Video Game Review: Knack II

When Sony released the PlayStation 4, they included a number of games at launch including the original Knack. One of the design goals for the game was to showcase all the features of the new console. After a few years they followed it up with the sequel Knack II. I have to be honest in that I never really played the first one but did watch my youngest son work his way through the game. I started playing Knack II at the suggestion of my oldest son who said it made for a great couch co-op game to play with my 4-year-old grandson. The first thing my grandson would do after arriving at my house was run down to the TV room and ask to play Knack II. Naturally I indulged him.

Knack II is a great game if you are looking for a video game to play with younger children. As both players appear on a single screen at the same time, the more advanced player takes the lead and every so often, the slower player is brought up to the same part of the game and magically reappears. That makes it fun for younger players getting used to the controller. Towards the end of the game, it wasn't always me in the lead. I have to say that it really helped my grandson's gaming abilities.

Knack II is an action-adventure game that involves some level of close quarters combat combined with puzzle solving. You also have the ability to collect skill points and level-up your character. It is missing the crafting element which makes it easier to play for younger gamers. I have to say that I would find it mildly entertaining and probably wouldn't have played the game had it not been for the chance to bond with my grandson.

The game has an ESRB rating of E10+ meaning that it is a game meant for everyone with a suggested age of 10 or older. While I played it with my 4-year-old grandson, I doubt he would have been able to solve the majority of the puzzles without my help. Therefore I agree with the age suggestion. The only warning for the game is that it contains fantasy violence. You get to battle with goblins and robots.

As Knack II has been out for a few years, you can purchase a digital version for $20 from PlayStation directly or get a disk from a number of retailers for the same price. I paid $20 when the game was released through my company store when I worked for PlayStation and think that is a very good price for the game. It took me and my grandson about 50 hours to complete the game and we had a great time playing together.

If you are looking for a game to play with younger children where you can play together, I highly recommend this game. I think it would also be a fun game for older children as well. I would not recommend it for older teens nor adults unless you really are young at heart and enjoy playing cartoonish games. If you are not sure you will enjoy it, there is a free demo available to give it a shot before dropping $20.

Finding Stuff with Supply Chain Shortages

Yesterday I posted about not being able to find 1-inch chlorine tablets for my wife's new hot tub. Today I took a more scientific approach and was able to locate them. Naturally I promptly went down and purchased a 2-pound pack of them. How did I do it? I resorted to old-school technology and was reminded about how we did things before the ubiquity of the Internet.

We have a pool-supply store close to our house and it is across the street from where my wife works. Before going into the office she stopped by the store to see if they had what we needed. Nope, they did not. She sent me a message about being unsuccessful and I went to work trying to locate the tablets. In the old days when dirt was new and dinosaurs still roamed the earth, we had these nifty little books known as the Yellow Pages. If you needed anything, like chlorine tablets, you would look up all of the pool supply stores in the area and call them one-by-one.

The Internet-era method of doing the same thing is to open maps.google.com and set the size of the window to be how far you are willing to drive. Next enter what you are looking for in the search field. When I pulled it up today, I zoomed out a bit as I was willing to drive rather far and then put "Pool Supplies" in the search field. It brought up a bunch of different companies. Hovering over the red pins with my mouse provided more information about them. I didn't worry about calling any of the pool contractors or builders and only focused on supply companies. Fortunately all of the listings had phone numbers and so I started calling them.

The first place I called knew exactly what I was looking for and explained that they only had powdered chlorine, not tablets. The next place didn't have them either. My 3rd call was to a wholesale distributor and they didn't sell to the public. I politely asked if they knew someone that might have what I was looking for and he gave me a lead. Unfortunately they were not listed in my Google search and so I had to look them up by name. I found their phone number and gave them a call. They had the 1-inch chlorine tablets in stock and so I jumped in the car and drove down to the store.

Interestingly I was the only customer in the store. I told the salesperson that I had just called him and he immediately went to the shelves and pulled a container from the shelf. He had plenty of supply if I needed more but I want to start with one. Besides, now I know where to go to get more.

Online retailers like Amazon are great for bargain hunting, especially if you don't mind waiting a few days for your order to arrive. Unfortunately I would have had to wait until the end of January because of supply-chain issues. Making a few calls got me what I needed today for exactly the same price as listed on Amazon. No, I didn't get free shipping as I had to take my time, drive to the store, and use about $3 in gasoline. After searching for several days, that is a bargain. While it may be tempting to use Amazon for all of your shopping needs, sometimes it really is better to buy local. Now to go set up that hot tub.

Batteries Not Included

About a week before Christmas I strolled through our local Costco and saw an inflatable hot tub. While I love the idea of having a hot tub, I don't want the constant maintenance hassle nor the expensive electrical bill. My parents had a hot tub and used it frequently for about a year. Then they drained it and it sat unused for several more before they happily sold it and have never regretted that decision. The idea of an inflatable hot tub appealed to me because I can take it down when it is not in use and only set it up when needed.

My wife saw the spa and told me she thought it would be a great Christmas gift. Being the good husband that I am, I went back a few days later while she was at work and bought it. Unfortunately I didn't look closely at the packaging to see that it required 1-inch chlorine tablets that are not included. Sure I could set up the hot tub but then would worry about nasty things quickly growing in it. It is sitting in my family room for the moment until I can find those 1-inch tablets.

On the way home from skiing today, I needed to run a few errands and so I went to several stores looking for the chlorine. Walmart carries them but only during the summer months here in Utah. Home Depot also has them, but again they only keep them in stock at the same time as Walmart. This evening we came home from a nice restaurant and I jumped onto Amazon to see if they could get me some by Wednesday. Nope, not until mid-January.

My wife did some searching online and found a pool-supply store close to our house but they are closed right now. Tomorrow we will go pay them a visit and we will see if we can't purchase some of the required tablets. If only I had bothered to read all of the fine print the day I purchased this magnificent gift, I would already have the one thing needed to set up the spa. I'd like to say that I will learn from this experience but honestly doubt I will. 

Learning React

If you ever find yourself looking for a new job, you will soon discover that you need something other than job hunting to keep you busy. I have started a project to build a graphically pleasing website that is also database driven. I am amazed at how much happier I am now that I have results I can see from my day's efforts. I also spend an hour or two looking for the perfect job, but it isn't all encompassing like it has been.

Right now I am focusing on building the front end or the user experience (UX) part of the website. I did a bunch of research and discovered that all of the cool kids are using React. I found a great tutorial on YouTube that is forming the basis of what I want to build. Of course there are a number of other graphical elements I want to add that are not covered, but that is what Internet searches are for. Those searches also help with figuring out why my version of the project isn't working. The tutorial I found was created over a year ago and the React libraries have changed since then. When something doesn't work, I just have to query the Internet and I have a fix.

Last night I worked on the project for hours and didn't notice the time passing. This morning I awoke early and eager to continue my journey of learning. This is in sharp contrast to the depression I felt after getting one more rejection from a job where I expected to receive an offer. With the general shutting down that is happening at companies due to the Christmas break, I am glad I have something that energizes me and keeps me excited. At the end of the break, I hope to have a fully functioning demo that I can show.

Waiting for my Daughter's Flight to Arrive

This evening I get to head to the Salt Lake airport and pick up my daughter who is flying in. Normally I don't bother posting to my blog on Sunday's but today is special. I am using technology to track my daughter's flight so I know when to leave the house and go to the airport. I know exactly how long it takes to get to there and how long it will take her to get off the plane and to the front of the airport. That means I can use Flightaware to track her plane.

All I had to do was input her flight number and it tells me where the plane is at the current moment. I know that my daughter is on Southwest flight 484 this evening and so I entered SWA484 into the website and can see exactly where the plane is right now. I also get such information as airspeed and altitude. Having flown a lot (I'm at over 2 million lifetime miles) I can almost feel the plane coming in for a landing. 

I guess I had better leave for the airport now as my daughter will be on the ground in less than 10 minutes. It will take her time to get off the plane and walk the entire length of the new Salt Lake airport. I don't want to wait too long nor do I want her to wait much at all. We'll see how well I timed it.

Favorite Streaming Christmas Movies

This evening my wife and I sat down to watch a movie and it is only fitting we should watch a Christmas movie as it is that time of the year. We first went into our Disney+ account and saw what they had there. We saw the usual favorites like "Home Alone", "I'll be Home for Christmas", and "The Santa Clause." We felt like we have seen those too many times and looked for something we haven't seen. Ultimately we settled on a 48-minute short called "The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special." It is very light hearted and funny. If you are looking for a great way to keep young kids entertained, I recommend it. If you want something a little more meaningful, skip it.

As the show we picked didn't take too long we looked some more. We have always enjoyed "Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas" and we also briefly looked at the animated version of "A Christmas Carol." Ultimately we headed over to Amazon Prime to see if they had anything interesting and new to watch.

There are a lot of Christmas movies on Amazon Prime. Unfortunately most of them fail to entice me to watch them. We have seen a few interesting movies such as "Guess Who is Coming to Christmas" which is totally cheezy but also fun to watch. Ultimately we ended up turning off the television and doing other things.

