Tatsuhiko Miyagawa's blog @bulknews - Tumblr Blog

Google Pixel Review

This is my 5th Android phone, after using Samsung Galaxy S (Vibrant), Nexus 4, Nexus 5 and Nexus 5X. I usually post some reviews just after a few days of use on my blog (linked above), but this time it took me a week to write this one.

The reason is pretty simple - there’s not really a lot of things to write about this device. Except that: it is almost perfect. So the tl;dr of the post is: I love this phone, and recommend it to every Android user, and potentially an iPhone user who is thinking about switching.

XL or non-XL

The phone costs $650 as the base, non-XL model to begin with, and I upgraded to the 128GB storage model - totally recommended because it fills quickly if you shoot videos in 4K - and all the taxes included it was over $800. XL adds another $120 on top, so that’s a big price hike. Unlike iPhone 7 vs 7 Plus, there’s no functionalities difference between Pixel and Pixel XL, except that:

XL has a bigger physical display, obviously

XL has more pixels, Full HD vs Quad HD

As a result, XL allows you to put more icons on the home screen

XL has a ~20% bigger battery

If you have bigger hands and would like to use the screen estate as much, XL would be a good choice for you. Otherwise, choosing non-XL doesn’t tax you or let you make compromises for losing a better camera or anything.

The box

The box came with a lot more tools than you’d ever need. A really powerful charger that is capable of USB-C Power Delivery to quickly charge the phone. USB-A to C OTG adapter so that you can transfer data from your previous Android devices or even from an iPhone. Apparently, importing the data from an iPhone works by emulating a PC storage in Pixel and getting your iPhone data backed up to a PC. I haven’t tried this, but that’s a really cool technique.

And it comes with USB-C to USB-C cable for charging, and USB-A to USB-C cable for data transfer, or some other uses. The cables look solid. It did not come with a pair of headphones, but who needs it anyway.

The phone

The price matches with the rest of the high end phones like Galaxy S Edge or iPhone 7, and I think it does what you’d expect this price range phones do. It is very snappy with the Snapdragon 821 processor, and I’ve not noticed any lags that I constantly experienced with the Nexus 5X.

I was a bit skeptical about the battery life of the phone, and the first few days were a bit disappointing, since I was mostly outside and the phone battery died down to 20% around the time I came home. But since then it has become much better, and when I work from the office when it is mostly in Wi-Fi, the battery is about 70% when I come home about 6pm. I’m sure the battery drain of the first few days was the artifact of me tweaking the phone all the time, and initializing lots of applications during the first run etc.

The back of the phone is a little bit slippery, but not as much as iPhone 7, thanks to its non-round shape of the edge. Also the glass surface around the fingerprint censor makes it more grippy than the rest. I chose the color “Quite Black” but interestingly it looks more like Space Gray of the iPhones. Not quite black.

The camera

The camera looks stunning photos. It is very subjective but I’d say it takes even better photos than iPhone 7 at times. Of course iPhone 7 Plus’s portrait mode is a killer and Pixel’s “Lens blur” is a pretty fake gimmick and there’s no contest here, though.

The thing I love about the camera is not just about the photo quality - it’s the performance. With Nexus 5X, you could take great photos, if you’re really patient, or your target can wait for your camera to turn up. Nexus 5X camera app even goes completely disconnected from the camera and showed dark screen, which cannot be fixed until the reboot. Its HDR+ takes a few seconds that block your next photo shoot opportunities.

None of that crap with the Pixel cameral. It boots up really quickly with the two clicks of the power button, and shooting takes very fast, and there’s no lag. Even HDR+ is done automatically in the background, and it does not block your next photo shooting. It’s impressive.

Software video stabilization works really great too. Here’s a video that I took while holding Pixel in one hand and walking in the farmer’s market. I took this video in full HD because the stock setting of the video shooting is 1080p, which I needed to change to 4K after realizing it.

For still photos, I immediately noticed that there were few lens flares when I shoot photos under the sunlight or even a room light directly facing at the camera. Maybe this is the consequence of removing the camera bump?

Google apparently recognized the issue and is preparing for a software update to remove the flare, which I’m not sure how well it works.

Summary

Pixel is a great phone that I recommend to everyone, as long as $700+ does not bother you. This is finally an Android/Google phone that is without all the garbages, and has no lag or any easily identifiable compromises, and has a great camera that takes impressive photos.

