Category: Digital Life

Great, Another Phishing Email Scam

Carl Setzer

Well, a new scam landed in my inbox this morning. Check out the details:

Google docs phish email scam example

This isn’t terribly new. I first saw references last fall (here’s a piece by Wired Magazine from last November: “Beware a New Google Drive Scam Landing in Inboxes“. Now, this isn’t terribly sophisticated, but it’s pretty clever. Now, I don’t have a David Anderson in my contacts, so this one is pretty obvious for me. But that’s a rather common name. Imagine how tempting it would be if it looked like it came from my friend/colleague David.

So, what should you do if you get an email like this? Report it! In most email tools, you can report a message as spam. If you have Gmail, you can report it as phishing, too. It’s pretty straightforward.

Gmail report phishing steps

You’ll see a dialog like this one:

Gmail Report Phishing Dialog Box

Click “Report Phishing Message” and you’re done.

Anyway, this seems as good a time as any to remind everyone to:

  • don’t click on links you’re not expecting. In this case, if I knew a David Anderson, I’d ping him independently of this email thread and ask about it. Do not reply to the email!
  • Make sure you have good malware protection and antivirus software. Here’s a great place to start: PC Magazine’s list of The Best Antivirus Protection for 2021.

The Audacity of Audacity and Alternatives

Carl Setzer
AudacityLogo

When I logged onto Twitter today I saw the alarming news that “Audacity is now a Possible Spyware, Remove it ASAP“. The TLDR: Audacity’s new corporate owners updated their TOS a few days ago to allow them to collect/harvest user data (the article above has good detail about the issue…give it a read). Needless to say, a good many folks in the Open Source community are less than pleased. So, I’m here to try and pull together a definitive list of alternatives. Also, I have a long-standing interest in finding alternative programs to expensive and proprietary ones (ie: Adobe). Here’s my list of these to date.

In this list below, the only one I’ve personally used is Adobe Audition, so the rest are a collection of options that I don’t know anything about. Please use them with caution and a dose of due diligence.

Paid Alternatives (in no particular order):

Do you have any experience with these? Are there any ones you recommend that I’ve missed? Any of them you’d recommend over the others? Please leave a comment below.

My Web Developer Evolution

Carl Setzer
List of Programming Languages

I was just thinking about the programming languages and environments I’ve studied over the past year.

  • The first one was Visual Basic. I have a basic understanding. Not sure how much additional effort I should invest in expanding these skills.
  • Though there’s some argument about whether HTML and CSS are programming languages. I’ll accept that they aren’t languages, but I’ve studied them, and they’re critical to web development. I expect I’m at an intermediate level with these.
  • The last of the web development trinity is Javascript, which is a true programming language and a lot of fun. I don’t know anywhere near what I want to, and so will be continuing in that.
  • With javascript, this quarter I’m studying frameworks, and I’ve been focused on jQuery. I really like how much cleaner it is than straight javascript. I’m just over a month in and enjoying this. Looking forward to continuing to build my skills.
  • Also, this quarter, I’m studying PHP. This has been a lot of fun. This language makes so much more sense to me, at an intuitive level than javascript.  As I’m only 4 weeks in, I’m looking forward to growing that knowledge.
  • At other points in my life, I’ve explored Java and C/C++. This knowledge is quite old and was very basic even in my hey-day. I’ve also explored Fortran and Cobol, but that really just entailed reading some books. If I have the opportunity, I want to explore these deeper.
  • I’ll be diving into tools like SQL and MySQL in the next few quarters. I also want to add Python to that list.

This is just my programming journey. I’ve also explored tools like Access, Excel, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Visio. All of this, for me, is fun. I must be a nerd.

What are the seven steps to successful SEO?

Carl Setzer
SEO Graphic
  • “What are the seven steps to successful SEO?”
    • Successful SEO has seven key steps, per MOZ’s “Beginner’s Guide To SEO“. These are valuable ways to help your website be discoverable by new users by ranking high in Search Engine Results Pages.
      • Crawl accessibility so engines can read your website
        • Enabling search engines to find and index my site
      • Compelling content that answers the searchers query
        • The site needs to answer questions in an interesting and engaging way.
      • Keyword optimized to attract searchers & engines
        • Be thoughtful with the composition of the website so that relevant keywords are featured in the articles
      • Great user experience including a fast load speed and compelling UX
        • The site needs to be streamlined so that it loads quickly, yet also has an interesting and engaging design
      • Share-worthy content that earns links, citations, and amplification
        • Content that engages your audience enough that they feel compelled to share it.
      • Title, URL, and description to draw high Click-Through Rates in the rankings
        • Thoughtfully considering article titles, the site’s URL, and description to make it compelling to someone, seeing it in a search, is very interested in clicking on the link and coming to the page.
      • Snippet/scheme markup to stand out in SERPs
        • Make the additional comments that show up on the Search Results Page engaging and encouraging the viewer to click over to the site.

