Camera Bag - 2023 Edition

I last wrote about my camera bag in 2020, and not a lot has shifted, but probably enough to have an update post about it!

Since my last time writing about this bag, I’ve moved from Android to iOS, and I’ve been shooting with the X100V for a lot longer. The Peak Design 3L Everyday Sling is still the bag of choice, holding just enough for my small kit. Here’s what’s in the bag now:

  • Fujifilm X100V

    • JJC Filter Adapter and hood

    • Tiffen Black Pro Mist 1/4 49mm filter

    • 128GB Samsung EVO Select SD card

    • Peak Design Leash

  • Fujifilm TCL-X100 and WCL-X100

    • B+W MRC Nano Clear filters on each adapter

  • Fujifilm EF-X20 flash w/ case

  • Microfibre cloth

  • 2x Neewer Fuji batteries

  • Business cards

  • Airtag

  • DIY flash gel kit

  • Big Idea Design Titanium Pocket Tool

  • GUS pill fob with some OTC meds (Ibuprofen, benadryl, etc)

  • External straps for the sling

  • 49mm filter holder

    • B+W MRC Nano Clear Filter

    • NiSi True Color Pro Nano circular Polarizer

  • Tom Bihn Ghost Whale Small

    • Mophie 6000mah power bank

    • Anker USB-C to USB-C 3ft

    • Anker USB-C to Lightning 3ft

    • Lightning SD Card Reader

    • Anker Powerport Nano III 30w

  • Tom Bin Ghost Whale Super Mini

    • Ray-Ban Folding Wayfarers

This setup basically affords me everything I need to shoot and edit remotely for an indefinite amount of time, and also doubles as a day-bag and a tech-bag while travelling with photography in mind. Lightroom Mobile and Adobe cloud really are game changers when it comes to keeping it light, and modern phones with powerful and efficient processors and great screens make it very easy to get solid basic edits while in the field.

I’ve got more tweaks to make (67mm filters anyone?), but for the time being I’ve been pretty content with the kit!

Home Server 2023: Secondary Node

My secondary DNS server was running on a Pi 3B+, however I really found doing a docker pull was taking a while to download and extract due to the limited hardware specs. In some cases I was seeing 10+ minute extract times… I decided to take advantage of another refurbished PC to replace the Pi, and managed an HP EliteDesk 800 G2 mini desktop for under $200 shipped with the below specs:

  • Intel Core i5 6400T

  • 16GB DDR4 RAM

  • 256GB SATA SSD

It’s cool, it’s quiet, it’s compact, and it’s got a load of RAM for whatever it ends up getting used for other than secondary DNS. For the time being I’ve put Proxmox on it and had my secondary DNS server setup in with Docker in about half an hour. I may consider trying out Frigate on this with Intel GPU acceleration, and I will likely also use this node for a lot of dev stuff I want to try out rather than doing it on the main host.

Home Server 2023: RAM and Storage Upgrades

I suppose this was all planned, however I didn’t really expect it to come up so quickly. Such is life when you come across some sweet deals though! I ended up adding a 16GB kit of DDR4 bringing my RAM to 32GB which should give me some room for more VMs/containers when it comes up, but more importantly, more room for 4K transcode cache. It’s still undecided if this makes a big difference, but updating the MediaStack container to 16GB of available memory lets me map about half of that to a transcode directory. All in the RAM came to under $50 shipped.

22TB for less than $400? I regret not getting two!

The other upgrade added was 22TB of spinning disk storage courtesy of Western Digital. I grabbed one of the 22TB Western Digital My Books for a ridiculously cheap $360 shipped due to a coupon stacking error. After verifying the drive was functional I shucked it and ended up with a 22TB white label enterprise class 7200RPM helium-filled drive. It found it’s way very quickly into the server and after a bit of fiddling around was mounted and accessible. My only issue was how do I present two drives to Plex at the same time in a seamless way? Mapping libraries in different drives is a pain, and the wait time for a fresh file being copied from the SSD to the HDD isn’t a solid user experience. On top of that copies could introduce I/O overhead, possibly leading to stuttering, again, another user experience no-go. I decided to go with MergerFS.

MergerFS is a union file system that can present multiple mounts as a single mount point to software. It handles writing data to different drives in different methods. In my case, I’ve got it setup to present both the SSD and the HDD as a single mount point, and MergerFS writes all data to it’s “first found” drive. With my configuration First Found is the SSD. I setup a cron job that runs daily at 5AM to move files older than 14 days off the SSD and onto the HDD, then cleans up empty directories. This should accomplish a few things:

  • New content is downloaded and served off fast storage.

