Ben's Personal Blog

Adobe/Photoshop decided it would be a good idea for me to update to Photoshop CC 2015, despite the newer version apparently dropping support for Intel HD 3000 GPU which is in my somewhat old laptop. Unfortunately this means no GPU accelerated processing, causing major slowdown in many Photoshop activities. In Photoshop CC 2015 the option to use the GPU is simply unavailable out (P.S. I am on Windows 10, not sure if this is the case in Windows 7 or 8):

Quite fortunately, Adobe Creative Cloud (that annoying program always bugging you to update), allows you to install prior versions of Photoshop and other apps (and maintain simultaneous installations of different versions, which is nice). I was able to roll back to Photoshop CC 2014 to restore support for Intel HD 3000 GPU on my Asus UX31E laptop (2011) running Windows 10. The latest version of Illustrator CC 2015 also took away my GPU support and this technique should work the same (and for other CC apps), so long as you can roll back to a version which previously supported your GPU.

Here’s how to do it (this is on Creative Cloud 3.5.1.209, not sure when they added this function so if you can’t see it, you may need to update Creative Cloud): 

Open Creative Cloud > Apps Tab > Find Additional Apps section > Click ‘All Apps’ button in header bar of that section > Select ‘View Previous Versions’

Now when you click the install button you will see a drop-down list of the available versions. At the time of writing, I have access to CC 2015, CC 2014, CC, and CS6 versions of Photoshop. Some apps go back further, or not as far, depending upon their history. Installing an older versions o Photoshop will not remove the current version which could be nice in some edge cases, but it seems this may not be the same behavior between all CC apps so make sure to read the prompts. (when upgrading from the very latest version to a brand new release however, be careful to check the box to keep the old version if you want it).

After installing Photoshop CC 2014, the ‘Use Graphics Processor’ setting is one again available for Intel HD 3000:

Here I come once again with another solution to an obscure issue that's hard to find help for because of its rarity.

The other day fully recovered my computer, carefully installed the latest drivers, and configured everything the way I wanted it. I use Windows Backup to create a system image so that I could restore to this fresh state whenever I pleased. I created the image and saved it to my external hard drive (HDD) and gave it a descriptive title with date so I could know which computer it was a backup for and when it was made.

You can understand my frustration a few months later when it came time to restore my computer using said backup. I launched into the Windows Recovery environment (Start > Search for 'Recovery' > Advanced recovery methods > Use a system image you created earlier to recover your computer) and was quickly greeted by the error "Windows cannot find a system image on this computer".

This was extremely annoying because I could see the backup folder and files in Windows Explorer when I was booted into the normal OS, so I knew it was there.

After much fiddling, I found that Windows Recovery is looking for something very specific: the folder for your backup MUST be named WindowsImageBackup and it MUST be at the root (top level) of your external hard drive (it cannot be inside any sub-folders). If not, Windows won't be able to find it. 

This is extremely annoying because it doesn't offer a good way to descriptively store backups for multiple computers.

If you ran into this computer as I did, boot back into Windows (or plug your external HDD into another computer), find your backup folder, name it WindowsImageBackup and move it to the root of your HDD. Then go back to the Windows Recovery environment where it should be found with no issue.

Just ran into one of those classically annoying computer issues that are so vague that you can find little help online. I found a solution so I'm writing this here in case anyone else is searching for it.

I just tried to do a local backup of my iPhone to my computer. I had a freshly installed copy of Windows and iTunes. I plugged in my phone and selected the 'This computer' radio button to backup to the computer instead of to iCloud.

I was continuously met with the error 'Cannot back up iPhone because it is disconnected' which was obviously not true as I could see in iTunes that it was connected.

After some troubleshooting I narrowed the issue down to either the USB 3.0 port, or possibly the Asus USB Charger Plus utility which interacts with that port. The solution was to simply change to a USB 2.0 port and try the backup again which worked without issue. In most cases you can tell the difference between a USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 port as you can see a blue piece of plastic inside the USB 3.0 port while USB 2.0 ports generally have a gray/black piece.

Update 12/7/2013: The below is now out of date. To easily sync Facebook calendar to iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad running iOS 7, go into Settings app > Facebook, then login with your Facebook info. Facebook events will now automatically sync to your calendar.

Ever since I owned the original iPod Touch I've been looking for a way to sync my Facebook events calendar to my iOS calendar. Finally I've found a way to do this easily after much searching and this solution doesn't rely on any third-party tools or services that may or may not exist some time down the road. I wanted to write it down here in case others like me were searching but could not find how to sync their FB calendar to their iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch with iOS. I think this will only work with iOS 5 and beyond.

