I’m amazed.

3 years ago, I made my first attempts at writing blog articles.

At first, I had 2 purposes in mind:

1. it was a way for me to log strange computer problems, so that I could “remember” how to fix something, if I encountered it again, many months later.
2. it was a cheap way to advertise Computer Aid, and implement some SEO

It has been useful in both ways.

I’ve been able to avoid “reinventing the wheel” a few times.

And I’m currently getting about 20 - 35% of my new customers from the internet.

At first, the traffic for computer-aid was low… about 200 - 600 visitors per month.

But then, I was using blogger.

Around July 2006, I switched to using wordpress (directly under the computer-aid.com.au domain. By the end of 2006, the website was getting around 3000 visitors per month.

And now, I’m getting around 10000 visits per month (http://www.computer-aid.com.au/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=computer-aid.com.au).

Clicks on my sponsors are currently earning me a bit over $400 per year, which covers the cost of the domain and website hosting… but not the huge number of hours I’ve spent writing blog articles.

I’ve also found I quite like writing my blog … so its nice to know that over 300 people per day actually read it also.

So, where do I go from here?

Ideally, I’d like to more people to click on my sponsor links… but I won’t hold my breath on that one.

For the moment, I’ll just keep going, with no major change in my routine.

Due to some recent events, I’ve deliberately slowed down my work schedule (from insanely hectic to moderately busy), but that shouldn’t affect my posts by much.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

Its been an interesting 3 years, and who knows what will happen in the next few years!

Posted by Computer Help as Musing at 1:16 PM EDT

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I must say I enjoy setting up new PCs that a customer has just purchased.

To me, unpacking and assembling a PC has a christmas feel to it.

I had to do a few recently, and I feel kinda guily that I get to do the fun stuff like unpacking and assembling the “chrissy presents”. I guess its a perk of the job

Posted by Computer Help as Musing at 1:44 PM EDT

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Soon after I first created this blog, I also connected it to feedburner, and activated the “email subscription” option.

I figure some people would like to read my posts without having to remember to regularly visit my website, or muck around with feed readers, etc.

since then, I’ve had 2 people send me some very exasperated-sounding emails eg:

can u STOP sending me messiges ok  it is anoying !!!!!!!
thanku!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Its probably someone playing a practical joke on them, as I cannot see how someone can go to the effort of subscribing to my email feed, and then not notice that each email has unsubscribe details within it. And given the infrequent nature of my posting (once every day or three), its nowhere near as annoying as some of the real spam emails.

Anyway I politely reply, saying that they should be able to unsubscribe themselves, but I’ve unsubscribed them anyway.

Posted by Computer Help as Hints, Humor, Musing at 1:58 PM EDT

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Having lived in the outer Brisbane suburb of Deception Bay for nearly 3 years now, I find the behaviour of the local ants difficult to understand.

Besides the normal ant behaviour (they swarm after most discarded/dropped food), they do other peculiar things:

• They often swarm into a glass that has a small amount of clean water in it. I can almost understand this: its been very dry, so water is just as important as food (to them).
• We replaced a worn out toilet cistern. After that, they would swarm around the silicon sealant that was used on the toilet piping (maybe they were getting high on the vapours?)…. after a few months, they are now just swarming around the toilet bowl (I assume they want the clean water)
• They seem to like biting small chunks out of clean paper facial tissues (This gets annoying/gross when I suddenly need a tissue for an imminent sneeze )… I now have to look before I grab a tissue from the box, as it could have 20 - 50 moving black dots on it
• We went on holiday for about 4 weeks, and during that time, they managed to bite a hole through an unopened (ie sealed) plastic bag of Castor sugar (and also an unopened (sealed) paper bag of white sugar).
• They have set up a mini nest inside a cordless phone headset (the backlight to the lcd display shows funny moving ant shadows. I fixed that issue by removing the battery and placing the unit in the freezer for an hour (and then spent 10 minutes shaking out dead ants and eggs).
• A few have explored a salt shaker (made of clear perspex), and have obviously died of thirst… leaving black specks in the salt.

These ants look normal (they are small and black… smaller that the ants roaming outside the house).

