Kibbles & Bytes Blog

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.

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!

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.

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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.”

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* 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!

_Dear Friends,_

Cold, hot, cold, hot, rain, sun – that about wraps up the weather report. Grace and I went over to our friend, Deborah’s house the other day and her garden was beautiful and also about a month further along than ours. It is one of the perils of having a higher elevation and weird micro-climate. The apples, strawberries and blueberries seem to be doing well.

All of the new products Apple announced have started to arrive and the response has been very positive thus far from those of you that have been pioneers. I think that the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro is going to be a huge hit. I know a lot of people can see the iPad replacing their Mac but I am not in that crowd yet. At least not until Hadley gets our database running on an iPad 🙂

Jezebel, my bulldog, is an avid TV watcher. She loves the Cubs but mostly watches for dogs or for the sound of dogs. When she sees a dog on the TV she leaps out of what seems to be a mellow nap on the couch to run over to the TV and bark. She does the same thing every time Anthony Rizzo hits a homer, too!

This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive features the “**13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002725/kibbles-bytes-exclusive-bundle? This is the newly discontinued model at a bit of a discount. It features the “**2.9 GHz i5 Dual Core Intel processor, 8GB of RAM and a big 512GB SSD drive.**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002725/kibbles-bytes-exclusive-bundle? It is silver and I only have 4 of these left. This week, while supplies last, I am bundling this unit with AppleCare+ for only “**$2049.99!**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002725/kibbles-bytes-exclusive-bundle?