Category: stuff

Software, toys, gadgets and computers

Ergo chair buying advice

A friend asks:

I’m in the market for an office chair. Does anyone use a backless “saddle stool” or anything else that’s more ergonomic?

I can’t comment on backless models, because I’m apparently an “OG Normcore” circa. 1980’s, and not into fads that didn’t survive that wonderful decade.

  1. If your a person who actually uses your brain, you’ll probably be sitting down, not standing. And if so, you’ll be spending a lot of your time there. A chair is a big deal!
  2. People are probably going to recommend the one they use.
  3. Good ergo chairs can run $1k+ and can last decades—mine is 14 years old and counting.
  4. It’s really a personal preference.

Granted, I’m know that the standing desk religious nuts claim old Benjamin as one of their own, but before you plunk 10 down, you might want to try them out before buying. In San Francisco, there are vendors for all of the top brands accessible.

The top three are:

  • Herman Miller: Invented the category with the Aeron. The Latest models are the Embody and Mirra.
  • Steelcase: The world’s largest office furniture company followed Herman Miller with the Leap. The notable ones are the Think and the Gesture. Steelcase chairs are known to be highly complex and highly customizeable (You’ll need to read the user manual to get the sitting right).
  • Humanscale: The dark horse of the elite ergonomic office chair world. Famous for the Freedom, and now the Diffrient chairs.

…

FYI, As I mentioned two years ago, at home I use a Humanscale Freedom that I purchased from their first store in San Jose in 2000. When I got the cushions on my chair replaced from visiting the downtown SF Humanscale offices in 2011, Marie got a Humanscale Diffrient World Chair in custom colors—another benefit of visiting the store: more color options than the website.

DSC_8400 - Version 2

Some things have changed, but a lot is still the same
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Learning to smile

Learning to smile

I’ve been a manager for 2.5 years and I’ve been too long away from programming. There is something just so wonderful about being able to work again in a world where there is a right and a wrong.1

I decided to start to finally2 teach myself iOS development today for: first, because I’ve never done it before and second, because it’s an opportunity to learn a new language and re-learn an old one3 I haven’t done for over a decade.

We’ll see how it goes. I’m not optimistic.

  1. …and getting the feedback to know which is which! ↩
  2. This does not count. ↩
  3. If you call writing a median-based BPM counter for Mac OS X, “learning.” I think the jury is still out since Xcode, memory management, and the user-interface are so different now. ↩
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The Rubbernecking Theory of Google Glasses

[John Gruber writes][]:

One of these guys is wrong.

It’s [possible][wiki:false dilemma] that they’re both right in what they observed, but both wrong in trying to derive a conclusion from their observations.

[John Gruber writes]: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/05/20/glass-io “Two Takes on Google Glass at I/O—Daring Fireball”
[wiki:false dilemma]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma “False dilemma—Wikipedia”
Continue reading about false dichotomies and false conclusions after the jump

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The new MagSafe

In nearly every review of the new MacBook Air or MacBook Pro Retina, a big list on the minus column has been the new [MagSafe][] 2 connector.

Mostly because this necessitates the purchase of a $10 part for all ones other’s adapters that is (admittedly) easy to lose.

But overall, I feel this deserves a big plus. Since I’ve had my MacBook Air, I have not once put my USB cable into my MagSafe outlet. This was an almost daily occurrence, so much so that I noticed I unconsciously nurtured a habit of using the right USB port first.

Now if they can only bring back the low profile connector and license MagSafe to third parties. Well that, and create a FindMyMagSafe2Adapter app. Because I seemed to have lost one of mine already.

[MagSafe]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagSafe “MagSafe—Wikipedia”

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Nikon D7000 availability

> When will the d7000 be availible in stores again cant find one anywhere?

The Nikon D7000 is produced in the superfactory in Thailand. This means that production was halted because of the flood in Thailand last year. The supply channel has emptied out during the holidays. Production should be back online this month and you’ll find availability you should find the stores will all have availability by March at the latest.

