A digital travel diary. · WP v1.08 · Updated
The "Play" version of the Babolat Pure Drive tennis racket contains sensors to track tennis swings and record forehand, backhand, and serve statistics. I was always interested in the racquet, but it was prohibitively expensive - at $349. However, I saw a seller on eBay for $200 (for a new 2015 version) and decided to take the plunge.. . . . To get the Babolat…
Read More: Review: Babolat Pure Drive Play tennis racquet
After trying many different earbuds, I recently purchased the Jlab Epic 2 Bluetooth Earbuds (and from the excellent review on Wirecutter). . . . Wirecutter claimed that these were the best headphones for working out, and I wanted to replace my Klipsch S4i wired earbuds with a Bluetooth headset using an Apple iPhone 7 or an Apple Series 3 watch. . . . Since this…
Read More: Review: Jlab Epic 2 Bluetooth Earbuds
I decided to purchase the Jabra Move wireless Bluetooth headphones on Amazon for my work (to block coworkers' noise and to use them on walks during lunchtime).. . Although I initially liked them, I realized they were too bulky to be painful to wear for over 30 minutes. Here is my overall review.. . . . . Positives. Relatively inexpensive ($50). Sound exceptional with excellent…
Read More: Review: Jabra Move Wireless Stereo Headset
Wanting to retire my iPod Nano player with Klipsch S4i earbuds, I decided to use my iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 3 with wireless, Bluetooth earbuds.. . I looked forward to avoiding long cord dangles and fully wireless operation during my workout sessions at Forma Gym and mountain biking rides.. . Researching online, I saw that the AUKEY Latitude wireless headphones were highly recommended…
Read More: Review: AUKEY Latitude Wireless Headphones
After being disappointed with the Zepp 2 tennis sensor, I continued searching for one that could provide meaningful/actionable tennis statistics to improve my tennis game.. . . . I decided to try out the Babolat Pop tennis sensor since it was popular and inexpensive. With Babolat Pop, one wears a wristband that contains a small packet where the small sensor resides. The sensor records the…
Read More: Review: Babolat Pop Tennis Sensor
I was always curious about tennis sensors and was set on purchasing the Babolat Pure Aero Play tennis racket with built-in sensor technology. Since it was costly - $350 - I decided to try a lower-priced option - the newly released Zepp 2 Tennis Sensor.. . . . I attached the Zepp 2 to my 2017 Wilson Burn 100S tennis racket using the "insert mount."…
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Having been an active user of Home Theater Personal Computers for many years (running Windows 7/8.1), I was looking for a front-end device that could replace the cumbersome keyboard and mouse. I prefer to have all my media on a separate NAS, like the Synology DS1815+, instead of a big, noisy PC.. . . . . My first significant replacement came with my adoption of…
Read More: Review: nVidia Shield TV
I have been a big fan of Roku3 and Home Theater PCs for a long time. Although it does not support many video formats, it works well with my Plex server on a Synology DS1815+ NAS. Plex can transcode any current movie/TV format to whatever format Roku (or another front-end supports. . . . . I was excited that Amazon released a Fire TV version…
Read More: Review: Amazon Fire TV and the battery compartment from hell
Since I had some free time, I enrolled in and tried out some classes, first on Coursera and then on EdX. . . With Coursera, I took An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python at Rice University, Computational Investing, Part I at Georgia Tech (my alma mater), Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part 1 at Stanford, and Computer Architecture at Princeton.. . I finished the Rice…
Read More: Review: Online Classes with Coursera and EdXAfter seeing graphics performance problems with my Office PC, I upgraded its graphics card from the Zotac GTX 570 Amp! to the MSI GTX 970 Gaming. In preparation, I moved the LSI MegaRaid SAS 9260-8i raid card from the PCIe 2.0 x16 slot to another slot. Doing so, however, broke something on my Asus P8Z68-V Pro motherboard, and my PCIe 2.0 x16 slot no longer…
Read More: Haswell, We Have a Problem
On March 1, Best Buy had a great deal on Apple iPhones (offering $150 for a trade-in on a working iPhone 4S). I traded my iPhone 4S for two 16GB iPhone 5S models.. . My Logitech kitchen speaker (model S715i with a 30-pin connector) did not support the new Lightning connector or Bluetooth, so I had to replace it.. . . . . I was…
Read More: Review: Bluetooth Speakers
Today, we purchased an Apple iMac 27 (2013+) to replace our Dell XPS One 2710 (which had problems with WiFi connectivity).. . . . . In comparison to Dell, Apple's iMac has some interesting differences:. . Advantages of iMac 27. iMac is much slimmer and much better looking. iMac is much quieter, and I never heard the fan going off (Dell's fan is pretty loud)…
Read More: Review: Apple iMac 27
About a month ago, I purchased a refurbished Dell XPS One 2710 all-in-one desktop Windows 8 PC from Costco.com (online) - to replace my 7-year-old Apple iMac.. . . . . The Dell desktop PC arrived quickly and booted just fine. I really disliked Windows 8 and decided to install Windows 7. I ordered a Crucial M4 mSATA SSD (256GB Flash) and installed it inside…
Read More: Review: Dell XPS One 2710
With thousands of photos stored on my server, I needed more speed in Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop, and Sony Vegas.. . Previously, I ran software RAID-5 with 6 Hitachi 4TB hard disks, yielding 18TB of usable capacity. Disk performance was quite decent for reads - 380-500 MB/sec, but relatively poor for writes (as most software raid servers are) at 70 MB/sec using ATTO benchmarks. This…
Read More: Review: LSI MegaRAID