Author: Scott Gruby

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Review: Une Bobine

As some that read this blog know, I’m still in the pursuit of a good stand for my iPhones. While I do most of my iOS development using the simulator, there are times when I need to test on an actual device, a stand comes in handy. I’ve backed a number of Kickstarter projects for stands, but have generally not been pleased. The last project I backed was the Une Bobine. This “stand” is a flexible iPhone cable wrapped in a metal coil that retains it shape.

When I first saw this, I thought it was a great way to be able to position the iPhone and have it connected to my computer. When it arrived, I was quite pleased with the workmanship and the utility. It allows my iPhone to sit at a decent height and makes it easy to access all the controls.

It is a unique design where the only thing that holds up the iPhone is the connector at the bottom. This, however, is what I consider its design flaw. The bottom connector wasn’t designed to take stress. The Une Bobine could put a significant amount of stress on the internal parts of the iPhone dock connector. At this point, I’m not too concerned with this as I use it with my test iPhones and if the connector happens to break, I can take it apart and not worry about it.

Pros

  • Unique design.
  • Very flexible.

Cons

  • Connector could cause extra stress on the dock connector.
  • Only works with the dock connector (doesn’t work with the iPhone 5 except with some wacky plastic that they now sell).
  • A bit expensive.

Summary

While this “stand” is going to work for me for development purposes, I’m not sure I’d buy it again. If the bottom connector somehow cradled the phone to reduce stress and possibly allowed the use of the Lightning connector, I might reconsider. I’m still in the pursuit of a decent cradle and having seen some of my co-workers cradles, I’m going to investigate much simpler stands that are already on the market so that I can read reviews before making a purchase.

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Review: Logitech Squeezebox Radio

A number of years ago, I installed a whole house audio system and used the Squeezebox series of devices as audio sources. When we moved into a rental six months ago, we pretty much stopped listening to music in the house as it just wasn’t convenient. I had seen the Squeezebox Radio come across on Slickdeals for an open box, but I didn’t act on it in time. About a month ago, I saw on Slickdeals that Office Depot was closing out the boxes, so I acted quickly and purchased the last one at the local Office Depot.

I setup the radio for my wife and she took to it almost immediately. I thought is was interesting enough that I bought a second one (I had to goto another Office Depot) to use as a clock. Unfortunately, this one had a problem with WiFi. I asked my wife if I should just return it or find another one. She said to get as many as I could as it was cool; I didn’t need any additional encouragement, so I found another Office Depot with 2 more units (a poster on Office Depot was nice enough to post a link to an inventory checker).

We now have 3 radios connected to our Squeezebox server that has all our music on it; I already had a Mac mini running the server from before we moved, so setup was a breeze. The interface on the boxes is easy to use and produces decent music (it has a mono speaker). We’re listening to more music and we have one as a clock where we can listen to soothing sounds to put us to sleep.

In our house, sometimes my wife is slow to adopt technology, but in this case, it took no time for her to embrace it. My 5 year old son also has learned to use it and find his music. I purchased batteries for 2 of the units so that they didn’t have to be plugged in; this is huge as my son can take one in the mornings and listen to music so we can sleep a little longer.

The only odd part of the radio is that its alarm clock functionality is controlled by the server. In order to reduce power usage, my server turns off at night and turns on in the morning. When the server is off, the alarm clock won’t work. I could, however, point the radio to the My Squeezebox service and set alarms there, but it would make things harder for my son in the morning. (The radio can point to a local server or the My Squeezebox service; this can make things confusing as alarms could be in both places, but the alarms only work when the radio is pointed to the right place.)

Pros

  • Easy to setup.
  • Portable.
  • Easy to use.
  • Decent sound quality.
  • Can play local music, Pandora or Slacker.

Cons

  • No longer available. (There is a replacement, but Logitech seems to be moving away from the local Squeezebox Server.)
  • Alarms don’t work when the server is turned off.
  • Mono speaker.

