Quarantine COVID-19 Charts

Every day after 4pm I go to the Massachusetts COVID response reporting page and enter the new numbers into a spreadsheet. Initially the data was simple with just new daily cases (remember when they used to say "presumed cases") and no colorful charts so I created my own charts. They now generate a super detailed report daily with charts, testing, breakdown by hospital, etc...  

My spreadsheet still has some stuff that they don't provide. First is an average of the daily change for the last seven days which really smooths out the chart and gives a clear picture of the trend. Second is my favorite though because it attempts to back into the number of actual cases based on the total number of deaths. The number of reported cases is problematic because you still have to meet a certain set of criteria in order to be tested. As of 5/2 there were 298,994 tests done in MA, we have about 6.893 million people (that is tests taken not number of people tested).

The Infected Fatality Rate(IFR) for COVID-19 is a controversial subject, it most certainly is not the total deaths divided by the total cases, because that bottom number is missing a bunch of people (MA would have a 16% mortality rate if that were the case). In my models I assume an IFR of 0.66% (I will include calculations for 1% for comparison), which last I checked was somewhere in the middle of the road. So as of May 2 there were 3,846 deaths in MA, which gives us about 582,727 calculated cases (384,600 if using an IFR of 1%). However, since it takes a few weeks for people to pass after catching the virus that is the calculated cases from April 11th. On that day MA reported 22,866 total cases or just 3.92% (5.95% if using an IFR of 1%) of the calculated cases. You read that right the number of cases we saw on the news back on April 11th captured somewhere around 4-5% of the total cases. The good news is that percentage has been consistently rising by about .25% each day. If that trend continues the number of cases reported today 66,293 represents about 9.17% of the total cases (11.17% if using an IFR of 1%) which is a range of 722,000 to 1,688,676 total cases in MA. So 10-24% of the people in the state may have had it. Recent antibody testing in New York and Santa Clara showed very similar numbers.

What does it mean? Damned if I know, but at least it gives me a distraction everyday. #mathiscool#numbersftw

AirPods and Siri Music Suggestions

At work I use my iPad Pro and AirPods to listen to Sirius XM and Apple Music during the day.  I noticed over the last couple weeks that if I put the AirPods down for a certain amount of time, they wouldn't play the same audio when I hit play again.  Now I know there is some special iOS thing about what the last audio app was and it sometimes loses track, but in this case it was sometimes happening with Apple Music.  It would be in the middle of the latest David Gray album and then when I came back and hit play, I get the Into the Spider-verse soundtrack.

Today I realized that if I put the AirPods in my ears and turned on the iPad screen it said, "AirPods Siri Suggestion" and that was the culprit.  I immediately went in to Settings > Siri > Apple Music and turned of Siri Suggestions.  So far today when I double tap to play again it resumes right where I left off.

New Mac Tips

For all those new Mac owners out there after Christmas here is a list of some settings I typically toggle when setting up a new Mac.  

• Spotlight - One of the greatest tools I use everyday on my Macs is Spotlight.  Just hit command+space bar or click the magnifying glass in the top right corner, and you will get a little search box.  You can type in the name of files, preference panels or apps in it to quickly launch them.  It can also be used as a calculator in a pinch.

• Organize System Preferences Alphabetically

1. Open System Preferences
2. Under the view menu select "Organize Alphabetically"

• Update clock to display day and date

1. Open System Preferences
2. Go to "Date & Time" preferences
3. Go to the Clock tab
4. Check the "Show day of the week" and "Show date" option

• Move the Dock to the right (especially for MacBooks because that vertical real estate is limited)

1. Open System Preferences
2. Go to the "Dock" preferences
3. Change the "Position on screen" to the "Right" option
4. While your at it you may want to change the size so the Dock icons are smaller
5. You can also drag items right off your dock if you don't think you will use them very often

• Apple Watch unlock (so you don't have to type your password in every time)

1. Open System Preferences
2. Go to the "Security & Privacy" preferences
3. Check the "Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac"

• Set up Time Machine for your back up

1. Get an external hard drive (format it using Disk Utility) if it isn't already
2. Plug in the external hard drive
3. Open System Preferences
4. Go to the "Time Machine" preferences
5. Click the "Select Disk..." to set your backup disk as your external drive
6. Check the "Backup Automatically" checkbox
7. Check the "Show Time Machine in menu bar" so you can easily keep an eye on it
8. Now your computer will be backed up whenever the drive is attached and you also have the ability to go back in time and restore files you may have accidentally deleted.

