Kibbles & Bytes Blog

Sadly, this will be my last article for Kibbles and Bytes. I’m going to be moving on from Small Dog to the next chapter of my life. I’ve really enjoyed writing articles almost every week and hearing from readers who learned something new or just wanted to tell me more about the topic I wrote about. I feel like I often learn more new things when writing. Usually I start off with a topic in mind, maybe something that I thought about in the week prior, and then research it in more detail. I’ve certainly covered a wide range of topics from gamma radiation to air conditioning to electrical safety basics. For this last article, I thought I’d share a bit about how I’ve picked up so much of this stuff and despite not having much formal training.

The only formal course I took on electronics was an in-development course in college. It was a brand new instructor and a brand new course the college was offering that year. I struggled tremendously in it. It was heavily math and theory-focused and my calculus background has always been pretty weak. I somehow managed to eke out a B average when all was said and done. I think if the course had included more hands-on learning, I would’ve done better. My skills have always been in putting theory into practice rather than just focusing on the theory alone.

I tend to be the kind of person who will decide to build something, and then do a ton of research until I understand what is going on. I remember when I built my solar power station, I did a lot of research to understand how to size wires for loads. You wouldn’t think something like that would be complicated, but actually, there’s a lot of theory behind it. What kind of amperage is involved? What will the voltage be? How long are the wires going to be? There are plenty of resources out there on the internet to help you on your way to learning about these things. I’m a firm believer that anyone with the desire can understand how all of this stuff works.

With electricity, there are always safety concerns. If you’re not confident about something, it’s ok to admit it. Remember that if the resistance is right, and there’s enough charge behind it, virtually any voltage can be lethal. Under most normal conditions, voltages below 48V are fairly safe. If you recall, my very first articles here about electricity basics focused on the safety factor and what was and wasn’t dangerous. If you’re looking to get involved in a project, 12 and 24 volt systems are generally pretty safe (shorts can still cause fires though). They can be a great way to work on gaining a better understanding of how electricity works. They also translate to useful projects. Most cars, for example, have 12 volt electrical systems, so if you’re comfortable working with that, there are lots of things you might be able to do.

Finally, you can always just read about the history of inventions and developments in the world of electromagnetism. Amps, volts, ohms…all of these terms are named after people. Reading about how they discovered what they did can really help to shed light on why we do things a certain way now, or how certain modern devices came to be. It can be incredibly fascinating to learn about the processes and experiments early scientists used to discover the fundamentals of electricity and it’s a great way to get yourself into the same mindset of learning.

Electromagnetism, at least the fundamentals of it, are what an old professor of mine would call “pure truth.” He was a professor of mathematics and computer science and he always told us that the things he was teaching us were pure truth. These things were true from billions of years before we were born, and they’d be true billions of years into the future and beyond. I always liked that. My hope in writing all the articles I’ve written is that some of you might have become more interested in some of those pure truths. Take care, and always keep learning.

A while back I wrote about some often forgotten features of the Notes app and the ability to sketch notes as well as create basic drawings. Hidden features are everywhere in our Macs and iOS devices, including features like Markup which can be found in your Mail program on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

Markup allows you to add drawings, text, and signatures to PDFs and photos. If you have used some of the Markup features within preview, you’ll be right at home using it on your iOS device. To try out these features you will want to make sure your using the Mail app on your devices and ensure that you have an active e-mail account set up as well. Recently I have found the Markup feature on PDFs to be incredibly helpful. To unlock these features you’ll first need to attach a PDF or photo to an e-mail.

1. Open Mail and tap on the square with a pencil to launch a new email
2. Double-tap in the body of the new email, this will pull up the option to insert a photo or PDF
3. Once you have located a PDF or photo to add simply tap choose
4. Tap the attachment and then tap Markup
5. Choose the tool you wish to use and tap done

There are several options within Markup to make quick on the fly revisions, provide instructions or give a final signature approval on a document. You can use the pen tool to draw directly on an image and you can select how thick or thing you need your lines to be. You can zoom in or out of an image and you can easily enter text, you even have a few different font options to choose from. To add a signature you simply need to select the signature option within markup and just like in Preview you can enlarge or shrink your digital signature to fit the signature space.

Markup is a great way to keep up on basic tasks and workflow from anywhere. Combine the features of Markup with iCloud drive so you can access and attach any document you need. Markup is just another way to turn your iOS device into an invaluable resource in the palm of your hand.

I am lucky. About the same time that I started Small Dog, 23 years ago, I had Lasik surgery. They made one of my eyes really good for distance and one for close-up work. The result is that I do not normally need reading glasses unless the print is REALLY small. But as you get older, if you haven’t zapped your eyes you may need reading glasses.

If you have 20/20 vision or are still wondering why your parents have reading glasses, count yourself lucky. But if you’re like many people–over 60 percent of the population by some estimates, including most people over 45–reading the tiny text on your iPhone or iPad screen might be impossible if you don’t happen to have the right pair of glasses handy.