  • Content being downloaded while content is being streamed should have minimal impact to the streaming experience due to the high IOPS of an SSD.

  • Older content is moved automatically during low/no use times to ensure no user experience impact.

  • The SSD is regularly cleaned keeping storage usage there to a minimum, allowing me to use it for other things like serving up my Lightroom back catalog over the network.

  • A single disk loss doesn’t mean all data on the other disks is lost. This is better than a JBOD but not as good as RAID, which is perfectly fine for a media server.

So far this has been working great. Initial copy of back catalog content saw an average write speed just over 200mb/s, which is awesome for a spinning disk. Content streamed from the spinning disk is served relatively quick with no noticeable user impact. The move script has been executing daily without issue as well. Looking forward to seeing how long it takes to chew through this much space!

Home Server 2023: VPN

My home network has some pretty sweet features! It’s got my files, my services, whole home ad-blocking, and DNS over HTTPS. I love these features when I’m at home, so why not get them while I’m out too? I accomplished all this with Cloudflare DNS and PiVPN.

PiVPN and Wireguard - a lightweight, easy to configure setup!

PiVPN is a script for setting up a lightweight, hardened and automatically updating VPN environment on either OpenVPN or Wireguard. It’s designed to be run on a Raspberry Pi and PiOS, but since it’s basically just Debian I ended up using it and throwing it onto an unprivileged Debian container. I used Wireguard since it’s lightweight and easy to setup, and went through the install really quickly with the below command:

curl -L https://install.pivpn.io | bash

I followed the prompts on screen to setup and configure for Wireguard, included my URL for VPN access, and kept most of the rest as defaults. Once I finished that I grabbed a Cloudflare DDNS updater script:

git clone https://github.com/K0p1-Git/cloudflare-ddns-updater.git

Configured it quickly with my URL and API key, then setup a cron job to run every 5 minutes.

I added a config file to PiVPN for my iPhone, installed the app, scanned the QR code, and configured the VPN to connect automatically whenever not connected to my home WiFi SSID. The result? Seamless VPN connectivity when I’m away from home and an experience that’s just like I’m on my home network - DNS based ad-blocking, DNS over HTTPS, and access to all my local services! Speeds are basically line speed - Easily up to 1gbps. I setup configs for my iPad and Macbook as well, so they’re ready to go when I am. Overall this was an incredibly easy setup and the benefits are astounding. The fact that it “just works” as well is great and really drives home the user experience focus of what I strive to achieve with my home network.

Home Server 2023: Photo Backups

I’ve got a good terabyte of RAW photos I’m sitting on. They’ve had various homes throughout the years, from spinning disks, to SATA SSDs, to most recently a 2TB Samsung T5 USB SSD. I discussed my photo workflow a bit in this post here, but I didn’t detail how I kept these images backed up. For the longest while I’ve been relying on Amazon cloud photos running on my desktop to keep things synced to an online source, and with unlimited RAW storage for Prime members, it was a no-brainer. With the move over to the Macbook Pro and my storage sitting on a non-internal drive, I haven’t been running that. So I want to get started again on the backups now that I have the home server up and running, and I’m going to be trying to follow the 3-2-1 rule for data backups of my Lightroom classic catalog:

The basis here is you should create three separate copies of your data - A working copy, and two backups, with one of those backups located off site. I’ll be doing things slightly differently but still keeping things in the spirit of the rule:

  • My working copy will stay on the Samsung T5 portable SSD

  • I’ll be storing two backups on the home server, one to the 4TB SSD, and a copy from that made on the soon to be had 22TB Western Digital hard drive that will be in within a week or two.

  • I’ll be doing a daily backup from the server to a cloud storage provider like Backblaze or Wasabi.

For the Macbook to home server backups, I’ve created an unprivileged Debian container running Samba, and threw a mount point onto the 4TB SSD. I’ve also built a shell script to rclone the RAW file directory to the Samba share if my Macbook is A: docked and B: has the external SSD attached. The shell script is also setup to push a notification to me via Pushover on a successful backup with the details of the backup included:

function push {
    curl -s -F "token=APPTOKENHERE" \
    -F "user=USERTOKENHERE" \
    -F "title=Photo Library Backup Notification" \
    -F "message=$1" https://api.pushover.net/1/messages.json
}

