Rules of the Road

Training for triathlons means putting in the miles: running down the road, cranking the pedals, and (finally) venturing into the open water. We're careful when we're out there: we wear reflective vests during our many nighttime runs, have blinky lights, usually have a phone on hand, wear helmets, and roadIDs. But, still, accidents can happen. A week ago, while biking to work on a backroad, I took a turn a little close to the inside, and suddenly was off the pavement. On a mountain bike, it'd be recoverable. On a racing bike with 1"-wide smooth tires, sliding off into sand and wet grass, on a downhill slope, you're pretty much just along for the ride. At least until the bike decides to stop, and then it's just you and Isaac Newton. This particular morning, it was up and over the handlebars and onto my back onto someone's lawn. After a few well-chosen curses, I realized that I was more or less unscathed: a little pain where I landed on my back, a hard whack on one forearm, and a tire slightly askew.

As it turns out, the pain where I landed on my back was slightly less than it otherwise would have been, because I'd landed on the hip-pack, which held my wallet, some odds and ends, and my phone. Clearly, my phone got the worst of it:

I have great admiration for Gorilla Glass, but there isn't much that can be done to keep a 1-mm thick piece of glass from being completely shattered by being underneath a 140-lb rider. Not to worry: replacement parts weren't too expensive (about $100), and I already had ample experience in fixing my phone. Still, a somewhat costly mistake to make.

(not so) Quick Fix

Well, it was a difficult case, but I think he'll pull through. He may even be able to play the piano again.

I received a replacement iPhone 4 screen assembly in the mail today (thanks to iFixYouri, which was the least expensive not-so-shady place I found for this part). After B went to bed, I spread my tools out on the dining room table and set to work.

Those who are interested can follow the directions I used here from iFitIt.com. They really do such quality work! They rate this job as a 1-hour, Difficult repair. It is definitely not for the faint of heart. But I'm comfortable with doing delicate work. I deal with small electronics and fine mechanical assemblies on a near-daily basis for my job (though Apple takes it to one hell of an extreme). In true Yankee and Maker fashion I prefer to make-do and repair rather than replace. So let's have a go! It ended up being more like three hours due to my meticulous nature and some complications.

The most useful tool I used for this job was my non-magnetic, fine pinch tweezers. I cannot imagine doing this job without them: there were a few dozen tiny fasteners that needed to be carefully lifted out. From this and other repairs, I have developed a system for keeping them straight:


Yes, those labels I've written go up to about 27, as in Step #27. It takes a while to get down to the screen. In a thoroughly warranty-voiding operation, you approach it from the backside, remove the battery, the speaker assembly, the logic board (what a piece of work that is!), undo about a dozen tiny, high density connectors, before you can finally remove the screws that hold the screen to the stainless steel bezel.

However, once the screws are removed, the screen assembly does not simply fall off. In the vicinity of the Home button, below the edge of the screen itself, is a sizeable piece of double-sticky tape that helps to hold the front glass to the bottom section of the case. Since this is where the screen broke, it meant that my first attempts to remove the screen only caused more cracking and shattered glass. I did eventually get it off, but the double-sticky tape was left with a scree of glass shards that took a long while to remove.


Once the tape was more or less cleared of debris, the re-assembly with the new screen went pretty smoothly - just reverse the directions that got me there. I had no leftover parts, and I didn't have to force anything into place, so all seemed well.

Still, this is major surgery for a phone, so there was some apprehension when I turned the power back on. The screen lit up with that familiar Apple logo! It responded to my touch (ok, that's just a little too dirty)! As far as I can tell, everything works as well as it always had done. Cell reception is good, WiFi is strong, and no magic smoke was lost in the process.

All in all, I call it a victory.

Physics Lesson

Behold, an abject lesson in both Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation as well as the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics`! We'll throw in Murphy's Law for good measure.

And what is this lesson? Don't think that your bare, numb fingers can properly hold onto an iPhone after a three-mile run in freezing temperatures. And when you are attempting not to fumble said phone, it would be a good idea to not do so while standing on concrete. And, really, the extra two seconds it would take you to come to a full stop before marking your time won't kill any personal records, either.

Ah well. Apple has sold over ten million iPhone 4's. The latest model has just come out, which makes my year-old phone so passe. This means lots and lots of relatively inexpensive replacement OEM parts. Have screwdriver, will travel. Will void warrantees for continued mobility. In the meantime, while waiting for my replacement screen to arrive, I am just trying to avoid slicing my finger on the sharp edges. "Slide to unlock" shouldn't mean drawing blood.

Siri

I haven't got an iPhone 4S, and probably won't have one anything soon. Hilary's contract is up sooner, she might get one to replace her aging 3GS. I am, however, very intrigued by the neat addition: Siri, the voice-recognizing, speech synthesizing personal assistant. Ask her a question in natural english, get an answer. It's not a new idea (a mainstay of sci-fi for the last 75 years, I'd say). It's not new to personal electronics (Android has had something similar for a few years now). It isn't even new to Apple (my powermac G3 in college, sporting OS 9, had a short list of speakable commands). But this appears to be the most sophistocated and natural implementation to date. David Pogue has a good writeup here.

