Review: Magnector X vs E-Prance

The Xperia phones look nice and work as well as I expected, but nightly charging required that you pry off the micro-USB flap and then snap it back on. I was worried about doing that too often causing the loss of water-proofing, so I went looking for a magnetic charging cable that would allow us to let that port stay unmolested most of the time. Since we were using cases, we didn't consider a dock: most of the docks looked like they wouldn't work with the case. This was clearly a missed opportunity for Sony, since an integrated system of case and charging dock would have been preferred.

The #1 search result for magnetic charger on Amazon is the Magnector X. Hailing from Korea, the marketing copy looks great though the price seems high. It comes in a little case with a carrying pouch, and a little nub that connects to a usb cable and then attaches to your phone. The problem? The nub is wide, so the charging pins never makes contact with your phone if your phone is in a case. So we returned it.

The E-PRANCE cable hails from China, has 7 reviews, and doesn't qualify for Amazon prime. It ships direct from Shenzhen, comes through the postal service and takes weeks to deliver. It doesn't appear to have strain relievers on the cable, which means that if you jerk it too hard, it will break. Fortunately, it's a magnetic charging cable, so pulling on the phone means that the charger will just fall off the phone, so the cable shouldn't ever be subject to huge stress. In any case, it's cheaper than the Magnector X. To my relief, the charging end is thin, and easily charges both our phones while they're in their cases. We went ahead and ordered 4 (2 at home, 1 in each car). Recommended.

Review: Geigerrig 1210 Hyrdration Pack

I actually prefer water bottles to hydration packs most of the time. In particular, when cycling, carrying anything on your back is just asking for trouble, and it's makes my back hot and uncomfortable. Hiking is another story. Here, you need a backpack to carry ancillaries anyway, you're upright so the back doesn't get uncomfortable, but it's still hot. Furthermore, hydration packs are hard to clean, difficult to share between people, and end up gunky. I usually end up buying new hydration packs every so often because of this, or just buying hydration pack compatible backpacks and then buying new bladders every so often, which is cheaper but still not ideal. Bottles last me almost a decade, by comparison.

Well, there was a Geigerrig Blowout on Amazon.com, so I snagged a Geigerrig 1200 for $50, about $80 off the usual Amazon price. The reviews were nice, and I was intrigued by the idea that there's a squeeze bulb that could pressurize the bladder, letting me eject a stream of water rather than having to suck on a bite valve. In fact, the motto for Geigerrig was "never suck again."

My first use of the pack was disappointing. It was hard to fill, and I still had to suck on the bite valve, despite pressuring the bladder. On subsequent use, I realized a few things. First, there were quick release buckles on the bladder's pressurization port as well as output ports. That means you could quickly detach the bladder and fill it up from the tap. Not only that, the bladder opens up completely so you could dump ice into it, for instance.

Next, the hydration bladder's pressurization bulb can come off the pressurization port. What this means is that before you pressurize, you must check the bulb's output valved. Otherwise, you risk pumping air from the bulb back into the atmosphere instead of pressuring the bladder. In addition, you have to ensure the valve screw is fully engaged. After doing all this, as promised, a push on the bite valve and you can get a nice stream of water, provided you keep pumping the bulb. Fail to do that, and you're back down to a trickle again, and you might as well just bite down and suck. In fact, biting down and sucking takes a lot less effort than pumping the bladder, so I'm not sure I'd use this feature much. In addition, pressurizing the bladder bloats the backpack a bit, which I feel, and is mildly uncomfortable. This is especially a problem when you've used half the water in the pack, for instance. In a word, this is more marketing than practical, so I suppose if you get into a water pistol fight while hiking, this would be just the bees knees for high capacity.

The rest of the pack is well designed, with lots of pockets, etc. And for the price, it's a nice big pack that can carry a lot of stuff. The bladder is also huge at 100oz of water, well over what I can get away for nowadays.

Do I recommend this pack? For the price I paid, yes. For full price? No way. And discount the value of pressurization. In practice, it's a pain to use. The ability to quickly detach and fill the bladder, however, is quite high, so that's worth paying a slight premium for, as is the ability ot use a dishwasher on the bladder.

Very conditionally recommended.

Fitness Tracking

I'm not a fitness tracking person, nor am I ever willing to spend the kind of money fitness trackers ask for. However, my father had a stroke last year, and one of the therapies involved was simply trying to walk 10,000 steps a day. There was no chance he could use a fitness band, either, but I bought him a pedometer. It was the Ozeri tri-axis pedometer, so that he could wear it around his neck. It's a simple setup: you set the clock on the pedometer, and it resets to zero every morning. If you stop and look at the device, it tells you how many steps it's taken. There are a few other buttons for paging through the last few days of data, but that's it. Simple, easy, and effective. So much so that I bought another for my mom (they come in 2 colors), and then was inspired to try out an ancient pedometer I had sitting in a drawer somewhere by replacing the batteries.

Believe it or not, I bought that in the pre-GPS days to help determine hiking distance. It worked but I never calibrated it enough to be useful in that fashion and abandoned it when GPS units became reasonably priced. It clips to your belt, and counts steps.

One thing that it doesn't work for is cycling. Cycling makes it go crazy with step counts. Another thing that makes it go crazy is Bowen. He saw it and wore it for an hour and the step counts also jumped. In this case, however, I think he actually was taking that many steps! This is one situation where the smartphone app Moves is significantly better, since it knows when you're cycling, driving, running, or walking. But for obvious reasons, I don't always walk around the house with my phone in my pocket, so Moves doesn't capture all the data a pedometer does.

In any case, I didn't bother with any goals for step counts. I just wanted to see how much I was moving each day. In practice, however, wearing a pedometer makes you more willing to run errands like taking the trash out. You're also more likely to deliberately park further if you're driving so you can walk a bit more. That has a significant impact, so I'm less likely to dismiss the fitness tracking craze (though I still wouldn't pay $100+ for one).

In any case, it's fun but I suspect it's also a matter of time before I lose my device or just get tired of wearing it. When that happens I probably won't replace it: I was happy to give up a watch after starting to carry a cell phone, and see no reason to go back.

Windows Phone vs Android: An Ecosystem Comparison

Over the last few months, I've switched from Android to Windows Phone and back again, so while the memory is fresh, let me write down what the differences are.

Both systems work well for the basics: e-mail, web-browsing, texting, and phone calls. What's fascinating to me is how much faster Windows phone is as far as the UI is concerned. Google made a big deal out of Project Butter a while back, but it looks like even the lowest end Windows phone has project butter beat.

What features did I miss most from Android when I was using the Windows phone?

1. Swipe keyboard. It annoyed me to no end to not have a swiping keyboard.
2. Google Voice. It sucked to call out to people and not have my Google voice # show up. Not only did I get people asking me if I'd changed my phone # (no I hadn't please don't call this number), I also had people ignore my phone calls because they thought I was a telemarketer as I was not on their white list due to the new phone #. If there's a single reason to ignore the possibility of using a Windows phone, Google voice is it. (Of course, that means that Google voice is #1 on the chopping block when Google decides to kill another round of projects) I had Google voice's mobile website as a short cut on the Windows phone home page, but somehow whenever I wanted to call anyone, I never got around to using it.
3. Digg Reader. Just like the predecessor, Google Reader, Digg Reader was my #1 use of the Android phone. Unfortunately, there's no Digg Reader that's compatible with the Windows phone, and Digg Reader refuses to accept that Internet Explorer on Windows phone is a real web-browser and insists on denying me access. Disappointing.
4. Moves. Moves got bought by Facebook, so there's a good chance that Moves will eventually show up either as part of a Facebook integration, or Moves would get a Windows phone port. That's a seriously great app, and I'm surprised that Google didn't buy them. Now Facebook not only knows where I am, it knows how I got there, and I'm happy to give it to them because I don't want to buy or charge or wear a real "fitness tracker" device. My phone's good enough.

That's it. Those are the 3 must-have apps for me. Sure, I enjoyed Clash of Clans, and I liked having Google calendar, contacts, etc. But the reality was, the Microsoft equivalents were more than good enough to keep me from missing them. And in all seriousness, I didn't have mind missing out on Moves that much.

By far the biggest problem with the Nokia 521 was that Facebook would fail to post photos from it. I have no idea whether that's because I had too low end a phone, or whether the Facebook app on Windows phone is a second class citizen and is hence buggy as heck. Whatever it is, that was a problem causing me to have to wait for WiFi access to post from my Windows tablet. Did I miss Google+? Not really. Even Arturo noted that his Facebook friends demonstrated much more engagement on the same content than Google+.