MOUNTCHECK=$(df | awk '' | grep "/Volumes/External SSD")
ETHERNETCHECK=$(networksetup -listallhardwareports | grep "Thunderbolt Ethernet Slot 2")
TIMESTAMP=`date "+%Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S"`
if [[ -z $MOUNTCHECK || -z $ETHERNETCHECK ]]; then
    echo "$TIMESTAMP INFO : One or more dependencies not available, not attempting backup." >> /path/to/log.txt 2>&1
    if [[ -z $MOUNTCHECK ]]; then
        echo "$TIMESTAMP INFO : The SSD is not mounted to /Volumes/External SSD." >> /path/to/log.txt 2>&1
    fi
    if [[ -z $ETHERNETCHECK ]]; then
        echo "$TIMESTAMP INFO : The computer is not docked." >> /path/to/log.txt 2>&1
    fi
    exit
else
    echo "$TIMESTAMP INFO : Depdendencies available, backing up photos to SMB share..." >> /path/to/log.txt 2>&1
    rclone copy --local-no-set-modtime --log-file=/path/to/log.txt 2>&1 --log-level INFO "/Volumes/External SSD/LightRoomPhotos" "photos:photos"
    OUT=$(tail -n 6 /path/to/log.txt | tr -s '[:blank:]' | tr "\t" " " )
    push "$OUT"
    exit
fi

I can pretty easily get this running daily at 2AM or whenever I decide it’ll be running by using launchd on MacOS. Considering I really only have this drive connected when I’m ingesting content from Creative Cloud into Lightroom Classic, I can just be sure to leave it connected overnight the day I do and the backup should happen. Logging is also setup so I can review as necessary.

Once it hits my Samba share, I’ll have a cron job on the Debian container running daily to rclone the directory over to the 22TB drive, and also schedule a currently undecided backup solution to run a backup on the SSD data to sync up to either Wasabi or Backblaze B2. I’m considering Restic for my backup option here, but will be exploring the options available before jumping.

Overall I think this will give me an advantage of being able to work off relatively fast local storage when I need to touch my Lightroom back catalog, while also maintaining a number of backups on my server and on the cloud. I’m also not tied to a network drive for working off my Lightroom back catalog in this case too!

It was a lot of fun learning more about zsh, how to use the Pushover API via curl, and getting all these little things working like rclone and Samba. It’s been a while since I dug in deep with this at home and it’s refreshing, and I really needed the refresher too!

Home Server 2023: DNS Infrastructure

It’s been a while since posting anything overly technical, so I figured I’d drop a couple posts over the next few weeks about the new addition to the basement, a home server.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a home server, but dabbling in HomeAssistant desires to cut down on our streaming services led me back down the rabbit hole of building an all in one box for home use. I was able to snag an HP Elite Desk 800 G3 Small Form Factor about a month ago for $360 shipped with the below specs:

  • Intel Core i7 7700

  • 16GB DDR4

  • 256GB SSD

I ditched the 256GB SATA SSD and threw in a 512GB NVMe drive along with a 4TB Samsung 870 EVO SATA drive that we picked up for very little money, and threw Proxmox on it. The rest has been a lot of fun figuring out various technologies and working to build something that “just works”. My first fun project was redundant whole home ad-blocking with a few pi-hole instances! I run one in a Debian container on the Proxmox host itself and the other is running on my Raspberry Pi 3b+ that was previously used for my Home Assistant install.

The above diagram is a quick overview of how the install works currently. Some notes:

  • All Docker containers are running on non-root UIDs and GIDs.

  • Diun and the Docker Socket Proxy are on their own network, and the proxy is only exposing the required parts of the socket to Diun.

  • Diun notifies of image updates by throwing a notification to Discord every Monday at 10AM.

  • The primary and secondary Pi-holes are setup with Gravity Sync to ensure allow and block lists along with local DNS is kept in sync between the two nodes.

  • Duplicati is backing up the config directories for the containers on host daily to OneDrive.

  • Locally on the primary Pi-hole container a cron job is run to update the allow list daily for URLs that are known to be safe.

  • The Pi-Holes are subscribed to a number of block lists to ensure a wide swath of trackers, malicious content providers, ads, and suspicious content is blocked.

The whole thing is very easy to tear down and spin up quickly, and updates are all completed with a quick docker compose pull && docker compose up -d. I can update on a per-node basis too, staggering things to ensure there’s no ill effects.

A couple of things I want to switch out though:

  • I want to replace Duplicati with Restic or something similar running on the hosts. I’ve read some horror stories of Duplicati restores.

  • I’d also like to do daily backups to OneDrive and monthly backups to Backblaze B2 or Wasabi, once I get that up and running for my photo backups.

