Thursday, June 30, 2016
Smart watch leaves him feeling ticked-off
 |
After trying a so-called "smartwatch" for a month, all I can say is that this
technology isn't yet ready for prime-time and needs to go back for some
serious remedial education.
|
These wrist-mounted, mini computers aim to combine the functionality of an old-fashioned watch with a modern smartphone, yet still requires you to carry a cell phone for most of its functions to work.
People lined up around the block when Apple released their version of the device last year, and many who got them claimed that you won’t understand how great they are until you actually started using one.
Well, I recently got the chance to get one – a hand-me-down Samsung Galaxy Gear from my boss – and after about a month of living with it, I can honestly say, my initial opinion remains unchanged.
As much as I love gadgets, I just didn’t find this device so useful.
Without it tethered to my phone via Bluetooth, all it could really do was tell time and count my steps. And while I really did like the pedometer feature, which showed me I average between 5,000 to 6,000 steps per day and walk about 2.5 miles, I found its primary function – telling time – rather inconvenient.
To save battery life, the Gear, turns off the display, so every time I wanted to see what time it was, I either had to twist my wrist back and forth rather vigorously to reactive it, or press the function button on the side of the watch. On my regular old fashioned analogue watch, all I have to do is slightly turn my wrist and glance down and I can see the time.
While I understand why the Gear, like most other smart watches, turns off its high-resolution LCD screen to save on its relatively short battery life, I don’t get how this is any better or innovative than what I used to have to do almost 40 years ago, when I got my first “Star Wars” digital watch back in 1977 or 78!
 |
Without the Gear Manger or some other similar App on
your smartphone, there's little any current smartwatch can by itself. |
But is this seconds-saving convenience worth the hundreds of dollars these smartwatches going for?
Not for me.
I still find them way too limited. The small faces make it virtually impossible to reply to a text message or enter text in any app with such a tiny on-screen keyboard. I also found typing numbers in on my “big-key” calculator app or the remote phone dialer difficult because the keys were so small.
Speaking of cumbersome, it seems that most apps that would extend the watch’s usefulness also need to be installed on the phone so instead of having to install an app once, I’ve got to install it two twice. Often that procedure involves downloading an app from the Google Play Store installing on my phone, then generating an install package called and APK and having to use a third-party program to upload it to the watch where it takes a few more steps to install.
So until the smart watch can be completely freed from a phone to be fully functional and its battery life no longer requires you to turn on and off its screen to tell time, I think I’ll go back to using my old- fashion wrist watch until these “smart” devices graduate from remedial school.
Smart watch leaves him feeling ticked-off
|
After trying a so-called "smartwatch" for a month, all I can say is
that this technology isn't yet ready for prime-time and needs to go back for some serious remedial education. |
These wrist-mounted, mini computers aim to combine the functionality of an old-fashioned watch with a modern smartphone, yet still requires you to carry a cell phone for most of its functions to work.
People lined up around the block when Apple released their version of the device last year, and many who got them claimed that you won’t understand how great they are until you actually started using one.
Well, I recently got the chance to get one – a hand-me-down Samsung Galaxy Gear from my boss – and after about a month of living with it, I can honestly say, my initial opinion remains unchanged.
As much as I love gadgets, I just didn’t find this device so useful.
Without it tethered to my phone via Bluetooth, all it could really do was tell time and count my steps. And while I really did like the pedometer feature, which showed me I average between 5,000 to 6,000 steps per day and walk about 2.5 miles, I found its primary function – telling time – rather inconvenient.
To save battery life, the Gear, turns off the display, so every time I wanted to see what time it was, I either had to twist my wrist back and forth rather vigorously to reactive it, or press the function button on the side of the watch. On my regular old fashioned analogue watch, all I have to do is slightly turn my wrist and glance down and I can see the time.
