565: The 2020 Holiday Gift Guide

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BRB gotta put my credit card in the freezer before I listen to this episode.

LOL as if it’s not saved in 1Password…

Update:

These are the “Rollerblade Wheels for Your Office Chair” that I ordered back in March, and later recommended on David’s website and he has mentioned several times how much he likes them:

Office Chair Caster Wheels (Set of 5) - Heavy Duty & Safe for All Floors Including Hardwood

That being said, I didn’t do any particular research on the brand or anything (and I’m not 100% sure that David got the exact same version that I did). Regardless, Amazon has a ton of results for “rollerblade wheels office chair”. I definitely like these much better than using a floor mat.

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Of all the podcasts I listen to, I think this one has cost me the most money. Haha.

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I just got a new chair and the wheels are pretty much crap. I looked at the roller-blade wheels but in the FAQ it said they raise the chair 1-1.5 inches. My chair is alswys all the way down and I couldn’t deal with that much lift. What now?

On this episode @MacSparky mentioned a camera kit for the phone. I would really like to get my wife a setup like this because she takes practically all the pictures in our family (in fact the only pictures I take are of her). But the tripod David mentioned, the Joby Micro Tripod, is no longer sold. Can anyone recommend a good second choice? Must be “small enough to fit in my pocket,” as David said.

Last time I got a Mac mini M1, now Better Touch Tool… But not finished the episode yet. :smiley:

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I’m a little unclear about the Glif from Studio Neat. Don’t the tripods already come with a grip for smartphones and such?

Most tripods expect to be screwed into the base of a camera.

The Glif has the part for the tripod to screw into on the bottom, and then the top part will securely hold the phone itself.

I believe there are some smartphone-specific tripods out there which may have grips for smartphones, but the Glif is the “Turn Any Tripod Into a Smartphone-Compatible Tripod” solution.

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@jec0047 - If you go to the link in the show notes, it is still currently in stock @ B&H:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1321820-REG/joby_jb01492_griptight_one_micro_stand.html?sts=pi&pim=Y

Once stock sells out, there may not be any more, but it is still available at the moment.

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The Joby GripOne is in stock on Amazon UK in black and silver:

On Amazon UK

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Same goes for the US Amazon site. I got the GripTight One for my wife. They have options for the regular GripTight stand through this same link.

Re. Round Seven & Gift Guide Timing
I bought a 1TB Samsung T7 Touch and found the touch sensor support to be fairly fruitful. The company’s guidance for macOS/iOS/iPadOS users is to set up the touch sensor and passcode on a mac, windows, or android advice using their software. After this is complete we can connect the drive to any device like normal, but it will only be mountable after the drive recognizes your fingerprint. To unlock the drive with its passcode you will need the drive’s software.
I bought the drive with the intent to use Time Machine on my MacBookPro ('17) and my family’s iMac, as well as for onboard storage. We don’t use too much data so 1TB is a-okay for my purposes. My plan is to use quota’d volumes for each Time Machine, ensuring that the drive always has space for projects. (My prior backup solution was cloud storage plus a thumb drive, so this actually is an upgrade!)
I have run into some issues, however. After I set up time machine the drive itself was formatted as APFS encrypted and read–only, not what I was looking for. Apple Support is currently working with engineers to figure out what happened. We’ll most likely reformat the drive and target TM to the individual volumes, ensuring that if they are set to read–only it will only affect the volumes, not the entire drive. I learned through this process that additional volumes can be added to a drive that is set to read–only, which I believe to be a weird permissions structure. The reason the issue was elevated to the engineers is that the Get-Info area does not show the padlock on the drive to revise permissions, and we determined that the onboard security was not the culprit. I intend to switch from TM back to Arq when Arq 7 is released early next year.

Also, I noticed that several of the picks this year were heavily discounted over Black Friday Month℠. Should the Holiday Gift Guides be released in mid-November to allow listeners time to bargain hunt?

I knew I should have passed on this episode. Streamdeck on the way. Amazon quoting past xmas so ordered it direct and on its way.

I want to see if I can program it to work with Linux as well and that would be grand.

Probably should have bought the high speed wheels to push my ass away from the keyboard before buying anything else.

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I heard sparks mention these on an episode of mpu a few months ago. I bought three sets off Amazon for the wife, my son, and me. They are truly amazing!

I can now safely admit this…

…for a brief while, I had two 32-button Stream Decks.

The reason was that I was switching between my Mac mini and my MacBook Pro so often I kept finding myself wishing that I had the Stream Deck on the other one.

So, once Amazon hit the point where anything you ordered could be returned before Feb 1st, I bought a second one. My thought process was this:

  1. If there’s a sale (Black Friday, Christmas, etc) I will order one at the sale price and return this one.

  2. I will have plenty of time to see if I really use two.

  3. Returns are easy!

To be honest, I fully expected that there would not be a sale and I would end up keeping it anyway.

However then something really unexpected happened: the M1 Macs came out, and now that I have one, I’m not going to be switching back and forth between my M1 MacBook Air and my Mac mini. I’m all-in on the MacBook Air.

So today I sent the 16" MacBook Pro to Apple’s Trade-In place and I sent my 2nd Stream Deck back to Amazon.

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I bought these (or something similar) and they are 10x better than the crappy plastic wheels that came stock w/my chair. And much quieter also.

I would still recommend that you try the wheels. I was concerned about this as well (as I keep my chair at the bottom level) but it’s been unnoticeable for me. The wheels are significantly better too. :+1:t2:

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I added them to my Aeron (20 years old — worth every penny!) chair and they’re fantastic. Especially good since I have wood floors and hate chair mats. They all seem to be very similar. The ones I’m using are just $20 though, vs. the $35 for the ones linked previously.

# AXL 2.8 inch Rollerblade Office Chair Caster Wheels Replacement, Heavy Duty Casters, Safe for All Floors Including Hardwood, Set of 5 (Black/Clear)

If I was going to WFH permanently that would definitely be my next purchase, but odds are good that I’ll be going back and forth between home & the office in 2021 and I’d hate to have a great chair in only one of those two locations!

You would think that someone would make an office chair with skater’s wheels?

I need to look into fitting luggage with these wheels as the swivel ones on most luggage are in the same crappy category.

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