shawnwall

1st time using the Buono V60 (Taken with instagram)

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 08:50:14 -0500

1st time using the Buono V60 (Taken with instagram)

Bose Cinemate Series II Review

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 10:18:00 -0500

For the past few months we’ve been renovating (or paying someone to renovate) our game room downstairs. It’s finally usable again, and I had been thinking about simplifying the home theater/stereo setup for some time. In the past, we had the following setup:

Samsung 42” LCD
FIOS Cable/DVR
Onkyo Receiver
PS3
Wii
JBL front towers, center, rear bookshelf surrounds

I wanted to lay out the room a little differently and eliminate the existing surround-sound setup and go with a simple 2.1 system. After reading around the web along with trying out equipment at various stores, I ended up finding a great deal on the Bose Cinemate Series II System at the Factory Outlet in Washington, PA. They ran me $399.99 instead of the $599.99 retail price found elsewhere. They sounded pretty good at the store, but keep in mind my expectations weren’t outrageous - they are $400 speakers so they aren’t going to be perfect…

Setup

The speakers were well packed and setup was a complete breeze. You simply place the satellites, connect them to the sub, connect the processing unit to the sub, plug a single digital optical out from your tv to the processing unit, and plug in the sub.

Use

There is a tiny on/off and volume remote that must be used with the system. If you are trying to simplify and not have to use another remote, you may not like this.

Sound

TV/Movies

I honestly can’t complain about the sound when it comes to watching TV and movies. The bass is plentiful, so much so I had to even turn down the default setting on the sub. The treble and mids aren’t mind blowing, and sounded a little “distant” but again I wasn’t looking for extremely high cost sound here. You have to play a bit with getting the satellites at the right high, distance, etc, but if you find a sweet spot these speakers really do excel for home theater on a budget.

Music

This is where the review turns sour. So… I purchased an Apple TV to be able to not only watch tv & movies but mainly to be able to listen to Rdio and iTunes through the stereo system. The sound is really quite poor… You have to crank the speakers up to get decent treble & mid out of them to the point where the bass is just out of control even if you turn it down on the sub. You just get the feeling where you want to clean out your ears or your head is clogged up. It simply doesn’t sound right.

Another thing to note here is that if I plugged the digital out of the appletv directly into the Bose processing unit, the sound did get a little better. This shows a flaw in the design of this system where the quality of your TV may effect sound quality since it may muck with the sound while doing a pass-through.

Games

I played a few things on the PS3 and don’t really have a complain. Again the bass was plentiful, and besides the general lack of high-end in the system it wasn’t really too bad.

Verdict

They are getting returned today. Thankfully Bose has a great “try it out” policy where you can return the speakers within 30 days (or 90 during the current holiday season). The speakers simply do not work for me with my goals of tv/movies and music. They are truly meant for tv & movies so I can’t knock them as they excel at their intended purpose for a fairly low price point.

We’re going back to the old equipment, except I may just end up doing stereo with my massive JBL towers.

Facebook buys Gowalla

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:25:26 -0500

Facebook buys Gowalla

Christmas decor (Taken with instagram)

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:51:21 -0500

Christmas decor (Taken with instagram)

Crosby to return Monday

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 15:35:00 -0500

Crosby to return Monday:

Awesome. Totally awesome.

Kindle Fire tries to do a lot, and fails at almost everything

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 09:23:34 -0500

Kindle Fire tries to do a lot, and fails at almost everything:

You get what you pay for.

Tools of the trade

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 09:21:02 -0500

I’ve been wanting to compile a list of the software & services I use to make my worklife just a bit more easy & enjoyable, so here we go:

