Tralfaz

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  • Spotify vs Google “All Access”

    Last week, I posted about pitting spotify (premium) against the newly announced “Google All Access”, and today I am going to post an update.

    To be fair, I have only been using it for 4 or so days now, but the one thing that drove me nuts about using my collection in Play was that it would skip, stutter and freeze periodically.  And by periodically, I mean at least once an hour. I figured that Google would have addressed that by now, with their play to go large and challenge Spotify.

    But the skips, pauses, stutters, and even long freezes (up to a minute at a time) are still plaguing the service.  I have submitted feedback, but naturally no response (I expect none, as Google is notorious for their lack of direct support).

    I am not sure how much this is caused by it running in a tab on my Chrome browser, versus Spotify’s dedicated application. This is all on my PC (HP Elitebook 8640p, core i5, with 16 G ram, and my work network). But Spotify either does a better job of routing packets to me, or queuing up a buffer to avoid the follies of internet packet delivery.

    It is a shame, as I was grooving on the All Access radio stations. Their matching algorithms aren’t as good as Pandora, but they aren’t bad. And having my 18K files in their storage means that even the artists that don’t do streaming will be mixed in with my radio selections. (I could do that with Spotify, but I would need to dedicate 120G of disk locally for it, a big negative).

    So, I am back to Spotify, and enjoying their service, and performance.  I will continue to try the Google service, on my Nexus 7. Maybe with an Android native app it will be better?

  • What drives me nuts: Windows installers putting shortcuts on the desktop

    Nothing screams the 1990’s like every time you install a piece of software that it puts an icon with a shortcut on your desktop. I know that most software asks you if you want one placed on the desktop, and I ALWAYS uncheck that box. But all too often, the software installs it anyway, or it doesn’t ask and just drops one there.

    I know this is a minor rant, and I also know people (more than one) who manages their workflow via piles of files on their desktop, and for them, it makes perfect sense to put shortcuts on their desktop (although, for me it is always faster to tap the Windows key and type the name of the program I want to load). Fine, ask them first, and then drop the shortcut.

    But many times, the program doesn’t ask, and just places it. Or, it asks, you can unselect it, and it will STILL drop it on the desktop.

    This is one reason why I prefer the Mac. Beyond the fact that installing applications is usually no more complicated than copying it into the “Applications” folder, there isn’t a paradigm of putting shortcuts on the desktop to foster quick launching.

    Needless to say, I have over 30 shortcut icons on my desktop, none that I put there intentionally, and most of them placed even though I selected to not have one copied there on install.  About 2x a year, I go and delete all the useless desktop icons.

     

  • Curse Survey Monkey…

    I have been using Survey Monkey for a few years.  Great product, and for simple surveys, it really can’t be beat. But I stopped using it at my last job (we had a high buck license of Eloqua which pretty much kicks all asses).

    The Survey MonkeyFlash forward to today.  The non-profit that I work with (Southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption) needs to replace a couple of board members who decided to resign. Perfect use of a survey to get a tally of yay’s and nays’ from the membership.

    But now Survey Monkey has changed.  First, my old account disappeared.  Not a big deal, I hadn’t used it in a couple of years, so I wasn’t upset.  I sign up again, and go to create the ballot as a survey. A lot of the nifty functionality that I used to enjoy for my simple surveys is now an “upgrade”. Boo.

    The biggest limitation is that you can only use it to gather 100 responses.  Since we have over 200 members, and expect 80%+ to vote, that is not a good solution.

    I took the plunge and subscribed to the first tier of premium (I have some work surveys to do as well, so I will get a fair amount of use for my $17 a month), and I have an even chance of being reimbursed for the subscription.

    On my professional blog, I have done a few entries about the “Fremium” market strategy, and how you need to make sure that there are reasons for a casual users to “pay”. Survey Monkey certainly has applied similar learning, and it encouraged me to open my wallet to get the better version.

     

  • The good and the bad about Netflix streaming

    I will come out and say it, I love Netflix streaming video. I like being able to watch what I want, without having to fiddle with the queue to get the right disk sent next.