OK, what about going from Windows phone to Android? The biggest thing I miss is the longevity of the battery on the Windows phone. I could easily go through a day without worrying much about the battery on my Nokia 521. The Sony Xperia Z1 has a much bigger battery (and better screen), but  the battery life is quite a bit worse. It's quite clear to me that Android has a lot of bloat that simply doesn't exist on the Windows phone. Now to be fair, I run a lot more apps on Android than I do on Windows phone 8, but even when just sitting in my pocket not doing anything the Android phone sucks battery faster. One way to measure the OS overhead as far as battery life is concerned is to compare say, the HTC M8 Windows with the original HTC M8 Android. The M8 Windows beats the Android counterpart in battery life by nearly 7 hours in battery tests (21 hours vs 14 hours), a 50% improvement. This shows that the Android implementation of core system functionality is quite a bit lacking compare with Windows. (It also shows that Microsoft's capable of producing lean fast software if it wants to)

The next feature that I miss most is copy and paste. Android has it, but it's a lousy implementation of long press and tweaking that I can't stand. Windows Phone 8, by comparison, is pure delight. You select the text, then bring up the keyboard and type Control-C, just like at a real computer. It never fails, you can't ever fail to bring up the copy/paste icons (unlike on Android, where sometimes no matter how hard you push, or how long you press, you can't ever bring up the copy/paste icon), and it's consistent from app to app.

The next big thing is offline maps. The Nokia's HERE map and HERE drive implementations are nothing short of amazing. You can search not just for addresses even offline, but point of interests like gas stations and hotels mostly show up as well. This is huge for traveling if you might not have data (which describes all of US national parks). Basically, a Windows phone with the Nokia navigation apps replaces the GPS very nicely. This is such a big deal that I would happily give up everything except Google voice if I could have it on Android as well.

I also miss Microsoft Office, which has an implementation on Windows while missing entirely on Android. The implementation is quite good and more than sufficient for mobile use. While Google Docs is also usable, there's nothing like Microsoft Word for displaying documents written in Word.  Furthermore the default implementation of PDF reader is also much better on Windows phone than Android.

For what it's worth, despite all these advantages, it's clear that Android is the current winner. I am concerned that the pace of improvements on Android seems to be slowing, but hopefully with the new emphasis on low end phones we'll see Android improve dramatically there as well. Competition is good, and while I'm currently an Android user, I certainly wouldn't hesitate to jump ships if a Windows phone fits my needs better.

Review: Far End Gear Short Cord Stereo to Mono earbuds

I try to ride my bike as much as possible for transportation. What that means is that sometimes someone tries to call me during the ride. While I could ignore all calls, sometimes I'm expecting a call or I need to make arrangements in flight. That's what having a bluetooth headset is supposed to be for, in particular, my MW600.

There's only one problem. The headphone wires are long and can easily get tangled with bike parts and are an invitation for my son to play with them while riding. I searched and searched but could not find cheaper short cord headphones than the Far End Gear Short Cord earbuds. These are extremely expensive at $16.95, and you can also buy the stereo version for the same price.

Out of the box, they're fabric-wrapped and look strong. The sound quality isn't the best, but you're not expecting Sennheiser quality for this price. Despite being so short, they do function as antennas for the MW600's radio, albeit with poor indoor reception. They're short enough that I can clip the MW600 to my collar and have just enough cord to reach either of my ears. They can also be looped around my neck and kept handy in case a call comes in (my phone rings) but not block my ears so I can have normal hearing.

You wouldn't want these if you want to listen to music in the gym, for instance, but having short cord headphones is so nice that I'd consider buying the stereo version just for gym use, where the long cords do occasionally tangle and get mixed up with machinery.

I was hesitant to pay the $16.95 price for these, but really shouldn't have. These are more than good enough and a huge improvement over any long cord earbuds. If someone made short cord headphones with great sound quality, I'd be all over them. As it is, for the specific application I have, they're recommended.

Xperia Phone Protection Solutions

If there's one thing I learned after buying the Dell Venue 8 Pro, is that you can't buy portable electronics with screens on them without also buying protection. In the 24 hours between that tablet arriving and the case arriving, the screen got scratched. One of the features of the Xperia Ultra Z is that you can write on it with a ballpoint pen or pencil, but color me chicken, I wouldn't do that without adequate screen protection.

The protection we chose this time around are the Illumishield Z1 and Z Ultra protectors. Each package comes in a set of 3, which is good value in case you screw up one or the shields actually wear off. In my experience, by the time the shield wears off you're likely to buy a new phone anyway, but it might help the resell value to install a fresh screen protector. The Z Ultra protector installed easily and ended up with zero bubbles, a first for any of this type that I've used. The Z1 didn't install as well, and had some extra bubbles even after a few days of use. I'm not sure what the difference is, and it could easily be attributed to me screwing it up rather than any fault of the protector. The Z Ultra protector, in particular, installed so well that I cannot tell that the screen has any form of protection on it whatsoever, which is impressive. Highly recommended.

I bought the case for my wife without consulting her, which made me very nervous. Cases for phones are like handbag: the difference between one case or another could make it either a fashion accessory or make you look like a dork. To my relief, the convert thin case looks very nice. Closed, it looks just like a purse or other woman's accessory, rather than a case for what most would consider an extremely geeky product: a high end phablet. One caveat is that the case cuts off access to the SIM card slot (a reasonable decision, since you're unlikely to touch the SIM card once installed), and it's tough to remove the phone from the case, so install the SIM card before installing the phone into the case. The case does allow access to the microSD card, the charging port, and the headphone jack. It even tilts up so you can use the phone in landscape mode while sitting on a desk to watch a movie. Just like a wallet, it also has a few slots for credit cards, though the case is so thin that if you do so you might bulk it up a bit. One disadvantage of the case being tough to remove the phone from is that you're unlikely to want to submerge the case, so you'd avoid swimming with it. But nobody's going to take a case like this inside a swimming pool anyway. In any case,  Xiaoqin liked it. Recommended.

For the Z1, I had a different set of requirements, which included being able to remove the phone from a jersey pocket while cycling and use the camera. That meant that the wallet style case was unacceptable, so I went with the VSTN case instead, which provides some protection if the phone were to fall, while leaving all the ports and the camera shutter button handy. The case never obscures the screen, and also makes the phone easier to grip, but it does make the screen protector essential.

All in all, I'm pleased with this set of accessories.

Review: Sony SBH52

I've had several bluetooth headsets, including the MW600 and the Knivio over the years, but my wife has never showed interest in any of them. They're dorky, hard to pair, and most of the time simply mean one more item to charge instead of saving you any hassle. My wife also dislikes wearing headphones.

The Xperia Z1 Ultra, however, is so big that it's awkward to hold to your head in order to make a phone call, though my wife claims she'll get used to it in time as well. The SBH52, however, looked promising, so I ordered it thinking that I'll send it back if she ends up not using it.

On the website and promotional photos, the SBH52 looks like an unusually big headset, but in reality it's not much bigger than my MW600. What's nice about it is NFC pairing. Until we saw this feature, my wife had never seen NFC as being something useful other than a novelty item for me to play with by using my phone to pay at Whole Foods. You touch the back of the phone to the clip on the SBH52, and pairing and connecting happens automatically, though sometimes (not all the time) the phone pops up an annoying dialog asking you to approve the pairing. (I have no idea why that happens: touching the two items isn't something that would happen by accident, so the engineer/product manager who thought that dialog box was a good idea should be shot!)

The speaker on the SBH52 is loud enough to use as a speaker phone, and my wife seems to prefer using it that way rather than as a handset. The UI to switch between handset and speakerphone is unintuitive, forcing you to actually read the manual, but all in all isn't too bad. You can pair up to two phones with the device. In reality, this feature is less useful than it appears, since you end up being confused about which phone/headset is triggering the phone to ring, and the handset is small enough that it's really a personal device, but if you're the kind of person to carry two phones or a phone and a tablet at the same time I can see how this might be useful.

Standby/Talk time seems about normal for a device of this type. What's interesting is that the phone is water-resistant, though not completely waterproof. That does eliminate the fear of water on the phone, but it also means the charging port is behind a rubber grommet. No big deal, but I wonder when that's going to break off.