So what are your favorite Christmas movies to watch this time of year? I love "Die Hard (edited for television)" but while it takes place at Christmas, doesn't really put you in the Christmas mood. There is always "It's a Wonderful Life", "White Christmas", and "A Christmas Story". Last week we watched "Jingle All the Way" for the first time and I don't think my wife will forgive me. I have no desire to watch "Elf" but understand a lot of people love that movie. So what is your favorite Christmas movie? I am always looking for something fun to watch.

My First 3D Print Design

My wife wants to take advantage of me using my 3D printer and asked me to make something useful for her. Normally I just find designs that others have created and print them. The most common designer for the stuff I print is my own son but there are a number of places to get 3D print designs. I won't tell you where they are as you will go there looking for cool things to print and never be heard from again. If I didn't have skiing to pull me away from the computer, I'd still be looking at fun stuff to print from the last time I visited Thingiverse.

My wife has an advent wreath that she pulls out every Christmas. This year she got some really massive candles to go in it but didn't have proper candle stands. She asked me to use my printer and create some. I thought about outsourcing the design to my son but realized he has his own priorities and I didn't want him to tell me I should design it myself. 

As my son is a mechanical engineer that works at an engineering firm, he has access to all sorts of great computer-aided drawing (CAD) software. He also has tried a number of free solutions and suggested I give Tinkercad a try. I logged in this afternoon and went to work.

The first time you go to Tinkercad, there is a quick tutorial you can run through. It gave me enough confidence to start designing. Then I just used my usual search engine to figure out how to get Tinkercad to do things the tutorial didn't show me. Things like how to stack objects on top of each other and how to make a hollow cone. The result is shown in the image below.

I sent it to my son and he immediately gave me some design suggestions. Something about fillets because hard corners tend to be weak spots. I just watched a YouTube video on how to do that but should have added them before I put everything together. I'll print one of these and see how it works. If my wife likes it, I'll consider the project done. If not, I'll spend another 30 minutes and design another candle holder.

Alternatives to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

Ever since I gave back my work laptop I have been having to work without Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This has forced me to look at alternatives to those 3 pillar applications. Fortunately there are a number of other solutions you can use. While you may have to fix a few issues due to missing features, these other solutions work well for most tasks.

My home desktop computer is actually a Mac Mini. The Mac comes with 3 alternatives to Microsoft's suite of office products. Pages is the replacement for MS Word, Numbers is the replacement for Excel, and Keynote is the replacement for PowerPoint. I have to be honest and say that Pages does a pretty good job of replacing Word but I prefer Word. I also have to say that I prefer Excel to Numbers. I have used both of the Microsoft products for years and am probably just used to them. However there are some differences that make me wish I still had access to MS Word and Excel. That being said, Keynote is much better than PowerPoint. This is one area where I prefer the Apple product. It has a much cleaner interface and just seems to do things better.

Don't worry, you don't need to have a Mac to replace Microsoft's Office software. There are a number of other alternatives. My favorite is probably LibreOffice. It used to be called OpenOffice and was owned by Sun Microsystems. OpenOffice was originally developed in Germany as a replacement for Microsoft Office when Sun purchased it. Sun then open sourced the software and it gathered quite the following. When Oracle bought Sun, the open-source contributors were afraid Oracle would ruin the product and so they created a fork of the project that became LibreOffice. Both are actually great replacements and work well.

I have done a lot of work helping both the LibreOffice and OpenOffice communities. I think they are very full-featured products and don't hesitate to recommend them as alternatives to Microsoft Office. Unfortunately I have been too lazy to load either of them on my Mac as the Apple alternatives also work and allow me to do anything I need related to my current job search. Perhaps when I have access to the Microsoft suite of products, I will continue to use the alternatives and save my next company some money.

Non-Fungible Tokens or NFTs

One of the side-effects of looking for a new job is the chance to review a number of new technologies as I look into positions at other companies. Recently I interviewed with a company doing non-fungible tokens or NFTs. Before my interview I researched them and even thought about creating one. I reviewed the process but never created an NFT as I didn't feel it would be worth it for me. At least not yet.

So what is an NFT? It is a unique digital file. The file can be something like a picture, movie, or audio file. Having a unique file can be counter intuitive. One of the benefits of digital files is that they can be exact copies of the original. So how do you make a digital file unique? Using blockchain technology that adds a wrapper around the file so only the proper owner can access it.

There are a number of reasons to create a unique digital file. The most common use right now is for artists to create a picture they can sell for a higher price because it is unique and nobody else can own a copy of that digital file. Sometimes artists like to do a limited run of numbered reprints and that is also possible with NFTs. Of course this means the artist cannot charge as much as the file is no longer unique.

Video games would be a great place for NFTs as you could dress your avatar uniquely and be guaranteed that nobody else will have that outfit. That is one of the reasons my resume looked good to the company I interviewed with as I have a lot of years of video game experience. The company is doing things related to enhanced experiences for entertainment. As the world has gone virtual, they are creating something similar to a backstage pass with extra content for online events. Imagine going to a concert and being able to interact with the singer or band members because you purchased an NFT. One reasons the NFT makes more sense than a special code is that codes can be easily shared where NFTs cannot. They can be resold but like a physical ticket, once the NFT is sold, the previous owner no longer has any claim to them.

NFTs are also not foolproof in the same way that art is not. When you go into a famous museum such as the Louvre in Paris, they ask you not to take any pictures. However if you brought your camera and covertly take a picture, then you can have a copy of a famous painting. There is nothing that prevents you from displaying your NFT on your computer screen and then taking a picture or screen capture of it. As with the picture taken in a museum, it will not be an exact replica of the original piece but it has the potential to be close.

Creating an NFT is a fairly straightforward process that requires you to set up a digital wallet where you can store it. It also requires you to pay some money for some entity to help verify or certify your NFT. You have the ability to specify how much you will spend for the service but not paying enough will mean a longer wait time before someone feels it is worth their computer's processing time to provide the NFT. Had the process been free, I would have taken a picture with my phone and then turned it into an NFT. Once you have your NFT there are a number of marketplaces where you can sell it. How much you sell it for depends upon the same factors for a piece of art. Being famous helps increase the price. Probably more so than having a good piece of art.

I found it interesting to see how NFTs are currently being used and can see a number of really valid uses for them. That number will only continue to grow as they gain traction. I will be interested to see what direction NFTs take in the future. Right now their uses are only limited by our imagination.

Having Someone to Bounce Ideas Off

I have been trying to keep my 3D printer going since I did my first print in over a year. I have been somewhat successful and am starting a new project. The reason you want to keep printing once you start is that the plastic filament used in the printer does not have a very long shelf life. Once you break the vacuum-sealed bag, you only have a month or two before it becomes brittle and breaks easily. That means I need to print a full kilogram of PLA filament.

Not all of my print jobs have gone without issues. I can print about 2 of the ornaments in the link above before something goes wrong. My latest problem is that the memory card that I use in my printer somehow gets corrupted. The print files contain GCODE that tells the printer what to do. When the memory card gets corrupted, the printer starts doing funny things. Most of the time it just prints a tangled mess of plastic. The most recent corruption managed to clog my print nozzle and I had to disassemble the print head to clean the nozzle and remove the clog. Then I just removed the print file from the card and recopied the GCODE file from my computer.

This morning I talked with my son who also managed to clog his 3D printer. We have similar printers and so I asked how he fixed his clog. He ended up having to put his print nozzle in the oven to heat it up and melt the plastic inside. I explained a trick I used and he thought it worthy of trying. My clog was bad enough that I pulled out a drill bit and rolled it between my finger and thumb to break through the clog. My son remarked that the drill bit could damage the print head. I stressed the importance of not putting the bit in an actual drill or that would cause damage. Controlling everything with my thumb and finger made it light enough not to damage any part of the printer. My son felt it was worth a shot.

Normally I will go to my son when I have a problem with my 3D printer. This is the first time I have been able to provide advice. Sometimes having someone that you can talk problems through will help you come up with your own solution. Other times a seemingly novice will have enough of a different perspective to suggest something that you would not have thought about. This second case is what happened today. I'll be interested to hear back from him to see how the drill bit worked.

Network Issues on the PlayStation 5

A few weeks ago I noticed that my PS5 kept dropping its network connection. While it wasn't a big deal for solitary gaming, it sure made watching a streaming movie tough. My WiFi access point had been having some issues and so I had spent time fixing that. Unfortunately that did not resolve the issue with the PS5. I was in a troubleshooting mood and so I spent some time searching the Internet for similar issues that others may have had.

I came across a number of posts where other PS5 owners kept having the console drop their WiFi connections. The solution was to turn off automatic frequency selection and limit the WiFi to just 2.4 GHz. The frequencies available to WiFi are either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz with the faster speeds generally found on 5 GHz. While the PS5 has the hardware to take advantage of the higher frequency, the software engineers did a poor job of implementing support for it. That just means once a patch is made available, PS5 owners will be able to go back to 5 GHz.

