Author: Andrew Huey

Apple TV 2015

A friend bought me a new Apple TV for Christmas this year. I was perfectly happy with my old Apple TV box (the previous generation), so I wouldn’t have gone out and bought myself a new one. But it’s a cool new toy, so I’ve been playing around with it. (My friend also bought me a Nimbus game controller, which is kind of nifty, but I haven’t done anything with it yet.)

My main use for the Apple TV has always been to watch iTunes content, specifically Doctor Who. I don’t get BBC America, so I buy Doctor Who from iTunes and watch it through the Apple TV box, usually. For that simple use case, the new Apple TV might actually be a little less convenient than the old one. I’ve found the interface for browsing through purchased content is usable, but slightly less convenient than the old interface.

The new remote is interesting, but so far I don’t find the touch surface to be any more useful than just having buttons like on the old remote. The Siri functionality works well, though I feel weird talking to my remote, and I’m not sure how often I’ll use it. And I’m also not sure how I feel about having a rechargeable battery in it; it’s a nice idea, and maybe necessary to support the touch surface, but I’m wondering how often I’m going to have to recharge it. (And I’m wondering how long before it wears out, since it doesn’t appear to be user-replaceable.) With the old remote, I just had to stick a new watch battery in it once every couple of years.

The app store is a good thing, and I hope to see some interesting apps show up there, but so far, there’s not much I’m interested in, aside from stuff that was already available on the old Apple TV. The Netflix app is fine, and there are apps for the usual networks, like PBS, Disney, Comedy Central, and so on. I did use the Disney XD app yesterday to binge on a bunch of Gravity Falls episodes, and it worked well.

I haven’t tried playing any games on it yet, but I’ll get around to that eventually. I hear that Alto’s Adventure is pretty good, so maybe I’ll pick that up.

Fire follow-up

I thought I’d write a quick follow up on the Amazon Fire I got last week. I knew when I bought it that it would be locked-down to some extent, but I didn’t really research exactly how locked down it is. Out of the box, you can only install software from Amazon’s store, not Google Play, and Amazon’s store is missing a lot of stuff. I installed OneDrive, Evernote, Slacker, and a few other apps, but there’s no (official) Dropbox client (as far as I can tell), Instapaper app, or any alternate web browsers (Firefox or Chrome). I’ve been reading up, and apparently you can “sideload” apps pretty easily, but I haven’t played with that yet. And I’ve read up on how to get the Google Play store installed, but the process for doing that seems a little dicey, so I’m not going to bother with it unless I need to.

In addition to the $15 32 GB MicroSD card I bought for it, I’ve now also bought a $15 case and a $5 USB cable (since the one it came with is too short), so I’ve officially spent as much on accessories as I spent on the Fire itself. I find that pretty amusing.

Blogging tools

I played around with the WordPress.com app for Mac a couple of weeks ago. I used it to write a few recent blog posts, but I’ve mostly gone back to just using the regular WordPress admin. The app is nice, but it’s not really that much better than the regular admin pages.

The WordPress.com app is now also available for Windows. I’ll probably install it on my ThinkPad at some point and give it a try. And, interestly, Windows Live Writer has (finally) been open-sourced and released as Open Live Writer. Windows Live Writer had a really good reputation as a great tool for authoring blog posts, and I know at least one guy who used it with WordPress and liked it. Microsoft pretty much abandoned it in 2012, and there’s been talk about open-sourcing it for quite some time. It’s great that they’ve managed to do it. I know it’s not easy with software like this that comes out of a large company.

Fire

My $35 Amazon Fire 7″ tablet arrived in the mail yesterday. It’s a pretty nice little tablet for $35.  (Even at the regular $50 price, it’s a really good deal.)  I bought a $15 32GB MicroSD card with it, and I’m thinking about loading that up with music, and using it primarily as an MP3 player. (My iPhone works perfectly well as an MP3 player, of course, but I’m always running out of room, since I’ve got so many apps and photos and other random stuff on it.)

I imagine that, for many people, it would make a good e-reader, but for me, I’ll stick with my old e-ink Kindle for that. The Fire does have a nice feature that I truly wish iOS devices had: it’s called “Blue Shade,” and it basically does the same thing that f.lux does. It changes the color and adjusts the brightness so that the screen is easier on the eyes. So if I had to choose between reading on the Fire at night, or reading on my iPad, I’d definitely pick the Fire. (Though some apps on iOS do have a useful “night mode” that’s easy on the eyes.)

Meanwhile, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1″ Android tablet that I bought a couple of years ago at Costco is just gathering dust. Since it’s about the same size as the iPad, I really don’t have much use for it. It was useful for learning how to use Android, I guess, but I never really got in the habit of using it for anything in particular. I checked on Gazelle, and it looks like I can sell it to them for $15. Not great, but it’s better than just throwing it out.