• Enable iCloud Features

1. If you have an iPhone or iPad you will most certainly want to sign in with your iCloud account
2. Open System Preferences
3. Go to the iCloud preferences
4. Log in to your iCloud account
5. I usually turn on all the different features like Photos, Mail, Contacts, etc...
6. iCloud Drive has a feature from a couple years ago is the iCloud Drive syncing of your Desktop and Documents folder.  Once you turn that on any files you add to your Desktop or UserName/Documents folder will automatically be synced to iCloud and available from the Files app on your iPhone or iPad.
7.  In the Messages app you can go to Preferences and go to the iMessage panel. There is an option to "Enable Messages in iCloud" which will put all your Messages in the cloud so they will be accessible from your Mac as well as your iOS devices.
8. Set up Photos to so you can get your photo library from your iPhone on your computer (if you pay for iCloud Storage of course)

• Finder Preferences - Some simple changes that make Finder more useful

1. Open a new Finder window (click on the little Face icon at the end or the dock).  This is how you navigate the file system on macOS
2. By default every new Finder window defaults to the "Recents" view which shows all the recently used files.  I find this to be less than useful.  If you open Preferences in the Finder menu you can change the "New Finder windows show:" option to either be Documents or your home folder (the one with your name) 

An iOS macOS Analogy

On ATP episode 304: Island of Shortcuts, Siracusa mentioned the current Apple community discussion about iOS as it compares to macOS and what lies ahead. He said he has been unable to nail down an analogy that perfectly summarizes the differences between two operating systems and their fundamental behaviors like, windows vs. split view, command line vs. shortcuts, Finder vs. Files, and various other areas.

Long after the episode ended I kept thinking about this analogy and lucky for me I had a three hour car ride in my future. I initially focused on Shortcuts and how it was the perfect example of taking a process like writing a little program, but making it work within a rigid framework with a simple user interface. From the beginning iOS has followed this concept for application launching, multi-tasking, files access and application launching. The next requirement for the analogy was finding a situation where the original thing and the new simplified thing continue to live alongside each other. Finally, the hardest part was finding something where the most skilled people at using this thing tended to use the original version rather than the new up and coming process.

I thought about this for a while and then posed these questions to my wife. After a little thought and then some discussion we cracked it, ovens vs. microwave ovens. The oven in this case is macOS and the microwave oven is iOS.
- Both of these can be used to cook food, but in general ovens use a temperature setting while microwaves use the concept of power percentage. I bet there are microwave haters complaining about all the hoops they have to jump through to figure out the different power setting and time combinations just to warm something up properly, when they are used to a single temperature setting for accomplishing the same task.
- Most people when given the choice of having just one of these would go with the oven, even though they would probably be able to cook most of what they wanted to in a microwave oven.
- Extremely skilled chefs can probably cook dishes in the microwave that rival those cooked in a regular oven. The Viticci of microwaves can probably cook a good lasagna.
- The first ovens may have been very simple with a single dial and a limited ability, but some of the microwave ovens todays have a rich set of feature allowing for more complicated cooking options than ever before.
- The microwave oven has a popcorn button for cooking, it doesn’t get much easier.

Do you see it?? Both types of ovens do the same basic things, but they do them in very different ways. Heating up a cup of water is much better suited for the microwave oven, but baking a cake on the other hand is best suited for the big oven. However, in the end it comes down to your preference and what task you are trying to accomplish. I think this is very similar to the areas of iOS and macOS that currently crossover.

I did leave the best until the end though, because you may have noticed I didn’t mention the stove top, well that is the thing that brings this all together. The stove top is the piece of this that really matters, it is the thing that the professional chef needs in order to do his job. It is where the really tricky part of the cooking is done, the most finely honed part of their craft involves frying pans, sauteeing and whateveer other fancy things chefs do with a gas burner. It is the hardest part of the cooking toolset to replicate, because it is so basic in its makeup, but its use cannot be rigidly constrained. The controls are simple, you just turn on a burner, but how do you simplify the next steps of cooking on a stove top for the masses, you can’t just add an omelet button. The tricky part of getting iOS ready for developers is figuring out how to add a stove top so they can cook up some amazing new professional apps.

Shortcut Bubble Trouble

Shortcut Bubble Trouble

On ATP episode 304: Island of Shortcuts, there was a discussion comparing and contrasting Shortcuts and the command line. Marco and Casey made some great points about how the command line, more or less, is something that is common across all major operating systems today. While Shortucts is great it is something new you have to learn, whereas the command line is something lots of people already know and lives just below the surface out of reach of iOS users.

Siracusa said he has played around with Shortcuts and thinks that people have been able to do some impressive and useful things with them. However, he continues that “if you are a programmer then it is far less appealing to use because you have to write a program with little GUI bubbles in a big long linear list”. I definitely related to that, because I have created a few different Shortcuts, from a medical log to one that generates dismissal letters for my kids. Since I am a programmer it would have been a lot quicker for me to just type 4 or 5 commands into a text file rather than going through the tedious process of searching through the blocks, dragging them into position and typing in the various parameters. For example, my medical log shortcut includes 10 blocks, but I bet it could probably be simplified to 3–4 lines of code.