The new Macbook Pro

I’m writing this blog post on Macbook Pro Retina 13” Late 2013. This is a computer my previous employer bought for me in early 2014, and I bought it from them because I really liked it, and they didn’t have any plan to reuse the laptop.

My current employer has given me a 15” equivalent, but I decided to separate my personal laptop from home this time, since I don’t want to mess my work laptop with personal crap, and vice versa.

The way I use this, a little outdated but mostly functional laptop is in variety of ways:

Used on my desk, sitting on an mStand, paired with the Magic Trackpad 2 and ThinkPad USB keyboard. Writing code, tweeting, Slacking, browsing, typing, editing podcasts and editing photos.

Brought to the closet, powered from the wall charger, connected to a podcasting microphone and a preamp to its USB ports, then record the show on Logic Pro X while streaming to Mixlr.

Brought down to the downstairs when I want to see live stats for F-1, or type on it when other family member is asleep, because my work desk is at the bedroom.

Carried around to the coffee shop to work remote, or hack on some personal projects.

All of this just works with this Macbook Pro including all the external gears that I use with this laptop. The new Macbook Pro lineups, on the other hand, just did the following:

No ESC physical keys on the keyboard, although as a non-Vim user i do not mind much, but this is a removal of something I use every day still.

The new butterfly keyboard with much less travels. I tried their new Apple Magic keyboard with the butterfly mechanism for a week and I got my wrist hurt.

Well, I use an external keyboard when I’m into serious typing anyway, but:

Removals of two USB-A ports and SD card means I need a dongle whenever I podcast while charging, or when I import audio files from my Zoom gear or a DSLR camera.

So OK, is this an upgrade or downgrade? I cannot tell. This definitely requires me to buy a dongle or adapter or two, to make it actually functional.

It seems the way Apple wants me to do is that I would buy an iMac 21.5” 4K (27” is too big on my desk) since I mostly work from my desk, and it would do most of the heavy duty work that I need to do on the desktop, and then buy another Macbook 12” or Macbook Pro 13”, to do all the mobile work. Maybe it would work, but that’s 2 computers not one, and that’s always a pain to manage multiple computers.

This is not really good. I can’t tell what these new Macbook Pros are for. I definitely feel like I’m not their target “Pro” users, and I’m apparently not alone in this.

I could just switch to Linux or Windows 10 with Bash on it for casual development, maybe. But I’d definitely need Mac because, well, I just like Mac, and a lot of the software I use for podcasting only exists on Mac, especially the Logic X Pro. It’s such an irony that the reason I stick to the Mac is the software, not the hardware.

I’ll see if a new iMac comes around with the new processor early next year, and if buying two computers to replace one is really an upgrade. But for now, I’m going to skip this generation of the Macbook Pros.

Sling vs PS Vue

I've never been subscribed to the actual cable TV services like Comcast here in the US, but given the recent development of on-demand & live TV services with the modern devices, I thought I would give them a try.

I tried Sling and PlayStation Vue on Apple TV and Roku.

The channels I'd like to watch are for European Football (soccer) and Formula 1, which would basically make:

beIN sports (La Liga)

NBCSN, usa, CNBC (Premier League, Formula 1)

FOX Sports 2 (Bundesliga, UEFA CL)

ESPN (UEFA CL, EURO)

Sling

Sling has two tiers, Orange ($20) and Blue ($25) and a couple of add-on channels. I like this model better since I can mix and match what I want to watch. Initially I signed up with Orange to watch EURO finals, but switched to Blue so that NBC and Fox channels are available for soccer programs.

The Apple TV app is decent, although sometimes slow or buggy and keeps buffering. It's nice that you can watch on your Mac as well so that I can open it in the office to catch up some soccer while working.

Pros:

$25 + $5 (Spanish pack) to watch most of the channels I want except ESPN

The app is decent, available both on Apple TV and Roku

Cons:

No DVR features, catch-up only available for some channels (beIN)

No TV Everywhere auth

PlayStation Vue

PS Vue has 3 tiers, $40, $45 and $55 respectively. Apparently there's a Slim package that does not provide OTA local channels, but that's not the case in San Francisco.

