Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • _Dear Friends,_

    We have had some sunny warm days and cold nights, and while it may seem a bit early, the sap in the maple trees is running and maple sugaring operations are starting up here in the nation’s largest (and by far the best) maple sugaring state. I used to sugar the old fashioned way by drilling holes for taps with a hand drill, hanging buckets on the tap and waiting for nature’s sunshine and the awakening maple trees to fill the buckets. We would then tromp from tree to tree, sometimes in the waist-deep snow, and gather the buckets to pour into the big tank on the sled that my workhorse would pull over to the sugar house. There we would boil the sap until way into the night, feeding the wood fired sugaring arch to make one gallon of sweetness from forty gallons of sap. Nowadays there are pipeline systems for most sugaring operations, but you can still see buckets on trees in some parts of the state.

    Long-time Small Dogger Mark Englehardt will be leaving the company next week after over fifteen years of being a consultant and employee. He is going to pursue some other interests, and we all wish him the best of luck with his new ventures. He’ll be around and helping us out from time to time but will also be missed. Fortunately, Rebecca Kraemer has stepped up and will now be our Director of IT and Consulting. I am so pleased that Rebecca has agreed to take on this new responsibility and am very confident that she is going to do a fabulous job. Rebecca is a frequent contributor to Tech Tails and other newsletters. Ben and I will twist her arm to get her to write some for Kibbles, too!

    While the new Apple App Store for the Mac means that Small Dog Electronics will be selling less software, I am finding it to be a very useful resource. Just the other day we needed a piece of software to generate some barcodes for packaging, and it was easy to find, download and use from the App Store. Apple tends to change the prevailing paradigm with many of their products and innovations. They have done this so many times–with music, with the Mac, with the iPad–that it is the real key to their success. When Steve Jobs introduced the Mac as the computer “for the rest of us,” it was the launch of a string of innovations and visionary use of technology.

    I had the pleasure of outfitting David Sellers, my dear friend and mentor, with technology for his upcoming trip to China. Dave was my professor at Goddard College and my business partner in my first business, North Wind Power Company. Dave is a noted architect and inventor but still uses yellow drafting paper and a pencil to make his drawings and sketches, so when he called to tell me he wanted an iPhone and iPad, I was thrilled to help him out. He is going to China to work on an architectural project and then stopping on the way back to check out the 1918 Stanley Steamer that he purchased with the notion of driving it back to Vermont from California. I’ve told Dave that I will join him for at least part of that journey, which should be a blast!

  • Apple Announces App Store Subscriptions

    Apple today announced a new subscription model for the App Store. Arriving nearly two weeks after the launch of The Daily, the subscription…

  • Preview Within An Icon

    One of my favorite features in Mac OS X is that certain icons themselves are a “preview” of the file’s contents. A photo’s icon is a tiny version of the photo itself, making browsing through a packed-full folder in the Finder less of a chore than it might be otherwise. A customer came in yesterday wondering why some of his icons showed this preview and others didn’t. I didn’t know the answer at first and began poking around preferences and ‘asking’ Google. This was a great question that had me stumped for a few minutes.

    I revisited the “Show View Options” window from the Finder’s View menu and saw what I missed the first time through: a checkbox for “Show icon preview.” With this checked, all icons–not just a random few–were turned into previews. Snow Leopard adds functionality to the icon preview for PDF files. If you resize the icons to something greater than 64 x 64 pixels using the slider at the bottom-right of a Finder window, you can place the pointer over the icon and arrows will appear, allowing you to preview the document page-by-page.

  • Less Can Be More

    Apple’s Migration Assistant is a great way to transfer your files from one Mac to another. It (usually) is able to seamlessly move your programs, documents, and settings over with a minimum of fuss, relying either on FireWire, USB, Ethernet, or AirPort. For some of us though, particularly those of us who upgrade all the time, you might find yourself having issues that get worse with each transfer.

    This is particularly true with non-Apple programs. The iApps like iPhoto, iMovie, etc. tend to transfer over just fine. But others, like Microsoft Office and various other third-party applications, simply do not like being transferred with the assistant.

    Perhaps you’re someone who is always looking for the latest software gizmo, downloading apps small and large from the Internet and the App store. Odds are very few of these apps are used past the evaluation period; if they’re free apps, odds are they haven’t been opened in a long time.

    In today’s world, where your new Mac will come with at least a 320GB hard drive and up to 8 terabytes built-in, it’s not strictly necessary to conserve disk space. But, wouldn’t it be nice to open your Applications folder on a brand new computer and not be reminded of your old computer? Why wait longer for the window to open, and for the icons to draw, when you can simply elect to not transfer your applications when you use the Migration Assistant?