  • I’ve recently moved to Pushover for push notifications, so I’d also like to move from Discord to Pushover for my Diun notifications. It’s fairly trivial to tie Pushover into shell scripts as well (I’ll detail this in a future post), so any job running that’s deemed important I’d like to integrate push notifications into.

Overall so far I’ve been pretty happy with the performance of the Pi-hole stacks and getting more familiar with Docker has shown me just how powerful the platform can be for building out solutions quickly. It’s also great to get user feedback when they start noticing there’s no more ads in their Android games!


Post Trip Report: Onebag to Halifax

We did 4 days 3 nights in Halifax. Now that we’ve moved to New Brunswick, this really wasn’t a huge trip, but I still had a lot of fun planning out a packing list and a capsule wardrobe for the it!

The eternal struggle of getting a good photo at Peggy’s Cove. We did beat the tour bus convoy though!

We were pretty lucky with some reasonable weather the whole time, mostly sunny, low teens for temperature, little wind. Our transportation there and back was the bus, and our main purpose of the trip was to drop my wife’s parents off at the airport for their trip back to India. This go around I wanted to concentrate on a smaller pack (20L) and also test out a capsule wardrobe from a new favourite brand, Ministry of Supply. We kept is pretty casual, with mostly city based activities (A lot of restaurants and bars!) along with a trip to Peggy’s Cove for the Wife’s parents.

A not-so-visually-pleasing photo of the 20L classic in our Airbnb. Bellroy replaced my Charcoal model with the black option when I noticed some fraying on the strap - No complaints on the colorway!

For a packing list I tried to streamline while giving myself a number of options for different looks over four days, targeting a slightly more dressed up look than I normally go for. My bag of choice was my Bellroy Classic Backpack coming in at 20L, and everything fit comfortably. For clothing, I went with below, most stuffed into a Peak Design medium packing cube:

Monochromatic! Not pictured here is the shoes and jackets.

2x Ministry of Supply Composite Merino Tees, Heathered Grey - 1 worn, 1 packed. Although these are only 15% merino they’re pretty anti-stink for me, and 2 was plenty for rotation over the few days we were away. Overall they’re durable due to the high poly content, dry quickly, and fit well. Great base layer.

Ministry of Supply Apollo Button Down, White - Packed. This was an awesome layering option and looked very smart on it’s own or with a pullover on top. Can be worn buttoned or unbuttoned over a tee.

Ministry of Supply Atlas Crew Neck Pullover, Grey - Worn. This was a great warm layer that has some visually interesting details on the shoulders. Mostly merino it provided a good bit of thermal regulation and worked great over a shirt or under a jacket.

Ministry of Supply Kinetic Joggers, Black - Packed. Stylish looking, great stretch, provided a slightly more formal option for dining at nicer spots. I really could have cut these in favor of the 5 pockets exclusively, but it was nice to switch up for a few spots.

Ministry of Supply Kinetic 5 Pocket Twill, Heathered Black - Worn. Basically a superlight alternative to five pocket jeans. Great stretch, love the waistband drawstring internally, and they fit really nicely after getting them further tapered. I find they have a bit of a blue hue to them, so I may favor my Lululemon ABC skinnies over them, but these look a lot more put together.

2x Smartwool No Show Socks, Black - Packed. Could have cut one of these. These are pretty standard, great fit, don’t see them over the shoe, and they’re fairly anti-stink.

Smartwool Crew Sock, Black - Worn. VIP. Really could have done just a second pair of these if I didn’t pack the joggers. I wore these most days and after hanging for the night they drop most of their smells.

4x Saxx Quest 2.0 Boxer Brief, 2 Grey 2 Black - 1 worn, 3 packed. I had enough space to change underwear everyday so I went for it. If I was travelling longer these dry quick after a sink wash and fit great, so 4 total is plenty for indefinite travel.

2x Uniqlo Airism Boxers, Black - Packed. I could have dropped one of these. They’re my preferred sleep boxers when travelling as they weigh nothing, take up no space, and dry incredibly quickly. Being used exclusively for sleep I find I can get a few nights out of a pair.

Uniqlo Ultralight Down Jacket, Black - Packed. Reliable layering option, packs into a pocket inside it, and is very warm for it’s size. Perfect for the weather we had while in Halifax.

Patagonia Torrentshell 3L, Black - Packed. We didn’t expect any rain, but this is a reliable windbreaker and due to it’s waterproofing makes for a great layer in which to further insulate. Worn at Peggy’s Cove, but otherwise packed.