Harvest Time Tracking & Invoicing. This is seriously one of the most well done services I have ever used. I can’t live without it. The companion iPhone app is also fantastic.
Beanstalk Hosted Source Control. Git or Subversion repositories combined with a great web interface and best of all - automated continuous deployment.
Basecamp Project Management. Love it or hate it, there’s not really a better way for a small company to manage its projects & tasks. Is it perfect? No.
XCode Mac IDE. You want to make iOS or OS X apps? Here’s your only (realistic) choice, and it is worlds ahead of anything you’ll be using for Android development.
BBEdit Text Editor. Sorry but I never really jumped on the TextMate bandwagon. BBEdit has been around since before some of you were born, and it will continue to be around forever. It just works. I do all my python development in here, and general text editing besides Markdown.
Mou Markdown editor. Do I really need a Markdown-only editor? This is a newcomer to my set of tools but I love it. It reminds me of the LaTeX split-editor I made many moons ago.
Cornerstone Subversion GUI. If I’m using Git I prefer to just use the command line, but this GUI by Zennaware makes source control a breeze - branching, merging, you name it. It’s well worth the $ for the time saved.
Intellij Community Edition Java/Android IDE. I hate Eclipse. Hate. It was one of the reasons I avoided Android development so much. Along comes another great IDE from the folks at Jetbrains. It’s fast, it has better code completion, along with various other great features built right in without constantly searching for more junk to bloat your Eclipse install. Make the switch…like you really use that Android Layout Designer anyway.
Omnigraffle Wireframing/UX. Along with Barebones, the Omni Group has been around forever. I remember using OmniWeb on NeXTSTEP back in the day. This is a very powerful tool where you may only scratch the surface of its features and still be making great wireframes. Definitely check out the iPad/iPhone/Android Stencil Kits from ZURB.
Dropbox File sharing made easy. Dropbox is a no-brainer. Keep all your work related content there so you don’t have to worry about backup or easy access from your several computers & mobile devices. It’s also great to use as an Intranet like we do at TwoTap Labs.
Evernote Notes & Clippings. Whether i have my iPad, iPhone or Macbook Pro with me, I’m taking notes in Evernote so I can easily find them later. I’ll admit I’m also known to carry a Moleskine and be old fashioned.
Pixelmator Image creation & editing. Bye Bye Photoshop. That’s all I have to say.
iWork Pages, Keynote, Numbers. You know you want to rid yourself of those last remaining Microsoft products.

I dont think they really require being spelled out… but I also use Chrome, Twitter for Mac, Mail.app, Rdio, iCal, and iChat.

Jawbone UP Battery Problems

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:05:01 -0500

Apparently what appears to be a large percentage of Jawbone UP bands are experiencing an incredibly early death. The batteries appear to be failing on devices within a week of ownership. I’ve had this occur to two friends already, and there is a forum post detailing many users’ experiences of the same issue.

So far I’ve charged my band once and haven’t had any issues, but reading about the experience of many other users is very disappointing. This is incredibly bad press for Jawbone and it’s hard to regain a customer’s trust after such immediate problems with a new device.

Space Needle (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:22:42 -0500

Space Needle (Taken with instagram)

Pike Place market (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:20:00 -0500

Pike Place market (Taken with instagram)

Mt Rainier (Taken with instagram)

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:27:36 -0500

Mt Rainier (Taken with instagram)

Digital inheritance

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 07:36:03 -0500

I’m a collector. As a society I believe we largely are collectors - the antique market is absolutely immense. Ever since I was a kid I’ve always been amassing something. I believe the order went:

star wars figures
stamps
coins
baseball cards
comics
magic cards
cd’s/dvd’s
video games
mid-century-modern furniture
tobacco pipes

While numbers 9 and 10 are still ongoing, most of the other hobbies died off over time. I’ve traded away most of my cd’s and dvd’s as it’s a simple transition to digital. I’ve been having a tough time getting rid of those video games I spent a lot of time collecting through visiting thrift stores and used video game stores such as the exchange. I haven’t been going to those stores much lately but while driving by one recently a thought crossed my mind. What is going to happen to the entire market of second-hand goods, and how do we hand down our digital goods to future generations?

A lot of people buy their digital goods from Apple, and those files come linked to your Apple ID. There’s no way of transferring those items to anyone else, whether you want to sell or just flat out give them away. Once your time passes are they just… gone? I think this “lifetime” aspect of digital goods has been overlooked by modern technology as we focus on the here & now.

Supposedly this is one of the reasons why ebooks & digital music are priced less than their physical counterparts, but I don’t believe it. I think people just don’t value “invisible” items as much as something concrete they can touch & feel. As a society we’re growing more and more solitary and inward, and this is just another example on how the aspect of physical sharing is going away, and I think it’s a shame.

Jawbone UP Review

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 15:00:00 -0500

The Jawbone UP is the latest in a series of hardware+software health monitoring tools to come our way. Having worked at Bodymedia way back when, I’ve always had an interest in these devices and their complimentary software. The UP is a $100 bracelet that you wear at all times (yes, even in the shower) that helps you track your sleep, activity & diet. The hardware accomplishes the tasks of sleep & activity while the software plays the sole role in diet. Onto the details…

Design

If you’re familiar with other Jawbone products such as the Era or Jambox, you’ll see the same familiar modern clean design in the UP. It was designed by Yves Behar & his team at fuseproject. It’s a design you’ll love or hate. I’m personally a huge fan of the form, but does it function?