This will sync your FB events to your device -- new events will appear automatically as long as you have RSVPed as 'Going' or 'Maybe'. Events that you RSVP as 'Not Going' are removed from the calendar (and re-added if you switch your RSVP from FB). Events will automatically updated if they are changed on FB, but you will not receive any pop-up notification about this, you'll have to check the calendar. Past events will not be added to your calendar.

Go to your Facebook events page (the one that lists all of your upcoming events)

Click the magnifying glass at the top right and select 'export events', you'll see a window pop up with a URL in it that starts with 'webcal://facebook.com', leave this window open, we'll come back to it in a minute

On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch (running iOS 5 or later), go to Settings > 'Mail, Contacts, Calendars' > Add Account > Other > Add Subscribed Calendar

In the 'Server' field type the entire webcal URL that you found on your Facebook events page. This is likely CASE SENSITIVE so make sure you get it right.

After entering the URL, tap 'Next' at the top right, the URL will be verified and then you can adjust some options. Click 'Save' at the top right when you are done.

Go to your Calendar app and verify to see that your FB events are there.

Troubleshooting:

If you can't see your events in the Calendar app, click 'Calendars' at the top left, make sure the calendar that you added is checked; it will be listed in the 'Subscribed' section

If events still have not appeared even though the calendar is checked, click the refresh button at the bottom right of the 'Calendars' page

If it's still not working, double check the URL you subscribed to for accuracy

If it's still not working, blame Facebook and/or Apple, then wait for iOS 6 where this will be much easier thanks to iOS integrated FB sign-in

Recently I was asked to write a bit about my strengths. There are many things I'm not good at, but I do at least like to think that I'm relatively creative. When thinking about what it means to be creative I was struck by a thought that I wanted to further articulate. What I'm about to say has no evidence beyond anecdote at this point, but I would like to further pursue this hypothesis at some point if possible.

It seems intuitive to think that creative people like to create works (art, literature, music, etc.) because they are creative. That is to say that the causal arrow for the popular concept of creativity goes creativity -> creation. However, I'd like to posit that the popular concept has it backwards. I believe that the arrow should go creation -> creativity.

How did I arrive at this reversal of the causal creativity arrow? Well, by looking at myself, I see evidence that suggests that my passion to create (which above I simply called 'creation') is the defining factor that leads to what people would call my being creative. By passion to create I mean to say that I simply have a desire to make things (independent of any one medium, even if I personally prefer one over another).

Simply saying I'm "creative" seems to be a pronouncement that my mind is better at coming up with completely new ideas than someone else's mind. This, to me, appears flawed. I don't think that I'm intrinsically better at coming up with new ideas than anyone else, but I believe that my passion for creation drives my creative thinking. The mere fact of finding joy in creating things leads me to think of ways that I can express that passion, and this, I think, is creativity.

But where does the passion for creation come from? There are elements of the nature vs. nurture debate in what I'm going to say; I think that exposure to creation tools as a child was a major factor in the development of my current-day creativity. As a child, I played with K'nex, Legos, Spirographs, Lincoln Logs, Playdoh and plenty of other tools which could be used to create works. I built from from the instructions sometimes, but I'd also spend hours putting together arbitrary creations because I loved building things from scratch. That I had tools to express what was in my mind led me to the passion for creation. My brothers and I used to make home movies with a VHS camcorder and had editing capabilities no more advanced than rewinding the tape and recording over it to edit our videos. Despite the challenges of analog editing, even as elementary school children, we came up with some rather creative film techniques.

One example stands out in my mind; we used to love to create 'magic' videos. In one such video, we made an entire couch disappear. The trick was simple: start recording the film, say the magic words and gesture at the couch, then pause the camera, move the couch out of the scene, get back into position and start recording again. Looking back at such films reveals the effect was done poorly, but the sentiment remains -- we created this technique (without being taught it, as far as I recall) not because we were inherently creative, but because our passion to make a neat video drove us to invent ways to express that passion. Similarly, our passion for creation led us to make stop-motion films using the same VHS video camera. We would set up a scene of army men then hit the record button for a second or two, then pause it and move the characters. We went through this painstakingly slow process because we had a desire to make something.  

In the above example, it was not inherent creativity that started the process. It was the passion for creation and access to a tool for expression (in this case, the camera). The passion for creation drives us to create works, which in turn drives creative thinking about how to express that passion through a given medium. For example, the passion for creation led us to desire to make a stop motion film in the first place, while creativity manifest itself in the choreography of the clashing army men.