Ponto The Pacific Shoe, Black - Worn. Hybrid between a sneaker and a dress shoe. They were probably just a bit too dressy for the whole trip, but they wore well, walked well, and looked very sharp paired with the joggers or the 5 pocket pants. I’d probably replace these with something a hair more casual like an Ecco street tray shoe or the likes if I was to do the trip again. Didn’t have an opportunity to test the water resistance.

My toiletries haven’t changed much since last time, I’m still using a Matador Flatpak waterproof toiletry case with the roll top. Inside it I packed a few different things though.

Really distilled down to a functional collection. Not pictured is the toothbrush case, though I’d probably just throw a head cover on it.

Philips One Toothbrush - A bit bigger than my old folding brush but worth it for a nicer feeling clean.

Lush Dirty Toothy Tabs in Nalgene container - Standard solid toothpaste for me. Not overly minty, and I can carry a ton of them.

Various OTC meds in a Nalgene container - Ibuprofen, antihistamine, anti-nauseant. Standard stuff as a just-in-case.

Folding Brush - Same one I bought years ago in Japan, been working awesome.

Native Deodorant - I love the smell of the eucalyptus mint. Wish I could find a smaller one.

Unscented Company Solid Shampoo and Conditioner in a Matador Flatpak Soap Bar Case - Still a wonderful little product for holding bar soap. The unscented company stuff works great for body wash AND shampoo, but if I was going on a longer trip I’d likely pack a bar soap from them too. Very happy with their products.

Beauty cloth - Unbranded. Just a grey exfoliating nylon cloth, similar to a loofah but unwrapped. I use these at home all the time now, they lather well, exfoliate nicely, and dry very quick due to being a loosely weaved nylon.

For tech and extras, I had to lug along a few things. Most of this was stored in my Bellroy Lite Sling which kinda doubled as a tech bag/day bag. It was big enough to hold my camera, a jacket, a packed Matador tote bag, and my battery.

A selection of the stuff below. The Bellroy Lite Sling was really functional for city walking.

Fuji X100V - Just the camera, no extra lenses. Haoge lens hood for no lens cap and a Peak Design wrist strap.

iPad Mini 6 w/ Smart Cover and Apple Pencil 2 - I replaced my iPad Pro with this a month and a bit ago. Phone was too small to read on, iPad Pro was a bit too big for cramped transit like the bus or economy plane seats. The Pro was also hard to use one-handed. This was the perfect in-between and I’ve been loving it. I read on the bus ride and used this for importing photos/editing on Lightroom.

Tom Bihn Ghost Whale Small w/ charging goods - This contained a Mophie 6000mah universal battery, a 30w Anker Powerport Atom III Slim charger, a 3ft USB-C to USB-C cable, a 3ft USB-C to Lightning cable, and both a Lightning and USB-C card reader from Apple. Coupled with the Incharge X on my keychain I can charge the battery and two devices overnight. I still don’t know if the Ghost Whale is the right pouch for this stuff, but it’ll do for now. This little pack has been shifting between my various bags over the past few weeks.

Airpods Pro - The ongoing standard. Pretty much flawless, easy to pop in and out, great for short listening sessions. Connects to my two devices without issue, seamlessly.

iPhone 12 with Apple MagSafe Wallet - Still happy with this. Sometimes I do wish I had the longer lens from the Pro, for short trips like this I could almost drop my camera then. I’ve removed my case and switched my wallet for the black version. If Apple does come through with USB-C on the next iPhone I’ll upgrade then. Debit card, credit card, ID.

Keys - Wonder what these are for? I have an Airtag fob on them and an InchargeX from RollingSquare.

Packtowl - I’ve had this guy for a while. I want to switch out for a Matador towel, but that’s not at all important. I didn’t need this as the Airbnb had towels.

Vapur water bottle - Still awesome, used this everyday in the Airbnb.

Tom Bihn Wool Utility Cloth - It’s a wool cloth! It’s a 25” square of wool! I used it mostly as a neck wrap, but you can use it for anything - Seat cover, impromptu single person table cloth, camera wrap, bandana, etc.

What Worked?

I loved everything I brought from Ministry of Supply. Overall the stuff is well suited to my body size, with anything in their XS size hitting perfectly. I was also over the moon about my charging setup, being able to plug my phone and my wife’s phone in at the same time was great. I felt like I brought the right selection of tops to keep things looking visually interesting, so I’m pretty happy there too.

What didn’t work?