I gave the solution a shot and regained my stable WiFi connection. Ultimately that was not the problem though. The fix worked because my new television also has WiFi capability and it turns out that the TV and PS5 kept interfering with each other. I really would like to go back to the 5 GHz signal for the PS5 and so I looked if I could set the TV to use 2.4 GHz but cannot.

Forcing the WiFi connection on the PS5 to 2.4 GHz seems to be working for now but I look forward to the day when I can go back to 5 GHz WiFi. At least I can watch a whole movie without it pausing while the stream buffers.

How Often Should You Charge Your Phone

Yesterday my oldest son and I had a conversation on the phone about our respective weekends. I spent the time visiting my youngest son in Ohio. My older son did a bit of furniture shopping. He is in the process of finishing his basement and creating a theater room. He and his wife went looking for a comfortable couch for it. He is quite pleased with his purchase even though it won't arrive until April. Given the history of his other recent furniture purchases, June is probably a more realistic date. He doesn't mind though as he still needs time to finish the room.

One of the features of my son's new couch is that each seat reclines and has adjustable lumbar support. As it requires electricity to recline and adjust, it also has USB ports at every seat. My son thinks this is a huge benefit as his phone constantly needs to be recharged. I find it to be interesting but probably not all that useful. I have a great routine for charging my phone that doesn't require any time during the day. I just charge it while I sleep.

This brings up the question of how often you should charge your phone. My son is constantly on his phone. So much so that he needs to charge his fairly new iPhone during the day. I can usually go several days without charging should I need to. Furthermore my younger son and I both believe that my older son is probably on his phone too much when he should be paying attention to the people around him. We both remarked about that in Ohio this weekend.

I don't mean to put down my older son by saying that he spends too much time on his phone. I just find it slightly rude to be talking with him, have him pull out his phone and disengage from the conversation without warning. Sometimes he is looking something up that is relevant to what we are talking about but most of the time it is something else that has won his attention.

Should you find yourself in the same boat as my son where you are having to recharge your phone in the middle of the day, you might want to evaluate your own phone habits. Take a look around before you pull out your phone. Are you in the middle of a conversation with someone? Do your kids need your attention? Are you truly alone and do you have the time to spend a minute or two on your phone? If you can answer, "No, No, Yes," then by all means feel free to pull out that insanely useful tool in your pocket. Otherwise you might want to reconsider and connect with the people around you.

My First 3D Print in Over a Year

Yesterday I posted my 2021 Christmas List and it got me thinking about my 3D Printer. I have not printed anything in over a year and I have a number of projects I wanted to print. So as soon as I finished the post, I walked over to my 3D printer and started it up. The year has not been kind to the filament I had loaded in the printer and it became incredibly brittle. The first thing I needed to do was to clean the old filament out and put in some brand new PLA. That actually took a bit of work but I got it cleaned out.

My son sent me some STL files for Christmas-tree ornaments that he designed and printed last year. One is an open ball with the Salt Lake Temple inside. It is a prominent building here in Utah and holds special significance for a lot of people in the area. Seeing as that is where my parents were married and they expressed interest in receiving one, I decided to print that first.

 

My 3D printer cannot just print an STL file and so I needed to run it through a slicer program that converts the file to GCODE. Unfortunately my slicer program would not load on my Mac. I'm not sure why and so I downloaded the latest version of Ultimaker Cura. That loaded up fine and I just dropped the STL file into the program. I clicked the "Slice" button and it spit out some GCODE that I sent to the printer. I didn't expect the first print to go smoothly and about 5 minutes into the print, it came unstuck from the printer bed and started turning into a spaghetti mess. I stopped the print and sent a text to my son asking if it should be printed face-down. It turns out that I needed to rotate the ornament 90 degrees in one direction. I did that inside Cura and then generated a fresh set of GCODE. I then sent that to the printer and waited the 13 hours for it to complete. The picture above is the final result that I saw this morning.

Those that do a lot of 3D printing will note that it is not a very clean print. I consider it a huge success because I didn't even bother to level the print bed which is something you should do before every couple prints. The first thing I noticed was all of the spider-web strands and wondered what settings I need to adjust to get rid of that. To salvage this print, I used a pen knife to remove some. That got to be tedious work. When I sent my son this picture, he told me to just carefully use a heat-gun and they will shrivel up and melt into the print. I tried it and it worked like magic.

There are several other things that are wrong with the print. Notice how you can see the print layers on the side of the ball. My printer could use a good nozzle cleaning and that should blend the layers together better. I also need to do a bit of calibration work. This is what I am working on today. My hope is that I can fine tune the printer so it creates good results. We'll see how it goes.

There is a lot you can do with a 3D printer but unfortunately it is not as simple as printing a document. There are quite a few adjustments you can make and understanding what each does is vital to a quality end product. Should you wish to get into 3D printing, remember that it can be more like a hobby than simply click and print.

2021 Christmas List

It is that time of year when people are starting to panic about what to get that computer nerd for Christmas. My wife hates trying to guess what I will want for Christmas and so I have to present a list for her early in September. This year that is probably a good idea as the news keeps talking about supply-chain issues and if you don't order gifts now, they might not arrive before Christmas. So for those of you that have procrastinated getting that computer geek in your life something special, here are some things that I would like.

The Gift of Learning

Technology changes at a rapid pace and I am constantly trying to keep up with new advancements. Several years ago I received a catalog from The Great Courses and ordered a few DVD classes on the National Parks and some others on Photography. Since then I have picked up a guitar course and several others. For a few years, my employer provided me with an unlimited online subscription to all of the courses. My wife and I would sit down about every other night and learn about quite a few number of topics that we both found interesting. Early in my career, computers were also my hobby and so if you have someone like that in your life, I would suggest finding their interests and seeing if there are any courses that match their level of experience. There is a great introduction to Machine Learning course (Christmas special of $50 right now) but if your gift recipient is beyond the beginning level, I would look for something else.

The Gift of Experiences

I find that the older I get, the less stuff I want. This may be because I already have everything I want or maybe I am just tired of throwing technology away when it becomes outdated. In any event, I always appreciate the gift of experiences. My son is giving his children a trip to Disneyland for Christmas and my wife and I have been invited. Of course we have to pay for ourselves but we are looking forward to the trip and have decided that it will be our gift to each other for Christmas. While a trip may be well outside your Christmas budget, there are a lot of ideas to help reduce the cost of a trip for someone. You might give them a gift card to help with airfare. There are a lot of airlines that allow you to give gift cards. Southwest and Delta are my two favorite. You could also give gift cards that can be spent at a destination such as Disneyland.

One of the best deals you can get someone that is looking for experiences is an America the Beautiful pass. It is a card that lets a car-load of people into any of our National Parks and National Monuments. It is only $80 for a year and pays for itself after only 2 visits. This year I have visited Volcanoes National Park, Kilauea Lighthouse and Wildlife Refuge, and Yosemite National Park. I got it in May and will probably use it again for Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park before it expires.

The Gift of Photography

When I found out I would be leaving Sony, I made a list of all the purchases I wanted to make at the online company store. I knew I would lose my discount and so I made sure to pick up a new television. Another thing I wanted was Sony's top-of-the-line digital camera. I have helped plenty of friends pick up cameras and lenses over the years. I figured I should get one for myself. I got a great deal on a Sony A7RIV. The only downside is I also needed to get lenses. I did a bit of research and picked up 5 different ones. I won't go into too many details but I am very happy with the purchase. Now if my wife would let me play with the camera before Christmas I could provide a nice review.

You don't need an expensive camera to give someone the gift of photography for Christmas. Perhaps they already have a great camera but could use an additional lens. My guess though is that a newer smartphone might be a better purchase. I generally go several years before upgrading my phone. Check with your carrier to see if there are free low-cost upgrades. While I have a spectacular camera, I use my mobile phone's camera a lot more. The cameras in the latest phones are nothing short of amazing.

The Gift of 3D Printing

My final gift idea for the year is that of 3D Printing. My youngest son got me into 3D printing while he completed his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering. Now that he has graduated, he purchased his own printer but continues to send me ideas of things to print. You can get your own 3D printer for around $200. If that special nerd in your life already has one, there are countless upgrades and supplies that would make great gifts. Just be sure to make sure any upgrades will work with the existing printer. You can also never have enough printing material and that you can find for around $20. Again, make sure it will work with the printer as filament comes in various sizes.

The Gift of Choice

I hate recommending generic gift cards as a Christmas gift but sometimes that could be the best choice. If you want to get some PLA for your nerd's 3D printer but are not quite sure of the filament size, just get a $20 gift card to Amazon and eliminate any worry about if you got the right stuff. It also allows you to tailor your gift to fit your budget exactly.

The One Company Everyone Should Interview With: Amazon

I have been at the job search for a month or so now and I thought I would share how things are going. While it can be an ego boost to have quite a few companies reach out and ask you to interview with them, it is more depressing to have them come back and say they are not moving forward with bringing you onboard. As I am more interested in finding the right opportunity than just landing a job, I thought I would share some tips I am learning during my own job search. My first tip is that everyone should try to get an interview with Amazon.

