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Julie’s gadget diary – 5 lessons I learned from my last vacation

 

I recently returned from an epic vacation to California where Jeanne and I explored 3 different locations over the course of 7 days.  As with most trips, I always struggle with the gear that I want to take with me. I am a minimalist at heart, so I like to pack the least amount of items while getting the greatest benefit from their usefulness. My biggest gear decisions for this trip were whether I wanted to take my 12-inch MacBook or my Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Android tablet and if I wanted to splurge and buy a small camera just for the trip.

Time to pack the gadgets

In the image above, you can see the tech that I took with me on this trip. Here is the list of items:

12-inch MacBook
Pixel 2 XL
Huawei P20 smartphone
Xaiomi Mi Sphere Camera
Skyroam SOLIS 4G LTE Global WiFi hotspot
Identity wallet
Selfie stick portion of the MeFoto Backpacker Air tripod
Jaybird Freedom 2 Bluetooth earbuds
EasyAcc MegaCharge Doubin 16750mAh USB-C Power Bank
X47 journal
Big Idea Design Ti Click Classic pen
Altoids tin with small cables, adapters, and thingamabobs
Lens cleaning cloth
Photon X-Light Macro flashlight
Spyderco Ladybug pocket knife
ThanoTech stainless steel USB car charger
Various cables and AC chargers
Generic shoulder bag

Other items that I packed but weren’t included in the photo above include:

SCOTTeVEST Hoodie Cotton jacket
Showers Pass Trailhead Bamboo-Merino Wool hoodie
Duluth Trading Company firehose cargo pants

Every time I go on a vacation, I revisit the idea of only taking a tablet and then every year that I do that, I complain that the experience was painful because I wasn’t able to get work done on the tablet as easily as I can on the MacBook. I’m happy to report that I saved myself that headache this year and decided to take the MacBook. In the end, the 12-inch MacBook takes up less space than a 10-inch tablet, a Bluetooth keyboard, and a Bluetooth mouse. Also, I didn’t need to take the dedicated Apple power adapter because the MacBook uses USB-C, so I was able to use the same charger for it as I used for my phones.

I mentioned that I also toyed with the idea of purchasing a camera just for the trip because I knew we’d be having some excellent scenic photo opportunities. In the end, I decided NOT to buy a new camera because again I’m a minimalist… Also, I was packing the Huawei P20 smartphone that I was in the process of reviewing and the Xaiomi Mi Sphere 360-degree camera along with my Pixel 2 XL. So 3 cameras would be plenty right? Hmmmm, I think maybe my definition of minimalism is flawed 😉

California here we come!

The trip started with us flying from Indianapolis to Dallas and then from Dallas Texas to Fresno California. During that leg of the trip, I used my Pixel to surf, keep up with emails, read news feeds, and read a few pages here and there on the book I’m currently reading (Chaser by John W. Pilley). I also ended up using the EasyAcc power bank while waiting in the Dallas airport for our connecting flight because all the outlets and charging stations at our gate were already being used by other people. I think this might be the first time that I’ve actually used a power bank for real-world use instead of just testing it for a review. It worked out great and allowed me to easily top off my Pixel’s battery before and during a couple of our flights.

When we landed in Fresno, we were greeted by a display that reminded us why we were there in the first place. Giant Sequoia trees! So we grabbed our bags, got a rental car, plugged in the ThanoTech car charger and used my Pixel 2 XL to navigate us to King’s Canyon National Park and the John Muir Lodge where we would be staying.

Lesson 1 – Offline Google Maps are your friend

Make sure you download your Google Map trip navigation info on your phone before you get into the middle of the drive to your destination. I already knew that cell coverage was going to be pretty much non-existent inside the King’s Canyon National Park, but it was also spotty on the drive from Fresno to the King’s Canyon National Park. That’s why I was really glad that I had planned ahead and had set up Google Maps on my phone with an offline map/directions from the airport to the park and also from the park to our second destination.

The drive from the Fresno airport to King’s Canyon National Park inside the Sequoia National Forest was our first taste of California and it didn’t disappoint.



Jeanne who loves plants and flowers kept wanting to stop at every turnout (wide gravel berms on the side of the highway where you can pull over so faster drivers can go by) so she could see and photograph various wildflowers that we don’t see in Indiana.

The scenery changed dramatically from what looked and felt like a desert landscape into a fairy tale world as soon as reached the Sequoia National Forest.