$45 Core package has everything I want. DVR is nice but the UI on Roku is pretty confusing and is very difficult to navigate.

Support for TV Everywhere is really nice, so that you can log in to NBCSports and ESPN app on Apple TV using the PS Vue account.

Pros:

DVR for 28 days

Everywhere auth suport

Cons:

The package costs $45

Roku app is pretty difficult to use

The website is not functional with Chrome

For now I'd probably stick with Sling because the UI is much nicer and pricing is more decent, and sports is something you would enjoy most when watching live. But the TV everywhere auth would be really great once Fox sports also launches on Apple TV app. NBC's Apple TV app is very well made and an ability to search and watch sports games on demand is pretty nice.

Podcasting Setup 2016

This is an annual post of describing my podcasting setup for Rebuild. See the posts in 2015 and 2014 to see the progress.

What's New

tl;dr if you followed my 2015 setup - what's changed since then:

Beta 87A condenser microphone

Zoom H5

Acon Digital restoration

Fastly to serve audio files

Hardware

I have two different setup for recording online (Skype) or offline.

My Microphone

For Skype recording, the following setup is used and the recording is done in the closet, where clothes and package boxes help to reduce the room echo.

Shure Beta 87A ($250)

Mackie Onyx Blackjack ($150)

DS7200B microphone stand ($13)

Ultimate Ears UE200 noise isolating earphones ($18)

I've been using Beta 57A dynamic microphone with Cloudlifter CL-1 for a long time, but recently have switched to BETA 87A upon Marco Arment's podcasting mic guide, because I thought my voice with 57A was a bit muffled and the mid was too high with less clarity on the high. 87A is a super cardioid condenser mic, which doesn't pick up a lot of ambient noise for a condenser.

Guests

It's difficult to ask guests to spend as much money as I do, and to be honest even if they do it's a bit hard to support the setup like mine, and all-in-one USB mics are much easier to use.

I recommend the guests to buy, or rather I buy and ship from Amazon, the following USB microphones:

Audio Technica ATR2100 ($50)

サンワサプライ USBヘッドセット (3400Y)

Headsets make it easier to keep the distance between the microphone and mouth reasonable. The downsides are that it's sensitive to the plosives. I often need to ask them to move the microphone above their mouth, almost near their noses.

Also microphone and headphone are often too close to each other and the mic is very sensitive to pick up the other side of the conversations leaking out from the headphones. There's no good way to prevent this other than asking them to minimize the volume.

Offline

For offline recording, I use the following kit to record offline conversations and stream while recording it.

ZOOM H5 ($260) + EXH-6

BETA 57A x2

BEHRINGER UCA202

A photo posted by Tatsuhiko Miyagawa (@miyagawa_) on Dec 31, 2015 at 6:32pm PST

I used to use a portable desktop mic stand such as this one but recently ask guests simply to hold a microphone near their mouth. This has a benefit of making it easier for them to keep it near mouth as they move their head around, but has a risk of them actually turning their head away from the mic when they don't pay attention.

That's why it is very important to let everyone monitor their own voice, so that they'll notice it when they do not speak directly to the mics.

Zoom H5 has two line outputs, one for monitoring and one for line-out. I connect my own headphone to the monitoring port, and use Behringer UCA 202 for the line-out port. UCA 202 has its own monitoring port which you can use to connect other headphones. I have a headphone splitter in case I have multiple guests.

H5 has many options when it comes to recording the audio (USB I/F, or record directly to SD) but here's what I come up with:

Power the device with USB battery (like Anker)

Record to SD directly

UCA 202 to Mac for Skype input

This way I can record individual tracks in WAV in a SD card, then use the combined track as a Skype input for streaming.

For more details, read an article I wrote back in May, not much has been changed since then.

Recording

Audacity

Skype Call Recorder

Audacity is pretty lightweight and lets me see the input level in a wave form, which you cannot do with QuickTime player. Audacity has its own input device settings, separate from the system settings, so be sure to select the right input device when recording audio.

Streaming

Streaming is an important part of my show, since it adds realtime feedback while recording the show, and gives the show more "live" feeling, so that the editing could be minimal.

I have a Mac mini box to stream conversations via Skype. This is done by making a bot running on Mac, piping the Skype output to Soundflower.

For streaming audio piped from Skype, I use Nicecast on Mac and Icecast 2 on the server (linode box in Tokyo).

