Riccardo Mori

Things I learnt while restoring my Mac/PC wireless home network

January 11, 2014

The setup

We don’t live in a huge flat, but my studio and my wife’s studio are far enough from the living-room, where the main router resides, that when I set up the wireless home network nine years ago, I had to add a couple of AirPort Express (802.11g) base stations, one in the living-room, the other just outside our studios in the hallway that connects the living area with the bedroom.

So, the current setup is:

Cisco router in the living-room
AirPort Express base station No. 1 connected via Ethernet to the router
AirPort Express base station No. 2 used to extend the range of base No. 1

The Cisco is also a wireless router, and broadcasts Home Network 1. The AirPort Express connected to the router share its connection to the Internet wirelessly, creating Home Network 2. Why two different Wi-Fi networks, you ask? Well, there are a lot of devices in my home that connect to the Internet wirelessly, some of them aren’t exactly current technology and don’t support a wireless encryption more sophisticated than WEP, so at times it’s best to have a secondary, closed (the SSID is not broadcast), less secure Wi-Fi network to allow these older devices to temporarily connect.

The incident

Various computers and iOS devices connect to our home network. Most computers are Macs, but my wife uses a Windows PC in her studio, and the other day she was complaining of slow Internet speeds and poor signal reception on her PC. I was puzzled because the Macs in my studio and the PC in her studio are placed at basically the same distance from the AirPort Express base station No. 2 in the hallway. I too had noticed slower Internet speeds on my Macs, but still in the ‘acceptable’ range — websites were slower to load, but they loaded. On her PC, websites stopped loading halfway or didn’t load at all. Plus, every now and then the PC would disconnect from the Wi-Fi network created by the two AirPort Express base stations, due to poor signal.

It was soon clear to me that AirPort Express base station No. 2 had started acting up and was no longer extending the range of base No. 1.

Mind you, this was not the first time. I have to say that my experience with AirPort Express base stations has been overall quite positive, and both these little guys are still working fine after 9 years of 24/7 duty, and they’ve been reliable devices I never had to reset or reconfigure since the first time I set them up in 2005. Occasionally they’ve been acting up, but nothing that couldn’t be solved by restarting either base station or both.

This time restarting AP base No. 2 did nothing. Nor restarting AP base No. 1. Nor both. Nor twice, three or five times in a row.

I repeatedly checked the settings in AirPort Admin Utility and nothing looked out of the ordinary.

It was not a problem with our ISP: the wireless network created by the Cisco router was working.

So I had to reset AP base No. 2 to its factory default settings. Then I used AirPort Setup Assistant to reconfigure AP base No. 2. Now, setting up an AirPort Express base station is a rather straightforward process and Apple software (both the Setup Assistant and the Admin Utility) has a clear enough interface so that any minimally tech-savvy user can do it. I followed instructions carefully, and set up the base station like it was before the incident.

Still no joy. All devices connecting to the Wi-Fi network created by the two AirPort Express base stations only recognised the one in the living-room (No. 1), and since my wife’s PC was the farthest from that base station, it barely connected.

After two hours of frustration…

I’ll spare you the details of my tribulations: suffice to say that there was much swearing; much checking and rechecking of parameters that should have been fine as they were yet nothing worked; much restarting and reconfiguring from scratch; much going back and forth from room to room.

When finally everything started working again, here’s what I’ve learnt from this frustrating experience. Of course, nothing is written in stone and your mileage may vary.

Check the wireless channel on which the two base stations are transmitting. It appears that when you’re using additional base stations to extend the range of the primary one, it’s better if all base stations are transmitting on the same channel.
If there’s a Windows PC connecting to the same Wi-Fi network as Macs, it appears that PCs like channels 1, 6 and 11 best. There’s probably a technical reason for this, but frankly I’m too fed up with this to further investigate. I set both AirPort base stations to channel 1 and everyone’s happy.
Check that the security setting is the same on all base stations:

For some reason, my AP base No. 2 Wireless Security setting was misconfigured and just said “WPA Personal”.

Only after verifying these three things could the PC connect to the Internet successfully. It was a very frustrating trial-and-error process, and my advice is to remain calm and double check every little detail, as it’s easy to miss something when you’re getting angry because you’re thinking “I should know this stuff, it’s not rocket science, yet for some reason it’s not working.” Also, when everything finally works, take screenshots of all the important settings, so that you can go back to them the next time your base station loses its configuration and you have to set it up again.

If you don’t, I’ll remember it

January 9, 2014

by Riccardo Mori

Briefly

I’ve never been much into animated stills, but the work of the person behind If We Don’t, Remember Me is truly extraordinary and evocative. It’s a poetic declaration of love to what I infer are this person’s favourite movies, and to the art of making movies in general.