Summary

The Logitech Squeezebox Radio is a great product for us as music is a part of our daily lives. For anyone that already has a Squeezebox setup, it is a worthwhile addition if you can still find the radios for a decent price. I might have gone overboard getting 3 of them, but they are integrating well into our life and making it more tolerable to live in a rental. Once we do find our perfect house, I’ll put in a whole house audio and while the radios will have less utility, we’ll still have a use for them.

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UPS Sensitivity

In a post I wrote yesterday, I commented that the new display I got kept causing my UPS to click on and off. I got so fed up with it yesterday that I unplugged the display. The problem still happened, so I unfairly blamed the display. After considering getting a new UPS idea, I came across a (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS4d-UNkE8o) which explains how to change the sensitivity on my APC BE750G UPS. I made the change and so far, so good. I even turned on my printer which normally caused the behavior and haven’t heard it clicking.

I’m not sure what changed to cause this new behavior, but I’m please that I may have found a solution.

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First look: Apple Thunderbolt Display

Today, a 27″ Apple Thunderbolt Display showed up on my doorstep and while I’ve only used it for a few hours, there are a few things that make it a dream display.

First off, it’s 27 inches (diagonal)! This is huge; my last display was 24 inches and the first TV I bought myself was 27 inches and I watched that at 10 feet away. The resolution is 2560×1440 which is a lot more than the 1920×1200 I had before. It may not seem like a lot, but the extra real estate (especially vertical) lets me use the iPhone simulator for the iPhone 5 without scaling. This alone, makes it worth getting a huge display.

Second, the Thunderbolt connector means that I’ve gone from plugging in power, display, Ethernet, FireWire 800, and USB down to power and Thunderbolt as I plug Ethernet into the display as well as USB and FireWire 800. This is effectively the docking station that Apple hasn’t made since the Duo Dock (I’ve wanted a dock since I started using a laptop as my primary machine many years ago).

Third, I had my machine connected to my old display using a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI connector which handled audio as well as video. The problem was that in this configuration, the sound can only be controlled via the display and the display controls were pretty awful. Now, I can use the keyboard volume controls (and mute). I can also control the brightness with the keyboard.

So far the only downside appears to be power consumption. We’re in an old house with very few circuits in the house (pretty much everything is on one circuit). The display and part of my office is plugged into one outlet; I keep hearing my UPS cycle and I think that this is due to a slight voltage drop. Previously I’ve only heard this when I turned on the printer. Hopefully it won’t be too annoying and I don’t go insane before we move! Also, the display is quite warm and for awhile this afternoon, I could feel the heat a few inches away from it.

While I was hoping for an updated display with USB 3.0, the only thing that would have gained me is faster backups to my Voyager Q. I can still hold out hope that Newer Technology adds Thunderbolt to the product.

If I get around to it, I’ll post a longer review in the future.

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Simple Energy Conservation

Awhile ago I was talking to my dad and the topic of energy bills came up. We both live in places that are roughly the same size and in the same climate (he’s about 7 miles from me). He was surprised at how much lower my bill was than his; mine includes gas and electric and his only electric. We started to figure out the differences. I have gas hot water, his hot water isn’t included in his bill (he pays it via his HOA dues). I have a gas range, he has an electric range. I have gas heat; he has electric in wall heaters. Neither of us has air conditioning. Since it is the summer, heat could be ruled out and cooking is pretty minor in terms of overall use.

What were the big differences? We started to think and determined that it is probably the computers. My parents each have an iMac that they leave on all the time whereas my wife and I each have a laptop that we put to sleep. In addition, I turn off power strips when not using them and have other powerstrips with timers on them.

So my father decided to turn off his computers and other equipment at night. The first thing he noticed is that there are days that he doesn’t even turn on his computer; he uses his iPhone or iPad to do what he needs to do. When his next bill came, he told me that he saved at least $10. This may not sound like a lot, but that’s over a 10% savings. He’s still not down to my level (could be the TiVo or his stereo amplifier as we don’t have a music system in our house right now), it is encouraging.