There are still minor bugs with the software. At one point NFC pairing got the devices confused and I had to reboot both the phone and the device. That problem went away relatively quickly, but I was still annoyed that such expensive equipment could fail on such a common task.

My wife doesn't like to use headphones, so I have no way to gauge headphone effectiveness. It does sport an FM radio using headphone wires as antenna, which I thought was pretty clever until I discovered that both the Xperia and Xperia Z1 do it as well, so it must be a fairly well-known trick.

In any case, so far my wife has been willing to carry around the headset in addition to her phone, which means that it passes the wife test. Translated into man-speak: "Recommended."

Review: Belkin Conserve Socket

It's rare that personal electronics pay for themselves, but the Belkin Conserve Socket is one of the rare ones. Basically, it's a timer attached to a power socket. You set it for 1/2 hour, 3 hours, or 6 hours, and when you push the button, it activates the power for that amount of time, and drops to 0 current after the time's up. There's also a power strip set up similarly.

The socket's spec'd for 15 amps, but in practice, you can't really max it out or it will burn out and fail. I had one attached to my desktop and the accessory monitors, and after running it for several months it failed (Belkin replaced it under warranty). Conversely, the one attached to the entertainment system's still going strong after several years.

If you do the math and monitor energy with a Kill-A-Watt, what you'll discover is that in typical usage, one of these will pay for themselves in a year at $9.99. That's pretty good, both for the environment and for your wallet.

Recommended.

Review: LG 60PB6900 60" 1080p 3D Plasma TV

I don't watch TV much, but I do play video games, and my son streams videos from Amazon Instant Video. My wife and I would watch more movies together if there was an easy way to watch movies without potentially disturbing our son after bedtime. It might be optimistic to think so, but I thought that if we had a separate TV in our bedroom after some remodeling work, we might be able to fulfill that last desire.

With Plasma TVs on the way out, I jumped on a recent Fry's deal to get the LG 60PB6900 3D Plasma TV for $699 and free shipping. While I didn't think that I would use the SmartTV features, one of the long standing complaints my wife had about the current setup was that the Playstation doesn't listen to IR commands, so you'd have to use the Playstation controller in order to turn the Playstation off, even if you could program the universal remote to talk to the playstation through the Nyko PS3 remote.

Plasma TVs have a reputation for having the highest picture quality. In reality, I'm red-green color blind, so it'd be tough for me to tell the difference. Nevertheless, apparently consumer reports rated the LG 60PB6900 the highest of any TV, tied with the Samsung PN60F8500. Since the latter costs over $2300 on Amazon, you can safely say that the LG represents good value. The comparable-in-price Samsung PN60F5300 comes without 3D or Smart TV features, and also has a reputation for buzzing as well as occasional "pink tint" panel issues.

Unboxing the TV and setting it up, it's hard to avoid going "Oh Wow, this is huge". The funny thing is that once the TV is on the wall, you get used to it pretty fast. The same thing happened with my wife and her Xperia Ultra Z. Her first impression was, "This is too big." By her second day, all the other phones just looked small. I'm pretty sure there's no real limit to how big screens can get: until they fill the size of your wall, you'd probably get used to however big they become.

One of the interesting things over the last 5 years is that digital audio outputs have really become the standard after being around for 20 years. That means that my RCA-driven  DRA-295 now needs a D to A converter before getting fed sound from the TV. Fortunately, you can get those fairly cheaply (like the basic one for $12.49, and you'll also need an optical cable), but they do add to the cable clutter in the entertainment system, and another source of power draw.

In any case, I won't review the picture quality, etc. You can geek out over that at AVSForum.com. I'll talk mostly about features that you're likely to try and use but those guys won't. For instance, the Smart TV apps. The interface is a mess. It took me a while to figure out that to get over to YouTube/Amazon Instant video, I should just push the blue button in the middle of the remote labeled "SMART". Once there, it was fairly straightforward to run the apps, enter your user name/password, and get things moving. Coming from the PS3, however, it amazes me how slow the Smart TV app is. I'm guessing the CPU/memory on these TV sets is rather lackluster, since they're not competing based on those specs. Worse, they're subject to occasional stutters and pauses. On occasion, Amazon Instant video will give up and return you to the main menu so you can redo your selection. Fortunately, Amazon Instant Video remembers where you were last, so this was not enough for me to give up on them, since it's nice not to have the PS3 running in addition to the TV, but also so I can program the universal remote so my wife has a prayer of using this thing.

YouTube pairs nicely with our tablets (both the Dell Venue 8 Pro and the Nexus 10 worked just fine), but behaves funny. One video started out looking like a SD video, and then the TV gradually buffered enough content that it suddenly looked like a HD video. Pretty weird. And god help you if you run two tablets at once throwing videos over to the TV. The poor TV gets pretty confused, and so do the tablets. Don't do that.

How about normal TV reception? It's pretty awful. I tried a bunch of local over-the-air channels on my crappy indoor antenna, and none of the channels look good. I have no idea whether this is because of my crappy indoor antenna, or because over-the-air just doesn't have enough bandwidth to put the HD into the HDTV.

Watching Blu-Rays? Amazing. It looks gorgeous. Basically, the PS3 is still the best media player you can find out there, and anything it does to your picture is just perfect. Even with the bigger screen I couldn't find any pixelation artifacts except by standing 2 feet from the TV with my glasses on trying to pixel-peep. Good stuff.

How about 3D. The set doesn't come with 3D glasses, but you can buy the cheap $16 Samsung 3D glasses and they will work with this set. I don't have any 3D movies (yet!) but fortunately, the PS3 had a few games that worked in 3D. I tried Super Stardust HD, Arkham City, and Killzone 3. The 3D looks good, but keep in mind that if you didn't like the game in 2D, you're not going to like it any better in 3D. I'm guessing that would apply to any 3D movies as well. If there are any 3D movies that you like feel free to tell me, since 3D-streaming is effectively still non-existent, and you pretty much have to buy 3D Blu Rays if you want to experience it.

Speaking of games, there's significant input lag with this TV (the display lag database shows it at around 71ms). This is not a great TV to play FPS on, though I'm such a poor FPS player that I might never notice. God of War, however, was fine with this TV as long as I turned on Game Mode.

All in all, for the price I paid (which $125 more than what I paid for the 42" LG 5 years ago), this is a pretty nice set. Recommended.

Review: Cheetah Mounts APTMM2B TV Wall Mount

Bowen had gotten big enough that he could now stand up and push the TV on it's stand. That by itself isn't dangerous, but if he pushed it hard enough and the TV tipped over and fell on him, that's pretty dangerous. The obvious solution, then, is to mount the TV on the wall.

The Cheetah APTMM2B is the #1 best seller in that category on Amazon.com. At $28.69, it's cheap, and comes with a magnetic level, though I ended up having to buy a magnetic stud finder. Furthermore, what the reviews don't tell you is that to complete the mounting of the TV, you'll need a long screw driver, which is $4.99 at Harbor Freight tools or $12.50 at Amazon.

The mount is surprisingly light for having to hold up to 165 pounds of weight and a 65" TV. What it does is to mount directly onto the studs in the wall (hence the stud finder), which bears most of the weight of the TV through the mount. The mount comes in 4 pieces, and you assemble it yourself and then mount onto the studs through the drywall with the provided large screws. When you're ready to mount the TV, you mount the provided brackets onto the back of the TV, attach all the cables and wires you'll need to connect to the TV, and then lift the TV and put it onto the mount. This is a two person job, and it's best that both of you are pretty strong. I tried to do it myself and it exacerbated my back problem last year.  If there's a problem with the angle, you have to take the TV down again, adjust the angle of the brackets, and then put it back on.

When all that is done, you reach back with that long screw driver, and drive the screws back past the lower retaining lip to retain the TV. This last bit isn't important if you don't live in earthquake country, though it does help make the TV darn near impossible to steal. In fact, I don't know if I could remove the TV now that I've gotten on, since it took a good 20 minutes to screw in those screws with that unwieldy long screw driver.

Am I happy with the mount? It works, it flushes nicely with the wall, and it does the job of keeping Bowen from drawing on the TV or knocking it back down. It seems pretty sturdy, and the 42" TV stayed on the wall during the recent earthquake. However, when I wanted to replace the 42" TV with a 60" TV, taking down the TV and putting up the new one was a major pain in the neck, and screwing in the retaining screws at the end was an arduous and frustrating experience, and I'm not going to install any more wires at the back of the TV any more. I'm not sure I would buy this mount again, given these problems. It's more expensive to buy an articulating wall mount even if you don't need the articulating features just for the ease of use when it comes to installing new wires and HDMI thingies, but that might be a better choice.

