case I decide to add more in the future. You want both these scripts owned by root, the easiest way to do this is via Terminal and use sudo nano filename to edit the file.

You will want to create the following script in /usr/local/bin/LogoutHook.sh

#!/bin/sh
#

/usr/bin/logger -i "Running Logout Hooks..."

/usr/local/bin/airport-cleanup.sh

/usr/bin/logger -i "Finished with Logout Hooks..."

You will then need to mark the script as executable: sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/LogoutHook.sh

Next create the cleanup script in /usr/local/bin/airport-cleanup.sh

#!/bin/sh
#
# This script is designed to be run as root via the LogoutHook system.
# It's purpose is to ensure that the airport system has been disconnected
# and all EAP entries have been removed. It also restores the keychain
# to a vanilla keychain if one exists.
#

AIRPORT="/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport"

#
# Disconnect from the airport network and remove all preferred networks.
#
$AIRPORT -z
/usr/sbin/networksetup -removeallpreferredwirelessnetworks AirPort

#
# Delete any EAP 802.1x profiles.
#
rm -f /Users/*/Library/Preferences/com.apple.eap.profiles.plist
rm -f /Users/*/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.eap.bindings.*

Again, mark the script as executable: sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/airport-cleanup.sh

Finally, you need to register the LogoutHook script in the system:
sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LogoutHook “/usr/local/bin/LogoutHook.sh”

Now, every time a user logs out it should “de-configure” the airport settings.  If somebody manually checks the Remember this network checkbox when connecting to the wireless network, it will save the password in their keychain.  This will not cause an automatic reconnect or anything, it just leaves it around. So far this script setup has worked well for us.

Apple TV Plays Digital Audio Out of Sync

So I updated my Apple TV to iOS 4.4 (aka iOS 5) the other day and immediately ran into a problem.  All of my movies/TV shows that had a Dolby Digital audio track were playing with the audio out of sync by about 1/2 second.  The 2.0 channel audio played perfectly, and these same files played correctly just a few hours before. I also tried using AirPlay to send the videos to the Apple TV with the same results.  Oddly enough, when I went to Netflix and played Psych (has a Dolby Digital audio track) it played perfectly in-sync.

After some troubleshooting and trying various random things, including 2 full resets, I finally tracked down the problem.  If the screen-saver type is set to Random then the digital audio tracks play with a 1/2 second delay.  If I pick a specific screen saver, everything plays correctly.  So for now I have selected a specific screen-saver instead of letting it randomly pick one.

One more random bug in Apple’s latest updates.

Anime Review: Demon King Daimao, Moeyo Ken, Ouran High School Host Club

Demon King Daimao

The basic plot is sound and entertaining, as much of the plot as I saw. I got through only one and a half episodes before I turned it off. The story would seem to revolve around a single guy who is learning the way of a magician, but is destined to become the Demon King, or destroyer of the world. He’s surrounded by girls (and another guy) who are either trying to kill him or they trust him and try to help him out. Unfortunately it seems like clothing is an optional thing. Pretty much every time magic is used it seems like the girls’ clothes get blown off or ripped to shreds.

Summary: It would have been a great show if clothing wasn’t flying off every few minutes.
Seasons: 1
Season length: 12 episodes
Episode length: 23 minutes
Content: Completely unclean, to the point of being obscene.

Moeyo Ken

The storyline of this one sounded interesting. It wasn’t a terrible plot but definitely not my kind of entertainment. It wasn’t that it was terrible in terms of the content (I managed to get through a few episodes before I decided to move on). It just felt like I was watching a love story when I expected to be watching an action flick. You would think the story is about a group of girls trying to stop monsters (and is what I thought from reading the plot summary) but really it is about that same group of girls trying to get their bosses son to stay in Japan instead of going back to China to marry his fiancé. To do that they decide he needs to fall in love with a “local girl”. Hence, the love story. I don’t mind love stories but it just didn’t mesh for me with the underlying “stop monsters” theme – that and it started showing too much flesh.

Summary: Eh. I could have done without, wasn’t that riveting of a storyline.
Seasons: 1
Season length: 13 episodes
Episode length: 24 minutes
Content: Not terrible, but there is a fair amount of flesh being shown off every few episodes it seems.

