Kibbles & Bytes Blog

Apple news, tech tips, and more…

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  • The Blue Lights Blues

    So there you are. Hammering away at your keyboard, not breaking eye-contact with your monitor, your eyes observing intently the letters that manifest themselves against the white backdrop of your e-mail window with each click and clack of your fingertips. Before you realize it you have moved just a bit closer to your screen, your eyes feel strained and you have that little headache growing again.

    These, my friends, are some of the side effects of prolonged exposure to artificial blue light. I’m sure many of us out there have the firsthand familiarity with the effects of the dreaded blue light, but those who might be a little unfamiliar let’s take a closer look.

    We know light is made up of electromagnetic particles that travel in waves. These waves emit energy, and range in length and strength. The shorter the wavelength, the higher the energy. These varying wavelengths are each represented by a different color and they’re grouped into the following categories: gamma rays, x-rays, visible light, infrared light, and radio waves. Put all of these together and you have the electromagnetic spectrum, visible blue light is the neighbor to ultraviolet which as we know is quite harmful. Blue light has a very short wavelength and thus it contains a higher amount of energy.

    This isn’t to say all forms of blue light are “bad”, by any means. In fact, quite the opposite. Let’s break down blue light in the forms of natural and artificial. Natural blue light is found virtually everywhere you look. It’s the reason the sky is blue, and it’s the reason our bodies tell us when it’s time to sleep. On a physiological level, blue light is quite beneficial for not only our physical wellbeing, but also our mental state. One could argue that it’s the reason some of us get bummed out when hit with a string of rainy days, and the same reason we feel joy when the sun comes back around again!

    However, in this age of information, we’re subjected to artificial blue light on a daily basis. Devices such as your cell phone, your computer screen, your television, your tablet and energy efficient lightbulbs all mimic and imitate natural blue light. This fact is and of itself, is of course not inherently adverse to our health and wellbeing but overuse and prolonged overexposure to these devices can counteract the positive effects that natural blue light has on our bodies. Issues ranging from disruptions to sleep cycles, increased risk of depression, back and neck pain and of course permanent eye damage.

    So what can we do to find the balance? Luckily for us all, more and more developers are taking steps to counter the adverse effects of artificial blue light. A new addition to macOS Sierra, 10.12.14, was Night Shift. When enabled, Night Shift will adjust colors of your display to the warmer, less intense colors on the spectrum when the sun goes down. Night Shift can also be found on your iOS devices, assuming you are updated to at least iOS 9.3. (Note: not all devices running the prerequisite iOS/OS are capable of running Night Shift) The shift in warmer colors has been shown to lessen the exposure and intensity of the artificial blue light and it’s also is more in-sync with our circadian rhythm, which governs the natural sleep cycle. Too much exposure to artificial blue light before heading off to bed has been shown to adversely effect our chances at getting a good night’s sleep, but reducing that blue light glow to a warmer color has yielded great results for me, personally.

  • Using Filters In Gmail

    A problem that many e-mail users have is receiving too many unwanted e-mails. I often receive automated e-mails for receipts or promotions that I don’t necessarily want to stop receiving, but are not important enough for me to want to receive a notification about them on my phone or e-mail client. For Gmail users, this problem can be easily solved by setting up a filter.

    By creating a filter, you can ensure that e-mails are matching a specific pattern, like from a certain e-mail address or containing a certain phrase in the title or message are caught and filtered. They are automatically marked as read or sent to a specific locations. You create a filter by opening Settings from the Gmail website ( located in the gear icon), and navigating to “filters and blocked addresses” tab. From there you can click the “create a new filter” button to set the parameters for the filter.

    I have dozens of filters set up on my Gmail accounts. Every few weeks or so, I look through my recently received e-mails to see if any could have been eliminated by setting a filter. The goal is to never receive an e-mail notification on my phone about an e-mail that I don’t want to reach. As you use more online services you will receive more e-mails that you might want to filter out.

    Hopefully this quick tips helps you to keep your in box a bit less chaotic and allow you to focus on the e-mails you really want to see.