Not recommended.

First Impressions: Xperia Z1, Z Ultra Phones

I impressed by the T-mobile international roaming plan. Coupled that with the fact that if you put a lot of people on a family plan, the costs are as low as what we were getting with Ting, without Ting's minute or data caps, so we made the determination to switch to T-mobile.

In any European country, the switch would be easily done by swapping out SIM cards. In the US, we're stuck buying new phones since the Ting phones are not GSM compliant. I wasn't going to do a lot of shopping, expecting to end up with either Moto G or the Nexus 5, but my wife had gotten used to a large screen Galaxy Note 2, and wasn't going back to a small screen. I thought about getting a Galaxy Note 3, but in the 2 years we'd had the Note 2, we'd had to replace it once for water damage, and I thought we could do better.

I noticed that Sony kept advertising its flagship phones as being waterproof, so a quick check on Amazon brought surprising results. The Xperia Z Ultra sells for $367 on Amazon (and much less if you're willing to buy the international version with no US warranty). In exchange for that (compared to the $349 Nexus 5), you get:

• Much bigger screen (6.4" vs 5")
• Waterproof (IP 58: submersion to 1.5m or 5')
• Bigger battery (3050mAh)
• Writeable with any ballpoint pen or pencil
• No barometer (does anyone use the barometer on the Nexus 5?)
• No flash for the camera
• MicroSD card slot
• Slower updates to the OS

There's a Google Play Edition of the Ultra Z for those who must have OS updates faster, but all the reviews say that stock android is no good for huge screen phones compared to Sony's skinned version, so we didn't consider it. The bigger screen cuts both ways, but if you ever read Chinese, you know how much difference a big screen makes.

That took care of Xiaoqin, but I didn't want the Z Ultra because it wouldn't fit in a cycling jersey pocket. I initially thought about using the travel Nokia 521 I used in Europe, but my mom was going on a trip so took off with it. I thought about buying another 521, but for long term daily use Android is still where the apps are.

The Xperia Z1 sells on Amazon for about $392. Compared with the Nexus 5, you get:

• Waterproof (IP58)
• Bigger battery (3000mAh)
• Better camera (21mp, bigger sensor)
• Slower update for the OS
• No warranty (international version)
• MicroSD card slot
• Dedicated camera shutter button

You can solve the warranty issue by buying the product with a credit card that extends the warranty, though apparently some internet forums claim that Sony would warranty the product anyway.

For me, waterproofing trumps nearly everything else, and the dedicated camera shutter button means I'll be able to shoot from the bike, just like when I'm touring. That's handy. Against that is the possibility of screen cracks, which are apparently as common amongst Xperia users as they are on iPhone users. (For a while I never saw an iPhone without a cracked screen)

In any case, as you can see, the design of the Xperia phones are such that they easily justify their premium over the Nexus 5. The sealed battery is a pain, and I've ranted about it before, but on the other hand, I'd happily take the sealed battery in favor of a waterproof phone. Note that the Samsung Galaxy S5 is also waterproof (IP67) and does have a replaceable battery, indicating that it is possible to engineer a replaceable battery in a waterproof phone. However, the unlocked Galaxy S5 sells for $577.74 on Amazon, making it a non-contender.

First the hardware. The Xperia Z1 is a relatively thick phone, but otherwise looks good to me. People talk about phone design, but it's hard for me to ever get excited about rectangles. The Z Ultra, however, looks great. It's thin, and doesn't feel too heavy even though it's quite a bit heavier than the Z1. Both have great screens. I was worried about the screen because all the reviews claim that if you look at the phone at an off angle it doesn't look as good. In practice, you only use the phone that way if you lay it down on a table while having breakfast, and that's not a situation where you care much about visual fidelity.

The physical buttons on the phone work, but are the weakest part of the package. The power button, for instance, needs to be pressed pretty hard to respond, and the volume rocker and shutter button feels squishy. This seems to be par for the course for phones.

Uncropped, unprocessed, JPG shot by the Xperia Z1

I didn't use cameras much on smart phones prior to the Xperia Z1. They've never been very impressive, and to be honest, the UI on those phones suck. On-screen buttons are worthless when you need to shoot from a bike. The Z1, however, has a decent camera and a dedicated shutter button, so I gave it a shot. I was pleasantly surprised. The shutter button is laggy in that it takes a second or two before the phone wakes up and goes into photo mode, but that's comparable to the shutter lag on even a high end point and shoot such as the Sony RX100.  When you push the shutter, it shoots the picture, which is very nice, and the photos are very acceptable. I would still carry a RX100 on major trips, but for day to day use, it's more than good enough. Shooting from a bike with a phone with any other camera (the Nokia 521's buttons were even worse than the Xperia's) is pretty much impossible but easily executed on this phone after you get used to the form factor. Even 1080p videos look great. The only thing lacking is a RAW mode, but then again, I have no intention of upgrading Lightroom just to process photos taken with a phone camera anyway, so maybe it's just as well.


Note the lack of image stabilization does hurt the video
The flaps covering the USB port, microSD port, and SIM card trays are surprisingly well designed. You can pry them off with your fingers even without nails, and they snap back in place. The micro USB port of course is subject to wear, but Sony has provided a pogo pin slot which I look forward to trying.

Voice calls are a snap and I didn't notice any degradation of quality compared to the Nokia 521 I used prior to this phone. A nice side effect of going back to an Android phone is that Google Voice now works and folks will no longer try to call me back on a non-Google voice #. I'm definitely dreading the day Google kills this service, just like it has killed all the other services that I like and depended on in the past. The Z Ultra, of course, is a huge phone, and you may feel silly holding one to your ear. It certainly does look silly. So much so that Sony made the SBH52 to accompany the Z Ultra so you wouldn't look silly taking calls. On the one hand, it's funny to see a phone come with a mini-handset, on the other hand, the SBH52 is really well designed.

The software is Android 4.4.4. Strangely enough, the Z1 updated over the air, but the Z Ultra asked to be connected to a computer for the update to work. There's a surprisingly little amount of bloatware, though the default Walkman music player is a lot more annoying than Google Play Music. What did surprise me is the usefulness of the Sony SmartConnect app. For instance, my wife's Galaxy Note 2 used to just throw off all sorts of notifications all night, leading us to charge the phone outside the bedroom. With SmartConnect, you can tell the phone to disable notifications while charging between 10pm and 7am, say, and you'll have a blissfully silent phone without the need to re-enable notifications manually when you unplug the phone the next morning. You can also set the phone to automatically play music when you hook it up to headphones, a bluetooth headset (or even a specific bluetooth connection), etc.

The phone does run exceedingly fast, tackling task switching, movie playing, etc, with barely a hiccup. But coming from a Windows phone, I no longer see having a smoothly operating phone as something special. I just expect it from phones. The irony is that Android is now as much a bloated piece of software as Windows was back in the late 1990s, and it is indeed the must-have applications such as Google voice and Digg Reader that have me using it instead of much cheaper and faster alternatives. Microsoft was smart enough not to kill off apps that had its user base hooked, but Google doesn't have such a history.

Here's the interesting thing about screen size. When I tried the phones in the store, it was clear to me that the Ultra Z was too big for cycling jersey pockets, but I thought the Z1 would be big enough for casual use. But when going to a doctor's appointment, for instance, the Z1 just isn't big enough, and I found myself bringing a laptop or Windows tablet in order to compose content, while my wife was happy with her Ultra Z.

So far, my first impressions of the phones are positive. Hopefully, the phone will last long enough for me to take an international trip on in the future, now that I no longer have to buy a separate phone just for an international trip. If Sony keeps this up, its turnaround really might be working.

Review: Pororo Edison Training Chopsticks

It's difficult to train your kid to use silverware in a Chinese household. This isn't because Chinese babies somehow have a harder time using forks, knives and spoons. It's because we give Bowen a fork and spoon and maybe a baby knife, and then sit down and pick up chopsticks to eat. Understandably, he becomes upset and fascinated with chopsticks, thinking that we're denying him cool tools. But the reality is, his training period with silverware would be prolonged by quite a few years if he tried to use chopsticks unaided.