The rubberized bracelet is bendable to a degree. It’s not the simplest task in the world getting it on or off your wrist, but thankfully you don’t really need to take it off given its waterproof nature. I’ve worn a watch every day on my left wrist since I was 13… so I’m used to “jewelry”. After opening up the well-designed packaging I got the bracelet on and instantly thought “wow I can hardly feel it there”.

You’ll want to obviously obtain the right size. Jawbone’s site has a sizing guide if you are ordering online, or the packaging itself has a size ring on it so you can try before you buy. There’s really not much in the way of moving parts here; there is a button at one end that is used for switching modes (more on that later), and the opposite end has a cap that is pulled off to reveal the 3.5mm male jack that is used to sync the device with your mobile phone (currently iPhone-only, but Android “coming soon”).

When interacting with the single button, there are light indicators on the bracelet to indicate what mode you are in - normal, activity, sleep. One negative I will mention is that for me the bracelet does not lie completely flat near its endpoints. I still have room in the bracelet, but due to the shape of my wrist etc it doesn’t look/feel “perfect”.

Use

When you first synch the device to your phone, you set up an account along with setting up goals for yourself. There’s not much to “using” the device. You simply wear it and have to interact with it only a few times a day. If you exercise, you can tap-tap the button enter “activity mode”. The sole purpose of this is to just break out this activity within the app UI at a later time. When you go to bed you hold down the button to enter sleep mode. Upon waking up you hold it again to enter back into the standard mode. That’s all there is to it.

You’ll need to charge the device every ten days or so using the included 3.5mm->USB dongle. Every time you synch to the app you are shown the device’s charge level, and there are warnings on the light indicators on the bracelet when the battery is low.

App

The supportive application (that is necessary to use the device) is available for iPhone only at the time of writing. Jawbone has stated in their forums that an Android version is under active development. As stated earlier, the main three things the device does is track sleep, activity, and what you are eating, although there are social features (team) along with challenges thrown in for good measure.

I’ve been removing the bracelet from my wrist to synch to the iPhone using the 3.5mm jack. Maybe you can get that cap off and synch with it on your wrist, but it doesn’t seem easy. You plug it in, open the app, and hit synch. I haven’t had any issues with it yet. The main visualization is a graph with three bars showing if you’ve hit your goals in Sleep, Activity & Diet. You can rotate your phone to see more detailed information about your statistics. It seems like the only view is a daily view, although I would hope there are more views of the statistics on their way.

Sleep

This is one area I’m very interesting in seeing about myself. The UP will tell you how much you slept along with your sleep quality. I’ve always been a light sleeper and my wife tells me I move around frequently. After using the device for one night I now believe her. Compared to a friend of mine who is also using an UP, my deep sleep time is far less than his. I’m anxious to see if this behavior is consistent.

One really great feature in regards to sleep is that the bracelet can be used as an alarm clock using vibration. Even better, it supposedly will wake you up out of a light sleep instead of a deep sleep by getting you up a little earlier if it can (by looking at your deep vs. light sleep somehow).

Activity

In the world of UP, activity is all about steps. You can view graphs of your steps over time along with estimated distance, active time, and calories burned. I’d like to believe I’m a fairly active & healthy person, so viewing this data should be interesting. I do not own another pedometor, Fitbit or anything else along those lines so I cannot speak for the accuracy of the UP. It feels like the numbers are too high though.

One of my favorite feature of the device is found in this area. You can set your bracelet to remind you to be active if you are sedentary for too long. The time range is user defined. This is great as it can remind us programmers to get out of our chairs once an hour :)

Diet

The food diary portion of the application is well… a little underwhelming in my opinion. You are forced to take a photo of every meal and it automatically slots that food into a designated meal such as breakfast or lunch. You can optionally tie the meal to a location (including restaurants, etc, nearby). About 1 or 2 hours later you get a push notification where the app wants you to rate how you feel after eating with the choices of energized, ok, sleepy, hungry, or stuffed. This is all well & good if there’s a way to really find out how certain foods effect you, but I don’t really see a way to do that in the app.

