Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • Black History Month – BB Stringfield

    Bessie B. Stringfield, a.k.a. “BB,” was the first black woman to make eight long-distance solo tours across the U.S. on a motorcycle. In the 1930s, BB Stringfield rode her hot rod through areas known for racial violence and prejudice. She earned the nickname “The Negro Motorcycle Queen.”

    On her tours, Bessie Stringfield traveled through Brazil, Haiti and parts of Europe. Her next destination was determined by tossing a penny on a map. As she rode through Jim Crow country, BB would sometimes sleep on her motorcycle with a blanket if there were no safe places for her to stay during her trip.

    Born in Kingston, Jamaica, BB Stringfield came to America as a child and was given up for adoption. At age 16, she was given a motorcycle by her Irish adoptive mother, whose name she was not allowed to repeat. After she was gifted her first 1928 Indian Scout bike, BB Stringfield would later purchase another 27 motorcycles throughout her life.

    Throughout her travels, BB performed motorcycle stunts for local carnivals. The press loved her balancing stunt while her Harley was in motion.

    Bessie used her motorcycle talent to work as the only female civilian motorcycle dispatch rider in World War II. She quickly carried documents between military bases and sharpened her riding skills by riding over makeshift bridges. Once her tour was complete, she moved to Miami and founded the Iron Horse Motorcycle Club. In Miami, Stringfield secretly entered riding contests as a man, and after winning, removed her helmet to reveal her gender. As a result, she was often denied the prize money.

    In her personal life, BB Stringlfied married and divorced six times. She lost three children over the years. Her final husband, Arthur Stringfield, asked that Bessie keep his last name because it made him famous.

    Bessie Stringfield, the Negro Motorcycle Queen, died in 1993 at age 82 from an enlarged heart. Her memory was left with the remainder of her six ex-husbands. In 2002 she was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame.

  • Playing Around with AirPlay

    I remember the time when if I wanted to play audio on a stereo or connect my Mac to a TV, I needed a special cable and always ended up balancing my Mac on the skinny TV table. The details varied over time and with different devices, but one thing remained constant: cables were always a pain!

    To eliminate the need for fussy cables, Apple developed a wireless transmission technology called AirPlay. With AirPlay, you can send audio and video from one device to another, making it possible, for instance, to play music from your iPhone on a standalone speaker or put a webcast video from Safari on your Mac onto the big screen in your living room. You can even use AirPlay to mirror your iPad or Mac screen on a large-screen TV.

    With AirPlay, it always takes two to tango: a device that sends the audio or video, and another device that receives it. When it comes to receiving audio and video via AirPlay, you have four options:

    * An Apple TV (second-generation or newer) can receive both audio and video and play it on a TV

    * An AirPort Express base station can receive audio and pass it on to a stereo through the connection on the AirPort Express

    * More and more manufacturers are now selling standalone AirPlay-enabled speakers that can play audio

    * The Airfoil Satellite app from Rogue Amoeba turns a Mac, Windows PC, or iOS device into an audio receiver. Airfoil Satellite for Mac or Windows is free with the purchase of Airfoil, which adds AirPlay support to more apps.

    How you send audio and video varies by device and what you’re trying to accomplish:

    * In iOS 10, when you’re playing audio or video that you want to send via AirPlay, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to reveal Control Center, swipe left to show the Media pane, and then tap the destination device in the list.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4979.png!

    * On a Mac, to send audio or video from iTunes via AirPlay, click the AirPlay icon to the right of the volume slider in the toolbar, and choose a destination. When you’re playing audio, you can click the + to send audio to multiple destinations at the same time.

    * You can also send certain videos from Safari or QuickTime Player to an Apple TV. Click the AirPlay icon in the playback controls and then choose your Apple TV.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4982.png!

    * On a Mac, you can send all the audio (from all apps!) to an AirPort Express or AirPlay speaker by clicking (or Option-clicking in older versions of OS X) the Sound icon in the menu bar and choosing the destination device. You can also choose a destination device in the Output view of the Sound system preference pane.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4981.png!

    * To send audio from any Mac app to an AirPlay speaker without sending your entire system audio there, use Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil.

    AirPlay’s other neat trick is that you can use it with an Apple TV to mirror your Mac or iOS device screen (where the same image appears on both screens) or use an AirPlay-connected Apple TV as a separate display to extend your Mac’s desktop. This is a good way to play video on an Apple TV if you need to use an app other than iTunes, Safari, or QuickTime Player. Here’s what you do:

    * In iOS, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to reveal Control Center, and in the leftmost pane, tap the AirPlay Mirroring button and choose your Apple TV.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4979.png!

    * On a Mac, click the AirPlay icon in the menu bar and choose your Apple TV from the list. Once you’ve selected it, click that menu again to choose whether you mirror your Mac screen to the Apple TV or use the Apple TV as a separate display.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4980.png!

    The most common problem with AirPlay is that you must have both devices are on the same Wi-Fi network and that all software has been updated to the latest version. If that isn’t sufficient, restart each device, along with your network router.

    AirPlay isn’t perfect, but Apple has been improving it in every new release of iOS and macOS, so if you would like to extend your iPhone’s musical reach or play video from your Mac on your HDTV, give it a try!