Given the recent discussion around iOS vs macOS it definitely got the gears going in my brain. Do I want a command line app in iOS because I am comfortable in my macOS habits or is it more because it is a more efficient tool? It goes back to a previous blog post I wrote about putting a real keyboard on an iPad, An iOS laptop. Do I want a laptop form factor for iOS because I am more comfortable with it or because that form factor is more efficent for typing and using? Even if I don’t get those things I hope that the Shortcuts team removes a layer of abstraction for the app and lets you write Shortcuts in some sort of an AppleScript or JavaScript format in the future.

macOS Screenshots and the Touchbar

tl;dr  If you change the screenshot destination setting to anything besides Desktop on the Touch Bar it will override the default behavior of the keyboard shortcut and use your setting from the Touch Bar.

I recently got a 2018 13" MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar and it has been an amazing machine.  At first I didn't really love the Touch Bar, but the more I try to use it the better it gets.  The idea of replacing those old function keys with a dynamic display is smart, although I would prefer a physical button for the escape key. 

I was taking a selection screenshot (command-shift-4) today and noticed that the Touch Bar had a couple options on it for the destination of the image (Desktop, Documents, or clipboard) and the thing to capture (selection, window, screen).  I always struggled with the keyboard shortcut for copying to clipboard (ctrl-command-shift-4), so I was delighted to be able to trigger the "file" destination shortcut, but change it to the clipboard using the Touch Bar.

Fast forward to later in the day... I was using an external monitor with the MacBook closed and tried to do a selection screenshot (command-shift-4).  I selected the area to capture, let go and waited for the file to appear on the desktop, but nothing happened.  I tried again, but tried pasting into Messages and to my surprise the image showed up.  Turns out if you change the screenshot destination setting to anything besides Desktop on the Touch Bar it will override the default behavior of the keyboard shortcut and use your setting from the Touch Bar.

In order to change it back you have to get the screenshot controls to appear on the Touch Bar and set the destination to Desktop.

Iceland in a Couple Days

If you find yourself in Iceland for a couple of days here are my recommendations based on my trip there in 2014.

Blue Lagoon

If your time is very limited the closest attraction to Keflavik airport is Blue Lagoon It is a little pricey, but is an amazing and unqiue experience.

Downtown Reykjavik

The next closest attraction is downtown Reykjavik main shopping area, Laugavegur street. It is about a 40 minute drive from the airport and has lots of shops and a few different attractions. I highly recommend a little bakery called Sandholt. The food was great and it ended up being our go to place for starting our day.

The other stop we made each day was for coffee, of course, and the best place we found was Reykjavik Roasters. The espresso was fantastic and their croissants were very tasty.

While wandering downtown you should walk out to the harbor and check out the modern looking Harpa Concert Hall

Up the hill from the harbor is a statue of Leif Eriksson next to the Church of Hallgrímur

Finally, if you happen to be downtown in the evening or late night you should check out the amazing hot dogs at Bæjarins beztu pylsur.

Golden Circle

Besides the Blue Lagoon the second thing you are most likely to hear about Iceland is the Golden Circle. It is a tourist loop that starts near Reykjavik and takes people to several different geologically significant features.

One of the attractions on the northern end of the loop is Gullfoss. It is a huge waterfall with a great visitor center and a nice lunch spot.

Heading back towards Reykjavik on the loop you will come to Geysir. It is a pretty small area with several different hot spring related features include a couple different geysers and multiple boiling mud pits. Here is an image of one of the larger geysers.

One of my favorite stops on the Golden Circle was Althing in Thingvellir National Park. It is the boundary of the North American and European tectonic plates and makes for some dramatic terrain.

Southern Iceland

If you choose to skip the Golden Circle, but want to check out something slightly less touristy head a couple hours east of Reykjavik towards Skogar. The road there will let you experience many different types of terrain you will find in Iceland. After driving across a long flat plain you will see your first big waterfall, Seljalandsfoss. It is a great place to stop and take some photos before continuing along the shore in front of one of the large glaciers on the island.

A little further east of there is the waterfall you have probably seen in every video about Iceland, Skogafoss It is huge and has a long staircase you can climb to get to the top of it. However, if you have some extra time once you are at the top of the big waterfall you can climb over a little barrier and follow a hiking trail that follows the river uphill with some amazing views of some smaller waterfalls.
Finally you will arrive at the Skogar Museum, where you can learn about Iceland and explore some classic Icelandic structures.