While I understand why the Gear, like most other smartwatches, turns off its high-resolution LCD screen to save on its relatively short battery life, I don’t get how this is any better or innovative than what I used to have to do almost 40 years ago, when I got my first “Star Wars” digital watch back in 1977 or 78!
|
Without the Gear Manger or some other similar App on
your smartphone, there's little any current smartwatch can by itself. |
But is this seconds-saving convenience worth the hundreds of dollars these smartwatches going for?
Not for me.
I still find them way too limited. The small faces make it virtually impossible to reply to a text message or type on the tiny on-screen keyboard. I also found it difficult to punch in numbers in on my “big-key” calculator app or the remote phone dialer difficult because the keys were so small.
Speaking of cumbersome, it seems that most apps that would extend the watch’s usefulness also need to be installed on the phone so instead of having to install an app once, I’ve got to install it two twice. Often that procedure involves downloading an app from the Google Play Store installing on my phone, then generating an install package called an APK and having to use a third-party program to upload it to the watch where I have to follow another procedure to get it up and running.
So until the smart watch can be completely freed from a phone to be fully functional and its battery life no longer requires you to turn on and off its screen to tell time, I think I’ll go back to using my old-fashion wrist watch and send these “smart” devices back to school for some remedial education.
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Craftsman is more than just about the tools you use
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| This month I turned a photo of a King George II-style bookcase I found on the Web into a set of woodworking plans using a non-traditional tool, Sketch-Up. Some woodworking purest consider that cheating. But I don't. |
As I continue planning out the build of the new book shelf I discussed last month, I’m reminded of a debate that’s now going on in the woodworking community.
Does the use of new technology like CNC routers, 3D printers, or laser engravers make you less of a craftsman than those people who build their projects in the more traditional manner?
I started wondering about this as I used Sketch-Up, a computer-aid drafting program to render the book shelf I mentioned in my last post in all its 3D glory.
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My version of the King George II
bookcase I created in Sketch-Up |
I always found that logic rather flawed. If the craftsman of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries had the kinds of power tools we had today, I’m absolutely positive they would have used them. These people were, after all, businessmen, using their skills to make money to support themselves and their families. And if there was a way to speed up their production so they could make more furniture and earn more money, they certainly would have used it.
So I find it rather funny that some of those same people who defend the use of power tools now look at the use of computer driven routers, 3D printers and other high-tech gadgets as cheating when it comes to woodworking.
To me craftsmanship is not about the tools used to create a project. Nor is it really about the skills used to create it. It’s about the passion, pride and care one puts into building it.
If I’ve learned anything from both my tech and woodworking experience, it’s that any tool, whether manual, powered or computer-driven, takes time to master. Despite what the internet would have you believe, today’s technology doesn’t make using something as simple as just “pushing a button.” (Don’t believe me? Just think of all the time you spent mastering your cell phone, tablet or computer).
For instance, when I got my first table saw and router, I thought I could build projects just as easily as Norm did on “The New Yankee Workshop” because the tool did all the hard work.
Boy was I wrong.
It took plenty of practice and experience before I could use those machines to make the kinds of
joinery that Norm made look so easy. In retrospect, if I had put the same amount of time into mastering hand tools, I could have become as proficient in them as say Roy Underhill, the host of PBS’s “The Woodwright's Shop” who only uses early American hand tools to create his projects.
 |
My bookcase with it's parts "exploded" so you can see how they
fit together. If you look closely, you'll notice that I'm pretty much only using rabbet and dado joints, two very, very basic woodworking joinery techniques. |
Computer driven equipment is the same. It too has its own learning curve, which in many ways takes more time to learn and master than a “manual” skill like using a hand plane or saw. For instance at my day job, I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop on and off for over 20 years, and I still consider myself a novice at it. That program is so complex and there are so many ways to do things, I feel like I'm only using it for 1/10th of what it can really do.
I've also found that projects don't always require fancy techniques or advanced skills to look nice and function well. Some of the nicest pieces of furniture I've seen have been constructed with some pretty basic joinery, proving that with just some basic skills you can still produce some fine furniture. As proof of this, just take a look as the Sketch-Up plans accompanying this post. To duplicate that fancy-looking King George II bookcase I'm pretty much only using rabbet and dado joints, two very, very basic woodworking joinery techniques.
