Month: May 2020

First, apologies for the audio quality (low volume) on my side of the discussion.

In this podcast, Jon Westfall and I discuss:

1. Microsoft BUILD: Linux GUI Apps Coming to Windows 10
2. Krita is a professional FREE and open source painting program. It is made by artists that want to see affordable art tools for everyone.: For Linux, MacOS, Windows
3. Still no notification about moving music from Google Play Music to YouTube Music. But, I was notified about moving this podcast to the new Google Podcast Manager
4. Jon’s been buying some Fitness gizmos and they will be arriving in the next few weeks. Let’s talk about what they are, and then over the next few weeks we’ll get reviews. Jon’s also been out walking these few days: Some thoughts on Apple Watch + Airpods (As you can see, something changed around May 12). Also means that I’m on track to pick up some Apple Activity “medals / badges” that I’ve never gotten – only took me over 5 years for a perfect week in exercise and perfect week closing all of my rings.

   Aura Strap – an apple watch band that includes a built-in sensor that measures bioimpedance analysis – fat/muscle and hydration. Syncs with Apple Health (a must for me). Mostly interested to see if it matches up with what my smart scale tells me. Ships in late June. $99
   Oura Ring – a smart ring that measures sleep quality, heart rate variability, and respiratory rate. Great for times when I’m not wearing my watch (sleeping) and could be a replacement for my wedding band (which is getting a bit loose). Pricey ($299), but if it gives me good sleep tracking and more info, might be worth it. Also helps me have another measure of things my Apple Watch tracks. Sizing kit comes this week, then I select my size and they ship out the ring the next day.
   Lumen – by far the craziest one – hack your metabolism by analyzing Co2 output. Claims that it will tell you what your body is running on that day – carbs or protein. Then gives nutritional guidelines for that day to help lose weight by eating what your body is processing. I’ve always noticed some strange things about my weight loss over the past 2 years and I’ve wondered if it’s due to differences in what I’m eating day to day. $299, ordered on Feb 17, arrives on Thursday.

5. Jon’s R tip of the week
   Cleaning up others mistakes: In a perfect world, data would always be in the way we need it, so dollar amounts would be “12.32” to mean $12.32. However when you let others enter data, sometimes they do annoying things with the best of intentions: “$ 12.32” or “12.32 USD” or “$12.32 USD” or “12 dollars” etc… However we can use the string manipulation commands in R to help us:

   y <- c("14.95","25.62","35.50"); sum(as.numeric(y)) z <- c("14.95 USD","25.62 USD","35.50 USD","103.52 USD"); sum(as.numeric(substr(z,1,(nchar(z)-4)))) b <- c("$14.95", "$25.62","$35.50") sum(as.numeric(substr(b,2,(nchar(b)))))

Available via Google Music Podcasts and Apple iTunes.

In this podcast Jon Westfall and I discuss:

1. iPad Pro 11-inch replaced. No more spontaneous shutdowns and reboots
2. Google Play Music going away. Forced to switch to YouTube Music. But, no sign of the “transfer button” on YouTube Music for iPadOS.
3. How much credence should I give to browser speed tests like Speedometer 2.0? I began wondering about this as I debate whether to buy the new Lenovo Chromebook Duet when it is available somewhere (other than in reviewers’ hands). AboutChromebook’s Kevin Tofel noted that he is not a fan of benchmarks. However, people always ask (like me). So, he provided a set of results from multiple tests and the Duet clocked in at 46.07. Being too lazy to run the full set myself, I choose Speedometer 2.0 as a representative test to compare against a couple of devices I have for testing. Note that results appear to vary because Kevin’s Speedometer 2.0 result for the Acer Chromebook Spin 13 was 104 while mine is 61.80. I checked and we have the same model (CPU, memory, etc.).
4. Jon’s Using his Apple Watch to its full potential.
5. iOS text messages & multiple devices – notifications problem
6. Still struggling with URL Schemes with Microsoft Office (why doesn’t ms-excel:// always open in office or Excel – WHY would it open Onedrive?!?)
7. Revisiting the Microsoft Whiteboard app
8. Microsoft Office app for iOS and Android
9. Jon’s Struggle to use a Apple 27’’ Cinema Display (2010, not thunderbolt, Mini-Displayport) with USB C. Cost of my desired refresh.
10. Jon’s R tip
    Web Scraping with rvest package – example code below. Basically if you can read HTML and understand CSS classes, you can find information and download it.

    install.packages(“rvest”);
    library(“rvest”);
    addr <- "https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?s=MS&pg=2&id=175616" page <- read_html(addr); nodes <- html_nodes(page,".tabular td"); totfaculty <- html_text(nodes)[2] paste("The total number of faculty are",totfaculty); What about pages that use Javascript to pull in the data though? Well then… PhantomJS browser! Chapter 9 in my book shows that.

11. App Tip of the Week: Garageband How-To Videos.iSongs’ version of Gangstas’ paradise
    iPianoDude

Available via Google Music Podcasts and Apple iTunes.