Barrett

October 11, 2015

I Bequeath My CD Collection to My Five Year Old

But before I do, I need to buy a new portable CD boombox, so my son can continue to listen to all of those near-abandoned discs I have yet to rip to my computer. The question is… which boombox should I get?

When my five year old was just a baby and beginning to crawl, he wasn’t really moving more than a few inches. One day, he spotted our old Sony CD boombox on the other side of the family room. It was playing a nursery rhyme. He stared at the magical device, and it was love at first sight. Now, he had some real motivation to advance his locomotion.

He had to touch it. In that moment, he crawled an entire foot towards it.

Over the next week, I watched him repeatedly return his attention to the CD player, and observed his effort to crawl over and touch it. When he eventually made it to the singing device, his face lit up as his stretched hand made first contact.

It felt like my son taught himself to crawl at an accelerated rate, because of this need to get to his CD boombox.

Yes, his boombox.

Music to His Ears
Since then, his attachment to the wonderful music box has never waned. He’s learned that pressing buttons makes it sing, and that there are different songs.

Eventually, he mastered the entire interface, plus the CD track numbers. He also enjoyed popping different CDs in and out to create a seemingly endless supply of music.

Like a boy and his dog, it was my son and his music.
(A dog is a conversation for another day.)

End of Life Lurking
But now there’s trouble lurking in his magic kingdom…

Our boombox is over a decade old, and his sometimes rough handling of it over the years has taken its toll. It’s finally starting to malfunction.

And before the CD player totally breaks down, I’ve got a decision to make.

Should I replace the Sony or introduce my son to the more current world of iPods and MP3 players?

Hanging on to CDs
It should be an obvious answer, but part of the problem is I still haven’t ripped all of my old CDs to iTunes. There’s a whole bookcase of them waiting for rainy days that never come… thanks to busy parenthood with other priorities.

Plus, somehow he’s picked up his own personal CD collection over the past few years. (Gifts, mostly)

My conundrum is CD use is still alive and well throughout the Lester household. As much as I want to, I can’t pull the plug… not yet. So I decided it was time to get a new boombox for my boy.

You Get What You Pay For
What made the decision a bit easier was the expected low price point of this near dead tech.

Sure CDs are still selling at the same prices as a decade ago.
(Odd)
But who’s really buying CD boomboxes anymore?
(Besides me?)

And in fact, Amazon has a whole host of no name CD boomboxes to choose from in the $30-$50 range. But user reviews are absolutely terrible for the whole lot of them.

Whatever I buy is going to take its share of wear and tear from my son’s use.
It needs to take a little licking…

Hmmm…

A Sony CD Boombox on Steroids
So expanded my price point and took a look at what Sony had to offer…

Of course Sony is selling its current boombox model for a hefty 100 bucks.
(You pay more for the brand, right?)

But as it turns out, the black Sony ZS-RS60BT CD Boombox has a few updated tricks up its sleeve.

It has Bluetooth connectivity. So I can stream music to it from my iPhone.
(Much like my nifty Logitech UE speaker)
It can play music files from USB devices.
It can rip CD files to USB devices.
(As MP3s)

Not too shabby…

Sticking with Sony
Okay… so I’m spending twice as much as I need to… but I’m technically getting a superior unit with newer tech to future proof it somewhat.
(Plus, Daddy can use it too.)

Okay, let’s shop it…

Click.

No Magic Bullets
Most portable CD boomboxes on the market today have seemingly become glorified toys at ludicrously cheap price points. But if you want a good one, you’ve still got to spend some coin.

Does my son need a premium ‘Sony’ product? Well, I’d like it to last for a few years, and the Amazon reviews on this one are mostly solid.
(And don’t forget, my last Sony held up to normal toddler abuse like a champ.)

Equilibrium Restored
So my five year old is getting a new CD boombox.
(The holidays are just around the corner…)
No, he won’t be the coolest kid on the block, but thankfully, he doesn’t know that yet.

Soon, I will expose my son to newer musical tech. But for now, my boy will continue his reign as the CD king of our household.

He’s happy. I’m happy.

Yes, I blew some bucks on dead tech.
But I got a Bluetooth speaker along the way…

Rock on.

October 4, 2015

Did You Know NASA Has a Martian Prime Directive?

The walls of the Garni Crater on Mars have dark, narrow streaks that NASA says reveal liquid water. Terran scientists are jumping up and down with glee, but there’s a catch…

Remember the Prime Directive on “Star Trek?” You know, that pesky Federation law that Captain Kirk often had to ‘bend,’ which was supposed to prevent humans from altering the natural development of an alien civilization?

In case you missed it, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted ‘definitive evidence’ of liquid salty water on Mars… not from millions of years ago… but right now!

Reconnaissance snapped photos showing dark streaks ‘seeping’ down Martian slopes, and the streaks have been changing size depending on the surface temperature.

Well of course, you’d think we should now refocus all of our Martian exploration efforts where this water is. Right?

Wrong.

Unwanted Hitchhikers
Well, it turns out, NASA’s got it’s own Prime Directive, and it’s called the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty.

