Today’s post is a little bit different but something I have been wanting to do for a while- Preston is here with some tech tips and tricks he’s picked up along the way of studying to be a computer scientist at UT Knoxville. I’m bragging on him, but he actually gets PAID to go to grad school and get his doctorate. So he is definitely a technology expert.

Keep reading for tips on managing your phone storage, extending the life of your computer and how to solve almost any computer issue. 

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     1. What is one “tech tip” you can’t recommend enough? 

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible.”

― Mark Twain

This is a quote from someone that never touched a computer a day in their life but is important today and tomorrow as well: Nothing is quite original as we think, laterally, no problem is quite as obscure as we might believe. This is particularly relevant to computers and the various errors they give. Odds are, anything that goes wrong with your device has already gone wrong for someone else before you. This information typically lands on the internet. There are entire businesses that do not want you to know that nearly all computer problems are solved by Google. No, not sending your device to Google – by typing your error code, obscure message, symptoms, .etc, into the search bar at https://google.com.

People typically think of computer issues as some impossible task that requires a tech wizard capable of performing magical seance to understand the device. Others believe it takes the skills of a surgeon to dissect the technology and understand what issues are going on. Realistically, someone tells me an error and then I go straight to google. There are countless forums and discussions on solving so many computer-related issues that anyone with the time to read a couple of paragraphs could walk away with not only a fixed computer, but a better understanding of their computer. Incorporate googling your computer issues into your life and in no time people will think you are a tech genius.

2. What does your tech troubleshooting process look like? 

This goes very much hand in hand with the golden tech secret that I gave away previously. However, it is important to understand more about a problem before you give it a google. Most individuals don’t feel comfortable troubleshooting issues because they may not understand exactly what is causing an issue, therefore, they could not understand the solution either. As a computer scientist, I am constantly dealing with errors that I don’t know the cause of but I am responsible for finding a solution. I find myself in many situations where I am responsible for fixing code that I did not write, likewise, you may find yourself fixing issues that you feel you did not cause. So, this debugging process is as applicable to me as it is to you:

I: Can I make the problem happen again?

II: What could be the problem?

III: Did I fix the problem?

IV: What isn’t a problem?

Can I make the problem happen again?

I should try to realize the steps I took to get to the problem in the first place. If I can get the problem to repeat, then I have an issue on my hands. If I cannot get the problem to repeat, it could have been a one-time thing. The former is a reproducible bug, the latter is an irreproducible bug. If you can clearly define the actions leading up to an issue, you can move on to the next step in the troubleshoot questionnaire. If you cannot get the issue to repeat, it was probably just a fluke and could be fixed by power cycling (engineering jargon for: “Turn it off, turn it back on, hope for the best”) and you can stop troubleshooting here.

What could be the problem?

You have a problem that you can get it to reproduce then you should take the steps to produce the error and attempt to give it a google search. As mentioned previously, the odds you are the first to encounter a computer issue are quite slim. Before you give your issue a search, make sure you give you include enough information. Let’s say you are trying to login to your favorite website and the browser freezes when you enter your password. A bad search would be: “freezing on login”. Although this includes the steps you take to get to the error, this is too obscure. Instead try: “Facebook website freezes when logging in on chrome”. You can see I added information like the website you are accessing (Facebook), the browser you are using (chrome). This list of additions to add to your search can be anything related to the environment of the computer you are using that encounters the error. Treat the search like a soup recipe, add and drop ingredients (search terms/words) if the taste (search results) is not quite right (not relevant to your particular problem).

Did I fix the problem?

This seems obvious, but it is quite important for the next step. You encountered an error, you can make it reproducible, you gave it your best google search, you followed the solution steps another person came up with. Did the steps you took in the solution you tried manage to fix your problem? If they did, congrats! You have now fixed an issue with your computer and you can stop troubleshooting. If not, it is okay, move on to the next step but keep that solution which did not fix your problem handy.

What isn’t a problem?

If you have tried to implement a solution and it did not fix your issue, that is okay. Following a solution to a dead-end gives you more information about the problem you are wanting to fix and gets you closer to a solution that will work. Going back to the example problem, “Facebook website freezes when logging in on chrome”, let’s say I tried to follow a solution by someone else on the internet. Their solution was as follows: “Logging on to Facebook froze and I couldn’t get in. I managed to fix this by going to Settings (the three-dot menu at the top of chrome) then searching for cookies, then clicking clear cookies and other data!”. If this did not work for you, we know that the cookies and other data were not your issues. Jump back to question II and ignore the solutions that say you need to clear your cookies. Anytime you find more information that did not work, the closer you get to find the exact solution for your problem.

3. How to best maintain/lengthen the life of your computer?

This is a great question. A good computer can last for eons, most people think their computer is getting slow and they need to ditch it then. This is certainly not a good mentality to have for a computer, as they are generally resilient to aging if taken care of properly.

I will try to divide up caretaking into three categories:

Hardware

Operating System

Software

Hardware:

Inside of your computer are components that are constantly talking to each other and doing many different calculations or performing various tasks on your behalf, this means your computer naturally produces heat as it works. It can be quite easy to tell if a computer is working hard if it begins to feel hot or if the fans are whirring loudly (probably trying to cool the inside components). Fans suck in air and try to cool the inside of the computer. Along with fresh air, they tend to suck in the dust in the air. The more dust that is inside of a computer, the less efficient it will be at cooling. If a computer gets too hot, it can cause slowdowns or damage internal pieces. It is important then to make sure you are away from natural sources of dust. If possible, take your computer somewhere to be cleaned of dust or clean it yourself if you feel comfortable (there are plenty of good guides on the internet). If you have a desktop computer, make sure it is not sitting directly on a carpeted floor. If you live in a house with a smoker, a vaper, or a pet – it may be best to have your computer cleaned more often than others.