If I was to approach again, I’d have just worn a single pair of chinos and left the joggers and five pockets at home. I recently took delivery of a pair of Pace chinos from Ministry of Supply and I can’t wait to try them out over an evening or two. I feel they would give me the best in-between mix of casual and dressed up.

I could have also dropped a pair of no-show socks and a pair of sleep boxers. With such a short trip what I had was plenty. Dropping both no-shows for another pair of crews would have been an option with just the chinos on hand too.

I really didn’t need the packtowl, but it didn’t take up much space so no issues there.

Constantly learning. Our next trip looks to be something a week long overseas in December, so I’m looking forward to curating a packing list for that. Stay tuned for another post!

MagSafe Wallet Update

I switched out my Baltic Blue MagSafe wallet for a newer one in Midnight.

Apple made some changes to AppleCare this year which means unlimited accidental damage claims per year. I figured that was incentive enough to try out going naked on a phone again after a number of years. With a lot of my wardrobe transitioning to more monotone pieces I wanted a wallet to match. The new wallet was gifted to me as a late birthday gift, and it’s been… Exactly like the old one. Which is to say, incredibly functional and holds all my required cards.

They did add a new feature with this one however that lets you sync the device to Find My. Though it doesn’t actively track the wallet it will notify you when you removed it and where you last left it. I do wish they could have snuck an AirTag into these, but that adds a shelf life to an object we generally don’t think of having an expiry date. They were kind enough to add a function when the wallet is placed on another MagSafe capable phone it’ll display contact info, which I suppose is fine in a lost and found scenario.

The naked iPhone experience has been great so far, other than the back being incredibly glossy, which means incredibly slippery. I’ve got a dbrand matte black skin without the logo cutout on the way, and I’m looking forward to that adding a bit more grip. I don’t plan on installing the sides or the camera bump portions of the skin, just the glass back which is the biggest offender. I did miss not using a case, the last time I would have done that would have been before discovering the Pixel fabric case for the Pixel 3. A lot of time and effort goes into designing these devices to be used as is, and with a lot of the materials in them becoming more and more resistant to wear and tear it only makes sense to embrace the device as is.

Philips One Toothbrush

I picked up a new toothbrush.

I’ve been using Colgate 360s at home for the better part of 5 years or so, and prior to that I was using an Oral B 5000 which I absolutely loved. I’ve been hesitant to jump on an electric brush again due to the price points, however with companies like Quip and Philips coming out with more affordable and minimal options I was incentivized to try one again.

The Philips one comes in two different styles, either a AAA replaceable battery version or the version I opted for, the rechargeable one. They also come in a number of colors, however I decided to keep it simple and go with black.

Likes:

  • “Quad pacer” timer. I didn’t realize how much I missed having a 30 second timer on my toothbrush. It keeps me on track for brushing for the recommended 2 minutes.

  • Slim and agile. Much smaller than my old Oral B 5000.

  • Small, tapered head. Easy to navigate around the mouth.

  • USB Type-C charging. Everything should support type-c charging.

  • 30 day battery life. Plenty between charges.

  • Regular toothbrush when the battery is dead. Unlike the Oral B brushes I find the brush head shape better facilitates brushing without the battery charged.

Dislikes:

  • The Type-C charging is not C to C compliant. It needs an A to C cable which is a bit annoying, but I have one on my keychain regularly so not the end of the world if I’m travelling with it and it dies.

  • Micro vibrations aren’t as strong as a real mechanical brush, but still better than a manual brush.

  • The “hinge” on the travel case and the battery door are just thin plastic, so time will tell how well it holds up.

Overall I’ve been happy with the new brush, and I’m hoping the brush travels as well as it’s been working for me here at home.

Dongle Life

Docks and dongles and cables and adapters and… Well, there’s a lot of options on the market. I’ve got a couple requirements in addition to the ports provided by the new 14” MacBook Pro, and some things to make tech travel a bit more flexible.

I wiped this down, and moments later… Still more dust.

The Workstation

The Macbook is a workstation replacement, and as such is spending a lot of it’s time connected to my Dell 49” super ultra wide. It’s currently connected via a single USB-C cable offering power and video, and that’s fine for the apartment as we’re fully wireless and I really have no desk room for additional things like speakers, etc. In the house however, we’ll be wiring for ethernet and I’ll have the desk room for speakers again! I’m looking at a single cable solution with all the right ports.

The Wants:

  • Front and rear 3.5mm audio jacks

  • Minimum 2 thunderbolt ports

  • Thunderbolt ports on the rear of the dock only

  • PCIe based ethernet

  • Silver colour

  • Lower price point preferred

I went through a lot of research on dock options from the very top end to the very bottom of the barrel, and I’ve found one that seems to stand out above the rest for my wants. The ethernet controller and connection can be a bit hard to find, however this blog did a lot of the work categorizing them, and it made it very easy to figure out the right option for me.