Assorted travel tips:

• The exchange rate at the time of this post is about 108 Krona to 1 dollar, so just drop the last two numbers of the krona price to get a comparable dollar value. 500 krona pastry would be 5 dollars.
• We rented a car so we could “choose our own adventure”, but there are many tour groups that can take you to all of the above attractions.
• Most people speak English, but as always it helps to learn some words, Icelandic Phrasebook

Creativity Drought

Over the last couple years I have spent a lot of spare time working on various creative projects including this blog, setting up and hosting my own website, drone videos, and the Kilobyte podcast. They each managed to challenge me in different ways, whether it was finding the right equipment for podcast recording, learning about setting up a Linux server, or understanding how to build and pilot a quadcopter. It was also difficult trying to find enough time in my schedule to work on each thing in a meaningful way. Somehow I managed to find the time and was quite happy with my first pass at all of it.

Going into this year I hoped to adopt a yearly theme as was discussed on Cortex #62: 2018 Yearly Themes. The basic idea is to find a theme for the year (or season) and use it as a guide for decisions throughout the year rather than setting a bunch of goals for the year you are likely to break. I spent several days thinking about the past year, what I had accomplished and the direction I wanted to head for the upcoming year. It was really important that I build on the previous year’s learning, but step it up in some way. Initially I was leaning towards creating content more consistently, but I think before that I need to make it easier for me to actually create and post the content.

I was getting close, but just as I started to narrow down on a theme something happened and I got distracted. It is hard to say for sure what happened, but my creative output went down to zero. Thankfully I have recognized it and have started down the road to correcting course. Here is my first step in creating more content again with hopefully more to come soon.

MacOS, Maven and Tilde Folders

I recently set up a new MacBook Pro for development and installed some developer tools like Java and Maven.  After checking out my source code from Subversion and building it using Maven a folder with the name tilde (~) appeared in the same directory as my source code.  I deleted the folder and a little while later I noticed it was back.  After some digging around I found that setting the path of my local maven repository in my settings.xml file so it started with a ~ for my home directory was the problem.  Every time I ran a build it was trying to put a new local repository in a tilde directory of the working directory.  After updating the path to use /Users/{username} it stopped creating the tilde folder.

Angular CLI Upgrade 'Cannot find module' Error

Every couple months I try to upgrade to the latest version of the Angular CLI and every time I run into this error.

Cannot find module 'webpack/lib/dependencies/ContextElementDependency'
Error: Cannot find module 'webpack/lib/dependencies/ContextElementDependency'
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:469:15)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:417:25)
    at Module.require (module.js:497:17)
    at require (internal/module.js:20:19)
    at Object.<anonymous> (C:\Users\\node_modules\@ngtools\webpack\src\plugin.js:8:34)
    at Module._compile (module.js:570:32)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:579:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:487:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (module.js:446:12)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:438:3)

Every time I realize I miss a step so I want to document the steps I ended using so I don't have to search for the solution again.  All the steps below are recommended by the Angular CLI Upgrade page, except the highlighted step below that removes the package-lock.json file.

Global install upgrade
NPM will keep a globally installed version of the Angular CLI that will be used across the system. It is updated using these steps, which will uninstall the current version and then install the new version.

npm uninstall -g @angular/cli
npm cache verify
# if npm version is < 5 then use `npm cache clean`
npm install -g @angular/cli@latest

Local install upgrade
The Angular project itself will have its own version of the CLI installed in the node_modules folder of the project.  It is updated using these instructions, which will remove the node_modules directory, update the version of the dependency in package.json and then reinstalls all the dependencies.  

rm -rf node_modules dist 

rm package-lock.json # deletes the package.json lock file
npm install --save-dev @angular/cli@latest
npm install

Windows 10 Hyper-V and Samsung 960 SSD Issue

I was following these great instructions, How to Create a Linux VM Using Hyper-V and when I got to the part where you actually create a new VM the computer frozed and restarted.  I tried this a couple more times with the same result.  I did a quick Google search and found this, Microsoft Forum Discussion on Samsung NVME Driver Issue .

In summary there was an issue with the Samsung Storage Controller driver version 2.1 that was causing the OS to crash when creating a new VM using Hyper-V.  You can check your current driver version by
1. Go to Start
2. Search for Device Manager
3. Expand the Storage Controllers node in the Device Manager
4. Double click on Samsung NVMe Controller to launch the details
5. Go to the Driver page and look at the Driver version.

The good news is that Samsung has released a fix for the issue with version 2.2 which you can download directly from Samsung at http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools.html (just go to the Driver section for the installer and instructions).

After running the installer and restarting my machine the Hyper-V Manager successfully created my new VM.

