SLTy Inspirations

The Case of the Phantom Disk

Pete — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 12:56:00 +0000

Late night, deep slumber. The phone rings—never a good sign. “Hello?” “Hi...can you help? My computer’s dead!” A relative calling from a thousand miles away, in a panic. “What’s the problem?” “Well, it won’t boot. All I get is this message on my screen...”

Disk boot failure - Insert system disk and press Enter

Ouch. None of our remote control tools are going to help with this one. We need someone there to look at it! Skip forward a week. An experienced tech guy has been on-site, working on the computer all day. It’s still not fixed. He calls for help. His report: After seven hours, he’s found that none of the usual issues for that message seem to apply:

The hard disk is actually fine. No problem.
Windows is properly installed. In fact, he wiped out everything on the disk and reinstalled Windows, but it still is not working properly.

Hmmm... father God, what do I ask this guy? A few more questions digging to learn something, anything... he gives an answer that sounds a bit strange to me...

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A SLTy Christmas Gift

Pete — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 23:29:52 +0000

ICTA loves to discover and promote Spirit-Led Technology – and we have an interesting new example for you at this gift-giving time of year! A friend of ICTA has helped develop and promote a fun, exciting and Bible-centered high tech way to offset a bit of our secular culture’s lock on kid’s attention spans – currently estimated as 42 hours a week of secular TV or video games.

ICTA has been given permission to offer you early access to Bible Islands, a safe, online learning game adventure experience for kids 4-99.
ICTA’s Christmas gift to you: you and your family can all PLAY FREE in Bible Islands with a two-week family FREE Trial Subscription good through January 2nd (it becomes a one-week trial after that.) Then if you opt to become a member of Bible Islands, using the ICTA link provides access to discounted 6 or 12-month family membership packages. The makers of Bible Islands will also donate a significant portion of your family membership to ICTA ministry projects. So check this out, tell us what you think…and pass along to others who may be interested.

More details below the fold…

Bible Islands is a hi-tech education experience for kids, designed to be an attractive and fun online gaming experience to reclaim an hour or two a day from that 4-6 hours a day kids are consuming mainstream media.

Bible Islands introduces kids to Bible stories, character building games and concepts, creative activates and also games in cross-curricular subjects of math, science, English and even Hebrew letters - all from the Christian faith and a “family values” perspective.

Bible Islands also has a completely safe and monitored online communication system for kids to send pre-selected text and picture messages to friends, parents and grandparents who are connected in the Bible Islands’ LINKO system.

Play special Christmas games and see Hermie’s “Meaning of Christmas” song in Bible Islands’ Glueworks Cinema

Bible Islands provides a personalized player account for each child, then it starts at their age appropriate level and grows with them to keep them challenged. Parents also get a special account to play too, plus a special parent’s webpage to guide and monitor their child’s progress and time spent in Bible Islands.

Bible Islands features animated characters, stories and music from several popular Christian Children’s DVD series (Glueworks, Hermie & Friends, Gigi, God’s Little Princes, On the Farm, and many more.)

We would love for you to take advantage of the FREE Play Trial of Bible Islands and tell us what you think (even if you just want to play the Hebrew letter learning games for yourself.) Until January 3rd, you get a two-week free trial that includes Christmas-only games and videos. This is a very dynamic system, with more material being added all the time. (Note: you are welcome to share the link with others.)

What’s Harder On The Mac?

Pete — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 20:05:35 +0000

The Mac is well known as an easy, reliable computer.

It only took me five minutes to discover that Mac marketing hype has its limits.

Administrating a Mac server requires the ability to look at a variety of configuration files, particularly when doing anything beyond the bare basics.

So, one of my first goals was to make it easy to see the “hidden” files on the computer.

It’s easy on Windows. Just open up Tools->Options and change a checkbox or two.

How about on the mac?

Nope, there’s no option for this. It’s not in the user guide. Nowhere. I guess they just assume people don’t need to see hidden files.

So, I searched Google… and found a good set of instructions. Here’s what it takes:

1. Open Automator (in your Applications folder) and choose Service from the list of templates provided and click the Choose button.

