Tag Archives: iPhone

Nest in my nest

Last year the Nest Learning Thermostat came out and sold out pretty damn quickly. At the time I wasn’t really in a position to purchase one anyway. They recently came back into stock and Nest e-mailed me that it was available to be ordered again. I jumped on it right away.

In case you’re not familiar with the Nest: its a thermostat created by some ex-Apple folks that attempts to learn its schedule from you so it can save energy. (Its interesting to note, that most people don’t end up programming their programmable thermostats because its too hard.  Most of your standard ones have interfaces not unlike VCR programming. We all know how that went.) Even if you don’t remember to set the thermostat down when you leave, it’ll start to learn when you’re “away” and use its away temperature to build the schedule.  The Nest also hooks into your wireless network so you can remotely control your thermostat through their webpage or an app on your mobile device. The wifi also lets it do things like look up the external temperature, so it can use that as a factor into your heading or cooling.

Needless to say, I’m excited about such a device. Its weird to be excited by something like a thermostat, but its a thermostat made for today.  I had tweeted about my excitement that it was on the way, and had a nice interaction with Nest over twitter where they asked for pictures. That leads to this blog post… I thought I’d take the chance to do an unboxing video, which I’ve never done before, and post some photos of the install of the Nest.

Continue reading Nest in my nest

Thanks, Steve

Steve Jobs passed away today at age 56 after a battle with cancer.  Here’s a few random thoughts…

On this day, I own a buttload of Apple gear: iPhone, iPod, iPad, MacBook Pro, Apple TV, Apple TV 2, Time Capsule, Mac Mini… I’m planning on getting an iPhone 4S as soon as possible.

I was (and am) a big open source dork at heart, but Apple’s simplicity and ease of use, especially the past 7 years really spoke to the pragmatic side of me.  It turned me into a fan boy, I guess.  It didn’t hurt that OS X is NeXTStep is UNIX… I touch OS X and Linux every day.

One of Dinah’s first words was iPod which she taught herself so she could ask me to turn on music for her.

In college, I loved using the NeXT computers we had. My first class in college used scheme on the NeXT’s. The NeXT is one of the first places I played Doom.  I took calculus using Mathematica on the Mac in college.

Steve also touched my kids’ lives via Pixar. (Okay, my life too, I saw Toy Story in the theater first run, long before I had kids.) Also through their first computer, a Mac Mini.

There were too other public figures who’s lives and deaths touched me the way Steve’s passing is touching me today: Jim Henson and Fred Rodgers.