We’re lucky that we live in a very temperate climate and that our energy bills are so low; I was talking to some people last month that live in the southeast and my <50 a month bill was peanuts compared to their $400-$500/month bill due to have to heat and cool their houses.

What if other people started doing simple conservation things like this? It would not only be a nice cost savings, but it could lead to being able to turn off a power plant. Who knows.

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Review: Belkin Conserve Surge Protector with Timer

As I’ve mentioned here before, I do my part to conserve energy not just to help the environment, but also to try to save a little money. Several years ago, I started turning off surge strips at night and then last year I bought some APC Power Saving SurgeArrest powerstrips that automatically turned on and off.

This, however, didn’t solve my needs for my desk where I come in every morning, turn on the powerstrip work all day and then turn off the strip. While this is a simple task, when we moved, the strip that I attached under my desk was no longer a good fit, so I placed it on the floor. For the last 4 months, I’ve been getting on the floor and turning the strip on each morning and repeating at night, except for the nights that I forget. I had seen some of Belkin’s new surge protectors and due to my laziness, I decided to pick up a Belkin Conserve Surge Protector with Timer.

The Belkin powerstrip is pretty much like every other powerstrip in that it has some outlets and a few spots for bulky power adapters. However, it had a wired button that I could put on my desk. Turning on the powerstrip became as simple as pressing the button; same goes for turning it off. If I forgot to turn it off, there was a timer that automatically turned it off after 11 hours which turns out works well for me. I turn it on in the morning and it goes off at night.

There isn’t a whole lot more to say about this except that it makes shutting off vampire power supplies a bit easier than having to press the switch on the strip.

Pros

  • Easy to use.
  • Timer helps the forgetful.
  • Has 2 outlets for always on devices.
  • Has 2 outlets for bulky power adapters.

Cons

  • A little pricey.
  • Timer isn’t configurable.

Summary

While it isn’t going to pay for itself anytime soon, I’m pretty pleased with the product. It makes it so much easier for me to turn things on and when I walk away from my computer, I can easily turn things off to save even more energy. I’d love to see more people using products like these (or just shutting off powers trips when not using them) as we could cut a lot of energy usage that is simply wasted.

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Making a first impression

When applying for a job, the standard thing to do is to submit a resumé and that becomes the first impression that a potential employer has of a candidate. Many years ago I came up with a basic, clean format for my resumé and periodically have updated it (luckily not lately), just in case I needed it. While I’m not sure a resumé ever helped me get a job (I was referred by a friend to the one job that I landed where I submitted a resumé), I’ve been in the position that I’ve had to read resumés of potential candidates. I look for a number of things on resumés to see if the candidate is worth pursuing. These include the basics like:

  • Does each job tell me what the candidate did?
  • How much experience does the candidate have in a particular field? Lately, it has been iOS and Objective-C.
  • Has the candidate worked on a team? What was the candidate’s role on the team?
  • Has the candidate switched jobs a lot?

And the not so basics:

  • Is the resumé clean and professional looking? I like to see PDF resumés as I don’t use Word and formatting gets messed up with Pages.
  • Are there spelling errors?
  • Is proper grammar used? While no one is perfect, I know that I spend a lot of time on the 1-2 pages of a resumé; I expect others to do the same if if grammar isn’t a strong trait, then the candidate should ask for help in reviewing it.

Some people will say that I’m too nitpicky, but I’m in a field where attention to detail really matters. I recently saw “Got familiar with xxx” as a bullet item on a resumé. That strikes me as someone that didn’t spend enough time wordsmithing or didn’t have a good grasp of the language.

There are also some things you should leave off a resumé. In the current era where everyone has an app or two, I see people list how many apps they have. One went as far as to say he worked on 50 apps. Going back to my list above, I looked for how long this person worked at a company and then did a rough calculation that he put out 1 app every 9 days of employment. While the candidate might have thought that the quantity of apps was important, it turns out to be a negative in my book as 9 days isn’t enough time to write a quality app (granted some apps were probably cookie cutter and different content put in).