It got to the point where my wife has frequently declared that she'll switch all of us over to forks, knives and spoons so he'll have decent role models, but a lifetime of habits is difficult to break, and we've never quite done it. (If you're used to eating out of a rice bowl, you'll understand: eating with a knife and fork using a bowl is impossible)

During the Tour of the Alps, however, Arturo told me that he learned to use chopsticks using special training chopsticks. I searched on Amazon, and sure enough, up came the Pororo Edison Training Chopsticks. They're $7 online but I'm sure if you went to Daisho or something like that you could buy them for $2 or however much they actually sell them in Japan or Korea.

These are very cute. Cuter than even the picture on Amazon's website depict. Furthermore, they work! Within minutes of fitting the rings on the chopsticks into his fingers, I dropped some vegetables into a bowl and he picked up a piece of cauliflower with the chopsticks and stuck them into his mouth and ate them! He even learned to bite off a small piece at a time and eat them that way. This worked with lettuce, but then when I gave him something difficult to pick up with the chopsticks (some rice), he finally understood and relinquished the chopsticks and picked up the spoon.

These are great and I highly recommend them. You probably need to buy more than a few pairs so you can have a clean pair for every meal.

Reflections on Cycling Skills

My book, Independent Cycle Touring spends a significant portion on cycling skills. When people think of cycling, they mostly consider it a fitness activity: one where the emphasis is on how fast and how hard you can ride. Sure, aerobic capacity is important, and I'd never be one to dismiss the importance of fitness.

The reality, however, is that on the road as well as off-road, cycling is a highly technical sport. In recent years, the kind of fitness approach advocated by books such as the Cyclist's Training Bible and cross-fit type activities has led to an interesting phenomenon: of very strong fit cyclists who cannot handle their bikes and crash in situations that are just slightly technical. In the past, when it took a year or two to get fit enough to climb up to Skyline, by the time you saw a cyclist in the mountains, they were generally good bike handlers. Today, I see lots of cyclists who can't descend safely, many who can't ride safely in a paceline, some who can't start from a grade, and most can't even handle a front-wheel skid. This is endemic of a culture that prizes data, and bike handling skills simply cannot be measured with a stopwatch, GPS, or bragged about on Strava, so many cyclists ignore them.

As a result, you find cyclists who avoid pleasant riding on dirt roads, cycling in the rain, pace-lining, or worse, cyclists who repeatedly ride the same route over and over for fear of trying a new road. It's no wonder that the most popular Garmin GPS is the Garmin Edge 500, a GPS that cannot show you where you are on a map!

I once had a cyclist say to me, "Piaw: I've ridden with you for 6 months, and there's never been a ride where you didn't go off-road." By contrast, someone I know once crashed his bike riding up a driveway because he approached it at an angle and slid out. As far as I can tell,  he never rode his bike again. You cannot get better at technical cycling by staying within your comfort zone. You can only do so by constantly riding in challenging circumstances in order to improve your skills. Doing so can avoid a crash and save you from some pain later!

I don't want to over-emphasize this, since cycling is still by far safer than Motorsports. Arturo said early on in this year's Tour of the Alps that cycling felt dangerous to him, since he was descending mountain passes at speed without wearing armor or a protective roll cage around him. While this is an understandable reaction, it is entirely false. While on a descent you might approach motorcycle speed, that's at most one third of your time spent cycling; for every hour you descend, you have to climb three hours in order to make it to the descent. Most crashes are single-vehicle crashes. Even if you fell off your bike while climbing, your injuries are likely to be minor. Motorcycles and cars, however, move at speed regardless of grade, which makes them a heck of a lot more dangerous because the drivers have to be alert at all times.

Review: DuraAce 7700 Freehub

I recently toured the alps with my DuraAce 7700 freehub. It finished the tour as quiet as it started, but it was an unusually dry tour, with relatively little riding in the rain.  For many years I avoided touring on these hubs on the theory that I wanted to save them from wear. This year, I finally decided to go all out for lightweight and brought these wheels into touring service since they'd operated for quite some time as a "daily driver" in California.

I compared the hub with several other hubs in a previous post, but let me summarize the details. With a wR of 21mm, the hub had the potential to build up the stronger wheels than any other hub on the market. On this, the hub did not disappoint. I've had the wheels since 2006, and they've been ridden hard on and off road. I broke one spoke when my derailleur shifted into the spokes, but other than that, the wheel has not even needed truing despite my recent tour and otherwise daily riding.

Mechanically, however, the hub's not very well sealed. Despite my Campy Chorus front hub being subject to significantly more rain, over the same maintenance interval, the freehub has had more water penetration whenever we took both hubs apart for service. This does not bode well for the long term life of the hub, though unless you damage the race, merely replacing the bearings and overhauling the hub frequently might be more sufficient.

The freehub portion, however, was disappointing. When Cupertino Bike Shop recently overhauled it, the freehub started making a ton of noise. It looked like it was near the end of its life, and none of the usual suppliers for that shop had a replacement part for it. I eventually found an eBay vendor that sold me some new old stock for an outrageous price, but it turns out that Ultegra parts from the same era are also compatible, so that's what I can do in the future.

The biggest impediment to frequent overhauling of the hub, however, is the need for cone wrenches. I do own them, but they're finicky, and make bearing adjustment much tougher than they should be. When I compare them to the Campagnolo front hub's adjustment mechanism, the cone wrenches I have to wield feel primitive and unnecessary.

Why not build new wheels? First of all, the double-butted 15gauge wheelsmith spokes used to build this wheel are no longer available. Secondly, the latest generation 11-speed hubs build weaker wheels, since Shimano was forced to dish the wheel further to accommodate that 11th-speed.

In retrospect, the best Shimano hubset to have built a wheel out of would have been the (also now out of production) Dura ace 7900 rear hub. These hubs were the last of the 10-speed hubs (but were also compatible with 8 and 9 speeds), so were as strong as the 7700, but eliminated the need for cone wrenches, making overhaul easy with just a pair of allen wrenches. Phil has these on his bike, and they were excellent.

In any case, I recognize that a review of the 7700s at this stage is obviously late and obsolete, but it's useful to keep track of what properties of hubs are important for long term maintenance. In any case, these aren't really recommended, though in the light of all the miles I've put on them, I cannot really complain.

Review: The Wolf Among Us, Episodes 3-5

The Wolf Among Us is Telltale Game's point-and-click puzzle adventure set in the world of Fables.  I previously reviewed the first two episodes and enjoyed them. Now that all 5 episodes are out and I've finished them, I thought I'd review them in retrospective.

First of all, many have said (and I agree) that these games don't really work well in episodic format. They're structured very much like a TV show, but TV shows only have a lag between episodes of a week, which isn't enough to get you to forget about the previous episode when you watch the new one. The time lag between these episodes were about 2 months, which was enough for me to need to watch the "what happened previously" entries in order to remember what happened. Luckily for you, if you're reading this, The Wolf Among Us is all out so there's not going to be a lag for you.

I'll confess to being a huge Fables fan. I consider it one of the best written graphic novel series out there today, and if you haven't read them, go do so now, starting with the entire trade paperback collection. The Wolf Among Us is a prequel to the series, so playing the game before reading the comics won't cause any spoilers, but also won't give you the delicious sense of context that the game provides.

Episode 3 was fun, as we discover wheels within wheels and that Crane is a bad guy, but not the mastermind we expected. Episode 4 felt like a filler: short, and full of nothing but build up. The finale made up for all that by providing an exciting fight sequence that finally resolves all my problems with Telltale Game's engine while still providing a satisfying story. The ending drags on for a bit too long, but it does resolve all the loose ends in the plot.

The MSRP of The Wolf Among Us is $29.99. At that price, you'll feel cheated of content. But if you're patient, it will inevitably go on sale for about $5. Anywhere below $10, this is good value and a good story worth picking up and playing.

Recommended.

Review: Anker X201 Replacement Battery

Ever since I got Xiaoqin her Surface Pro, she's relinquished my (by now ancient) X201 back to me. Laptop batteries usually get killed by heat and being fully charged, and the X201's was no exception. A few months of using Android Studio on the laptop while being plugged in killed the original OEM battery, which would have been down by 40% in regular unplugged use, but was down to 10 minutes of run time. The thing about the X201 is that the keyboard's still the best you can get for a laptop of this size and weight, and writing doesn't consume lots of CPU power, so I use this as my primary writing machine, relegating the desktop to heavy-duty work like Lightroom, Premiere Elements, and InDesign. Even with 2 Moore's cycles in place, newer laptops still have not caught up to my 2009 desktop's performance.