I remember finding this tumblelog by chance, back in early 2011 and it quickly became one of my favourite tumblelogs. I remember checking my Tumblr dashboard for updates to see if there was a new animated movie still. Even the stills chosen from movies I knew well were capable of catching me by surprise. IWDRM’s greatness is that it tells a story inside another story.

Then, in 2012 and 2013, I noticed the updates were getting few and far between, and in the last post (a still from Modern Times) the author announced that the project is over, for now. I hope it’s just the beginning of a hiatus, and that someday IWDRM will return.

If it doesn’t, we’ll remember it. Right?

(Look at IWDRM’s Archive page for a bird’s eye view of this beautiful world of stills that subtly, gently, endlessly loop.)

People I added to my reading list in 2013

January 9, 2014

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

With regard to reading — both online and offline — I feel my 2013 has been a denser, richer year than 2012. I know for sure I’ve read more books in 2013 than the year before, and as for reading stuff online I’m left with the impression that I’ve found more quality writing overall. Maybe I’m just getting better at instinctively avoiding the bad writing and at filtering out the noise while tuning to the signal.

Fiddling with the feeds

There are geeks who obsess over their software setup and keep rearranging the apps on their phones, tablets, and computers to achieve that perfect combination of frictionless productivity or minimalism-oriented anal-retentiveness or what have you. I tend to rearrange my feeds rather frequently. The main reason I do that is because I don’t want my reading list to get out of control, both in size and in the amount of unread items. My issue with accumulating unread articles is not that I want to reach RSS Feeds Zero at all costs. It’s because, in a way, I think I’m not respecting the people I’ve added to my list of resources. What’s the point of adding someone you find insightful and worth following, if then you don’t read what they write because their website or blog has become just another drop in the ocean of your feed reader?

In the second half of 2013, I further simplified my RSS feed management:

I’ve transferred all the infrequent reads, the rarely-updated sources (the ‘slow feeds’) into the older version of NetNewsWire I keep on my G4 Cube. This version of NetNewsWire doesn’t sync with anything, so it makes sense to use it for those sources I check infrequently and/or are updated infrequently.
The sources I check frequently and those which are updated frequently are managed via my Feedly account, and kept synchronised on the Mac (with ReadKit), on the iPad (with Feedly) and on the iPhone (with My Paper).
I have removed from all my feed readers those sources I end up checking so frequently I don’t even need a feed reader to keep track of them, and I’ve added them to Coast’s screens for quick one-tap access.
I have mercilessly removed from my feed readers all those sources I’ve lost interest in over time, plus all those sources which have let me down, in a way or another (by changing focus and talking more about things I don’t particularly care about; by providing shallower content; by becoming ‘me-too’ blogs; by getting progressively more self-admiring and self-approving; and so on and so forth).

The result of this process is that I have 20 ‘Infrequent Reads’ feeds in NetNewsWire, around 35 feeds in the ‘Hot & always in-sync list’, and 18 bookmarked websites in the Coast browser on the iPad. Considering that in 2011 I had a total of 273 feeds in my feed reader, the current situation after the progressive pruning is pure RSS management heaven.

More people, less portals

In 2013 I noticed I started following people more closely while I found big tech news sites to be less and less appealing. Sure, I read a lot of articles here and there, but most of the time it was because someone on Twitter or App.net had suggested the link, not because I was keeping an eye on that portal’s feeds.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s whom I added to my reading list in 2013.

In the tech sphere (tech commentary, programming, app development, etc.):

