Author: Dave Farquhar

Why can’t St. Louis repurpose buildings like Baltimore does?

Dave Farquhar St. Louis ,

I had the opportunity to visit Savage Mill, near Baltimore, recently. Savage Mill is an old textile mill dating to the 1820s that fell into disuse in the 1940s. Today, the complex houses a variety of businesses. While the place has vacancies–the economy is still struggling, after all–it’s crowded, and it’s a great reuse.

It makes me wonder why we can’t do the same thing in St. Louis.
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How to pass CISSP: Test taking strategies

Dave Farquhar security , , , ,

The CISSP is a 250-question, multiple-choice test. You have six hours to complete it. It’s not like any college final I ever took, though cramming all of finals week into a six-hour session is almost a fair comparison. If you’re wondering how to pass CISSP, I can’t guarantee my method, but I’m glad to share what worked for me.

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How to study for CISSP

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , ,
How to study for CISSP

I got the letter this week. The one from (ISC)². If the first word is “congratulations,” it means you passed. But if the first two words are “thank you,” you didn’t. If you want the letter that says “congratulations” in your future, it helps to know how to study for CISSP. Here’s how I studied for mine. Hopefully it will help you. It’s a long road. But it’s doable.

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And on a personal note, I passed the CISSP

Dave Farquhar Personal

I can’t believe I forgot to post this, but yesterday I got word that I passed the CISSP. So, after a vetting process that can take up to six weeks, I’ll be able to sign off with a “, CISSP” after my name.

Now that I can give advice on taking the test without being presumptuous, I’ll write about that this weekend.

The future of flash memory might not be so bleak after all, either

Dave Farquhar Hardware

PC Perspective’s Allyn Malventano stopped in earlier this week and sent me a link to his take on the bleak future of SSDs and flash memory: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/NAND-Flash-Memory-Future-Not-So-Bleak-After-All

He didn’t agree with me entirely–he argued that the problems outlined in the study in question are solvable.

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Handling data recovery

Dave Farquhar data recovery , , , , ,

I took a strange phone call from the field today, asking for advice about creating policies and procedures on data recovery.

There’s no easy answer.
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Libre Office grows up some more

Dave Farquhar Software , , ,

Libre Office 3.5 is out. I need to look at it. My big beef with Open Office all along was that it made current hardware, whatever it was, feel like Office 97 running on a 486. Or perhaps a Pentium-75.

They’re saying all the right things now. Lots of new eyes looking at the code, reviewing the code, dropping obsolete code, streamlining it and making general improvements. Netscape 4.5 was a bloated mess too, but once the Mozilla team got some fresh eyes looking at it, the situation improved. Eventually they had to break the browser out into what became Firefox, but they had the freedom to do that.

And in the meantime, I suppose if it’s too slow, you could throw hardware at the problem. 8 GB of RAM costs $40 or less right now. Carve out a ramdisk of 1-2 GB and install Libre Office in that, and it’ll load pretty fast. It’ll eliminate any I/O-bound bottlenecks.

Quick and dirty OCR, included with Office 2003 and 2007

Dave Farquhar Software ,

At work we have a document scanner that outputs files to PDF and e-mails it to us, but the PDFs are really just full-page images mashed together as a PDF because the scanner doesn’t have OCR capability.

Here’s how to extract the text using Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007. It’s imperfect, but here’s what you can do with the tools you already have.
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Review: The Lutron MS-OPS2 occupancy sensor switch

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , , ,

I installed a Lutron occupancy sensor switch this weekend. It detects you entering the room, turns the lights on, then turns them off five minutes after it detects nobody is in the room. The timeout period is adjustable. It comes in four models: MS-OPS2-WH (white), -AL (almond), -LA (light almond), and -IV (ivory) and retails for $29.

Installation was surprisingly easy–it took about 15 minutes, which is about how long it takes me to change a regular switch, and unlike most models in its price range it works with modern CFL and LED lighting, but I recommend some prep work ahead of time. Read more

SCO v. IBM winds toward resolution

Dave Farquhar Linux, Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , ,
SCO v. IBM winds toward resolution

Slashdot reported yesterday that SCO v. IBM is back on. Well, it is, sort of. The case never was fully resolved, due to SCO running out of money and filing for bankruptcy. Groklaw has the details.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, I’ll try to refresh your memory.

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