For a fairly new laptop, it would have been worthwhile to hunt down an OEM battery and pay full price for it. For a laptop that's been well-used (albeit upgraded), I settled for the Anker X201 replacement. Anker warranties the battery for 18 months, but the biggest problem with non-OEM battery is that they have a melt-down which could set your laptop on fire. I've had a 3rd party Macbook battery warp so badly that it wouldn't fit in the battery slot any more after I wrestled it out of the slot. Of course, nowadays, Macs don't come with user-replaceable batteries so the optimal solution would be to throw away the Mac and buy yourself a real computer with replaceable parts.

The battery plugged in snugly into the battery well, and surprisingly, the Power Manager on the Thinkpad recognized the battery! I didn't expect that and was impressed. The manager says that the battery's good for 47.34Wh while the specifications claimed 49Wh, indicating some minor deterioration while the battery was sitting at Amazon's warehouse. On initial charge, the battery indicator said the battery's only good for 2 hours, but after 4 charge cycles it now says 3 hours. This is more than good enough for my general use of the laptop, and comparable to the OEM battery.

Newer machines such as the Surface Pro and Macbooks no longer have user-replaceable batteries, making it worth while to hang onto older machines such as the Lenovo Thinkpad for as long as you can. The Anker goes a long way towards helping that out. Recommended.

Review: Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Capital in the Twenty-First Century is Thomas Piketty's magnum opus about the future of capitalism and the implications thereof. It is by far and away the best book I've read this year, and I doubt if I'll read a better book in this decade. It's a combination of economics, political economy, history, literature analysis (of Jane Austen and Honore Balzac no less) and big-data analysis that had me getting up early to read it. In my younger days, I would have devoured this book non-stop in a matter of days, ignoring food, sleep, and work. It is more exciting than any combination of science fiction novels, and in many ways fulfills the idea of economics as psychohistory.

The central premise of the book is the inequality r > g. Through human history, while growth rates have usually been around 1%, the return on capital has usually been around 5% (in real terms, not nominal terms). You might question this 5% number as contradicting Bernstein's 2% number. Note that Bernstein's numbers includes major catastrophes, such as the world wars wiping out most assets in Europe. From a personal finance point of view, such events usually mean that you care a lot more about staying alive than your portfolio! The implications on wealth accumulation is fairly straightforward: if you can accumulate capital such that you can live on less than 5% over a long period of time, you can reinvest the remainder of your capital income and grow well above the growth rate of the economy, leaving you not only with increasing assets, but also freeing you and your heirs from ever having to work for an income ever again. In the extreme case (let's say you're Bill Gates), you can live on 0.01% of your income from capital and essentially reinvest all the proceeds, creating dynastic level wealth. The Hiltons, Kennedys, Rockefellers, and Kochs are of course in this category.

Wait a minute, you say, isn't the world GDP growth more than 3%? Isn't China growing at 7-8%? This is where historical data comes in. Piketty provides convincing evidence that these numbers can only occur because of (1) population growth, and (2) catchup with the modern economies. In other words, Europe could only grow at 6-8% a year until it caught up with the USA at the frontier of technology and infrastructure, at which point it devolved down to 1-1.5% growth. The same happened to Japan, and will happen to China. It's reasonable to expect the world to degenerate to that case eventually, but the developed world is already there.

Even more impressively, Piketty has current data. This data in particular, shows that the top 1% in Europe and USA already own more than 70% of the capital assets in their respective economic arenas. Even worse, there's reasonable evidence that because of the existence of tax havens, these estimates are low. Piketty analyzes total capital known to be in existence, and reveals that the world owes more money than exists in developed country accounts. The remainder of the dark capital exists in tax havens and is likely to be around 10% of global wealth.

How bad can things get? Here, Piketty turns to history for data and to literature to make it real. This section of the book is impressive and amazing to read. During the Gilded Age (called Belle Epoque in the book), the wealthy commanded 90% of the capital in their respective countries. Fully half of the population (then and now) owned essentially nothing or had a negative net-worth, and there was no middle class. There was effectively no inflation, which explained why Austen and Balzac would provide numbers in terms of income for the characters in their novels and expect readers to understand what situations each character was in. Worse, there was no way for anyone to get ahead by hard work or education: even judges could at most make 5 to 7 times the average income, compared to the wealthy heirs and heiresses who would have 30 to 60 times the average income from the capital they inherited. Hence, the plots of those novels always involved marrying someone so wealthy that they could provide a dignified existence (meaning that they could hire enough servants to take care of the needs of daily living, given the non-existence of refrigeration, cars, etc).

Lest you think that this state of affairs could only occur because of a stagnant technology, Piketty reminds the reader that automobiles, steam engines, etc. were all invented during this period. It was hardly a period of stagnation. Yet because all new technology required capital, the inventors didn't make off with the lion's share of the profits.

So how did the situation change? Was it the progressive income tax? Was it the introduction of inflation? The answer was that it took 2 world wars to essentially destroy most of the existing capital stock in Europe in order for a more egalitarian post-war generation to exist. This essentially created a middle class that owned about 40% of the wealth and consisted of 40% of the population. 50% of the population continued to own no property, while the top 10% owns 60% of the wealth. In the U.S., punitive taxation levels of 90% kept inequality low, essentially keeping the American middle class from suffering the same fate. Piketty points out that the 90% tax rate was hardly ever paid. Instead, what it did was to keep executives (who essentially set their own pay) from asking for compensation at that level. When those tax rates were dismantled in the 1980s, CEO and other executive compensation sky-rocketed in response.

So how does the world look going forward? It looks grim. We are currently in a situation where in the US and Europe, capital from inheritances and capital from savings through work average about 50%. By 2050, if things don't change, we could easily see a return to inequality levels seen during the Gilded Age: most high net-worth households will be those who are inherited, and once again, your path to success would lie mostly in marrying rich rather than hard work and entrepreneurship. The dystopia of Blade Runner or Elysium never looked more likely than through Piketty's statistics. To balance that out a bit, Piketty points out that the European and US welfare states do cushion the blow somewhat: elderly poverty is down substantially since social security was introduced, and the European safety nets are even more generous. Of course, there's no shortage of the usual suspects wanting to tear that down...

Is there any possibility of change? Piketty proposes a global tax on capital, essentially a wealth tax. This is by far the most disappointing section of the book, not because such an idea wouldn't work, but because the political climate just wouldn't allow it. Furthermore, he works in lots of other issues that have very little with inequality and other topics covered by the book. For instance, he covers ways to pay down the national debts of various countries with a one-time exceptional tax. Since Piketty is French, he spends a lot of time discussing the Euro and the need for Eurozone cooperation and sanctions against tax havens, which is an international problem.

But seriously, that's a small nit on the book. I haven't even covered many of the side-topics that Piketty covers in the book. For instance, there's a huge discussion of slavery in the US in the antebellum South. This was a tour de force, as Piketty shows how much wealth slaveholders had: essentially, the northern US states were poor compared with old Europe, but the southern US states were wealthier, and of course, with a correspondingly higher wealth inequality. There cannot be more impoverishment than the inability to own even your own labor, and Piketty's statistics and graphs show the benefit of being on the other side of that equation in stark relief.

Piketty also discusses the American education system in contrast with the European systems, and how elite American colleges perpetuate the inequality that already exist in society: the majority of their incoming students come from the top quartile of society. He does point out the advantages of charging insanely high tuition, so you do get something for your money. Nevertheless, this goes a long way towards understanding why elite American colleges' acceptance tests seem very similar to the old-school European finishing school, complete with piano-playing and other tests of altruism and "leadership." They essentially have not drifted too far from those original prototypical elite institutions.

Finally, is there anything practical you can learn about personal finance in this economics book? The answer is yes. The first of which is that real-estate is a mug's game. Today's real-estate yields about 3-4%. Why so low when all other capital earns 4-5% real returns? The answer: real-estate is the only capital today subject to Piketty's wealth-tax. That wealth tax seems small: 1-1.5% of property value per year. But since it's levied every year, it imposes a drag on performance that's much higher than the capital gains tax, which are the subject of inter-state competition and hence tends towards zero over the long term. Piketty points out that the higher up the wealth ladder you go, the lower the proportion of real estate owned in the portfolio because of these characteristics. In other words, it's better to be equity-heavy and house poor than equity-light and house rich. The other lessons are fairly obvious: you want to have the lowest costs possible (both in investment costs and living expenses) so that your capital has the highest chance to compound. The bigger your portfolio, the faster the money will grow: Piketty points out that there's no difference in performance between Bill Gate's portfolio and Liliane Bettencourt's portfolio, even though one was a brilliant entrepreneur and the other is the heiress of the L'Oreal fortune. Capital is indifferent as to how you came by it. Furthermore, the largest portfolios grow the fastest. The elite university endowments for instance, grow at 8-10% a year, since once you get past a certain size you can take advantage not only of relatively expensive wealth managers through economies of scale, but you also have the ability to buy illiquid assets that cannot be easily sold and hence command a risk premium.