In my later years I've enjoyed a game called Minecraft which is a very free-form building game that runs on a computer. There are essentially no objectives. To enjoy the game, you need to make your own fun. As someone who likes to create, Minecraft is extremely enjoyable for me. People who don't like to create hate the lack of objectives and usually don't enjoy the game. Because I want to create, I have to think about how to use the tool (Minecraft in this case) to express that passion. Finding novel ways to express the passion through a medium is what I would call creativity -- again note that the desire to create in the first place precedes the creativity itself.

It does seem to me that creativity cannot come without first desiring to create. Desiring creation seems to come from having access to tools that allow you to create at an early age (this could be pen and paper, Legos, etc.).

Dear Microsoft, Forcing people to pay for Xbox Live in order to use Netflix and other services is a real jerk move (and by 'jerk move', I mean greedy). I can stream Netflix from a computer, a smartphone, a tablet, a PS3, a Roku, and plenty of other places, all completely free of charge, as long as I have a subscription to the Netflix streaming service. On the Xbox 360 you require that I have an Xbox Live subscription in addition to a Netflix subscription in order to do this. Xbox Live costs $9.99, $8.33, or $5 a month depending upon how long I commit to the service. The subscription to Xbox Live is not technically necessary to stream Netflix but you've made it an arbitrary requirement none the less. You've effectively doubled the price of watching Netflix through the Xbox 360 for no apparent reason other than that you want the extra money. The pay-for Xbox Live service is rapidly becoming an entirely extraneous middle-man, especially when you won't even use it to protect us from having to pay for meta-services that we don't want. Once customers realize how unnecessary Xbox Live actually is to the fulfillment of what they want from a gaming console / set top box, you'll quickly begin to see defection to competing products. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Microsoft, you've set a dangerous precedent by allowing EA to operate it's "Origin" platform through Xbox Live. This needs to stop before it gets out of hand.

Let's take a look at exactly what's happening: Microsoft charges a subscription fee for Xbox players to take advantage of Xbox Live (XBL) -- the multiplayer gaming service which showed the world what console multiplayer gaming could be, before mainstream multiplayer gaming took off.

Players have to pay Microsoft for an XBL subscription if they want to be able to play multiplayer games with friends.

Origin is like Steam; it's EA's attempt at a digital distribution platform, and while it doesn't currently require a subscription to use, it requires that players have an independent Origin account, and EA can force players to pay in order to play multiplayer games in some circumstances.

Origin really launched on consoles when the EA-published Battlefield 3 launched. When you put Battlefield 3 into your console for the first time to play multiplayer, you have to create an Origin account, then login with that account to play any form of multiplayer. What's more, EA requires that you have a 'battlepass' to play. A battlepass is a code that comes inside of a game like Battlefield 3 -- it's one-time-use and console-specific.

If I lend Battlefield 3 to a friend (or sell it used to someone), they can't use the original battlepass; they are required to pay $10 to purchase a new one in order to play Battlefield 3 online.

This is completely unacceptable given that players already have to pay a monthly subscription to Microsoft in order to play any multiplayer game. Specifically, we're paying Microsoft to make the entire multiplayer experience seamless. Being required to either own a battlepass (which means buying a game new, or paying $10 for a new pass) to play certain titles is insane. Being required to create a new account that's independent of XBL and then login with that account within an XBL title is the opposite of seamless. 

If EA can charge us for a battlepass to play, why are we paying Microsoft? If Microsoft wants to keep our money, they need to stop this practice before too many people ask this question and turn their heads over to Sony, whose multiplayer platform, Playstation Network, is free to use. Microsoft might not realize it, but if they keep this up, they are slowly ceding power to game publishers (not developers, mind you), and this means slowly losing control of the XBL the platform.

As a paying XBL customer and gamer, Origin as a meta-service is incredibly annoying. I mentioned how I'm paying Microsoft an XBL subscription to make multiplayer gaming seamless, but I see no respect for that concept from Microsoft's decision to let Origin operate as it does inside of XBL.

I purchased Battlefield 3 on launch-day. The battlepass was included. I also pay Microsoft monthly for an XBL subscription to let me play the multiplayer portion of the game. Say I want to take Battlefield 3 to a friend's house to play with him on his Xbox. Even if my friend is a paying XBL member, we cannot play Battlefield 3 multiplayer on an Xbox that does not have a battlepass. Even if I brought my gamertag to my friend's house on a memory stick and signed in with my own XBL subscription, we will still be barred from playing Battlefield 3 multiplayer because we haven't payed for an additional battlepass. This is complete bullshit. I bought the game at retail, we both pay for the service, we both own an Xbox, and yet Microsoft is allowing a meta-service to block me from playing a game on the XBL platform. This is like BMW preventing anyone but the owner from driving their cars. No... this goes further than that -- this is like BMW preventing anyone but the owner from driving the car AND preventing even the owner from driving the car if a friend payed for the gas.

