Category: Tech

Photo by Joe WilcoxSep 7, 20176:01 am

The Cats of University Heights: Goldie

The sudden, and unexpected, recent discovery of new neighborhood felines (five in two days), makes this site look like a cat blog, which it most certainly isn’t. I met three on Alabama Street, day-before-yesterday. Goldie is second of the trio.

The kitty approached, strutting behind Itchy Valentino, as I walked from Adams towards Madison. I shot the Featured Image, using Leica Q, on Sept. 5, 2017, at 8:48 a.m. Soon afterwards, a mom walking kids to school passed by. One of them knew the kitty’s name, which she said, and I later forget—embarrassingly. Yesterday, I walked back, luckily finding Goldie lounging on the sidewalk; name is on his collar.

Photo by Joe WilcoxSep 1, 20176:00 am

‘Come Home, Fess’

One month ago, Aug. 1, 2017, for the second consecutive evening, I saw my favorite neighborhood feline, Fess, lounging long after his owners came home for the day. The feisty, friendly furball sprawled far onto the sidewalk as it sloped into the street. I looked at my watch, 7:25 p.m. PDT, and walked down Cleveland Ave. to the corner of Meade—then turned back. I worried that in the dusk, a vehicular driver might not see the animal when turning into or backing out of the driveway. He looked relaxed and content. I walked on.

Four mornings later, as my mother lay dying in a Vermont medical center, I left our apartment for a long, soul-searching walk. Losing mom was unthinkable, but, based on communication with my sister Nanette, inevitable. Approaching the corner where I had looked back at Fess, his image waved from a poster placed on a utility pole by his human family. No one had seen the cat since the night of August 1st. He had vanished! My muscles tensed. We couldn’t lose Fess, too.

Mobility by Joe WilcoxAug 23, 20172:20 pm

Seriously, Verizon?

I should have known better. Once burned is supposed to be twice as wary. Right? Disgruntled by pricing and other policies, in autumn 2015, I took my family from Verizon Wireless to T-Mobile, which cut our monthly bill by more than one-third. But in May of this year we made the trek back in part because data speed is so much faster from my apartment than it is with Magenta. Better Red than dead, eh? Wrong. Oh, dumbass me. Un-carrier’s aggressive pricing, and Verizon’s first-ever quarterly loss of post-paid subscribers, compelled the nation’s largest carrier to respond—by, starting in February, to offer comparable unlimited plan that for my family of five lines would cost just $20 more a month while delivering superior, speedy service. But what Red gave, it now takes away. I regret the decision.

Today’s unlimited cellular service plan changes suck some of the most important value from all that extra bandwidth. What good is having something you can’t use? Henceforth, Verizon will offer two consumer options—one (Go Unlimited) that throttles streaming video to 480p on smartphones and costlier option Beyond Unlimited that reduces quality to 720p. Go is essentially priced the same as the older unlimited plan, and it takes away even more: Tethering (e.g. Mobile Hotspot) is capped at 600kbps. There’s no 4G LTE for you, baby!

Photo by Joe WilcoxAug 17, 20176:19 am

The Cats of University Heights: Charlie

My second-favorite neighborhood feline, The Colonel, is gone. Numero Uno, Fess, is missing—16 days, and as each passes his return grows more unlikely. In June, The Colonel’s owner told me that the majestic longhair had succumbed to “the cancer”. A few months earlier, while on a walk, my wife and I chatted with the woman (and her husband). The kitty had lost weight and, honestly, looked terribly scrawny to me.

The family has a new pet, Charlie, whom I first met on June 19, 2017. My struggle since: Getting good-enough portraits, despite several opportunities. Morning of Aug. 15, 2017, while walking down Monroe Ave., I saw a woman petting the cat on North—diagonally across the street from his home. The beastie, who is still a kitten, but closing on a year-old, is a roamer. As the lady turned away, he skirted from the sidewalk into a yard, where chomping grass consumed him for a good 10 minutes.

Photo by Joe WilcoxAug 16, 20175:58 pm

Have a Seat!

San Diego residents leave all kinds of things in alleys behind their residences. What’s that saying about one person’s garbage being another’s treasure? This sofa sits by a dumpster, but it waits for a new […]

Photo by Joe WilcoxAug 16, 20175:18 pm

Beetle Mania

The killer feature(s) of my beloved Leica Q: Manual focus and Macro mode, both of which are controlled by rings around the barrel of the lens. They’re best when used together, as the Featured Image […]

Photo by Joe WilcoxAug 14, 201712:35 pm

The Stagers

While walking past Campus and Meade this morning, I saw stagers moving furniture into a house “coming soon” for sale. After initially crossing the street, I turned back. The vantage point appealed to me, and Leica Q was in tow. The bold, yellow crosswalk symbols in the foreground are what made the moment worth capturing.