    I have really enjoyed watching some of the series I used to watch while growing up, and that is where the “bad” comes in. Of course, I remember Knight Rider being pretty awesome. But it is completely ‘meh’ now. Cheesy special effects, and David Hasselhof is an annoying a-hole.

    I did enjoy watching all the “Rockford Files”.  I loved that show when I was a kid, and I still enjoyed watching the episodes. Lots of fun.

    But it isn’t all roses. I was a huge fan of the X-Files when it was first run. I kind of drifted away after the 4th season, and sporadically caught an episode or two.  Lately, I re-watched them on Netflix, and being able to get through 2-3 episodes at a sitting, you can almost see in real time the Shark being jumped.  Of course this reminds me of why I drifted away (it had become all too predictable, and boring) in the first place.

    I just wish that they would get the agreements in place to greatly increase the available movies. For one, I hate not being able to queue up all the James Bond flicks for a marathon. But even some old classics like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff” aren’t in their library, except by disk.

     

  • Google’s “All Access” vs. Spotify Round 1

    I have written in the past about the music “locker” services. I have been a user of Amazon, Google’s Play, and Apple’s iTunes Match.

    But I have actually gone to using Spotify pretty much across the board. They have a great library, very deep, and lots of great genre’s to experiment with and explore. Since my work laptop has limited free space, I have pretty much resigned myself to streaming.

    I joined spotify when they came to the US, and I liked it.  I didn’t like the ads and the really bad recommendations they made (I am pretty sure I only listen to a top 40 song by accident), but the streaming was solid, and they had a lot of music on tap.  THe recently got “Metallica” in their inventory. Of course, I pay the $9.95 a month to get the premium service. Syncing files to my iPhone, and their application on my PC and Mac work quite well, with very few glitches.

    Apple’s iTunes Match was a distant second. Not on my mac, but on my PC, the iTunes application pretty much sucks donkey balls. Slow, resource heavy, and when I was streaming music, there was lots of stuttering and dead spaces. Groan.  Of course, I have all my music in the Google Play service. But their streaming, while better than Apple was still third rate compared to Spotify.

    Now Google has launched their “All Access” streaming service for about the same price as Spotify premium. I signed up today, and will exercise it for the full 30 days before deciding whether to drop it or Spotify.

    So far, it has been pretty good, and it does mix in items from my collection that are not licensed for streaming (Led Zeppelin, and Paul Gilbert are two I note.) But a downside is that it runs in the browser.  I may be a luddite, but I prefer it to be a sticky application (like spotify), and not something that will cut off if I have to quit Chrome (which happens with too much regularity).

    I will report back a few times to share how the test goes.

  • My ride – 2002 Lemond Buenos Aires

    Since I regaled people with the drama about failing wheels, and buying a new wheelset, I thought I would spend a little time talking about my current road bike.

    The Lemond Buenos Aires, a reynolds 853 steel frame that remains a joy to ride
    The Lemond Buenos Aires, a reynolds 853 steel frame that remains a joy to ride

    It is a 2002 vintage Lemond Buenos Aires. Made by Trek, is is a steel tube framed bike with a carbon fork. I bought it in 2002 for ~ $1200 new (I don’t recall the actual price). It was the most expensive road bike I have ever owned, but I have greatly enjoyed it. The frame has a comfortable geometry well suited for a hobbyist rider. It is neither a twitchy race bike, nor a special purpose bike (read up on what makes a good “triathalon” bike), it has served me well.  It came with a mixed component set (more on that later) that was mostly Shimano Ultegra, and the Trek made Bontrager wheels.

    I always figured that the wheels would be the weakest link in the bike, and I was not much wrong. However, while they lasted they stayed remarkably true, and needed very little maintenance. Of course, over 11 years I probably put 6,000 + miles on it (as logged on my cycle computer) including many miles climbing hills and racing down the other side. Add into that fact that I have been north of 200#’s for most of the time I have ridden it, it is not surprising that there were hairline stress fractures on the wheels.

