Review: Irwin Self-Adjusting Wire Stripper

Like many people, I like to have the right tool whenever I do household projects. So when I see a tool that may come in handy, I think about purchasing it for my collection. While I might not have a need for it today who knows when it will come in handy in the future.

In December I saw the IRWIN VISE-GRIP Self-Adjusting Wire Stripper on sale and it looked interesting. The theory behind this tool is that you put in any gauge wire and it strips it without nicking the wire. If it worked as advertised, this tool could have saved me countless hours over the last 20 years of being a home owner. I've installed outlets, switches, ran Cat 6 cable, installed landscape lighting, ran speaker wire, and numerous other projects that required me to strip wire.

When I received the stripper, I looked for scrap pieces of wire in my random collection of parts. I tried the stripper on different stranded and solid wire. I put the wire in the tool, squeezed the handles and the wire was effortlessly stripped. After I got used to the tool (it didn't include instructions and I was at first confused as to how it worked), all I wanted to do is find wire to strip! Whatever wire I threw at it, it did a flawless job at taking off the insulation and not touching the wire. I was in awe that the tool worked so well; it was almost too good to be true.

I do have to tug on the side that isn't getting stripped so that the wire doesn't move, but other than that the tool is simple to use. I'm working on putting all my HAM radio equipment in a transportable box (more on that another day) and everything I've read says to use Anderson Powerpole connectors. Just about every installation video for these connectors uses a tool similar to these self-adjusting wire stripper; I am very excited to actually use the tool in a project and not just testing it!

Pros

• Easy to use.
• Fast.
• Strips wire without nicking the wire.
• Works on every gauge wire I've tried.

Cons

• Didn't purchase sooner.

Summary

If you don't already have this tool or a similar one, I'd recommend purchasing it even if you don't have a need for it today. The current price is about $20 and after using it, I would gladly pay the current price. Any homeowner that does any type of work with wire will wonder how he or she lived without this.

Review: SyncWire USB-C Ethernet Adapter

Now that I have a MacBook Pro with only USB-C ports and no USB-C peripherals, dongles are the only way to connect devices. I wrote about dongles last year and have been happy with just a USB-C to Thunderbolt and a USB-C to USB-A dongle. I haven't seen the need for additional dongles, yet, but with the hopes that Apple will release its own display instead of promoting the LG UltraFine display I've been revisiting that.

With my current Thunderbolt Display, I have Ethernet, FireWire (I don't use it), Thunderbolt and 3 USB-A ports. If Apple follows LG's lead on a new display, the display will only have USB-C ports. If and when I purchase this magical display that doesn't exist, yet, I'll have to figure out how to connect my array of devices. Currently I am connected to the network through the Ethernet in the display which would go away with a new monitor. I always prefer wired networking over wireless networking, so when I was offered a SyncWire USB-C to Ethernet Adapter to review, I jumped at the opportunity.

An Ethernet adapter is pretty basic; plug it in and it works. That was definitely the case with the SyncWire adapter. There were no drivers and it was instantly recognized by my Mac.

There are only a few thing that I care about for Ethernet:

1. Does it work?
2. Is it reliable?
3. Is it fast?

For the first two, I've been using the adapter for 5 days now and I haven't seen any hiccups. I disconnected the Ethernet from my display and turned off WiFi. I do regular backups and transfer a decent amount of through it which should put the adapter through its paces. For the last one, the test I used was iperf3 running between my MacBook Pro and my Mac Pro on the same LAN connected via a Ubiquiti UniFi Switch. The result is that the adapter could transfer data at over 900 Mbits/sec. This is definitely not bad. On WiFi, I can get about 360 Mbits/sec. When my MacBook Pro is connected to the Thunderbolt Display, I see about 935 Mbits/sec. I would have expected better throughput with the adapter, but in the real world I'll likely never see sustained speeds anywhere close to this.

So far the adapter meets my three basic needs for a network adapter.

Pros

• Compact size
• Reasonable price point
• Appears reliable
• Decent transfer speeds

Cons

• Unknown long term reliability

Summary

While I wasn't looking for a USB-C to Ethernet adapter right now, this would probably have been on my shopping list when I get monitors that only have USB-C ports. When I purchase equipment for my computer, I tend to goto brand names that I have heard of before as I don't like messing around with shoddy parts just to save a few dollars. I chose SyncWire for a few Lightning cables as they were MFi certified and were on sale. Prior to that, I had never heard of SyncWire and definitely wouldn't have bought their adapter. Now that I've had a chance to try out their USB-C to Ethernet adapter, I'm not sure I can recommend the product. While the price is right and it performs well, the big unknown is how reliable is the adapter in the future. If I was going to spend my money on an adapter, I'd probably look at a more dock like adapter that had USB-A ports in addition to Ethernet.