Harry Marks at Curious Rat — I really like Harry’s honest, direct style. He doesn’t write only tech-related commentary but focuses also on themes related to the process of writing.
Nick Heer’s Pixel Envy — I found Nick by following a link on another source (can’t remember who, sorry), and what a great discovery Pixel Envy has been. I loved Nick’s in-depth review of iOS 7 and Retina iPad mini review (and once again I suggest you read his The best photo editing app on the iPhone writeup on The Sweet Setup). He’s another honest voice who always talks from experience and when he has something to say.
Raging Thunderbolt — Not frequently updated, but often a refreshing reading.
Smarterbits by Shadoe Huard — It’s a recent find, and I like it.
Brett Terpstra’s website — You’ll find a lot of interesting resources on Brett’s site, and of course his writing. I never miss his ‘Web Excursions’ link posts. If you’re into all things Markdown, Brett is definitely someone to follow.
Stratēchery, by Ben Thompson — Ben’s analyses and insights are always worth your time.
Benedict Evans’s website — …same goes for Benedict’s contributions.
Waffle — Written by Jesper, “some guy in Sweden” as he presents himself. He often talks about programming and software, and his contributions can get quite technical, but you’ll also find the recipe for making the best Swedish pancakes. My favourite articles are Web browsing like it’s 1999 and Compare Contrast.
Techinch by Matthew Guay — I discovered Matthew by reading his great software reviews over at AppStorm. Then I started following him on App.net and finally added his blog to my reading list. I suggest you do the same.
Whole & Part by Zac Cichy — The most recent addition (the site is also fairly new), so recent it was already 2014 when I added it. I arrived to it by following a discussion on Twitter and thinking “I like this Cichy guy, I should read more of what he writes.”
David Smith’s blog — He’s the developer of Feed Wrangler and I’ve been enjoying his musings about apps and the App Store (read this article or this one, for example).
Collin Donnell’s blog — He’s the developer of Pinbook for Pinboard and I discovered his blog only very recently, but I quickly made up for lost time by reading older articles. I really like Collin’s writing. (See for example The Products Apple Doesn’t Have Time to Improve.)
Jared Sinclair’s blog — He’s the developer of, among other things, Riposte and Whisper for App.net, and I’m looking forward to using his upcoming Unread RSS reader. I found his blog while browsing for Fifty-Three’s Pencil stylus reviews (Jared has written one) and after reading a few other articles, I decided it was worth keeping the blog in my feeds.
Rob Horning’s Internal Exile — Technology, philosophy, food for thought.
Jonathon Duerig — I’m adding him to my reading list as a sort of special mention. Jonathon is a developer and has his website where you’ll find more information about his many projects. But my suggestion is to follow him on App.net. He’s a great guy with whom I’ve had many interesting discussions and exchanges. He may challenge your point of view, but what follows is always constructive.

Other voices and resources, not strictly related to the tech sphere:

Donovan Bond’s website — Photography above all. If you love Fujifilm’s digital cameras, you’ll want to add his Fuji vs. Fuji project to your bookmarks.
The VSCO Journal — I love everything Visual Supply Co. does, and their Journal is a great source of inspiration, especially if you’re into photography and design.
Fern Riddell’s Vice and Virtue Blog • The London Music Hall’s 1850–1939 — I’m a bit of a Victorian and Edwardian eras’ fanatic, and I was very pleased to add Fern’s website to my resources. Her About page will tell you all you need to know about who she is and where she comes from. I can tell you she’s smart and witty, and if you like what she writes and the themes she talks about, you should also follow her on Twitter.
Messy Nessy Chic — The tag line says it all: Blogging on the off-beat, the unique and the chic. Curious Internet findings, abandoned places, interesting photographs… and much more. Browse the archives, follow the related links at the bottom of every article and go down the rabbit hole. You won’t regret the time you spend on her site.
Liz Climo’s tumblr — I love her drawing style and sense of humour.
Transit Maps — I’m obsessed with transit maps — especially historical transit maps — and this is a fantastic resource to follow on Tumblr.

Is this all? Probably not, and I may update this list in the following days. Oh, and of course I keep reading all the resources and people I found in 2012…

My essential iOS apps — Part 3

January 8, 2014

by Riccardo Mori

Software

Part 3 — Special mentions

I originally had not planned a Third Part in my ‘Essential iOS apps’ series, but while writing the first two I couldn’t help but notice a few applications which — while I don’t consider them strictly indispensable — are important enough to warrant a mention.

Sparrow — This promising email client enjoyed a brief moment where it was my primary email client both on the Mac and on my iPhone. Then Google came, acquired the company (or acqui-hired its developers, whatever), and ruined everything. Development of the Mac app has basically stopped, and on iOS it receives the occasional maintenance update to keep the app working. However, something curious has happened with this app and my setup: it is now the primary email client on my secondary devices. It has replaced the built-in Mail app on my iPhone 3GS, and it has replaced Mail.app both on my 12-inch and 17-inch PowerBook G4s (Yes, I was quick enough to download Sparrow at the beginning, when it was still a Universal Binary). In other words, it’s not an essential app, but I still love it very much.

x2y — This is a great aspect ratio calculator, developed by Joe Cieplinski, who is also one of my favourite tech writers (you should add his blog to your feeds). As the official app description goes, “x2y is a beautifully simple aspect ratio calculator for the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Built for designers and web developers who need to resize images and videos in code, x2y calculates dimensions for you automatically. Just choose the original aspect ratio or size, enter one of the new desired dimensions, and the missing dimension will be calculated instantly.” I’m not a designer or Web developer, so this app is not part of my essential tools, strictly speaking, but whenever I need to resize an image I want to include in an article on one of my blogs, I always reach for x2y. It’s really a well-designed and thought-out application which I strongly recommend despite what some people may think about its ‘expensive’ price tag.

