I have a lot of microphones kicking around the house — most stemming from my many attempts at podcasting. I have a Rode Podcaster with stand, shock mount, pop filter; a Blue Yeti; and various other crappy mics — not to mention those built into headphones and bluetooth headsets. There’s a lot going on, but I clearly needed another microphone.
Category: Articles
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Safari Reading List
What seems like eons ago I switched from Instapaper to Safari Reading List as my primary means of saving links to read them later. There were two impetuses for switching: the first was that Instapaper had just been sold; and the second was that with Safari Reading List I could tap and hold links almost anywhere in iOS and save a link for later. Good stuff.
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Put on a Watch
This isn’t about the Apple Watch, so don’t start sighing just yet.
When I started at MartianCraft I did so figuring that working from home wouldn’t be a big shift for me. Most of the time I worked one day a week from home already and I felt confident it would be similar. As it turns out — working from home full-time has a lot of little quirks I didn’t know about.
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Confirmation Bias
I quipped about this on Twitter earlier today, but wanted to mention it here as well: there’s an asinine amount of Apple Watch posts going around, ranging from X minutes with the Apple Watch, to three days with the Apple Watch.
I haven’t read most, and probably never will — I don’t think you should either. Outside of the handful of journalists which received the Apple Watch before the launch, there isn’t much stock to be put into what people are saying.
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I’m Shooting JPG Only Now
I’ve long been staunchly in the camp of RAW shooting. As long as your camera could shoot RAW, I couldn’t see a reason not to shoot with it. Storage is cheap, and a shitty reason to not shoot RAW.
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The GORUCK 15L Shoulder Bag
I keep saying that I’ve found the one and only bag that I need, but then I keep talking myself into trying a new bag. I guess I have a problem there, but that’s not something to tackle today.
Instead we need to talk about the GORUCK 15L Shoulder Bag. It’s not new, as it has been around for quite some time. However, the price recently dropped down ($155, currently) to a level where I felt it was worth checking this bag out, as I have always had a keen interest in it.
Could it be a good shoulder bag? Something better than my current top pick, the Tom Bihn Founder’s Briefcase…
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iPhone and iPad Cases for Kids
Both our kids have their own iPads and iPhones — all the devices are old ones — and because of that I have spent a fair amount of time trying to find good kids cases. Cases which help them carry and use the devices, but also offer ample protection.
I started first looking at military grade cases that didn’t look too insane. Each one I tried turned out to significantly impair the functionality of the iPad. Either rendering the speaker too muffled, or the touch screen far less responsive.
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Short Trips and Which Bag
I ran into something rather unexpected: it’s hard to choose a bag for a very short trip.
The scenario I found myself in: departing on a plane at midnight, and landing at 6am (destination time), then boarding another plane at 9pm (destination time), and returning home again at midnight. No hotel involved, just two flights, and work in-between each, before mercifully arriving home. ((To be clear, I drove the decision for such cramped flights, and not staying over longer. I wanted to minimize time away from the family as the available flight options were terrible.))
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Obvious Button States
If you use iOS then you’ve likely run into the most annoying part of iOS: the terrible shift key. It’s so bad it has a dedicated website to helping you understand if shift is on, or off.
Aesthetically the key works as it blends nicely with the look and feel of the keyboard, but from a usability perspective it is a miserable failure. Now Apple isn’t alone, there’s another offender I recently found for public flogging: Skype on the iPhone.
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Desk PM
There’s been an an abundance of talk about Desk, a multi-blog publishing tool that looks very pretty. The talk, unsurprisingly was drummed up because the creators chose to buy a spot on Daring Fireball to advertise the product. I held off because Ulysses, but at some point I have to try things like this to see if there is something here.
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OmniOutliner for iPhone
The OmniGroup has been making a big push of late to make all of their apps universal iOS apps, and that means some apps that were never on the iPhone before, are now making their way to the device. This week it is one of my favorite apps: OmniOutliner.
I’ve been a long time OmniOutliner user, so when OmniOutliner came to the iPad it became my go to way to outline. The biggest missing piece for me was always the iPhone app. Once you find a good tool on one platform, you can’t help but yearn for it on all the platforms you use. ((Yes, that a Ulysses reference.))
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The Lack of MagSafe
It appears, if my RSS reader is any indication, that the lack of a MagSafe connector on the new MacBook is a “thing” now (it is replaced by the USB-C port). People are doing lots of math and lamenting over laptop cords they have tripped over in years past.
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Ulysses for iPad
The wait is over.
Maybe you weren’t waiting, but I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. And most Ulysses users have been waiting for this day for quite some time as well.
Today my favorite writing app, Ulysses III (now renamed to just Ulysses and shipping alongside an updated Mac app), gets a full blown iPad app. Gone are the days of syncing your Ulysses documents through Daedalus Touch (no one will miss that).
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My iPad Week
On Monday there is an Apple event scheduled, and it’s likely to center around the Apple Watch — this post is not about the Apple Watch — there are two far more interesting rumors about the event for me: the 12″ Retina MacBook Air, and the iPad Pro. Both have had their share of rumors of late and both are things that I really want.
While I want a watch, I actually need a computer.
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Optimization Without Thinking
There was a recent update to Slack for iOS and it said it paid special attention to the iPhone 6 and 6 plus. This is of particular importance to me because I am a 6 plus user and Slack is my most used iPhone app. Upon opening the app I didn’t notice much, but then I swiped to switch channels.
Woah, they made that wider, now it’s easier to select new channels one handed with my right hand. Sweet!
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The Status Page
I’ve always been very intrigued by status pages at various places. They can be such a wealth of information, or such a despot of things I already know (yep, I knew iCloud was down). In the past I’ve toyed with having a page that told you when my site was up or down, but really: why? You already know if it is down, and whether there is a status page to confirm it or not is completely irrelevant to the situation at hand.
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The Paper Method
Near the beginning of this year I found that my note taking system wasn’t working anymore and was in need of an overhaul, or at least rethinking things. At the time my system was to take all notes on my iPad or iPhone (either with a stylus, or in a note app) and I was pretty adamant about how much better that is/was. I still think that digital notes hold far more advantages to analog, but some changes in the way I worked necessitated a change for me.
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The iPhone 6 Versus the iPhone 6 Plus
When the iPhones 6 and 6+ came out I thought that big iPhone was pretty silly. While I didn’t get it at the time, but I was intrigued by it. There had to be a reason for a larger-large screen iPhone, but I couldn’t comprehend that reason. I did the paper mock up print outs to see, and that made me even less sure of why such a large device would be made.
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Darkroom for iPhone
I posted about this the other day, when the app came out, but Darkroom is a new iPhone photo editing app and it is awesome. I dropped the ball on posting about this when it came out as I lost track of time, but I’ve been testing this app for what seems like a very long time and want to show it the love it deserves.
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The Pocket Pens
Let’s just start this off by clarifying: I am not really a pen geek. I like a nice pen, but I don’t take it further than that. So if you are a pen geek you should run away, if you are just a practical person wondering what pen you should carry in your pocket: I’ve tested two and will share my thoughts on those here.
I recently went down the road of supplementing my digital note system with analog, paper, notes. The reasoning is for another post, in this post we just need to talk about writing implements. You see as part of this process I wanted a pen that I could effectively carry on me. So, naturally, I asked Twitter what they thought.