Geek

So Earl and I are avid viewers of “Shark Tank”. I’ve always been partial to episodes that include Barbara Corcoran as one of the sharks (I like the way she thinks, she’s way outside of the box and that’s awesome) and last night we caught up on the season finale off the DVR.

Some of the products pitched on the show get my attention and last night one of the pitches was for Rocketbook, specifically the Rocketbook Wave.

Photo from monstersandcritics.com

The Rocketbook Wave is a notebook designed to be reusable. Using a Pilot Flexion pen, you take notes like you would in any regular notebook. Using a free app on your iPhone, you can then instantly transfer those notes to the cloud service of your choice. It’s a “system” and it’s a well thought out system at that. When you’re done, you then microwave the notebook and all of the pages are erased. You can then use the notebook over again.

That’s pretty nifty.

Here’s a video explaining it.

I am always torn between writing my notes in a notebook, because writing things down by hand helps me remember things and keeping all of my notes digitally. I don’t like wasting paper and I don’t like having to refer back to notebooks. I’ve tried writing notes by hand on my iPad Pro using an Apple Pencil, but it doesn’t feel natural to me and this “artificial pen and paper” distracts from the task of writing something down to remember it. So naturally I went ahead and ordered a Rocketbook Wave directly from their website.

If you use this link to get to their website, you’ll get a special deal.

Rocketbook Referral Deal.

I’m looking forward to my Rocketbook Wave and pen set arriving in the next few days. I’ll be posting a follow-up blog entry to let you know how successful I am with this note taking system that is ecologically friendly.

Now, my only question is, where do I get Jake’s sunglasses? They are very Pretinama.

Today I worked from our friends’ house. As a digital nomad I’ve come across slow Internet during my travels over the past couple of years, but I was confident that things would fly right along on their DSL connection. They have the fastest connection available to their home outside of Durham, N.C. 

After struggling with simple file uploads early in the day I ran a test using Speedtest.net. The fastest connection available here, outside of Durham N.C., tested at 5 Mbps down and .66 Mbps up. The sad thing is, the provider of this DSL is a former employer.

People, it’s the 21st century. We should be looking at 100 Mbps as a minimum. Other modern civilizations look at gigabit speeds and here we are crawling along at 5 Mbps down.

A first world problem, right? Probably. But, man, it’s the 21st century.

Microsoft announced a new Surface Laptop today. It’s basically described as the MacBook Air that Apple doesn’t make anymore and honestly, this description is dead on. Take a look at their marketing video.

https://youtu.be/74kPEJWpCD4

Now, I’m not one to jump on the “Apple is doomed” bandwagon that so many pundits like to chant, but I will freely admit that Apple, and their Mac hardware, is starting to feel stale. I’ve heard many Apple folks say that users don’t want to really touch their screens, but I’ve noticed folks browsing in any given Apple store immediately touch the screen of a MacBook, expecting some sort of response. We are rapidly moving to a touchy-feely world when it comes to our technology, and I don’t think touchbars are the answer. Having everything respond to touch is where the answer lies.

I started browsing around the other Microsoft videos on YouTube and came across the one about the new Surface Book with Performance Base. This does everything I would expect a computer in 2017 to do. My only hesitation is Windows 10 and part of that hesitation stems from ignorance, I don’t know a lot about Windows 10 other than the stuff thrown all over the web, and how reliable is information on the Internet these days?

Color me intrigued.

Sometimes we need a little wit in our lives. It all leads to Happy Endings.

I caught this on Reddit this evening. It’s a YouTube video discussing how much darker the movie “Passengers” would be like if they rearranged the acts. An intriguing approach. I have to admit I liked “Passengers”, even for all its flaws, but I think I would be very interested in seeing a rearranged cut of the movie as described in this video.

I no longer shy away from the label of “Apple Fanboy”. I’m a Crazy One. I love my Apple products. I’ve tried everything else and lord knows I’ve wretched about Apple over the years, but when you shake away all the complaining, the fact of the matter is I find that Apple still provides the best computing experience available. Other hardware pales in comparison. Windows 10 feels cobbled together to me. And, as much as I’ve tried, I just can’t get behind the idea of Linux on the desktop (or laptop). That is way too much work.