This pesky treaty mostly talks about the peaceful exploration of space, but Article IX briefly addresses the protection of other planets:

“States Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination…”

So it’s like we’ve got to wash our hands, before first sitting down to dinner with any Martians we might find.

And the problem is… we haven’t thoroughly washed our hands.

Article IX is a Bummer
When NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover landed on Mars back in 2012, it wasn’t totally sterilized from all Earth microbes. Turns out, that’s extremely difficult and ‘expensive’ to do.

Most likely, there are some tough Terran microbial hitchhikers cruising with Curiosity on Mars today.

And if Curiosity did come across any form of Martian life, we wouldn’t want to contaminate it with our own micro bugs.
(Note the ending from H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds.”)

So even if Curiosity could be redirected to check out this discovery,
(Which the rover can’t get to…the slopes are too steep.)
…Curiosity is banned from this new ‘forbidden zone,’ because of Article IX!

That’s right… We spent billions of dollars to send robots up there to look for life, and when we finally find a place that’s actually got some water, where there’s a stronger chance of finding life, we can’t… because we didn’t spend enough money to sterilize our gear to protect the Martians.

And guess what?
It looks like we’ve got the same problem with the next Mars rover mission in 2020.

Huh?

I think we 21st century humans needs a little dose of Captain Kirk’s 23rd century explorative ‘joie de vivre’ right about now…

Searching for Life… from Afar
I really don’t get it…
Isn’t there an inherent problem with the design of all this?

If we’re trying to find life on Mars, shouldn’t we be able to go to the places where there’s a greater chance of some actual life?

Yes, it’s lovely to see all of those nifty pictures from the surface of Mars, but come on!!

I don’t typically end my posts with more questions than answers, but I’m a little stumped.

Yes, I understand NASA doesn’t have the money or technology to send up a totally “clean” mission to Mars…but there’s got to be some way to figure this all out.

And haven’t we already contaminated the Red Planet with our Mars exploration to date?

What would the Prime Directive and Mr. Spock have to say about that…?

September 27, 2015

Pocket Lint Can Destroy Your iPhone

You may not know it, but this dusty mess is growing in your iPhone right now! It’s time to get rid of it…

Recently, I noticed my year-old iPhone 6 Plus was acting quirky.
(Maybe it’s cranky that it’s no longer the latest and greatest with the new 6S line just released.)

I first started having problems a couple weeks back while using the EarPods. First, the onboard volume buttons on the cable stopped working. Then, the microphone started wigging out. So I figured the earphones had simply gone bad.

I pulled out my backup pair of EarPods.
Same problem.
Hmmm…

Cupertino, We Have a Problem
Then I considered a separate iPhone issue that was simultaneously annoying me. It had to do with my nightly ritual of charging up my trusty iPhone before I went to bed. I began to notice that inserting my Lighting charging cable didn’t create that confident ‘clicking’ sound anymore. The cable went in, but it felt like the connection wasn’t firm. On occasion, I had to push in the cable a second time to activate the charge. It was as if… the connection was failing. As if something was blocking it.

And in fact there was…

A Dusty Blob
I grabbed a flashlight and took a look inside the small opening of the Lightning connector port. I peered closer…

Perhaps not so surprisingly, the hole was partially filled up with pocket link and dust from the right front pocket in all of my pants. I guess it’s been building up over the past 11 months, and it finally grew to a large enough mini-mass, which had been crammed to the back end of the jack hole through my daily charging cycle. Would this prevent the connector from seating properly?

You betcha!

It was time for some emergency surgery.

Calling Dr. Lester!
So I took a pin and carefully extracted portions of the dusty mass until all was clear again.

Bingo!

A toothpick would work too, and I imagine occasionally blowing in some compressed air would be a deterrent to prevent dusty build up.
(I don’t know how durable the inside of the lightning port is to be… so I would tread lightly.)

The Operation Continues
Then I peered into the EarPod jack. Same issue?

It was harder to tell by visual inspection. It just appeared to be a bottomless black hole. So I took the pin and carefully dropped it down like I was a kid again playing my Milton Bradley game of ‘Operation.’

And then I felt it. The spongy muck.
Yep….identical problem… not a surprise.

So I carefully performed the same procedure.
And voilà… my EarPods suddenly worked again!

It’s Not Just Pocket Lint
Who knew pocket lint could be so destructive?

It makes sense that over the course of months, bits of dust and pocked lint will inevitably enter the holes in your iPhone. That said, I never had a problem with the earphone jacks of my older iPhones. Perhaps that’s because they weren’t located on the bottom of the iPhone next to the Lightning jack.
(And in fact, the bottom of my iPhone always touches the bottom of my pocket. So if there’s pocket link to be found, my iPhone will make contact…)

And as for the Lightning connector problem… I jumped from the 4S to the 6 Plus… so this is my first experience with a Lightning port.

Clean Up!
If your iPhone has been living in your pants or purse for a while, you might want to think about giving it a lint inspection.
(It’s probably a good idea to turn your iPhone off first before beginning the operation and don’t use any liquids.)

I guess the other choice is to vacuum your pockets…
(Hey… new tech gadget idea!)

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