  • Frederick Douglass

    We are celebrating Black History Month all of February and today we will honor the memory of Frederick Douglass, a former slave that…

  • Product Review: Elgato Eve

    I continue to play around with home automation products. As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, it’s ok to take baby steps into home automation. I’ve been slowly adding devices in my home and started with installing outlets around my home that I can use with HomeKit. I’m not sure yet if any of these smart outlets will help to reduce my energy usage in a significant way, but it sure makes me feel better to know my kids are really turning off the lights.

    Over the past week I’ve installed and have been playing around with the Elgato Eve wireless weather sensors. Both units measure temperature and humidity. The room sensor adds air quality and the outdoor sensor measures air pressure. Setting these sensors up is quick and easy. Simply download the free app from the App Store, sync them to your phone by verifying a serial number and you’re ready to go!

    The “*Eve wireless weather sensor*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/88351/elgato-eve-weather-wireless-outdoor-sensor installed quickly outside. The sensor reports the temperature, humidity, and air pressure with what I would consider fairly high accuracy. I did initially set up the unit inside and one observation on the negative is it took quit some time to accurately report on the outside temperature. It’s also important to note that it’s only water resistant, so you’ll want to install it in a location outside where it’s out of direct contact with the elements. I set up the Eve “*room*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/88350/elgato-eve-room-wireless-indoor-sensor in my bedroom. I have some allergies and wondered if I would notice a difference in some of my symptoms based on its air quality readings and humidity. I’ve been making a greater effort to let fresh air circulate through my room, a challenge sometimes in Vermont winters. I have noticed my breathing is better since being able to monitor the air quality closer.

    Aside from the ability to simply better monitor weather conditions via HomeKit from anywhere, the Eve app itself provides you with accumulative data. I can look for example and see what my average room humidity has been over the last week specifically in my room. To see this more detailed information you do need to use the Eve app. HomeKit cannot provided the detailed maps and statistics, but the benefit of HomeKit is I can see all of my various HomeKit enabled devices at a glance.

  • Drag and Drop vs. Cloning

    The macOS Finder interface has gone through many changes over the years. Some of these have been major, while others are merely cosmetic. One thing that has endured is the ability to drag and drop files and folders. In most cases the easiest way to move or copy a file is to just drag it where you want it and drop it there. However, you may have experienced cases where dragging and dropping large amounts of files hasn’t worked properly.

    This can happen when there is a file that is corrupted or damaged in some way that doesn’t allow the file to be copied or moved. When this happen, the Finder cancels the entire transfer even if it has apparently already copied some or even most of the data. The slow way around this is to drag and drop files one-by-one until you discover which item is the problematic one. What if I told you there was a better way?

    Here at Small Dog, we use “*Carbon Copy Cloner*”:https://bombich.com to perform most data copying tasks. This program installs a cloning “engine” on your machine and uses this to perform the copy. This engine is smart and will skip over problematic files and copy everything it can. When the task completes, you can open a *History* window and see which files were skipped, the total amount of data copied and how long the copy took.

    Carbon Copy Cloner has a number of other useful features as well. It can be used to create a bootable clone of your entire hard drive, and every Mac can be booted from an external drive, so if your hard drive fails but the computer is otherwise working, a bootable clone can get you back up and running in just the time it takes to boot the machine again. It can also create scheduled clones so you can, for example, create a bootable clone every night so that you always have a recent version to boot from. With the SafetyNet feature enabled you can get a file history, similar to Time Machine, so that you can find older versions of files if needed.

    “*Download a free 30-day trial of Carbon Copy Cloner here!*”:https://bombich.com

  • _Hello Fellow Technophiles,_

    I have made it back from Florida safe and sound. I am confused about all of this white stuff on the ground that does not appear to be sand, though. It’s cold, wet, and it’s everywhere. As a lifelong Vermonter, I am not sure that it was wise to experience 75 degree days in February because before this trip I just took winter as something that is inevitable and must be endured. I have heard that after the Civil War a significant number of Union soldiers from Vermont stayed down south, which up hear means anywhere south of the Vermont/Massachusetts border.

    I hadn’t flown JetBlue in a while and was pleased to discover that in addition to TVs in every seat, they now also offer free gate-to-gate wifi. It is becoming increasingly rare, even in the wilds of Vermont, to be out of a coverage zone, so it made me happy to be able to stay connected even in the air. I want to assure you, however, that I left my phone in the condo most of the times that I went down to the beach and managed to enjoy the sun and surf without distractions from the outside world.

    Thanks for reading!

    Mike
    “*michaeld@smalldog.com*”:mailto:michaeld@smalldog.com

  • Apple Re-Paves The Street

    After several quarters of top-line revenue stagnation, Apple rebounded in the holiday quarter by returning to growth and posting their best financial results…

  • I am heartened by the overwhelming response to the executive order on immigration. Unless you are a native American, you are descended from immigrants. I know I am as my grand parents immigrated to the USA to escape persecution. And do not forget that son of a Syrian immigrant by the name of Steve Jobs! It is wonderful to see the peaceful non-violent demonstrations and the statements by Apple and other businesses including Budweiser who is airing an immigration-themed Super Bowl commercial.

    Small Dog Electronics recognizes the intrinsic value of our immigrants and the diversity that makes our country strong and abhors the misguided executive order.

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily & Hadley_