Try to get onto a waiting list at your local camera store. Due to the way Nikon is regulating prices, other than sales tax, the price should be the same as online. It will be much lower than trying to purchase on eBay today.

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Monitor cover for Nikon D5000/D5100?

Sometimes I get bored and answer questions on the Nikon USA forum:

> Is there a monitor cover which will work with the D5100? I am thinking of a cover similar to the BM-8 that came with my D70.

The 5100 has a flip out LCD, so there is no need for a monitor cover. Instead, just flip out the LCD, rotate it, and flip it back in.

There are third party sites that make “[screen protectors][google screen protector]” which are thin films designed to protect the LCD from scratching. I don’t know how effective or useful they are since the glass or plastic used to protect the Nikon LCDs has improved over the years and quality varies from model-to-model. Plus, it is simply not very likely that a dSLR camera LCD will get scratched—dSLRs just aren’t often found in your pocket along with your keys a la iPhone 😉

For instance, my Nikon D3 with a glass screen and no plastic protector doesn’t have a scratch even though I’m and outdoor shooter and have tens of thousands of shutter clicks. Similarly, my GF’s Nikon D5000 doesn’t have a scratch because it is easy to rotate the display to a safe position for storage and transportation.

BTW, avoid most “anti-glare” thin film protectors unless you are sure you know what you are doing. They work by frosting the film to scatter the reflection. However the material used in the frosting may be too close to the size of the pixels in the high-density monitors of a camera LCD. When that happens you end up being able to see the individual red, green and blue pixels in the display making it annoying. 🙂

[google screen protector]: http://www.google.com/search?q=lcd+screen+protector+nikon&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=PzF&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=lcd+screen+protector+nikon+5100

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Scrivener Ninja

I recommend [Scrivener][] as **the** application for doing long-form writing. But since I’m no longer in academia and I don’t write creatively, I don’t often use the program—unless my blog articles run away from me. (Besides, my [vim][macvim] keybinding addiction is enabled by [QuickCursor][]). Even when I do, it is pretty much limited to its [MultiMarkdown][] export to HTML for notetaking.

The other day, I noticed they added a tutorial document to the application itself. I decided to go through it.

Scrivener Tutorial

This screenshot shows both normal and “smart” collections, split screens with audio dictation handling, custom templates with custom icons, and that I love my boo 🙂

Very cool. I learned a lot that I didn’t get (not) slogging through the complete(ly boring) user manual.

Now if only if I can figure out some reason to actually use the program… 😀

[Scrivener]: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php “Scrivener—Literature and Latte”
[QuickCursor]: http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/quickcursor “QuickCursor: Your Text Editor Anywhere for Mac—Hog Bay Software”
[MultiMarkdown]: http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/ “MultiMarkdown”
[macvim]: http://code.google.com/p/macvim/ “macvim: vim for the Mac”

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The Thunderscan story

I’m surprised I never got around to mentioned this, when [I promised I would][nans second story]. Since it’s been years, go back and read it, and come back. I’ll wait.

…

In high school, I owned a [Thunderscan][Thunderscan]. For those of you too lazy to click on the link, this was a device that would digitize photos by replacing the ink cartridge of your ImageWriter, [a dot-matrix printer][dot-matrix printer], popular with Macintosh computers of the era.

(For those of you too young to remember what a dot-matrix printer is: in the old days, our printers were slow enough that you could watch an episode of *[Cheers][Cheers]* waiting for it to print out an article or “graphics” —the latter of which was whatever came out of [Print Shop][theprintshop]. And they were so loud, that a popular accessory was huge muffled box to place the printer in, in order to contain what can only be described as the primal periodical scream of the then nascent personal computer, “Why the f*&k do I have to be tasked for the next half our printing up a sinfully ugly banner for [your terrible P.T.A Yard Sale][review the print shop]?”)

Now imagine something that did the reverse (put print into the computer) by scanning it line by line. And realize that a typical “line” of text back then was actually 24 “lines” to this scanner.

This was a Thunderscan.

Continue reading The Thunderscan story after the jump

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