    As I mentioned, I am not surprised that I had to change the wheels, but more amazed at how long they lasted. I put a lot of good, hard miles on them, and they were the lowest maintenance road wheels I have ever owned.  But the mixed components of the Shimano group was the first failure.  The outward facing components were all proper Ultegra, shifters, brakes, crankset (the hubs were the Ritchey hubs built into the Bontrager wheels). But the one “hidden” component, the bottom bracket, was the economizing point. It came with the bottom end Tiara bottom bracket that after 3 years or so developed a really annoying “click”, particularly when you were pressing hard on the pedals.  I ended up replacing it with an ultegra bottom bracket, and it has been glass smooth ever since.

    I was a bit concerned about whether I spent too much to get it back on the road.  After all, a 11 year old bike that was originally only $1,200 new, adding $500 of wheels to the bike seemed a bit risky. However, a little searching and reading on the web, and apparently that era Lemonds are well regarded, and the Buenos AIres in particular which has the Reynolds 853 stainless tube set are prized for the comfortable, ride, and how well it handles.  Apparently “good to nice” condition versions still fetch up to $500 on the secondary market. Clearly, I have a good frame, and now with the new wheels, I am good to go for another decade.

    While I can’t help but drool at the higher end bikes at the shop, all the carbon, and exotics, for my needs and purposes (to ride and stay in shape), I think my Lemond Buenos Aires will keep me riding in style.

  • My first encounter with a Retina MacBook Pro

    The other night, after quaffing a couple fine Czech style pilsners at Gordon Birsch (highly recommended, I might add), I wandered the 100 or so feet to the Gilbert Apple Store.  I am usually cautious at an apple store, because sometimes reason evades me and I find myself whipping out my plastic to upgrade to a new computer.

    I have studiously avoided getting up close and personal with a retina display MBP, simply because I figured I would “have to have one” and then I would be $2700 poorer (I would want the bigger SSD, and the 16G ram.) Having seen one, and played with it for a little while, I can say that they are really nice. Well put together, and very very snappy.  They had one on display wit the 16G ram and the 512G SSD, loaded out the way I would like.  Applications loaded almost instantly, and it was super responsive.  The Retina display was gorgeous, but not “must have”.  I loved the thin-ness and the lightness of it.  The fact that it has no optical drive is not a detriment (my current MBP has a SSD in the disk bay, and a 750G 7200RPM spinning rust disk where the DVD drive would be).

    It was nice, and a fully loaded system would do me well, but alas, I don’t feel the burning need to replace my current MBP.  With the SSD + spinning disk, it has plenty of oomph, and it has been upgraded to 16G ram, so it works pretty nice.

    So call it a strong case of the “likes” on the Retina MBP, but not a “gotta have it”. Of course I am talking about the 15″ version.  I just find the 13″ MBP’s to have too little screen real estate.

  • An expensive day – Bicycling Woes

    Lately, I have been pretty jazzed that my feet have allowed me to begin bicycling again. For the longest time, my plantar fasciitis pretty much put the kabosh on cycling. But about a month ago I gave it another whirl, and it was not painful. Woo hoo, I love to cycle, and it would be great to get back on the saddle regularly again.

    Tucson had better riding, lots of hills, and good routes to ride. Moving to Chandler has been a little different. While there aren’t easy access to mountain roads, we do have well groomed and paved trails on the irrigation canals. From my house, it is about 2 miles to where the canal trail crosses Chandler boulevard, and from there you could go 8+ miles to the end of the trail. Good riding, slight uphill all way. 21 to 22 miles out and back.  Good ride, easy, and pretty safe.

    This AM, I got my bike down from the hooks, and pumped up the tires. I noticed that the rear wheel was a little out of true. Not a big deal, so I grabbed my spoke wrench and put it to the nipple. “Ting” the nipple broke.  Shoot. No ride today, so I geared up and went walking. After the walk, I pulled the wheel off, removed the tire and headed to the local bike shop.

    We moved here last July, so we are still hunting around for all the usual haunts (good chinese, mexican, and american food, bike shops, the Apple store, where to get the best breakfast. Yada yada) so we stumbled into a shop in Gilbert called “Global Bikes”. I took my wheel there to see if they could fix it. Since it was the nipple that disintegrated, it would be an easy fix (they would have had to remove the cassette to replace the spoke). So I rummaged around for 15 minutes.