Ouran High School Host Club

This is hands down one of the funniest TV shows I have seen in a long time. The premise says it all: Haruhi walks into the host club room while looking for an empty room to study in and breaks some valuable vase. He is then coerced into joining the Host Club to help entertain the ladies to pay off the cost of the vase. The Host Club is a bunch of boys that entertain the girls of the school, nothing shady but the guys are expected to make the girls happy – only Haruhi isn’t a guy, he’s actually a girl dressed as a guy because she had to cut her hair real short just before school started. Comedy ensues as the rest of the Host Club tries to keep Haruhi working for them without anybody figuring out she is actually a girl. Haruhi quickly learns to just accept her fate and enjoy the opportunity to spend time with the guys, her new friends. But there is only so much of these guys she can take, especially when they follow her on summer vacation!

Summary: Really enjoyed this one. Very funny while being extremely clean. Intend to watch this one again sometime.
Seasons: 1
Season length: 26 episodes
Episode length: 24 minutes
Content: Very clean. Two of the characters (brothers) are “sort of” gay with each other though nothing ever happens – if this would bother you then don’t watch it, but it didn’t bother me at all.

Lion 10.7.2 Update

Well Apple released a 10.7.2 the other day.  It quietly “fixed” the data-loss bug that occurs on network (and other non-internal storage).  And by fixed I mean they mocked us entirely. So now doing the same test, I open an image off the file server in Preview and crop it, print it, and then try to close it without saving. Preview will now helpfully tell me that if I close the file I will not have access to the “older versions” (original) of the document. Great, I can click “Don’t Save” now right? Wrong. The two buttons available are Cancel and Close. If you still want to close without saving you have to “Revert to Last Saved” and then close the file. Oh wait, when I do that it STILL gives me the same warning even though I have reverted my changes; so I will still have users confused about what is going on.

While I appreciate Apple’s attempt to fix the problem, I think they still don’t realize how big an issue this is. They seem to think this is a minor issue that will only affect a few people and therefore a half-hearted attempt to fix the problem is in order. The problem is, they implemented a fundamental new way to save files in the core OS that they cannot easily change without breaking applications. Unfortunately this means that we will probably never get what we want which is the ability to disable Auto Save instead of these patchwork solutions to try and work around the real problem.

I hate to be this critical of Apple, but all this change will do is increase my help desk load with people calling me asking (1) how they are supposed to close without saving since there is no Don’t Save button or (2) what happened to their original file because they clicked Close anyway since there was really no other choice. What that dialog needs is Cancel, Close Without Saving, or Save and Close buttons. While I appreciate their attempt to “fix” the data-loss bug, this doesn’t really fix it. It just attempts to push the blame off of Apple and onto our users “because they don’t know how to properly use the computer” or on us “because you didn’t train them properly”.

Thanks for the attempt, but that is kind of like letting somebody get in a car, drive an hour to a movie theatre and then when they try to turn off the ignition warn them that if they turn off the car they won’t be able to turn it back on unless they drive home first. Yea, thanks for the warning, but I still need to get our of my car.

iOS 5 New Features

As a member of the iOS developer program, I have had early access to iOS 5 beta for some time now. I first installed it with Beta 3 in mid-july on my personal iPhone.  Being that I am a part-time developer and don’t have thousands of dollars to buy multiple iPod touches, iPads and iPhones to keep various iOS versions on as Apple recommends (bull-*cough*-crap), I only have my iPhone to use. This means I live on the edge a bit and have to deal with glitches in the system, but it also means I learn very quickly what new features are available, since I am using it all day long.

Most of the information I am presenting here I am writing while still in the Beta stage, so some things may have changed since I wrote them. But being a good, honest Apple Developer Program member (okay, mostly honest), I didn’t want to post this until iOS 5 was officially out. This is also not a comprehensive list. I am only including things that I think people will be interested to know about and may not initially realize.

Background Syncing

The first feature I noticed right off the bat is that iOS 5 performs background syncing with iTunes. Remember all those times you’ve started a long sync process on your device and then wanted to look something up on it real quick (maybe a text message, or address book entry, whatever) and couldn’t because of that stupid “Slide to cancel” message while it was syncing? No more! You now get the normal “Slide to unlock” message and can use your device while iTunes is still syncing. For example, I can browse the web while iTunes is syncing to my phone. I can send text messages, play a game, etc.