    When I get my next computer, I won’t be migrating my programs. Instead, I’m going to install the applications I need, and only when I find myself needing them. Really, I don’t need a menu bar item telling me the temperature of a fan sensor; the half-dozen alarm clock apps I didn’t like don’t need to be there; and who uses Microsoft Messenger anyway?

  • Tip of the Week: Precise Volume Adjustment

    We’ve all been there. You arrive at the office intent on listening to your tunes, only to discover you’ve left your headphones at home. At Small Dog, a quick trip to the warehouse to browse our “*inventory*”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Audio|Headphones for a replacement set is all that’s required, but many are without that luxury. So lets say you’re sitting at your desk in complete silence, and decide that ‘Pyromania’ simply needs to happen now! How can you pull it off without disturbing your co-workers? Easy.

    Though all Macs feature 16 steps of volume adjustment at first glance, there are actually 64. Each time you adjust the volume from the keyboard (F11 and F12 on current gen. Macs) The level jumps by a box with an accompanying “pwipt” noise. However, holding down a series of keys prior to adjusting the volume enables you to fine tune your level further.

    By holding: Option + Shift, and pressing: Volume Up or Volume Down, you can adjust your Mac’s volume in 64 increments instead of the usual 16. You’ll notice that each box divides into four precise slices while using this method, allowing you to set your volume as low as 1/64 if you have picky co-workers.

    Further, if you only hold down shift while adjusting the volume, that “pwipt” noise will be disabled. It can get awfully loud if you’re wearing headphones!

  • The Internet is Running Out of Addresses

    I’ve written in past Tech Tails about IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, and how every single device connected to the Internet needs to have its own IP address. Under the current system, known as IPv4, the addresses are formed as four groups of up to three digits. Each group of digits can go from 1 to 255, but no higher than 255. For example, Google’s IP address is currently 74.125.226.148. When you type in a web address in your browser, it’s actually translated into an IP address by DNS servers.

    The problem with IPv4 is that the four groups of up to three digits only allows so many unique addresses. It must’ve been hard to imagine in the early days of the Internet that so many billions of addresses would be needed, but here we are and some experts claim that we have less than a year before the last address is taken.

    I’m not sure I’m ready to fill my basement with canned goods and iodine tablets quite yet. But just in case we find ourselves in an era of an overpopulated Internet, there is another protocol called IPv6 that will replace IPv4 over time. The new protocol boasts an address allocation (number of possible addresses) with so many zeroes after it that I can’t even think how to pronounce the number.

    Needless to say, this transition will take time, and in some cases users may see some speed issues. The IPv4 and IPv6 networks will essentially be two different Internets, and there will have to be “translating” services, or gateways, to bridge between the two networks. These gateways will certainly be bottlenecks.

    The whole protocol and the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is going to take some time and there will likely be bumps along the way. But there’s really no need to panic as some have suggested. There’s a wealth of information out there about the transition and the protocol itself. Wikipedia, as is so often the case, is a great place to start.

  • Happy Tuesday,

    Yesterday was the first real thaw of the season. Foot-thick sheets of ice slid off rooftops, including the one right over my head, and the river is rising. Roads are still flanked by massive, dense snowbanks, and all the meltwater doesn’t have anywhere to go. With temperature expected to fall to the lower teens tonight and tomorrow, we might have some very interesting driving in the coming days. It’s never fun when your road turns to mud, and tire tracks freeze in place only to be removed by snowpack or snowplow.

    Owen is enjoying the weather, though. He’s spent a good chunk of the morning outside, mostly laying down on top of the highest snowbank in the parking lot, staring across the field at the still-frozen river. Soon enough I’ll have to go fetch him from the river, in warm Spring weather.

    We still have a good number of “used MacBooks”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/73536/macbook-2-16ghz-1gb-120-sd-ap-bt-white-used/at_tt that were tested and cleaned up by Small Dog technicians. They’re an excellent value at only $599, and they come with MacOS X Snow Leopard and iLife ’11 (the very latest software from Apple).

    As always, thanks for reading, and keep in touch.

    Matt
    “matt@smalldog.com”:mailto:matt@smalldog.com

  • Researchers Expose iOS Security Flaw

    Last week, TUAW reported a group of researchers had cracked the passcode system implemented in iOS 4, across Apple’s range of portable devices….

  • !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/2195.jpg!:http://www.smalldog.com/wag20569/at_dr

    *$100 off Mac mini G4/1.25GHz 512/40/combo – Used* Regularly $299.99, now only $199.99–click above to see details!

    Because we want to give you the best deals AND stay in business, Deal Retriever deals are valid for one week only. Quantities are limited; offers good while supplies last.