I remember in the past my father making sure he put his resumé on the right paper stock just to make a good impression. He put so much effort into his resumé that when it came time for me to do a resumé, I tried my hardest to make it my best work. In modern days, people rarely send in paper resumés, so they have to do different things to make a good first impression. I wish more people would spend time polishing their first impressions.

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Jumping on the upgrade treadmill

Now that Apple has announced the iPhone 5, it’s time for me to upgrade! Yes, I did just get an iPhone 4S last year, but luckily for me, staying on top of iPhone technology is part of my job. Now that my wife has an iPhone, it’s easier for me to justify upgrading as I can give her my old one and get the discounted pricing. Would I pay full price for one? That’s a tough question that luckily I don’t have to answer.

I don’t think I’ve been so enamored with devices as I have been with the iPhone. Initially I was pretty ho-hum about it because I felt I had to be against it due to all my work centering around competing devices. While the improvements of each iPhone seem pretty minor, I can imagine them being quite useful to me. It isn’t cheap to keep upgrading devices, but as my wife puts it, I deserve it as I work hard.

Will I be first in line to get one? I won’t go out of my way to get one, but I’ll order when I can.

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Bulk updating of git repositories

As I’ve written in the past, I have mixed feelings about open source, so I take a close look at a lot of it, especially for some side projects that I have. There is a lot of decent code out there, or at least ideas that I can build on, so I’ve flagged code to look at and cloned a bunch of repositories from Github. The problem I’ve been faced with is that I have a folder filled with open source that becomes out of update quickly and updating each repository is cumbersome. I want to have the latest and greatest so I don’t have to think twice about the code when I go to evaluate it or use it.

Today I had a little time, so I threw together a shell script that walks through my open source directory and updates each repository in it. I could probably set this up us a cronjob, but for now, I’ll run it manually. For all those out there that want to do something similar, here is the script in all its glory!

#!/bin/sh
OIFS="$IFS"
IFS=$'\n' 
for i in $(find "/Users/scott/Documents/Development/OpenSource" -type d -maxdepth 1); do
    cd "$i"
    echo "Pulling from: $i"
    git pull
done
IFS="$OIFS"
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Review: Monoprice Aluminum X-Form Rotatable Desktop Stand

A few weeks ago I wrote about the MobileMount and how it worked well for the iPad, but not the iPhone. After using if for the iPad for over a week, the suction cup stopped sticking and my iPad kept falling. So it looked like another failed KickStarter project (I’m a sucker for trying new things). I did like using it with my iPad as it was convenient to have my iPad easily accessible on my desk.

I started searching for an iPad stand and there are a huge number of options out there, so picking one was going to be hard. I liked being able to rotate the screen easily, so the book stand options weren’t attractive. There are cheap ones and expensive ones. After much searching, I went to Monoprice.com, one of my favorite places to get cables and connectors. I saw that they had a decent selection of stands, so I picked the Aluminum X-Form Rotatable Desktop Stand.

When I opened up the stand, it looked pretty substantial for a $13 product. I put my iPad in it and started rotating the screen to see how well the connector worked holding the base to the frame. The movement is quite fluid and holds my iPad well. The stand is extremely adjustable and can be titled to many angles. The only thing it seems to be lacking is a height adjustment, but that seems minor. I’ve read other reviews indicating that the screws get loose over time, but that is easily rectified.

I’m quite surprised that such an inexpensive product seems so well built and so functional. As I’m working on an iPad project right now, this is really going to come in handy.

Pros

  • Inexpensive (< $20 with shipping).
  • Allows easy rotation.
  • Angle adjustments.
  • Fits my iPad 3.

Cons

  • Not height adjustable.
  • There is a little slop in the corners where the iPad fits into the slots.

Summary

For the price, this stand is well worth it. Monoprice seems to deliver decent products for a reasonable price. If you’re looking for an iPad stand, I’d definitely check this one out. While I hate to say that things are disposable, for $20, I don’t think you have much to lose. While you’re shopping around Monoprice.com, check out their other items as they have a lot of things you wouldn’t even have thought that you need.