There are some things that don’t work so well. For example, currently iTunes is syncing my entire music library because it was a full device restore (3,420 songs takes awhile to sync). Trying to run the Music application while iTunes is syncing my music library causes it to hang and I have to “force quit” it. All in all, though, I like the new feature. I don’t often use my phone while it is syncing, but I have more than once had to cancel a sync so I could get to some bit of information and then resume the sync.

By the way, there is now a small spinning sync icon in the status bar on the iOS device telling you that it is actively syncing. I personally haven’t tried pulling the sync cable while it is syncing, but I wouldn’t recommend doing it on purpose.

WiFi Syncing

WiFi syncing is not news to most people since it has been talked about and shows up right in the iTunes window as an option. It does, however, have some cool features and there are some things to know about it before you decide to just turn it on and forget about it.

First off, WiFi syncing is slower than USB. To be honest, I expected WiFi to be faster. Yes I know, USB 2.0 is 480Mbps and WiFi is only 150Mbps. But watching my phone sync via USB and the speed it takes to sync movies, for example, makes it feel like it isn’t even close to the full speed of USB 2.0. And since the USB sync always felt so slow I figured a good 802.11n network connection should be able to do better. No, it can’t. WiFi is noticeably slower than USB.

The ability to have my phone sync to my computer while still in my pocket, however, is very cool. And the ability to have it sync automatically overnight is even more cool. For me, though, I sync my phone to my desktop computer at work. My only other option is my laptop which I don’t leave open and running overnight anyway. So the automatic nightly sync does me no good. Also, leaving the WiFi syncing enabled seems to keep my phone connected to WiFi even when locked (which it didn’t before) which seems to put a noticeable drain on my battery. Usually by the end of the day my phone is only down to around 80% battery. The 3 days I had WiFi syncing enabled, by 5pm when I left work my battery was down closer to 40%. This may be because it detects my desktop (which it is “paired” to) on the network and therefore keeps the WiFi active so that I can do a WiFi sync (which can be initiated from iTunes or the iPhone). So if you sync to your home computer you may not have the same problem of having your phone connected to your work’s WiFi for 8 hours.

One bit of good news on the WiFi sync is the ability to seamlessly switch from WiFi sync to USB sync. If I start a WiFi sync session on my phone and then plug it into my computer mid-sync it almost instantly switches over to USB and the speed improves dramatically. So if you start a sync on WiFi and then realize it has a lot of data to transfer, just plug it in via USB and let it keep going.

Hourly Weather

Maybe other people already knew about this, but I found it by accident. The supplied Weather app now has hourly weather forecasts. When looking at the weather screen simply tap on the screen and it will show you the hourly information which you can then scroll through.

As I said, I found it by accident so you may not know it is there. I can’t say I would use it a lot, but if I was planning a day at the beach or a picnic or something else it would be nice to get to this more detailed weather report. You can also, by the way, sync the little spinning sync icon in the top-left next to the WiFi icon. I took this screenshot while my phone was syncing to iTunes.

Notification Center

Yes, another item you already know about. But I just wanted to give you a quick bit of information on it that again you may not ever know about unless you happened to accidentally trigger it or specifically wanted to know if it worked and tried it (like I did). The notification center can be pulled down to sliding your finger down from the status bar right? Well it also works with full-screen apps.  How often have you wanted to check on the time on your phone while playing a full-screen game but didn’t want to exit out of the game to do so?

Well now you can, and very easily. Simply perform the slide-down gesture you normally would and you will see a little gray handle appear in the top-center of the screen. Perform your slide-down gesture again and the notification center will appear, along with your standard status bar. Simply slide the notification screen back up and you can resume your game. The reason for this double-swipe gesture is obvious as soon as you play a game that requires a lot of swiping, such as Harbor 3D (great game by the way). This game requires you to draw a path for the ship to follow in order to enter the harbor safely. Well sometimes when I get to a boat too quickly and it is near the top-edge of the screen the “little gray handle” will appear. My original gesture is passed on to the game as well so that does not cause any problems. But this way I do not accidentally trigger the notification center since I then have to grab on the handle itself to fully bring it in.

