Missed my first weekly post in… uh… a long time!

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:general-category ]I have to go back a long way to see when I haven’t posted on JumbleCat on a weekly basis, but yesterday I missed my first weekly post in a long time.

It was a combination of things, several other projects have kept me busy so I’ve been writing posts closer to their post date (I use to have 4 or more posts pre-written and queued up, now I usually only have one).  And last week I caught a nasty cold which really took a lot of inspiration out of me.

To top it off it was a 4 day weekend for me and I didn’t even think about my Monday post until today 🙂

No excuse though having written 270 posts (including this one) over the last 4+ years, I think I can take a day off without feeling too guilty 😉

To install or not to install Windows Phone 10?

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:mobile-category ]We’re rushing head long in to spring and Windows 10 for Phones is still in a very limited release with only a few handsets supported.

That’s about to change as Microsoft has announced a slew of phones that will be supported in the next release, including my Lumia 925.

That means I’m going to have a choice to make shortly, stay with 8.1 or move to 10 on my main phone?

I’ve always taken the plunge early in release cycles but I have to admit I’m hesitant this time.  It’s not that I can’t live without my phone, I could always drop my SIM in to another one or roll back to 8.1 if things went down hill.  It’s more that Windows 10 is still very much a work in progress and I’m not sure how stable it really will be.

I guess the lack of information so far on how well (or poorly) the current preview is running for day-to-day use has me concerned.

Since we don’t have a release date for the next preview I guess I still have some time left to make up my mind.

Slack for Windows

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:software-category ]A while ago, WordPress.org moved its communications from IRC to Slack, which seems to be taking over the Internet these days.

I’ve used Slack a bit and in general it’s a nice interface, but especially for the first while, a little flaky.  They’ve cleared up most of the issues but it’s still kind of slow.

I haven’t used their mobile app (they don’t support Windows Phone) so I can say much about it, but they’ve released a Windows desktop app so I can review it 🙂

I’ll cut right to the chase, it’s kind of crappy.

It’s mostly a wrapper for their web app, the only real advantage to it is the status icon in the Windows tray.  Other than that it is just a window that displays the web interface.

It’s just as slow (if not slower) than the web interface and doesn’t even minimize to the tray so it takes up a spot on your taskbar all the time.

Perhaps it will get better in time, but for now I’m just sticking with the web interface.

WaterField Designs Backpack

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:hardware-category ]I’ve been using a SwissGear backpack as my primary travel bag for the last couple of years and it has done me well, but it had started to get a little frayed around the edges so it was time to take a look for something new.

The SwissGear bag is designed for a 15″ notebook, which makes it less than ideal for my ASUS Zenbook Ultrabook.  Likewise it has lots of large pockets that I don’t use and so decided to try to find something designed for a smaller laptop.

Surprisingly, that’s harder to do than you might think.  Most cases targeted at ultrabooks are just sleeves, which didn’t do what I wanted.  I spend probably six months looking for a new backpack and finally found one over at WaterField Designs.

The Staad Laptop Backpack is a custom backpack designed for smaller laptops and ultrabooks.  Of course the first thing you notice is the price 😉

I waffled for a while, but decided to splurge on one, so I ordered a black ballistic with black leather slim model and waited.

Waterfield takes care of the international shipping and duties, but it’s a two-step process.  First you place your order and pay for it and then they calculate the shipping and handling and send you a second ‘order’ to pay for it.

This went smoothly and they said to expect the backpack in a few days.

A week passed with nothing.  Then two so I decided to send an email and see what was going on.  The response was quick but I guess they missed the point as I received a request for another shipping ‘order’.

A quick e-mail exchange cleared things up and the backpack was on its way.  It looks like the international shipping is a manual process and I assume my second ‘order’ fell through the cracks.

Anyway, the bag itself is well made and quite beautiful.  The ZenBook fits in perfectly without a lot of extra room.

Overall it’s a great backpack, there are two external pockets that are easy to get to and large enough to hold a big phone or two.  The interior pockets are a little limited, there are two on the front part of the page which I put my mouse and power brick in.

The backpack is very slim and perfect for what I want.  There are a few things to point out:

  • Other than the two zippered pockets, there are not exterior holders of any kind, so if you want to carry a water bottle or an umbrella, your out of luck.
  • The interior pockets are a little small, if my power brick was larger I’d have to put it in the “bottom” of the bag, which is where I currently keep my backup power pack.

Of course the real questions with this kind of item is if it’s worth the cost?  The answer for me is yes, but it’s probably not for everyone.

µTorrent

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:software-category ]I’ve been using µTorrent for years as my BitTorrent client and have been happy with it, however I have noticed more and more advertising on it with each new release and the recent controversy over including a bitcoin mining app as a “bundled offer” seems like it might be time to move on.

My torrenting needs are pretty basic so really so I don’t need much.  A quick internet search turned up a couple of options but one kind of caught my eye, qbittorrent.

It’s whole purpose in life is to mimic µtorrent, which makes it a no brainer drop in replacement.  It also has the benefit of being open source and cross-platform.  So far it’s worked well and does exactly what it says.

The web ui looks better than µtorrent as well.  Since µtorrent’s web ui hasn’t changed in years (they’ve kind of dropped it in favour of their new cloud offering) it also has some features not available in µtorrent’s, like SSL and DDNS support.

There are only two small things to complain about:

  • I use a Windows 8 app for remote control of µtorrent but it doesn’t work with qbittorrent (not a real problem as the web ui on qbittorrent is pretty good).
  • There is one setting I used in µtorrent to limit seeding by time, which isn’t available in qbittorent (or I haven’t found at least).

There is another open source client, Deluge, which I’m going to take a look at as well, but for now qbittorrent will be replacing µtorrent for me.