But, of course, it wouldn't be new whiz-bang technology without being (mis)used for lowbrow fun and entertainment. I present you with this compilation of odd conversations Joshua Topolsky has had with his iPhone recently. Example below from his blog:

P is for Parents

For lack of any news, here's a little anecdote from Christmas:

Brynna has now reached new heights of iPhone skill. This new trick actually involves using the phone as a phone, believe it or not.

B is not a great conversationalist on the phone—given her early experiences with iChat, she prefers to wave hello instead of actually talking. But recently she's started to participate in the occasional call with her grandparents, mainly to ask them to go get on their computer and have an iChat with her! A few weeks ago, she wanted to help me actually place the phone call, so I explained to her that in the list of contacts on the phone, M and Deen were listed under "Parents," and then she touched the word that started with P to connect the call.

So, we were driving down to CT to visit my parents on Christmas Day. Brynna was in the back, refusing to nap and instead playing games on my phone, when we turned off I-84. I turned around.

Me: "B, may I have my phone please? I need to call M and Deen and tell them that we're nearly there."

B: "No! I do it all by myself!"

B pokes around for a moment, says to herself "P is for Parents," then holds the phone up to her ear.

A moment later, B says "Hi M!" a few times. With some coaching Brynna did eventually say "We off da hi-way" before a quick and over-loud "Bye!", followed by hanging up.

At this point, I decided I should collect my phone back, lest Brynna get it into her head to call China.

iPhone Surgery

The recent scoop about the (possible) lost-and-found 4th-gen iPhone prototype has me thinking that, come June/July, it might be time for an upgrade. I was, through the great beneficence of Hilary's grandfather, able to be an early adopter and bought a first-generation iPhone when it came out. That phone, minus some glitches, has served me well for the last three years. Still, it does feel a bit sluggish in loading and using apps compared to Hilary's more recent 3GS model, and it would be nice to have that faster connectivity. If the rumors about it using the A4 processor are true, it should be a screamer indeed.

Still, I've got a couple months ahead of me where I shall continue to depend on the phone I've got. Like I said, it has served me well for a bunch of years now. I did have this one weird glitch last year where, for whatever reason, it stopped recognizing when I had the headset plugged in. This is kinda important for the iPhone, because when the headset is plugged in, sound gets piped to that headphone jack, not the built-in speaker, and the phone gets its voice input from the headset mic, not the built-in one. It was an inconsistent glitch, but it meant that I couldn't properly use it as a phone, and sometimes the music wouldn't play in the headphones, so it was a problem. I purchased a replacement headphone jack assembly (which also includes the vibe motor, power switch, silent switch, and volume up/down switches in one wicked rigid-flex assembly) from the ever-reliable iFixIt.com, perused their step-by-step guide on how to change it, and was all set to attempt the repair myself. But I got busy, and after a week or two it resolved itself. So I set aside the replacement part and mostly forgot about it.

That is, at least, until Tuesday afternoon, when the same problem cropped up. This time I was determined to fix the problem and get on with things. So after Brynna went to bed that night, I laid out my tools and a cuppa on the dining room table and set to work.


Those who are interested can read online about how to break into an iPhone, which was not really meant to be opened by mere mortals. It's not quite for the faint of heart, but with patience and a little delicacy, I'd say most people can do it. Most people who aren't too fussed about putting a few dings into that immaculate case, that is. Being 2.5+ years old, it was already well outside of warranty, and had some battle scars from wide travels, so in I went.

It took about 40 minutes to get the black plastic antenna cover off, and perhaps another hour to get the aluminum back case off. I bent the edge of the case a bit in the process, but being metal I was able to bend it back right again (more or less). After that it was a straightforward task of removing a half dozen tiny screws and extracting the old headphone jack assembly. Putting it back together with the new assembly only took about 15 minutes.

Feeling pretty pleased with myself, I tested it out.

Nope. Not fixed.

Not any more broken, mind you. I hadn't made things worse, I just hadn't made them better.

By this point it was after midnight, so I decided to call it quits for the night and hope for the best. The following morning, however, proved that I had succeeded last night in doing just one thing: making the inconsistent glitch perfectly and totally consistent. The iPhone, for its own inscrutable reasons, had things backwards: when I plugged the headset in, it believed it was unplugged; when unplugged, it thought it was there. As a result, when Mark called me in the afternoon, we couldn't hear each other at first because my phone believed that the headset mic was connected, when I was speaking into the built-in mic. We were able to talk to each other a few minutes later, but that required me to hold the phone to my ear normally, but have the headset dangling off the back. I guess I could live with that situation for a few months until the next iPhone comes out, but it would have been pretty annoying.

