Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • You're Your Own Trash Collector, Bub

    The trash feature of any operating system is quite vital. Sure, we all take for granted the fact that we can delete files as quickly as we create them, but what if you couldn’t move a file to the trash or worse empty the trash successfully?

    Well, I’m happy to inform you that there are ways to resolve this issue, one that if it goes unresolved, can create a space limitation on your hard drive. Think of it this way, simply because you put trash in a garbage can doesn’t mean the trash collector is going to come each week. Here are a few tips/tricks that can resolve your trash can issue. In the case of owning a computer, you are essentially the trash collector that’s responsible for emptying your trash. This might seem like common sense but you’d be surprised how many people operate on a “out of sight, out of mind” mentality when it comes to file organization.

    Hopefully the following tips and tricks help provide you a resolution:

    In Mac OS X, each user account has a separate, invisible Trash folder that is in the home folder. When you view contents of the Trash, you see only items you placed there and not the Trash folder of any other accounts. If other writable volumes are present, you may also have individual Trash folders on these volumes.

    *How to delete a file:*

    1. Drag an item’s icon to the Trash (in the Dock), or select the item and press Command-Delete.
    2. Choose *Empty Trash* from the *Finder* menu.

    Note: If you’re trying to delete a file that wasn’t completely downloaded or copied, check out “*this document.*”:http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1988


    Tip: In Mac OS X v10.3 or later, you can securely delete items by choosing *Secure Empty Trash* from the *Finder* menu.



    If you change your mind about deleting the item before you choose Empty Trash:

    1. Click the Trash icon in the dock.
    2. Drag the item out of the Trash.
 

    *If you can’t empty the Trash or move a file to the Trash:*

    For example, this message might appear when you try to empty the Trash: “The operation could not be completed because the item ‘(item name)’ is locked.”

    First, try holding the Option key as you choose *Empty Trash* from the *Finder* menu.
    

    If that fails, check for these conditions:

    *Is the file locked?* If files are locked, unlock them before deleting or delete using the tips in the “Deleting locked files” section below. Also, see “this article.”:http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1402

    *Do you have correct permissions to modify the file?*

 Every file and folder in Mac OS X has some permission settings to help define what you or other users can do with the file or folder, for example whether you may modify it or not. If see an alert box with a message that says you do not have “sufficient” privilege or permission, see the tips in the “Emptying the Trash” section of “this article.”:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2963 

    *Does the file or volume have special characters?* Usually, Mac OS X can delete files whose names contain special characters, but sometimes you might need to follow this advice.


    1. Note the name of the volume which the files are being deleted from. If you are not sure of the item’s location, you can verify that by selecting it then choosing Show Info from the File menu. If the name of the volume contains any special ASCII characters, such as a bullet or trademark character, temporarily rename the volume so that it does not contain these characters. 



    *Example:* If you cannot delete files from a volume named “·Dox”, rename the volume to “Dox”. After the Trash is empty, restore the volume’s original name as desired.
 

    2. Examine the name of the files or folders you cannot delete. They should not contain a solidus (“slash”, “/”) character or any other special ASCII character such as a trademark, quotation mark, or copyright symbol. If the file does, remove the special character or slash from its name, then delete it.



    *Example:* If you cannot delete a file named “Things/stuff·”, rename the file to just “t”, then delete it.

    Remember to always delete your trash as the files/data that can accumulate in there are still taking up space on your hard drive.

  • The very first computer I used was an Apple IIc. There was no modern internet at the time, so I wasn’t browsing the web, and I wasn’t old enough to have any writing or computing to do, so there was only one thing left: playing video games. But the blocky 2D graphics of Lode Runner and similar titles are very different in appearance from the realistic 3D renderings of today’s offerings. And these graphics aren’t the only thing that have changed since video games went mainstream more than 20 years ago.

    In a YouTube video titled, “*Women as Background Decoration: Part 2 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games*,”:http://youtu.be/5i_RPr9DwMA blogger and media critic “*Anita Sarkeesian*”:https://twitter.com/femfreq brought into light the ubiquity of violence against women as a method of adding authenticity to modern video games. The video catalogs instances where women are used as a prop to indicate a non-player character is evil or some similar effect. A small group of people on the internet vehemently disagreed and the backlash against Sarkeesian was swift and frightening. Threats became so severe that she left her home temporarily.

