Monthly Archives: December 2013

Google Chromecast – a quick review

I’ve been wanting to check out Google’s Chromecast since it came out. Thanksgiving night, I noticed that Amazon was selling it for $30 with a $6 Google Play credit making the effective price $24. The deal was too good to pass up. I went for it. I’ll admit that it was an impulse purchase, but I’ve impulse bought worse. Much worse, and for a lot more money.

Thanks to the magic of Amazon Prime, the Chromecast arrived in Saturday’s mail. Don’t ask me how Amazon does it. Jeff Bezos must be practicing some kind of voodoo magic over there. As an aside, an Amazon Prime membership is the cheapest $80/year you’ll spend. Free two-day shipping, access to free streaming of hundreds of movies and TV shows, the Kindle lending library. It doesn’t get any better. Anyway, i digress – back to Chromecast.

The amount of time it took to go from out of the box to operational was ridiculous, in a good way. In fact, I think I spent more time figuring out which port to plug it into in my receiver and where to plug it in than I did setting it up. Here’s how easy it is:

Plug it into an HDMI port on your TV or receiver.
Plug the AC adapter in.
Load the Chromecast app on your phone or tablet.
Start the app, it asks you to verify that the code on the TV matches the code on your phone/tablet.
Hit OK in the app, the Chromecast reboots.
Through the app, enter your Wi-fi password
Done. Chromecast is operational.

It is very easy to stream content through Chromecast. Simply load up any Chromecast enabled app, look for the Chromecast symbol (see picture right), and press it. You’ll be asked to connect to the name you gave the Chromecast app, and then you’re in business. Anything you select through the app will be played on the TV.

Trust me, this is simple to setup and easy to use.

Likes

For all the grief Google takes for being a consumer unfriendly company focused on technology, the Chromecast is incredibly easy to setup. Google nailed it here and knocked it out of the park.
Chromecast worked flawlessly with all of the apps I’ve tried so far: YouTube, Google Music, Netflix, HBO Go. It’s a great way to share content with the family on the big screen.
It’s awesome that you can search for additional content in the app while Chromecast is streaming content
Another great feature is allowing multiple people to connect to the Chromecast at one time. No more, “hey, can you load this next?” Everyone in the room can search for content to push to the TV. It’s great if you’re into YouTube viewing parties.
The Google Cast extension for the Chrome browser is the bomb. Once you install the extension, you can mirror whatever you are doing in that Chrome browser tab to your TV, and I mean anything. I was able to push content from Vimeo, Hulu and ESPN without much trouble. It would be much nicer (and smoother) with an app, but the browser mirroring bridges the gap while I wait for the official Chromecast apps.
It really improved the value of my Nexus 7 tablet, which has mostly sat in a drawer since last Christmas. It’s now an awesome remote for the Chromecast.

Requests (aka Dislikes)

More apps, and I mean a lot more apps. The situation is improving slowly, as Google announced a number of new apps this past week, but a few simple additions like access to Amazon Prime Instant Video would up the value of the device tremendously.
A dead simple way to stream content from your home network. This is a major hole.
Display photos from your own network in the background on startup, or while playing music. Being able to create instant slideshows would be an added bonus.

The verdict

Chromecast is effectively a poor man’s Apple TV or Roku box. If you already have one of those, you don’t need it. In fact, given the relatively few apps that are available, you’ll probably find that it’s a step back, especially from Apple TV. The biggest drawback is the difficulty streaming content (music, video and photos) from your home network.

On the other hand, if you don’t have a streaming media box connected to your TV, Chromecast is the best bang for your buck. I’d highly recommend it and don’t regret making the impulse buy. I also believe that if Google keeps giving it a little love, like adding more apps and content streaming from your home network, then Chromecast has the ability to be a killer device, especially at a price point of under $40.

Book review: Dust

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After finishing Shift, I had to wait almost seven months for Hugh Howey to finish the conclusion to his Silo series, Dust. It was a long seven months, but it was worth the wait. Dust is just as good as Wool and Shift, and Howey brings the Silo story to an end that fills in the holes and questions that were raised in the first two books. It should go without saying that if you read the first two books, you’ll want to pick up Dust.

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My first mini-ITX build

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mini-ITX form factor DIY PC I’ve been extremely pleased with my last PC build. It’s been working so good that I figured it was time to replace the oldest machine in my house – a Dell Dimension that I bought in 2002. The old machine still works great given what it’s used for – primarily email, web browsing, and light document editing. I’ve just gotten tired of waiting the five minutes it takes from power on to ready-to-use. In addition, I figure at 11 years old, the machine is probably an accident waiting to happen given that I’m still on the original hard drive.

About the only thing I would have done differently with my latest build was go smaller. Therefore, I chose to go with a mini-ITX form factor for my latest build. Since I was planning on using the integrated graphics on the CPU, there really wasn’t any reason to go with a bigger case.

As usual, picking the components is the hardest part of the project. Here’s the list of components I ended up buying, along with their price (excluding tax and shipping):

Processor	Intel Core i3-4330	$146.19
Motherboard	ASRock H81M-ITX	$69.99
RAM	Kingston Hyper X Blu 8GB (2 x 4GB)	$64.99
SSD	Intel 530 Series 240GB	$149.99
Optical Drive	ASUS DVD-Writer DRW-24F1ST	$15.99
Case	In-Win 200-Watt Mini-ITX case (incl. power supply)	$44.99
Monitor	ASUS VS248H-P 24-inch Full-HD LED Monitor	$119.99
Operating System	Windows 7 Home Premium	$79.99
	Total Component Cost	$692.12

PC components for mini-ITX PC build

I got quite a few killer components all for under $700, including the SSD (which I won’t build another machine without). I’ve had the machine running for about a week, and it works just as well as the rig I built back in March. Power on to operational only takes about 15 seconds, and I haven’t noticed any limitation using the onboard graphics given what it is being used for.

