Category Archives: Gadgets & Apps
Backup
This was always a challenge during my Windows days. In part because there were no now high capacity external hard drives, but mostly because it was a tedious chore. And maybe I just wasn’t smart enough of disciplined enough. Best I could manage was to copy some documents and photos to some floppies and pray I didn’t the computer HD didn’t die.
That really changed for me when I switched to Mac and started using Time Machine. When I got to the office each morning I’d plug an external hard drive in and forget about. It did incremental back-ups in the background.
While I never had a hard drive failure, I frequently needed a file that I had mistakenly deleted. I don’t recall how we addressed this in the old Windows days but seems like you had to do a full restore (a major deal) to get that one file back. With Time Machine I just flip back through the backups until I find one where the missing file existed. Just drag the file to my desktop and it’s back.
[Allow me to stipulate that smarter folks than I probably had no trouble managing backups on Windows.]
Barb has less time for this kind of routine (but critical chore) so she doesn’t do backups as often as she should but I think we’ve solved that problem.
The AirPort Time Capsule is “a superfast Wi‑Fi base station and an easy-to-use backup device all in one.” No more plugging in external hard drives. When we fire up one of our MacBooks it periodically does the incremental backup. With two terabytes of storage, the Time Capsule manages backups for both Barb and me.
Because I’m a little paranoid about backups, I also run Carbon Copy Cloner once a week. And I’m going to start keeping a copy off site.
Bedside Flushable Toilet
The most advanced directional sign on Earth
Drone video: Prairie Garden Trust (George Kopp)
iMovie Themes
I’m exactly the sort of amateur Apple’s iMovie was created for. A set of simple, easy-to-use tools for editing those home movies. And it has some nice features I rarely use. Like themes. Here’s a minute of video and stills from Singapore (that I might have posted already) with one of the iMovie themes. Adds a little class I could never do on my own.
Steve Jobs Schools
“Some 1,000 children aged four to 12 will attend the schools, without notebooks, books or backpacks. Each of them, however, will have his or her own iPad. There will be no blackboards, chalk or classrooms, homeroom teachers, formal classes, lesson plans, seating charts, pens, teachers teaching from the front of the room, schedules, parent-teacher meetings, grades, recess bells, fixed school days and school vacations. If a child would rather play on his or her iPad instead of learning, it’ll be okay. And the children will choose what they wish to learn based on what they happen to be curious about.”
The Talking Window
Mouth Buffer
I suffer from “fast mouth.” Someone will say or do something and before my mind can engage, I blurt out some smart-ass or unkind remark. Seconds later, my brain catches up and I spend some time regretting my (literally) thoughtless comment. Here’s my fantasy fix for this condition:
A small, neural implant in my brain with a tiny switch just behind my right ear (I’m right handed). When going into situations where I think I might speak before thinking, I can engage the Mouth Buffer. While my mental and physical reaction times are unaffected, there is a three second delay before I can utter a sound. (This can be changed in Preferences)
By default, the Mouth Buffer stays engaged for one hour but can be reset as needed.
The only down side I see is the possibility some strangers will be crushed by falling pianos or hiking buddies killed by poisonous snakes because I couldn’t warn them.
Flying by iPad
Barb had a meeting in Kansas City today and the client sent the company plane to fetch her (and save a few billable hours, I assume). She snapped this photo of the pilot’s iPad. I shared this on Google+ where Bisbo (a pilot for Southwest) posted the following comment:
“The major airlines are starting to go to this, and slowly moving away from paper charts. With it tied into GPS, you can see your position along the route, and you can also overlay weather radar information from the NWS. In fact, I often get much better weather information form my First Officer’s iPhone than I do from dispatch.”