This was our first look at one of the giant sequoia trees as we drove into the King’s Canyon National Park which is inside Sequoia National Forest. We were impressed and had to get out and snap a few pictures. We would soon come to learn that this one was just a ‘baby’ compared to others we’d see the following day.

We checked into our room at the John Muir Lodge and then had a quick dinner at the lodge restaurant where they had free (although insanely slow) WiFi. Afterward, we went back to our room where I promptly crashed due to not sleeping at all the night before in the hotel where we had stayed near the Indianapolis airport so that we wouldn’t have to get up so early to drive from Columbus to Indy for our 8am flight to Fresno, CA. I ended up sleeping from 6pm to about 8am the next morning. I guess I was tired and the time difference from EST to PST caught me.

When we got up that next morning I checked again to see if I had any T-mobile coverage and nope, nothing. Then I checked to see if there was open WiFi in the room. Nope. Then just for kicks, I tried the Skyroam 4G WiFi hotspot. Again nothing. I wasn’t surprised though as I already knew I was going to be off the grid during the first part of our vacation. I’d already prepared to be incommunicado by scheduling Gadgeteer news and reviews posts for several days in advance and I surrendered to the fact that I would be able to catch up on emails once we made our way over to the coast to our final vacation destination in Carmel.

What I hadn’t completely prepared for was just how freaking cold it was in King’s Canyon National Park. We had checked the weather for King’s Canyon when we were packing before we left Indiana and thought the forecast was screwy because it had shown temps in the 30’s and 40’s. We figured it was showing the forecast for farther up in the mountains or something. But when I checked out on the porch outside our room at the lodge that morning, I was pretty surprised by how cold it was. But it wasn’t just cold, it was also foggy and drizzling. Luckily, we’d each brought sweatshirts, along with t-shirts and a jacket.

Lesson 2 – I still love my SCOTTeVEST Hoodie

When we were packing for the trip, I had originally decided to take the BauBax Women’s Sweatshirt jacket because I’d just posted my review but hadn’t actually put it through any real-world travel scenarios and wanted to do so for a later review update. But in the end, I changing my mind and packed the SCOTTeVEST Hoodie Cotton Jacket because I just like the SeV jacket better.

I’m glad I did make the swap because the SeV jacket is a heavier weight and kept me warmer than the BauBax would have been able to do. The SeV jacket also has a better layout of pockets that were perfect for 2 phones and the Xiaomi camera that I carried with me every day while on the trip.

That first day we walked around looking at some of the trees in King’s Canyon near the John Muir Lodge where we were staying. But the weather was so bad and it was so foggy that we packed it in earlier than anticipated and drove to our 2nd destination which was Three Rivers.

But before we left King’s Canyon National Park, I got my journal stamped. One stamp was a postmark from the tiny post office near the lodge and the other one was from the park visitor center. And that’s one reason why I still love my paper journals. I like collecting little mementos to tape, or glue in my journal so I can flip back and remember the fun we had and things we did and saw.

Lesson 3 – Don’t forget the panorama mode on your camera

The panorama mode on my smartphone’s camera isn’t normally something I think about using on a daily basis. But on this vacation, it was the perfect way to capture pictures of the giant sequoia trees and other landscape shots. Here are some examples which you can click if you want to see the full-sized image.




Panoramic images aren’t perfect. They often have a fisheye or warped appearance like the giant sequoia images above. But I still think they are cool because you can get all of your subject in one photo where it would otherwise only show a small portion of it.

It’s also amazing how many people don’t know about this feature. When we were on a tour of the Sequoia National Park, one of the other people with our group asked what I was doing when I was taking panos of the trees. When I showed her how to do it with her iPhone, she was overjoyed to learn that she could do that.

Lesson 4 – I didn’t have access to the internet for almost 3 full days and I survived!

When we were staying in Three Rivers, our room at the Gateway Inn had internet, so I was able to check my email and surf when we were there in the room – which was only in the morning and evening since the other part of the day we were in the park which has zero internet/cell coverage.

Before the trip, I was a little anxious about not being able to keep up on my email, news feeds, and Gadgeteer stuff. But once I gave in to the fact that I wouldn’t have control over that part of the trip, I stayed calm and carried on. It was actually pretty liberating. For someone who likes to stay connected and on top of things, this was a big accomplishment for me and I am glad that the trip worked out the way it did because now I know that taking a break from the digital world is not going to kill me. 🙂

Lesson 5 – My 12-inch MacBook is a great travel computer but for my next trip I may go with a tablet or nothing at all

Shocking right? But seriously, now that I’ve survived without working for a week, I’m going to look forward to doing that more often. Of course, it did take some preparation beforehand. I had to schedule news and review posts to publish days in advance and I had Janet take over comment moderation and take the wheel while I was away.