So to all you makers out there, who use computers to aid your creative endeavors, don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not a craftsman. As long as you put heart and passion into what you’re building – and you constantly strive to improve your skills – you are a just as much a craftsman as those who stick to more traditional methods.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Adventures in Woodworking
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| Over the next couple of months, I hope to chronicle how I build the King George II-inspired bookcase at left to replace our crappy old family room bookshelf at right. |
I’m always inspired by the things these people come up with, and just a bit envious of the amount of time they can spend in their shops. I go to bed afterwards with a renewed enthusiasm to not only get into my own shop and build the dozens of projects rattling around in my head, but to start my own Youtube channel and film my own adventures in woodworking.
But by the time Saturday afternoon rolls around, that enthusiasm has faded and after taking care of the 1001 little things that always seem to eat up my free time on the weekends, what little enthusiasm I have left is often killed off having to do yard work. (Forget the robot maid, what I really want is a robotic grounds crew to take care of my yard!)
Not every weekend is like that and I do manage to get a fair amount of shop-time in during the warmer weather here in the Northeast. But trying to film and edit those projects to produce a professional-looking video would just take up too much time I already don’t have.
Rather than just relegating that idea to the “Perhaps Someday” or “When I Retire” pile, I thought I’d try to document a complete project here in this blog.
Lately I’ve been struggling to come with interesting topics for each month’s column, and thought this might help me kill two birds with one virtual stone.
So this month, I’d thought I’d introduce you to the latest project I have in mind: A King George II inspired bookcase.
Since moving into our house 18 years ago, I’ve been meaning to replace a plain, cheap bookcase in our family room with something a bit better.
The particle board shelves have begun to sag under the weight of all the books and chachkies on it, it’s hard dust and all our old record albums are just stored in an old crate on top of it.
The picture of the King George II bookcase I found while browsing online looks like it could be adapted to hold all of our LPs in the squat cabinet on the bottom, while the glass-enclosed upper section would keep dust and dog hair off the books and chachkies, making dusting much easier. Plus the bookcase would match the style of the furniture in that room much better than the current one does.
So in the coming months, I’m going to cover how I go about turning this picture into a set of working plans in SketchUp (something I don’t usually do), my trials and tribulations trying to find the perfect materials for this (popular?cherry? mahogany?), then detail each step of the build from first cut, to finishing and installing it in the room.
So stay tuned. This should be an interesting ride…..
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Déjà vu all over again
One of the things about being an aspiring writer is that I tend to view life through the filter of a story-teller.
I’m always looking at things going on around me, trying to connect events into a coherent narrative as if I were a character being swept along by events in some Great American Novel.
And aside from the almost constant desire to go back and re-write certain parts of my past to improve that story (and my role as a hero in it), I can’t help but see certain patterns repeating around me.
Perhaps this comes from me being a history geek who has always wished he could hop into a time machine and experience what it was really like to live in whatever era has currently piqued my interest.
Usually these fantasies revolve around wandering down the fog-shrouded streets of Victorian London, getting involved in court intrigues and duels in 17th Century England and France or touring the great castles of Europe during their prime in the Middle Ages. But since minoring in history in college, the place and time I think I’d really most like to visit is early 20th Century America (1900-1955).
Unlike the other places and times I’ve mentioned, my view of this period of our country’s history is not colored by the mystery stories of Sherlock Holmes, the swashbuckling romance of “The Three Musketeers” or the adventure stories of “Robin Hood,” “Ivanhoe,” or the myriad of Dungeon and Dragon games I’ve played that were set in pseudo medieval settings.
No, my view of early 20th century America is informed though scholarly research I did to earn that minor in college. As a result I can’t help but notice that some patterns that happened at the beginning of the last century seem to be re-occurring at the beginning of this one.