Twitter — Why a special mention for Twitter’s official iOS client? For a very particular, obscure reason: to my knowledge, it’s the only Twitter client that will work on your old iPhone 3G with iOS 4.2.1. I didn’t believe it myself, but I tried this and it worked: on your iPhone 3G, enter the App Store app and look for Twitter. You’ll get the Download an older version of this app? dialog box, tap Download and install the app. Log in to Twitter and… it’ll work. (I mentioned it previously, by the way.)

Dragon Dictation — This app is worth a special mention because it still works with older iOS devices, having iOS 4.0 as minimum requirement (at the time of writing). It works great on my iPhone 3G.

Groove — Music player & Smart playlist — The app description says that “Groove learns your listening habits and organises your music into great playlists.” At first I didn’t think I would use such an app, since I’m not on the move enough to spend much time listening to music on my iPhone or iPad. Yet I recently tried Groove and was impressed by its (revamped) interface and, more importantly, by the great mixes it generated by choosing songs from my library. Again, I wouldn’t call Groove an ‘essential’, but its importance and frequency of use are rapidly increasing on my iDevices.

Mactracker — Mactracker is a compact encyclopaedia on everything Apple produced: computers, peripherals, devices, accessories, operating systems. It’s the best tool for quickly looking up some information on an Apple product, no matter the vintage. When I set up a new iOS device, this is usually the first non-strictly-essential app to be installed right after all the already-mentioned essentials.

Coast by Opera — This is a really interesting browser, which sits on my iPad dock together with Safari and has made me use Chrome less and less frequently. I love Opera’s modern take on how to browse the Web and the ‘websites as apps’ paradigm. I love how gestures are implemented and the browser’s UI in general. I’ll probably write more about it in a separate post.

Jasmine — I don’t watch a lot of YouTube videos, but when I do I fire up Jasmine and not the official YouTube iOS client. I simply love Jasmine’s minimal, elegant UI. It all feels so much less cluttered.

VLC — The only occasion when I watch videos on my iPad is when I travel, which doesn’t happen all that frequently (and that’s why there were no video apps in my essentials collection for the iPad). There are many good third-party iOS apps for playing videos out there — Flex Player and Infuse are the first coming to mind — but for my needs, VLC is a complete-enough package.

Status Board — When I was talking about Screens in Part Two of this series of articles, I wrote: “Over time I’ve purchased a few apps with an ‘expensive’ price tag, and at first glance it’s easy to dismiss them with the typical Oh, App X does just that? It’s not worth the price objection.” The same can be said about Status Board by Panic. Why should I pay $10 for an app that just displays information in a pretty way, most of which information (time, weather, email, Twitter and RSS feeds…) can be retrieved from other sources for free? Again, it’s a well-designed app and with little extra work it allows you to configure custom data sources to display the information you need. You can have it display statistics, with graphs and tables, in real time. And you can see all this information together at a glance. Again, once you begin to recognise and take advantage of its versatility, it’s not hard to see that it’s worth the $10.

And that’s really a wrap! Thanks for reading, and if you have questions or suggestions, you know how to reach me.

Link to Part 1

Link to Part 2

My essential iOS apps — Part 2

January 8, 2014

by Riccardo Mori

Software

Part 2 — on the iPad

The following apps are as essential to me on the iPad as they are on the iPhone, and have already been discussed in Part 1: Dropbox, Simplenote, Google Maps, Snapseed, Scotty, iMDB, Wikipanion, Spotify, Pushpin for Pinboard, Twitterrific, Netbot and Felix.

All my iPad essentials (except Paper) are universal apps, or have a separate iPhone/iPad version available, but I find these in particular to be most enjoyable, useful, practical on the iPad.

Flipboard — The first app I open in the morning, while having breakfast. The feature I love most is how easily you can add favourite articles and feeds to create a magazine of curated content. If you visit Flipboard’s website, you’ll also find a ‘Flip It’ bookmarklet to add to the browser, so that you can add things even when browsing from your computer. (By the way, I have a little magazine like that on Flipboard, called Morrick’s Flipcrumbs.)