  • Drone Etiquette

    No longer the stuff of science fiction, drones are becoming more and more prolific in our modern world for personal and commercial use. Sounding like an angry beehive on steroids, most popular consumer-level drones are what are classified as quadcopters, having 4 propellers providing lift and control. Powered by batteries and electric motors with a sophisticated electronic brain to provide stability, these human-controlled devices often contain detailed HD or 4K cameras which can take spectacular video and images from a perspective only birds and the CIA have been able to experience until now.

    !>http://blog.smalldog.com/images/5115t.png?1497362847!

    In addition to getting those awesome aerial shots, you may be surprised to know that when flying one you are actually considered by the government to be piloting an aircraft. Easy, Maverick, this doesn’t mean that you get your gold wings or a fancy helmet. What it does mean is that there are laws that are attached when taking a drone out to fly.

    To the Federal Government, a drone is considered an Unmanned Aircraft System, or UAS. If you’re based in the USA most drones, aside from the little $10 novelty toys you can buy at a drugstore, have to be registered with the Federal Aviation Administration. You can “register online”:https://registermyuas.faa.gov/ easily and it only costs $5 for three years, but if you fail to register, you can rack up expensive fines and even up to three years in prison, but that’s obviously in extreme cases.

    If you’re planning on using your drone for commercial purposes such as selling your footage or delivering pizzas, you’ll need to take a “few more steps”:https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/fly_for_work_business/ which includes passing an initial aeronautical knowledge test. The good thing is that you can “study online”:https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/fly_for_work_business/becoming_a_pilot/ and prepare ahead of time.

    Once you have registered, you will want to follow these guidelines:

    * Don’t fly higher than 400 feet.
    * Always keep your drone within sight.
    * Avoid flying in the dark, strong winds, and/or bad weather.
    * Don’t fly near other people or property until you’re very confident in your ability to maintain control and pilot the vehicle.
    * Avoid airports and military-controlled areas to prevent accidentally filming something classified and getting the men-in-black called on you. Also if you do fly within 5 miles of an airport, you have to notify air traffic control.
    * Avoid flying over private property as much as possible as privacy is always an issue.

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    What it really comes down to is that you’re operating an aircraft which can potentially crash into other aircraft, wildlife, buildings, people, power lines and has the potential to give you the ability to cross barriers and fences to access areas that someone else may not want you to have access to. Please use common sense and be courteous, follow local laws and regulations and don’t annoy, harass or trespass on your neighbors. Let’s keep that awesome footage coming.

  • Summer is officially here and an already short Summer in Vermont feels even shorter with all the rain we continue to get. We really only get 2 months of summertime weather here in the Green Mountains. I continue to think positively that the continuous rain in the daily forecast will come to an end. The one plus is that I’m taking every advantage I can to enjoy the sunshine when it does come out.

    I was talking to a customer last week who, like me, is doing his best to enjoy the warm summer weather every chance he can. We’ve been experiencing a lot of sudden showers. One minute it’s sunny and in a matter of minutes it’s pouring down on us. Unfortunately for the customer I was talking with his MacBook Air was caught in one of these sudden showers. He had been working on his MacBook Air on his deck and listening to music, while cooking dinner a pop up shower erupted and he unfortunately forgot his computer was on the deck. Well you can guess what happened next, another tragic story if liquid damage to a computer. These kinds of accidents happen all of the time, I could write a book about all the ways I’ve heard of how a computer ended up with liquid damage. Broken shampoo bottles in suite cases, the cat running across the desk and hitting the glass of water on the way by and the champagne toast that didn’t go as planned. Thankfully, for some customers this worry and concern is now by the wayside. With Apple’s introduction of AppleCare+ for Mac, customers can now have peace of mind when it comes to life’s mishaps with liquids and their computers. Many customers choose to skip AppleCare because of the Macs reliability, but with the added protection of accidental damage everyone should be purchasing AppleCare+ for Mac with your computer purchase. Apple now also only gives you 60 days to get this protection, so I strongly encourage it at the time of purchase. AppleCare+ can make your next trip to the service department a lot less stressful!

    I hope everyone has a safe and memorable 4th of July weekend. Our offices will be closed as well as our retail locations so that everyone can enjoy this special holiday.