An iOS Laptop

The one device I would like Apple to release in 2018 is a laptop that runs iOS. I have been thinking about this a lot since reading Jason Snell’s piece at MacWorld, Why Apples Next Laptop Should Run iOS and the related discussion on Upgrade #168: Hail Hydrant. The addition of the Files app and better multi tasking in iOS 11 has made the iPad an even better alternative for those looking to get rid of their Windows or Mac laptop. However, I haven’t seen a lot of people switching out there laptops for an iPad, but instead moving towards Windows or Chrome OS convertible devices. I think the tablet form factor of the iPad combined with some out of date understanding of the capabilities of iOS coupled with the adoption of Chromebooks in schools is keeping people from making the switch.

It seems strange, but I think one of the big things keeping the iPad out of the conversation is the tablet form factor. If a person is looking to replace their old laptop or desktop they look at the iPad and it just does not seem like a replacement because it is perceived as just a tablet. They may see the Smart Keyboard attached to it in the store, but that is just an accessory for a tablet. People seem to have an association with the first class keyboard and a “main” computing device. The laptop form factor provides an extra level of comfort and consistency users may not feel with a tablet. The Smart Keyboard is also limited to being used on hard surfaces, which might also turn some people off.

The next thing holding back the iPad as a person’s main computer is the misconception that you can’t do a lot of “computer” things on them. It is probably just a hold over from the early days of the iPad when it was the next big thing and not only was the operating system pretty limited, but the quality of apps in the app store was also very low. Most people held on to their iPad 1 or iPad 2 for several years and never got to experience the more powerful iPads of the last few years or the new crop of apps that pushed the limits of tablet computing. If it was not for the last two years of daily iPad use and hours of podcasts helping me retrain my brain to work with a different style OS, I might also disregard the iPad Pro too.

Chromebook adoption in school’s could also be a factor as children start to get their own devices at home. My son has been using Chromebooks in school for a couple years now and has become very proficient navigating Chrome OS. Last fall, his homework required a device at home and he asked for a Chromebook. After a little research I found that while the low end Chromebooks are cheap; in order to get something with a little more longevity and higher quality you have to spend quite a bit of money. I briefly considered getting a MacBook for him, but then realized if anybody could make an iPad work for his tasks it was my son. I explained to him how his iPad Air could do all of the things the Chromebook could do and more. Of course the lack of a keyboard was an issue so I bought the Element Digital bluetooth keyboard case and despite the smaller keys he is quite happy with his setup. Unfortunately I think we are the exceptional case and most parents would purchase a $200 Chromebook and call it a day instead of spending twice as much for an iPad and a keyboard.

The combination of iOS and the iPad is now mature enough to be used by most people as their non-smartphone device. The first step Apple should take is to create an iOS device with a more familiar laptop form factor for iOS. The device would still support touch for some activities, but the keyboard would be the main input device. It would require a little more polish to keyboard shortcut on iOS, but for the most part it should be compatible out of the box. The next part is a bit trickier and involves Apple getting the word out that iOS on iPad can now do much more than it could back in the iOS 5 days when they owned their first iPad. Finally the new lower price point for the regular iPad should help make the iOS on iPad experience much more affordable when compared to other devices and the iPad Pro. I am convinced that iOS is the future of Apple devices and now is the time to start to expand beyond the old tablet form factor and into more interesting form factors like a 13” laptop or maybe even something as boundary pushing as a 21” desktop machine.

Work From Home Difficulties

Yesterday we received over a foot of snow, so unlike previous years I decided to work from home.  It is nice that I have a space upstairs that is somewhat separated from my families, although it isn't in a room where I can close the door and I can hear all the goings on elsewhere in the house.  Thankfully I can play music while I work and this blocks out that noise.  The harder thing is trying to work on the 22" inch monitor at home, because it has about a quarter of the pixels of my 28" 4K monitor at work.  I immediately feel so claustrophobic and struggle to get used to the space.  The only other difficulty is that I only have Apple keyboards at home so my brain has to remap some of the key combinations. 

Thankfully we only get a few storms like this a year and for the most part I stick to working in the office.  I'm not sure if maybe I should practice more, by spending a day at home every other week.

iPad Pro Productivity Apps

Since buying an iPad Pro way back in 2015 I have come to rely on a few different apps for my day to day use at work and for my creative endeavors at home.

My Current Home Screen

Note Taking

I played around with a few note taking apps in the beginning, but settled on Good Notes 4 for a few different reasons.  First and foremost it has great Apple Pencil support and includes a neat feature that lets you lasso text and move it around, which is helpful if your writing style is a little messy and sparse.  My favorite feature is that you can import PDF files from a number of file providers like OneDrive, Google Drive, DropBox or in iOS 11 the Files app.  Once imported you can mark the documents up and then export them back to any provider you want.  The app has the concept of categories to keep you organized and has the concept of notebooks with all different types of paper to choose from.