Daedalus Touch — I’ve been writing more on my iPad in recent times, especially since I started using it with an Apple Wireless Keyboard. I’m also a happy user of Phraseology (I love its linguistic analysis tools) and iA Writer (I love its strong focus on the text and the airiness of the interface), but I’ve come to favour The Soulmen’s Daedalus Touch, especially since the last major update which has brought, among other nice improvements, the amazing option of letting you install your own fonts. Another useful feature in Daedalus is the integrated Web browser, particularly when I translate because I can quickly look up words in online dictionaries without having to switch to Safari and back.

Paper — I like sketching and painting on the iPad when I have some time or when I need to clear my mind and relax. I have purchased a fair amount of apps for that, but since I’m talking about essentials here, if I had to choose just one to install on my hypothetical ‘minimal iPad’, I would pick Paper due to its versatility. You can use it to just make doodles or very refined drawings and paintings. (I have all the In-app purchases, of course.)

Documents by Readdle and GoodReader — To handle documents, these two apps are both great and rich in features. I like Documents’ user interface better, but I also like GoodReader extended syncing capabilities. So it’s really a draw between these two.

Posts — Time ago I had my eyes on Poster by Tom Witkin and put the app in my wishlist. But since 99.9% of the time I’m publishing articles from my Mac on my WordPress blogs, purchasing an iOS app for that purpose wasn’t a priority. When I finally decided to give Poster a try, Automattic acquired it, so I had to look for an alternative. After a bit of research, I tried Posts and found it to be very good for the job. (By the way, I had hoped that after Automattic acquired Poster, the official WordPress iOS app would get better, but I still find it barely usable.)

Just Type — This app is to the built-in Notes app what Google Maps is to the built-in Maps app. The feature I probably love most? Full Dropbox integration. And iCloud syncing. And a great selection of fonts to choose from for your notes. And… only $0.99/€0.89.

WordWeb Dictionary — On the iPhone, I like the Merriam-Webster Dictionary app better. On the iPad, I prefer WordWeb. I really like its search features: you can use wildcard characters like ‘*’ or ‘?’ to search patterns (e.g. if you type req*ed in the search field, you’ll get all the words beginning with ‘req’ and ending in ‘ed’.), and you can filter search results by noun, verb, adjective, adverbs. And did I mention it’s free?

Feedly — I still haven’t returned to my old favourite Reeder. For now I’m staying with the Feedly official iOS app because it’s good enough for my needs and because I actually like its Flipboard-ish interface (though I liked the previous default fonts better.)

Screens — Over time I’ve purchased a few apps with an ‘expensive’ price tag, and at first glance it’s easy to dismiss them with the typical Oh, App X does just that? It’s not worth the price objection. Is Screens by Edovia worth the $20? It’s just a VNC client, after all. There are other, less expensive alternatives. I can use a Mac to control another Mac, and Screen Sharing is built in Mac OS X. Sure, but then you realise how well designed and well implemented the app is. You realise how fast and reliable it is. You realise how a well-designed UI makes monitoring and controlling a Mac via an iPad (or iPhone) a breeze. You realise how often you end up using it because (at least in my case) it’s faster and more responsive than a Mac-to-Mac remote desktop session. After a while, you realise that yes, Screens is worth its $20 price tag.

Readmill — The iPad is my main ebook reader (I don’t have a Kindle), and I read a lot in Apple’s iBooks app, which I find decent enough. But I also love Readmill’s iOS app, which has a really nice, elegant interface. Plus, I can upload a book or PDF from my Mac via the browser and have my Readmill library synced across iOS devices. Readmill (both the app and the service) is getting better and better with every update.

Digits — I’ve never understood why certain iOS apps that are built-in on the iPhone are absent from the iPad. Digits is a great calculator app. I love the interface (big numbers and buttons on the iPad in landscape orientation), the ability to check your calculations on virtual paper tapes and even to email them, which comes very handy when calculating my expenses, etc.

Camera+ — I haven’t mentioned Camera+ among my essential iPhone camera apps because I actually started liking it more on the iPad. I don’t take many photos with the iPad, and for my very limited needs Apple’s Camera app should be enough, but I really like Camera+‘s interface, which feels a bit less cramped than on the iPhone 4. I also use it a lot to import and edit images from the camera roll. Another recent favourite (hat tip to Nick Heer for mentioning it in his great article on the best photo editing apps for the iPhone) is Afterlight.

AppShopper — AppShopper is an essential tool to keep an eye on the App Store. I use it to search for apps (it’s faster and better than the official App Store app), to manage a wishlist of apps I’m interested in and want to monitor, and so on. Note that I’ve linked to the current AppShopper Social app, but I’m still using (and referring to) the original AppShopper, which I downloaded before it was removed from the App Store in December 2012.