AppleInsider has some screenshots and details accidentally posted to Apple’s Czech web store. It seems to have keys that indicate that the keyboard maybe backlit. I for one would welcome a backlit keyboard, though many don’t see the utility. As someone who likes to use darker screen themes, combined with working late; the dim glow of keys would be great.
Possible New Apple Wireless Keypad – Courtesy of Apple Insider
Many others speculate the use of the new butterfly style key switches, but what would be the reason? I’m sure they cost more than standard ones and there is no push to make the wireless keyboard thinner.
Give me a backlit keyboard and a touchpad with force touch built into it and I’ll be happy. Granted at this point I wouldn’t spend another $150 to replace what works perfectly now. Then again, this old iMac 2010 is getting a bit long in the tooth. Retina iMac anyone?
A great piece about the track that started it all for Nascar, North Wilkesboro Speedway. It is a sad story about a place that history has left behind. A fan favorite, not a car owners favorite, it is one of the places like Rockingham that was lost in the mix to expand Nascar to places that could care less like California and cookie cutter super speedways.
Many wonder why Nascar’s popularity is waning and I think it has to do with long races at tracks that are eerily similar to each other. These tracks make it so that it literally is cars going in circles for a few hours. It is why Bristol is such a popular track and people love to watch the Mud-summer Classic at Eldora. Track owners at these speedways will still never give up the dates even as they demolish half of the stands and luxury boxes at all their tracks. Maybe one day Nascar will help to revive and return some of these tracks like North Wilkesboro to their glory, but I figure it will be a cold day before that happens.
In the end though it is up to Bruton Smith and SMI to either sell the property for a reasonable cost or gasp, fix it up themselves. Granted with the waning ticket revenues in the sport recently I doubt he has the cash or want to do either for a track that will not host a Sprint Cup level race.
It should be no surprise that the Apple Watch doomsayers are taking are getting whipped up into a frenzy as the launch grows imminent. While I don’t think it will be the runaway success that is the iPhone or the steady sales category of the iPad, it will make a splash and sell in large enough quantities to be worth while to Apple.
My favorite line from the piece in regards to the oft misquoted 2.5 hours of application time:
This is not so much baloney as it is pimento loaf. Some people actually like baloney. No one likes pimento loaf.
I’m not sure why people think that they will be staring and playing with the watch for hours on end. After the initial fun time of it where you explore new apps and features most will use it like a regular watch or fitness band. It will sit there doing nothing but collecting data and waking up occasionally to alert you to something.
Scanning the headlines over at Engadget I came across this picture of AT&T’s connected car concept that integrates with their connected home offering. I have to say it looks absurd in any vehicle and a usability nightmare. We won’t even get into the distraction factor.
Source: Engadget – AT&T’s connected car concept
One would also wonder how much of a nightmare a screen of that size would be at night. I think you would have night blindness even if it was turned down as low as it could go. Plus, I’m sure the software on it would be updated on a regular basis.
Rene Ritchie at iMore takes on Samsung’s newest flagship phone, the Samsung Galaxy 6S. While I’m not so sure it is a “slavish” copy of the iPhone 6, he does bring up some interesting points with Samsung removing essentially every differentiating feature of their phones. As for the Galaxy 6 Edge, I don’t think a bit of wrap around display is enough to make anyone go “Wow.”
I’ve been thinking about getting a NAS device for a while now and Amazon had the Drobo 5N for $439.99, which is about $160 off of retail. I pulled the trigger with one left and received it on Saturday. I was going to use some existing drives I have laying around, but decided to purchase a the WD Red NAS 3TB drives. Here are a few quick thoughts:
Setup: This couldn’t have been easier, slide in the drives and turn on.
Construction: I’m quite pleased that it is a nice heavy metal exterior rather than cheap metal and plastic. The front bezel is attached magnetically and really snaps into place.
Performance: It is plenty quick, but I didn’t realize my router only has a 100 Mbps ethernet jack on it. Through Wi-Fi from my iMac, I can easily push 95.5 Mbps to it.
Oddities: I’ve noticed that after I create a share and mount it for the first time I cannot do anything with it. If I unmount and mount it again, it works without a problem.
One thing that you learn as you rise in your career as a software developer is that good logging is very important. I had a great experience of why writing out as much data as you can is important.
A client of ours has been load testing our application before their production pilot. During the load test I noticed in our single sign on routine that we were getting primary key errors on role insertion. Being that this was one of the first things I had worked on early in my career, I had not done any duplicate checking on the roles. After fixing that, we received the results of the second round of testing. We were still getting duplicate errors! I frantically and frustratingly went back an retested my logic over and over again. Not once would it try to insert a duplicate.
Finally after combing the logs I noticed one tiny discrepancy between the logging lines where the duplicate role was trying to be inserted. The process ID was the same, but the Thread ID was different. Because we are calling an external service before the insertion, we have a thread collision occurring and trying to insert the same user in two separate threads. Granted this is mostly due to the fact that there are only a few user id’s being used during the load testing, it still can be something that can be seen in production.
Had we not logged this out, I’d still be beating my head against a wall to try to figure it out. Now to come up with a bulletproof solution for the thread collision problem.
After having a great plate of arroz con pollo at my local Mexican restaurant, I decided to see if I could whip up something at home. Having bought a bunch of chicken breast tenders on sale I took a stab at it.
Ars Techinca has a review of the brand new Dell XPS 13. I have to say it looks absolutely beautiful and looks functional to boot. Working with a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro everyday makes you appreciate the light weight and size. Maybe I can get work to buy me one of these and hand down the Yoga to one of the young new devs. 🙂
Watching an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives inspired me to take a stab at a Cuban dish, Picadillo. It is kind of a Spanish version of an Italian bolognese style sauce usually served over rice. This is another adaptation that was made with ingredients that were laying around the pantry.