    Some argued that these instances of violence were only added to these games to make them seem realistic. But how realistic is a game where a driver mows down a sidewalk of people only to escape by painting his car a different color or for that matter a fantasy RPG pitting sorcerers and knights against skeletons and dragons? In an excellent analysis of the situation, Adi Robertson in “*an article on The Verge,*”:http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/28/6078517/stop-ruining-my-escapist-fantasies-sarkeesian-haters states: “Games with realistic stories are still built on unrealistic mechanics and stylized environments…Realism is as much about what you leave out as what you put in, and an unfortunate number of games pare down the feminine experience to nothing except sex, childbirth, and vulnerability.”

    I love the world of technology, and it has allowed me to play some pretty epic games, including some of the ones on Sarkeesian’s list. But I also live in a world where women are people, not props to cheaply develop a protagonist’s character. The more we remove these misogynistic depictions from the media we consume, the less they pervade our real lives.

    Please keep reading for less ranting about important topics and more tips, reviews, and stories about the technology that you use. Today we’ll talk about managing your digital garbage, check out the next operating system from Apple, and further explore TOR networks and internet privacy.

    _Mike D_
    “miked@smalldog.com”:mailto:miked@smalldog.com

  • All of us here at Small Dog wish you a Happy Labor Day weekend. I see motorcycling, barbecue and sweet corn in my future and plenty of downtime looking at the trees changing or finishing the book I started on the flight back from Key West.  

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes and have an awesome weekend!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don & Mike_

  • 95 Triple X $1000 Small Dog Shopping Spree!

    Our friends over at “*95 Triple X*”:http://www.95triplex.com/common/page.php?id=931 came in and bought a $1000 Small Dog gift card that they are going to give away to a lucky listener. If you listen in and are the 15th caller when they solicit calls, you will be entered in the pool to win the shopping spree. This contest runs from now until September 6th!

  • Transistor Love

    I’m going to try to explain something crucial to computers that I’m sure many people have heard of: the mighty transistor. What are transistors? How do they work? What makes them so useful in computers?

    First, what a transistor is…actually, that’s very easy. At the end of the day, a transistor is basically a switch. It can turn things on and off. The only difference between a transistor and a light switch is that to turn a light switch on or off, you use your hand. A transistor is turned on or off by the presence (or lack of presence) of an electrical signal. That really is all they do. By itself, switching something on and off isn’t that useful but when you start combining multiple switches together, or using different kinds that switch on and off gradually, cool things start to be possible.

    A good way to explain a common transistor application is with a record player. On the record player, there’s a tiny stylus that vibrates based on the bumps in the record grooves. As it vibrates, a magnet attached to the stylus vibrates near tiny wire coils. This creates an electrical charge, or signal which represents the music, but this charge is extremely weak, on the order of a few millivolts. A few millivolts is not enough to power speakers or headphones, so we have to amplify that signal. We do that using transistors. That tiny millivolt signal is used as the electrical signal that turns our transistor on or off (in this case, on to off is a range of values). So what are we switching on/off in this case? A much larger power source such as wall outlet power. That’s more than enough to power the speakers. The wall-level power is controlled and will be directly proportional to the tiny signal from the stylus. The transistor can change the output level thousands of times per second without a problem. Try doing that with a light switch.

    You may have heard things about how many transistors are on a chip or “*CPU die.*”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_(integrated_circuit) These are the same transistors I just talked about. They’re just switches. The A7 chip in the new iPhone for example contains over 1 billion of them. In computers, they’re basically used to compare binary (on or off) signals. This allows you to create AND gates, OR gates, multiplexors, adders, flip-flops and more. Those pieces go on to form things like RAM, registers, arithmetic logic units, controllers and much more. Transistors are perfectly suited for computers because they can be made extremely small, they consume almost no power, and they’re extremely reliable because they are solid state.