So I wear my Crazy One t-shirt in pride. I proudly gave a presentation at work this morning using my work provided 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, including the couple of dongles I needed to connect to the projector and network. There was an ooh and aah from the crowd as I made my way through my Keynote Presentation. It had that extra bit of polish that I strive for.

I look forward to what Apple has in store for us. I know they will continue to delight.

Earl and I had stopped at the local Microsoft store today just to look over their line of Surface products. It was the first time that I had a chance to go hands-on with the Microsoft Surface Studio, which is in all in one computer that can lay down like a drafting table so you can comfortably use a pen on it.

I was beyond impressed.

I know that it was just the other day that I mentioned that I was still solidly an Apple boy, but I have to say that Apple is completely missing the boat when it comes to this type of technology. Having a touchbar in a MacBook Pro does not even come close to being able to lay your computer monitor down and draw all over it. Carrying around multiple devices is tedious: for graphics or programming work I need to carry my MacBook Pro. For quick blogging and such on the go, I can take my iPad Pro. Of course, I always have my phone with me, so at times I could be carrying three different Apple devices all to do nearly similar things. Wouldn’t it be great if I could carry one device to fill this need? I’d be willing to pay a premium price for a device that can handle all of my needs. Having one device would bring us closer to making technology frictionless.

I want the technology that sustains the type of world as demonstrated in this video. I have shared this video, and others like it, before. I believe it’s worth sharing again.

As an avid tech enthusiast (what kind of enthusiast wouldn’t be avid?), I am starting to become a little paranoid about my online activity, especially in light of the fact that I’ve become rather outspoken on Twitter about the Trump Presidency.

I’ve started using a couple of tools in my online arsenal to make my experience with the Internet a little bit safer, and I thought I would share these with you.

Private Tunnel
Private Tunnel is a service that provides VPN (Virtual Private Network) connectivity to the Internet. This basically “hides” your location by routing all of your network traffic encrypted through a remote server. It also assures that all communication between you and the remote server is encrypted. This is particularly important when you are on the road using public hotspots.

Private Tunnel is free up to a certain amount of bandwidth and I found their subscription model to be affordable for my needs. The software client is available for a number of platforms which includes Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android. At the very least I use this service for all monetary transactions. I routinely use it for all other browsing, especially if I’m using a public, unsecured network.

For more information, check out their webpage here. If you decide to go with a subscription, help me out by using this link. I believe my unlimited data plan was $29/year.

Better
Better is an iOS and MacOS Safari Extension that helps block all trackers, ads and the like while surfing the Internet on Safari.

While many of the ad blockers available for the various browsers do a decent job of blocking ads and the like, many are still supported by ad companies, which are placed on a “white list”, so their ads still get through to you. Better is not supported by any ad company or Venture Capitalist, so they have no obligation to anyone. Development is based solely on the purchase of the app or extension.

This blog entry better (heh) describes Better and if you’re interested in making your online activities untargeted, ad free and lighter (because all of that ad data is blocked from coming down your network connection) you should definitely check out Better. Link to the Mac App Store and Link to the App Store (for iPhone and iPad).

1Password
I’ve written before that no one should be using the same password across multiple sites. You should never have the same password for Twitter as for your email as for Facebook, etc. If someone has your password they’re able to get into everything and that’s not good.

Safari and other web browsers do a decent job of coming up with random passwords and storing this information for you, which in turn is stored behind another password to keep it all safe. The thing is, if you use both Windows and Mac or both iOS and Android, your saved Safari (or other browser) passwords may not sync between the dissimilar operating systems. Yes, Google Chrome works on just about everything, but remember, Google’s livelihood is supported by your data. You are not the customer, you are the product, so you probably should have another way of keeping track of all your passwords. Don’t write them down, put them in 1Password.

1Password is available for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. 1Password has a variety of sync options to choose from and no one but you can decrypt the data stored in your 1Password profile, so if you lose the password, you’ve lost your vault.

Their subscription model is quite affordable and I noticed that they now have a family plan available as well. Earl uses 1Password and finds it easy to use. I encourage users to keep their stuff safe with dissimilar passwords across platforms and to store them somewhere safe. 1Password definitely fits the bill.

FYI, the password to my 1Password account is over 25 characters long. I keep my stuff SAFE.

This is just the start of my arsenal of security tools. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below or feel free to drop me a line.

Safe surfing for all!