A little more poking around on the internet illuminated a possible culprit: lint. The headphone jack has a number of small, springy electrical contacts (left ear, right ear, mic, ground), and additional contacts that tell the iPhone when the headset is plugged in. These contacts are so small (half a millimeter, perhaps) that a piece of lint or other debris can prevent the contact from being made. People have tried compressed air, tiny screwdrivers, and alcohol swabbing to fix the problem with mixed success. I also noticed a post that indicated that the replacement part I had installed on Tuesday was actually a slightly newer version of the part I had replaced, a version incompatible with my early-build first-gen iPhone.

But, I also did find this post by a guy who seemed to have a decent grasp of the problem and offered a solution. It required not only cracking into the iPhone again, but actually doing a little exploratory surgery on the headphone jack itself to properly clean the innermost contact, the one that tells the phone when the headset is plugged in.

So Wednesday night I performed the fix for a second time. I did the aforementioned cleaning on the headphone jack assembly I had taken out the night before. I then opened up the iPhone once again. Partly because it had already been broken into, and partly because I was feeling a bit more confident and familiar, it took me all of ten minutes to remove the covers this time. Before making the swap, I plugged the newly cleaned and freely-dangling headphone jack assembly into the exposed guts of my phone to test things out. Sure enough, the problem was fixed. After that it was just the mechanics of swapping out the new headphone jack assembly with the phone's original one and closing things back up again. In and out in less than an hour.

I figure I've renewed my geek cred for at least the next month.

And hey, it's Earth Day, so let's all celebrate by repairing more things instead of replacing!

New (Old) Home

Well, yesterday and today saw us working long and hard to get the bulk of the move finished. We had lots and lots of help, which is really what made it possible at all - we wouldn't even be out of Minnesota yet if left to our own devices.

After a very entertaining drive across southern Vermont and New Hampshire in the heavily loaded truck (with trailer) on winding and steep roads, Da, Jasper and I arrived in Concord not long after Hilary, her folks, and the B showed up. Friday afternoon and evening was spent trying to unload as much from the truck as would to into the apartment, and trying to sort what would go to storage on Saturday. Recall that we were moving out from a house, fully furnished, into an apartment we had more than half moved into and filled back in December. A bit less than half the contents of the truck would go straight to storage, augmented by not a small amount of stuff already in the apartment. Alas, due to timing and the practicalities of how the truck got loaded, the stuff to go into the apartment and the stuff for storage were all intermingled. Likewise, the stuff for storing from the apartment wasnt all in one place nearly staged. What is more, we were going to change the layout of some of the rooms. It made for a tiring Friday night as we tried to sort as much of the truck as possible while making some changes indoors and ensuring the place was still livable. Things were made a bit better by my Mom's lasagna - good for a crowd.

Saturday started off with more of the same. We had hired a pair of movers to assist with some of the heavy lifting (some of the furniture was murderous), reloading of the truck, and packing up the storage unit. They were really fast and efficient. Even though I am not old by most measures, the loads they manhandled for three hours were really astonishing and made me glad to leave it to the young'ens.

That set us up well to make headway in the afternoon doing some unpacking and making the place tidier and more livable. There's still a pile of work to be done in that area, but it is now to the stuff that Hilary and I just need to sort out on our own. That will occupy us for quite a while, but we have definitely arrived and are settling in comfortably.

Sent from my iPhone
(because Comcast sucks and we don't have Internet service yet)

Breeding through Detroit

Alex's iPhone allows for quick updates on the run when he is traveling. When I was sitting in class last Friday, and he was making his way from Minneapolis to Manchester, I received an email from his phone with the subject line "Breeding through Detroit."

I sent back an email that I certainly hoped that he was not, since our hands are quite full with our current baby.

We are still trying to figure out why the iPhone auto-correct would think that someone was more likely to want to type "breeding" than "breezing."

AA-to-USB revisited

[Apologies to our faithful readers who haven't seen this blog updated in a week, only to have it updated with my old and smoldering nerd project. I know you hang out here to catch a glimpse of Brynna. Fear not! With the weekend coming, we'll have some more to say soon.]

Previous posts on this project are here

Nope, I haven't given up yet on this one. When last we left it, some four months ago, I had a sort-of-working circuit board. It worked well enough to create a nice 5 V supply for a USB device from a pair of AA batteries - the green LED said so. But, it couldn't power my iPhone, because it just supplied power - there no brains behind it like in a computer. As a result, being a nice standards-compliant device, the iPhone wouldn't take the power presented to it. So, I had a working device of marginal value to me.

Since then things have been a bit busier - can't imagine why - and I haven't had much time or inclination to follow up.

But, about a month ago, I managed to sneak off to the lab for a bit for every engineer's favorite past time: taking things apart. There are tons of USB chargers out there, and a bunch of them work with the iPhone. How is it that they are able to convince the iPhone to draw power? To find out, I took a car charger I have and cracked it open.