Like the computer/Internet/electronics revolution we’re currently living through, the beginning of the 20th century also saw a great boom in technology. Electricity began phasing out other forms of lighting and power for the home; trains and expansion of the railroads, not to mention the invention of the automobile and airplane, began making once far-away and inaccessible places easier and faster to get to, and the advent of mass-production techniques from the previous century was transforming our sleepy, little agrarian nation into the world’s manufacturing powerhouse.
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| CREDIT: B. Deutsch at http://leftycartoons.com/ |
new technology replaced many jobs people used to do, rendering their skills almost obsolete overnight. Adding to the turmoil was the throng of new immigrants descending on U.S. cities drawn there by the promise of a better life, which fueled ant he anti-immigrant backlash not really that much different than the kind of hate-filled rhetoric spewed by some of today's political candidates.
Speaking of politics, I see a lot of similarities between the first two decades of the 20th and 21st centuries. As pointed out in the wonderful 2012 History Channel mini-series, “The Men Who Built America” these “Robber Barons” tried to control the political system through their proxies in the Republican Party, and even tried to derail the career of a reform-minded New York politician, Teddy Roosevelt, by sidelining him into what was then thought of as the dead-job of the Vice Presidency of the United States.
Now compare that to the way the Koch brothers are using the Citizen’s United decision, and I think the parallel becomes glaringly obvious.
But the one parallel that’s got me really worried is the one I see between the rise of Hitler in Germany during The Great Depression in the 1930s and the rise of Donald Trump in the aftermath of our own Great Recession.
Yes, I know a lot has been made of this already and I usually try to steer away from politics in my blogs. But as a Jew, I just can’t sit by and watch as another charismatic, demagogue tries to divide our nation under the guise of “Making America Great Again” by demonizing a whole class of people and blaming all our national problems on them.
(I’ve got news for you Mr. Trump. Whatever our troubles may be, this country STILL IS great! That’s why all the immigrants you want to throw out of the country want to come here!)
This is exactly the same tactic Hitler used to gain power. He focused the average German’s pent up frustration over their economic and political situation and turned it against the country’s biggest minority — the Jews.
And when late last year Trump said he’d close down all the mosques and make every Muslim carry an ID card, my jaw hit the floor. Hitler did the same to the Jews, closing all the temples and making them wear a blue, five-pointed star on their clothing with the word “Jude” (Jew in German) stitched on it. I half expected him to go on to suggest we should burn all Qurans and have people smash the windows of Muslim-owned businesses in a 21st century version of Kristallnacht
How people still cannot see the paralell between the two baffles and worries me.
It also baffles me when an elected official, Roanoke, Va. Mayor David Bowers, can justify the internment of Japanese-Americans in internment camps during World War II as a good thing when comparing it to the current Syrian refugee crisis. What's even more astounding about this is that Bower's is a Democrat, proving that our foolishness to repeat past mistakes isn't just limited to one of our political parties.
Pardon me, Mr. Mayor. But did you read the same history books I did? Because the use of those camps is considered one of this nation’s most shameful moments! How in good conscience can you even remotely suggest it was the right thing to do? Have you ever spoken to one of those internees? If not, may I suggest, starting with George Takei, Mr. Sulu from "Star Trek," who has first-hand experience of what it was like to live in one of those camps you blithely called a good idea!
Look, I'm not trying to belittle anyone's political views and I understand today's threats are different from those we faced at the beginning and middle of the last century. But it looks to me like the path we’re heading down is dooming ourselves to repeat the exact same mistakes we made 100 year ago.
We're better than that.
Or at least we should be.
So we all need to stop and take a good long look at our own history, because George Santayana was right.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Apple Vs. The United States
I’ve never been a big fan of Apple, but in the current controversy over whether the Cupertino, Ca.-based tech company should or shouldn’t give in to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s demand to break the encryption on the iPhone used by the San Bernadino shooters, I find myself decidedly in Apple’s camp.
And you should be too.
Here’s why.
Because despite what the government promises us, this won’t be just a one-time thing.
It just can’t.
