Categories
Computers Information Technology Technology

Logitech VX Nano Mouse

I know I’ve been very lax about science or tech posts of late, but as I’ve picked up a wireless mouse for my work laptop recently for use at home, I thought I would share some impressions of it.  This is the Logitech VX Nano mouse.  When it comes to mice, I tend to like them fairly simple – not the “buttons all over the place” types (i.e. like gaming mice).

What I like about this mouse is that while it is marketed as a notebook mouse, it is not too small.  It is only slightly smaller than a standard mouse.  Its shape and size still make for a comfortable mouse for me at least.  The shape should also allow for left handed users to be comfortable with it as well I think.  Larger hands may find it a tad small – my hands are more medium sized with longer fingers.  The USB transceiver is really nice in that it is small enough to plug into the laptop USB port and can leave in there without much worry of breaking it.  The portion that sticks out is just a hair under 1/4″, and the mouse itself fits into an included pouch which helps protect in in a bag.  It also has an on/off switch underneath to help save battery life when not in use.  Again while I don’t do much with the extra buttons, this mouse includes web browsing “forward” and “back” buttons next to the left mouse button.  There is also a button behind the scroll wheel that sort of acts as a replacement for Alt-Tab in Windows, giving a menu to select any open window.  Of course, these button functions are customizable through the Logitech software.  The scroll wheel has both horizontal and standard vertical scrolls.  One of the nicest features, for my use at least, is the that the scroll wheel has two vertical scroll modes.  One is the standard scroll of 3 or so lines at a time with some tactile feedback.  If you click the wheel as a button though, it goes into what I call “free wheelin’ ” mode.  This mode freely scrolls many lines. It’s very useful in a long web page, large spreadsheet, or in what I find really handy, while at work I have the ability to scroll through about 20,000-30,000 lines of text in large log files.  I find the section I am concentrating on, for instance an error dump section, then one flick brings me to the most recent events at the bottom of the section.

So, if you’re in the market for a nice cordless mouse for your system, check out the VX Nano from Logitech.  I like it enough that I now keep it in my bag and use it at work as well as when working from home.

Categories
Environment Nature Photography

First Hike Of The Season

I wanted to get these posted a couple of weeks ago, but better late than never.  These are from our first warm weather outing to Ames Nowell State Park in Abington, MA.

Categories
Information Technology Thoughts

The New Gig

I’ve just finished my first week at a new job. After almost 11 years at my previous employer, their cutbacks affected my position and I was laid off in early April. I interviewed with a few places pretty quickly, and luckily, I had my verbal offer for this job within two weeks of being out. I then only had to wait for the normal process stuff – background check, drug test, etc. So once I knew I had the job, I tried in the meantime to enjoy the downtime (as my good friend points out here): hang out and do things with the family, get some stuff done around the house, and keeping the brain technically engaged – passing the CCNA that I let expire last year.

In the end, I know this is one of those “things that happened for a reason”. I will be working in new area of IT I have not been deeply involved in thus far – SAN (Storage Area Network) technologies. Coming from an IP based networking background (and before that Wintel server & messaging and Desktop support), the plethora of training my new company provides is really a great thing. I’ve enjoyed opportunities to learn new areas of technologies in IT, and the brain is now definitely “reawakened”.

Categories
Computers Information Security Information Technology

Creating Good Passwords

Most companies and universities have password policies in place that enforce complexity requirements. But do you have a good policy you use for your personal accounts? You should create good strong passwords for any accounts you access – your email, eBay, online merchants, your personal finance file on your system, etc.

When creating your password, it should:

  • Be at least 8 characters long, but be easy to remember (more on this in a second).
  • Contain at least one capital letter, a digit, and a special character along with the lower case letters. Some web sites may not allow special characters (shame on them!!), so be creative with more digits (preferably) or capital letters.
  • Not be built from a dictionary word or any name – including character substitution!! For example, password is obviously a BAD password, but P@ssw0rd is also a bad password. Hacking utilities would have this figured out in very little time.
  • Not contain sequences, patterns, or repeated characters, for example 123, 111, qwerty, etc.

So I mentioned making your password at least 8 characters. I tend to like to make them 8 characters exactly. Perhaps this is because of my past experience using UNIX systems, where the first 8 characters only were significant (standard UNIX would ignore anything after 8 characters), but I also think 8 characters would be easier for most to remember. What you don’t want is to have to write the password down; it should be something you can commit to memory.

So given the rules, how to actually create a good password? Think of a phrase seven to eight words long, and then use the beginning of each word to make into your password, mixing up the capitals, symbols, and digits. If you use seven words, you can use punctuation as the last character. If you can easily remember a longer phrase and the password you create from it, certainly go for it. Some examples (don’t use these for yourself, though):

Phrase: I found the Science Attic really useful today
Password: Ift5@ruT

Phrase: My dog Fido is the best dog!
Password: MdF1tBd!

Phrase: Firefox is a great internet browser to use
Password: F1@giB2u

So you get the idea. And you can get really creative with this. 🙂 So have a little fun with it, while keeping your accounts that much more secure.

Categories
Astronomy History Science

John Wheeler

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John Wheeler – physicist who gave birth to the term ‘black hole’, worked in nuclear fission, and was a contemporary of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr – has passed away at age 96. Full article here.

Categories
Environment Nature Photography

Out In the Snow (Finally!)

Well we finally had a snowstorm that produced enough snow that we could get out this weekend for our first snowshoe hike. I bought our snowshoes in November, and of course now we’re in late February before we got to use them for the first time. We had one good storm in December, but the next few days were warm, so there was nothing by that weekend.

It was a good outing (despite some technical difficulties with the sled we were pulling our three year old son on). Here are a couple of pictures I took of the local scenery.

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Looking Off The Trail

 

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The Path Is Over There

 

Categories
Astronomy Nature Photography Science

Lunar Eclipse!

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In case you missed last night’s lunar eclipse, it was a good one. Luckily the weather mostly cooperated. I took a few pictures, these being the best two – although they are a little fuzzy due to some thin clouds. This being the last one until the end of 2010, I wanted to make sure I got to catch this one. The color on this one was good, the orange/red very visible once it reached totality. (Why is it that color, instead of totally dark? It’s the sun’s light refracting around the earth’s atmosphere as it makes its way to the moon – basically looking at a distance at all the sunrises/sunsets all at once if you were to stand on the moon.)

If you click the pictures above, you’ll see one that is wider angled has two stars visible. The one to the left is actually the planet Saturn. The other bright one above is Regulus, in the constellation Leo.

Pretty cool stuff… although the natives in this story didn’t think so…