Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • Google Santa Tracker

    For a few weeks now, I’ve been hearing faint sounds of Christmas music coming through the ceiling in the IT room here at Small Dog HQ. I mumbled some humbuggeries as I headed up the stairs to see what all this was about. As it turns out our new marketeer, “*Rachel,*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/authors/rachelnarkewicz is a pretty big fan of Christmas and has been playing Christmas music since at least the beginning of December. Through a furrowed brow I made some comments about “kids these days” before returning to my ground level lair to scheme against Christmas and joy in general.

    Back at my desk, I opened Safari to begin composing a sternly worded email to management outlining why I felt happiness and joy among employees in the workplace was inappropriate. When Safari opened though, it immediately jumped to “*santatracker.google.com*”:https://santatracker.google.com instead of my usual homepage of “*http://www.starshiptroopers.net*”:http://www.starshiptroopers.net. As I tried to figure out what sorcery had taken place for santatracker.google.com to usurp the coveted designation as __my__ homepage I started to hear cute little noises coming from the page.

    Ok, maybe I could take a few minutes and look around before getting on to my email. The animations and sounds were pretty cute after all. As I moved the mouse around, I noticed some of the things on the page were interactive. One of the icons looked like a fan. Clicking on it brought up a little animation of what looked like a blowdryer blowing air at a reindeer on a platform in some kind of elf test lab. Below were controls to click on that changed the speed of the air. A tiny smirk crept onto my face; this was pretty neat. That email still needed to be sent though.

    Clicking back I was once again greeted with the cute animations and sounds of this little elf world. There appeared to be many other games, animations and links. There was even a countdown showing when Santa would be making his delivery run. I could only imagine what cute animations that would have!

    Before I knew it I had all but forgotten about sending the anti-joy email to management. The Santa Tracker was just too much fun. It was around this time that I felt a sharp pain in my face. Reaching my hand up and expecting to find a gash or inexplicable bruise I found my mouth was contorted into a weird shape that was unfamiliar to me. Opening a new tab in Safari, I entered a description of my symptom into google. The first result was a wikipedia page about “*__smiling__.*”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile It said that “Among humans, smiling is an expression denoting pleasure, sociability, happiness, or amusement.” My last visit to the physician had indeed confirmed I was human. Was I experiencing this expression of “happiness” and “amusement”?

    Eventually, I had to conclude that I was. Maybe Rachel wasn’t so bad after all, and maybe, __just maybe__, happiness and joy among employees in the workplace __was__ acceptable. Maybe it could even be encouraged. All this change of heart wouldn’t have come about without the simple, cute and fun Santa Tracker at “*santatracker.google.com.*”:https://santatracker.google.com

  • Apple: The Year in Review

    *January*

    * Apple announces the strongest ever quarterly earnings with $13.1 billion profit on $57.6 billion in sales
    * It was the seventh anniversary of the iPhone and the thirtieth anniversary of the Mac

    *February*

    * Mac Pro did not ship
    * Lots of rumors about iPhones and Apple Watch

    *March*

    * Apple announces CarPlay iOS vehicle integration
    * Apple launches 8GB iPhone 5c
    * Apple sells its 500 millionth iPhone
    * Microsoft releases iOS Office Apps
    * World’s first Apple reseller, FirstTech, closes after 73 years in business 🙁

    *April*

    * Apple now accepts all products for recycling at retail stores
    * Angela Ahrendts joins Apple
    * Apple updates the MacBook Air line with faster Haswell processors and a price drop
    * Apple beats estimates with $10.2 billion profit on sales of $45.6 billion
    * Apple announces 7-for-1 stock split

    *May*

    * Apple acquires Beats

    *June*

    * Apple announces iOS 8
    * Apple announces OS X Yosemite
    * Apple unveils Swift, a new Xcode programming language
    * Apple introduces HomeKit and HealthKit
    * Apple announces iCloud Drive
    * Apple refreshes iPod touch

    *July*

    * Apple announces new partnership with IBM for enterprise apps
    * Apple reports $7.7 billion profit on $37.4 billion in sales