I also used the Newton Mail client on my phone when I needed to file emails and the Gmail app with the canned reply feature for quick responses. These two tools helped me to keep my inbox clean, which is important to me so I don’t get that I’m never going to catch up feeling that can happen when there are dozens of messages awaiting a reply.

Our next vacation is this fall when we’ll go to Sanibel Island, Florida. I’m seriously considering just taking a tablet this time. No, I’m not going to try to make it bend to my will and become a laptop. I won’t even take a Bluetooth keyboard with me. I’d just use it for surfing and a few games when the mood strikes. With Newton Mail and Gmail, I can keep my inbox clean and as for working on Gadgeteer reviews and articles, I now know that I can relax and take a vacation.

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Julie’s gadget diary – 5 lessons I learned from my last vacation originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on June 22, 2018 at 5:09 pm.

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Julie’s gadget diary – Gmail will be updated soon and I’m worried

I’ve been seeing a lot of headlines this afternoon about Google updating the web-based Gmail interface for the first time in years. I can’t remember any changes to Gmail since I switched to it as my only email client back in 2009. Software updates are usually something that I enjoy and look forward to, but today’s rumors are making me worried that a “new and improved” Gmail will wreck havoc on my productivity workflow.

I’ve considered myself a Gmail power user for almost 9 years now. I even wrote about the reasons why I love Gmail in a post from 2009. I still use all the features I talk about in that article to this very day and that’s why I’m worried… Other than labels, stars, and keyboard shortcuts, the other power user features I like to use are all Gmail Labs features which mean that they aren’t truly supported because Google considers them to be experimental.

Two of these features include multiple inboxes and canned responses. I could deal with not having canned responses because I can use an alternative like AutoHotKey on Windows or TextExpander on the Mac which is a program that runs in the background and expands certain keywords into pasted blocks of text for things that I type frequently. It’s a real time saver.

I read one rumor that Google will bring the same smart reply buttons that we have in the Gmail mobile app, to the desktop web interface. I do like that rumor and will be happy to see it happen, but I would still like to be able to create my own list of custom replies because I currently use a LOT of them.

So although I wouldn’t like to lose it, I can live without the current canned responses feature. But if Google decides to ditch multiple inboxes feature, I’m not going to be a happy camper at all. Multiple inboxes allow me to easily see messages that I need to reply to or groups of messages that I use as a pseudo task management system. I like to see everything on one screen like you can see in the screenshot shown above. That way I don’t have to go searching for what needs to be worked on. If this feature is abandoned, I’ll have to create a new workflow and that’s not something I hope I won’t need to do.

Am I the only person who is more than a little anxious about what Google may decide to change or delete from Gmail? Do we need to make a sacrifice to the appease the Google gods so there will be a favorable outcome? Let me know what you’re thinking in the comments.

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Julie’s gadget diary – Gmail will be updated soon and I’m worried originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 11, 2018 at 1:23 pm.

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Julie’s gadget diary – Gmail will be updated soon and I’m worried

I’ve been seeing a lot of headlines this afternoon about Google updating the web-based Gmail interface for the first time in years. I can’t remember any changes to Gmail since I switched to it as my only email client back in 2009. Software updates are usually something that I enjoy and look forward to, but today’s rumors are making me worried that a “new and improved” Gmail will wreck havoc on my productivity workflow.

I’ve considered myself a Gmail power user for almost 9 years now. I even wrote about the reasons why I love Gmail in a post from 2009. I still use all the features I talk about in that article to this very day and that’s why I’m worried… Other than labels, stars, and keyboard shortcuts, the other power user features I like to use are all Gmail Labs features which mean that they aren’t truly supported because Google considers them to be experimental.

Two of these features include multiple inboxes and canned responses. I could deal with not having canned responses because I can use an alternative like AutoHotKey on Windows or TextExpander on the Mac which is a program that runs in the background and expands certain keywords into pasted blocks of text for things that I type frequently. It’s a real time saver.

I read one rumor that Google will bring the same smart reply buttons that we have in the Gmail mobile app, to the desktop web interface. I do like that rumor and will be happy to see it happen, but I would still like to be able to create my own list of custom replies because I currently use a LOT of them.