You will also find under the System Preferences on your device that you can set the notification behavior on a per-app basis. For example, by default text message are I believe now banners in the notification center (they appear briefly and then go away until you pull down the notification center window). Calendar alerts are the same old “in the way” alerts they have always been which require you to dismiss them before continuing on. This granularity allows you to configure your notifications in a way that suits you and works the way you want to work.

Network in a brick

I realized while talking to another church that my previous blog post about off-site check-in didn’t include as much detail as I thought it did about the actual I.T. side of the process, so I thought I would elaborate more on that seeing as we are in the middle of setting up another campus.

Storage and Transportation

We started with a Stanley 37″ Mobile Job Box from Home Depot. This is a heavy duty box on wheels with a pull out handle. The handle is a bit short for your average person as it tends to bang into my ankles if I walk normally with it so I have to hobble a bit. It does have a lock though we don’t use it as the box itself is always secured in our building when not in use. We have had one of these in use for a year now at our Apple Valley campus and we have not run into any issues with it yet.

We then had our facilities manager build us a wooden box to go inside. This inner box is what we put all the really expensive equipment in and is padded with foam. We built the box to be 18.5″x20″x19″ (WxLxH). Basically we had it built so that it just barely fit in the box with a length of 20 inches. This leaves us a usable “gap” of about 10 inches for cables and such outside this inner box. Yes this is a 37″ job box, but there is about a good 8″ of that which is completely unusable for our purposes due to the shape.

Inside this inner box we designed out the spacing we needed to get all our equipment safely stored with foam.  All the empty space (and there is a lot at the bottom) we filled with small cardboard shipping boxes. We purchased various sizes, I believe they were 3x3x1, 3x3x2, 3x3x3x3, 3x6x3 and 3x9x3. In reality I don’t think we used the 3x6x3 and 3x9x3 boxes. This cost us about $100 in cardboard boxes and we have enough to make about 8 of these campus boxes. The cost to do the same in pure foam would have been closer to $400 – per box.

We used random large shipping boxes to create the sectional areas and gorilla glue to glue everything in place.  The foam we got from Walmart, it is 1-inch thick foam and is sold in a sheet.  We had to buy 2 sheets (as evident by the 2 different colors) and I believe each sheet was about $40. I don’t have a link as we bought it in-store and I can’t find a link on their website, but it is sold in their crafts department. A little experimentation led us to the design you see.

VPN (Network Connection)

Linking up the remote site to our main campus is done via a VPN connection, specifically using OpenVPN. This is a an open-source VPN implementation that works over any TCP or UDP port. Therefore usually you can punch through firewalls with it. In our case we are plugged into the school’s wired network and the standard OpenVPN port (1194 UDP) works fine. The device we use for this is a Buffalo Technologies WHR-HP-G300N. This is an open-source (dd-wrt) based router that supports OpenVPN internally. I believe it also supports PPTP VPN connections.

The router establishes a site-to-site VPN connection into our main campus and then sets up the routing tables needed for the local devices to connect remotely into our campus. It also serves up a WiFi network that allows the iPads and Apple Airport Express units to connect to. Because the connection is site-to-site, this means that the local devices have no clue that they are not “plugged” directly into our network. The only thing they can’t do is use “browsing” services such as Bonjour to see other devices – and that is fine with us.

The dd-wrt software runs on top of Linux so we were able to write some custom shell scripts that run automatically set the lights on the front of the unit to indicate the status of the connection. One light turns on when a valid Internet connection is detected and a second light turns on when a valid VPN connection is established. This way if somebody from the campus calls with problems we can quickly have them let us know which lights are on and that helps us know where to start looking for problems. Because these things run dd-wrt they can be a little complex to setup, and site-to-site VPN connections are a little more complex than your standard laptop VPN connection so you will need some knowledge of networking and routing tables to get your site-to-site VPN setup (wether you use this device or another device).

Printing

Printing is done by a combination of Apple Airport Express units and Zebra GK420d USB printers. The Apple Airport Express (APE) is setup to work as a wireless client, meaning it connects to the WiFi network created by the router and provides that network connection to the printer. Zebra does have a wireless version of the printer, but we found that it was unstable on a secured network and after a month of trouble-shooting with Zebra decided they were not serious about fixing the problem. After a month working with them they still claimed they had no way to test internally the problem we were running into. Meaning they had no GX420d model and no secured wireless network to try connecting it to.