The key thing in these pictures is the cluster of resistors (R9-R12) clustered next to the USB connector. These form what's called a voltage divider that puts about 2 V on each of the two data lines of the USB port. This jives with information I was able to glean from others who have tried to hack their own iPhone chargers - including the maker of the popular MintyBoost. Some say to add a pull-up resistor to each of the data lines, others say a resistor divider. I'm following the resistor divider I found in this car charger.

(What I really would have liked to do was take apart one of the Apple AC-power adapters for the iPod/iPhone. That obviously would be the most authoritative design (once you get past the AC-DC conversion). However, it turns out they are devilishly difficult to get into without breaking them, and I'd rather not risk doing that. I wasn't able to find anyone who'd taken one apart and posted the pics for all to see, alas, something that has been done to just about every other Apple product out there.)

So, I just needed to cram four more resistors onto the circuit board in the neighborhood of the USB connector. I was able to do this by placing them on the underside of the board, beneath the connector, and being a little clever with the circuit routing.



The addition made the board a touch wider then before. I needed to squeeze and shift things a bit to make sure the thing was less than one square inch, since BatchPCB rounds up and charges by the square inch. I just made it. I sent off the order and received by boards earlier this week. I had ordered 10, but somehow received 17. I'm going to chalk this up to them probably having a little extra space in a panel of circuit boards, and squeezing in a few extra copies of mine for the heck of it. I'll need to send them a nice thank you email.

Anyway, in the last day or two I've been able to populate the board and try it out. I had one false start when I soldered the main chip incorrectly. Being square, with leads all around, and very external markings, I didn't notice until too late that I'd had it rotated 90 degrees from the beginning. The next time, though, I managed to get it right. Viola!



As you can see, there's little different from the earlier version except for the four resistors under the connector. The other difference is that I can show off the sliding top enclosure I made with the rapid prototyper at work.


Even better than having an LED glow to tell me the thing works is for my iPhone to do it.


One thing that I have learned after letting my phone charge from this thing for a while - rechargeable NiMH batteries are probably a better fit for this circuit than alkaline AAs. The reasons are technical, and tough to explain without graphs. The short answer is that NiMH batteries' cell voltage drops more slowly than alkaline AAs. Even though the alkalines have more energy inside them, their cell voltage drops too low for the circuit to work before the batteries are fully drained. It would be like having a gas tank where the gas line exited from the middle of the tank instead of the bottom. This suits me just fine - I prefer using rechargeables when I can in any case. As it happens, I've got some neat rechargeables to use from USB Cell, which you can recharge using a USB port. Hmmm...use the USB port to charge the batteries to power the USB port. Eureka!

So, what was the final breakdown for this project? I shelled out about $35 for parts - enough to populate 7 or 8 boards, along with some free sample chips from TI. Each run of circuit boards was about $38. Goodness knows how many hours went into designing, assembling, and debugging it. I figured that, for parts, I could make them for $13 in lots of ten. I have so far only made one finished, working device.

All this effort just to be able to charge my iPhone on the go? Well, in my defense, I could say that I haven't just made a charger for the iPhone. I've made one for just about any USB device out there, including H's iPod and our Flip camcorder. Plus, this circuit, now that I've got the boards for it, will make a handy AA, 5-V power supply for future projects I might come up with. [Updated 2008-11-21 20:11] There's one that I have my eye on tackling -and LED nightlight for Brynna, roughly modeled along these lines. But, as usually happens, I'm thinking of expanding it a bit, so that the lights don't just shine, but twinkle in and out. That'd require some sort of microcontroller, and some coding, and...

[Updated 2008-11-21 20:11] In the end, as I stated at the start of the project, that it was not really ever about the having of an iPhone charger. It was, first and foremost, about the making of one.

Visit from Sara

Our very good friend from college, Sara, came to visit Brynna this past week. We also happened to be there, but mostly Sara was here to see our little girl. We're getting used to that.



We ate very well while she was here. Lacking cable, we had dinner at a nearby tavern so that we could watch game 3 of the ALCS, looking on in horror at how miserably the Sox were doing. The following evening we had some pumpkin ravioli, which I made from scratch the day before, with a roasted red pepper and mustard sauce. Aside from the flour and some olive oil, it is possible that all the ingredients for this meal came from the farmer's market. This is my attempt to recreate a decadent dish I once had at the Fresh Pasta Company in Northampton, MA. According to its recipients it was great. The following evening, Thursday, had us back at Nosh. There aren't any TVs at Nosh, but we kept up on another Sox falling apart via my iPhone. Imagine our surprise, upon returning home, to hear that somehow the Sox had tied it up, and went on to win and force a game 5 (tonight).


Alas, Sara has had to move on to her next social engagement. Too bad, because Hilary has her first work-free weekend in many weeks. We are going to the season opener of the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and Chorale. The program is Beethoven's Big Night, which will include the fifth symphony. Brynna will be left in the able care of one of Hilary's classmates. It is possible that this will be the first date that Hilary and I have had alone since Brynna was born.