I can’t pinpoint the main nest, as they usually appear from cracks in the wall.

I have tried baiting them using a boron based poison, but that doesn’t seem to have much effect.

They can sometimes be useful (cleaning up some sticky messes), but they also do some weird stuff!

Posted by Computer Help as Musing at 1:46 PM EST

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I have just realised that Compact Flouro light bulbs are actually worse for the environment (and carbon emissions) than ordinary incandescent globes!

Many years ago, I decided to try a CF at home. It cost me $25, and it was intended to run at least 12 hours per day, so the 5000 hour lifespan was very tempting…

The 8watt CF replaced a 40watt globe

The CF was $25, the equivalent 40 watt globe was $0.50, so I needed to save over $24.50 to make it worthwhile.

I figured I would gain about 4000 hours out of the CF(compared to the incandescent globe) , so 4000 X 32Watt = 128000 watt hours… ie 128 Kwatt hours… at $0.15 per Kwatt hour, I’d save $19.20

Hey! Wheres the saving in that!

And then the CF stopped working after just 2000 hours!

Recently, with all the hype surrounding “green energy”, I’ve started thinking about the “total” carbon footprint of supposedly green items.

With CFs, you cannot just look at how much electricity they save you, you also need to consider how much energy and resources went into making them in the first place.

An incandescent is cheap because manufacturing it has a low environmental impact (and a low carbon footprint)… think about it… whats an incandescent made of? Glass, steel, a tiny tungsten filament, and a bit of “glue”

A CF, however, needs: a carefully manufactured, vacuum sealed glass tube (with a special coating on the inside), a circuit board with various electronic components all soldered together (so you get lead and lots of other toxic stuff)…

And as most engineers will tell you: the more components, the more things that can break down.

So, I reckon any carbon “savings” from a CF, will be lost in the extra carbon costs in making them in the first place.

So is there a way to be truly green with household lighting?

Not yet, but LED lighting is the way to go… it has hardly any disadvantages…

You can switch LEDs on and off thousands of times, and they won’t burn out (CFs and incandescents will burn out in a week if they are constantly switched on and off).

LEDs will eventually start to fade after a few years of use.

LEDs also don’t heat up like CFs and incandescent bulbs.

Its a pity that LED technology is not quite ready for illumination purposes. Hopefully, LEDs will be commercially viable soon!

Posted by Computer Help as Musing at 12:23 AM EDT

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At the start of this year, me and my other half, went to a seminar by onsitedirect, and decided to buy an investment property…

After years of not wanting to borrow money for anything, I have eventually realised that borrowing money correctly is the best way to increase wealth (I wish I’d realised that 20 years ago!).

Anyway, we buy an apartment, borrow lots of money, and later (after settlement) find a few inconsistencies:

The body corporate fee is a lot higher than what onsitedirect told us.

A “sister” company to onsitedirect (growingequity) assisted us in getting a line of credit with macquarie bank, telling us that the interest only loan was “indefinite”, but we only found out after settlement, that the interest only part was for 5 years, which could be extended by another 5 years by paying a fee…

Well, despite the negatives, the important thing is we now “own” an investment property.

The income from rental actually works out a lot lower than we expected (due to the higher than expected body corporate). Thus the “out of pocket” interest repayments are a lot higher than expected.

But in the long term, it just means that it will will take longer before we can afford to borrow for a second property.

And I’ve re-learnt a valuable lesson: caveat emptor… verify everything you are told independently.

Posted by Computer Help as Musing at 11:26 AM EDT

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Since the start of August 2007, I’ve noticed the number of spam comments being captured by my blog spam blockers (akismet and bad behaviour) has decreased significantly.

Bad behaviour would easily block 500 - 1500 spam comments per week… now it seems to block 200 - 300 comments.

Akismet is similar: from 20 - 30 per day, down to 5 - 10 per day.

Admittedly, my website traffic has decreased slightly (about 20%). So, all I can think is that the spammers are busy brewing up some smarter spam bots. The drop in spam activity is also resulting in a drop in my website ”traffic”… but then, it was traffic I never really wanted anyway.