Automation

iOS apps have always been sandboxed since day one and this limits the interactions you can do between apps.  In iOS 8 the concept of app extensions was introduced which let developers create extensions allowing one app to open content in a different app.  The Workflows app, which Apple bought within the last year, lets you do lots of different tasks across multiple apps.  You create a workflow and then using a building block interface construct a workflow that can get a distance from the Maps app and plug it into a prebuild text message for sending.  You can add data to the health kit app or do more complex things using web services.

FTP and SSH

Managing my web server from the iPad is done easily using Coda.  The app includes the ability to configure multiple FTP servers, with great text editing tools and an SSH client when you need to update something remotely.  The text editor supports lots of different syntax formats, which is useful when editing on your mobile device.

File Providers

I have my files spread across multiple file providers like DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive and iCloud Drive. Once you install any of these apps the built in Files app will gain access to the files and you can quickly access them from any apps that properly integrate with Files.  

Miscellaneous Apps

Here are some other apps I use on a regular basis:

• Ferrite - Podcast recording studio
• Overcast - Podcast listening app
• Microsoft Remote Desktop - Sometimes you need to access your Windows machine
• Byword - Markdown editor
• PCalc - A calculator because the iPad doesn't come with one, plus this developer has lots of easter eggs in it.
• iMovie - Movie editor because my Macs are too old to edit 4K
• Tweetbot 4 - My favorite Twitter client
• Inbox by Gmail - Keeping the dream of inbox zero alive.

iCloud Photo Library Optimize Storage Issues

I was trying to use the Apple Clips app the other day to make a quick movie from some short ~10 second videos I had shot on my iPhone 6s an hour earlier.  I went to the Library tab, tapped on one of the videos and it popped up the "Downloading from iCloud..." progress bar.  It seemed odd that it had to go to the cloud to for such a recent video.  I was really curious so I went to the Photos app, went to a different video and tapped on the edit button to see if the video was stored locally, but it wasn't as I saw the little progress circle showing it downloading.

My iPhone has the "Optimize Storage" setting turned on for iCloud Photo Library and I have over 22GB of space available.  Is this a bug in iOS 11 or has something changed in how the "Optimize Storage" behavior?

World Mental Health Day: My Anxiety Story

Today is World Mental Health Day so I wanted to share my story about anxiety:

Four years ago, I went out to lunch like normal, but I started to feel nauseous and was unable to finish my meal.  Later in the day when I was in the office I felt dizzy and short of breath.  It was very strange since I had never felt this way before.  After this happening for a few more days I decided to go and see my doctor.  I was sent for a few blood tests and then wore a heart monitor for a day, but nothing turned up.  In my follow up appointment my doctor diagnosed me with anxiety and referred me to a therapist that specialized in the treatment of anxiety.

Prior to this I never thought of myself as somebody that would need to see a therapist, because I thought just being smart and strong would get me through any problem.  It was also surprising that somebody like me that is so outgoing and friendly would have anxiety.  However, at that moment in time I just wanted to get better and didn't think twice about it.  I contacted the therapist and after a brief phone screening had my first appointment.  The first few weekly appointments went as expected with lots of talk about my history, family and my current life.  It wasn't long though before the homework began and we started to tackle some of my anxiety issues.

My therapist follows the Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy (wikipedia.org) approach for treating anxiety and doesn't prescribe medication.  So my first job was to figure out situations that made me anxious, like going out to lunch or visiting a crowded place.  We would then list out those things and then I would have to go experience them and afterwards document how I felt while doing them.  I think my analytical mind really enjoyed this type of feedback loop and trying to correlate map activities to their outcome.  All of the documenting was done using Google docs so I can go back today and see all of the different tasks I had to complete and all of the improvements and sometimes setbacks I faced.

After about a month I started to make progress with eating out at lunch and started to feel much better in general.  However, it turns out this was just the tip of the iceberg for my anxiety, because once we started to talk it became clear that anxiety had affected me in many other ways throughout my life.  I started to recall panic attacks I had at different large public events, small fears I had about checking into hotels, migraines from the anxiety associated with air travel (thanks TSA), meeting new people and many others I won't bore you with today.

Slowly over the last four years I tackled one problem after another and started to recognize my anxieties and then how to best deal with the situations causing it.  It hasn't been easy and I have definitely gone into more than one exposure that pushed me to my limit, but today I am so much stronger and happier because of my treatment.  I feel there is such a stigma associated with going to therapy, but it has actually made me open about the fact that I do go and how much it has helped me.  It has really changed my life and if you have ever considered seeking help, but were worried about what people might think, just do it!

Special thanks to my therapist, my family and of course my amazing wife for supporting me through all of this.

iOS 11 for iPhone

Today is the annual update all your iOS devices day, thanks to the release of iOS 11, watchOS 4 and tvOS 11.  I have been running the public beta of iOS 11 on my iPad for over a month and on my iPhone for about 2 weeks.  Here is a quick review of the biggest changes in iOS 11 for iPhone, because the scale of the changes on the iPad is too big for anything quick.