And the winner is… The Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Express Dock HD. It hits all the above points and comes in at a very attractive price point on the secondary market. One could argue that it would be nice to have additional type C USB ports, or a built in SD card reader, but in reality I connect very little to my computer as is, and I can utilize either the SD card reader on the Macbook or one of the other USB options I have kicking around.

For the time being this will give me fast and reliable gigabit ethernet, 3.5mm audio, a headset jack in the front just in case, and the option to leave my Samsung T5 connected while docked, all from a single cable. I was able to scoop one on eBay for around $100 shipped, which is a wild price compared to the $349 MSRP. It does have a few markings due to previous use, but nothing astoundingly bad. I’m pretty happy with it, though I suppose it’d be nice to have a bit of a longer Thunderbolt cable - Nothing I can’t buy later though.

On The Go

I’ve been overhauling the dongle/accessory kit for on-the-go as well. This kit should cover all use cases I could have for mobile work on the go, and be cross compatible between the iPad and the MacBook. USB type C makes this fairly flexible, but like with Thunderbolt, there’s so many bad options on the market. The purpose of the travel/on-the-go accessories are to make sure I can do just about anything I need to while out and about, and also take up minimal space.

The Wants:

  • Flexibility across multiple devices

  • First party dongles where possible

  • Cover all possible scenarios in a small package

These are the pieces below I’ve picked out so far:

The Audio Kit

This one is straight forward and replaced the lightning EarPods in my camera bag.

A big ol’ nest. These actually live in an old Etymotic soft case, with the adapters separated inside the case.

  • Apple USB-C to 3.5mm adapter

  • Apple Lightning to 3.5mm adapter

  • Apple 3.5mm EarPods

These are realistically a stop-gap emergency kind of thing in case whatever wireless headphones I have at the time are dead and I really need audio. They sound generally agreeable but lack any isolation. I may consider a swap for a set of Etymotic HF3s instead of the Earpods, or re-appropriating my Apple in ear IEMs from my partner, but the adapters will allow whatever headphones are connected to work across all three of my devices.

The Data Kit

This one covers all data options from video to internet to file transfer. I have no reason to believe my on-the-go use will require using these ports more than sparingly, but I’d still like high quality, functional pieces.

  • Apple USB Type-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter

  • Apple USB Type-C to SD card reader

  • Apple Lightning to SD card reader

  • DLink DUB-E250 2.5Gbe USB Type-C to 2.5 gigabit ethernet adapter

I had a Plugable 7-in-1 hub which was fine, but these pieces offer a much higher quality, lighter experience than a cheaper all-in-one unit. The SD card readers function flawlessly, the digital AV multiport adapter does 4K 60fps with HDR support off the HDMI port, and the USB type-A port nets me full speeds off my real fast 64gb Lexar P20 flash drive (200+mbps reads/writes). The DLink adapter was chosen for it’s 2.5gb/s support, and it also has an NCM driver in MacOS, which offloads the processing from CPU to the adapter itself. Although the Macbook isn’t a slouch, seeing a full core’s worth of processing power consumed by a big data transfer is a bit silly. These pieces look great, feel great, and work great.

The Charging Kit

My Baseus GAN charger is actually great here, but the 65w max and only two type C ports is a bit of a drag if I want to charge everything at once and fast. I want to try to remove as much cabling as I can, so a higher wattage type-c only adapter and a few better cables are on the horizon for sure.

It’s about half the size of the 96w Apple charger

  • Satechi 108w 3 port GAN charger

  • Anker Powerline iii Flow 6ft Type-C to Type-C cable

The Satechi is a relatively new charger that’s compact thanks to GAN technology and offers 3 type-C ports and no type-A ports. It supports a charging output of 58w+30w+20w when fully loaded, which coincidentally is plenty for a Macbook, iPad Pro, and iPhone all at once. This should let me drop all my Type-A cables from my kit other than my InCharge X, which is awesome. I’ve swapped my 60w Anker 6ft cable with an Anker Powerline iii Flow cable, which should let me take advantage of 100w fast charging on the Macbook when nothing else is in use. I may end up swapping my other cables for Powerline iii Flow cables as well, depending on how this one works out.