    The tech found me in the mountain bike area, and told me that he had fixed it. But he noticed that the rim had stress fractures near all the spoke holes. Yikes. It was pretty easy to see them, and I was naturally concerned. Global Bikes isn’t a Trek dealer (the bike is a 2001 Lemond Buenos Aires, and it had the trek made Bontrager wheels), but a couple of the guys there thought that Trek might warranty the wheel. I was skeptical that they would consider replacing a wheel from a bike that was 12 years old, but they said that they might.

    So, off to A1 Bikes, the nearest Trek Authorized dealer. Fortunately it was only 5 minutes away. So I headed over and walked back to the service desk, and explained that there were lots of stress cracks in the rim, and would it be possible to warranty it. He said that no, as it was 12 years old, and clearly I had ridden it (a lot, I will attest to), and I am not a svelte guy, so I am sure I put a lot of stress on the wheel, so I wasn’t too surprised.

    I asked what he recommended, and he said: “Well, you can ride on it, keeping an eye on how true the wheel was. That it would become difficult to keep it trued, and then it would be time to replace it”. I was flabbergasted. He was recommending I continue to use a wheel that is showing extensive stress fatigue, and early failure signs. Sigh.

    So, back to Global Bikes (for the record, these guys are awesome), and I picked up a set of wheels, Fulcrum Racing wheels, and lightened my wallet by $500+.

    The bike is back together, cleaned up, and ready to ride in the morning.

  • Making things too difficult – RasPi WiFi setup

    Well, sometimes I am an idiot.  I jumped through major league hoops that were totally unnecessary in getting my WiFi dongle to connect with my Wireless router. I looked for help on the web, Found a lot of guidelines that were a bit involved, but not atrocious.

    So I started doing what they asked. Got my system plugged into the router via ethernet cable.  Update the Raspbian install, check for chipsets, add drivers.

    But it was confusing, because it said all this stuff had been done.

    Finally, I looked at the desktop in the X-Window window manager, and “fuck me, there is an icon for WiFi Config” right there on the desktop.

    Shit, 2 minutes later, I am connected, got an IP address, and am all set.

    That was hard. But I am posting this from the minimal browser in the system, and all is well.

    Having fun doing some hobbyist hacking around in linux.

  • Next up on the Raspberry Pi

    Last week, I wrote about how I on a lark bought one of the raspberry pi single board computers. The first round of goodies for it was a SD card (to write the OS to and boot from), and a HDMI cable to connect it to my Samsung monitor.  Got it fired up and all was cool.  Of course, it sitting naked on my CSS reference book was a bit clunky, so back to Amazon I go.

    Now it is in a clear plastic case, and I have a dedicated power supply for it.  I also have a WiFI dongle to get it on the internet, and ready to do more heavy lifting. I began to work my way through a Python tutorial, and will continue that this weekend.

    Next up, I am going to have to move my kit to the living room for a couple hours.  Alas, to get the Linux install updated, and to add the correct kernel modules for the WiFi dongle, I need to be on the internet, and that is where the router is. Oh well, but after that, I should be good to go.

    I am still impressed with what comes on this little board for a mere $35.00. I bought it to bring back memories of my early computer experiences, an 8-bit Atari system, but this has so much more, including internet, and HD video output.  I remember endlessly fiddling to get a decent serial port (the 850 module) and a modem to connect to the outside world (there was no private internet at that time), living with composite video out on a mediocre CRT display. Living with 48K of memory (actually, that was a luxury), writing small assembly language adjuncts to speed up Basic or Basic XL (OSS System software ROCKED), and running a full featured BBS system.

    I still have an old Atari (some of its games are still very playable), but I don’t break it out often, because it is so painful to setup, so this will be my “toy” for now.

    But what will I do with it in the long term?  Media center? MAME cabinet? Do some robotics?  Maybe build a weather monitoring system?  Hoo boy, it will be fun.

    Next post will have pictures, I promise.