Control Center

The most dramatic change for the iPhone is the new Control Center.  You may not know its name, but  if you have an iPhone it is likely that you swiped up from the bottom of the screen to reveal a set of controls for turning on airplane mode, or most likely to use the flashlight.  It is the same area where you may have seen music controls when you were trying to find the flashlight and only after trial and error realized you could swipe right to find the page with the flashlight.

In iOS 11 the multi page Control Center is being replaced with a single page that is now much larger and contains lots of buttons of different shapes and sizes.  

It takes a while getting used to all the new controls and what they do, but after a week or so it becomes second nature.  Simply tapping on the controls will perform the expected action, but if you long press or 3D Touch on some of they will reveal a more detailed control.  For example, long pressing on the flashlight will give you three options for brightness.  

Messages

Not a lot has changed in the Messages app, but since it is used by a lot of people I wanted to point them out.  In iOS 10, the introduction of apps in Messages was a tent pole feature and they invaded the Messages app.  One downside to this was you had to do an extra tap to attach or take a pictures.  I know it doesn't seem like much, but it really annoyed me.  In iOS 11 apps in Messages are featured differently and as a result the camera is now only a single tap away.

Now instead of using an arrow button to reveal the camera, the text input field is a little smaller and the icons for the camera and app store are always displayed.  A new row of apps is always displayed to help encourage their use, but in a nice and subtle way.  My only gripe about this new interface is once you type a certain number of characters the input field grows and it always "startles" me as the display changes.

Live Photos

One of my favorite features on my iPhone 6S is Live Photos.  I almost always forget to record video of different events and it is so nice to be able to see a brief snippet of video that I "accidentally" captures.  I generally leave Live Photos turned on, because why not.  In iOS 11, Live Photos is getting a couple upgrades.  My favorite is the new Live Photo Effects: Loop, Bounce or Long Exposure.  I know these already exist in apps like Instagram and Snapchat, but it is nice to be able to apply these effects after they are taken.  

To access the Effects just slide the Live Photo up to reveal a live running example of what it will look like.  There is a slight delay as the effects are applied so be patient, but once they have loaded you can tap on the effect you like and the photo will be updated.  The first option is Loop, which tries to create a looping video that repeats over and over again.  The second option is Bounce, which will play the video forward for a certain amount of time and then reverse it for the same amount of time.  The last one is Long Exposure, which will basically overlay all the different frames together as if you left the shutter on your camera open for a long exposure photo, this works best for things like waterfalls or night shots.

Other Random Changes

Above are the changes I found to be most notable on the iPhone, but here are some more quick things you may notice.

• Taking a screenshot will now show a thumbnail in the bottom right corner of your screen for a few seconds.  You can tap on it to mark up the thumbnail and choose to share it, save to Photos or delete it.
• Screen recording is a control that is available in the new Control Center.  It is not in Control Center by default, but you can add it in Settings.  Once it is on you can record what you are doing on the screen and it will be saved to Photos.
• Swiping down from the top will show the lock screen.
• iCloud Family Sharing of data!!!  Now you can share your iCloud storage data with your entire family, so just spend $2 a month for 200GB and everybody will have plenty of space.
• The App Store is completely redesigned.

UPDATE: Forgot to include Do Not Disturb While Driving, which will automatically turn on whenever your iPhone detects you are driving.  Any messages you receive will auto reply with a message that you are driving and the ability for the sender to resend with the word URGENT to bypass it.

Installing Apache HTTP Server on Windows and Proxying to Tomcat

I have been working on Tomcat web applications and have always just accessed the pages directly on the port that Tomcat is serving.  Now I want to put an Apache HTTP server in front of Tomcat so I can access this page next to other pages that aren't served by Tomcat.  Here are the instructions.

Since the Apache site doesn't provide Windows binaries of the Apache HTTP server they must be downloaded from a third party site, I used Apache Haus HTTP Server Windows Binary Download page. After downloading the zip file I unzipped it and put it into a directory on my system.  The first thing you need to do is open up the conf/httpd.conf file to modify the configuration of the server.  The only required change is to update the SRVROOT definition, which basically is the pointer to where the unzipped folder is defined.  Make sure to use forward slashes instead of backslashes in the path.  Save the conf file and then run bin/httpd.exe.  If it started up correctly you can go to localhost:80 in your browser and an example page should load.

By default the server will look in the htdocs folder of the Apache Server installation for the pages in the site, but if you want to store them in a separate location for easy upgrade of the server then you can update the DocumentRoot and also the Directory elements of the httpd.conf file to point to any other folder on your system.