    *August*

    * Summertime and the living is easy

    *September*

    * Apple announces iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus
    * Apple launches iOS 8
    * Apple announces Apple Pay
    * Apple announces Apple Watch

    *October*

    * Apple’s Sapphire partner GT Advanced Technologies files for bankruptcy
    * Apple announces iPad Mini 3
    * Apple announces new Mac Mini
    * Apple announces iPad Air 2
    * Apple announces 27-inch iMac with 5k Retina display
    * Apple releases Mac OSX 10.10 Yosemite
    * Apple reports $8.5 billion profit on $42.1 billion in sales
    * Apple discontinues the iPod classic

    *November*

    * Apple sells a ton of iPhones!

    *December*

    * Everyone is buying Apple products for the holidays
    * Apple wins iPod DRM case

  • _Dear Friends,_

    Happy Chanukah! Grace got out my Mom’s menorah and lit some candles but it is sure different being down here heading into the holidays in the sun rather than snow. I do get to watch the winter in Vermont via the webcams, but it is not quite the same as hanging out with the white stuff all around. I am not complaining, for sure.

    With some extended hours and some great values, all of our retail stores are ready to help with your holiday shopping whether it is time for a new “*Mac*”:http://www.smalldog.com/Macs or an “*iPad*”:http://www.smalldog.com/iPads or some “*Beats headphones.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/Beats_by_Dr._Dre We are in the middle of our “Be Safe for the Holidays” campaign where we are giving $15 to Prevent Child Abuse Vermont for each hard drive or Apple Time Capsule sold. I can not think of a better gift than a data backup solution for that special someone on your list. I know we have talked many times about how important it is to back up your data. Too many times people come in with failed hard drives and we hate the look on their face when we give the bad news that data was lost. Hard drives fail, it is just physics. In most cases, if you are using a traditional disk hard drive that is spinning at anywhere up to 10,000 rpm you are relying upon bearings and other mechanical components to protect your precious photos, writing and files.

    Need a quick gift for five of your favorite friends? This week’s Kibbles & Bytes special is a 5-pack of Chill Pill Speakers. This is a great stocking stuffer and we are offering a buy one get one promotion now but exclusively for Kibbles & Bytes readers we have a B2G3 promo! You get five Chill Pills for only $79.98! That’s a $200 value!

    “*See this great deal here!*”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900001673

    Kibbles & Bytes will be taking a break next week and return on January 2nd with my predictions for the new year and a review of my crystal ball for 2014. But for this week let’s do a quick recap of the Apple year in review for 2014…

  • Nathan Persing

    Pets: 2 Dogs Lab/Rotty Mix Hobbies/Interests: 3D animation, web development, nintendo, linux Favorite Books: The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy series, Darma Punx,…

  • TT | Charge On The Go

    If you travel with a power hungry device such as an iPhone and have to keep it charged at all times, you’ve probably taken to carrying around the device, a charger, and the accompanying cabling. This accessory has taken the place of the accompanying cable and added both a bottle opener and a carabiner to attach it to belts, bags, and more so it is always by your side. Perfect for holiday gatherings.

  • TT | A Different Perspective

    IRIS is an all-in-one autonomous aerial vehicle with a compact and durable design, built with the consumer in mind. Stylish and powerful, IRIS runs on the innovative Pixhawk autopilot system—the newest in advanced autopilot electronics from the PX4 open-hardware project. With wide-angled arms and a GoPro-compatible camera mount, IRIS is perfect for any aerial imaging application.

  • TT | Bring Your Backup

    The Seagate Backup Plus Slim Portable Drive is the simple, one-click way to protect and share your entire digital life. Perfect to take on the go, the sleek metal case design allows for the thinnest portable hard drive available with up to 1TB of capacity. It goes anywhere — without getting in your way. Available in Black, Blue, Red, and Silver.