Editing

Logic Pro X

Acon Digital Restoration Suite

Acon Digital DeVerberate

Auphonic

LAME MP3 Encoder

Logic Pro X's "Strip Silence" is an absolutely necessary feature when editing podcasts. I use the setting "4%, 1 sec, 200ms, 200ms" to find silences to strip.

For most recordings, the only effects I use are Acon Digital Denoise and compressor. For recordings done in a non-ideal room environment, I need to apply Acon Deverberate to reduce the room echo.

Auphonic does a phenomenal job in leveling the final audio, since most of the time, double-ender recordings have loud part and silent part. Compressor could reduce the dynamic range, but leveler is better suited if you have a part that is loud and then quiet elsewhere.

I purchased standalone license for both Auphonic and Auphonic Multitrack, the latter of which could be used for offline recordings to crossgate to remove room echo.

Publishing

Jekyll + Linode

Heroku for dynamic content (supporter)

Fastly for MP3

I switched from SoundCloud to Fastly for faster downloads and easier uploads and instant purging when necessary (Disclaimer: I work for Fastly).

Soundcloud's podcasting package is fantastic if you have a mid to large audience for podcast audio since they provide unlimited streaming for a fixed monthly pricing. They also have a nice stats dedicated to the mp3 audio downloads. With Fastly, I use the log streaming feature to get the raw log files, then use my own perl scripts to build up similar stats from there.

Misc.

I have some other websites and software to build my podcasting system:

Google Calendar and Sunrise to schedule recordings

Gumroad to sell transcripts and subscriptions

OneSignal and Pushbullet for push notifications

GitHub to prepare show notes

Harvest and Square for invoicing

Wufoo for sponsorship inquiry forms

Summary

In 2015, the change was minimal but I improved the offline recording a lot by eliminating the heavy Onyx Blackjack and introducing H5. I recorded about 50 episodes a year with this setup, and there was almost no recording that I didn't like in terms of audio quality.

Further Reading

How I podcast: Editing - Six Colors

How Jason Snell edits podcasts – Marco.org

Equipment Guide — The Podcast Method

Rebuild: Chrome Notifications

Rebuild はいくつかの通知プラットフォーム (Pushbullet, Yo) を利用していますが、新たに Chrome Web Push Notifications に対応しました。HTTPS で rebuild.fm にアクセスすると、通知を受け取るダイアログが出ると思います。

個別のプラットフォームやアプリに依存しないので、専用アプリをインストールすることなく、Mac, Windows, Linux の Chrome や、最新の Android Chrome でプッシュ通知を受け取ることができます。ライブ配信の開始時や、新しいエピソードが配信された際に通知を送っています。

Web Push は ServiceWorker など、ウェブ標準の技術を使っていますが、Push API については Chrome のみ対応ですね。バックエンドには OneSignal というサービスを使いました。

Nexus 5X review

I've been using Nexus 5X for a month now. This is my belated personal review on this device.

The Hardware

I was expecting that the hardware is almost identical to Nexus 5. It's not really the case. The hardware is quite big and is actually something between Nexus 5 and iPhone 6 Plus. It is very comfortable to use on my hand though.

The first thing that I noticed in the first few days was that the vibration motor makes some annoying beep when making a vibration. This is pretty noticeable and annoys when you hear it in the morning or night in the bed side. I turned on the DND mode for most of the time when I'm supposed to be in bed, like 1am to 8am.

It makes me realize how great iPhone 6s Taptic Engine is for light notifications, since it doesn't make a buzz when you put them on the table but you'll notice that in your hands or in your pocket.

Ambient Display and Nexus Imprint

Ambient Display is a great feature that makes a dimmed screen lighten up whenever there's a notification coming in, or when you pick up a phone from a table or pocket. It is very useful to just see what time it is or what notifications you have. They are the kind of things you can see on your wrist if you use smart watches like Pebble though. Ambient Display, combined with the Nexus Imprint, makes it almost unnecessary to unlock your phone with the power button. You pick up your phone and see the ambient screen show up, and put your index finger in the back to unlock. This is a nice pattern.

The only problem though is that the Ambient Display is kind of a hit and miss - it works most of the times, but sometimes doesn't.