Why Amazon? Well they have a very formal job interview process that requires you to do a lot of homework before what they call the "Interview Loop." That homework helps with the interview process with other companies. It forces you to put your job-related stories in a format that flows well and highlights your career.

This morning I had an interview with a very interesting company. I think I did a great job sharing information because of my interview with Amazon. I may not get either job but I do feel significantly more prepared for future interviews. I'm sure you will too.

Two-Factor Authentication

A few days ago I received an e-mail from my credit card company asking if I had made a certain charge. I had not and so they cancelled my card and overnighted me a new one. In the 30 years I have had that credit card, I had never had a single fraudulent charge. Unfortunately the e-mail I received was the second such e-mail in about a month's time. That means someone used my card a month ago and somehow received my new credit card number and pertinent information to do the same thing again. How do I know it was the same person or organization? Well both fraudulent charges were to the same company, which is more than a coincidence. Fortunately my credit card company caught the theft and I didn't have to worry about disputing the charge.

I find it very interesting that a credit card I have had for 30+ years suddenly became compromised. It had me concerned about all of my other financial interests. After all if someone could get my credit card number so easily, what about my other cards or my bank account. The first thing I did was to enable two-factor authentication for all of my online financial accounts. That means that even if someone is able to break my fairly complicated password, they won't be able to get into my accounts unless they also manage to steal my mobile phone.

Two-factor authentication relies on two methods of verifying you are who you say you are. The first locked door is your password. The second locked door is associated with a physical device such as your phone or computer. When I log into my bank account, I can't complete logging in until I provide a very temporary unique code that has been sent to one of my phones. Should I get a notification on my phone that I didn't initiate, I can immediately lock my account before anything nefarious happens.

With online theft happening more and more, I highly suggest setting up two-factor authentication for all of your online financial access. This includes banks, credit cards, brokerage accounts, and any other account that has access to your money. While it is not foolproof, it is another layer of protection that could save you some serious heartache.

Opening Day at Alta

Today is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and it is fitting that I should post about one thing I am thankful for: opening day at Alta ski resort. This morning my wife and I awoke at 7am and quickly got ready so we could head up for the morning celebration. We arrived at 8am and I quickly got ready. I left my wife in the warm car while I stood in the cold line and saved us places close to the front. Eventually my wife joined me followed shortly by our youngest daughter who is a ski instructor at the resort. Today is her day off and so she got to ski with us.

So what does opening day have to do with computers and technology? As usual, not a single thing. Well there is the point I could make about how we got 3 inches of fresh snow this morning and I could have looked up that information on the Internet before getting in the car. The funny thing though is that I would have made the trip anyways. While it is the first day of lift-serviced skiing, it is my 16th day this season and so I had a really good idea of what the conditions would be like. I didn't need to waste my time looking them up.

Hopefully you too have something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season. Perhaps your item is even much more meaningful than mine. I sure hope so as there are many things I am thankful for. I just chose to list this one today.

Poor Sound Playing DVD on PS5

Friday night my wife and I sat down to watch a DVD with a guest and had to do some troubleshooting with my surround-sound system. The father of a friend from work was driving his motor home from Calgary to Phoenix. He had planned to spend the night in a Walmart parking lot but I offered to let him park it at our house and sleep in one of our guest bedrooms. The weather is a bit cold and while I'm sure he had a nice bed in the RV, running water and heat would be nice too. He accepted and joined us for our Friday-night movie.

For the past week or so, I have been trying to watch the 2004 version of Flight of the Phoenix. This seemed like a very appropriate movie as my friend's dad is a pilot and was headed to Phoenix on his road trip. We put the DVD into the PS5 and jumped past all of the previews. When the movie started, the speakers sounded like I had blown one of them. I knew they were fine as we have been watching a lot of movies lately. To double-check, I switched the receiver from the PS5 to a radio station and the audio came out clear. Therefore I knew it was a problem with the PS5.

Not wanting to play around too long and troubleshoot the problem, I quickly moved the disk to the PS4 and the sound had no issues. We watched the movie and my friend's dad really appreciated the audio. The powered subwoofer created a very unique experience for him, especially in that movie.

The next day, I wanted to figure out if there is a perpetual problem with DVD's playing on the PS5 and so I took the time to troubleshoot the issue. After all, if there is a problem, I could always reach out to my buddy that works on the CODECs for the PlayStation consoles and log a bug even though I no longer work there.

When I am done using my PS5, I always put it in standby mode. That allows any updates to automatically download and install. The first thing I tried is powering off the PS5 and then restarting it. I put in the DVD and it played fine. I wish I had known that the previous evening but now I do. Should you find the sound not working correctly in a movie you are playing on your PS5, just restart the device and see if the problem goes away. If not, then it is a different problem than mine.

Performance Improvement

One of the fundamental lessons I learned in my days as an Electrical Engineering student is the order that performance improvements should be addressed. Always work on the largest problem first. This is really counterintuitive as people will throw out minor improvements because they are easily seen and understood. Unfortunately the improvements may be so minor that they are imperceptible. Let's look at some examples.

Recently I drove a car from San Mateo, California to Salt Lake City, Utah. This is a great example of performance as you always want to minimize the amount of time spent in the car. There are a number of variables you can play with to decrease the amount of time the trip takes. First off is which route you will take. Interstate 80 is the fastest route but is sometimes closed because of snow. You also have how fast you go. You can drive the speed limit or try to go above it. That introduces a few more variables like gas mileage and the risk of getting pulled over to receive a warning or speeding citation. The faster you drive, the more you will have to stop for gas. Don't forget that you may require additional stops to use the restroom or get food.

Thinking of the driving example, most people will point out that you can save time by combining food and restroom breaks with fuel stops. During my recent trip, I stopped for an hour to sleep and that could have been avoided by leaving earlier in the day. Leaving earlier would have also helped with the gridlock traffic I encountered leaving the Bay Area. Ultimately though, that all had very little effect on the overall drive. The best performance gains on a long trip like that are going to be solved by changing the speed of the trip from 80 miles per hour, the legal speed limit for most of the trip in Nevada and Utah, to 500 miles per hour which is how fast you can make the trip in a commercial plane. That is how I got to San Mateo in the first place and if I didn't have to bring a lot of stuff they don't allow on airplanes, it is how I would have gone home.

Another example of performance improvement I saw came in the form of a National Geographic article. It described how to save water while doing dishes. In many parts of the world, water is a scarce resource. In other parts it falls from the sky in large quantities. The article encouraged everyone to avoid rinsing your dishes before placing them in the dishwasher. No offense National Geographic but if you have a dishwasher, there are significantly better ways to save water. Taking a shorter shower is a good start. Better yet is to water your lawn only when necessary. Not rinsing your dishes saves about 2 gallons of water. Taking a shorter shower will save more than the 2 gallons of water. Watering your lawn only when necessary will save hundreds of gallons of water. In other words, stop worrying about 2 gallons and worry about 100 gallons. Once everyone gets that down, you can worry about smaller amounts.

So what does this have to do with computers? A lot actually. If you find yourself looking to improve performance, look at the system as a whole. Break down the tasks and their various times to complete. If task A takes minutes and task B takes seconds, focus on task A. Don't worry about B as it doesn't really matter until you can get task A into the seconds range.

AirPlay: Sharing Your Screen on Your Television

My wife and I had a rare moment last night with some unscheduled time. Rather than waste it, I told her I would teach her something new. In the end, I learned something new.

Lately my wife has been waking up early to exercise before heading off to the law firm where she works. As it is early in the morning, she likes to log in on her computer and exercise with some pre-made videos that she pays an annual fee to access. A few days ago she asked how she can connect her computer to our large television. Last night I figured I would show her.

My usual method for connecting a computer to our TV is to use an HDMI cable and plug it into our receiver. There is a nice HDMI outlet on the front of the receiver which makes it very simple. I grabbed a cable that connects to her laptop only to discover it wouldn't work. I had a cable with a display output that fit her MacBook Air. That is not the same as an HDMI cable so it didn't work with the receiver.

Interestingly enough, the solution was staring me right in the face, literally. There is a sticker on my receiver that says it is capable of AirPlay. I had never used it before but knew it is used to transfer computer displays to televisions. I turned on the receiver and television. Then I went into my wife's System Preferences on her computer. There I selected "Displays." In the bottom-left corner is a pull-down list that says: "AirPlay Display:" with a selection of "Off." I opened the pull-down list and saw my receiver listed by its model number. I selected it and was given a 4-digit code from the television to enter on the computer. Once I entered it, the computer display was mirrored on the television.

As AirPlay is from Apple, I looked on my iPhone and saw that I could transfer the display from my phone to the TV. That got me excited. I hoped I could play games from my phone on a larger screen. Unfortunately that is not the case. I can display photos or play videos on my television from the phone but not use the TV as a second screen.

This morning my wife got up and headed down to the TV room to do her morning exercise. Normally I can keep sleeping and not notice she is down there early in the morning. The high-end surround sound system woke me right up. I'm glad she figured it out.