Therefore to resolve the problem we purchase APE units to act as the WiFi bridge. We have used this setup in both Ethernet mode (meaning we buy the Ethernet version of the GK420d printers and have the APE bridge the WiFi to the Ethernet port) as well as, more recently, used the APE units as the print servers themselves and plugged the printers in via USB. This is a simpler configuration as we then do not have to configure anything on the printer itself. The APE remembers which printer is plugged into it so we have to make sure each printer is always plugged into the same APE unit each week, but that is easily solved.

As I said, the printers are the GK420d model which is available as a USB only as well as a USB+Ethernet version. We have thus far always purchased the USB+Ethernet versions but in our latest campus we have never even used the Ethernet port. However, doing so lets us easily use these on the main campus (which do use Ethernet) if we ever have to. Don’t let the picture fool you, these printers are not color. They are black and white direct thermal. This means there is no ink ribbon or anything like that to change on the printers. The only thing that ever needs to be changed is the paper roles.

The printer will accept labels up to 4″ wide, but we use 2.25″ x 2.00″ labels for our check-in system. These labels come with 1370 labels per roll and since we print 3 labels per child that means we can print labels for 450 kids without having to change out the roll.

Touch Screen

For our touch screen interface we use Apple iPads (we just use the WiFi model, not the 3G model). Our first off-site campus uses the original iPad and our second campus that we just launched uses the the 2nd generation iPad. We also purchased them as the 16GB as they don’t need any storage. All they do is pull up a web page.

We configure them to automatically join the WiFi network and to never go to sleep. We don’t want them randomly going to sleep and then have people not know how to wake them up or just think that check-in is not happening. There isn’t much to say about these. We put a custom background and lock-screen image on each iPad to make them feel more like an HDC device. We don’t have a specific case to recommend, pretty much anything works. As far as “mounting” them we use car windshield suction cup-style mounts. We have a dedicated table that we glued 3 pieces of plexiglass to for the suction cups to adhere to. The iPads then just slip into the mount holder. We purchased these units, they are a little flimsy and we have had 2 break so far but they get the job done. But any old car windshield mount should work fine.

Data Entry (Laptop)

Each off-campus site has 2 laptops. These are 15″ Mac Book Pros. One laptop is used for playing back the message for that weekend (and all other presentation aspects such as the words on screen during worship, etc.). The second laptop (configured identically) is used for data-entry of new families or fixing wrong grades etc. on existing families. If for whatever reason the primary laptop fails or has an issue in the main service they will take the data entry laptop. This gives us a backup that doesn’t just sit around 99% of the time but still gives us a decent laptop for use with check-in.

Finished Product

Some miscellaneous things that the box also includes is a set of pre-printed labels that can be used in case of full system failure. We have told them that these emergency labels are not meant to be used as a one off thing because one single person had an issue. They are only to be used in a “break the glass” scenario meaning all 3 kiosks are not working and they cannot get ahold of I.T. on the phone to work on the problem. The reason for this is that we don’t want them using one or two labels each weekend and then when the system does fully fail and they need to use them, they no longer have enough. The labels include pre-generated security numbers and blanks for the names to be written in.

Experience has also told us that the boxes need to include chargers for the iPads. Twice now the iPads arrived at the off-site campus un-charged. We run the iPads on battery during check-in (fewer cables to worry about plugging in) and then we charge them during the week. One week we somehow just forgot to charge them and another week they were charged but somehow when we put them away we managed to wake them up and they drained the battery before check-in started.

Each “kiosk” is color coded with little circle stickers. So the iPad, Airport Express, Printer and specific table location all get the same color sticker. This helps our volunteers be able to very quickly setup the system. Once they are used to what goes where it takes them about 10 minutes to get everything setup and connected. Teardown is similarly fast, though it does take a little longer as they do a good job of trying to keep everything neat and wrapped nicely.  Every single cable has an attached velcro strip so they don’t end up with a big mess of cables when they are done.

When all is said and done, we have a rolling box with everything loaded in it.