Once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s out for good.
Look, I’m not some tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist nor am I a “slippery slope” evangelist. I’m a realist, and know that despite the best intentions of the FBI and all our assorted law enforcement agencies, the congress, the president and even the Supreme Court, there is no way they can control what goes on beyond our borders.
When foreign governments, who may or may not be so friendly to us and our ideals, see this is possible, there is nothing stopping them from demanding Apple do the same for them. After all, if Apple did it once for the United States, how could they then refuse when Russia, China, North Korea or any other repressive state asks them to break into the iPhone of a dissident who they claim is a “a national security risk” for them?
Remember the uproar when Google caved in to China’s demand to censor its Chinese sites back in 2006 after refusing to allow the U.S. Department of Justice to take a peak at what our citizens were searching for here at home?
Yeah, it’ll be exactly like that.Only worse.
Even if Apple refused to cave to foreign governments, those governments could then turn around and forbid Apple from selling their products and/or services within their borders. Worse yet, countries like China which have a track record of ignoring patents, could turn a blind eye to enforcing Apple’s trademarked technology, leading to a flood of cheap knock-offs on the market. So in essence this decision by our government could drastically curtail Apple’s pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, which in this case equates to its being a profitable company.
If the government were trying to infringe on the rights of an individual from making an honest living this way, everyone would be up in arms about it. Well, since the Supreme Court ruled that corporations essentially have the same rights as individuals in the Citizen’s United case, the government shouldn’t be allowed to do this to Apple either.
Whether you agree with this line of reasoning or not, you have to admit that the government also doesn’t have control over the hacker community.
Whether state sponsored like China’s elite unit of military hackers, PLA Unit 61398 ; gangs of tech-savvy criminals from Russia and Eastern Europe, or even the media-popularized image of some maladjusted, teenage-computer wizard working out of his parents’ basement or garage, once hackers know a backdoor into the iPhone is possible, they will stop at nothing to try and recreate it.
The potential for profit is just too rich for them to ignore. With over 700 million iPhones sold world-wide hackers would have a virtual shmorgishborg of victims to pray on, pillaging their data for use in identity theft rings, blackmail or ransomware attacks where hackers could break into a user’s phone, re-encrypt it with only a password they know and demand a ransom to unlock the phone.
Don’t think that’s possible?
Neither did Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, until cyber-crooks broke into their computer network and locked them out of all their files until they paid a $17,000 ransom.
If that’s still not enough to convince you, remember that the German Enigma Code was deemed impossible to crack during World War II, until Alan Turning and his cohorts at Bletchley Park in England figured out how to crack it. And that was 70 some years ago. Now, just imagine how much quicker cyber-thugs could do the “impossible” with today’s technology.
Now tell me how far-fetched it sounds?
Look, I’m not totally unsympathetic to the government’s side. I understand they have a duty to keep us safe and I want them to do that that. I have no desire to be blown up or gunned down by an extremist of any nationality, religion or view while living my day-to-day life. But unlike the scenarios spun by the popular Fox TV show “24,” there is no ticking time-bomb here. The FBI has already admitted that the San Bernadino shooters acted alone and weren’t part of some bigger foreign terrorist network operating inside the U.S. Any threats from these two terrorists died back on that sad day back in December.
If there was any concrete evidence that they were apart of some bigger threat and more shootings or bombing were imminent, I might reconsider my stance. But as it appears now, what the FBI wants is akin to a “fishing expedition,” which as anyone who has watched even one episode of “Law and Order” or any other TV police procedural knows, is illegal.
If Apple gives in, or is forced to give in to this order, then this will be a victory for authoritarian leaders around the world such as Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un and a huge erosion of the freedoms we, as citizens of the United States, are promised under the bill of rights.
Like Benjamin Franklin before me, I whole heartily agree that “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Sunday, January 31, 2016
"The Force Awakens:" A New Hope for our dark times?
Since “The Force Awakens” opened a little over a month ago, there’s been one question raging across geekdom that’s been bigger and more controversial than “Who exactly are Rey’s parents?”
