Today marks a big day in my life. I completed my first book. I just sent off the final manuscript for publishing. (That’s fancy-words for “I emailed a formatted PDF to the publisher.”) This book is all about cyber-security for small businesses. While some of the content applies to individuals, I geared it toward the […]
Author Archives: eliaspuurunen
Your Wi-Fi Password is (Probably) Too Short
When’s the last time you changed your Wi-Fi password? Perhaps you’re among many who have never thought to. When you signed up for Internet service, did you have the technician set up your modem for you? If so, your Wi-Fi password is probably way too short to be secure. tl;dr: If your Wi-Fi password hasn’t […]
Pattern Matching & Systematic Reduction Continued: How I Learned to Multiply
Last time I talked about memory and memorization I discussed how I learned the Braille alphabet. We reduced the number of symbols to memorize from 64 down to 5, plus a few rules to transform those symbols. I mentioned I wanted to show how I skipped learning the multiplication tables. In elementary school, I hated […]
Pattern Matching & Systematic Reduction: How I Learn New Ideas Efficiently
Throughout my life I have always searched for patterns. I can’t explain why, but I’ve found it’s been the way I’ve learned most efficiently. One example of this is my recent fascination with Braille. I had the chance to play Scrabble recently with someone who is fully blind. It was, no pun intended, an eye-opening […]
Modernizing Your Libraries: What Magical Go-Fast Button Lurks Within Your Code?
One of the specialties of my consulting company, Northern HCI Solutions, is to take old software and modernize it. Often companies have programs that work perfectly well, but because their code is aging, it’s hard to find people to maintain those systems. One of our most recent projects involved modernizing a Delphi app written in […]
PurpleBlu2 – My First Custom Wi-Fi Pi Speaker Build – PART 2 – Test Run
In part 1 of this blog series, I covered the basic design of PurpleBlu2, my first from-scratch Raspberry Pi-powered Wi-Fi speaker. To recap: I designed a speaker system from scratch using some small 2″ full-range drivers (for good quality audio), a Raspberry Pi 3 B+, a small 5 watt amplifier, and a wood box I […]
PurpleBlu2 – My First Custom Wi-Fi Pi Speaker Build – PART 1 – Plans
After the success of retrofitting a Raspberry Pi into my old guitar amplifier, I started the design of my next project. This time I didn’t want to reuse old parts. I had the following objectives. Cabinet that could be mounted in the kitchen. Small speaker size. Powered from one replaceable power supply. My long-term goal […]
PurpleBlu – My First Pi-Powered Wi-Fi Speaker
It’s been a long time since I last blogged about a technology-related thing I did. I miss that. After talking politics, public policy, and everything else that’s wrong with the world, let’s talk about something cool and exciting – hacking! During my recent trip to Alberta I got to tour some of the maker spaces […]
Disconnected – How Politicians Have Overlooked Rural Ontario’s Internet Poverty Crisis
Following the 2018 Ontario election has been like watching someone channel-surf. In mere weeks we’ve covered more issues than prior elections could ever cover in months. The Liberals are trying promise after promise to find an issue that will stick with voters. The PCs have screamed about the Liberals non-stop. The NDP have campaigned on […]
Too Much Information?
It’s been entertaining to watch the Cambridge Analytica story over the Iast week. When it broke, you would be forgiven for thinking that it was a scandal of some sort. Basically this company used personal data from Facebook to craft political messages that would all but guarantee the election of Donald Trump. It’s certainly not […]