AA to USB - It Works!

The pretty green light says so.

Ok, caveat time: it works in the sense that it takes the power from two AA batteries (or any number of other low voltage sources) and boosts it up to a nice regulated 5 V to power a USB port. However, one reason for doing this project was so that I could have a supplemental battery for my iPhone. By that measure, this device doesn't work, yet. I can connect the iPhone to this thing, but it will not draw power from the 5 V line.

To answer the question of why that's not working, I'd have to get a bit into USB enumeration and details of the USB specifications. For the curious, this guy has a decent explanation on his blog. Wikipedia also has some info on Power in the USB spec. The short answer is this: the iPhone won't blindly draw power from a USB port. Being a good little USB-compliant device with peculiar power needs, it transmits a request to the USB host to draw power, and waits until it gets an acknowledgement. This sort of thing requires a PC, or a least some sort of microcontroller, that is able to implement the USB communications. My simple device can't do that.

That's not to say that it can't still work as a USB charger for other devices. By my reckoning, it should be equivalent to the venerable Minty Boost, which is able to provide at least some power to nearly all of the iPod lineup.

In response to this situation, many have looked to see if there is some way to trick the iPhone into charging off a "dumb" USB port anyway. And, in fact, it appears that at least some have gotten it to work through clever combinations of resistors across the communication lines of the USB connector. I might give that a try.

Lightsaber Envy

Ok, NOW I want an iPhone.

Not because it now runs the Internet on the fast Edge network, or because it has GPS, or because it would collapse my phone/iPod/calendar combo into one device.

But because you can now download an application (one of the many, many free programs that became available last week, I presume), that pops up a lightsaber icon on the screen. You touch it, and the lightsaber extends out of the handle, making the classic lightsaber-igniting humming sound. Then, when you wave your phone around in the air, it makes noises like you are fighting with the blade!

It is so cool.

I am such a dork.

(But, since I am married to someone who downloaded this and then gleefully showed it to me when he got home from work today, I know I am not alone in my dorkiness.)

WWDC

No, that's not some play on "What Would [D] [C]?" It stands for World-Wide Developers Conference, Apple's annual week-long conference for people that write software for the Mac. For the last several years, the major focus has been on whatever is coming in the next version of Mac OS X. This year, there are rumors that there will be a preview of the next release, 10.6, which some are code-naming Snow Leopard, which might be released next year sometime. But, for the first time, there will also be a major track on developing for something other than the Mac - the iPhone. At the end of the month, apple will release firmware version 2.0, which will bring the capability to run (legitimate) third-party applications, and support for many features desired by corporate America. So, developing for the iPhone will have a lot of airtime.

But both of those are overshadowed by the number one rumor surrounding Steve Jobs' keynote address - the next generation of the iPhone. Those who follow these things feel that an unveiling is all but certain - there have been many strong indications that it is imminent. The biggest anticipated change is the addition of 3G wireless, which is a much faster cellular data network than EDGE, which the current iPhone uses. EDGE feels like the bad-old days of dial-up internet access, but is available most everywhere you can get a cell signal in the US, and requires relatively little power. Most of the iPhone's applications - weather, maps, email - have been optimized to work well even with the relatively slow speed of EDGE. Surfing the web, however, can be somewhat painful, especially if you need to find some information now. For that, you are better off using the built-in WiFi, but only when you can find it.

3G is comparable to broadband, is available in most metropolitan areas of the US (and most of Europe, Japan, and Korea), but is more expensive to implement and burns through battery power a bit fast, which has stifled its adoption in cellphones until recently. iPhone users have demonstrated a much greater appetite for wireless data access than other smartphone users. While hardly the first smartphone to take advantage of it, a 3G-iPhone will certainly speed adoption of this technology.

Others anticipate that the iPhone will have a built-in GPS receiver, allowing it to know where it is located to within, say, ten meters. Right now the iPhone can very generally work out where it is, based on the closest cell towers. The best I've ever seen that work is to within a couple hundred feet. Good enough to tell you what the closest restaurants are, not good enough to give you realtime directions to find them. There are tremendous amounts of "location-aware" applications that will blow your mind, most of which haven't been invented yet.

Others expect a better camera (myeh), more storage (always a plus), a slimmer (or thicker) profile, etc., etc. Other question marks abound. For myself, I just hope for a trade-in/upgrade program :-) If nothing else, you can expect to hear about it. For those interested in the blow-by-blow, you can get live blog coverage from the event.

On the road

I'm heading down to Scottsdale to see H for the weekend; currently hanging out in the bedlam of MSP airport aon a Friday afternoon, dashing off this quick update before boarding.

It's been a busy week here in the not-so-frozen North. I am attempting to let the grass in the backyard recover from being torn up all winter and spring by a very quick and agile dog. It's gotten ripped a fair bit, not counting the patch worn bare along the fenceline with the border-collie-owning neighbors. So, I've been taking Jasper for short walks in the mornings for him to do his business, which is time normally spent eating breakfast and making coffee. The alarm clock as steadily been rolling back all week from that and other chores, such as setting a load of laundry put to dry before heading off to work. Other chores have been pushed up, since I won't be around this weekend to so them. Hopefully I can catch up next week.