2 In the left hand column under Library, select Utilities.

3. In the second column, drag “Run Shell Script” to the right hand pane.

4. At the top of the right hand pane where you dragged the Run Shell Script action, click on the right-hand popup menu and change “any application” to “Finder”. This sets the service so it only appears and can be activated by the keyboard shortcut when Finder is the active application.

5. Then click on the popup menu next to “Service receives” and choose “no input”. It’s important you do this step after step 4 because if you do the reverse, Finder won’t be available as an option in the right hand menu.

6. Copy and paste the following text into the empty text area of the Run Shell Script action:

7.
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'
SHOWHIDDEN=`defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles`
if [ $SHOWHIDDEN -eq 1 ]; then
   defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool FALSE
else
   defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool TRUE
fi
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to activate'
Completed Automator action, ready to save (click to enlarge)
8. Choose File–>Save, and give the new service a meaningful name like “Toggle Hidden Files” that will appear in the Services menu. Once you’ve done that, you can go to the Services menu (located in the current application menu, next to the Apple menu) and your newly created service should appear there. You can even run it, it’s already functional, just lacking a keyboard shortcut.

9. Open System Preferences–>Keyboard–>Keyboard Shortcuts and select Services in the left column.

10. Setting the keyboard shortcut (click to enlarge)
11. Scroll down to the bottom and under the General category, you should see your newly created service listed there. Select it, then Double-click close to the right side of the selected line to reveal a field where you can enter a custom keyboard shortcut. Enter “Shift+Command+.” (might as well keep it consistent with the shortcut used in open/save dialog boxes), and then quit System Preferences.

The good news: follow those instructions carefully, and you will now be able to view or hide the hidden files. (By pressing Shift, Command and “+” together.)

Update (March 7, 2011): A friend has discovered an easier solution, albeit still non-standard. The built-in Dashboard app supports several thousand user-supplied “widget” mini-apps. One of those apps is the Hidden Files widget. With that widget installed (and the Dashboard icon dragged to your icon bar), toggling hidden file visibility is as simple as firing up the Dashboard, clicking on the Widget, and re-hiding the Dashboard.

I’m sure this makes sense to someone…

Pete — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:49:08 +0000

While setting up a new netbook, the Quick Start Guide instructs:

It is strongly recommended that you create recovery DVDs/media before using your computer for the first time.

(further explanation of why this is such a Good Idea…)

For complete detailed information on how to create recovery DVDs/media, see the “Creating Recovery DVDs/media” section in the electronic User’s Guide preinstalled on your computer.

Hmmm… the instructions are in the computer, but I need to read them before I turn it on.

Maybe I need to lay hands on the computer… like with a hammer?

I’ve certainly learned something from this exercise.

Stay calm…

Meeting Mac

Pete — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 23:14:55 +0000

What a fun surprise in the middle of a tough year…

Would you believe we’re learning a bit about Mac? … yes, the computer.

A friend was nice enough to donate a fully-redundant pair of high end Mac Mini servers, with all the accessories, to upgrade our decade-old Linux-based office infrastructure. Thousands of dollars of equipment, complete with full warranty, etc. THANKS!

The donor, as well as a few other friends who have heard about this, have asked me to share my experiences as we go through this adventure.

I know Linux, I know Windows, I know lots of older systems… but I don’t really know Mac at all. So this will be a great learning experience!

Our goal: move our existing Linux-based highly tuned email server (and everything that goes with it) over to the Mac server. And do so retaining as much of the vaunted user-friendliness of the Mac as possible along the way.

Our situation is a bit more interesting than some because of our very advanced custom email filtering: our underpowered decade-old Linux box automatically handles thousands of spam attempts every hour, plus up to 20 denial of service attacks per second on a bad day. And we have to be very conservative in our spam-blocking because we work with partners all over the world (yes, even Nigeria!) How do we do it? Stick with me and I’ll tell all…

Let’s get a few techie bits out of the way.