That question?
“Star Wars” or “Star Trek?”
Now, to the average “civilian” this may seem like a rather banal question. But not in the geek world.
Oh, no, no, no!
You are either a “Star Wars” fan or a Trekkie/Trekker, because we geeks live in a world of absolutes and you just can’t be both. Whatever the question, you’ve got to pick a side.
Don’t believe me? Go ahead, walk into any geek bar in the multi-verse and ask loudly, “Marvel or DC?” and see what happens. Just be sure your health insurance premium is paid up first.
This absolutist view of fandom has always bothered me, but lately it seems it’s becoming more rigid and intolerant of differing opinions.
Unfortunately this hasn’t surprised me at all because everyone – geeks and normal people alike – seem to becoming more and more rigid in their world view and anyone who disagrees with them is obviously stupid, ignorant, obnoxious and ugly.
My pessimistic view of things isn’t just from watching our politicians acting like a bunch of spoiled 3-year-olds fighting over whose parents are better than whose, but from reading Sci-Fi/Fantasy forums on the ’Net and seeing the often vitriolic way people go after one another when someone disagrees with a cow another person views as holy.
While pondering how this all came to be, I stumbled on this great article by Charlie Jane Anders on io9.com about “The Essential Difference Between Star Wars and Star Trek.”
In a nutshell, she says “Star Wars” is really all about “Fighting the Man” (a group of plucky rebels fighting an oppressive, fascist, militaristic galactic empire) while “Star Trek” is about “Being the Man” (The United Federation of Planets and its starships bringing peace, freedom and self-determination to the frontier).
Not only did Charlie Jane hit the nail right on its proverbial head, but her essay also explains why the recent release of “The Force Awakens” has captured the public’s Zeitgeist.
For at least the last decade, if not longer, there’s been an ever-growing distrust of authority. People view the government with suspicion believing its primary purpose is to take away all their freedoms instead of defending them; they see business people as greedy robber barons out to steal every last penny from their pockets; and even doubt the knowledge of our smartest scientists, believing their warnings about the damage we are doing to our environment is just part of some nefarious, hidden agenda. So it makes sense that people would identify with those plucky rebels who are out stop a re-awakened Dark Side from snuffing out their hard-won freedom.
Now I’m not saying we haven’t been given ample cause to distrust all the institutions we used to believe in. Edward Snowden, government dysfunction, The Great Recession, wars in the Mideast and terrorism have given us all plenty of reasons to believe our worst suspicions about these institutions are true. I just don’t remember things ever being this bad.
I was a child during the Vietnam War and Watergate and came of age during Iran-Contra and even then I don’t remember people being so suspicious of government. Even in the midst of those scandals and the realization we’d lost a major war, people still believed that, at heart, our government was a beacon of freedom and liberty for all the world. Despite a nearly crippling oil embargo, super high inflation, and a presidential extended family that seemed to come straight out of “The Beverly Hillbillies,” people still believed our brand of government was invulnerable to the hatred, fear, suspicion and anger that lead to the rise of regimes like the Nazis, Stalinist Russia or any other, oppressive, totalitarian government.
So what’s happened since to erode our national morale?
I’m sure there are many different answers to this question, each as valid as the next. But as curious as I am to figure out how we got here, I’m more interested in the way we break out of this dark time of distrust in everyone and everything so we can start building that optimistic, utopian future that was the hallmark of “Star Trek.”
Ironically, when the first “Star Wars” came out in 1977, the United States was in another funk as it looked like our influence over the world and status as a superpower was on the wane. Yet somehow, a silly little sci-fi film, managed to give the nation, and perhaps even the world, “A New Hope” and helped set the stage for the rejuvenation of both our spirit and the economy in the “Go-Go ’80s.”
Here’s hoping General Leia, Luke, Rei, Finn and Po and their band of brave Resistance fighters can again help us conquer our dark time of distrust and once again bring hope and optimism back to the universe nation.
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