The imprint fingerprint scanner is fast, but not so crazy fast as iPhone 6s Touch ID. I was a bit worried about it being in the back of the phone, but I actually got used to it pretty quickly.

Camera

The camera takes great shots. It is very comparable to iPhone 6s camera, and iPhone takes bright photos most of the time, whereas Nexus takes a bit darker, but often richer and more natural colors. I took some shots in a bar with very dark light, and the produced photos were phenomenal.

See more photos at My Flickr Album.

The camera software is pretty bad though. It is not very responsive, and takes a while to boot when I activate the camera by double tapping the power button. I tried some other third party cameras like Z Camera or VSCO: they either do not save photos to Gallery by default (which makes backing up with Dropbox and Google Photos complicated), takes worse photos, or has full of ads. Google recognizes this issue and seems to be working on a software update, so I can hope.

Battery Life

Android OS has improved its performance and battery life over the last few iteration of its operating system. Marshmallow on Nexus 5X is snappy, but I'm sad to say that it still has lags. I don't know if it has not enough RAM, or Snapdragon 808 CPU is not as snappy, but i can definitely tell from time to time the OS just freezes the UI and lags for a few seconds when I try to open an app. Not always, but when it happens it drives me crazy. This kind of thing would almost never happen with an iPhone.

The Doze feature saves a lot of battery life when the phone is put on the table, and the rapid charging (see below) charges the phone pretty fast. This made me change my charging pattern, so that instead of charging the phone overnight, I only charge it when I take a shower in the morning until I leave home, which is about 1 hour. That is enough to bring this phone up to 100% of battery.

The only problem with Doze feature, is that there's some software bugs that it misses some important notifications like Hangout SMS, or alarms. I missed the alarm a couple of times because of the Doze feature - who would expect the battery saving feature of the phone could stop ringing an alarm? That's just embarrassing.

USB Type-C

The type C cable is pretty neat so that I can finally forget about flipping the cable to see which side is up or down. One issue with Nexus 5X is that Google/LG has only shipped USB-C to USB-C cable and its own power brick. If you want to charge the phone with a regular mobile battery power or a computer (other than the new Macbook) you'd need a USB-A to C cable, or an adapter.

The type-C rapid charging is kind of cool, and you'll see the "Charging rapidly" message on the lock screen if you use with the charger that supports rapid charging. It is different from Moto's Quick Charge, and rapid charge is hit and miss with Macbook USB ports. The charge is about 1-2% per minute, so from 0% to the full it would usually take about 2 hours or less.

Wrap-up

Overall I like this phone, but I hate this phone at the same time because it takes such a great photo but the camera app is the worst. Also, I didn't expect the phone OS to be as laggy as this one in 2015, even though I knew this isn't the most high-end phone.

It is a great device, $400 for 32GB makes such a good primary phone for a budget, if only Google can bring in a software update to address these software issues.

Joining Fastly

I'm very excited to tell you that today is my first day at Fastly as a software engineer.

As a long time Fastly user myself, I'm thrilled to be part of the fast growing CDN that powers many sites, and am pretty glad to be able to work with so many good friends from Six Apart, Cookpad as well as new and old friends from Perl and Ruby community.

I continue to be in San Francisco, and the HQ is a few minute walk from my home. Fastly recently launched their office in Tokyo, and I'm looking forward to visiting them from time to time.

YAPC::Asia 2015

YAPC::Asia started in 2006 with 300+ attendees. YAPC::Asia 2015 had 2130 attendees.

The first YAPC::Asia had invited speakers of Larry Wall, Yukihiro Matz, Damian Conway and Audrey Tang. This year they invited Larry, Matz, Jonathan and Ricardo among others.

In 2006, Perl 6 was under development and was set to be released by Christmas. This year, it was set to be released by this Christmas.

This year they chose a new venue, Tokyo Big Sight. The venue size is perfect to hold 2000 attendees. The auditorium is big enough to hold most of the attendees, and each room is pretty close to each other to easily access. The smallest rooms only contain 100 people, and it seemed there were some talks that clearly went overflown with its popularity.

There are many things I liked particularly about this year's YAPC::Asia. The conference was so well organized from the flawless Wi-Fi to the time schedule.

In previous years, most of the talks were either 20 minutes or 40 minutes long, and there weren't even any break between the time slots, except a few around lunch time and a coffee break.