The Featured Image is the original, slightly straightened. Neither this pic, the other, or two crops of both have been retouched. I imported the DNG originals into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and exported as JPEG. Vitals, aperture pre-set for street shooting: f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/800 sec, 28mm; 9:49 a.m. PDT.

Web by Joe WilcoxAug 6, 20175:09 pm

Why Are There So Many Failed Login Attempts Against My Blog?

This website is nothing special. I write about things that interest me, but with others in mind—particularly about topics journalism and technology. There is nothing of value to steal here. The site doesn’t generate enough traffic to warrant planting malware, and there is no advertising; I never intend there to be. This blog should be a low-value hacker target, particularly since I use unique passwords everywhere; compromise here won’t open my other accounts. I suppose a criminal could break in with the intention of dropping a payload, such as keylogger, on my one computer. But, honestly, I am a low-value target, too. I ain’t wealthy, nor do I work for a company with massive assets to steal. So, why, then are there so many failed login attempts by presumed hackers?

I pose the question to anyone with more security expertise than me. Your response could help other people, too.

Photo by Joe WilcoxAug 3, 20176:20 am

Hello, Rabbit

Last night, seeking relief from an uncharacteristically overcast and muggy August day, I grabbed the Leica Q and walked, looking for felines to add to my “Cats of University Heights” series. Instead, I saw a bunny, sitting smack in the middle of New York Street, about halfway down from Madison—or, coming the other way, dead end into the canyon. I approached cautiously, getting closer and closer captures; necessity without a telephoto. The digital camera has a fixed 28mm f/1.7 Summilux lens. Noise from a nearby house startled the rabbit, which sprinted into a yard.

So I persisted, until my approach drove the cottontail to scramble further—and eventually out of sight. The 24-megapixel full-frame shooter uses (inside the lens) a leaf shutter, which is virtually silent. I didn’t worry, then, that camera clicks would spook the critter.

Photo by Joe WilcoxAug 2, 20173:02 pm

Purple Passion Flower

While I attended a basic botany class in college, my familiarity with plant life is limited—unlike clouds and bugs, or even the stars. Walking down Cleveland Ave. the other day, purple flowers hanging from vast vines rapped my attention. I snapped some closeups using iPhone 7 Plus, which were okay. On the evening of July 27, 2017, I meandered back with the Leica Q in tow and, using the dedicated Macro mode and manual focus, captured satisfying shots.

They’re purple passion flowers, and new flora to me. Interestingly—no surprisingly—their presence is “absent/unreported” in California, according to USDA. Oh yeah?

Web by Joe WilcoxJul 31, 20172:38 pm

Five Rants from 2006

What a strange delight. I spent a large chunk of the weekend restoring posts to this website from July to early-September 2006. They represent a period of loss—originally spanning from June of that year to March 2007. Ten years ago, accidental deletion of a Movable Type backup file coupled with migration from ExpressionEngine to WordPress purged more than six months of posts. It was a devastating realization then; I had been a prolific personal blogger while working as an analyst (for Jupiter Research) and not being bound to the crazy, erratic, unpredictable schedule of news reporting. Meaning: I had more time most evenings to write.

Four days ago, I discovered that the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine had captured my first website, at editors.com, starting in December 1996. I later looked at joewilcox.com, which went live as my personal blogsite in 2002. Back then, I called the site “The Writer’s Life”. Wayback Machine snapshots from July, August, and September 2006 allowed me to restore a small portion of the lost content, which still is incomplete for those months—while there is nothing from autumn of that year through spring of the next. The blank space likely will never be filled.

Web by Joe WilcoxJul 27, 20178:06 pm

Remembering My First Website

This afternoon, I looked over Archive.org’s Wayback Machine for the first time ever and was delighted to find cached copies (e.g. snapshots) of my first, personal website at editors.com, which I registered in August 1995. Foolishly, when needing some extra money, I accepted a $3K offer to sell my first domain in May 2004. I have lots more to say about that decision—in the future. For now, let’s look at the past.

At the time of the site’s snapshot, Dec. 27, 1996, my family prepared to leave my hometown of Caribou, Maine—where we had been for about 18 months—and return to the Washington, D.C. area. There I would take the editor’s position at Government Computer News responsible for the newly created State and Local section.