What we really want is a screen that corrects automatically for its user’s individual vision problems–research into such technology has taken place at UC Berkeley and the MIT Media Lab, but real-world products are probably years off. Until then, those of us who need a little help seeing our screens will have to rely on features Apple has built into iOS. Try these options:

*Increase Text Size*
Although not every app supports it, Apple has a technology called Dynamic Type that lets you set your preferred text size. In Settings > Display & Brightness > Text Size, you’ll find a text size slider, and you can see how it affects text in the iOS interface by moving around in the Settings app or looking at Mail.

If you want a size even larger than is available from the Text Sizes screen, you can get that in Settings > General > Accessibility > Larger Text. Turn on Larger Accessibility Sizes, and the size slider adds more options.

*Bold Text*
Sometimes, the problem isn’t so much the size of the text, but how light it can be. In Settings > Display & Brightness, there’s a switch for Bold Text. Turn this on, and all the text on the iPhone will become darker. Oddly, enabling Bold Text requires restarting your device, but there’s no harm in doing that

*Display Zoom*
If you have difficulty with aspects of the screen other than text, you can use iOS’s Display Zoom feature to expand everything by a bit. The trade-off is that you’ll see less content on the screen at once, of course, but that’s a small price to pay if it makes your iPhone easier to use.

To enable Display Zoom, go to Settings > Display & Brightness > View. Once there, you can compare the difference between the standard and zoomed views in three sample screens by tapping the Standard and Zoomed buttons at the top–notably, you’ll lose a row of icons on the Home screen. If you think zoomed view might be better, tap Zoomed and then tap Set. Your iPhone has to restart, but it’s quick. Unfortunately, if you decide to switch back to standard view, you’ll need to rearrange your Home screen icons again.

*Zoom*
The iPhone’s full Zoom feature is particularly useful in two situations. First, it’s easy to invoke and dismiss if you need a quick glance while wearing the wrong pair of glasses. Second, if Display Zoom doesn’t magnify the screen as much as you need, the full zoom may do the job.

Turn it on in Settings > General > Accessibility > Zoom and zoom in by double-tapping the screen with three fingers. By default, the Zoom Region is set to Window Zoom, which gives you a magnifying lens that you can move around the screen by dragging its handle on the bottom.

Tap the handle to bring up a menu that lets you zoom out, switch to full-screen zoom (which can be harder to navigate), resize the lens, filter what you see in the lens (such as grayscale), display a controller for moving the lens, and change the zoom level. To get back to normal view, just double-tap with three fingers again.

So, if you don’t want to use those granny glasses try some of these tricks to make reading your iPhone easier!

_Dear Friends,_

Grace and I had a great visit to Asheville, NC to see the eclipse. As it is with most of our motorcycle trips it is usually the journey that is the adventure rather than the destination. This time, however, we visited our friend Jen Mayer (no relation) who owns an Apple Premier Partner in Asheville. Jen used to work at Small Dog and if you are not going to come to Small Dog Electronics for your Mac needs, Charlotte Street Computers is a world-class resource in Asheville.

We stayed with Jen for three days and fell in love with Asheville. Maybe it was Jen’s tours of downtown, maybe it was the journey to the eclipse, maybe it was the Blue Ridge Parkway but Asheville felt like home. We arrived on Sunday and most of the morning on the day of the eclipse we debated whether the 99% coverage at Jen’s house was good enough or whether we should brave the expected traffic to head to 100% totality. Fortunately, Hapy was in Oregon at the time and he and I were texting and he said the 98.2% he experienced was just not good enough. So, we piled into Jen’s car and drove to totality. We did not encounter any significant traffic and pulled into a rest area off the highway just in time to see the sun disappear and for it to get dark. Well worth it!

The trip on the Blue Ridge was so incredible. If you have not driven down the Skyline Drive which starts near Washington, DC and connects to the Blue Ridge Parkway – you have not seen one of the most beautiful roads in the world. It is over 500 miles of non-commercialized roadway with hundreds of turn-outs, hiking trails and vistas all along the spine of the Blue Mountains. It is well worth the time. We saw bears, deer, eagles and lots of beautiful views. Before we got to the mountains, I had a little encounter with Bambi who ran out and committed suicide on my motorcycle. Luckily (for me) she hit me broadside so no damage other than feeling bad for the fawn.

This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive features the Apple Factory Refurbished 27-inch iMac bundled with AppleCare Plus. This iMac features the amazing 5K Retina display and the 3.2GHz processor. It has 8GB of RAM and a 1 TB Fusion drive. Just like new Macs it has a 1-year Apple warranty but we are bundling it with AppleCare Plus that covers it for 3-years, provides you with 3-years of Apple technical support and covers 2 incidents of accidental damage (for a deductible). This iMac with AppleCare Plus is over $100 off for Kibbles & Bytes readers this week at $1499.99!