In this series, I’ll try not to submarine too deep into tech talk; after all, many of our friends are non-tech. So if you don’t understand something in here, feel free to ask. Even so, I assume this series of blog posts is of more interest to tech-savvy folk…

What’s a Mac Mini Server? It’s a tiny all-in-one computer about the size of two bricks side-by-side. It has a bunch of connector ports, and an on-off switch. That’s it. You can’t change any of the parts inside the box (at least on our version.) Some of the parts and ports of most interest:

Two internal 500GB hard disks. One of them comes with the Mac OS pre-installed. The other starts out blank
4GB of RAM, which is plenty
One Gigabit wired network port. That’s going to hurt because we’d like to have two parallel networks here
One firewire port. We’ll use that to connect a redundant disk drive (two 2TB drives set up to mirror in case one goes bad) as the main system drive. That way if a drive dies we can keep running, and can replace it without losing the server. We may also use this for some other interesting tricks.
Several USB ports. We’ll eventually attach a (regular 10/100) wired ethernet cable to one of them, to act as the gateway to our DSL service.
One mini-DVI display connector. This requires a special adapter to connect to a screen; we’ve got all that as well.

That’s it. Some things I wish it had (but as Grandma used to say, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride…)…

Regular VGA display connector so we could use our KVM (Keyboard/Video/Mouse) switcher. Not going to happen.
A second Gigabit wired network port. Nope.
A second firewire port

As for the Mac operating system (OSX 10.6.4, “Snow Leopard”)… it’s actually a version of Unix, with some Apple-provided GUI “eye candy” on top. Don’t disparage the eye candy too much — it makes things simple for casual users…at least some of the time. More on that later!

Initial Setup

The first step is to get one of the servers running, with a proper basic configuration.

Getting started was mostly a smooth process. After skimming about nine inches of System Administrator books we were given, I decided I didn’t really need to learn a lot up front. So, I plugged the parts together, fired up the computer, used the built-in utility to reformat the external RAID drive (into a 500GB “system” partition and 1.5TB of “data” space), copied the system files across (yup, just drag-n-drop), and told the computer to boot from the external drive. Not bad so far. ‘Twas as easy as using Windows

Next, I wanted to arrange some form of remote access since none of us in the office want to have to go to the server closet every time we need to do something. Even more so if everyone’s at home… or visiting India!

I tried several remote-access solutions, including the popular VNC (there’s a built-in VNC system in the Mac). Unfortunately, none of them worked well. Happily, our Bomgar remote-desktop system works VERY nicely!**

Before I finish this intro story, I’ll leave you with a puzzler…

Unlike other computers, if you unplug the LCD display from the Mac, it will no longer allow remote GUI access!

Anyone know how to fix this?

Merry Christmas!

Pete — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 15:07:40 +0000

It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it!
Economic challenges pushed us toward a paid-consulting income model, and we’ve been running hard for months in that direction. We’re very grateful that we’re still here, even if rather quiet in public.
May you finish this year and begin the new in quiet reflection, listening for His direction in your life.

The Measure of Measurement (Part 1)

Pete and Cecilia — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:30:29 +0000

Which do you like better: multiple choice, fill-in or essay tests? Every student has a preference. And so do teachers! For example, essay tests are disappearing, partly because they take longer to grade and grading is considered less accurate than for other forms. All three kinds of questions produce answers that help teachers understand what students have learned. Whether it’s the story that emerges from an essay, the careful calculations of a math/science student, or making the right choice from a set of predefined options, we all know what it’s like to have our knowledge and insight tested. At the same time, evaluation is very different in today’s “grown-up” world of business—and ministry too. Today, we typically place a huge emphasis on one specific type of measurement as the only objective way to look at the real world. Management experts don’t spend their days reading stories about “what’s happening,” because stories are seen as subjective opinion rather than objective fact. Likewise, while guessing the correct answer (or choosing a preferred option) is an interesting and popular pastime, it’s no way to run a business. Such categorized data is labeled as “nominal” and downplayed because it is again seen as subjective. Managers want more concrete, more objective measures. If stories and multiple-guess answers don’t meet the business need very well, what is left? Managers like to see metrics: calculated quantities that can be tuned to manage a system. This understanding is so strong in the modern world that when most people say “is it measurable?” they really mean “is it quantifiable?” So they tend to ask about sales volume or church attendance, and avoid deeper questions like whether real needs are met or people are gaining in wisdom and spiritual understanding. The result? Whether in business or ministry, when we say “if it isn’t measurable, it isn’t real” what we really mean is “if it isn’t quantifiable, it isn’t real.” That’s how we end up following aphorisms like “work to the numbers,” based on an assumption that numbers are objective (accurate, undistorted by bias, factual, trustworthy, repeatable), while other data is subjective (biased by emotion, based on opinion, non-scientific, non-repeatable). From a SLTy perspective, we find that very sad. Is it shocking to suggest that all forms of data can be either objective or subjective? Often, we assume numbers are reliable, because today’s computer technology makes it easy to work with them. Yet the old saw is still true: garbage in, garbage out. We have found there is a better way than focusing so much on the numbers.