This year they decided to increase the default time slots to 30/60 minutes, and every talk had 10 minute buffer afterwards. This made sure all the talks had at least 10 minute for questions and answers. Japanese tech audience has been known to be very shy and don't ask many questions, but this year, most of the talks I attended had so many questions that actually went out of time.

The live interpretation from audience's question to the speaker via the receiver had seemed to work well, almost like magic, too.

.@kelseyhightower listens to #yapcasia question w/ live translation ear piece, "This thing is magic. I understood your Japanese perfectly!"

— Brad Fitzpatrick (@bradfitz) August 21, 2015

Also, most speakers have been instructed to repeat the questions. This helps a lot when playing back on videos.

This is 10th YAPC::Asia, and every year I go there, I see familiar faces of my friends. It feels almost like an annual reunion event, especially so for people like me visiting from abroad.

It's sad to see this event go, but I'm sure there will be something that carries this spirit over.

#yapcasia

Pebble Time

Here's a quick review of Pebble Time.

This is a second Pebble for me. The previous was Pebble Steel. It's such an upgrade with a colorful screen (not full color), with much faster user interface and animation.

The timeline UI is very good, and the original Pebble's watchfaces look ugly as compared to this.

The hardware looks cheap and a toy-like, but it still looks better than the Steel to me. It might not fit very well if you wear suit every day though.

I like the updated configuration for the vibration as well. The original model has a very strong vibration that I needed to turn off. Time has a "weak" setting, which I think is still a bit stronger than necessary, but it's useful to have.

The belt is so light, easy to hold and yet comfortable.

I like it overall.

If Google sees that you're searching for specific programming terms, they'll ask you to apply for a job. It's wild. Here's how it works.

This is a lot like Ex Machina where the candidate is chosen out of an internal coding contest, to be invited to the founder's house for his secret project.

#hidead

NIKKEIをHackしよう。日経電子版では学生インターンを募集中。2015年9月に東京、福岡でインターンを実施。電子版の開発現場で一緒に開発作業に取り組む長期インターンも募集中。

NIKKEIをHackしよう。電子版インターン2015

先日のミートアップをスポンサーしていただきました。

日経電子版では、インターンシップを募集しています。アプリの実際のログデータを利用して、データ分析、機械学習などが試せます。また、naoyaさんがアドバイザーとして参加している開発体制の内製化へのインターンも随時募集しているそうなので、学生さんはチェックしてみてください。

ZenPad S 8.0

I have stopped using an iPad about a year and half ago, when I gave my iPad 3 to my parents in Japan.

Since then, I haven't felt any particular need for a tablet, but from time to time I wished for a bigger screen to consume text or image-based medium, such as Manga and PDF-based ebooks.

ZenPad S 8.0

ASUS has released their latest line of their Android tablet, ZenPad. There are multiple SKUs of this "ZenPad S 8.0" but currently available in the US is Z580C in Best Buy, so I picked one up about a week ago.

There seems to be a higher end Z580CA which has a gorilla glass, palm rejection, slightly less weight and USB type C input. But the availability seems to vary from one country to another, so you might want to check the device model cautiously.

Hardware

The hardware form factor is pretty close to that of an iPad mini. It is an 8 inch tablet, with 4:3 screen. It is a retina screen and is very crisp, ready to read a lot of text in tiny fonts without any problems, and an ability to read manga in double-spread layout is pretty great.

I put the tablet on Anker Aluminum Tablet stand on my desk, and it is very sturdy.

Z580C does not support 5GHz 11n Wi-Fi. I was really surprised that there's a tablet without 5GHz support in 2015, but that's probably what the price tag means. I suspect that the higher-end of Z580CA might have a support for 5GHz.

Battery life is mediocre at best. The battery consumes about 10-15% for a day by just leaving it for doing nothing when connected to Wi-Fi. When actively used with the screen on with near-full brightness, the battery gets down pretty quickly and runs out about 4 to 5 hours for me. Fully charging from 0 to 100 takes about 4 hours. YMMV.

Android Tablet Apps

The last time I used an Android Tablet was with the original Nexus 7 back in 2012. At that time most of the apps are just stretched version of mobile apps. The OS was running Ice Cream Sandwich and the current Lollipop has been a huge upgrade since then. By the way ASUS product page says Android Lollipop 5.1, but the tablet I own is loaded with 5.0.