The final setup for our Phelan (most recent) campus looks like this:

Anime Review: Clannad, Clannad: After Story, and Kanon

So I have to admit. I have always thought of Anime as nothing but adult content, an excuse to show off too much flesh, in a word: porn. One of my friends is into Anime and watches a lot and I often (jokingly) made fun of her for watching it.  Well, to be honest I don’t recall if it was a recommendation from her that made me give one short anime series a shot or something else. But I ended up watching a few anime shows; or at-least a few episodes of some shows and a few I watched all the way through. I will admit I was both right and wrong about my impressions of anime.

I have since then started watching a lot of anime shows, and I have turned off a lot of anime shows.  Some I go through a number of episodes before I decide the show is basically an excuse to show off flesh.  Some shows I get all the way through a whole 3 minutes before I come to the same conclusion. And as I said there are some shows that I watch all the way through because they are purely good content and don’t stoop to including a bunch of garbage just to fill time or get ratings. I have not yet found any good sites out there for determining if a anime show will be clean or not.  I’m sure there are a number of sites out there, but it seems most rate the shows based on how entertaining it is and not how clean it is from a christian perspective. So as I go through shows I decided to start posting my thoughts on various shows I have watched (and some I have turned off).

Clannad

This was a very entertaining show to watch. It is full of one-liners and ongoing comedy as the various characters inter-act through-out the story line. The basic plot revolves around Tomoya, a high-school student who cares nothing for himself or his future but cares greatly for those around him. Tomoya consistently goes out of his way to help the people around him. When the show starts he really has only one friend, a delinquent like him. As he meets new people and tries to help them make friends and accomplish the things they are wanting to do he beings to discover that he has more friends than he thought.

The content of the show is about as clean as it gets for anime. That is not to say that it still has adult content and just “isn’t that bad”, it is to say that it is clean. Anime generally revolves around high-school aged kids which means a bunch of girls in short uniform-skirts. I haven’t been to any Japanese schools so who knows if that is reality or fantasy. But because of that many anime shows use it as an excuse to flash undergarments or go strait to flashing some flesh because it is “just natural” for a skirt to flip up or something when girls are running around. This show stays far away from that. It is just good clean comedy.

Summary: I really enjoyed this show and have already watched it for a second time.
Seasons: 2 (see After Story below)
Season length: 24 episodes
Episode length: 25 minutes
Content: Clean

Clannad: After Story

Many sites (e.g. Netflix) list this as a separate show, but in reality it is season 2 of Clannad above. It picks up only a few days after the first season ends. This show continues the comedy of the first and and in many ways is even funnier than the first season. It also continues to keep everything clean. There were times I had to pause the episode because I was laughing so hard I was missing everything. Interestingly enough, as hard as I laughed at this show there were times that I cried equally as hard. Yes, I – a man of 30 – cried during an animated tv show, and I freely admit it. There were parts of this show that were so sad I couldn’t help by cry.

Even though there was sadness in this show it is well worth the watch. I have also watched this one twice already and expect to watch it again in the next year or so. I don’t expect them to make a season 3 as they wrapped it up pretty well, but I would certainly watch it if they made one. I will say one thing about this show: If you start watching it you must commit to watching it until the end. That is imperative. There will be times you want to stop watching because it is sad, but there is equal joy coming!

Summary: At times heart-breaking, but a wonderful show that makes me wish for a perfect ending in real life.
Seasons: 2 (see Clannad above)
Season length: 24 episodes (+1 extra)
Episode length: 25 minutes
Content: Clean

Kanon

Yuuichi hasn’t been to his cousins home-town for the past 7 years. But he doesn’t remember anything from when he was there last. Now he is back since he will be attending school with his cousin and living at his aunt’s house. While at school and visiting parts of the town he meets a number of girls who have secrets that seem to involve him. The show revolves around learning what those secrets are and Yuuichi regaining his lost memories.

This show I actually just finished tonight and I really enjoyed it. It was another extremely clean show that had a lot of great one-liners as well as references to ongoing jokes throughout the show.  All shows include some heartfelt sadness and this one is no exception; but fear not it wasn’t anything as heart-breaking as Clannad: After Story. There was some sad times but most of it was just good clean fun.

Summary: A thoroughly enjoying show powered by a great story and backed by good clean fun.
Seasons: 1
Season length: 24 episodes
Episode length: 25 minutes
Content: Clean

Images courtesy of thetvdb.com