Posted by Computer Help as Business, Musing, Technical at 11:20 AM EDT

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This wasn’t meant to be a book review, but I guess thats how it turned out! 

In the last few years, I haven’t had much time to read books, so when my wife bought this one for me, I was sceptical.

I mean, I’ve heard of so many books on “how to improve your bottom line X-fold”, etc etc, so I was prepared to be either confused by the over-complicated techniques, or bored by the blindingly obvious.

So, I started reading “The E-myth Revisited”, and I got past part 1, but it just seemed to just be setting some background information. Boring, but with some interesting bits of information.

Part 2  was short, but it got quite interesting… and with each interesting bit of information I absorbed, I found myself wanting to ask a few follow-on questions (most fell into the how?, and why? category).

By this stage, I was itching to get to part 3, and I was hoping I’d get the answers to my questions. This was getting exiting.

Although Computer Aid doesn’t quite fit into Michaels description of a small business, I could see many similarities, and I could see I was going to make many mistakes in the future, and probably run myself into the ground…

But I also got a taste of what Computer Aid could be like… I could also see its potential.

Part 3 of this book got a bit hard to read (in places), but by the end, it felt like I had had one of those “lightbulb” moments. I knew I could avoid “burning out”… but I could also see I had a lot of work in front of me…

All up, E-Myth has been one of the most enlightening books I have read (maybe because I know nothing about “business”).

Probably one of the most difficult things I’ll need to do is the “documentation” of all aspects of my work… not something I’m looking forward to.

And after that, I’ll also need to learn to “let go” and not try to do everything myself… The feeling that “no-one else can do my work as well as me” is so ingrained, that I’m not sure if I can do it.

Looks like I’ve got some interesting times ahead.

Posted by Computer Help as Business, Musing at 10:23 PM EDT

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Since starting a computer repair business, I have often wondered where the computer industry is heading. But not from a “whats going to be the next whizz-bang technology” point of view, but how are ordinary people (with very little technical knowledge) going to be using computers in the future (and how it will impact my business).

From what I’ve seen, computers need to become easier to use (not necessarily faster… I can use a pentium2 for simple web surfing, and a pentuim3 for playing some more advanced games). They have already come a long way, but when I see people who need to be taught how to drag and resize windows, then I think we need something easier.

In the past I’ve theorised that mobile phones will be the computers of the future. I’ve since thought about that from a more generic point of view.

And I’ve also thought about similar “technologies” from the past, that might give a hint of what might happen in the future.

Lets start with Clocks. Go back a few hundred years, and you find that few people had clocks. Clock technology (eg grandfather clocks, hourglasses, etc) was about large timepieces, that were hand-made, expensive, inaccurate, and required a lot of maintenance (eg winding and repairing). And you needed a good education to read a clock (eg: my step daughter never really got the hang of analogue clocks. She always had digital clocks, so the incentive to learn to read analogue clocks wasn’t there… and I must admit, I struggled to learn analogue clocks myself)

Telephones would have had a similar phase of initial development, using large telephones, a tangle of wires, and a human switchboard operator. Although they weren’t as sophisticated as clocks (ie clocks would have had pendulums, springs and many many cogs), at least clocks were fully automated, whereas telephones required the manual intervention of the switchboard operator. But they were easy to use… just dial a number, or even better yet: just pick up the headset and tell the operator who you wanted.

Cars probably have a similar history to clocks. The started as an offshoot of the horse and carriage, add an engine, and you no longer need to maintain a horse stable. But the first cars (engines and chassis) were very unreliable, were hand made, needed a lot of maintenance, and had a limited range and speed. But you still needed to learn to drive the beasts… except learning to drive would have been quite simple in the early days (just steer, brake, and stay on the road. Change gears? whats that?).

Early computers were as large as a house, used a lot of power, were less powerful than a modern scientific calculator, were hand made, and required a lot of maintenance. And you needed to be a real bright spark to use one.