As for pointing to Tomcat you will need to do the following:
1. In the httpd.conf file make sure to include the load the proxy_module and the proxy_http_module.  They should be included in the file, but may be commented out.  Just uncomment them and they will load.
2. Next in the httpd.conf file add you need to add a ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse, which will map specific web applications to the URL of the Tomcat applications. These will look like: ProxyPass /theApp http://localhost:8080/theApp
ProxyPassReverse /theApp http://localhost:8080/theApp
3. Update the Tomcat server.xml file so the connector element includes a proxyPort attribute specifying that requests from port 80 are proxied.

Start both servers up and you should be able to access your Tomcat web applications on port 80 now.

Getting Video into iMovie on the iPad without iCloud

A few months ago I wrote a post, My Kingdom for a Local iPad Data Store, talking about how I wanted to be able to use iMovie on the iPad to edit my drone videos. The problem was that in order to get the videos into iMovie they had to be in iCloud Photo Library or in iCloud Drive, but I didn’t want them to be uploaded and then maybe downloaded from the cloud because they are large files. Over the weekend I had an epiphany and figured out how to work around this by doing some offline file shuffling.

1. Turn on Airplane mode to prevent any internet connection from occurring.
2. Connect a Lightning to USB adapter with an attached SD card reader to the iPad. 
3. Insert and SD card into the card reader or in my case a Micro SD card. 
4. The Photos app will launch and prompt you to do an import. 
5. Import any of the videos you want and then choose to keep or delete them on the card. 
6. Unplug the Lightning to USB adapter. 
7. In the Photos app go to the “Last Import” album. 
8. Tap the Select button to enable selection mode and select all of the videos. 
9. Tap on the “Share” button (the box with the arrow coming out of it). 
10. In iOS 11 tap on the “Save to Files” action and in iOS 10 select the “Upload to iCloud Drive” action. This will copy the file to iCloud Drive. 
11. In the Photos app tap the Select button again and select all the videos and this time delete them. 
12. Go to the “Recently Deleted” album and delete all the videos from Photos (just in case these would get uploaded to iCloud Photo Library).
13. Now open up iMovie. 
14. Create a new movie and import all of your videos from iCloud Drive. 
15. Click Done to go to the Summary screen just to make sure everything is “Saved”.
16. If you are using iOS 11 open up the Files app and if you are using iOS 10 open up iCloud Drive. 
17. Delete all of the videos from iCloud Drive. 
18. Go to the Recently Deleted view and also delete them from there. 
19. Finally open the Settings app. 
20. Go into the settings for the current user, which should be the top option. 
21. In the user menu select iCloud. 
22. In the iCloud menu you can choose which apps will save their data to iCloud. 
23. Turn this off for the iMovie app. 
24. Now turn off Airplane mode and you are ready to work on your movie. 

The iCloud Drive/Files storage part seems a bit excessive, but was necessary because any videos imported to iMovie from the iCloud Photo Library stop working if you delete them.  Importing from iCloud Drive/Files on the other hand puts a copy in the iMovie app's local storage.

Remembering My Dad

Last week we had a private funeral service for my father and here is the eulogy I read:

Bill, my dad, was many things to many people.  He was a storyteller, lots of fun to be around, hard working, resilient, happy, kind and the list goes on and on.

One thing we all were familiar with was his ability to tell a story.  Some of the stories were adventurous like the time he was riding a bicycle built for two through the center of town and got pulled over by the police or the time he fired a cannon off in front of the police station and freaked all the officers out inside.  

Another type of story he loved to tell was the accomplishment type story like driving up and down Mt. Washington multiple times, or driving to Keegan, ME just to see what was there or racing a car with his drone and winning or how he had the fastest stock motorcycle in the world and he got it up to some ridiculously unsafe speed or having driven to every state in the continental US.  

The other type of story we seemed to hear more than any other involved the injustices he suffered, like being nailed to the roof by his brothers or how my mom had a new car every year they were married.  He had a lot less of those type of stories in recent years, because he was happy.  On the rare occasion he did have a new one it always made me laugh when Anne would call him out and set the story straight.  

Every once in a while you could get a life lesson from a story, well besides don’t drive 165 MPH on a motorcycle, one that changed me for the better was from a trip we took to Washington DC when I was a kid.  We were in line at this fancy hotel and the woman in front of us was complaining about something to the receptionist and my dad patiently waited his turn in line.  We finally got to the front of the line and my dad made a funny comment about the complainer to the receptionist.  She thanked him for his patience and upgraded us to an amazing room overlooking the city.  Sometimes being patient and funny pays off.  

The stories were almost always exaggerated in some way, but that is what made him a great story teller.  I am thankful to have picked up this skill from him and look forward to passing on these stories and many more.