Do you have less room on your iDevice then you think you should? Are you seeing space taken up by a media file that you can’t remove via an iTunes sync? Do you have weird, grayed-out items in your list of iDevice media files when you look at them in iTunes? Well, Gear Diary is [...]
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A Day in the Life: Using a Bluetooth Headset as a Remote Recording Device for Lectures
I have been teaching for the past few years and have found that recording my lectures is helpful for students that are sick or that need assistance due to attention deficit issues. Many of the programs to record lectures are costly, so I set out to see if I could use my MacBook and a [...]
iOS 5.0 QuickTip: It is Worth the Time to Set Up Keyboard Shortcuts
I’m a huge fan of the application TextExpander. It is, in fact, one of the key Mac utilities I cannot do without. TE offers a good deal of power but the primary reason I use it is that it allows me to create text shortcuts that have saved me a great deal of typing. For [...]
Macbook Pro Utility You NEED for Better Battery Life: gfxCardStatus
Perhaps it was because I was using the Sony Vaio S-series laptop with its 15-hour battery, but I never really looked critically at the battery life on my 2011 15″ Macbook Pro. But recently I have been using it almost exclusively and have felt that I should be getting more hours between charges. My assumption [...]
Siri and iCloud Turn the iPhone’s Notes App into a Powerful Tool
The Notes app that is built into iOS has always struck me as a bit anemic. That’s hard for me to write, considering that my cousin works for Apple and is one of the key people involved in its development. Unfortunately… it’s kind of true. Sure, Notes is great for jotting down quick memos, but [...]
Red Bull “Creation” Event: The Official Gear Diary Report
If the apocalypse comes, I want to spend it with the teams who competed in the Red Bull Creation event. They were given 72 hours and a pile of junk, along with the mission to illustrate “Energy in Motion”. Any scraps were fair game, from metal to electronics to slabs of wood, and the creations [...]
Mac Quick Tip: Use Faces to Find People and Organize Out of Control iPhoto Libraries
Sometimes it is the little features in a program that can make the biggest differences. iPhoto’s facial recognition is one example of this. I knew the feature was there in the ’11 version of the software but never used it. Last week Elana’s grandma Pearl died. It was and is sad, but at 87 she [...]
Using Technology to Train for My First Triathlon
I am currently in the final weeks training for my first triathlon here in DC on June 19th. The race lengths are an 800m swim, 20k bike ride, and 7.5k run, mostly along the National Mall. (Here are more detailed maps of the swim, bike, and run routes.) What makes this race particularly challenging for [...]
IPad Quick Tip: Want to Read Outside on Your iPad? Go Landscape
Now that summer is unofficially here you may be spending more time than ever outside. As great as the iPad is it leaves a good deal to be desired when you are in the sun. There is the glare. There is the overheating and subsequent shut down safety mechanism. And there is the fact that [...]
How To View Free Books and Blogs on the Kindle
Now that the ad-supported Kindle with Special Offers (aka the Kindeal) is out, sales are apparently through the roof again. With that in mind, it seems a good time to bring up the question on many (some?) people’s minds – how do I get free stuff on the Kindle? Books There are a truly remarkable [...]
iPhoneography update: Going HDSLR (almost)
During my recent shift in gear and equipment from days gone by to the modern era I began to collect all the little hardware that was either loose or just kind of hanging around with other stuff. In a moment of inspiration this week I dumped a pile of it out and began assembling a [...]
HDSLR, Part 3: Enter the new Nikon D5100
In part two of this series on using DSLR cameras for capturing high-definition video I teased to the new D5100 camera coming from Nikon. It’s here … and my favorite little camera store here in Dallas had one. Now it’s mine. What drew me to the new unit is the variable-angle LCD monitor which will [...]
The HTC HD2: A WinMo Story with an Android Happy Ending
When the EU model of the HD2 came out in late 2009, it was one of the coolest phones I had ever seen. Knowing it was coming to the US a few months later, I had to decide if I was going to ditch my Mytouch and pick one up. The hardest part about doing [...]
HDSLR, Part Two: Getting It In Gear
I did not choose the Nikon D7000 for its digital still photography features, no, I solely based my purchase on its HD video capabilities. This morning I ran out to shoot a few shots of a couple of vehicles I am reviewing this week and the D7000 had the lens on it that is my [...]
High Def With D-SLR: Adding the Nikon D7000 to My Gear Bag
Offering to help out landed me some new work. Paying work. Sweet. It starts, as most things do, innocently enough. “Hey, can you take some pictures for us for the annual company banquet?” “Hey, can you get with supervisor so-and-so and see if they need any help with getting the highlight slideshow/video ready for the [...]
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