Jasper will, no doubt, have a great time at doggie camp this weekend.

More updates about triple digit-weather later.

Sent from my iPhone

AA to USB

Over a couple of posts, I'll be describing a little project I've been working on. When all is said and done, this device will take a pair of AA batteries and use them to power a USB port, something called a boost converter. What's that good for? It could be used as a backup power source for something that is powered or recharged over USB, such as an ipod. My iphone gets about 4 hours of video playback on a full charge - this device I'm making could be used to augment or recharge the iphone battery to double that playback time - good for long flights.

Now, the end result will be useful, but is hardly the point of the project. If I was actually interested in having such a device, I could just buy one. If I wanted something cooler than store-bought, I could purchase a Minty Boost kit, a tin of Altoids, then have a fun for an hour with a soldering iron.

No, the point of this project is the design of it and the doing of it. I haven't done much electronics work since I left college, so it's nice to dabble in it again. Partly I wanted a little side project. Another part of it was that, while looking over the development and design of the Mint Boost, I thought that I could do a better job. It's a cool piece of work, and the Altoids tin gives it some geek chic, but there were two things I wanted to improve on. The first is a limitation on current. The chip at the heart of the Minty Boost, a MAX756, is spec'ed for only 200 mA at 5 V. The USB specification is to be able to supply up to 500 mA at 5 V. I'm not sure what the power draw of an iPod is while it is playing something and recharging, but I figure I may as well try and satisfy the spec. The second limitation is efficiency. The Minty Boost does better than most DIY designs, but is only about 85% efficient. I figured I could do better.

Tune in next time for the start of the design, and oh so tiny components...

Wasteful Packaging

This past week, I had plenty of opportunity to rant and rave at the wastefulness of commerce. Sure, capitalism is supposed to eliminate waste and make everything more efficient, but that can sometimes take a back seat to expediency. Waste, to an engineer, is anathema. To an environmentalist, it is a cardinal sin. In this rant, I am referring to packaging waste.

Allow me to elaborate. I recently ordered a copy of TurboTax from Amazon.com, because it is that time of year again. I am not a particular fan of TurboTax - it is not a superlative program in terms of ease of use, they have a nice racket going in terms of the state packages, it's overpriced for what it does (year after year, 95% of the program is identical), and the sweetheart deal they (and just about every other tax prep software) have with the IRS to charge fees for E-filing is nothing short of corrupt. But, it does the job, and I prefer it to doing it by hand.

But I digress. For years, TurboTax has been packaged in the standard-sized software box. The size of this box is a holdover from the days from software consisted of a stack of floppy discs and a thick printed manual. For at least the last five years, this has been entirely superfluous. Software today is just one optical disc. Printed manuals disappeared a decade ago. The size of a software box, however, has largely stayed the same. Maybe they like the large canvas it provides to catch your eye on the shelf. On the other hand, when buying software online, the size of the box and the canvas its provides to marketers is likewise superfluous.

The good news is, however, that TurboTax has this year changed their packaging to put the disc into a DVD case - much smaller. Amazon, however, hasn't seemed to have gotten the message. When it arrived in the mail, this DVD case arrived in corrugated cardboard box measuring 12x9x4 inches. Think about that. Take a DVD off the shelf, and set it on a letter-sized sheet of paper, now project a height of four inches. That's about the size of the box that this disc came in. What is more, the case was shrink-wrapped to a 8.5x11 sheet of cardboard. I was speechless at the example of absurdity and waste sitting in front of me.

I contact Amazon about this. I informed them how ridiculous it was to use such a large box to send something, essentially, the same size of a DVD movie - which Amazon has optimally-sized boxes for. Packaging and Shipping has to be one of their largest costs, especially since I didn't pay them anything to ship this order, so you would think they would try to use as little material as possible. The response I got was a form email, probably chosen by some heuristic algorithm that examined keywords in my email (I doubt any human eyes other than my own ever read it), that really didn't even come close to addressing the issue. But, if my package arrived damaged due to a packaging error, I know exactly who to talk to. Amazon.com reminded me that their packing materials are recycleable, but that's hardly the issue. It is better to not use something in the first place than to use and recycle it.

So, that's story number one. Story number two relates to the holster for my iPhone. So that the sound can exit from the bottom of the phone and reach my ears (like when the phone rings), the bottom of the holster is a woven plastic mesh. All well and good, except that the mesh started pulling away and fraying almost as soon as I bought it. Now, six months in, I start to worry that my phone is going to slip right out the bottom. I count myself a decent tinkerer, and Hilary can tell you plenty of stories of items long past their useful life that I obstinately refused to give up. But, this time, I didn't see a good way to fix this do-hickey. Thankfully, the device has a lifetime warranty, so after a brief phone call, a replacement was in the mail.