Preferred Device for Video Conferencing

I have quite a few computers available to me at home. Currently I am posting this blog using my desktop computer. I also have a Chromebook that I keep near the kitchen. Sadly I no longer have my laptop since I have left Sony PlayStation. They made me give that back. I am reluctant to purchase a new one for myself as I am actively interviewing and will let my new employer get one for me. I am tempted, however, to go get one and then give it to my wife once I start the new gig. My reason for doing so? I am attending a lot of video conferences and my device of choice is a good laptop.

I have a great camera set up on my desktop computer. It does a great job but has one fatal flaw: where do I put it? My desktop computer is connected to a 43-inch 4K monitor. If I put the camera below the monitor, it looks straight up my nose. If I put it on top of the monitor, you can see a huge reflection from my bald head. If I put it to either side, it looks like I am staring off and not paying attention to anyone in the video conference. Basically there is no good place for the camera. That doesn't keep me from using it though. In case you are wondering, I have gone for the up-the-nose look.

I have used my Chromebook for a few video conferences but it is really under powered. I keep getting popups from the various video conferencing software saying that I need to shutdown other applications. The sad thing is that I don't have anything else running. I have thought about upgrading the Chromebook but the choices make it very confusing. A high-end Chromebook is more than a cheap refurbished laptop which will do a lot more.

I suppose I could use a mobile phone as well but the reality is that I loved using my laptop for video conference calls. If I didn't want to take the call in my office, I could bring it to the living room. When I was in Hawaii, I even took a few calls from the Lanai. I didn't even have to use a fake backdrop.

Fortunately my wife really does need a new laptop. Christmas is coming too. Do you think it is bad if I get a laptop for a month and then put it under the tree as a gift for my wife? I should probably add some jewelry there too.

Video Game Review: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Before the pandemic started, I had my buddy that used to work at Electronic Arts (EA) purchase me a copy of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for the PlayStation 4. I then payed him back the $20 for the game and brought it home. My youngest son found the unopened copy of the game and asked if he could borrow it. I was finishing up another game at the time and so I loaned it to him. Naturally he redeemed the code inside for the extra goodies and ended up paying me for the game while he kept it for about a year. He then loaned it to my older son who played it for quite awhile.

With not being able to go to the office to get another copy for myself, I was feeling a bit left out. Then my oldest son let me know the game was on sale at the PlayStation store for about the same price as my friend could get it for me. Naturally I jumped on the store and picked up an electronic copy to download. I just finished playing it and am glad I finally got the chance to run through the game.

Jedi Fallen Order is an open-world adventure game which is a genre I really like to play. It is not nearly as complex as Horizon Zero Dawn or any of the recent Far Cry games. While there are some puzzles to solve and plenty of combat, it doesn't have all of the complex gathering and crafting. You have some echos and collectibles to find but they are minor parts of the story, unlike in other games.

If you are a fan of the Star Wars movies, you will love this game. It takes place just before the original Star Wars movie and has a pretty interesting story line that adds insight into saga. You also get to explore some of the planets in the Star Wars universe. It took me about 70 hours to complete the game and I played it on my PlayStation 5 even though it was created for the PS4.

The game has an ESRB rating of T for Teen due to some mild language and violence. After all, you do run around with a light sabre slicing droids, storm troopers, and creatures in half. I would have no problem letting my grand kids watch while I play this game. The fact that you don't have a complex crafting system also makes it easier for younger audiences should they wish to play.

I found the game to be very enjoyable and recommend it to anyone that is a fan of the Star Wars movies. Towards the end, it did get to be a bit redundant but less so than many other games I have played. There is still a lot I can do should I wish to platinum the game (get every single trophy or achievement) but I also have a lot of other games that I am interested in playing. I paid about $20 for the game and feel you get a lot of entertainment for that price.

Grandma Got Lost Again

Last month I posted about how Grandma lost her way to her daughter's house. Well it happened again. This time we were able to track her and call her to help get her home much more quickly. Here's more to the story.

One problem with living with family is that you will eventually upset each other. There is a reason kids grow up and leave home. When it comes time for a parent to move in with a child, it will be stressful. Well Grandma got caught eating a brownie at her daughter's house before dinner and her daughter gave her the you'll-spoil-your-dinner speech. This offended Grandma and she jumped in her car and drove off. The next morning she showed up at my house. I knew she had to return to her daughter's in a week for a doctor's appointment and so my wife and I welcomed her into our home for a limited stay.

I used the visit to see how Grandma is doing with her new phone and other technological devices in her life. It didn't take long to realize that Grandma doesn't know how to use her new smartphone. She doesn't even know how to answer it. She claims it won't let her answer a call when she is driving. While this is a feature I wish all phones would adopt without hands-free car integration, the reality is that she just isn't familiar enough with her new phone. So lesson number one was to help her get more familiar with her phone.

I also asked Grandma to explain how she got lost on that fated drive back to her daughter's. Of course she didn't really have a good explanation. I explained to her that she just needed to stay on the freeway and not take any exits until she got close to home. That sounds pretty easy, right? I actually explained it in much more detail to help ensure the same problem wouldn't happen again. I felt pretty confident in my explanation and was sure she would drive right home.

Saturday morning arrived and Grandma jumped in her car to head back to her daughter's. About an hour later, my wife used the "Find my Phone" app to locate Grandma. Contrary to all my directions, Grandma exited the freeway she was supposed to stay on and headed off on the wrong way. I couldn't believe it. My wife gave her a call but it went unanswered. Fortunately Grandma's daughter was also watching and managed to get her on the phone. Grandma added 45 minutes to her drive but eventually made her way home.

Smartphones are great tools. They can be used to prevent driving mistakes, provided you are using them to help you navigate to your destination. They can also be used to fix that mistake if someone is watching you and can call you to provide correction. Unfortunately this all relies on the user being able to use said smartphone. Grandma still needs help.

Getting the Most out of my PlayStation 5

When I first got my PlayStation 5, I kept it on my desk in my home office as I used it for work. Now that I am no longer working for Sony Interactive Entertainment, I have moved it into my theater room. I now have it connected to my brand-new 85-inch television. Unfortunately it was not as simple as plugging it into my TV as I had to also connect it to my surround-sound system.

Yesterday I posted about the importance of refresh rates and why 120 frames per second or Hz is significant for the latest televisions. I want to preserve the high refresh rate from my PlayStation 5 and that just isn't possible if I plug it into my current television receiver which is then connected to the TV. My receiver only supports 60 Hz at 4K and I do not want to spend money replacing it right now. I probably will in the future but for now I want to keep using it. So how do I keep the high video quality and also keep the high sound quality?

I can't take full credit for this as my oldest son helped me figure it out. The solution is to use the audio return channel or eARC HDMI output from the television. The high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) has been around for over 15 years and has evolved to allow for various scenarios like this. When I set up my PlayStation 5, I plugged it directly into my new television using one of it's two HDMI 2.1 interfaces. The second is used to connect the TV to the receiver. Now what happens is the picture and sound are sent to the television from the PS5. The sound is then sent back to the receiver for that shake-the-neighbors experience. HDMI works both ways so that any devices connected to the receiver use that same HDMI interface into the television.

One would think that with a PS5 I wouldn't need to connect any other device. It streams video, has a DVD drive, a Blu-ray drive, and can play 4K Blu-ray disks. I also have a PS4 Pro connected to a PlayStation VR as well as an old VHS video cassette player, from Sony, of course. The moment you connect your PS VR to your PS4, you lose the ability to play games in 4K without having to swap cables. Rather than deal with that, I just kept my PS4 Pro and use it with my PS VR. I also use it to play video games with my grandson and keep a healthy mix of age-appropriate games loaded on it. As for the VHS tapes, their quality is really horrible even with 4K upscaling. You never know when you may need to watch an old video though.

My son and I connected everything and then started watching Return of the Jedi on Disney+. While we enjoy the movie, we wanted to make sure the sound and picture were in sync. After all, nothing ruins the experience of a movie when you hear an explosion before you see it. The lip movement not matching the dialog can also be really annoying, which is why I prefer subtitles to dubbing for non-English movies. Fortunately both the TV and the receiver have mechanisms for delaying one or the other. In my case, the sound led the picture. I went into the receiver settings and added a 10ms delay. That improved things somewhat but wasn't perfect. I upped the delay to 20ms and everything synced perfectly. If it had been the other way around and the picture led the sound, I would have added the delay to the television.

Once we got the timing worked out on the PS5, I had to go in and check it on the PS4 and VHS cassette player. The PS4 is in sync but there is a 20ms delay on the VHS. I can turn off the delay setting in the receiver when I play video tapes to solve that problem. As I doubt I will watch a lot of VHS tapes, I'm fine not worrying about it. I can probably set custom parameters for each device and save them to the receiver but am fine with how things are set up now.

Should you find yourself with a new PS5 and an older receiver, just connect it directly to the television. Then use eARC to pull in your surround-sound receiver. You may have to adjust some settings but once you get it set up, you will be amazed at the quality.

