All Apple All Day

This isn't really a full post, but I'm pretty happy with the updated look for AAAD. We're going to be making a few more tweaks - and incorporating a title graphic in short order - but for now, it's just nice to look at a website that isn't all greyscale!

I'm on the road a lot. But when I'm in Chicago, I am a remote worker, operating from my home office.  Our company uses GoToMeeting quite a bit - both for internal meetings & presentations, and for assisting clients with remote forensic collections of their data for litigation.  It's a very versatile and powerful web platform - essentially, a conference call in which all of the participants can hear each other, either over the phone or through their computer's microphone & speakers.  At the same time, all of the participants can see the selected "presenter's" computer screen - and any participant can be given control of the presenter's computer.  As you can imagine, this is incredibly useful for, say, operating a powerful forensic tool for a client employee based in, say, China. The only problem is, we're interviewing that employee and logging responses at the same time. And if the GoToMeeting is showing the target's

Apple's AirPort networking products have a few built-in advantages.  First off, they're high quality - both in terms of functionality and in terms of build quality.  Secondly, they're simple. Very simple. With the AirPort Utility on a Mac doing most of the heavy lifting, they're basically plug-and-play. In my experience, that is somewhat unusual.  We've been very happy with our wireless network, which has a Time Capsule as the primary router, and multiple A1264 AirPort Express devices extending the network.  So why am I updating my AirPort networking components? Why rock the boat? 

I used to be a prodigious diet soda drinker. To the point that people noticed . To other people, diet soda consumption was my "thing". Really. But those days are over - my 2013 resolution was to cut artificial sweeteners entirely out of my diet. Now, I don't know if there's anything wrong with diet soda. I don't know if artificial sweeteners are in any way unhealthy, or if diet soda is associated with weight gain, or anything. I doubt that any of that is true, actually.  But I do believe in moderation, and I figured it was time to stop compulsively pounding Diet Mountain Dew and Coke Zero. Two months in, and I really barely miss diet soda anymore. But it's time to dial the resolution thing up a bit, and drop some weight.  Also, this gives me an excuse to add a new gadget! My 6-year-old and I were at the Apple Store yesterday, and I noticed that they're selling wi-fi scales - that track your weight and BMI every day.

I know what you're probably thinking about that title - Matt, of COURSE you can watch British TV shows! There's Downton Abbey and Doctor Who, of course, and Gordon Ramsay and Ricky Gervais are on at least 15 shows each right now.  AND there's the entire BBC America, and Wheeler Dealers on Velocity, and there's American versions of Top Gear, and British versions of Law & Order, and Premier League on Fox Soccer, and Six Nations Rugby.... what more can you want? Well, that's not what I'm looking for - I want to be able to see British TV that's on RIGHT NOW. As in, last night.  Mostly, topical comedy panel shows, like Sean Lock and Jon Richardson on "8 Out of 10 Cats". 

I'm obviously a huge Apple fan. So when iOS was released last year, I didn't mourn the loss of Google Maps, as much as I welcomed the arrival of Apple Maps. Yes, I knew it wouldn't have data for public transit at first - but I figured that would be a short-lived problem... surely Apple, with its gargantuan war chest, can acquire a company or service that provides transit data.  And then the app arrived. It's beautiful. It's minimalist. The vector graphics scaled really smoothly and gorgeously, as opposed to Google Maps' constant "disappear to grid, redraw" whenever you zoomed in or out. But then we all started using the app. And we laughed at the melting freeways, and we started to notice rather obvious mistakes, like misplaced cities and missing roads.  The turn-by-turn was awesome, but it often took us to incorrect locations. And you couldn't count on the app to know where a particular business was - the maps were shockingl

Today was the first day of intrasquad Cubs games down in Mesa, Arizona.  And while the future of the team looks bright (OF prospect Jorge Soler homered, SS prospect Javy Baez crushed a ball that SS Starlin Castro turned into diving putout), this could be a long season.  Who cares! It's still baseball. This year is our 5th consecutive year of buying the 9-pack of tickets. For the first time I can remember, the Cubs basically allowed us to pick any 9 games we wanted, with no April Wednesday afternoons forced upon us.  Our tickets arrived last week. It's a mix of Saturdays, Sundays, and night games. A pricier 9-game pack than usual, because we only purchased games that were in demand - but the Big Games are always more fun.  We'll be using the MLB At The Ballpark app this year to log our attendance at Wrigley, and on roadtrips to Brewers and White Sox games. The app got some pretty good reviews last year, and I'm curious to see what it can do.