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Tech Nits: Clean Sync on Palm Treo

Pete — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:22:23 +0000

I just picked up a Palm Treo 755p (Sprint), the last Palm OS PDA that will not require an expensive monthly data subscription. Unfortunately, with everything set up just right, it gives me an annoying error:

Failed to backup 1 file(s)
PmTraceDatabase
Protocol Error: Handheld file could not be opened. (4004)
SYNCERR_FILE_NOT_OPEN

The solution takes just a few minutes, and is pretty easy to follow.

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Radio Interview: SLTy eMail/security

Pete and Cecilia — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:00:24 +0000

[It's good to be back from travels. We have a lot of pent-up material to write about!] Pete was interviewed by Pilgrim Radio Network (CA, MT, NV, WY) to discuss the social, spiritual and technological implications of email in our combative world. This expanded on a recent print interview ("You've Got Jail: Missionaries' imprisonment shows the security risks of support e-mails"), where Pete was asked to discuss the security implications of multi-cultural communication for global workers. (You must sign in to listen and comment.)

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A story worth re-telling

Pete — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:00:51 +0000

The story below was written in June 2007, commemorating Pete's accident ten years earlier (in 1997). We hope it is a blessing to you as we remember Jesus' resurrection!

June 2007

How Much Can We Really Do? Confessions of a “can-do” high tech wizard Dum-De-Dum-Dum.^[1] Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to hear is true. The names have not been changed to protect the innocent. It's a story about God's hand on one common ordinary person. I work in High Tech. I carry a laptop. My name's Pete. I grew up in California... and in rural upstate New York.^[2] I’ve lived in Colorado since the early 1990’s. One wife, two daughters, three computers and more pets buried than I can count. To understand this story, you need to know about two parts of my life. The first part relates to all those computers. “High Tech” is my background, my giftedness and skill—some might call it an anointing from the Lord. A couple of years out of college, I was burdened by the sense that God wanted all of me, not just some volunteer time and some dollars in the Sunday offering bucket. So on the day our first daughter was born, and with my wife Leslie’s blessing, I quit my job. My goal was to earn time for God as a computer consultant in Silicon Valley. God has greatly blessed that side of me. I’ve had the privilege of helping create many of the products that have shaped our world, from phones to computers, diabetes monitors to accounting software, maps to market research. He also blessed me with a very clear high tech ministry. In the 1980’s He directed me to lead the computer work that resulted in the 10/40 Window model, and to coordinate the equivalent of “market analysis” of global mission. In the 1990’s, our team solved the problem of worldwide group email for leadership teams. And now I lead a small team that’s moving from helping people talk to helping people truly work together. Bottom line: I’m a high tech entrepreneur, a problem solver, a concrete “can do” guy. I praise God for His amazing grace to give me gifts and skills to solve almost any problem.

Accident Site, Pretoria South Africa

Now let’s jump to the other side of who I am. Simply put, I exist as a miracle of God’s healing, and it’s time to boldly declare His power to easily perform what scientists might call “low probability events.” Ten years ago I became one of those people you’ve read about: dead, gone to heaven, miraculously restored to life by God. I’ve been cautious about making the story public because I know how bad the hype can get. But after ten years, it’s time to share this story of God’s signs and wonders. The signs point us to God, and He gives us something to wonder about! By the way, if you’re skeptical as you read this, please remember that I’m a skeptic too, well trained in science and engineering. So let’s just review the facts. June 27, 1997, I was in Pretoria, South Africa to speak about technology at a huge global missions conference. I finished a prep meeting, across a residential street from one of the conference churches. I looked both ways and then started across the street. Suddenly, I heard “LOOK OUT!!!” and that was the end.^[3]

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