As progress and innovation improves our lives, you find:

Clocks got smaller and more accurate. You get mobile clocks (watches)… initially the fob watches that you put in a pocket (there is a strong similarity between fob watches and todays mobile cell phones), then the rise of the “swiss movement” wrist watches… they would only lose or gain a few minutes per day! By this stage, learning to read a clock would be part of the school system

Telephones also got smaller, telephone networks got bigger, the need to replace the human switchboard operator became a necessity, and so the automated switchboard was developed. Using a telephone is so simple, it doesn’t need to be taught at school.

Cars became more reliable and faster. But there is obviously no need to make them smaller, their function is to transport people, so the size cannot be changed much. But their mechanical nature meant that they still need regular maintenance by a mechanic. And with more cars on the road, the number of road rules increase, such that everyone must undergo an intensive training course in order to be allowed to operate a car on the roads.

Computers got smaller, more efficient, and faster. They start being used to replace more unreliable technologies (this process is still ongoing) like controlling elevators, clocks and watches, fuel injection timing, etc. They become more and more pervasive, and easier to use. You don’t really need to understand how to program your microwave, watch, elevator, mobile phone. This is probably why MS windows rose to where it is today… it was made easier to use, so more people could use a computer.

And the future?

Clocks are now everywhere. It used to be that if I didn’t have a wrist watch, I felt like something was missing. But now I can just look at my mobile phone, the car dashboard, or a wall somewhere. The only place you won’t find clocks, are at supermarkets (for marketing reasons: if you don’t know the time, you will shop more!) Clocks are now like paper, pens, or a shirt. You can wear them as a fashion statement. But mostly they are taken for granted. If one breaks, you bin it, and buy a new one.

Telephones are now merging with computer networks (eg VOIP). Soon, dedicated phone networks (over which you can also use the internet), will change to internet connections (over which you can also make phone and video calls). Mobile phones are currently at the “fob watch” stage, and should soon get to the wrist watch stage (maybe with a “bluetooth” headset or just hands free). Although more expensive than a watch, they are still thrown out when they break.

Cars probably won’t change much. There will always be more added features (bluetooth, more airbags, satnav, etc). Hopefully, there will also be a change in engine technologies, as current CO2 emitting engines will push the world to dangerous climate change, maybe even a global oceanic anoxic event. Cars could even become “slower”, as you get greater environmental efficiencies at slower speeds. But you will always need a mechanic to service your car, regardless of what it will look like in the future.

And Computers?

Computers are almost as pervasive as food. Most are maintenance free and disposable. The only exception is the “PC” (and to a lesser extent the mobile phone). One of the biggest problems with replacing a mobile phone, is transferring the data (phone book, photos, ringtones, etc). But newer phones have plugin memory cards, which make the process simple. But with a PC, the situation is worse. Important data can be scattered all over the hard drive… and in the windows registry (which cannot be simply copied from PC to PC). So tossing  out a PC (for most non-tech people), usually involves a large data loss, or hiring an expert to transfer the data to the new PC.

Will this situation improve in the future? Yes. You can already start to see the beginnings of this with things like hotmail/gmail, where your emails are stored on the internet, and don’t need to be transferred from PC to PC.

Technically, internet speeds (ie internet infrastructure) are not fast enough to support a whole PC running all of its applications over the internet, but is should be possible to implement a “local cache” of data on the internet. Thus you can run a spreadsheet (or linux/windows) off an internet “drive” but you get a speed advantage by having a local copy, and changes / updates happen to both copies. A new PC will run slowly until it has downloaded its local copy. But your data is never lost, and a broken PC can just be tossed out for a new one. The technology to do this is possible today. It can be done via an extra OS plugin, or even via a modified P2P filesharing network.

Another change is the move to wireless technologies. 3G networks are a sample of what will be possible in the future. I can see that many of us will just not bother with a copper wire (for phone and internet) running into our house. We just go wireless.

What does this mean to the PC repair industry? Well, it will eventually die like the industries that repair TVs, VCRs, watches, phones. But what I see is that it will never die out until computers become truly disposable. It could be 5 years, or it could be 50 years.

And with most industries, something else will spring up, which is unreliable and that needs repairing.

Posted by Computer Help as Musing, Technical at 1:12 PM EDT

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