Category Archives: Technology

completing pathways levels 3 and 4

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See my main Presentation Mastery Pathways page for some context.

 

Level 3

The required project in my path is a 5-7 minute persuasive speech. I did mine about Pathways! There was good content on how to approach a persuasive speech.

Level 3 is where you get to start electives. See my pathways comparison for a list of the choices and what they entail. I chose “Using Descriptive Language” and “Active Listening”. The former is just a 5-7 minute speech that is similar to what we did in the old CC. The later is being table topics master.

I picked these two because my goal was to get through the first four levels before Pathways launched in New York so I would have access to all the projects for reference. So I wanted to pick projects where I already knew what to do. On my second path, I plan to pick electives that are new such as using presentation software or making connections through networking.

Level 4

In my path, the required level 4 project is a 5-7 minute speech on managing a difficult audience. I really like this project. Before I presented at a public conference, I gave a club speech called “The Case of the Interrupting Audience.” I gave club member specific annoying/distracting things to do. This Pathways project is similar. Audience members get assigned roles and you have to practice handling them. Excellent addition to Toastmasters! I lost my train of thought twice during the interruptions.

There is one elective in this level. I chose holding a Question and Answer session since I was doing that anyway for Pathways.  There are a lot of fun looking electives in this level like blog posting, running an online meeting and creating a podcast. There are some less technical ones like public relations and project management as well.

twitter and two factor take two

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In 2014, I tried to enable two factor on Twitter and had to turn it off. Given the recent news that Twitter encourages everyone to change passwords, I decided to take another stab at it. I also learned that Twitter has more options for two factor now like Google authenticator.

Step 1: Changing the password

First, I changed the password. I clicked on the drop down with my picture and chose “settings and privacy”. Then I choose password and changed it. I got an email letting me know the password changed. Good.

Step 2: Surprise step – review apps

Twitter then reminded me that I have 18 applications that can access my account and asked if I wanted to review them. 18 sounds high so I said yes. There were a few general categories:

  • Apps with read only access – given that pretty much everything on twitter is public, I don’t mind that I gave a few sites access to read my profile. I did find one that was just for a one time test and doesn’t need it anymore.
  • Piping my tweets to Facebook – yes. I definitely want this.
  • Various twitter clients – some I don’t use anymore so cleaned this up a bit as well.
  • “social reputation monitoring” – it says I gave this site read/write/direct message access in 2015.  I don’t remember this and I certainly don’t want them to have it anymore. Revoke!
  • Linked in – While I don’t mind them having read access, I don’t want them having write access. Revoke. Same with Disqus. I wasn’t nearly paranoid enough in 2013.

Now I have 13 apps with read (or read/write) access. Still a lot, but at least I know what they are. It’ll be interesting to see which of the read only ones break. “I don’t mind” is different from “I really want it to work”

Step 3: Login verification (two factor)

As I was looking for two factor, I saw “login verification” under account options. That turns out to be what Twitter is calling two factor. I guess it sounds less scary.

However “setup login verification” was disabled. It says I need to confirm my email to turn this on. Ok. So how do I do that? It appears the only way to get a confirmation email is to change your email address. It was a bunch of steps, but I did:

  1. Change to myRealEmail+twitter@gmail.com (because gmail lets you add a plus and more text and still sends to you)
  2. Enter twitter password to confirm it is me
  3. In email, click confirmation
  4. Repeat these three steps to switch back to and confirm my “short form” email. (so I remember what I gave them)

Ok time to turn on two factor with SMS

  1. In account settings, click “setup login verification”
  2. Click start
  3. Enter twitter password to confirm it is me
  4. Send SMS code
  5. Enter SMS code from phone
  6. Generate a backup code in case I ever have issues

Now I have the option to setup alternate two factor methods

  1. In account settings, click “review your login verification methods”
  2. Click “setup” next to mobile security app
  3. Use google authenticator to scan the barcode
  4. Enter the generated code from google authenticator into twitter

Finally, I clicked “edit” next to text message verification so I am just using google authenticator and not text message.

Step 4: My twitter clients

Ok. Now for the test. Can I use Twitter in the devices I care about most? Things seem to work. Will post an update if that no longer stays the case!

Updates:

  • I can still use twitter on all my devices. So I don’t get prompted to login after the password change or two factor. It only takes effect for new logins. (This is good; I have a lot of places that I am logged into twitter.)
  • I got an email from an identify monitoring service that they no longer have access to my twitter. This service only told me about my own tweets so I’m leaving them without access. I was hoping they would tell me about other people’s tweets. I know what I tweet. And as fun as it is to be told I used the word “password” in my twitter…

Fix for M3D Micro+ failed to open stl modes after upgrading to High Sierra

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I upgraded my Mac to High Sierra and then learned more about .NET and the Mac that I wanted to.

I got an error that there were two copies of a file:

FIFinderSyncExtensionHost is implement in both /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/FinderKit.Framework/Versions/A/FinderKit and /System/Library/PrivateFramworks/FileProvider.framework/OverrideBundles/FinderSyncCollaborationFileProviderOveride.bundle/Contents/MacOS/FinderSyncCollaborationFileProviderOveride. Of of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.

There was an error in loading the file. Check to see the file is valid.

First thing that didn’t work

I tried to re-install Mono choosing the latest release 5.4.1. (Mono is the runtime for .NET on Mac and the M3D software uses .NET). This actually made things worse cause M3D to crash on opening. Then I rebooted and got an error that I wasn’t on the latest Mono. But I was.

Second thing that didn’t work

I tried re-installing the M3D software. I got:

The Mono Framework installed is not support. You must install the latest version to continue. Would you like to visit the Mono website to downloaded it?

The Mono Framework is a required component for this software and must be installed first.

Turns out I installed the Micro software instead of the Micro+ software. Reinstalled correct software.

Third thing that didn’t work

Then I tried downloading Visual Studio for Mac. Didn’t help.

Fourth thing that didn’t work

At this point, I decided to be more methodical. I tried running M3D at the command line to see if I could get more data:

cd /Applications/M3D.app/Contents/MacOS

./m3d

The highlight is:

2018-01-15 17:24:37.585 M3D[1127:35860] run command:/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/Commands/mono /Applications/M3D.app/Contents/Resources/M3DGUI.exe

WARNING: The Carbon driver has not been ported to 64bits, and very few parts of Windows.Forms will work properly, or at all

There was also

Agreeing to the Xcode/iOS license requires admin privileges, please run “sudo xcodebuild -license” and then retry this command.

I ran the command to agree to the license, but that didn’t solve my problem.

Fifth thing that didn’t work

I learned that Mono 5.4.1 defaults to 64 bit. But M3D and Carbon require 32 bit. There’s a flag “–arch=32/64” but doesn’t help with M3D so I uninstalled Mono again:

sudo rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework

sudo pkgutil --forget com.xamarin.mono-MDK.pkg

sudo rm -rf /etc/paths.d/mono-commands

Then I installed an older version (5.0.1) of mono. WHich got me back to the original message.

Sixth thing that didn’t work

Loading a file I’ve used before

What did work

I contacted M3D support and they gave me a workaround in just a few business hours. They suggested clicking on a recent model rather than loading through the OS. That worked fine. Then they suggested dragging the file directly from the Finder into the open UI.

That worked! I can print again. Thanks M3D.