    The modern-day silicon-based transistor wasn’t born until the mid 1950s, but there were obviously computers before that, so what’s the deal? Things like the Colossus (what a great name) and the famous ENIAC were built in the 1940s and used vacuum tubes and mechanical relays as switches. These early computers worked on the exact same principles as modern computers. They had many of the same things like memory, arithmetic logic units, registers, etc. The problem with vacuum tubes and relays was that they were prone to failure and consumed an enormous amount of power. The single ENIAC alone had over 17,000 vacuum tubes and consumed around 150 kilowatts of power.

    It’s amazing to think that such a simple microscopic component is capable of doing so much. The entire modern world is utterly dependent on them, and the rate at which computational power has increased thanks to better and smaller transistors is mind boggling. The ENIAC could perform up to thousands of operations per second (depending on complexity) and it used a 100kHz clock. It’s almost inconceivable that 60 years later CPUs with clock speeds in the billions of cycles per second are so commonplace (and cheap) we hardly even think about it. I can get an Intel Core-i7 with 4 independent computing cores and a clock speed of 3.9GHz for just over $300. The ENIAC cost millions of dollars to build.

    So whether your using a Cray supercomputer to run global climate model simulations, or watching cat videos on your iPhone, don’t forget the mighty little transistor that makes it all possible.

  • Labor Day- The Last Weekend of Summer

    Get out the grills because it is Labor Day Weekend and the unofficial end of summer. All of “*Small Dog Electronics’ retail stores*”:http://www.smalldog.com/retail/visit-us-in-store-at-any-of-our-locations and corporate offices will be closed on Monday September 1st so that our employees can enjoy this last weekend of summer. As I have said many times, Small Dog Electronics measures its success on the triple bottom line of PEOPLE, planet and profit. The people portion is so important and while that means community, customers and vendors, the most critical to our success is our people: “*the employees of Small Dog Electronics.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/team/meet-the-small-dog-team

    We honor them this Labor Day and thank them for their commitment to the company, our community and our customers!

  • Five iPad Tricks

    Last week I mentioned some tricks to get more out of your iPhone and this week I will turn my attention to the iPad. Here are five handy tricks that you might not have discovered yet…

    *Get the Big Picture!*

    To take a screen shot push the power button and the home button at once for just a second. You can also use this trick on your iPhone. On the iPad, however, that screen shot is at 768 X 1024 resolution making it a lot more useful than the tiny iPhone shots.

    *Get Social with Siri*

    Did you know you can have your personal assistant, Siri, post to Facebook or Tweet for you? You can say “Post to Facebook: I love Small Dog Electronics”  or say “Tweet: Heading over to Small Dog now”.

    *Be All Thumbs*

    I have seen some really fast typing done by all thumbs but the iOS keyboard doesn’t quite facilitate that for most people. However, you can split the keyboard into two halves and move it around on your iPad screen. Simply press and hold the keyboard icon on the lower right side of the keyboard and choose “Split” and it will separate into two halves. You can stick it back together by pinching it together or by pressing and holding the keyboard icon. Your other choice is to “Undock” or “Dock” which means you can move the keyboard anywhere on the screen or move it back.

    *Hey Where’s My Manual?*

    ??Wait a minute, this fancy iPad didn’t come with an instruction manual!??

    Not to worry my friend. Surf over to “*Apple’s Product Manual page*”:http://support.apple.com/manuals/ or search in the iBooks app and you will find the 25 MB Apple User Guide to download. Read on and you might even find more tricks!

    *Customize your Triple Click!*

    You can activate voiceover, invert colors, set the screen to grayscale, zoom, switch control and assistive touch by customizing the triple click of your home button.  Head to Settings > General > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut and you can customize the triple click.

  • _Dear Friends,_

    I took a quick trip down to our Key West store to check in with the team down there and to button up my house until I go down in the fall. Putting up hurricane shutters is a little like getting the firewood stacked for winter except for the heat which instantly had me drenched in sweat as I twisted hundreds of little wing nuts. Luckily, Joe Lytton, the Key West store manager, told me about a drill attachment made specifically for wing nuts that made the job easier.