That replacement arrived this morning. It's the small black thing in the above image. Yet another example of wasteful packaging. This holster is hardly larger than my iPhone itself, yet it, like so many other consumer products these days, comes with a tremendous amount of packaging to ensure that it looks pristine on the shelf - contained in a perfect volume of crystal. At least it wasn't an unopenable plastic clamshell. But, rather than wrap this bullet-proof bit of packaging in some paper, or even a manilla envelope, to speed it on its way to me, they felt that it needed a whole stack of plastic peanuts and, you guessed it, a large cardboard box. My broken holster will get far less nice treatment. Even if it were intact and had a long usable life ahead of it, I doubt I would have done more than shove it, unadorned, into a padded envelope.

Now, when it comes to commerce-by-mail, the amount of packaging is hardly the full story of environmental impact. There is the shipping involved, which is usually cross country, and goodness knows how much manufacturing. But, suffice to say, whether I drive down to a store and buy something, or else order it online and have it arrive a week later (I usually opt for the slower shipping - I can deal with delayed gratification, and I'm too cheap to shell out for 2nd day), the item eventually arrives in my home. Is it better to have the item bulk-shipped with thousands of its brethren 98% of its long journey, housed in a climate-controlled asphalt jungle of a mall, then the last few miles in my car? Or is it better to have it bulk-shipped 66% of its journey to a warehouse, then individually packaged in a cardboard box with the mail for the remaining 33%? I guess it's bad any way you consider it.

Maybe next time I'll prepare my taxes by hand, and sew a holster for my phone.

And speaking of packaging waste, don't even get me started on the bag-packing habits at the local supermarket!

New Laptop

I've had a few days to play around with my new machine, and I love it. It's so sleek, so zippy, and so capable. It exhibits no hesitation whatsoever, even when I have many applications open at once. The larger screen is nice, and is incredibly bright compared to my previous machine. The keyboard is essentially the same, which is good, because it feels smooth and types well without fatigue. I have yet to really tax the battery, but I imagine that it would outlast my ability to write about it at least. The Migration Assistant built into OS X made transferring and setting things up pretty easy. I can probably avoid filling this new hard drive for a good long while. I have no need to do a raindance to get my iPhone to sync up.


It is certainly a larger machine - not nearly as compact as my previous. That's mostly OK, because my portability needs aren't as great as they were when I was in college. We'll see how it handles on an airplane, but that probably won't be for a good long while. I have most of my old apps moved over to the new machine, and a few new ones, too. For instance, I have Keynote, apple's answer to PowerPoint, which I will tinker with a bit in the next few weeks.

My previous computer, when I first received it and it was new and fast and not full and had a good battery, I christened "Shadowfax," because it was silvery and fast (and because I'm a lifelong Tolkien fan). I feel pretty good in transferring that name to my new machine.

iPod Update II

Yes, of course, within a week of our purchase of a replacement iPod for Hilary, Apple comes out with just what we had been holding out for - a 16 GB iPhone model (and a 32 GB iPod touch). Well, the only consolation is that the upgrade is not quite at the same price point, it's a $100 bump apiece. And, no word on a 3G iPhone - it's just a memory bump.

Still, I wonder if we could still get a return, though...

iPod Update

Behold our timeline of iPods! Left to right: iPod 2G (10 GB, late-2002), iPod 3G (10 GB, mid-2003), iPod Shuffle (1 GB flash, early 2005), iPod Shuffle 2G (1 GB flash, spring 2007, not pictured), iPhone (8 GB flash, Aug 2007), and the newest addition, the iPod Classic (80 GB, yesterday).

What's a person need with all this stuff? Well, the last two are replacements for the first two; the middle one is mostly for gym use. Hilary was able to rock out 5+ years from her iPod, which, as a 10 GB model in late 2002, cost about $500. My, what five years has wrought! Yesterday we picked up Hilary's (interim) replacement iPod, and 80 GB model that's less than half the thickness, and about half the price, of her original. I say interim because Hilary really has her sights set on a 16 GB iPhone, which don't exist outside of a Cupertino laboratory right now.

"What," I hear you asking, "is someone going to do with an 80 GB iPod? Who has 80 GB worth of music?" I nod my head in understanding, and add, "especially when the computer it is syncing with only has a 40 GB harddrive itself?" The answer, at the moment, is that you simply don't use it all - we've filled only about 24, about half of which is Hilary's music collection. The other half, and what will probably fill the bulk of the rest of the device, is video. With a bit of slightly illicit software, one can rip their DVD collection just like their CD collection, albeit as a much slower speed. With an external harddrive and some understanding of how iTunes syncs up, it is possible to not have to keep all that stuff locally on one's laptop in order to also have it on the iPod. A two-hour DVD can be compressed and formatted for the iPod into about 1 GB. At that rate, it can not only hold Harry Potters 1-7 in unabridged audio book form, but also movies 1-7 (or, as of now, only 1-5), and not break a sweat. It currently also holds the entire extended edition of Lord of the Rings, about 11.5 hours' worth, in about 1/10th of its hard drive. There are plans to rip and add some portion of Hilary's collection of Gilmore Girls, and possibly some Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. This will make this iPod an excellent traveling companion, even if Hilary gets herself a new iPhone.