    Thank you for reading.
    Emily Dolloff
    “emily@smalldog.com”:mailto:emily@smalldog.com

  • The strawberries are sweet and definitely in season with juicy organic berries at many of the nearby farm stands. I love strawberries with my breakfast, in my salads and especially in my strawberry beverages. I have already stained one nice shirt slurping on berries in the car before I got home.

    Well, I have dismantled my Indian to do some performance upgrades. It was a good thing this week was rainy because I don’t think I missed too many opportunities to ride. I do complain a lot when I am doing motorcycle mechanics. You know, about my aching back or losing that screw or how do I get that bolt out but I have to say that it is really therapeutic for me. I really don’t have to think about Macs, iPads, employees or anything while I am trying to remember just how I got that bolt back in the last time I took the bike apart. I crank the tunes in my shop and have fun with my tools and hope that I don’t have any parts left over when I am done.

    Thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes team,

    _Don, Emily & Hadley_

  • Stay Cool

    Summer officially started this week. Has anyone checked with Mother Nature? Are we sure she got the memo? Seriously, sometimes I can’t tell where we are with the weather. I don’t really mind the hot weather at all, as long as I can do things like jump in a river, or ride my bike. The warmer days had me thinking about an interesting topic that spans a bit more than just electricity and magnetism, but I thought it might be interesting anyway. How do we cool things down?

    I’ve always been fascinated by this actually. Even as a child, I could understand, heating things up was easy. Fire is easy. Warming myself up in winter with a heavier jacket was easy. Cooling things down is always trickier, and there are several ways to do it. To get a better understanding of how we cool things down, we have to start at the very basics. What is temperature? Actually, what we call temperature is a measure of motion, specifically of atoms and particles. They’re not moving from A to B, but rather, vibrating in place, or in the case of gases, moving around haphazardly. The faster they move, the higher the temperature of the substance. When all motion stops, the substance if brutally cold. So cold, in fact, that it has a special name: absolute zero. Absolute zero is approximately -273.15 Celsius or -459.67 Fahrenheit. We even have a temperature scale that starts at absolute zero, called the Kelvin scale. 0 Kelvin is absolute zero. The motion of the atoms or particles also gives off something called black body radiation. This is simply thermal-spectrum electromagnetic radiation. As such, it’s part of the electromagnetic spectrum I wrote about some time ago. This is how infrared cameras work as well as any thermal imaging camera.

    With that background in place, it’ll make more sense when I explain certain cooling methods we commonly use. One of the most efficient and effective cooling methods is gas decompression. This is how nearly all refrigerators, air conditioners and heat pumps work. In any gas, the molecules comprising the gas are spaced pretty far apart. When you compress them into a tinier volume of space, the gas will increase in temperature. Is this because the particles are now hitting each other more often and creating more frictional heating? It would be nice if that’s how it worked, but it’s actually a bit more complicated than that. The simplest way to understand heating of compressed gas is to understand conservation of energy. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Compressing a gas requires some amount of energy, and that energy has to go somewhere. It ends up going into the gas causing the particles to move faster, which we observe as heat. From a physical standpoint, the gas particles are interacting with the boundaries of their space more frequently as the space containing them shrinks. The most scientifically accurate explanation of the temperature increase is that by reducing the available volume of space, you’re increasing your theoretical knowledge of where each particle is. Instead of being somewhere in a huge volume of space, each particle is now in some much smaller volume. You’re decreasing the entropy of the gas. That knowledge doesn’t come free though. The particles essentially say, “ok, we’ll let you know more about ??where?? we are, but in turn we’re going to let you know ??less?? about our speeds, because we’re going to move faster.”

    Whew…all of that. Are you still with me? Hadley, you haven’t mentioned a single thing about cooling yet! Just heating! Yes, but now all the pieces are available. When we compress a gas, it heats up for the reasons stated above, but we can do something with that heat. We don’t have to let the gas just stay hot. This is what refrigerators do. Once they compress a gas, they pass it through some type of heat sink. This is a device that allows the heat of the gas/fluid inside to dissipate as quickly as possible to the ambient environment. Once this happens, we have a roughly room temperature compressed gas. If we allow the gas to decompress, its temperature will fall…to below room temperature. The particles are now saying, “ok, you’re increasing our volume, and this means you’ll know less about ??where?? we are. So to compensate, we’ll slow down a bit so you can at least know how fast we’re going.” Obviously the trick in any of these refrigeration systems is being able to compress the gas ??a lot?? as well as being able to efficiently remove the heat from the compressed gas.

