Adventures in Tech

  I have been using Asus routers for many years, and have been pretty happy with them. The web interface is superb, and the firmware upgrades are timely and easy to apply, and over the last couple of years have introduced newer features that kept my old router relevant and functional.   After many years of service, my older router finally gave way, and started dropping Wifi connections randomly, especially when under heavy load. The connection drop happens whenever the kids have a Zoom meeting, or my wife and I are on work calls. Turning the laptop/iPad Wifi off and on again did not help, and we usually had to reboot the router to be able to connect again. Out of curiosity I looked at the CPU/memory stats of the router under heavy load, and could not see any issues. Even when all of us were in video calls, the CPU/memory did not rise about 50%. I could not see anything abnormal in the logs either. Online I saw that a lot of people had similar problems after upgrading to the la...

Last weekend I wanted to clean up my python installation on Windows 10. In the past, I used a combination of Anaconda, Python app from the Windows Store, and Python distributions from python.org. Most of these were older versions that I have not updated in a while since I spend most of my time in WSL. I started by deleting everything and cleaning up the installs. Afterwards, I downloaded python 3.8 from python.org, and proceeded with the installation. I selected install python for everyone and adding it to the %PATH% environment variable. After the installation completed everything worked like a charm, until I started installing packages. I started with installing TensorFlow: pip install tensorflow and got a cryptic error that one of the TensorFlow files was missing. A quick internet search revealed that it is due to a missing setting for long filenames in Windows 10.   Following the instructions in this Stackoverflow post to enable long filenames option in the loc...

One of my favorite times at work is when the interns in my organization present the projects they have been working on for the past 10 or so weeks. It is amazing to see what they have accomplished during that period, and its impact on the business.   In my groups, I always make sure that everything the interns work on makes it to production and has visible business impact. The interns enjoy that quantifiable sense of accomplishment and seeing that their work lives in a launched product and improves some aspect of it.   After the interns demo their projects, I schedule follow-up 1:1 meetings with each of them. During the meeting, we go over their experiences during the internship, what they have learned in the process, and how can we make the experience better the next time around.   Their suggestions are always on point, constructive, and actionable. The conversations invariably drift to learning more about Microsoft, and what advice would I give them to have ...

Over the weekend, I dusted off my old Macbook Air to search for some old family photos. I have not used the laptop for a long time, and it was completely out of charge. I plugged it in, and it quickly booted. Shortly after, I got bombarded with notifications that many of the applications needed updating, and that a new version of the OS was available.   I waited till I found the photos I was looking for, before attempting to upgrade anything. I also wanted to install OneDrive to get my old files to the cloud, so that I can access them from any of my devices, instead of dusting off old computers to get to them. The MacOS upgrade experience has always been fantastic, and this one was no different. The OS upgrade files downloaded quickly and after a restart and a quick install, the Macbook Air was ready to go.   Upgrading the installed applications was also a breeze, however in the process I discovered that a large majority of the applications installed were not compatible ...

I have been using WSL1 for a long time now and have been extremely pleased with it. After setting up Cygwin/X server, I don’t have a need for running Linux in a VM anymore. With the new Windows update, WSL is changing to support GPUs and GUI applications, so I decided to upgrade my install to make use of these improvements once they are shipped.  The upgrade path is easy: you can choose to configure a new WSL2 environment, or you can migrate your existing one. I decided to upgrade my install, since I had a lot of packages installed, and did not want to reinstall and configure them in a new environment again.  First, I started by getting everything I have in my Ubuntu environment up to date:   sudo apt update  sudo apt upgrade  Then in a windows command prompt, I updated my default WSL environment to version 2:   wsl –set-default-version 2  WSL2 requires Virtual machine platform support, and if that is not enabled, you can easily enable it throu...

 This year schools shifted to remote learning because of COVID-19. Before the semester started, our school district planned on a hybrid approach, where students attended schools physically a couple of days a week, and studied from home for the rest of the week. The thinking behind the plan was to balance the students’ exposure vs the benefits of in-person learning, however as the virus situation did not improve by the school start, the district abandoned the plan and opted for a full-time at home learning schedule. Before the school started, my plan was to have the kids use their iPads to access their learning materials. They were comfortable with their iPads, knew how to use a web-browser, and switch between applications well. As school start neared, I started thinking that they would benefit from a bigger screen, and a decent physical keyboard, so I began to look for reasonably priced laptops that would do the job. As I started looking late, and I think a lot of parents had ...