  • Digital Analog

    Computers are digital devices. Digital devices are distinguished from analog devices by their use of __digital logic__. This is the binary 1s and 0s you’ll so often hear about when discussing the nuts of bolts of a computer. More generally, digital circuits operate in discrete electrical states whereas analog circuits operate over a continuous range of electrical “states” (they aren’t really states at that point though). That is, they use discrete electrical conditions (1s and 0s or voltage signal and no voltage signal) to represent states and decisions. Everything computers can do is based on this single principle.

    However without the wide array of analog circuit counterparts, digital circuitry would be fairly mundane, if not wholly useless. With that in mind, I’ll be starting a series here on interesting and useful analog electrical circuits and their very important uses in the digital devices that are so tightly integrated with our every day lives.

    The first analog circuit I’d like to talk about is one of my favorites. It’s called a boost converter. One common problem with any electrical device is requiring one level of voltage, but being supplied with another. For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll assume the signals involved are DC-DC or AC-AC and no AC/DC conversion is required.

    A perfect example of a situation requiring a boost converter is a cell phone. Most modern cell phone batteries are lithium-ion, which have a nominal cell voltage of 3.7 volts. If __everything__ inside the cell phone can run off 3.7 volts or less, we’re good. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Some things like the cellular radio transmitter require more than 3.7 volts to operate. For the purposes of this example, let’s say that this radio circuit requires 5VDC to operate. Thanks to the boost converter, this is very possible.

    !>http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4172.png! So how does a boost converter work? The simplest boost converter requires only three components: a switch, an inductor, and a diode. The whole operation depends on the fact that an inductor does not like rapid changes in electrical current. An inductor is an electrical storage device that stores energy in the form of a magnetic field. The idea in a boost converter is to charge up the inductor using the power source, then switch off the power source thereby allowing the inductor’s magnetic field to collapse and create a voltage. The load being driven, which is connected to the inductor, now sees some voltage which is being supplied by the inductor itself and not the power source. The specific configuration of the circuit will determine how much of a __boost__ in voltage our load gets.

    You may or may not have guessed that the switch being used here is not like a light switch. In order for this circuit to work, the switch needs to be opened and closed very rapidly. The Maxim MAX757 for example switches at 500kHz. This rapid switching capability is made possible by semiconductors and fancy components like MOSFETs that are typically packed into a tiny integrated circuit like the MAX757. These ICs allow you to provide your own inductors, capacitors and resistors to build the appropriate type of boost converter for your specific application.

    One final thing to note is that a boost converter is not a miracle device. We’re not __creating__ more power from nothing here. If the voltage in is 3.7VDC at 400mA (1.48 watts), and we boost to 5VDC, the load receiving the 5VDC will only see 296mA of current. In reality it will likely be less, since the conversion process is not 100% efficient.

  • _Hello friends and fellow Apple Enthusiasts,_

    Recently many of us have had or attended a holiday party to celebrate each other’s company. Mine involved very few electronics, although we did make use of a flatscreen TV with a VHS tape, the “*Leonardo’s iPhone app*”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/leonardos-pizza/id855612476?mt=8&at=11lb7k (to order pizza), and a flashlight.

    However, right after the party it’s back to the company laptop and my personal gadgets! While it is nice to leave technology now and again, one always returns to it, as a tool if nothing more.

    While you wait for the wood stove to warm up and the nog to mull, have a seat by the fire with your pup and gather round the Mac (or iPad!) for some tales brought to you by our fine technicians!

    -Mikhael
    “mikhael@smalldog.com”:mailto:mikhael@smalldog.com

  • Small Dog Gift Guide – Part 1

    We’ve asked a few of our employees what their favorite gifts are this season – either to get or to give, of course…

  • Jonathan Fenton

    Family: Mom, Dad, and three younger brothers Hobbies/Interests: Reading, Sports, Traveling, Hiking and Food! Favorite Books: Pretty much anything by Stephen King, Arthur…

  • Andrea Kee

    Family: One Daughter, Two Sons Hobbies/Interests: Reading, Pinterest, tattoos, drawing, taking different things a part and putting them back together. Favorite TV: Orange…