    This process will work for any gas, including air. In fact, I encounter this phenomenon every time I air down the tires on my bike. The tires are filled with ordinary air, compressed to between 90 and 110 PSI. When initially pressurized, they do heat up, but over time, they cool to ambient temperature. When I rapidly release the pressure, the valve becomes noticeably cold to the touch. In most refrigeration, we don’t use air, we use some kind of refrigerant, like Freon. Freon is the trademark name for any number of different gasses used as refrigerants known as halocarbons. You’ve probably heard of at least some of these by their scientific name, chlorofluorocarbons (abbreviated CFCs). These are the same CFCs that scientists discovered were causing ozone depletion in the 1980s and 1990s, so they aren’t in widespread use anymore. All refrigerants are just special types of gas that have properties that are beneficial to what we’ll be doing with them.

    The important thing to remember is that if you’re unable to remove the heat from the compressed gas, and you let it decompress, all it will do is decrease back to roughly room temperature where it started. So it won’t be cool the way we want it. If you want the gas to be very cold, you have to make its starting temperature less. There is actually no limit to this (beyond absolute zero) and this is how we create extremely cold substances like liquid nitrogen. In fact, you can sometimes create bits of dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) by releasing a fire extinguisher into a burlap sack. The CO2 in the fire extinguisher is compressed, and if it’s been sitting long enough, it’s also at room temperature. Releasing the pressure causes a large decrease in temperature. So large that the gas actually solidifies into its solid state.

    Hopefully this was an interesting slight deviation from my usual topics of electromagentism.

  • Did You Get A New Computer?

    Last week I had my daughter tell me my new computer was great, but it really needed a mouse. I couldn’t help but chuckle out loud, my “new computer” was my iPad connected to a keyboard case. I couldn’t pick on her too badly though. A quick looked and an untrained eye might be fooled by this iPad case from “**Brydge.**”:http://www.smalldog.com/search?search=brydge?search=brydge&page=1&refinecat=iPad_and_iPad_mini_Accessories

    I’ve been using and testing the Brydge 9.7in Bluetooth case and I love it. I’ve never used a keyboard case before on an iPad so I was not sure how I would use it and if I would even like the idea of having a keyboard attached to my iPad. To get used to the idea I forced myself to abandon my MacBook Air in the evenings and exclusively used my iPad with this keyboard case. Ultimately I found it very functional. While I am a huge fan of this iPad case, like with many cases there are a few drawbacks to it. However, for me, the advantages to this kind of case outweighed the few negatives I’ve found while using it.

    **Features that make this case a winner for me**

    There are several features about this iPad keyboard case that I really enjoy. Unlike many iPad keyboard cases, this is just the keyboard. Your iPad slides into the hinge system with rubber covers to tightly grip your iPad. Whether you pick up the iPad itself or just grab it by the keyboard and carry it around like a laptop your iPad will not go anywhere. Linking the Keyboard via Bluetooth was fast, a quick launch of **Settings,** **Bluetooth** and hitting the power button on the keyboard was all it took. A little detail that you don’t always see on keyboards for iPad is that the power button illuminates when you hit it so you know the keyboard is on. That was it, about two minutes of my time and I was up and running. I immediately liked the feel of the keyboard. It feels very similar to the Apple Bluetooth keyboard and while it’s not a full size keyboard it does not feel restrictive when I type. Specialty keys worked flawlessly. I can quickly lock my iPad screen, launch Siri and adjust brightness from the keyboard. Lastly, the look! This is a very professional and eye-catching setup. My daughter thinking it was a new computer is a perfect example. This keyboard case comes in coordinating colors to match your iPad and because it’s designed to use without a case your iPad remains a focal point.