The Importance of Television Refresh Rates

My new 85-inch television is awesome! Friday night we got everything configured correctly and then watched the latest version of the movie Dune. Having read the book and also having met Frank Herbert when I was very young, I am always interested in any movie about it. I have to say that this movie did not disappoint. It is very methodical in the storytelling and does a great job sticking to the book, at least as how I remember it. Should you wish to see the movie on HBO Max like I did, make sure you see it on a really large 4K television and also have an awesome sound system. I don't think my subwoofer has had that much of a workout since I bought it many years ago. If your house isn't rattling, your sound isn't loud enough.

One of the things that makes my television so great is its high refresh rate. Understanding the importance of refresh rate is very important to know why I setup my home theater system the way I did. So let's begin.

In the early days of movie making, industry pioneers discovered that the human eye sees pictures in motion at 24 frames per second. That means if you are shown a series of pictures at less than 24 per second, they will look like individual pictures. If you are shown at 24 or higher, it will look like smooth motion. Up until recently, all movies have stuck to the 24 frames per second refresh rate.

When television came along it used alternating current for power which, in the United States, is regulated at 60 Hertz or cycles per second. Rather than come up with complex circuitry to match the movie frame rate of 24, the engineers just divided frequency of the input power by 2 and set the television frame rate to 30. Besides 30 is more than 24 and shouldn't be noticeable to the viewer right? For the most part, that is true but it does create some difficulties when encoding a movie to be shown on television.

Now let's add video games and computers to the mix. The original home computer monitors were just televisions. As higher-end graphics cards and monitors emerged, 30 frames per second was no longer the best picture you could get. Kids raised on television could tell the difference between 30 frames per second and 60. Given about 5 minutes watching the two different signals, most people can and they prefer the higher frame rate. It actually turns into an advantage for those playing video games and so console makers started increasing frame rates. The current generation of video game consoles like the PlayStation 5, support 120 frames per second.

That higher frame rate comes in handy for video enhancements. My old 3D television used the higher frame rate to show the left-eye image followed by the right-eye image in the next frame. The glasses you wear block the right-eye image in the left eye and the left-eye image in the right. So even though the TV is showing the movie at 60 frames per second, you are only seeing the movie at 30 frames per second. If you want to see the movie at 60 frames per second, the TV needs to bump up to 120 Hz.

There is also another very important reason for having higher frame rates. While working on the PlayStation VR, we discovered that virtual reality glasses need to have the highest frame rate possible. VR allows you to move your head around and a low frame rate introduces lag into the picture. If you move your head slightly, the image doesn't quite match with what you see in real life. This induces motion sickness. We knew we were getting the right frame rates when we could do a short demo to a room full of executives and nobody threw up.

High frame rates are now very important at amusement parks. A few years ago, I attended a developer's conference put on by Sony PlayStation. One night we rented out the Hogwarts section of Universal Studios in the Los Angeles area. With only a few hundred people in the park, we had no lines and could ride the Hogwart's Castle ride over and over. If you have never been on it, it is a giant VR ride coupled with a roller coaster. Unfortunately they use a very low frame rate and most people are rather sick after the first go around. I rode it 3 times in a row and came very close to blowing chunks. I don't normally get motion sick as I am a sailor and have even sailed a boat from Hawaii to California through 2 hurricanes. When I get sick, that is bad. Several other coworkers were not so lucky and spent part of the night hunched over garbage cans clearing their stomachs.

Television frame rates keep getting higher and higher and there is a reason for it. As we enhance our entertainment experiences more and more, our televisions will need to keep up. Now if we can just get our high-end amusement parks to keep up, we won't find ourselves with motion sickness.

Time For a New Television

Monday was my last day working at Sony PlayStation and I wanted to maximize my discount on Sony items before I left. So on Monday last week I ordered a new 85-inch 4K television. It arrived today. My previous one was only 60 inches and so I am now doing a lot of rearranging to make room for the new toy. Getting a much larger television requires a lot of work.

I waited around this morning for the television to arrive. Once it did, I just moved it into the house so I could plan out the next course of events. My old TV stand fit the 60-inch model perfectly but won't work for the 85-incher. I did an online search and found a stand that I liked at Ikea for a reasonable price. I drove down there and picked it up. Then I brought it home and put it in my home theater room and waited for some help to arrive before assembling it.

My oldest son came over after work and we moved the old TV into my bedroom so it is out of the way. Then we removed the old stand so we could build the new one. The build process went amazingly fast as we made sure to follow the instructions carefully. That is the trick behind assembling Ikea furniture: carefully following the instructions. Next we put the new television on the stand. Boy is 85 inches a lot of screen real-estate. It took awhile to plug in the PS4, the PS5, and the audio system. Once we had everything put together we tested it by logging into Disney+ on the PS5 and watching the first 8 minutes of "Return of the Jedi" in 4K.

There are still a few bugs to work out but I will take care of that tomorrow. My PS5 runs 4K video at 120 frames per second but my audio receiver can't handle that. To get around the shortcoming, we connected the PS5 directly to the TV and then run the sound back to the receiver. There is a bit of a delay between the picture and the sound but it should be fairly easy to fix with some setting adjustments. I'll work on that tomorrow.

So far I am very impressed with the new television. For the past few years I have felt that my 60-inch TV has gotten too small. I also like the added definition of 4K as the picture looks incredible. Now I just need to figure out what to do with the old stuff. Let me rephrase that: I need to figure out how to make my old television fit in my bedroom without upsetting my wife or buying any  more furniture. I'll be sure to report on the outcome.

Road Trip in a Ford Escape

Yesterday I boarded a plane and flew to San Francisco where I rented a car and drove to my boat at Coyote Point Marina. As Monday was my last day at Sony, at least for now, I had to clean out my sailboat so I could sell it. I pulled all of the big stuff off the boat and loaded into the back of the rental car and then sold the boat to an old coworker. His one request was that I help put the sails back on the boat so he could start using it on weekends. I obliged and showed him how to get everything set up. I also showed him how to start the engine. Then I got in the car and made the 11-hour drive back to Salt Lake City. The flight was much easier than the drive.

When I made my rental car reservation, I had the option of several rental car companies. Ultimately I settled on Hertz as they had cars available and also the best rate. I set the rental pickup at the airport and then gave myself until 10pm this evening to return the car to the location 2 miles from my house. Talk about convenient.

National has always allowed you to select the car you wanted when you arrive at their lot. This is something Hertz recently started doing and I really appreciated it yesterday. I knew I had a lot of stuff to bring back, including a generator, 2 televisions, and a mountain bike, so I passed on the Ford Mustang. While it would have been a fun car, not everything would have fit. I also wanted something that got great gas mileage as I would be responsible for filling the tank multiple times. Ultimately I settled on a very new Ford Escape. I put the back seats down and the bike fit nicely. Then I just loaded stuff around the bike. The generator rode in the front passenger's seat next to me.

Lately all of the cars I have rented have had key-less starts. You just have the key in the car and press the start button. It is a feature I really like. I also quickly connected the car's sound system to my phone so that I could use all of the hands-free features. It came in handy as I talked with my wife and other family members while driving. That kept some of the boredom at bay. It also had satellite radio that I started using just outside of Lake Tahoe when the traditional radio stations started getting scarce. I began with music but by the end of the drive, I was listening to comedy to help pass the time.

I turned the car back into Hertz this morning and saved myself $50 by not doing it this evening. I have to say that I really enjoyed all of the electronic features in the Ford Escape. Before I connected my phone to the car, its own navigation system did an excellent job routing me and also giving me an ETA into Salt Lake. Of course it didn't take into account the hour nap I would need outside of Elko, Nevada but it did factor in stops for gas and that soft-serve ice cream cone from McDonalds at midnight. Ultimately my favorite feature in the rental car was the fact that I averaged 30 miles per gallon of gas while mostly doing 80 miles per hour (the legal speed limit for most of the trip . . . once you get outside of California). My mother-in-law is looking for a good all-wheel drive car and I highly recommend this one. Full disclosure: I own a Ford F-150 truck and also own 190 shares of Ford stock. While both of these may influence me somewhat, I still liked the car a lot for my California-to-Utah road trip.

Fresh Fruit From Hawaii

One of my favorite things about visiting Hawaii is getting fresh papaya. For some reason, the papayas here on the mainland just are not that great. After eating a particularly bland one here in Utah, my daughter took it upon herself to figure out the difference between mainland papaya and papaya from Hawaii. It turns out the fruit on the mainland is usually "Imperial Papaya" from Mexico and is about the size of an American football. The fruit in Hawaii is actually "Strawberry Papaya" or sometimes known as Hawaiian Papaya and is much smaller. It also tastes a lot better.

The net is that I love Hawaiian papaya and think mainland papaya tastes like earwax. I mentioned this yesterday to some friends and one remarked that he misses Hawaiian-grown pineapples. He even went so far as to say that he would pay a premium for real Hawaiian pineapples. I told him that you can get Hawaiian fruit air freighted to your home. That is what I do when I want real papaya.