I’m hoping that the 7″ Fire might fit into some use cases in between the iPhone and the iPad. Maybe as something to carry around when I need a screen that’s bigger than the iPhone but I don’t want to bring a full-size iPad. It’s small enough to fit into the pocket on my winter jacket, for instance, while the iPad is definitely not pocket-size.

Sleep

I’ve decided recently to try to work on my sleep. It sounds weird saying that. Sleep doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you can “work on.” I have trouble sleeping occasionally, and I know there are some things I can improve. I’ve read a lot about good sleep habits, and the best things you can do to help get a good night’s sleep. And I’ve already done some of them. I use f.lux on my Mac (and my PCs) to tone down the color on my screen before bedtime. I try to limit my caffeine intake in the afternoon and evening. And I generally go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am, so I’m in bed for a full eight hours. (Though I’m not always perfect about that. Or the caffeine thing…)

I decided this weekend to make one more change: I started to use an alarm clock app called Sleep Cycle that (supposedly) tracks your sleep so that it can wake you up while you’re in a light sleep phase. I have to admit that I’m a little skeptical about how accurately it can track my sleep; it uses the microphone to pick up the noises you make in bed, and tries to figure out your sleep cycle based on just that. So I’m not sure if it’s really doing anything useful or not. But I’m going to give it a try for a week or two at least. The basic version is free, so there’s no real down side. (Unless it turns out to be buggy, and just doesn’t wake me up at all, and I miss work.) Their FAQ says that it takes a few days to calibrate itself, so we’ll see how it goes.

On another front, I’m starting to think about buying a new mattress. My current mattress is about ten years old, so it’s time. I did a little online mattress shopping this weekend, though, and came away more confused than anything else. There are a lot of options and a lot of opinions out there. I may give up and just go back to Sleepy’s, where I got my last mattress, show them the receipt for it, ask for something similar, and hope for the best.

Jackson Pollock

I went to see the Jackson Pollock exhibit at MoMA today. Pollock has been a favorite of mine since high school. This exhibit is all stuff from MoMA’s collection, so it’s not a huge exhibit, and I’ve already seen all of the major works that are included. But there are a number of minor works and odd bits that usually aren’t out for display, so it was nice to see some of those, and to see so much Pollock work all together in one place.

I was hoping that they would have produced a new book to go along with the exhibit, but they don’t seem to have done that. I have only one book on Pollock, and it would be nice to have a keepsake from this exhibit. In fact, I couldn’t find any books related to Pollock in the museum gift shop. Lots of random Christmas  knick-knacks though. Tis the season, and all that.

I was hoping to do some more stuff in the city today, maybe including a visit to the Met, but I was really tired after I was done with MoMA, and went straight home. This was my first big excursion since my surgery, and I think it went pretty well, but I guess I’m not at 100% yet. Or maybe I’m just getting old. Maybe I’ll try going to the Met next weekend.

stumbling my way into a mostly paperless system

I got a bit restless today and did a bunch of housecleaning, both literally and metaphorically.

For a long time, I’ve been trying to work towards going as paperless as I can. I still receive most of my bills and statements on paper, mostly because, in the past, I’ve been really bad about downloading those statements when I get the email notifications about them. I just let the email notifications pile up, then when I finally get around to following up on them, the statements they reference are no longer available.

So, this year, I’ve been trying to train myself to be better about that. I’ve been keeping my Gmail inbox pretty clean, and I’ve been good about marking actionable emails and then following up on them in a timely fashion. Today, I decided to take the plunge and switch my Merrill statements from paper to email. The Merrill statements have gotten out of hand over the last few years. Each month, I get a combined statement that’s 30 to 40 pages long. It’s printed on both sides, but it’s still a heck of a lot of paper. (And it’s mostly useless. But that’s a whole other discussion.) So turning off the paper on that should make a big difference.

My workflow for downloading and organizing statements has gotten a lot better since I switched to storing them in OneDrive. Now, I have the full folder hierarchy on both my Mac and PC, and can download and organize stuff on either machine. That removes a big stumbling block that I used to have; I had to turn on the desktop PC to do any of this stuff. (It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it definitely does get in the way.) And I can even download and store a statement right from my iPhone, though I’ve found that to be a little clumsy.

I also shredded all my 2014 Merrill statements today, and organized the stack of 2015 statements a bit. Now I’m looking forward to shredding the 2015 statements at some point next year, then not having to worry about that ever again.

TrustFax and other recurring expenses

Back in 2009, I signed up for a service called TrustFax. For $40/year, you get an account that can be used to send and receive faxes. Nothing fancy. Incoming faxes arrive as PDF files, if I remember correctly. For outgoing faxes, you can send PDF files (and probably other formats).

I signed up for it largely to handle some of the paperwork associated with my parents’ deaths. (It turns out that death-related paperwork exists in this weird time-warp where people still expect you to have a fax number instead of an email account.) I’ve been letting it auto-renew every year since then, even though I haven’t really used it in the last few years. I finally decided to cancel it now, after seeing the yearly charge show up on my last credit card statement.