Most of the Google apps obviously support tablet layout very well. Other third party apps, including Adobe Acrobat, Talon for Twitter, Flipboard, Feedly and Instapaper all support tablet views as well, not to mention media apps like Netflix, YouTube or Plex.

4:3 screen layout is pretty nice for browsing and reading. The only problem is when I watch HD 16:9 videos, where there is obviously a wasted line in the top and bottom of the screen.

Customizability

The nice thing about Android is the (nearly-)full control of its software and hardware. The tablet supports micro SD expansion up to 128GB. I bought a 32GB model for $199, and I paid an extra $20 to get 64GB micro SD from Amazon to get the full 96GB of the storage for a reasonable price. The SD card storage support in Android 4.4/5.0 apparently has been a bit annoying, but so far, it doesn't cause many issues to me.

I keep syncing media files from my computer using BitTorrent Sync and let all media consumption apps read directly from there. Basically, whenever I download a PDF scan, let sync run the task and I can continue reading it on my tablet, completely offline. It's nice.

Crapware

ZenPad is preloaded with a lot of ASUS junk ware. ASUS Notes, ASUS Emails, Calendars and all that. I counted them and it is more than 30 and it's a bit shocking.

Unfortunately I can't remove these apps without root, but so far, I just switched the home screen app to my favorite Action Launcher 3 to see none of these crapware on my desktop, and ASUS's customization on UI skin is pretty minimal.

An ability to unlock the screen with double-tap is a good one, though.

Wrap-Up

Pros:

It is $199

Can expand up to 128GB micro SD

Screen is crisp and bright

Cons:

Full of crap ware

Difficult setup if you're from iOS

No 5GHz Wi-Fi support

Extra:

Book Reader (β) is the best Manga reading app

Google Play Books is great for reading PDFs

No buying links because Amazon.com/jp doesn't have them as of this writing.

こんにちは。Tokyo Otaku Mode エンジニアの重岡です。ひさしぶりにブログ記事を書く順番がまわってきたのですが、技術ネタではなくアニメ鑑賞会のレポートです。でも、アニメ鑑賞会のレポートを期待していたコアなファンもいるんじゃないでしょうか？（いるといいな・・・）それでは、『楽園追放』を鑑賞した座談会の様子を書き起し形式でお楽しみ下さい。

「やりたいタイトルがなかったからPS4買っていなかったのをセコンさんにdisられたんで、仕方がなく買いました」ってrebuild.fm で言ったら、「やりたいタイトルがなくてもゲーム本体買わないとdisられるのか」とTwitterに一杯書いてて、「俺は正常だった」って。

Annotations promised to upgrade tweets from being a 140-character postcard to being a 140-character message written on the outside of an envelope. What was inside the envelope? Whatever a developer could imagine.

I remember that I was really excited about the tweet Annotations announcement at Chirp.

Seems like Twitter has reversed course since then, and today all of the metadata attachements in tweets are handled as URLs in a tweet, such as photos, videos or even quoted tweets. The API seems to attach a little bit more metadata (like quoted tweet ID), but the current design was to work with old clients gracefully.

If annotations API were implemented earlier and correctly, all of these media attachements could have been handled that way.

Sony SRS-X77

JAMBOX

I've been a long time user of the original JAMBOX. It's portable, and is loud-but-not-too-loud to put on my desk on the loft to listen to the music while I work from home.

There are many shortcomings with JAMBOX though: one is that it always wakes up with some weird startup sound, which apparently Jawbone fixed with a later software update. The other thing is that it uses Bluetooth pairing for music. I sometimes want to play music from my OS X iTunes, from iOS Soundcloud app, or from Android PocketCasts app. I need to go all the hoops of disconnecting and connecting.

Sony SRS

Sony has released the updated lineup of its SRS speakers. I got aware of these series when I visited my friend Fumiaki's house in NYC, where he has the previous generation model SRS-X7 and he seems to like it so much.

Like everything with Sony, there are dozens of different models with meaningless numbers but I think the real contenders are: SRS-X33, X77 and X88.

X33, X77 and X88

Simply put, the difference is like this:

X33 is a Bluetooth-only model music like JAMBOX. You can charge it with the standard micro USB cable.