In the writing of this review, my biggest fear is that I haven't convinced you that you must read this book. Not only does it give you tools with which to analyze the world (and Jane Austen's novels --- you might even be able to avoid having to read them at all, since Piketty does such a great job of picking out the essentials), it also gives you the context of why we are still feeling the effects of world war 2, 70 years after the event.

Highly recommended. Pay whatever price you have to, ignore whatever pressing assignments you have to, read this book. It is that good, and whether or not you disagree with the politics, there's plenty in here for you to exercise your intellectual muscle on. Go to it.

Review: Anker 40W 5-Port Desktop USB charger

We have 3 tablets, 2 phones, 2 kindles, an external battery pack, a camera and several more electronic items in the house, all chargeable via USB. We had chargers scattered all over the house but still somehow never had enough chargers for everything. Worse, some chargers could only charge low power device, so we would plug some devices into certain chargers and they wouldn't charge and we wouldn't realize it until much later.

If my name was Dan Wallach, I would buy a wireless charging pad and spend millions of dollars (after including institutional overhead) retrofitting all my devices to take wireless charging. Fortunately for you, my name isn't Dan Wallach and I'm a lot cheaper than he is, so I opted for the Anker 40W 5 Port charger instead, which at $26 ($20 on sale if you can find a coupon).

The device looked huge on Amazon's website, but in practice it's fairly small:  about the size of a deck of cards. What's nice about having so much power is that you can effectively get 2 amps or more a port, which means that you don't have to fuss around with which port would charge which device: they'd all work for any of the devices. In addition, unlike cheap chargers that come with your phone, these don't draw parasitic power when nothing's plugged in.

This device is so handy, I can see myself bringing it along on sailing trips or car trips. (Not cycling trips though!)

Recommended, if your name isn't Dan Wallach.

Review: NewTrent 90C

On the tour of the alps this year, I had 4 devices that regularly needed charging via USB: the Garmin Edge 800, the Nokia 521, the Sony RX100, and the Dell Venue 8 Pro. Add to that my CPAP machine, and I was going to either carry way too many adapters or certain things would simply go uncharged.

The solution: the NewTrent 90C. A high powered dual-USB charger that uses only one power socket but can charge 2 devices at once. Only one of the USB sockets is high powered, so I had to use that one for the tablet, but could easily swap between the others. Since the Edge charged the fastest and was something that was needed nearly every day, we'd first charge that.

The Dell Venue 8 Pro was power hungry, especially since I imported photos every day, so that usually went on the charger whenever I wasn't using it. The phone usually went on the charger only just before retiring to bed, and the camera got a charge whenever I remembered to charge it, which was about every 3 days.

All through the tour, the charger never so much as heated up, no matter what I threw at it. In terms of weight savings for $10, it's probably one of the best bang for the buck you can find on a bike tour.

Recommended.

Review: i-Bert Safe-T Seat

It's almost getting to the point where Bowen has to go to pre-school, which is about 4 miles away. I'd been riding him around locally with the Weeride Kangaroo seat, but I found that I was just tall enough that my knees kept hitting the seat. For short rides, no problem, but if I was going to deliver Bowen on a regular basis to pre-school by bike, I'd better fix it.

The first thing to do was to switch to an off-set seat post and shove the saddle all the way back. That made it so that my knee wouldn't hit as hard, but if I raised my seat to the proper riding height, I would still hit the seat with my knee.

I finally gave up and ended up with the iBert Safe-T seat. The first thing you notice when you install this seat is that it's wobbly. So much so that I was worried about the safety of the thing and had Pardo drop by to take a look at it. After examination, he pronounced the Safe-T seat safe to use as long as you didn't exceed the weight limits (about 40 pounds). The wobble looked alarming but actually goes away when you load the seat with a real toddler.

With this seat, my knees barely graze the seat when set at proper riding height. It also has the advantage of being easier to secure and put a toddler in and out of it. And I can now ride at almost normal riding speed: obviously you can't go full tilt with a toddler in it: that adds a good 25 pounds or so to the bike!

Recommended. We've been using it almost daily and been quite satisfied.

Review: T-mobile postpaid international roaming plan

As previously mentioned, the plan this year was to use my Nokia 521 phone in Europe in conjunction with the T-mobile post-paid all you can eat plan along with international roaming (unlimited data, unlimited SMS, $0.20 per minute). Because there were 3 of us, we all signed up under the family plan, paying about $120/month after taxes. That's about $40/month, which would be like buying a SIM card for 10 euros for 3 different countries. Given that we visited Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Lichtenstein, we broke even.

We tested the plan on 3 different phones. Hina carried and iPhone, Arturo carried a Nexus 5, and I carried the afore-mentioned Nokia. We had data on all 3. We relied mostly on SMS to communicate with each other, though I used Skype alot when texting or calling my wife at home. Skype voice over a 2G network is sucky, but text messages worked fine, and I wasn't going to make huge long phone calls until I got wifi anyway.

Surprisingly enough, the glitches came whenever I tried to sign up for free wifi networks that required SMS for registration. No matter what I tried (routing through Google voice or giving the "real phone number" for the phone), I could never register for the wifi at the Zurich airport or at certain hotels. Fortunately, I had workarounds in both cases, but it was nothing short of annoying.

Other than that, however, the plan worked well, had no hidden fees, and whenever we needed to make a phone call at $0.20 per minute, we were more than happy to pay the charge. This was the first tour where we didn't spend substantial time getting SIM cards in every country, and it was definitely worth it.

Lots of people have complained about T-mobile's coverage in the US. But to my mind, that's the wrong trade-off. The times when you most want good phone coverage is when you travel, especially internationally where you're not familiar with the area. If you really wanted a post-paid plan, the T-mobile trade-off is probably the best you can find today.

Highly recommended.

Ultra Long Term Review: Garmin Edge 800

It is the nature of electronics that they tend to be short-lived. Most people don't hang on to their phones more than 2 years, and in some cases like Android phones, software support lags even before then. It is therefore a testament to the build quality and utility of the Garmin Edge 800 that I'm writing this long term review 3 years from when I bought the unit.

Of course, I'm very much aware that the smartphone is currently the most used bike computer in the world. But if that describes you, you're probably not much of a cyclist, and have no reason to read this blog entry. I buy bike computers to do 1000 mile tours, not to post on social networks and brag about my rides.

The device has survived 2 tours of the Alps, countless numbers of day rides, include some mountain bike rides. Since buying the NT navigator for Europe, I haven't spent any additional money on the device. You don't tend to buy or update maps for cycling because by and large, cycling roads just don't change. I've never felt the need for more up to date maps on the device.

The device did corrupt its own boot sector once, during the Downieville ride. I resolved the problem using Garmin's website, essentially reformatting the device and starting over. There's been quite a few firmware updates since, and I haven't seen the need to do so since.

Since I bought the device, Garmin has introduced several new units: Garmin Edge 810, Garmin Edge 1000, and the Garmin Edge Touring are just 3 of the new units most likely to interest those who've bought the Edge 800, which is still available at a significant discount.

During the Tour of the Alps this year, both Arturo and Hina brought along the later model Edge 810. The big feature of this newer unit is blue-tooth integration. The unit can sync with your Android or iPhone and then upload to Garmin's website without you having to find a wifi hotspot or bring along a Windows tablet. Since I wasn't bringing either of those types of phone, I wouldn't have been able to use this feature anyway. Furthermore, Hina ended up using my tablet to upload, for a number of reasons, and her device lost some data. So buying a newer unit doesn't mean you will never have to plug it into the PC: you still have to do that in order to get the latest and greatest firmware!

