Tag: Design

Mindset Monday: The tool is not the skill.

Way back at the beginning of this blog, I wrote about the importance of knowing what I want to achieve when I start working with a piece of technology. That post was about the importance of knowing my goal and motive.

My post today is the importance of not confusing the tool with the skill. There are lots of drawing and art software programs available, but none of them make me a good artist when I buy them. There are lots of software programs for music and sound available, but none of them make me a good musician, composer, or sound technician just because I bought them.

Becoming good at a skill takes a lot of work. It takes practice, and research, and looking at other examples in that same field, and more practice, and more research. It’s a slow process. I have to put in the work. I can’t trade money for the software program or electronic gizmo or whatever and have that also be a trade of money for time and effort. The tool is not the skill.

Technician Tuesday: A Wi-Fi analyzer from Matt Hafner and some things I like about his website

How I got there.

The December 2022 issue of Maximum PC magazine (link takes you to magazine subscription page, Maximum PC does not have online archives at this time) recommended the Wi-Fi signal analyzer program from Matt Hafner, at MattHafner.com.

(A side question: I know periodicals like Maximum PC get their titles italicized when cited, but I’m not sure about personal websites. That is something for me to look up another time.)

I’ve downloaded and installed his Wi-Fi analyzer on one Windows 10 PC already. I like it. It works. I can already see my current 2.4 GHz router channel setting might be too close to another nearby network’s channel.

Why I lingered.

I’m also impressed by Matt Hafner’s own website.

It is easy for me to navigate.

His affiliate link was marked by an asterisk with “* Affiliate-Link: I earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you!” as an explanation below. That is very elegant in my opinion. For someone who knows what an affiliate link is they can quickly see that it’s an affiliate link. And for someone who doesn’t know what an affiliate link is, he’s provided a clear explanation and the name so they’ll know what affiliate links are the next time they run across the term.

His photos and videos seem to be the main focus of his website. He doesn’t crowd the page with zillions of each, but presents enough I can get an idea of what his work looks like. There’s clear links to find more videos and photos if I want.

I’ve started reading privacy policies and terms and conditions on websites and programs. His website privacy policy is one of the clearer and more straightforward website privacy policies I’ve seen in a while. The privacy policy on the Wi-Fi analyzer app is also easy to read and answers my questions.

I came to his website to download the Wi-Fi analyzer app. I browsed through most of the website, and I’m writing about it now, because the design was that nice to look at and interact with. That’s really good web design.