So although I wouldn’t like to lose it, I can live without the current canned responses feature. But if Google decides to ditch multiple inboxes feature, I’m not going to be a happy camper at all. Multiple inboxes allow me to easily see messages that I need to reply to or groups of messages that I use as a pseudo task management system. I like to see everything on one screen like you can see in the screenshot shown above. That way I don’t have to go searching for what needs to be worked on. If this feature is abandoned, I’ll have to create a new workflow and that’s not something I hope I won’t need to do.

Am I the only person who is more than a little anxious about what Google may decide to change or delete from Gmail? Do we need to make a sacrifice to the appease the Google gods so there will be a favorable outcome? Let me know what you’re thinking in the comments.

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Julie’s gadget diary – Gmail will be updated soon and I’m worried originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 11, 2018 at 1:23 pm.

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Julie’s gadget diary – Samsung makes great phones, so why can’t I love them?

Verizon Wireless was kind enough to send me a shiny new Samsung Galaxy S9 smartphone to test for a few days and it’s an all around awesome phone. From the look of the hardware to what’s under the hood, this is a phone that many Android fans would love to own, but for some reason, I just can’t seem to fall for one of them.

You look like you haven’t changed a bit since I last saw you

At first glance, the S9 looks identical to the Samsung Galaxy S8 from last year with a glass front and back sandwiching a metal frame. The new handset is slightly heavier, and a few tenths of a millimeter thicker and wider S8. But those are things you won’t notice at all when you hold the phone in your hand. It’s not until you flip the phone over that you will see the biggest physical difference compared to the S8. The often criticized location of the fingerprint sensor on the S8 has been updated on the S9 to a new location below the camera lens.

There’s a new home for the fingerprint scanner

If you’ve been a regular visitor of my reviews, you’ll know that I am usually grumpy when it comes to talking about fingerprint sensors on smartphones. Until recently, I’ve had the worst luck with getting them to work for me for more than a day or so after the initial setup. That changed with the Pixel 2 XL and even more recently with the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, both of which have wonderfully fast and accurate sensors on the back. I’m happy to report that the S9’s fingerprint sensor is not terrible! Notice that I didn’t say it was surprisingly great and wonderful. It’s neither of those things for me. But, it’s not terrible and even after several days it still works for me at least most of the time.

One interesting feature of the S9 is that it now uses Intelligent Scan, which is a combination of iris and facial recognition that works simultaneously. I also noticed that the S9 will unlock the phone with your face if your fingerprint doesn’t work first or vice versa. Maybe that’s the same way the S8 works, but this is the first I’ve noticed it. Even in low light facial recognition works really well. However, it didn’t work in total darkness.

Other updates

  • The Samsung Galaxy S9’s CPU is a bit more spiffy than the S8.

Galaxy S8: Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 or Exynos 8895, 4GB RAM, 64GB + microSD
Galaxy S9: Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 or Exynos 9810, 4GB RAM, 64GB + microSD

  • Bixby has been updated. One word, ick. It still feels clunky and I prefer using Google assistant.
  • The S9 features Dolby Atmos and AKG speakers that sound great and give you almost a surround sound feel when you watch video in landscape orientation.

Don’t forget the camera

Samsung kept the S9’s camera at 12 megapixels but they added a variable-aperture lens that opens as much as f/1.5 for low-light shots and as small as f/2.4 for bright shots. They also improved the Dual-Pixel performance. What does that mean in non-photographer speak? It means that the camera is good. Crazy good. Here are some sample shots right out of the camera with no retouching applied (except for rotating the tree picture in WordPress).







Another new feature on the S9 is AR emoji which is Samsung’s version of Apple’s Animoji only way creepier.

The way it works is that you take a picture of yourself and it takes your face and lets you customize your hair and clothes.

You can then use animated GIFs in your messages like the one above showing me waving at you. Does it look like me? Yeah, I guess so, but why? These cutesy features must be for teens, because other than goofing around with it for a few minutes, I’d probably never use it.

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S9?

If you already own a perfectly fine S8, then no. In my opinion, the S9 just doesn’t have enough updates to justify upgrading. That doesn’t mean that Samsung won’t sell millions of them because they will. The S9 is a fantastic phone with every feature I’d ever want like wireless charging, long battery life, great camera, notification LED, HDMI out (with a USB-C HDMI adapter), DeX compatible (with optional dock), and a microSD card slot.

So now back to the question in the title of this article. If the S9 is such a great phone, why can’t I love it? I keep asking myself that question and I don’t have a good answer to it. I could say that I’m not a fan of Samsung’s version of all the stock apps, as I really prefer the stock Android experience. But, it ultimately comes down to my own personal preferences. Just like I love MINI Coopers but think Fiat 500s look hideous, or that I won’t eat mushrooms and green peppers but I love green beans and tomatoes. There are things that I like that you don’t like a vice versa.