    School has started here in Vermont as in most areas of the country, but we still have some time left on our back-to-school sale. We can save you up to $250 on a Mac or $100 on an iPad and a ton of other accessories on sale, too.  You can check out all of the sale details on our “*Mac-to-School page.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/dogdays/mac-to-school

    As I drove in to work this morning I noticed that some of the trees are already turning color and I know with Labor Day coming up that autumn is not far away. One sure sign is that my favorite snack bar, Maynards, right down the road is closing for the season. It is also rumor season for Apple with lots of speculation on what, when and where Apple may announce new products. I am getting a lot of email from our overseas suppliers that claim to have cases and accessories for these unannounced products. We may not be the first out of the gate with cases but we will make sure they fit as Apple has been known to make changes right before production and these early guesses can be costly.   

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes special is the iPad micro – also known as the iPod touch! This is the most popular iPod with a great camera and the ability to run iOS apps in addition to 16GB of storage for your music and photos. The iPod touch in Space Gray is the latest version and in honor of the coming season, I am going to bundle it with a pair of Urban Ears Plattan Headphones in Pumpkin color!

    “*This bundle is exclusively available to Kibbles & Bytes readers for $225.99!*”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900001568/kb-exclusive-labor-day-special

  • Grace and I are heading down to Key West for a few days to see the Small Dog team down there and button up the house until we get there in a few months. We are going to put up the hurricane shutters both to learn how and just in case. I wonder how my plants are doing down there…

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Stephanie & Mike_

  • SOAPBOX: Racism is Alive

    ??Start Soapbox??

    Bad News – Racism is Alive

    ??I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.?? — Martin Luther King, Jr

    I went out to dinner with my daughter and her family this week. My son-in-law, Ismael, is from Guinea and became a naturalized US citizen last year. He asked me what my thoughts were about Ferguson, MO. He told me that watching events unfold made him weep and it was difficult to understand why an unarmed black youth was killed by police and that tanks, rubber bullets and laser-guided rifles were being trained on demonstrators. I told him about the 60s and the civil rights demonstrations, killings and institutionalized segregation. It didn’t help with the understanding. That is because it is beyond understanding. I glanced over at my grandson, Boka who is 12-years old and it washed over me that he and his sisters would experience the scourge of racism. This may not be dramatic (I hope!) but it will be real.

    As horrifying as the shootings of unarmed men is, that is really the ugliest tip of a giant iceberg of racism that permeates our society. Whether it is the disproportionate numbers of African-Americans incarcerated or the random stops, searches and suspicions of police, to the person being subjected to racism there is no doubt. The store clerk that follows you around the store, the stares from strangers all lead to show racism. We have an African-American president and yet, it is racism that is fueling some of the most troubling events in our country today.

    ??”Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.”?? — Benjamin Spock

    I want my grandchildren to feel safe walking to school the store or simply playing in the park or at the beach and to be free of judgement based upon their race.

    Clearly, the response by police in Ferguson was way out of control. I was very impressed with Captain Ron Johnson on his first night on the job when he walked with the protestors, drew hugs and cheers and declaring that he was there to serve and protect. The militarization of our police forces is a waste of our tax dollars (yes you are paying for this) especially when our infrastructure is as fragile as it is. I know that police like new toys just like anyone else and I am sure they were itching to get to use all that fancy military gear but it is completely inappropriate to deploy against people peacefully demonstrating their outrage at the shooting of an unarmed man.

    ??”There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.”?? — Jackie Robinson

    ??End soapbox??

  • A Special iPad Air

    I received some really great feedback about my article last week describing how little ol’ open-source me managed to successfully migrate myself over to an iPad Air. I think the thing that people like myself forget is that if you have the skills, you can make just about any technology work for you and meet your needs. If that’s the case, why not go with a solid platform on really nice hardware?

    One thing I didn’t really mention in my previous article was how much the iPad’s battery life influenced my decision. It was almost as important in my decision as iOS 7. So far, I’ve been very impressed. For such a large-screened device, and a powerful processor driving so many pixels, it’s very impressive that it easily lasts a full day with moderate use. With lighter use, I could see going a solid two days, or maybe even three, but that would be pushing it.