For those reading that are willing to spend a little money to get some fresh Hawaiian fruit, my favorite place to get it is: Dole Fruit Hawaii. Every couple of weeks I will get a box and eagerly await its arrival.

One nice thing about the Internet is being able to find such interesting food. If you have a favorite food that you can't find in the usual stores, let me know as I am sure I am not the only one that appreciates tropical fruit during the cold winter months.

Time for a New Adventure

After 11 and a half years at Sony PlayStation it is time to move to a new adventure. Monday, November 1st will be my last day. It has been a great ride and I have enjoyed my time there a lot. When I first started, I thought it would only be a 3-month job. I originally started as a contractor working in the Research and Development group. The guy that hired me needed someone to take over so he could go back to his native South Africa to watch the 2010 World Cup. When he got back, I kept waiting to be let go. That never happened.

During my time at Sony Interactive Entertainment, I got to see the launch of the PlayStation 4. Employees were given the chance to buy the new consoles and receive them 2 days before the general public. The PS4s came in on Thursday and I had my new console in hand as I headed to the airport to fly home. Some people in the shuttle bus were so excited to see the new device before its release date that they took pictures with it on the way to the airport.

Not long after the release of the PS4, I had a bunch of friends ask if I would join their new company. I went into the office on Monday prepared to resign from Sony. On the way to talk with my boss, I got pulled into someone's office and asked to start working on the PS5. I couldn't say no to that and so I ended up turning down my friends and staying at PlayStation for a few more years.

With the release of the PS5 and my latest project moving into production with the next update of the console software, it is time to move on. Unfortunately my career has stagnated for the past couple of years at SIE and it will be good to jump start it at a new company. First I plan to take a few weeks off and get ready for my next adventure. I will be sure to post where I land.

Online Research for Fun

Today I got an e-mail from Alaska Airlines letting me know about a one-day sale where they have great deals on flights but you have to buy them today. I have a lot of credit on the airline and so I surfed over to their site and started entering destinations. The first question is where to go. I thought about it for a second and looked at what it would take to go see my son in Ohio. Unfortunately Alaska does not have an optimized route between Salt Lake and Columbus. I'm not a fan of connections and the trip would require several of them. Next I checked about going to Orlando. After all, doesn't that sound like a fun destination? While the flights only required a single connection, all of the layovers seemed way too long. My final destination to check was Hawaii. Who doesn't want to spend part of December in Hawaii? Alaska Airlines has some great flights between Salt Lake and Hawaii for about $450 round trip on the dates I selected.

While I am tempted to book the flights to Hawaii, I have other things I need to do and ended my research there. I am asking myself if there could have been a perfect situation that would have me booking flights tonight. What about $200 round trip? That seems tough to pass up but I still would not have done it.

The Internet is a great tool that constantly amazes me. Tonight I did a bunch of research that would have required me to waste someone's time on the phone before the Internet. Now I can play around with a number of parameters without inconveniencing anyone. I wondered if I wasted my time this evening but got some entertainment out of the exercise. I wasted my time no more than if I watched a YouTube video or an old movie. Yes, doing online research can be entertaining and fun even if you don't buy anything.

Where's Grandma?

We have recently had a death in my wife's family and it has caused a huge disruption. Grandpa passed away and so the family needs to take extra care in providing for Grandma. Fortunately a lot of plans were in the works before the death as it was somewhat expected. After the funeral, the family had an event where everyone could share their memories of Grandpa. Everyone expected Grandma to let them know when she was leaving. Instead she snuck out and didn't tell anyone.

Grandma's departure didn't raise any red flags until she didn't show up at her daughter's house in a timely manner. Grandma was lost. Unfortunately she has a horrible habit of not charging her phone and everyone assumed it was dead. It was only mostly dead and wouldn't take a call. The family was able to access her credit card statement and see where she last purchased gas. Then one of Grandma's sons called the carrier of her mobile phone and was able to get a faint ping location. I have to admit that I didn't even know that was possible. They found her 7 hours away from home. Let's just say she got really lost. Needless to say, it was a rather sleepless night for everyone in the family as they worried about Grandma. Everyone could finally go to sleep when they could see the credit-card charge for a motel in the middle of nowhere. The next morning, Grandma's daughter drove to meet her and caravan home.

Last week the family got together and worked on solving some of the problems that led to Grandma getting lost. First, they got her a new phone with a long-lasting battery. Second they got her a wireless charger so she just has to put the phone on the charger next to her bed. Finally, they installed a tracking device in her car. I understand you can get them for your teenage drivers so you know where your kids have your car at all times. Guess what? It also works with Grandmas. Grandma saw that they were fiddling with her car and asked if it would help diagnose car problems. It does that too, so they responded in the affirmative not wanting her to know they were lo-jacking her car.

A couple of days ago, Grandma got caught eating a brownie before dinner. The daughter reminded Grandma that she was making dinner and a brownie would spoil the meal. Instead of a pithy response like, "I'm old and may not live until dessert," she stormed out of the house and drove away. Naturally she left her phone at home and nobody could track her. You would think that they could just look at the tracker information from the car. Funny story, nobody installed the software and that wasn't possible. That problem is now rectified. Fortunately Grandma cooled off a little bit and eventually came home.

The moral of the story is to be sure you finish installing all of the software for your tracking devices before you need it. Otherwise it won't be worth a thing.

The Right Tool for the Job

Recently I wrote about diagnosing a bad diagnostic tool and would like to expand on the proper use of tools. Last week I flew out to my boat to clean it up a bit and work on the engine. I needed to replace the impeller on the water pump which required removing a pin on the water pump housing. The easiest way to do that is with a hole-punch and a hammer. Unfortunately I didn't have a hammer on my boat and so I tried a number of other tools. I did have a hole punch and so I lightly hit it with a wrench, a screwdriver, and even a piece of wood. While I made some progress, none of what I tried was a good substitute for a hammer. Ultimately I drove to a local store and bought a small picture-hanging hammer. Only 3 whacks later and the pin came out nicely.

The whole time I was working on the engine, I kept thinking of the phrase, "When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat all your problems like nails." So what is the opposite of that phrase, when you have a bunch of other tools, but not a hammer? I'm not sure, but if you come up with something let me know.

This experience reminded me again of the importance of having the right tool for the job. With computers, this is very important. Anyone that has ever tried to work on Macintosh computers from the 1990's knows that the most important tool was a #8 Torx screwdriver. At the time you had to special order them but now you can find them at almost any store that sells tools.

While we all know the importance of hardware tools, there are a number of software tools that can make your life significantly easier as well. I remember one night trying to rebuild a corrupted database. It didn't have much data in it but the information it had was very important. To get the everything back, I looked at the raw data files using a hex editor. It allowed me to see the original data and write an extraction script to pull the information out in a human-readable format. Then I could rebuild the database and populate it with the correct information. Your typical editor or word processing software would have made the job significantly more difficult, if not impossible.

So how do you know if a better tool exists? Simple, just do a search on your favorite internet search engine and see if others have had similar problems. They will generally provide some ideas on what tools to use to solve them. That is how I solve car problems, boat problems, electrical problems, and even computer problems. Hopefully it works for you too.

Meeting In-Person For the First Time

This morning I got on a flight to head to the Bay Area for a quick trip. When I arrived in town, I headed to a local restaurant next to my office in San Mateo. A large group awaited me as they knew I would be in town and everyone wanted to get together. COVID-19 has prohibited coworkers from meeting in person and the group finally felt safe getting together.

We had a lot of new faces at lunch today. While I have seen everyone on frequent conference calls, today is the first time I have physically met some of them. This includes my data scientist that I hired back in January. We talk almost daily over video conferencing but I have never met him face-to-face. I have to confess that he looks significantly different than I thought. For one thing, he is tall. I always assumed we were the same height. Nope, he towers above me. There are other differences but nothing bad, just not the image I had of him.

Our department has hired a number of other people and it was good to meet them today as well. None of them looked significantly different than from the usual video conferences. I imagine that it is because I only see them once a week whereas I see my data scientist almost daily. I wonder how many other people are having or will have similar experiences once we all return to the office. Furthermore I wonder how different I look in person to the new guys on the team. Hopefully I didn't disappoint them.

 

How Long to Wait for a Video-Conference Call

I had a very important video-conference call this afternoon but got stuck in traffic and couldn't get on the call until 7 minutes after it started. As the call was a one-on-one with someone, that is much too long to wait. Fortunately the person I needed to talk with stuck around that long and waited for me. We had a great call but I felt miserable for being so tardy and apologized profusely.

This brings up the question in the title of this post. How long should you wait for a video-conference call? If it is just two people, 5 minutes is sufficient. If the person doesn't show up by then, you can easily reschedule. The question becomes much trickier when it is a group call. The easy case is if there are a lot of people and you are not required to present anything. In that case, you can show up at any time. Just be sure to keep your camera off and come into the call muted. This is similar to sneaking in the side door and is perfectly acceptable provided the other people in the call can assume you were in another meeting that ran late.

