Yearly Archives: 2015

I’ve mentioned how much I love their products before—now you can get quality cases for the iPad Pro.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether or not the iPad Pro can replace your Mac as a primary device. I think the simply answer to that question is, yes, it can. However, for me, the bigger question is do I want the iPad to replace my Mac? The answer to that question is, no.

I own a lot of Toontrack products and they are all fantastic. This company gets music creation for all genres, but especially Metal.

Brilliant.

Some of these are really great. Definitely worth making your way through the post.

Amazon:

Amazon’s Two-Step Verification adds an additional layer of security to your account. Instead of simply entering your password, Two-Step Verification requires you to enter a unique security code in addition to your password during sign in.

You’ll enter your sign in information like you normally would, but then you’ll be prompted to enter a security code. You can receive this security code in a variety of ways depending on the option you select during sign up, including text message, voice call, or authenticator app.

Some folks will think this kind of security is inconvenient. But any time I give a company my credit card info and I want that info stored on their site, I feel more comfortable if the site offers this additional level of security.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. and Google Inc. face renewed calls to create a workaround for smartphone encryption in the wake of the Paris attacks as Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. proposed a compromise that seeks to mollify privacy advocates.

Vance and FBI Director James Comey echoed recent comments by CIA and Justice Department officials who cite the need for access to stay a step ahead of terrorists who may use encryption to hide planned attacks. Underlining their point, French authorities said predawn raids in a Paris suburb were triggered by information gleaned from a discarded mobile phone.

“The line to protect the public should not be drawn by two companies who make smartphones,” Vance said Wednesday at a cybersecurity conference in New York where he unveiled a 42-page white paper on the issue. His plan would require companies to download data for investigators with a warrant, rather than providing the government with a “backdoor.”

Let’s hope these companies continue to push back against the government’s desire to use our devices against us.

You know how when you turn your face up into the bright sunlight, even on the coldest winter day, it can totally lift your mood? Well, that’s what our latest limited-edition, seasonal release is all about.

I love Field Notes. I’ve had them with me for years for jotting notes and doing interviews.

Dan and Jim talk about the Australian Apple Store incident, a converged iPad/Mac, the iPad Pro, setting up an iMac for guitar jams, and more.

Brought to you by:

lynda (Visit lynda.com/thebeard to get free 10-day trial access to their 3,000+ videos)

Younity (Turn your computer into your own personal media server and access all your media from your mobile devices by visiting GetYounity.com/Amplified)

Longreads:

The job of pilots like Royal is to fly directly at monstrous thunderstorms—something most pilots diligently avoid, given that the turbulent airflow in these storms occasionally brings down commercial jetliners—and discharge chemicals into a particular part of the cloud, a technique called “cloud seeding” intended to suppress the storm’s ability to produce hail.

But on this late June day, the storm racing across the prairie is outmaneuvering the 22-year-old Texan pilot. “I started approaching from the east, which is the front of the storm and should have been kind of calm,” says Royal, “but it was so turbulent that my seatbelt wouldn’t even stay fastened.”

I’m not a good flyer at the best of times. There’s not enough money in the world to get me to get into one of those little planes on a good day, let alone to fly deliberately into a thunderstorm.

CBC:

A recent report by the non-profit group MediaSmarts says nearly a quarter of Canadian children in Grade 4 — some as young as eight years old — own their own cellphone.

That number jumps to more than 50 per cent for students in Grade 7.

Interestingly (or frighteningly for some parents), of those Grade 4s with phones, the report says about one-fifth are on social networks, even though Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat (and others) all have policies that require users to be at least 13 years old.

Not having kids of my own, I’m always interested in how parents with young ones deal with this. At what age did/will you give your kid a cell phone? Do iOS and Android have “enough” parental controls to make you comfortable that your child can use the phone the way you want them to?

The Verge:

On the surface (and even under the hood), these top living room contenders share a lot of the same features, with the exception of 4K video support. Which means the best experience really comes down to the interface, the app ecosystem, and available content.

It was a tough call this year, but one new streaming-video device nudged its way past the others.

The answer will likely not surprise you but, what was interesting to me was how close the three runner-ups came in the scoring.

Outside:

Ian McIntosh was maybe five turns into a first descent of a jagged Alaskan peak when things went wrong. The 34-year-old Canadian pro skier was filming a segment for Teton Gravity Research and carving down a face the film crew dubbed “Daybreak Spines.” The light was playing tricks on him, and early-morning shadows made a long spine look easy to cross over. It wasn’t. McIntosh hit it hard and dropped five feet into a trough he didn’t know existed. Then he started rolling.

McIntosh says he was immediately certain of one thing: “I knew I was going to the bottom,” he says. “I knew I was going for a ride.” Then all he could think was, Am I going to get traumatically injured by tomahawking down this mountain? and Please be over.

The video of this is almost painful to watch. The audio makes it even more so.

Vox:

Jessica Jones is a terrible superhero by superhero industry standards. Her name is forgettable; she sounds like a girl from your third-grade class. She’s just another brick — a term assigned to the plethora of superhumans with super strength as their primary power. It’s easy to see why she isn’t popular or why many people, even some comic book fans, were puzzled by Marvel and Netflix’s decision to give the character her own TV show.

But even though Jessica Jones is a terrible superhero — something she would be the first to admit — that doesn’t mean she’s unworthy of her own show or that her story stinks.

Jones’s origin story is actually one of the more daring arcs Marvel has published in the past decade.

I know nothing about this Marvel character so I don’t know if Vox’s description is accurate but I assume it is. Regardless, the trailers I’ve seen make me really interesting in this series. All episodes are set to premiere November 20, 2015, on Netflix

IFLScience:

Perception is a fickle thing. As good as our senses are at keeping us alive, they can often mislead and deceive us. Here’s a great example of that which you can try at home, featured in the new BBC Four series, Colour: The Spectrum of Science.

Check out the video below, follow the instructions and see a black and white image turn into a full-color image of a landscape.

This is really cool. It illustrates an idea I teach in my photography classes about perception and being able to “force” the viewer into seeing what you want them to see.

MIC:

The Oxford Dictionary’s 2015 word of the year was awarded to something that isn’t necessarily a word, though it definitely paints a picture worth, perhaps, a thousand or so of them. The “tears of joy” emoji face — featured, among other places, in a keyboard on Apple’s iOS platform — is just one of the many cartoon facial reactions used since the late 1990’s being honored with this year’s distinction.

The emoji beat out several words and phrases, including “refugee,” “lumbersexual,” “on fleek,” “Dark Web” and “sharing economy.”

But it’s not a word.