    In short, there are so many good things to be said about the iPad, and how well it can work for different people and different situations. There’s one thing about my iPad in particular though that makes it special. No, I don’t mean that mine is space grey and others are silver. I don’t even mean that mine is cellular and others are wifi only. The thing that makes my iPad so special is that since getting it in mid June, I’ve never plugged it into a wall electrical socket.

    What?! Ok, so the iPad’s battery is good, but clearly, it’s not more than two months good, especially with how much I use it. So what’s going on here? Some readers may remember a while back I “*wrote an article on a miniature 50 watt solar power station*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/kb872/ I was building at the time. Well, since then, that system has become more refined, more stable, and has been put to regular use. In fact, I basically use it every single night to run my primary floor lamp. Once I got the iPad though, I knew exactly how I wanted to challenge myself. Could I run my iPad exclusively using power from my system?

    Well, it’s been two months and my iPad doesn’t even know the meaning of grid power (ok, Siri might, but that’s another story). The best part? It hasn’t even really been that difficult. Occasionally I have to consider how much I’m using my iPad if I’ve had a few bad sun days, but mostly, I do have enough power. Granted, my system is overpowered for something like an iPad alone, but keeping the iPad topped off hasn’t stopped me from using my floor light each night, or any of the other things I use the power station for.

    At first, the power station’s only output was 120 VAC from a 300-watt pure sine inverter. In my initial designs, I had always planned for one or two 12V automotive sockets, but when I first got the iPad, I still hadn’t added even one. So for about a month, I had to charge the iPad using the standard power block by plugging it into the inverter. This worked well, and I still do it sometimes, but it’s not too efficient. The inverter consumes about 5 watts just by being on. Although Apple’s power blocks are pretty efficient, it’s just silly to go from 12 VDC to 120 VAC back down to 5 VDC for USB. When I charge the iPad that way, I end up drawing somewhere between 15 and 18 watts from the battery.

    The inverter is much less efficient at converting 12 VDC to 120 VAC when the power draw (around 12 watts for Apple’s power block) relative to capacity (300 watts in my case) is low. A few weeks ago, I installed a single 12V automotive socket, and bought a “*2.1 Amp iPad-compatible car charger*”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/iPad_and_iPad_mini_Accessories/Charging_Devices_and_Power/Chargers/Auto. Now when I charge the iPad using the 12V socket, it draws a much smaller amount of power from the battery. In my tests, charging from the 12V socket only draws about 6 watts from the battery, making for a 66% reduction in power consumed! Car chargers use something called “*DC-DC switched-mode conversion*”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC-to-DC_converter#Switched-mode_conversion to drop the voltage and while they can be electrically noisy (from high frequency switching and inductor harmonics), they are typically very efficient. Of course this all means I can continue to keep my iPad running without using wall grid power for even longer.

    This was (and continues to be) a really fun challenge, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. The power station was a project I’d been planning for years, and was totally independent of getting an iPad. When I saw the two things together though, I saw an opportunity to merge my interests. Further improvements may include an auxiliary Li-Po power pack so I can bring some of my solar power with me on trips. I’m also planning on doubling down my efforts in my thermoelectric power generator designs to see if I can charge the iPad that way.

    I will definitely say that doing something like this is basically guaranteed to **not** save you money, but that’s not why I’m doing it. It’s been a huge learning experience so far, and talking about why my iPad in particular is special is a great conversation starter.

  • Farewell, farewell!

    I’ve been here at Small Dog for a little under three years and the number of things I’ve learned in that time is pretty awesome. Not only did I broaden my design skills and polish up my web knowledge (thanks Scott!), I also picked up a thing or two in the writing department (thanks to Kali!).

    Small Dog was a great environment to learn the ropes for my first “real” job in my field. From package design to creating window displays to compiling our weekly newsletters, I got to work on a little bit of everything around here.

    I will certainly miss my super-awesome coworkers who made the hour commute worth it. I’ve made some great friends, acquired some sweet skills and learned a bit about myself while here.

    It’s been swell Small Dog — tata for now!