I think Jawbone needs to add some more functionality into this area such as integration with social (beyond their own network), calorie info (wasn’t there some crazy startup/app that figured out calories in food by using mechanical turk?), along with better analytics over time. This area of the app just feels too labor intensive.

Team

So far I only have one friend with an UP as we both got them a little early by scoping out Apple Store’s, but as expected the social features in any health/exercise-based app are key to the experience. You can search for users profiles and invite them to your “team”. You can then view their progress along with yours in the three main areas of interest in the app. It’s a great way to keep yourself motivated and motivate others, although I hope to see some more features added in over time in this area.

Additionally, there is a Feed tab where you can see recent activity of the members in your team.

Challenges

Game mechanics are a huge portion to an offering such as the UP, and I feel they currently fall a little short. There are sponsored challenges such as walking X steps in a day where it looks like you can obtain points (from the sponsors?) that are good for I don’t know what. I hate to say badges in the modern world of over-gamification, but they really do feel like they belong in an app such as this but are nowhere to be found. I want to be able to compete against my friends along with cooperating - the two core game mechanics.

Summary

The UP is an extremely well designed & engineered product accompanied by an average mobile app experience. It is by no means bad - it’s a well done native iOS app that quick & responsive and looks good. In an offering such as this the data that is being captured is the core of the entire experience. It is the foundation. Upon that there are a plethora of choices to be made upon the visualization & interaction with that data. The bracelet and app just came out so I’m not knocking Jawbone for all this stuff but I’m just hoping for more and more in the future. They have a solid foundation upon which they can keep building a better & better user experience.

Up! (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 10:06:40 -0500

Up! (Taken with instagram)

Mou - Markdown Editor for OS X

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:49:20 -0400

Mou - Markdown Editor for OS X

Spicy Vegetarian/Vegan Spaghetti Sauce Recipe

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 09:27:00 -0400

Ingredients

2 tbsp Olive Oil
1 Sweet Onion, Chopped
1 Green Bell Pepper, 1/2 chopped, 1/2 sliced thinly
1 Red Bell Pepper, 1/2 chopped, 1/2 sliced thinly
4 Cloves Garlic, Minced
2 Bay Leaves
1 1/4 tsp Oregano
1 1/2 tsp Basil
1/2 tsp Rosemary
1/2 tsp Marjoram
1/4 teaspoon Thyme
1/2 tsp Red Pepper Flakes
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
Plenty of Ground Black Pepper
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Penzey’s Forward Seasoning
1/2 tsp Fennel Seeds
1/4 tsp Garlic Powder
1 tbsp Sugar
1 6oz. Can Tomato Paste
1 28oz. Can Tomato Sauce
1 28oz. Can Diced Tomatoes
1 tiny piece (1/8 tsp?) Dark Chocolate
Water to keep proper consistency

Instructions

Heat your skillet to medium/medium-high heat. Add Olive Oil. Saute Onion, Garlic for 5 minutes.
Add Bay Leaves, Red & Green Peppers, & all seasonings except sugar & dark chocolate. Saute until soft (another 5 or 10 minutes).
Add Tomato Paste, Sauce, & Diced Tomatoes. Stir well, bring to simmer.
Lower heat, cover completely & simmer for 1 hour, stirring from time to time.
Add the sugar & dark chocolate. Mix well. Crack the cover ever so slightly to let some air escape, and simmer for another 2-3 hours, adding water to ensure proper consistency from time to time while stirring.
Serve on top of spaghetti with fresh grated parmesan (or not if you’re vegan), garlic bread, freeze some leftovers, and my favorite: Mix with leftover pasta, refrigerate, and microwave the next day! :)

As always with pasta sauce, feel free to alter the seasonings slightly to your taste, adding a little more of certain seasonings throughout cooking. I personally only use Penzey’s Spices, and also use Delallo canned tomato products.

Clean at last - GTI (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 14:57:05 -0400

Clean at last - GTI (Taken with instagram)

Testing instagram 2.0 (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 12:18:20 -0400

Testing instagram 2.0 (Taken with instagram)

One of the best things you could ever buy - Thermos Nissan

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:13:00 -0400

One of the best things you could ever buy - Thermos Nissan:

This thermos changed my life

Vegan pumpkin cinnamon rolls (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 12:45:30 -0400

Vegan pumpkin cinnamon rolls (Taken with instagram)