So what about the cases in between? Realistically you should always do your best to be on-time to meetings. It shows that you value everyone's time. Sometimes that isn't possible and you must be late. In those cases, being 5 minutes late is about as far as you can go. Sometimes the meeting will start without you but if you have to be caught up on items you missed, it wastes other people's time.

I felt really bad about being late to my meeting today and am glad the person I met with could forgive me. At a time when most people can work from home, I felt bad giving the excuse that I got caught in traffic even though that is what happened. Now I just need to make sure I am early to the next meeting we have together.

Diagnosing a Bad Diagnostic Tool

Yesterday I woke up early and drove the 15 miles to Alta ski area so I could do some early season skiing. We received about 25-inches of snow last week and then another foot or so on Monday evening. No the lifts are not yet running and so skiing requires hiking up the mountain. When you have the right equipment, it is a great form of exercise and fun. If you don't have the right equipment it is still a great form of exercise but not nearly as fun.

Last night I took a look at the statistics from my Suunto smartwatch and realized that it must have missed a few of my heartbeats during my hike up the mountain. The watch is generally very accurate but the readings I got yesterday are definitely low. When I go running up a hill with skis on, my average heart rate is around 120-130 beats per minute. The reading I got yesterday was a lowly 65. I know that is not right as there is always an informal competition with anyone else climbing the hill. You want to pass other people and never get passed. That means I could feel my heart beating quite noticeably by the time I got to the top of the hill. It was well past the 65 beats per minute.

On Monday I had a different experience but one that sort of relates. Follow me for a moment and you'll see what I mean. My wife's Jeep's check-engine light came on. I pulled out my trusty OBD-II computer and connected it to the car using the port under the steering wheel. I waited for the error code but only got an error reading the Jeep's computer. I tried several more times making sure to re-seat the connecting cable with the same results. Our son came over with his OBD-II reader but it also failed to read the error code from the car. Now what do I do?

Fortunately Jeep Wranglers have a way to read the diagnostic codes without having to use an OBD-II reader. You just need to turn the car on and off 3 times without starting the vehicle. Then the code appears in the odometer. It took me a few times as you have to go quickly and I was going too slow. The car spit out the code and it told me where to start looking for the problem. Basically the thermostat was bad. I had to do more to make sure that was the problem but then I replaced the thermostat for $25 and about an hour of my time. That $25 included the new thermostat and a gallon of engine coolant.

So what do these two stories have in common? Sometimes your diagnostic tool will give you erroneous information. If I had been relying on my smartwatch to give me my heart rate, I would be mistaken. Fortunately there is an easy check you can do yourself to get your real heart rate: look at your watch for 15 seconds, count heart beats, and multiply the result by 4. With the OBD-II computers, I got worried that the car had another fault with the connection. When 1 reader doesn't work, you can guess the reader is bad. When 2 don't, you start to get really worried. Fortunately I ordered a new OBD-II reader as my old one is over a decade old and needed to be replaced anyways. The new reader arrived yesterday afternoon and I was able to access the code and reset the Jeep's computer.

Diagnostic tools generally work fairly well. You just can't trust them blindly as you may be tracking down the wrong problem. Verify the results through other means if possible. Once I had a starting point on my wife's car, I could put my hand on the coolant hoses and verify that the thermostat was stuck in the open position before starting any work on the car.

A Review of iRobot's Roomba and a Eufy Robot Vacuum

When you think about keeping your house clean, there are some modern conveniences that make life significantly easier. While you don't NEED a dishwasher, it sure is easier to rinse your dishes and put them in a device that does a pretty good job cleaning and sterilizing them. Robot vacuums are not really a need but they really free up time to do other things like play video games. Back in 2015 I got my wife one of the iRobot Roomba vacuums designed specifically for pet hair. I loved that vacuum. Unfortunately they don't last forever.

Several weeks ago the vacuum stopped charging itself. It had started to exhibit other problems and so I figured it was time to replace it instead of getting replacement parts. My son has purchased several Eufy vacuums and so my wife replaced our Roomba 655 with the Eufy Robovac 11S Max. She only paid around $200 vs. the $350 I paid for the Roomba that I got from Costco. I figured I would post my comparison between these two robot vacuums.

The price of the Eufy is very attractive. You can almost get 2 for the same price as the Roomba and who wouldn't want a robot vacuum for each level of the house? Yes the Eufy is less expensive but how does it compare to the original standard? Frankly the Eufy is not nearly as good as the Roomba. There are some things that are better but the Roomba generally seems to be a better device.

The first thing I noticed about the Eufy is that my wife has it set to run daily instead of twice a week. When it runs that often, I am probably more aware of its defects as it always seems to be getting itself stuck behind a table in the living room or too far from its home base to return and charge itself. I'll be down in my office and hear it start beeping. I'll run upstairs and have to rescue it. The Roomba had similar problems but not nearly as often. I'm seeing this particular issue 45-50% of the time. The Roomba was probably only 5-10%.

You may not mind having to rescue your vacuum and it really isn't that big of a hassle to me. So how does it clean? I'm afraid I'm split on the answer to this. My experience is that the Eufy is better at picking up dust but the Roomba is better at picking up pet hair. I am always the one that empties the dust bin on both devices. I liked the Roomba's fur balls but don't remember much dust. The Eufy constantly has a thick dust blanket up against the filter and hair needs to be untangled from the roller brush.

The real test of the Eufy robot vacuum came the other day when my wife used the living room floor to cut out fabric for a large sewing project. She didn't worry about cleaning up all of the stray bits of thread because she knew the vacuum would take care of it the next day. Unfortunately the Eufy only got about 75% of the stray string. I had to go back through and handpick the thread off the floor. It didn't take more than 30 seconds but the Roomba did a much better job.

Unfortunately we have not had the Eufy very long and so I can't comment on how long it will last. If I get 6 years out of it then I will be very satisfied. My overall impression is that it is a good device and while I need to rescue it every other day, I don't mind as the cost savings make it an attractive alternative to the Roomba. If someone was to give me a choice of either one for free, I'd go for the Roomba.

Silicon Slopes Summit 2021

Today I attended the second day of the Silicon Slopes Summit. I attended as a guest of another company and appreciate Lucid Software for inviting me to the event. I made sure to wear my PlayStation 5 jacket and got a lot of comments. I learned a lot and want to share some of that today.

When I first arrived, I made sure to register and get my wristband so I could move freely about the summit. One of the people there saw my jacket and asked if I work for PlayStation. I told him I did and he responded that he loves his PlayStation 5. Naturally I asked how he managed to get one and he gave me a good secret. He said that a local furniture chain (RC Wiley) has some in stock and you just need to ask if they have any. Sometimes people will get a PS5 ordered but then not be able to pay for it. If you get them on the right day, you can pick up a new console. I will have to check if that works. Fortunately it did for the guy I talked to.

Next I went to look for the Lucid booth so I could thank them for the ticket to the summit. It took me a bit because I couldn't find a map of the exhibits floor. I ended up walking around and eventually found them. While walking around, I had several people ask me if I worked for PlayStation. They all thought it was cool and had some good questions. The most common was why there is a shortage of consoles. The best answer I could give is that we are manufacturing them as quickly as possible but demand is more than anticipated.

I did a bit more walking around the floor and discovered that there are a lot of companies hiring in the Salt Lake area. Now is a great time to see about improving your job situation if you live here. I liked seeing what new technology companies are in the area.

Eventually I made my way to the presentation that drew me to the conference in the first place. I enjoyed what I saw and glad I could attend. Once I finished the presentation I boarded the train and headed home.

Looking forward to the next Silicon Slopes Summit, it is an event that I will plan to attend in the future. Should you find yourself in the area next year, I recommend setting aside some time so you can do the same.

Don't Be Afraid to Push Buttons or Click Icons

Saturday evening I returned from visiting my son and his family in Ohio. He recently purchased his home and it was built about 100 years ago. The original seller did an excellent job fixing it up and ensuring my son did not get stuck with problems. The house has a lot of character and a number of interesting features. One that stuck out on this last trip is the sturdy front door. The front doorknob has a nice feature that when you pull it shut behind you, it locks automatically like many hotel rooms. My son made sure to warn me not to close the front door or I would have to walk around to the back door to get back in the house.

Towards the end of our trip, my son was examining his front-door latch and noticed 2 buttons. One was depressed and the other flush with the side of the door. Out of curiosity, he pushed the flush one in and the other popped out so it was now flush with the door. It also caused the outside doorknob to open the door even when it was pulled shut. Simply by playing with the buttons my son figured out how to switch between auto-lock and an unlocked front door.

I had a similar experience with some computer software recently. I saw some icons and buttons but didn't know what they did. Instead of remaining ignorant, I played with them and discovered some functionality I needed. I now use those buttons all the time and they make my work significantly easier.

The moral of the story is to not be afraid to try new things on your computer and in your software. If you don't know what something does, try it out, after you have saved your work. Rarely will it do something that is irreversible. Yes you may have to play around if you find yourself in an unfamiliar place but you will almost always be able to undo any negative effects.