Here are some more notes from the build:

I’m re-using the keyboard and mouse from the current machine, so I didn’t include them in the cost of the components.
I could have saved money by reusing the monitor, but $120 was too good a deal to upgrade from an old school 19-inch LCD monitor to a 24-inch widescreen LED monitor.
I could have also saved by using an Ivy Bridge Intel processor, but since I figure this PC could be in operation for 7-10 years, I wanted to use the latest Haswell architecture.
Since I don’t anticipate doing much media viewing or editing on the machine, I chose to go with 8 GB RAM and skipped the Blu-ray drive. I can always upgrade later if necessary.
I stayed with Windows 7 for this build. I wanted to keep the interface more familiar to the less technically inclined in my house. Plus, I’ve heard that Windows 8 works better on touch screens. Otherwise, it doesn’t offer an improvement over Windows 7. I also decided to go with Home Premium since I didn’t the need the extra features in Professional.
This is the first build using an ASRock motherboard, and I was pleasantly surprised with the ease of use and quality. I’ll definitely consider them for my next PC build. About the only drawback on the motherboard, and this is not a knock against ASRock, is that there are only two SATA connections on the board. I had to use one for the DVD drive and one for the SSD, so I couldn’t have included an HDD, even if I wanted.
I was a little hesitant with the In-Win case given the price, but so far it’s been great. The case is high quality, and no complaints with the power supply (yet). I also like the fact that a chassis fan was included, and there is a mesh opening directly over the CPU to help with the cooling of both the CPU and motherboard. I’ve also found the sound level of the fans to be very reasonable. I wouldn’t say it’s whisper quiet, but it’s not annoying either.

Comparing mini-ITX and a mid-Tower ATX I’ve been spending most of the last week transitioning the key files and programs from the old machine, which has served the family quite well over the years. It’ll be sad to see the old beast go, but it was time. I have a feeling that within a couple of weeks, none of us will realize its gone. In fact, I bet we’ll be wondering why we didn’t upgrade to a new machine sooner!

Book review: The Startup Playbook

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It had been a while since I last read a business book (The Wide Lens by Ron Adner). I was looking to find a little inspiration to get me through to the end of the year, so I decided to pick up The Startup Playbook by David Kidder. To be fair, I wouldn’t consider The Startup Playbook a book. It’s a collection of interviews that Kidder has with successful entrepreneurs in which he lets them offer up their best advice for startups. At the end, Kidder provides “The Best Advice”. It’s a collection of excerpts from interviews in the book divided into “The Best Advice” categories such as Boards, Business Operations, Culture, Leadership, Marketing, Raising Capital, Sales and more.

Kidder interviews over 40 people for the book. Some of the notables included are Steve Blank, Matt Blumberg, Jeff Bussgang, Steve Case, Chris Dixon, Reid Hoffman, Ben Horowitz, Tony Hseih, and Elon Musk. Overall, I found the quality of the interviews and advice varied widely. Some were hard to get through, while others left me wanting more. Of the 40+ interviews, a couple that stood out to me were the interviews with Elon Musk and Chip Conley.

Musk’s story stood out due to what drives him. As he puts it in his interview:

I’ve always treid to be involved in things that will impact the future of humanity and have a good effect on the world. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about whether my ideas were the best way to make money.

I also found he had one of the best pieces of advice in the book:

I’m always surprised when people think they can make a great company without having a great product. The most important thing an entrepreneur can do is focus on making a great product or service.

I found the interview with Musk to be inspiring and only wish that it could have gone a few more pages. It also gave me a whole new respect for ventures he is involved in and his desire to truly make a difference in the world.

The reason I enjoyed Conley’s interview can be summarized in one word – passion. It’s obvious that Conley’s passion is to “create joy”, as he puts it. He has taken an idea that the industry downplayed, the boutique hotel business, and transformed it with Joie de Vivre Hospitality. As with Musk’s interview, I found it inspirational as it spoke to the passion that I recognize one has to have to build a successful business.

The other thing that I got out of The Startup Playbook were pointers to further reading and resources. A few new books made it to my ever expanding Amazon Wish List which I hope I will be able to get to at some point in 2014.

I like reading stories and lessons learned from other entrepreneurs, particularly if it can help me to learn and understand what it takes to succeed or how to avoid making the same mistakes others have made. However, as I mentioned earlier, I found The Startup Playbook to be of mixed quality and wouldn’t put it into my must read category of books.

If you’re interested like I am in reading entrepreneur stories and about lessons learned, I recommend that you pick up Founders At Work by Jessica Livingston first, and then The Startup Playbook. The overall quality of Founders At Work is better, and the interviews are more focused on the entrepreneurs and their stories. I also liked that Livingston focused on both successful and unsuccessful ventures as well as those of varying sizes.

Grandma’s apple pie recipe

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One of my favorite memories growing up was going to my Grandma’s house after she baked her homemade apple pie. I can still remember the smell in her kitchen, and there was nothing like the taste of warm apple pie fresh out of the oven.

My mother, who is a great cook in her own right, took over my Grandma’s apple pie recipe. She can, and still does, make a pretty mean apple pie herself. I’d be hard pressed to choose which one I like better – Mom’s or Grandma’s.

In any case, I decided a few years ago that it was time for me to start learning how to make Grandma’s apple pie myself. On one of my mom’s trips out to Southern California, she brought the recipe and assisted me on my first try. It was good, but not like what I remembered.

Since then, I’ve made a few pies, but the one I recently baked over Thanksgiving came out best. It’s the closest I’ve come to matching my mom and grandma’s work. I still need more practice, but I figured I’d share my variation of the recipe along with a few secrets I’ve learned so far.