This Morning’s Earworm: Kate Bush “Running Up that Hill”

Carl Setzer2 Comments

Pretty much every morning I wake with a song in my mind. Sometimes it’s simply my latest auditory obsession. Sometimes I think it’s my subconscious “telling me something”. This morning I woke with Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” on earworm. I’m not sure if my brain has a message for me or this just a song I’ve long loved popping back into my awareness. But it’s not unwelcome.

Looking At Laptops

Carl Setzer
Apple M1 Logo

My main laptop right now is an OLLLDDD MacBook Pro. It’s nearly 10 years old, and it’s starting to really show its age. And we do have need of a laptop.  So, it’s time to think of a replacement.

I’ve been very pleased with what I’ve seen of Apple’s new M1 chip. Also, my wife is most comfortable with Mac OS. And I pride myself on being OS agnostic. Additionally, one of the things I’m considering once I’m done at Edmonds college is UW’s Interactive Design program. They require a laptop and, though they don’t mandate a MacBook, they do highly recommend one. So, with all of that, I’m leaning towards an M1 Macbook Air. I still need to explore more, though. Due diligence and all that. Fortunately, I do get a student discount.

So, I’ve done a bit of research already. Check out these videos below. The first is a review of the MacBook while the second talks about the M1 chip compared to Windows PCs. Both point towards the M1 and Macbook.

Valuable Coding and IT Tools

Carl Setzer
Photo by Josh Sorenson from Pexels

As an Information System student, there are a handful of tools recommended to me by my instructors that have been critical. Every one of the tools below is free. Anyway, here’s my list:

  • Notepad ++: a richly powerful text editor. It’s what I’ve done most of my HTML and CSS in, and what I’ve done a lot of my JavaScript. I have shifted, though, back to Visual Studio, at least for now. I used Visual Studio for my Visual Basic class, so I’m pretty familiar with it.
  • 7 Zip is a great Zip file tool.
  • Agent Ransack, which boosts your PC’s search utility.
  • Winmerge: a great tool for comparing files. It has helped me a few times to find that one damn character I was missing.

Anyway, what tools do you use? That you find indispensable?

 

Featured Image by Josh Sorenson from Pexels

Amazon Frames, Google Glass and the Reinvented Future of Connected Eyewear

Carl Setzer

Today I logged into Amazon and the first thing I see is this ad: 

I’m surprised that I missed the announcement for Alexa Frames. Looks like these have actually been on the market for a few years.  Though not as feature-rich as the old Google glasses, they are definitely more discrete and attractive. 

This got me wondering about the status of Google Glass, and what similar products are on the market. With a little research, I found this piece about Google Glass. Now, I’ve known that the product is far from dead as there’s now Google Glass Enterprise Edition. But it has been more of a niche thing (here’s a post from the Verge from last February about it). 

 

As far as other products, I found this: Focals By North. Looks pretty interesting, but not ready for the mainstream yet. This video is from 2019, so perhaps they’ve updated things in the meantime. 

I think that the glasses will hold a significant part of the future of mobile computing. In particular, I’m curious about the ways VR/AR will be integrated into these glasses. Or how they won’t be. 

 

WordPress vs Joomla

Carl Setzer1 Comment

This upcoming quarter I’ll be taking JavaScript, System Analysis, and a class on Joomla and SEO.  Funny, really, that I never heard of Joomla until seeing my degree plan, and was surprised by that. Thus, I opted to spend a little time learning more. I am trying to be a good student, after all.

My research pulled me to this, somewhat dated, article (2018): Joomla vs WordPress. Turns out Joomla is, essentially, a competitor of sorts with WordPress. Of sorts is important. Joomla has been around as long as WordPress but holds a fraction of their market share. This puzzles me since I’ve been hovering around web design and site creation for years. I’ve created many sites, mostly with WordPress, but I’ve also used HTML as well as tools like Netscape Navigator and FrontPage. So, I’m disappointed I’ve never even heard of Joomla (or Drupal, for that matter). Time to learn, I guess.

I do find it interesting that the class is working with Joomla, and not WordPress. For me, it’s cool to learn new (to me) tech. But with only 5% deployment, vs WordPress’s 60%, along with that 5% share decreasing, I still find it puzzling to focus on a tiny tool. I expect that this will become clearer as the quarter progresses.