Operating System:

If you get beneath a certain amount of free memory on your computer, it can get slow. It’s best to leave at least 30GB free for your Operating System (Windows/macOS/etc.) so that it has room to breathe. Sometimes used memory can be hiding from you in temp folders or junk folders. You can use Windows’ built-in Disk Cleanup utility or navigate to the temp folder by hitting Win+R to open the “Run” window and typing in “%temp%” without quotes, then selecting all the files and deleting it. Check it here. You can also use BleachBit to clear up other junk, like browser caches and things like that. If you are on macOS, make sure to empty the trash can regularly! Lookup methods to clean macOS of junk as well, there are great guides on how to reclaim memory that could be hiding from you. Make sure you back up your files now and then as well. It could be the case that you need to erase your Operating System and reinstall it eventually. I like to erase my operating system once every other year to ensure it is fresh.

Software:

Antivirus software is a great way to feel secure. There’s plenty of legitimate and free antivirus to install to keep your PC clean. However, Windows comes with Windows Defender pre-installed, and it works wonders. If you’re still worried, BitDefender is a good alternative that can be installed to supplement Windows Defender (it can be installed on macOS as well!). After the first install of BitDefender, it should run automatically in the background and help keep you safe. Startup programs can slow your PC down as well. On Windows, make sure to open your Task Manager and you should see a tab called startup. Click on it and you should see a list of programs. These are all applications that can run on startup (as soon as your computer powers on). Reducing the number of startup apps will have a noticeable improvement in boot times and performance at startup. Apple computers can suffer from the slowdown of startup apps as well, so make sure to disable startup programs that are not used on macOS if that is your operating system as well.

4. How to best manage storage on your iPhone?

My iPhone is probably my favorite device that I use daily, so I need to keep it organized and have free space to play around with. Apple has provided a very intuitive way to see where your memory is being used on the iPhone. The breakdown for your memory usage can be found in the Settings app. Specifically: Setting App -> General -> iPhone Storage. There is a bar at the top (in iOS 14 at least) that shows how storage is split among Apps, System, Photos, Media, Messages, .etc. The System and Other bar is typically storage you cannot work with, being reserved for iOS typically. What you can work on is Photos, Apps, and iMessages storage. If you use iCloud, see if you can offload some photo albums to the cloud to free up some storage. If the Cloud scares you, feel free to send the photos to another computer and back them up on that machine or onto a USB drive. Apps can take up plenty of space as well and the iPhone Storage page we navigated to earlier lists their memory consumption in decreasing order of storage used. I listen to many podcasts (I recommend having a listen to Nice To Have a Friend, which is hosted by my beautiful wife and a friend of hers). Since I download some of these so I can listen when I am somewhere without the internet, these can take up space. To reclaim this space, I can open that app and delete the podcasts I have downloaded, or if I find an app that I do not frequently use is eating space I can delete it from the Settings page that displays all the memory usage.

5. Something you wish everyone knew about technology? 

I wish everyone knew that the technology that they use is not unintentional. What I mean by that is the way we use devices has been carefully curated to be satisfying. Why are the iPhone buttons slightly rounded and not square? This question probably took a team of engineers at Apple countless man-hours and plenty of cash spent researching just how to round a button needed to be so it was optimally pleasant to the user’s eyes. While this is a more wholesome example, it can get scary when you think what else might be getting optimized to keep you on your device. I like to browse Reddit, but sometimes I like to browse it a bit too much. So, I use the Screen Time data my iPhone provides and I make sure that I keep my usage at a healthy level. I usually limit myself to about 20/30 minutes of browsing a day, preferably when 5 pm rolls around. Setting a strict time and being intentional with my screen time can make any app feel more like a reward rather than a time drain.

6. Any other thoughts or ramblings you want to share about your job, yourself, your passion for computers? 

Yes absolutely! I spend most of my time working on research or working with students to help them understand whatever course I am TA’ing (as well as grading their homework), but I like to spend whatever time I can spare working on side projects and programming things that I enjoy. This may be the first time it has been mentioned on the blog but I have been working on some updates to classicallygrace.com as one of my side projects. I am looking forward to having that new release out. When Classically Grace first launched I was quite new to web development. My background is systems programming and embedded architectures (I have an operating system written in Zig and RISC-V if you want to check that out!), so the environment was certainly new to me. I am beyond excited to say I have learned many more interesting things in terms of web development and I am hoping that everyone is ready for the launch of an updated Classically Grace website in the *fingers crossed* not too distant future. The architecture will be entirely different than the current setup, going completely serverless and utilizing some new technologies from Amazon Web Services to make sure Classically Grace is faster and better than ever.

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That’s it for Preston’s post! I know I am biased, but I just think he is the absolutely CUTEST and reading this made me so happy. Okay, that is all the blabbering I will do 🙂

I hope this was helpful for some of you! If you have any questions for him, feel free to message me on instagram!