X77 is a hybrid Bluetooth, AirPlay and Google Cast speaker. It is also portable (more on that later) but requires a dedicated AC cord to charge.

X88 is the high-end and supports high-res audio, with BT, AirPlay and Google Cast. Not portable.

SONY has abandoned the support for apt-X codec for its Bluetooth and opted in for their supposedly proprietary LDAC codec. If you have their walkman or Xperia series smartphones, there's a chance that LDAC is supported.

Anyway, to solve my issue with the Bluetooth pairing process, I decided to go with X77. I don't have a high-res music source to rock X88.

X77 review

Setup with X77 is almost painless. Just plug it to the power source, and run their SongPal app on either Android or iOS, to setup the wifi connection.

Once it's done, you can play music from any application and OS that supports AirPlay or Google Cast. You can of course use Bluetooth for this, but like I said above, Bluetooth pairing is a painful process so I would avoid doing so unless it's for an outdoor use.

The speaker is a bit bigger than what I expected. It is a good size to put on my bookshelf next to the desk though. Even with much more portable JAMBOX, there's only a couple of times I used it apart from my desk, so this isn't much of a problem.

It has a rechargeable battery inside, and apparently it runs 3 hours with Wi-Fi enabled, and 10 hours with Bluetooth. I haven't actually tested it yet, and won't probably use it without power cord for many times.

The sound is great. The default EQ setup is a bit too high on the bass, but you can change it anyway you want. Playing music from Macbook iTunes is just selecting a speaker away, and it's the same with iOS and Android apps.

If you frequently switch the music source devices, be sure to reset the speaker to the device itself, before reconnecting it, since there seems to be a cache somewhere and you'll get a sad "can't connect to the speaker" dialog. It's not much of a big deal, and much easier than re-pairing on Bluetooth.

AirPlay vs Google Cast

AirPlay is almost built-in on both OS X and iOS, and its support is universal. Even with non-supporting apps, you can install the versatile AirFoil app to play remote on this speaker. It works great with Chrome websites like SoundCloud.

Google Cast, though, is a hit-and-miss. There's apparently a different media support for video and audio in Google Cast, and by default, the Chrome extension only shows the device that both supports audio and video (i.e. Chromecast).

Only when you go to a specific site or player that explicitly supports audio media (e.g. Pocket Casts web app), you'll see the speaker in the Cast tab.

Shortcomings

I have very little to complain about this device. The only problem I have is that the power cord that comes with it is very short, and plugging it to the power extension under my desk was a little messy. Not a big deal and easy to fix with a power extension cord.

Summary

Overall it's a great buy. It is available on Amazon.com for $260 and Amazon.co.jp for 31,480 JPY.

I love Apple. I love them because they take difficult problems and come up with innovative, simple solutions. The things they make just work and we trust them...

However, if I decide I really want those songs, when I click the “Add” button, nothing happens, which seemed odd to me.

My experience with Apple Music has been superior so far - It has a way larger catalog than the competitors, the pricing is decent (although their 30% advantage on iOS subscription sounds anti-competitive) and their playlist and algorithm based Radio gives pretty good selection of music.

Except when it comes to merging with the local music library. I tried to add my favorite album to "My Music". Sometimes it succeeds, but then later it gets merged with completely unrelated albums. Sometimes, I add an EP with the same song with different DJ mixes. Original title on Apple Music has "(DJ someone mix)" but as soon as it's added to the local library those annotations are gone. Now I have an album with 5 songs with the same title, not sure which one is my favorite remix.

I decided to stop dealing with the "Add To Music" thing with Apple Music, and use iTunes' New and For You tab just like an Rdio or Spotify interface. I backup local music constantly so there's little to fear, but given the above post it's better to stay away until Apple says something officially on this.

sniproxy - Proxies incoming HTTP and TLS connections based on the hostname contained in the initial request of the TCP session.

Proxies incoming HTTP and TLS connections based on the hostname contained in the initial request of the TCP session. This enables HTTPS name-based virtual hosting to separate backend servers without installing the private key on the proxy machine.

sniproxy is a great tool, once combined with dnsmasq or some sort of software to override DNS query, to allow you to basically watch HTTP(S) streams via proxy, without using VPN at all.

Works great with Apple TV because ATV doesn't support VPN.

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