Let's not also forget that the battlepass will presumably be required for each individual game. So even if I have a Battlfield 3 battlepass, I'll need to buy a Battlefield: Bad Company 2 battlepass if I buy that game used and want to play it online -- and so on for every game that EA publishes with Origin attached. Considering how huge of a publisher EA is, this move is going to hurt the used-games market and take money out of the pockets of already strapped-for-cash gamers. If you ask me, they should be working to eliminate piracy rather than finding ways to get more money out of legitimate customers -- after all, each pirated game is worth six battlepasses at full retail price. 

Of course, all of this is EA's attempt to stifle 'lost' profit from games that are sold used. Anyone who buys Battlefield 3 used will have to pay EA $10 for a new battlepass if they want to play online (assuming the battlepass that originally shipped with the game has already been used) in addition to their XBL subscription. As a subscriber to XBL, I expect Microsoft to actively protect me from this sort of annoyance and meta-fees. So far they haven't lifted a finger.

Here's an idea:

Instead of using law to band-aid a monetizing model that doesn't work in the digital world, we need to make a new model. We need a way to monetize content that doesn't treat digital content like physical goods.

Instead of punishing content pirating by threat of law, we need to eliminate the entire concept of pirating.

Here's how the physical-goods model works:

I go to the record store and I buy a record for $15. This is a physical thing. I cannot reproduce it with the click of a button for free. If I want to give the record to a friend, I have to physically hand it to him, and that means I cannot access it at the same time that he has it. Thus, the $15 I payed for the record has payed for only one record and no more.

Enter the digital era which ruins this model:

I buy an album online for $15. Because technology is great, I can reproduce the content with the click of a button, and for free. Then I can give it to my friend and we can both listen to it at the same time, independent of one another. Initially, the content was paid for with $15, but now that there are 2 copies, it was as though I paid only $7.50 for the content. For each subsequent copy, the payment for the content goes down until the content creator is left with almost nothing.

How do we fix it?

Trying to stop pirating is not the answer. We need a new model. We need a model where the money brought in by the sale of the content is not reduced for each copy shared, but rather increased. We need a model where the goal of the content producer should be to distribute their work as widely as possible and as easily as possible. If we can figure out a way to do this, it means people can get the content more easily, and the content producer profits when good work spreads far and wide as easily as possible.

How do we do it?

I don't claim to have the best answer to this question, but the point of this post is to get us all thinking. We've been approaching the problem from the wrong angle, as shown above. I've done a little bit of brainstorming for a new model, and sure it would be hard to implement, but in the end, it is perfectly possible with today's technology. I'm hoping this will inspire you guys to try to come up with new models too so that we find one that's easy to implement and works well. I've got two off-the-cuff suggestions for a new model.

Ads: I know, I cringe a bit at this one to. The idea of seeing an ad at the 10th page turn of my ebooks is a bit upsetting, but it could work. Given the right software reader or player, each ebook or song could have a plug at the beginning or end (or both) which asks the player to grab the latest text/graphic/audio ad from the web. So a song could be distributed freely, and the advertisers would pay the content producer to advertise to the listeners. This would be great for advertisers too because it would be very easy to target ads based on book and music genre (or even individual songs, authors, artists, or books). The further the book or song is distributed, the more people are viewing or listening to the ads, and the more the advertisers will pay to advertise with a certain book or song (or artist/album/label/etc.). This would work with ebooks, movies, and games, and software. Just build the software to serve ads to the reader, watcher, or player, and then the revenue stream will build as the digital good is distributed further to more people.

Distributed computing: Did you know that people pay good money to access massive amounts of computational power? Renting processing power is much more affordable to those that need it than purchasing their own super-computer. Distributed-computing (or clustered computing) programs link together thousands of consumer-grade computers to create a super-computer-like system that can be as powerful, if not more so, than the world's fastest super-computers. Distributed-computing applications already exist; Folding@Home and SETI@Home are just two examples off the top of my head. Content creators could create content that, while being viewed, links the user's computer into the cluster. The resulting system would have the power of a super-computer or beyond, and the computing time could be rented out by those that need it. This means that as the content gets distributed to more and more people, the resulting revenue increases. So let's say someone decides to watch a movie. They download it for free, and it has a unique ID which the software player uses to make the user's computer available to the computer-cluster that belongs to whoever's ID it is (major music labels might each own a computer-cluster, and all content published through them will add user's computers to the computer-cluster when that content is being played/viewed). The same thing would happen when a user listened to a song or read an ebook. In addition to selling/renting computational power, these computer-clusters could be used by the labels (or whoever owns them) to mine for Bitcoins and do other revenue-producing work.

