Kibbles & Bytes Blog

We are having our own version of the million women march down here on Duval Street on Saturday and I will be out there with Grace. I am very scared, concerned and unhappy with the election results, the Russians messing with our election and sad to see President Obama leave office.

It is weird, I used to be a complete news junkie. I would have the news playing in the background, I would rush home to catch the evening news and news sites were dominating my Safari favorites. Now, I would rather post pictures of Grace and Jezebel on Facebook than get depressed about the news. Does that mean I am wicked old?

I think we will find some time to make our way to the beach and dip into the ocean this weekend, too!

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

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

_Don, Emily & Hadley_

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There was one component that I skipped in my article last week. It wasn’t actually present on my breadboard, but it is present on both the graphics PCI card and the 10/100 ethernet PCI card on my desk. This component can take many physical shapes, but it’s common to see them as a silvery metal oval with flat sides. This component is called a crystal oscillator and is undoubtedly the most critical component in all complex digital circuitry.

Digital circuitry is discrete by definition (1s and 0s). The opposite of digital circuitry is analog circuitry (which has been the bulk of what I’ve talked about in my articles). Digital circuitry expects the electricity being used to exist in one of two discrete states, either on or off. What constitutes “on” is arbitrary and will depend on the exact application, though in demos and educational material, it’s commonly 5VDC, but the exact value isn’t important, as long as it’s consistent. An “on” signal will always be 5VDC (within some narrow tolerance) and an “off” signal will be 0VDC (again, within some narrow tolerance).

Analog circuitry isn’t concerned with being in any particular state, and in fact is expected to range infinitely between two values. The sine wave of standard household AC power is an analog signal. At some point in time, the voltage will be every single value between -120V and +120V. This property is often used to our advantage, in step-up/step-down transformers for example. It isn’t very useful for digital circuits though.

Because digital circuits are discrete, a good way to think about them is as a series of switches. In circuits, these are often called “gates” and they’re usually composed of transistors in various arrangements. There can be ??millions?? if not ??billions?? of these little gates/switches inside even modestly complex digital circuits. If all those switches are going on and off on their own, digital circuits wouldn’t be able to do anything. It would be like a million-piece orchestra without a conductor.

A clock signal is used to synchronize and coordinate all of those switches, much like a conductor’s baton keeping pace for an orchestra. Every time the clock “ticks” a series of signals are passed through the digital circuitry, from one stage to the next, over and over and over. For something complex like a CPU (central processing unit) in any modern-day computer, the clock signal needs to be fast (as in billions of ticks per second fast) and accurate.

You might be thinking, “Hadley, you mentioned a 555 timer/signal chip a few weeks ago, why don’t we just use that?” Some digital circuits do. When I took a computer logic and organization class in college, we built a small computer from scratch on a breadboard and we used a 555 chip as the clock. This is great for learning purposes because the 555 can be made to tick pretty slowly. We were able to actually watch the computers we built tick through work at the sub-instruction level. Chips like the 555 are limited however based on the rise/fall time of the signals they create. Anything over 2MHz for a clock speed would be pushing it.

To finally bring it back around, this is why we use crystal oscillators like the ones on my PCI cards to generate that clock signal. They can be made to accurately tick billions of times a second if necessary and are cheap, small and simple. In fact, they’ve been in use outside computers for decades. The crystal inside the oscillator is made from quartz. Hence, quartz-crystal wrist watches. The details of how these oscillators actually work delves into piezoelectrics and some other physics I don’t have time for here, but may discuss in a later article.

The oscillation speed of the crystal oscillator and clock signal in a computer can be thought of as a speed limit. The circuit cannot process data faster than the clock ticks. So the clock cannot tick faster than the slowest component, lest it skip a tick and data gets all mixed up. Some types of memory circuits tend to be slow in operation and so the clock must be set to tick only that fast.

Hopefully this all makes sense and I was able to illuminate a critical part of every digital circuit we use today!

It’s probably happened to you at least once and it’s worse than the spinning beach ball. It’s the scary black screen with multiple languages alerting you to restart your computer. I’ve seen it countless times on customer machines over the years and once or twice on my own computers. Most users come in with concern and fear on their faces; what just happened to their computer?

This black screen is often referred to as a kernel panic and I like to describe it as the computers equivalent to your car’s check engine light. It’s a very generic error that can means something has gone horribly wrong or your computer just simply needs to restart. Generally the only way to know if your kernel panic was the result of a serious problem is running diagnostics, typically performed by a technician. I once experienced this with a 15in MacBook Pro of mine. I was sitting in my living room looking up something on the internet and BAM kernel panic. I was stuck with a machine that was completely unresponsive, locked up and displayed a scary black screen. My computer had never before indicated any kind of performance issues and was working perfectly fine until it locked up on me without warning.

If you should find yourself in the unlucky position of having your Mac lock up on you due to a kernel panic you will need to restart your computer. How you might ask? When your computer is locked up and unresponsive to your keyboard, mouse, trackpad, etc the only way to restart your computer is to hold down the power button for about five seconds. This will force your computer to turn off and it will shut down. I would suggest letting your computer sit for about thirty seconds and then turn the computer back on again. With the new Touch Bar MacBook Pros you will need to press down on the blank touch ID button until you feel and hear a click.

It’s never advisable to shutdown and restart your computer by just holding down on the power button and you should only do this in situations where you have no other choice. Forcing your computer to shut down by holding the power button can cause corruption and loss of data among other things. However, when your Mac is frozen there is no other option. In many cases this lock up is a one time deal, as was the case with my MacBook Pro. The machine only ever locked up the one time. Like your cars check engine like, the kernel panic can be caused by any number of benign issues from a bad memory chip to a logic board issue. Certainly it’s recommended that if your machine locks up again you should have it looked it, but more than likely it’s just an isolated event.

I am just getting used to my new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and while I cannot say that the Touch Bar has changed the way I work, YET; I do think that it may!

The things I use the most now are the Siri button and the fingerprint sensor. I am also using it with AirMail and love the big red “Move to Trash” button. If the app you are using is optimized for the Touch Bar you may be able to customize it for the way you work. When I am working on my inbox we have one set of Touch Bar helpers and when I am in the middle of writing an email I have another set of useful buttons.

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But where are my function keys? Well, I never use function keys but if you need your function keys it is simply a matter of pressing the “fn” key at the bottom left of the keyboard and your beautiful Touch Bar is transported back in time to function keys.

When you are in the Finder the Control Strip on the right side of the Touch Bar shows a few familiar buttons like volume, mute, and display brightness, as well as Siri. The Escape (Esc) button appears on the left side of the Touch Bar.

In Safari you can just touch one of your favorites and safari surfs right over. Once you are there, the Touch Bar will show you open tabs, just touch to open, a back and forward arrow, home button and of course, you can customize it to add things like history, autofill or sidebar.

In Photos, the Touch Bar speeds your search for just the right photo as you slide your finger across the thumbnails. You can tap to mark a selected photo as a favorite or tap rotate it. After you select a photo, tap to see editing options (crop, filters, adjust, retouch, and red-eye). You can edit your photo using controls that appear on the Touch Bar.

It is pretty cool in Maps, too, but I don’t know how many people are navigating with their MacBook Pros. You can find yourself by tapping in the Touch Bar to find your location. Tap the search field to type where you want to go. See what’s nearby. The Touch Bar shows buttons with categories of nearby locations, like restaurants, hotels, and gas stations. Get there: When you select a location to visit, you see options for getting directions, calling the business, or viewing its website.

In most apps you can customize the Touch Bar. Choose View -> Customize Touch Bar. The customization window appears on your display, allowing you to choose your favorite items. When you’re customizing the Touch Bar, its buttons jiggle like on your iPhone, and you see the Done button on the left side.

Use your cursor to drag items that you want down into the actual Touch Bar. You can also drag items left and right within the Touch Bar to rearrange them, or drag them up and out of the Touch Bar to remove them. Tap Done in the Touch Bar or click Done on the screen when you finish.

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Apple hasn’t forgotten about accessibility either. As an example, you can activate Voice Over by pressing the command key and tapping the Touch ID button three times. VoiceOver tells you what’s on your screen, and walks you through actions like selecting a menu option or activating a button using your keyboard or trackpad. It can also tell you what’s on your Touch Bar.

You can use Touch Bar Zoom to if you enable it in the Accessibility system preference. This allows you to touch and drag with one finger on the Touch Bar to see a zoomed view of the Touch Bar on your display.
You can change the magnification level by holding down the Command key and use a two-finger pinch gesture or while panning with one finger, quickly tap with a second finger to synthesize a tap where your first finger is. Hold the second finger down and move both fingers together to synthesize a tap down and drag where your first finger is. Hold your finger still in one location to enter direct-touch mode, which allows you to interact directly with the control under your finger.

I think that the Touch Bar is a pretty amazing innovation that may really make a difference in how I interact with my Mac. I did not think that I would use it much with my external keyboard and display but I am moving my MacBook Pro closer and closer so I can use the Touch Bar to do things like delete mail or surf through my photos.

_Dear Friends,_

My snow plow woman texted me to tell me my front door up on Prickly Mountain was wide open. Of course, she closed the door for me and I was able to lock the door remotely with my Kevo lock app. I am really having fun playing with home automation stuff and that is the next big initiative from Small Dog. We are building home automation centers in two of our stores and bringing in a bunch of new products that are HomeKit compatible. I am going to have to make the break from Alexa at some point but right now she is controlling my lights and thermostat and the ceiling fan. Oh yeah, and she also controls my outdoor irrigation system with the Rachio.

I was working in the store down here in Key West the other day and the primary objection to the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros is “port-fear”. Many customers have legacy USB equipment and are uncertain about how the move to USB-C will impact them. Personal experience sells and I tell customers how USB-C actually simplified my setup and in most cases that “port-fear” gets turned around. With my MacBook Air, I would have to plug in three cables each morning – display, power and USB for my keyboard. Now, I plug in one USB-C cable which goes to a small hub that has display, power and USB.

We planted a papaya and a mango tree down here after becoming jealous of the trees covered in fruit at our neighbor’s house. We are hoping our green thumbs work on those!

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