I have no doubt there’ll be more doodads and dongles to fill my pockets and pouches with in the future, but for now this is a pretty comfortable collection. Now, if only I could find a tech pouch that fits the bill a bit better…Stay tuned for that I guess.

IPad Pro 2020 11”

The opening below was written in late August, 2021, and I’ve subsequently revisited this post and finished it… Whoops!

I sit in the dark at the dining room table. My fiancée is out for a few days. The window to my right is the city of Toronto, fleetingly backlit by lightning strikes beyond it’s reach. I’m nursing a hazy IPA and a few olives. The iPad Pro provides a soft glow, I’m browsing YouTube and typing out this. Why here? Why not the computer in the office? Or YouTube on the TV in the living room? Well, it’s because the iPad Pro is fun to use, and I can be wherever I want to be using it, and tonight, that’s enjoying this thunderstorm by the dining room window.

A morning with the Pro, featuring the Smart Keyboard folio.

The Preamble

I’ve had the iPad Pro 2020 11” since late 2020. I grabbed the 256GB model in silver as a “let’s see how it works vs the Surface Pro” and ended up quickly selling the Surface Pro afterwards. It’s been a secondary computing device since then, and it’s been pretty flawless.

The Notes

  • It’s fast, like real fast. This thing edits photos as fast as my desktop did, and that thing isn’t a slouch. Even with the M1 version being released I don’t think there are going to be any worries about slowness for a few years.

  • The screen is excellent. Super bright, great contrast, and awesome color accuracy. I like True Tone a lot and it works well. I’m a big fan of the variable refresh rate all the way up to 120hz, which makes games really smooth.

  • iPadOS 14/15 made the iPad considerably less limited than my last experience with an iPad mini. Some nice usability features like being able to directly import into Lightroom from an SD card further blur the lines between iOS and a full desktop OS.

  • Multitasking has improved but could still be better. I’d love to see actual windowed options, but that’d completely cannibalize the Mac lineup.

  • USB-C all the things. If only Apple got the note regarding the iPhone. Fast charging via PD spec is a very nice include, and being able to share dongles/accessories between the MacBook and the iPad is awesome.

  • The speakers are pretty damn good for a little 11” tablet. Makes for a nice impromptu speaker vs carrying a bluetooth one.

  • It’s flexible. Most days it might be an eReader, but if I’m packing light, it can be my full on computer - It’ll handle just about anything I throw at it. Entertainment in the evenings, reading on the plane, photo editing, day planning, blogging, journaling, marking up maps, etc.

  • Whereas the Surface Pro was more of a computer that could be a tablet, this is a tablet that can be a computer. Both aren’t really amazing at their secondary function, but the iPad gets a lot closer.

  • The battery life is an all day affair, provided I’m not pushing it too hard. Screen brightness and task at hand definitely affects things, but with mixed all day usage I’m probably not looking for a charger until bed time.

  • The magic keyboard, although flawed, is probably the best keyboard option for the thing. The typing experience is very similar to the Macbook and it holds the device incredibly well. Although it does increase the weight and size a fair bit, I wouldn’t use any other option on the market if need a keyboard.

  • I wish I used the pencil more. I think this is more of a discipline thing, but it’s one of the best drawing and writing experiences I’ve had on a device ever, and I might use it on the occasion. There’s a lot of good notebook apps that I’ve been playing with like notability and goodnotes, and of course I have apps like procreate and charcoal, but I tend to find myself leaning toward OneNote, Google Keep, or Apple Notes rather than a hand written option. The markup feature for PDFs though has been an absolute godsend for all the paperwork we needed to do for the house.

  • There’s still a few meh points with the app ecosystem. I’m missing features in Photoshop, and the iPadOS versions of the office suite are really not that good compared to the full fat versions on MacOS and Windows. Otherwise software like OneNote works great, for example, and there’s normally an app for what I need to get done.

Overall this device has been a great companion since I picked it up. The fact that I don’t feel like I want more of a device too speaks to the software and hardware inside the device. With sidecar it becomes a great secondary screen while on the go too, the perfect companion to a 14” display. Universal Control will be coming out in the next iPadOS/Monterey release, so I anticipate the iPad is going to get even more use at that point - Getting to just do something on the Macbook then drag and drop it over to the iPad directly to work on it further is going to be really nice.

I’m very happy this was my entry back into the world of iPads. The iPad mini I had a few years ago, although good as a basic device, was really missing the polish that was brought with iPadOS14/15. I can honestly say with the updates made to file management, direct import into Lightroom, growing pro app catalog, and class leading hardware, the iPad fits very easily into my workflows as a jack of all trades, and master of a few.