My favorite thing about any distributed revenue model (where more distribution = more money for the content creators) is that it encourages content creators/hosts to make the content as easy as possible for the consumer to get to and as easy as possible to share with friends. Instead of locking down content with DRM, content would be encouraged to be shared, hosts would offer the highest download speeds at the best quality possible because they want to get the content into the user's hands. The content creator would want to make it super easy for people to share; all of this is great for consumers.

Anyway, that's what I've got for now. There's probably a lot of situations that I haven't considered, but again my point here is that we don't need to stop pirating we need to make pirating stop existing by making a distributive profit model where revenue grows as digital distribution increases. 

I just returned from a week long skiing trip in Colorado. Me and four friends had a blast tearing down the slopes. Consequently, we all took photos/videos across several different devices. Three of us have iPhone's and all took several shots, while one of my friends had a nice Canon point-and-shoot and took a number of photos and videos on that.

Now we're home and we'd love to share the beautiful sights with friends by posting our photos to Facebook, but the bothersome issue is that we can't all post our photos to one album.

Facebook really needs a 'shared album' feature where one person can make an album and invite any of their friends to also have permission to upload photos to that album. The album would then be listed under the 'albums' page of any of those invited to the shared album.

Many online services today have the ability to reset your password, in case you forgot it, by answering a 'Security Question' that you would have set up when you created the account.

Far too many times I've seen friends and family forget their passwords then go to use this method for password recovery, but completely forget the answer that they would have originally put for the question.

It's not so much that they forgot the answer to the question, but it's that the answer might have changed (in my Mother's case, the "favorite music artist" question couldn't be any worse), or they might have formatted it some weird way when they put it in.

So you were prompted to answer the question "What's your favorite color?" Let's say you made this account a few months or even years ago... did your favorite color change? Is it 'Blue' with a capital 'B', or was it 'blue'? Maybe you were feeling particularly color-specific that day and used 'teal' instead. Maybe you mistyped the answer and accidentally put it in as 'bleu'.

Or consider the classic "Where did you go to high school?" question. Did you use the abbreviation of your school, like SACHS? If it was a 'Saint' school, did you use 'St.' or 'Saint' at the beginning? Maybe you abbreviated 'high school' as 'HS', but spelled out the rest of the words? Maybe you didn't include 'high school or 'HS' at all? Was it all upper case or all lower case? Maybe one of the words was lower case? Maybe one day two years ago when you were making this security question, you were feeling particularly security-minded, so you decided to append the year that you graduated to the end of the answer?

And you can see the problem here. The number of variables, the potential of the answer to change, and the fact that you likely haven't been prompted for the question in years, makes it tough to remember and leaves this recovery option with a high rate of failure and a high level of frustration.

Beyond being difficult to remember, security questions are insecure. They often ask easy to guess (in the case of the 'favorite color' question) or easy to find questions ("Where did you go to high school?", "What year did you graduate?", etc.).

Sarah Palin's personal email account was famously 'hacked' in 2008 with little more than knowledge of the insecurity of security questions and a little bit of internet research. According to the Washington Times, the hacker "spent about 45 minutes on Google and Wikipedia tracking down answers to security questions, such as where she met her spouse, her birthdate and ZIP code." A little elbow grease is all it takes.

But you'll never guess my security questions no matter how much research you do, or how many times you try to predict how I would have answered a given question. And I'll never be left guessing which color I considered my favorite two years ago when I made the account I'm trying to reset. Why? Because I have one answer to all of my security questions, regardless of the question.

Having a single fake answer is far easier to remember than trying to recall the particulars of how you would have worded, formatted, and capitalized a real answer several weeks, months, or years ago. And, because the 'answer' has nothing to do with the question, there is no way for anyone to guess, or look up the right answer. I know my fake answer off the top of my head and I know exactly how its formatted, so any time I see a security question, regardless of whether it is "When did you graduate high school?" or "What is your favorite pet?" it is always the same.

A fake security question answer makes your accounts more secure, and they're easier to remember, saving the time and frustration of trying to guess the exact answer that you may have written a long time ago.

XKCD has some similar advice which applies to normal passwords which will also make your life easier: