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Out with the (very) old, in with the new…

As you can see (unless you're using RSS, in which case, visit the site to see), there's a new look around here. According to the datestamp on the folder, my old theme (which I named "macbar" for no obvious reason) went live in January of 2007. In internet years, that's like 300 years ago.

The age of the theme showed, too. Graphics were heavy, textures overbearing, and (worst of all) the site was entirely fixed in size, which made for a horrid mobile experience (and it wasn't great on big screens, either). As a reminder of the "good old times," click the image at right for a flashback.

So say hello to "macbar2014," if only because I'm too lazy to think up an exciting new name. The new theme is responsive down to iPhone size, and also expands to fill 1400 or so pixels of width. Beyond that, the text field stops growing, as honestly, it gets hard to read if it's too wide. But that still gives a much wider reading area than the old theme.

With the new theme comes a renewed focus on keeping the blog up to date; it's my plan to post here more regularly post, including more detailed looks at some of the 140 character observations that I blast out on Twitter. I'll also link to my Macworld articles, as much for my easy future reference as anything else.

Read on if you're at all interested in the tech details behind the site do-over…
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Review of Excel for iPad

Macworld logoI spent some time (a lot of time, actually) with Excel for the iPad, and reviewed it for Macworld:

There are any number of spreadsheet apps available for the iPad, but recently the market changed dramatically when Microsoft released the full Office suite for iPad, including a version of Excel. While you can argue that Excel is many years late to the iPad party (and I wouldn’t disagree), the iPad version of Excel is a solid entrant, and instantly changes the landscape for competitive apps.

Read the rest over at Macworld.



Disney does digital right with ‘Frozen’ Blu-ray

Macworld logoI was pretty happy with how Disney handled digital copies on their Frozen Blu-ray:

What with the recent Veronica Mars/UltraViolet debacle, you might think all studios still live in the dark ages, and just don’t get it. Thankfully, as I discovered with my purchase of Frozen—the kids’ “Dad, you gotta buy it!” movie of the month—not all studios opt for such an anti-consumer path.

Frozen is available for purchase via iTunes as well as traditional retailers. At the time I bought, iTunes was asking $20 (with iTunes Extras included), which is the same price BestBuy was asking for the Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy bundle.

Read the rest on TechHive.



Shedding some light on the cost of lighting

In our home, our kitchen is lit with eight in-ceiling flood lights. Each uses a 65W incandescent bulb, and it seems to me that at least one of them is burned out at any given point in time.

Frustrated by the never-ending replacement cycle, and aware that there were longer-lived and more-efficeint options out there, I decided to look into replacing the incandescent bulbs with either CFL (fluorescent) or LED lights.

I was curious as to whether CFL or LED would be the better option for us, and how much it would cost to switch, in both the short and long term.

tl;dr summary: If you can afford the up-front costs, switch your lights to CFL or LED now. You will save a lot of money, and spend less time replacing bulbs. Read on for a full cost analysis of my kitchen light replacement project.

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How I manage spam on my mobile devices

Macworld logoMe, writing about battling spam on my iOS devices (which lack any sort of built-in spam handling tools):

Spam. Nobody likes it. Everybody hates it. Yet it continues to exist, filling inboxes with unwanted offers for generic drugs, overseas lotteries, health insurance, and who knows what else. The problem can be especially bad if you’ve got a really old email address, and that email address has been listed on various websites over the years—spammers love to harvest emails from websites, making your old, established, and public addresses subject to an amazing bombardment of spam.

Read the rest over at macworld.com.



Sugar detox: Day three

Day three is nearly done; the meals today were scrambled eggs for breakfast, leftover chicken with broccoli for lunch, and for dinner, I splurged on a nice steak with some steam cauliflower. Water all around, of course.

Day three was easier than day two in some ways, but harder in other ways. It was easier in that I had fewer all-out sugar cravings, which was a nice change. On the other hand, it was harder because of monotony. And really, looking back on the three days, that's the biggest challenge: eating according to the very-limited three-day "no sugar at all" diet is just really, really boring, which makes it hard to keep going.

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Sugar detox: Day two

Day two was definitely tougher than day one. Breakfast was a tasty (if flat) omelette with nothing but pepper for flavoring, and water to drink. Lunch was some ground beef, which I was going to make into a hamburger—then decided that a hamburger without cheese, tomatoes, and a bun would just be depressing. So I just mixed it up with some spices and ate it that way, along with some broccoli and water (of course).

Dinner was roasted chicken breast with a touch of lemon juice and other spices (edible enough), and some celery sticks (without peanut butter, I don't like celery nearly as much!). Snacks during the day were pistachios and peanuts.

Again, I had no issues with feeling hungry today, and physically, I feel fine. But today, the taste buds were (are) definitely screaming for some sugar.

Opening the fridge, my eyes seem to only see the things with sugar, and not my shelf of special food. Drinking a glass of water, my mouth is letting me know it'd really rather be having something flavored. After dinner, the dessert bell rang loud and clear in my mind. I even had a thought of eating a donut, and I don't even like donuts.

Tomorrow could be a challenge!



Sugar detox: Day one

Yesterday, Dave Hamilton posted this intriguing Tweet:

Despite his Tweet reading somewhat like a late-night infomercial (sorry, Dave!), I clicked the link, and found that Dave's blog entry discussed and linked to an article titled I'm Kicking the Sugar Habit!. That article explains how to free oneself from sugar in foods, starting with a brutal-looking "three days without sugar" detox period.

During this period, you're not allowed to eat or drink anything that has sugar in it, whether naturally occurring or artificially added. This basically eliminates 99% of my normal caloric intake. Yikes!

But between Dave's endorsement, the comments to the article, and my own curiosity, I decided I'd give it a try, starting today. Not really a New Year's Resolution per se, but just something to try. To keep myself honest, I decided to write about each day's experiences.

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Demonstrating iMovie’s stabilization feature

On our flight home from Denver last week, our 10-year-old daughter had the window seat. So I asked her to record the takeoff (using a Canon pocket cam with 1920x1080 video). I gave her no tips (she'd never tried this before), other than to minimize any reflections off the window and to try to keep the camera steady.

The results weren't bad, given her lack of experience at such things, but they weren't really usable. So as with my early-morning Portland take-off, I fed the raw video to iMovie's stabilization routine. The end result is nothing short of amazing, with some caveats as noted after the video:


(Also available on my YouTube channel.)

At first glance, the changes are nothing short of extraordinary. The raw video is almost unwatchable in spots, due to the extreme camera movement. The stabilized video, while jumpy in those same spots, is infinitely more watchable. There are some tradeoffs, of course, to get this stability.
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Macworld: 2014 writings

Macworld logoThe following table covers all of my writing for Macworld in 2014, current as of the last month shown on the table.

I'll update the list throughout the year, assuming they keep asking me to write stuff for them.