On the open market, neither of the first two have much value, not even on eBay. In fact, my old iPod, second from the left, died some months ago (which motivated, in part, my move to the iPhone). I wasn't too fussed about its demise - I got and a sweet $200 rebate deal when I bought my laptop 4-1/2 years ago, and got plenty of use out of it. I was a little bummed that it died when it did: a senseless death, really, by a short drop when the hard drive was working.

So, now that we have these new fangled gadgets, what to do with the old ones? It would be unconscionable to just toss them, so Hilary and I will probably send them back to Apple to be recycled. I only hope that their recycling program is legit, and not just a rape of the third world.

Update Cycle

My current computer, a steadfast Powerbook G4 12" laptop, has been starting to show its age in myriad ways for a while now. "Its age" has a double meaning here: 1) its apparent speed for doing the things it always has done and 2) its obsolescence compared to current technology. For reference purposes: I purchased it not long after my (first) graduation, in June 2003. That makes it about 4-1/2 years old.

Examples of age in the first category. It has a 40 GB internal hard drive, of which about 3 GB remains available. I have in recent times had that down below 1 GB. Where does that all go? Well, there's a fair bit (about 8-9 GB) devoted to the operating system (OS X 10.4.11), and the applications. About 14 GB is my music collection (meaning I have to be selective about what I put on my iPhone, but that's a different issue). Another 6 GB or so is devoted to pictures. There are a few GB of movies which don't really need to be there. Thankfully I picked up an external hard drive a while back (also good for backups), otherwise I'd have run into a serious problem a while back. It is not only a matter of how little more I can hold: when a harddrive get more than, say, 75% full, you start running into performance issues. A second example: while I have done a little video editing on this machine, it was never all that speedy, only then only for 30-60 sec clips for the web. The computer would probably vomit if I asked it to do of that today, which is a bummer, because I'd like to do more of that in the future. Thirdly, the 867 MHz G4 processor and 1 GB of RAM, which were really only "good" when I bought it, just barely meet the minimum specs for the latest release of Mac OS X, 10.5 "Leopard", which I haven't installed yet. I am a bit anxious about whether it would go well or not. I have already mentioned the rain dance I need to do to get my iPhone to sync up with iTunes using my laptop's USB 1.1 ports. Lastly, I have worn these ol' batteries right out, even replacement batteries. These days I'm lucky to get much more than an hour or two out of my computer, untethered, before it konks out.

Compare this to what I could get today (i.e., examples of age in obsolescence terms). Apple and IBM were never able to get a G5 processor into a laptop without frying eggs, so there was a generation skipped. The move to Intel processors started about two years ago, with the Core Duo in the first MacBook Pros, call that another generation. The transition to the Core 2 Duo is a third (there was a sizeable architecture shift wrapped up in that "2"). At some point here Apple will roll out laptops with the new 45-nm Penryn chips from Intel, which is another generation still. So, my current computer is about four generations behind. Hard drives are 3x-4x larger for laptops, RAM is 2x-4x as capacious (and with faster bus speeds), screens are brighter, battery life is 3x-4x longer. (UPDATE: I didn't mention it before, but with the introduction of the MacBook Air, which has a multitouch trackpad, it is only a matter of time before multitouch is rolled out in all of Apple's laptop line.)

Don't get me wrong, I have gotten 4-1/2 good years of use out of this machine, and it has traveled with me on many adventures. There here machine got me through my fifth and sixth years of college, including my 300-page master's thesis and fieldwork in Greenland. But surveying what's out there, and considering the age and limitations of my current machine, I have come to the conclusion that it's about time for an upgrade.

But, there are two things that stand in my way of throwing down the credit card and walking off with a new machine. First, the laptop I have my eye on now (15" MacBook Pro) is no small amount of money - so throwing down the credit card would cause some amount of pain. In fairness, it's about as much as I paid for my current laptop (4-1/2 years ago). Second, the MacBook Pro lineup hasn't been updated since last July. Intel is coming out with their new 45-nm Penryn chips right now (although they'll still be branded Core 2 Duo). Many expected Apple to announce new machines with these chips at Macworld this past week, but nothing was mentioned. The attention was all on the new MacBook Air (an odd name, but a slick piece of work, although it doesn't fit my needs), iTunes movie rentals and the AppleTV, etc.

So, it's just sit back and wait, and marshall my energies (read: $$$), until the time is right. It better happen soon, otherwise I'll be tempted to wait a bit longer, until mid-year, when Intel's new mobile chipset, codename Montevina, comes out.