Kibbles & Bytes Blog

We made some progress on my electric motorcycle. As you might remember, it was underpowered. Well, it turned out that we had the controller set for 50% power so once we corrected that, it was quite zippy! We are working on figuring out a parking brake and some active cooling–then it may just be ready for the road!

Have an awesome August weekend! Thanks for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
_Don, Kali & Mike_

As per usual, we wanted our loyal Kibbles & Bytes readers to be the first to know–our Garage Sale is kicking off next Friday, August 17th. We will be including the list of items we have for sale in next week’s issue.

Look for HUGE markdowns on brands like Timbuk2, Incipio, Simplism, Edifier, Marware, Griffin and more. Preview the list in next week’s Kibbles & Bytes and then go online to purchase your new treasures! Note that all items are final sale, and that *all items must be purchased ONLINE. NO item will be sold over the phone.*

Click below for the link to our famous Garage Sale and to brush up on the rules!
“*Smalldog.com/garagesale*”:http://www.smalldog.com/garagesale

Halfbrick, perhaps best know for their game “*Fruit Ninja*,”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fruit-ninja/id362949845?mt=8%26uo%3D6%26partnerId%3D30 has released another great game for iOS: “*Jetpack Joyride*.”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http://itunes.apple.com/app/jetpack-joyride/id457446957?mt=8%26uo%3D6%26partnerId%3D30

This game has incredibly simple gameplay. Your character is always running forward through what appears to be some sort of lab (this is not explained) full of scientists running around, flaming bars in the sky, missiles coming at you and various other obstacles. To activate the jetpack, which is necessary to avoid the obstacles and collect coins, you just tap anywhere on the screen. The longer you press, the more your jetpack fires. That’s all there is to getting started, so it is extremely fun to play right from the start.

To make it more interesting, there are a a variety of other vehicles that you can grab and control along the way, such as a robot dragon and a motorcycle. There are also mini-missions to accomplish in order to level-up. My favorite was having to high-five ten of the scientists as you run by them (try not to burn them up with your jetpack when you are trying to do so!).

Halfbrick also seems like a really fun company, something we know all about here at Small Dog. For example, their bio of one of their game producers includes the line: “Good instincts and natural talent help Luke lead his team to victory, poor dress sense gets him turned away from staff Christmas parties.” (Editor’s Note: Small Dog also has a great “bio page!)”:http://www.smalldog.com/team

“Download Jetpack Joyride for free here.”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http://itunes.apple.com/app/jetpack-joyride/id457446957?mt=8%26uo%3D6%26partnerId%3D30

For many years Apple has boldly gone where no other tech company has gone before. Recent screenshots, captured from the live stream of _Curiosity_ landing on Mars, show that their products have also made inroads into NASA. Images of the Entry, Descent and Landing Operations team at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California show several MacBook Pros in use by the staff. Close up shots reveal that they are running Mac OS X and being used for mission specific tasks.

The _Curiosity_ rover also has technology inside it that is Apple-related. The chip that runs the on-board computer (actually two of them for redundancy purposes) is a version of the PowerPC processor that was used in the entire G3 line, from the Bondi Blue iMac to the iBook G3. The biggest change to the chip is making it radiation resistant in order to survive Mars’ harsh environment. This chip doesn’t have anywhere near the processing power of current Apple processors, in fact people have noted that the current iPhone is more powerful, but it has more than enough power to complete its tasks.

There has been a fair amount of debate as to the wisdom of spending 2.6 billion dollars to send a robot to Mars when there are pressing needs here at home. While I am an ardent supporter of NASA and I believe that money spent to learn more about the universe we live in is always money well spent, I can understand the argument on the other side. To make everyone happy, I propose that Apple spends its cash reserves, which is currently well over 100 billion dollars, to start its own space program. They might spend a little too much time making sure that the ship is as stylish as it is functional, but I think that they could get people to Mars and back before NASA does.

This week, screenshots have come up a lot in the office for some reason. I take screenshots all the time, and find it to be a great way to grab a piece of the ever-changing Internet, either for posterity or just for a laugh.

The easiest way to take a screenshot on your Mac is through keyboard shortcuts:

* *Shift-Command-3* captures the entire screen
* *Shift-Control-Command-3* captures the screen to the Clipboard
* *Shift-Command-4* selects any part of the screen that you drag to capture (my most-used)
* *Shift-Control-Command-4* captures a selection to the Clipboard
* *Shift-Command-4 + space + clicking a window* takes a screenshot of a window

You can also use Grab, the app included in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. To delve even deeper, “*click here*”:http://osxdaily.com/2011/01/26/change-the-screenshot-save-file-location-in-mac-os-x/ to learn how to change the default file location of your screenshot in OS X.

Happy capturing!

_Dear Friends,_

My Arctic Kiwi plant and its vines now reach over to the apple trees and covers the arbor I welded from rebar. This spring, it was covered with flowers and I was sure that I was going to have a huge harvest of the grape-like kiwi fruit. It turns out that my male kiwi must have died a few years back because we didn’t have any fruit set. So, I took the clippers and hacked away one side of the plant and bought a new male kiwi so maybe next year I can show once again that we can grow kiwis in Vermont!

Have you been watching the Olympics? I catch it mostly late at night and simply love watching the best athletes in the world compete. I loved watching Gabby Douglas win gold in gymnastics and I like some of the odder sports too–like handball or water polo. I do think it is a travesty that baseball is not an Olympic sport anymore, though!

We have been in the middle of what I call departmental comprehensive reviews. This is where each of the managers of our divisions presents an overview of their work for the past year and talks about the upcoming year and their initiatives. The audience is my management team and we use this exercise to help plan our budgets for the next year. I am about 1/2 way through this process and I think we have some very exciting plans for our next fiscal year (we operate, like Apple, with a September 30th year-end).

What’s clear in these presentations and the thing I am most proud of is how our commitment to customer satisfaction and our triple bottom line of people, planet and profit is apparent. We are a different kind of business, and it is certainly rewarding to see that the managers of Small Dog are with Hapy and me as we show that business can be an agent of change.