End-user perspective on small office tools & technology

M is for March-In-Meatspace

Projects-in-the-worksYou may have notice that March was a very quiet (crickets) month hereabouts. It was the slowest month in the seven year history of this blog. As such, I can’t help but feel that I owe an explanation for these events. March was spent focused on events in meatspace.

I suppose the term “meatspace” is by now archaic. The term “cyber”space has certainly been devalued, most especially since part of it was coopted by CBS into their newest CSI franchise. Whatever the case with the linguistics, I spent most of March engaged in things that involved getting away from my desk and dealing with real people in the physical world.

When I left Pixel Power in the spring of 2013 part of my plan was to become more engaged in the local community. For many years my work life involved so much travel that I had been unable to commit to such activities. Since then quite the opposite is true. I need such engagements to keep me from going stir crazy in the home office.

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Deal Alert: Groupon Offering Nexus 7 For $149

Yesterday I received my third Nexus 7 (2013 edition) by way of a Groupon deal that ends later today. The offer is new, not refurbished, versions of the 16 GB model for $149.  That’s down from the $199 list price, which was an unbelievable bargain in the first place.

Nexus7-Groupon

There are dozens of cheap Android tablets to be had, but few that run Lollipop. In my case, my existing Nexus 7, which has a few scrapes and nicks, will be rotated into a utility role, very likely as a pseudo-Squeezebox.

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Hunting For Our Next SqueezeBox

When stuff just works all the time it doesn’t often come up in conversation, which just seems wrong. After all, it’s still working! It’s the stuff that doesn’t consistently work that gets the attention.

We’ve used Logitech Squeezeboxes for musical playback around the property for a  very long while. We presently have five of them deployed, including our original Squeezebox 3 that was purchased in 2005! In general they just work, which has been great, especially since they were discontinued years ago.

When we stage our annual Halloween festivities we are required to reposition some equipment. Last time around one Squeezebox powered-up with a fault in the analog output. One channel is delivered with level much reduced compared to the other channel. A quick search of the still lively forums.slimdevices.com turned up similar reports, attributing the problem to faulty capacitors in the analog output stage.

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Flash In The News

One of the announcements coming from MWC2015 today was the release of a frightfully capacious flash memory card from SanDisk. Their new Ultra Premium Edition microSDXC card holds a whopping 200 GB of data! With class 10 performance it’s able…

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Mini-Review: Definitive Technology AW5500 Outdoor Speakers

Definitive Technology AW5500Not long after I started this blog I described my plan for delivering Whole House Audio. To summarize, at various locations on the property we pair a Logitech Squeezebox with semi-pro powered audio monitors. The Squeezeboxes can be synchronized, delivering the ability to play music across the entire property, with independent control of level at each location. Or we can play different things at different places, all under control of the Logitech Media Server’s web interface, or apps on our handheld devices.

Even though the Squeezebox is no longer made, this remains a pretty sweet setup. In the summer of 2013 I added a pair of Definitive Technology AW6500 outdoor speakers under the eave of the garage, providing music into the back yard. In truth, I had planned to install these on the front porch but they proved too large for that site. Rather than return the speakers, I deployed them in the back yard where they have been serving us nicely.

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