Furthermore, despite all the tweaking we managed to do on Tour, Arturo's Garmin unit used battery far more aggressively than my old unit. I would regularly end the day with 55-65% of the battery left, while his unit despite being newer would end the day with at most 30-45% of the battery. At first we thought it was brightness, then the autostop. We ended up suspecting the bluetooth connection to the phone. Regardless, the 810 does not have as good a battery life as the 800.

Of the remaining units, the Edge Touring is missing several features of the Edge, including power meter integration and speed sensor cadence compatibility. Neither of those features are essential to me, though I do have a GSC10, which would have been incompatible with the Edge Touring.

The Edge 1000 is recently introduced, but was apparently rushed to market as reviews indicate that it is a very buggy unit. If you're actually going to tour with a unit, given Garmin's record of lackluster reliability amongst newly introduce units, I wouldn't recommend going with the 1000.

As you can see, I think the Garmin Edge 800 is an unusually robust unit that holds up better than many later introduced units. It's a lot like the 1993 Bridgestone RB-1: it was better than any of the predecessors as well as its successors as well. If you know me, that is the highest praise I can give any device.

Recommended with the highest honors.

Convergence

Microsoft's Surface Pro is a bet that convergence will lead to a device that blends a laptop and a tablet. I'm both a fan of the Surface Pro and the Dell Venue 8 Pro, both of which do things that neither tablet nor phone can do. However, I believe that Microsoft's approach is at best flawed.

The convergence I'm betting on is between tablet and phone. I noticed this when my wife, who owns a Galaxy Note 2, the above mentioned Venue 8 Pro, and the Surface Pro would either use the Galaxy Note 2 (for general surfing, quick purchases, or Facebook) or the Surface Pro (for general content creation). But her mode of use of the Surface Pro is that of a desktop: usually tethered to a large monitor, rather than as a tablet. While many have complained about the battery life on the Surface Pro, she's never even noticed, indicating that the disconnected operation time is minimal.

This makes sense: the Galaxy Note 2 is already fast enough compared to the Venue 8 Pro, and the screen size at 5 inches is also comparable that to the Venue's 8 inch form factor. For watching movies, etc., they're both already pretty good (though the Note 2 is a 1080p while the Venue 8 Pro's a bit less at 1280x800), and the Note 2's handy stylus is much easier to access than the Venue 8's. The reason why 8" tablets took off is the price: while the Galaxy Note 2 was close to $600, you can get a Venue 8 Pro at around $200, or a third of the price. But you sacrifice considerable functionality to get there: you no longer have always on internet, the resolution of the screen doesn't go up commensurately, and things like bluetooth are much clunkier.

More importantly, you only have so many hours in the day, and you've got a lot more experience with the phone than the tablet. So even though the tablet might be better for some things (e.g., the Venue 8 Pro's tablet's browser is superior and is a real web browser, unlike the Galaxy Note 2's), you might not waste time picking it up unless there was a specific use case, such as a web site that just refuse to be viewed via the Galaxy Note 2's.

So what I think Microsoft needs to work on is a 5.5" (or 6"!) phone running a full on version of Windows with appropriate software. Such a device might even have a port for an external monitor. At $600-$800, such a device would clearly be superior to existing tablets and phones, and I might even consider getting one. This device could easily eliminate the need to carry a phone, tablet, and laptop. Of course, getting sufficient battery life and power out of such a device might be a technical challenge, but it's one that's suited very much to Microsoft's engineering team.

Tour Review: Michelin Pro Race 3 Tire

I brought the Michelin Pro Race 3 tire on tour with misgivings. The last few times I'd brought 25mm tires on tour, they'd resulted in shredded tires and I'd have to use a spare to finish the tour. I brought a spare this time as well, but did not need it. The tire handled on and off-road riding, including much road construction debris with aplomb. I descended several wet roads and did not feel any loss of wet traction, but I wasn't pushing the limits in those circumstances either.

I've since come home and ridden the tires on the bike off pavement, and the tires are still going strong, despite 2000km of riding on them at this point, of which 1600km were loaded in alpine conditions. The tire's likely to wear out within the next week, and I'll be replacing it with a Michelin Pro 4. It's clear that if you exceed 2000km of touring in the alps, you will need to bring a spare or rotate the tires to avoid going into the threads.

Come to think of it, when I previously shredded tires in the Alps, it wasn't on Michelins. It was with Avocets. I can highly recommend the Michelin tires, and would happily do another tour on them.

Long Term Review: Garmin GSC10

I bought the Garmin GSC 10 several years ago in the hopes that it would improve accuracy of tracking for the Garmin GPS. On this year's tour, I discovered that it's not designed for wheels with 15 gauge swaged spokes. I use thin, swaged spokes because they build stronger wheels, so it was disappointing to discover that the magnet on the GSC10 swings about on the thing spokes.

I would still have kept using the GSC10 on tour if whenever the GSC10 failed to register the magnet, the Garmin head unit would switch to using the GPS and record distance that way. Unfortunately, when that happens, the Garmin head unit would register 0 distance and 0 speed, and I lost about 10km of route data that way. This result made me turn off the GSC10 and deregister it from my bike for half of the 2014 Tour of the Alps.

I happily use this unit when I'm at home, since it's no big deal to lose some information here and there until I stop and adjust the magnet. But when touring, it's a big nono. I expect not to use this unit on tour in the future.

Epilogue and Conclusion: Tour of the Alps 2014

It was a chore getting the bike box and my suit case back to David's apartment, so I was glad that Arturo came along to help. Packing the bike went easily, however. David brought us to his favorite restaurant in the area. It was strange having to cut back on the amount of food we consumed, since we were no longer going to be eating enough for 6000 calories per day.

That night, rain poured in Zurich, but the next morning it held off on the rain long enough for Arturo and I to get the bike box down to the street and for me to walk the 15 minutes to the Wetzikon train station towing the two suitcases. I took advantage of half-tax card one last time to buy a reduced fare card to the airport, then bought chocolate for Bowen and Xiaoqin back home. This time, my bike did not get lost in transit.

Arturo stayed in Switzerland for another week, hoping to climb the Matterhorn, but fresh snow prevented him from making the climb again. The day after I left, it poured again in Zurich, turning the Sihl into a torrent of water.

This trip was 1687.12km (1048 miles) and 32969.6m (108168 feet) of climb in 22 riding days, of which we had 3 days interrupted by weather and 1 day interrupted by a crash. We had 1 flat tire and1 mechanical due to a derailleur cable coming loose. My bike got lost in transit on the way to Zurich costing us a full day and a half of riding. In terms of mileage it far exceeded the benchmark 2007 tour despite us being weaker than the 2007 team because we had more riding days, but the toll of the years clearly left their mark: we did not do nearly as much climbing. We had much better weather as well,, having no days where we couldn't do any riding because of rain, snow, sleet, or hail. We explored new roads and found some new hotels that I thought were very exciting.

For Arturo, it was notably his first tour, and all through the trip, he was setting new records for longest day on the bike, furthest distance, most climbing, etc. He said that the first few days were terrifying as the descents were scary and the first climb up to Rosenlaui was surprisingly difficult. The biggest lesson for him, he said, was that cycling kills contact lenses. He brought what he thought were an excessive number of contacts,but wore through them so quickly that he was dangerously close to running out at the end. Hiking trips understandably do not expose your eyes to hours of 30mph winds, and despite his protective eyewear it simply wasn't enough. In the past, folks on my trips brought daily wear contacts, so didn't experience this as a problem. He also bonked multiple times on the trip, mostly because he simply wasn't used to having to eat the volumes of food necessary to fuel a cycling tour. Cycling is a deliberately inefficient activity: cyclists trade off fuel efficiency in favor of being able to ride faster all day, and if you're used to hiking having to eat the huge amounts of food just to keep going is not common. The jolting action of walking or climbing prevents you from being able to eat and digest the volumes of food that cyclists regularly down while touring.

I lost 5 pounds on the trip, but for the first time didn't lose strength, indicating that this time, either I ate enough or my metabolism had finally slowed to the point where I was no longer losing muscle by working this hard, or that the tour was indeed easier than in past years where I lost this much weight. Arturo lost 9 pounds. This was by far the best tour in recent years. I'd failed to replicate the 2007 tour in recent years because of weather conditions, and it was good to see that in good weather, this tour is just as pretty as I remembered it.

Few cyclists choose to ride the Alps the way we do, but the ones that do are rewarded by views of some of the most beautiful places on earth as well as the complete freedom to explore as the weather requires. The photos do not do it justice. You have to see it in person to understand.

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