    **Some drawbacks to this iPad keyboard case**

    The nature of the design and function of a keyboard case does lead to a few drawbacks, but these drawbacks are typical of just about all keyboard cases on the market. The first thing I noticed was my lightweight iPad now gained some weight. You’re also stuck in landscape view. There’s not much to be done about these two drawbacks, but your iPad easily separates from the keyboard. It did take a little adjustment on my part to be comfortable reading my digital books in landscape view. I’ll admit it’s still not that comfortable and feels a little unnatural and I’m still adjusting to it. A final draw back that I see is that your iPad isn’t fully protected. The screen is protected when the iPad is closed against the keyboard but the corners and backside are exposed. There’s good news however because this particular keyboard case can accommodate and fits with the Otterbox Universe case for iPad! I thought this was an error when I read it, but it’s true. The keyboard has rubber inserts that help to hold the iPad securely to the keyboard, you simply remove these and your iPad easily and securely fits again to the keyboard with the added protection and convenience of this case.

    If you’re in the market for a new keyboard case for your iPad I strongly recommend this keyboard case!

  • Remind Me Again…

    Apple designed the built-in Reminders app as a list-keeping assistant for both macOS and iOS. You can add reminders of any sort to the default Reminders list, or you can create custom lists, like Groceries or Movies to Watch. Plus, if you’ve set up Family Sharing, you also have a shared family list that everyone in your family can access. I can see that being handy if you have kids but I am gonna hide that from Grace because she will fill up my list!

    Making reminders is easy enough, but they can be easy to lose track of, and you may have to hunt through a number of lists to find any given one. How can you be certain that you won’t forget a particular to-do item? One technique that works well is to add a time trigger to the reminder. Time triggers cause your Apple devices to alert you to the reminder, and as an added benefit, they make it easier to find associated reminders.

    Say you want to remind yourself to buy tickets to Halestorm’s next concert. To include a trigger in your reminder, you can get Siri’s assistance by mentioning a time in your request: “Remind me to get tickets at 10 AM tomorrow.” Or, when you add the reminder manually, pick a day and time. After creating the reminder, hover over it or tap it, tap the i button that appears, and the option to be reminded on a day. Then, on a Mac, click the preset day and time to adjust them. In iOS, tap Alarm and set a day and time. Unless the specific time matters, pick a general time that’s early in the day, like 10 AM.

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    Because your reminder includes a time, it appears not only in the list where you added it but also in the special Scheduled list. That’s important!

    Now imagine that it’s first thing tomorrow morning and you’re trying to plan your day. You can either check the Scheduled list in Reminders or ask Siri: “Show me my reminders for today.” Once you see your day’s reminders, you can just do the easy ones, plan them into your day, or reschedule them for another day.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/5130.png!

    Of course, since you’ve assigned a time-based trigger to these reminders, Apple’s Notifications feature comes into play. At the appropriate time, your Apple devices can display an alert that you must dismiss, show a banner that disappears quickly, or play a sound.

    Reminders can make it easy to remember important tasks, but try these tips if you need help:

    * For reminders created on one device to trigger notifications on another, set up your iCloud account on both devices must have Reminders on. Do this on the Mac in System Preferences > iCloud. In iOS, tap Settings > Your Apple ID Name > iCloud (if your copy of iOS isn’t up-to-date, tap Settings > iCloud). Plus, the reminders must be on a list that’s stored in iCloud.

    * If you use Siri to make reminders, specify the list where those reminders will be added if you don’t speak its name. On the Mac, choose Reminders > Default List. In iOS, go to Settings > Reminders > Default List.
    Configure Mac notifications in System Preferences > Notifications. At the left, select Reminders and then make your choices at the right. The Alerts alert style is the easiest to notice. Set up iOS notifications in Settings > Notifications > Reminders. Turn on the Allow Notifications switch. For best results, turn on Show on Lock Screen and select Alerts under “Alert Style When Unlocked.”

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/5131.png!

    * On your iPhone, to see a different Reminders list, tap the “stack” of lists at the bottom of the screen.

    Remind me again why I need those reminders? Well, since I always have a device handy (literally in the case of the Apple Watch!) it is easy to keep track of my “Honey Dos” and the important stuff, too!