The purchase price of the adapter was refunded to me in exchange for writing this review. However, it didn't influence what I wrote.

I was asked to post a review of this product on Amazon, but it is against Amazon guidelines to post incentivized reviews, so I posted this review here.

A year of being self employed

Where has time gone? I meant to write this article in December as it marked a year of me being self employed this time around. Anyone that has browsed my past articles will see that I've gone back and forth on being happy working for a company. Will this time being self employed be different? Will I be successful and happy?

I believe that in any professional service work, having good clients is the key. For the most part, I've always had good clients and worked with good teams. For the last year, I've had a great client.

Being self employed may sound glorious to those working for companies, but I always have concerns about being a one man team. I'm sure that others in the same position share the same concerns:

• I can only accept as much work as I can do personally. While I could subcontract out my work, I've never really felt comfortable doing that as I get my contracts based on my own work and not the work of a team.
• Having one main client means that if the client goes away, I'm left high and dry and have to immediately find another client.
• Taking time off is somewhat tricky as I don't have anyone to back me up and I feel guilty about it.
• Who is going to help me if I get stuck on a problem? I can search the Internet for solutions, but have you looked at the Internet lately? 😀

With the ability to purchase health insurance on the open market now, I'm not concerned with getting health insurance. This used to be a big concern of mine. The cost of health insurance on the open market is quite high but, I'm lucky that I can afford it.

In the last 15 months, my large client has been great. I'm treated as part of the team and the team is made up of really good people. I don't feel stressed and manage to get the work done when needed. I do feel guilty about taking time off (I've taken a few days off), but no one minds which is a huge relief. Being always reachable is both a blessing and a curse; I can't be completely disconnected from work but my client can feel comfortable knowing that I can be reached. I really can't ask for anything more from a client.

People think that being self employed offers a lot of freedom. In reality it offers the perception of flexibility. I still have to get up every morning and work as I have commitments to meet and have to meet with my team. This is no different than working for a company. Given that, why don't I just work for the company? That's a good question. I feel that I'm in charge of my own destiny. Is that really true? I have no idea.

Review: PhotoSweeper

Back in December when I was scanning in old photos, I found that I had some of the photos already in digital form leaving me with duplicates. The photos weren't always of the same quality and I had to manually go through to pick the best one. I knew that there were programs out there to find duplicates, so I started searching. After a little while I stumbled upon PhotoSweeper and gave it a test drive.

The first step in using PhotoSweeper is to select a bunch of photos. In my case, I went ahead and selected all the photos.

You then click Compare and select your options for comparison.

I selected a pretty loose matching criteria knowing that I would get a lot of matches. After you start, you see the blurred thumbnails of the photos as it goes through and does the comparisons.

The number of photos and your matching criteria determines how long the process will take. The first time I ran it, I did a small sample just to see the results. I was amazed at the results as it found matches where the photos were scanned at different times, the color was different in them and sometimes the photos were cropped differently.

You then walk through the groups of photos and select the ones to mark for deletion. The process takes awhile depending on the number of photos you are comparing, but most of the matches really are duplicates or close to being duplicates. Once you hit Trash Marked, PhotoSweeper opens Photos and moves the photos you marked to its own album and gives instructions on how to permanently remove the photos.

The process is quite simple and straightforward. While the program may seem like a use once application, I've run it a few times just to see if I missed anything. The side by side comparison of matches is also quite useful to see if you want to remove photos that are not exact duplicates, but are close enough. In my match example above, the photos are quite close and I'd be fine with keeping just one of them. (If you can't tell, the photo on the right shows a little bit of the electrical panel in the left side of the photo.)

Pros

• Integrates with Photos app to read photos.
• Creates new album for photos marked as deleted.
• Many options for photo matching.
• Works on JPEGs and HEIC (new image format used on iPhones).

Cons

• I'm not a fan of the dark interface. I know this is more the norm in applications today, but I just don't like it.

Summary

After I tried PhotoSweeper (you can get a trial version from the developer's website) in a basic test to see if it would work, I immediately went to purchase it on the Mac App Store (I like the ease of use of the App Store and while I know that developers take a hit, the seamless process especially using Touch ID on my MacBook Pro takes the thinking out of the purchase.) Much to my surprise, I had already purchased the application! I'm not quite sure when or why I had purchased it. The $9.99 price tag is a small price to pay for an application that does exactly what it says it will do and does it well. I have no hesitation in recommending this application to anyone that has a photo album. Even if you aren't scanning in photos, using the side by side comparison tool makes it easy to see if you want to remove similar photos.