I’m not going to say that I wouldn’t use a Samsung Galaxy S9 if I didn’t have another phone and someone gave me one. But if I had to choose between buying an S9, a Pixel 2 XL, or even the Huawei Mate 10 Pro right now, the S9 wouldn’t be my number one or number two choice… for no other reason than I like the other two phones better even though they are missing a couple of the features that the S9 offers.

I think it’s great that we’re to the point where flagship phones all have the same core set of features and choosing one comes down to the little things.

Source: The temporary loaner device was provided by Verizon Wireless.

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Julie’s gadget diary – Samsung makes great phones, so why can’t I love them? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 16, 2018 at 1:51 pm.

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Julie’s gadget diary – Update on my plan to ditch my notebooks

In my last gadget diary post from over a week ago, I announced that I was going to give up my paper notebooks in favor of a digital To-Do system to help me manage my tasks. After I published that post, quite a few of you gave me ideas for different apps to try (thanks!). Some suggestions included Evernote, Todoist, Trello, Wunderlist, and more.

There’s are too many apps for that

I was excited to try each app that was suggested and I set out doing just that. But after trying a handful of them, I grew frustrated. Each app had features I liked, but features that I wanted but not available.

Most of the apps offered free and premium versions, with the free version offering a watered down feature set, vs. a paid version that required a monthly fee to unlock all the good stuff. Since I already mentioned in my previous gadget diary post that I don’t want to pay for a new system/app, it didn’t take me long to strike several suggestions off the list.

My aha moment

My sister commented on Facebook when she saw my post about ditching my notebooks that she gave me 2 weeks to change my mind and go back to pen and paper. It didn’t even take me that long to figure out that I love keeping a notebook for the following reasons:

  1. It’s a tangible object that I can hold that doesn’t run on batteries and won’t shatter if I drop it on the floor.
  2. I don’t have to flip to another tab in my browser or have the app own in a window on my computer because the notebook is always open next to me so I can see the 3-5 daily tasks that I want to do that day.
  3. Drawing an X through a box with pen on paper when I finish a task is more satisfying to me than clicking a mouse button.

I realized that my simplified Bullet Journal system that I’ve been using for the past few years has been working just fine for helping me productive with my list of daily tasks. I don’t need a digital task manager at all, what I really need is a better way to record and then later find ideas and notes on a variety of subjects that I jot down in the same notebook that I use for my daily To-Dos.

I’ve decided that I want to use Google apps like Gmail or Google Docs, Sheets to build my customized note-taking system because I’m a Gmail ninja and I already use Google Docs and Sheets for other things. So it shouldn’t be that difficult to create a way to keep track of ideas, notes, and other things using these tools.

Ideas I’m considering

The first idea is to record my ideas and notes in a separate section of my paper notebook. This is attractive to me because it means I have one place where I keep everything. But, it’s also the same reason why I want a better note taking system. Finding individual notes that have been written on paper is not easy unless I’d create an index. But, an index is only useful if everything is recorded in it. Otherwise, I’d never find notes on that crazy idea I had 2 months ago about a Gadgeteer podcast without flipping through 2 months worth of pages.

Another idea is to use Gmail to send myself notes with specific labels/tags that I can later use to search to see matching entries. I am a heavy label user in Gmail, so it would be simple to do this. I could use labels like postideas, healthnotes, tripideas, etc.

Another idea is to use a Google Sheets spreadsheet and add a new row each time I have a note that I want to save and have the first row be a label/tag so I can sort on that label to see all the entries with that label.

I think the Sheets idea might be the best way to go just for visual reasons. Here’s an example of the way I’m thinking about setting up the sheet.

I’m not a spreadsheet wizard so if I go with this system, I’ll have to learn how to set up the sheet so I can just display rows based on the tag column if I only want to see health notes for example. I don’t even know if this is possible in Google Sheets. I know you can do it in MS Excel because I’ve seen pivot tables. But again, I’m not a spreadsheet expert.

One more idea I have is to use a flat text file that I can use Unix commands like grep to sort and display only the notes I want to see at any given time.

The biggest issue with this idea is the ability to access the text file from my computer at home, my computer at work, and my phone or tablet.

So that’s where I am right now with this “project”. Just like before, I’d love to hear your ideas and suggestions.