Category: Information Technology

I have an Associate in Technical Arts in Web Application Development degree, as well as certificates in:

  • Business Systems Analysis
  • Requirements Analysis
  • Database Theory and Design
  • Cisco Networking
  • And I’m one class away from a Desktop Support Certificate

I have a deep knowledge of technical systems and have solved a variety of problems.

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.

Google’s Disturbing Trend In Regards To Ethical AI

Carl Setzer

Yesterday Margaret Mitchell tweeted this out:

This might not seem troublesome on the surface. However, earlier this year they fired Timit Gebru, who was the co-lead with Dr. Mitchell of Google’s AI Ethics Team.

Add to the above this behavior by Google executives (Tweet below), and I see a toxic environment dominating the company with a code of conduct statement “Don’t Be Evil“.

One of my areas of interest is Corporate Social Responsibility, and I’ve been looking at how this might be applied in the tech sphere. And Google is giving me solid evidence of those applications, in the most negative way possible.

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. 

 

Some Thoughts 2 Weeks Into Winter Quarter

Carl Setzer2 Comments
Student

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Winter quarter started January 4th. This round, I’m taking 3 classes: one I’ve already talked about, “Web IV Joomla! and SEO”. I’m also taking Systems Analysis, and, lastly, but not leastly: JavaScript.

Web IV has been the most puzzling. Besides Joomla and SEO, the course also covers Amazon Web Services. All of these are cool, but, what a hell of a collection. I feel a bit of whiplash as I move through the week.

Systems Analysis is something I’ve been looking forward to. Understanding how to look at business systems in a strategic way excites me. I think this will be critical to my future career work.

Then there’s JavaScript. This is the grail! Yeah, this summer I coded in Visual Basic, which was fine and all, but JavaScript is what actual web developers use daily. So I’m delighted. But, code is a double-edged sword.

For several days last week/early this week, two of my projects were stuck. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the code to work. I went through all kinds of imposter syndrome stuff. Finally, grabbed one of my other classmates. It took both of us over an hour, but we figured it out: I was missing ONE curly brace (this thing: “}”). But as I’ve started interacting with the developer community on Twitter, I know this is not uncommon. Every keystroke is important, and variable names are case sensitive. Meaning “GetByID” is not the same as “GetById”. At one point in my career, I highly prided my typing skills. Back in the days of typewriters, that is. Spell check, autocorrect, and even simply being able to delete and re-write have spoiled me. Now my keyboarding kinda sucks. And just when it became critical.

And since I’m never happy unless I’m silly busy, I’m also filling in for a friend who’s on paternity leave. I’m “working” as a media coordinator for Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynnwood, WA (unpaid, but that works fine for me right now). This mainly entails creating graphics, as well as editing videos. Nothing too dramatic. I’m doing some of the photo editing in Photoshop to keep my skills up, but a lot of the stuff I’m creating I’m doing in Canva. It’s a pretty slick tool that really speeds up some workflow. Videos are also pretty straightforward. Our church services are online, and we’re using a fair amount of pre-recorded music and such to keep the number of people in the space to a minimum. Mostly I’m trimming down the videos, adding fades and such, and also plugging some b-roll in so that the videos have more visual appeal.

Here are a few things I’ve crafted recently.

Featured image:

Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile from Pexels

Glaciers, Coding and My Social Media Feeds

Carl Setzer2 Comments

So, earlier today this video appeared in my YouTube feed:

Then this popped up in my LinkedIn Feed:

Tracking the effects of glacial melting at the top of the world

I’m sure Jung would label this synchronicity, but I don’t know what the universe is trying to tell me with this. Anyway, I found the coincidence fascinating.

Some Thoughts On Being A 21st Century Student

Carl Setzer
person writing on notebook

I have a few favorite tools that really make school more effective. One: I get my textbooks on Kindle. I have the Kindle app on my computer, plus I have it on my phone and iPad. Having my books wherever I find myself is great. Plus, I can hit ctrl+F and search the whole book quickly. This has been really helpful when I’m struggling to remember “that one command”.

Also, I have Grammarly’s app installed. Being able to spell and grammar check in the browser is a great time saver.

Lastly, I love using Evernote to take notes. I often use paper, and also the note feature within the Kindle apps. But I can scan the papers, and import the Kindle notes, so all of them are in Evernote. Again, being able to search is powerful, and being able to review whenever I have a few minutes of downtime is great.

DNA, Technology and Unintended Consequences

Carl Setzer

From Wired Magazine: “There’s No Such Thing as Family Secrets in the Age of 23andMe”

This looks at the fascinating intersection of biological tech with democratized data, laden with so many “unintended consequences” in the DNA market (is it right to call this a “market”?).

I believe there was no way to guess these issues would come up when humanity first developed medical insemination. DNA databases and the commodification of DNA data: I doubt we could’ve guessed this coming about 10 years ago, much less in the 1970s.

Many, many questions, so few answers. The way forward seems murky. I guess it always is.