The cancellation process was predictably inconvenient. There’s a web page where you can supposedly cancel your account, but, once you log in, the page says that a chat box should pop up, and if it doesn’t, to call customer service. The chat box never came up for me, so I called the customer service line. I was connected to someone who sounded like they were on a speakerphone in a windy cave somewhere in the Himalayas. The call took about ten minutes, which I guess isn’t bad, and she only made one attempt to keep me as a customer by offering a better deal, and one attempt to sell me an unrelated product. And she only put me on hold twice. So, by modern standards, an excellent customer service experience!

I try not to sign up for services that auto-renew every month or year, unless I know that I can easily cancel. Services billed through iTunes are good for that, since you can cancel them through Apple, without worrying about the actual vendor. (That’s how I pay for Slacker Radio.)

My Evernote Premium subscription will be up for renewal soon. When I first set it up, I used a code from a gift card, so Evernote doesn’t have my credit card number yet. But I don’t see any way to get a new code to renew the subscription, so I guess I’m going to have to give them my credit card number. (And I also don’t see a way to switch my subscription to iTunes billing. I think you can start a new subscription via the iOS app, but I don’t see a way to extend an existing subscription.) But I’m likely to stick with Evernote for the foreseeable future anyway, so I might as well just give them my credit card.

Similarly, I bought a card from eBay for the first year of my Office 365 subscription. Then, I extended it with a card bought at Costco. I’ll likely extend it next year with another Costco card, assuming they’re still selling them, since it’s cheaper than auto-renewing through Microsoft.

I’m thinking about what services I want to keep in 2016, and what I want to discontinue. Obviously, the fax service was overdue for cancellation. And I’ll definitely be keeping Evernote and Office 365. I’ll likely keep paying for Slacker Radio too. And Amazon Prime is still worth the money.

Netflix is questionable though. I might decide to cancel my account (or put it on hiatus if possible) for a few months at some point, then restart it if they add any interesting new shows, or if I run out of stuff to watch elsewhere.

And my web hosting through 1&1 is something I might want to reevaluate at some point. It’s not terribly expensive, but I’m really only using it for the blog. And I have several domain names with them that I’m renewing annually, but not using for anything. So maybe I could cut down on the domain names and move the blog to WordPress.com to save some money and simplify things.

Black Friday: Fixing Things

I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do with myself today. I had a nice Thanksgiving yesterday at my friend’s house. And I have today off from work. And I’m mostly healed up from my surgery last month. So I considered going into NYC to check out the Jackson Pollock exhibit at MoMA.

But I decided this morning that maybe I should see about getting the speaker on my iPhone fixed. There’s a local store called Batteries + Bulbs that, I recently discovered, does iPhone repair. I don’t know much about them, but they appear to be reputable, so I thought I’d give them a shot. Alas, the repair guy had the day off, so I’ll have to come back tomorrow. But I walked there and back, so I got some exercise at least.

I read an interesting article on Vice this week about iFixit, and about computer repair in general, called How to Fix Everything. I’ve been thinking about this subject a lot lately, since all of the trouble I had with my MacBook recently, and since I’ve been on the fence about geting a new iPhone vs. repairing the old one.

I almost managed to replace the hard drive cable on my MacBook, but had to give up and let someone else do it. But, if not for those two pesky screws, I would have been able to do it, no problem. For the iPhone, I did check out iFixit’s page on speaker replacement. It looks a little too complicated for me to handle on my own, especially if I can get someone else to do it for a reasonable price. But I appreciate, in general, the idea of repairing existing hardware, and keeping it useful for as long as possible. It does seem like Apple, and other manufacturers, and going out of their way to make end-user and third-party repair and upgrades as difficult as possible. But Apple gear is still a good choice, since it’s so populat that you can always find instructions and parts via sites like iFixit.

I’ve managed to avoid blowing any serious money on Black Friday sales, so far, but I have spent a few bucks here and there. I ordered one of the 7″ Kindle Fire tablets that are currently on sale for $35. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it, but for $35, I’ll find something semi-useful. And I bought Commander One Pro from the Mac App Store for 99 cents. I’ve been using the free version, since I got my MacBook set up again, and I like it. I had needed to find something to replace Total Finder, which doesn’t really work with El Capitan, and Commander One seems to fit the bill.

It’s really nice out today, so, in addition to the walk to Batteries + Bulbs earlier, I also walked to Bridgewater Commons and back. I didn’t buy anything while I was there, but I wandered around and looked at what was on sale. I didn’t see anything I really needed, nor did I see anything I really wanted to buy for anyone else. (I really don’t need to buy many Christmas presents these days anyway.) But all this walking put me over the 7500 step threshold for the first time since the hernia issue arose. So I feel pretty good about that. And I now feel like I can spend the rest of day binge-watching Jessica Jones, if I want to, and not feel guilty about it.