I will be off this coming week and Emily and Hadley will have to entertain you next week in Kibbles & Bytes. Heading south on motorcycles to view the total eclipse sounds like a very romantic trip but it is all about the ride. We love being on the road and the challenges of motorcycling.

Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes! And don’t look at the eclipse without proper glasses!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

_Don, Emily & Hadley_

I am leaving today for our annual motorcycle trip. This year we are heading down the Blue Ridge Parkway to Asheville where we will visit our friend Jen Mayer, the owner of Charlotte Street Computers an awesome Apple Premier Partner and go to see the total eclipse of the sun. We got new tires for Grace’s Victory so we are ready to go.

So, I will have to post the requisite picture of the eclipsed sun on Facebook and I was curious about just how to go about that. We did get the official eclipse glasses so we are set there but to snap a picture might be tricky. I had all kinds of questions, would the direct sunlight filter by the moon negatively affect my iPhone? Could I hurt my eyes looking at my iPhone as it is pointed at the sun?

Well, Apple cleared that up by saying that the iPhone will not be damaged by direct exposure to the eclipsed sun nor would you damage your eyes looking at your iPhone screen. NASA put out a document about photographing the eclipse. One important tip is to make sure that the eclipsed sun is actually in focus. Because it will be a low-light situation for only about 2 and a half minutes you might want to practice a bit by taking pictures of the moon tonight.

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Okay, so what do you need to remember other than point and shoot.

# **Turn off the flash.** I don’t know how many times I see people at baseball games or concerts taking pictures with the flash on, mistakenly thinking that little flash will light up that scene a hundred yards away. Take it from me, your little LED flash on your iPhone will not light up the moon which is only 238,900 miles from you.
# **Turn off autofocus.** You will want to manually focus because your iPhone will have difficulty in the low light focusing on the sun. So, how do you do that? Easy, get the sun centered in your screen the way you want it and tap and hold on that image until the AE/AF Lock banner appears, that will lock in your manual focus.
# **Reduce the exposure.** There is going to be a lot of stray light (maybe from all your friends with their flashes still on) so you want to reduce the amount of light. To do this is easy, too. Tap and hold on the eclipsed sun and you will see a box around the object and a small sun next to it. That sun is a slider that will adjust the exposure. Turn it way down.
# **Use a tripod**. Okay, I am not bringing a tripod on my motorcycle and as a result I expect some blur in my photos but if you really want a good shot get one of the many tripod mounts to ensure that you shaking with excitement doesn’t ruin your picture.

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The NASA document recommends putting those eclipse glasses in front of the lens but I am skeptical. First, those eclipse glasses are not particularly optically wonderful so you would be degrading the quality of the picture. Second, they are making that recommendation because there was some concern that exposure to the direct sun might hurt some brands of phone cameras. Apple cleared that up by saying that it would not hurt the iPhone so keep those glasses for when you look at the sun directly, your iPhone does not need them.

Telephoto? You can zoom some with the iPhone but Olloclip and others do make some add-on lenses that will give you greater telephoto capabilities.

Getting the photo of the disc of the eclipse might not be the perfect photo. Consider taking that picture of your friends with their goony eclipse glasses on starring up at the sky. And by the way, there will be a couple bajillion photos of the eclipse but don’t you want to experience the eclipse? Put your phone down, pull on those goony glasses and enjoy this rare celestial event!

_Dear Friends,_

Thank you to Tim Cook for calling out the hatred and violence in Charlottesville last week and putting Apple’s money where its mouth is by donating to Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League and shutting off white supremacist site. Tim said in a statement to Apple employees:

“This is not about the left or the right, conservative or liberal. It is about human decency and morality,” Cook writes. “I disagree with the president and others who believe that there is a moral equivalence between white supremacists and Nazis, and those who oppose them by standing up for human rights. Equating the two runs counter to our ideals as Americans.”

The horrific events in Virginia were frightening and shocking. A woman died at the hands of a nazi while peacefully protesting Nazis in the streets of a city in the USA. It was chilling to see torch-carrying men chanting nazi slogans marching in the streets. Small Dog Electronics condemns the hate and violence and the insensitive and inappropriate response of the president.

We think that the official motto of Key West and the Florida Keys, One Human Family, is the only appropriate response. Like fingers of your hand we are all connected.

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