Dear Google, please increase your Drive space...

Dear Google,

I'm a huge Google/Android nut, I use calendar/mail/drive to pretty much run my life.  I currently pay $2 a month for 100GB of drive storage which is not enough to store everything I have.  The next plan is 1TB for $10 a month which is way too much for home photos / videos.  If you could create a 500GB plan for $3-5 a month, that would be more reasonable.The other problem I see is that your competition is closing in.  

While I use Google for everything, I buy everything from Amazon.  You are probably aware they are throwing everything but the 'kitchen sink' in with a prime membership.  So for $99 a year ($8.25 a month) I get:

• Prime Movie / Streaming  Included   vs  Google YouTube Red $10 a month
• Prime Music   vs  Google Music $10 a month
• Prime Photo Unlimited No Compression   vs  Google Photo Unlimited ('changes original resolution, I don't want that')
• Prime Books 800K Included   vs  Google Books purchase eBook separately
• Free 2 Day shipping   vs   (When Google buys Walmart???)
• Prime Cloud Storage Unlimited ($60 a year)   vs  Google Drive ($10 a month for only 1 TB)

Here is my point, I love Google services, I use them everyday, but from the comparison above, Amazon is providing a great deal.  If I spent $160 a year ($13 am month) with Amazon, I get movies, music, uncompressed photos, unlimited cloud drive, eBooks and free 2 day shipping.  To get something comparable to Google, I would need to spend $360 a year ($30 a month), and that's only for 1TB of drive including YouTube Red and Music. Google, I have posted this request before, I have chatted with service reps and asked repeatedly for increased drive space on your plans.  You leave me with no choice, but if you do not give us the option for larger cheaper drive storage, I have no choice but to take my business to Amazon services.  Thank you for your time.

Matt

Finally, using a 3D printer for something other than Army Men

The explosion of 3D printers is simply amazing.  From the humble starts of MakerBot to the cool new high resolution resin printers from Formlabs, 3D printing is certainly changing the way we design and manufacture new products.  But for the home hobbiest, after you print a few Army men and a key chain here and there, what do you do?  Well I finally came across a problem that 3D printing was the perfect solution.

From my previous post, I am a huge home theater nut and you can't curl up on the couch for a movie without popcorn.  The 'gold standard' of popcorn machines is Gold Medal.  The popcorn popper I purchased from Gold Metal is built like a tank, except for one slight problem, the plastic hinge on the front plexiglass doors broke after many years of use.

The hinge is supposed to have a plastic 'spike' sticking straight up that the door hinge below  slips over.

Here is what the door should like:

The sales team over at Gold Medal were very helpful, but unfortunately since we have an older model, they no longer make the hinge piece.  They did however say a replacement hinge from another model may fit, but with shipping would be around $40.  That's when a lightbulb went off, why don't I just 'print' a new hinge?

Our local library in Carroll County Maryland has a new 3D printing lab that has great prices on printed items.  They recommend using a web based design tool from Tinkercad.  As a web developer I'm amazed at what can be done in a web browser today and this software looks great and is easy to use.  After using just a basic ruler with millimeter scale, I recreated the broken hinge piece:



I downloaded the 3D file from Tinkercad to a USB drive and drove over to our local library.  They have a Lulzbot printer that uses basic PVC stock, but due to the wear and tear of the hinge I opted for stronger ABS plastic which had to be sent to another library branch.  Within a about a week, the parts came back, below is a comparison of the broken hinges and the newly printed parts:

Straight off the printer they had a little support material, but it easily came off by hand and then cleaned up with a razor blade.

This is a shot of the attached hinge to the popcorn machine.  I was somewhat surprised (and proud) that the screw holes lined up perfectly the first time, no adjustments with a drill bit required.

After the hinges were installed, the moment of the truth, the door slipped right over the hinge pins, no problems.  So for $2.50 and a little time with Tinkercad I was able to 'machine' my own hinge replacement.  I have officially been bitten by the 3D printer bug, now I look around the house and say, new knobs on the stove, no problem ( although that might not pass the wife test ).

Special thanks to the people over at Gold Medal they were very responsive and tried their best to find the right replacement part.  Check out their website they have some really cool machines like this monster for movie theaters.  Also thanks to the staff at the Eldersburg and Westminster library branches in Carroll County Maryland, it is really great to see our library system providing this great service to the community.

Time to throw in my favorite movie of all time The Matrix and pop some corn!

Get MEAN!

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It's 1995 and I just finished college with an Accounting Degree working as a Junior Accountant at a healthcare company, then this 'thing' called the Internet hit the public scene.  Forget balance sheets, I want to be a web developer!  I started basic web development and later enrolled in a Masters Program at Stevenson University where I learned Object Oriented programming and Java.

I spent the next 15 years programming in Java, everything from Data Access Objects to Swing UIs.  Needless to say I had lost the edge in web development.  Then along comes a project where our customer says, "Here is my problem, I need a dashboard to aggregate large amounts of data and visualize it.  I don't care what you use, just make it fast and functional".  Fast and functional, well cross off Swing UI, what's the latest in web development?

That's when I GOT MEAN!  The MEAN Stack, or MongoDB, Express Web Framework, Angular JS, and Node JS.  What?  How can this JavaScript thing take on a big OO language like Java?  Well it does, and it is AWESOME.  Take it from an old Java developer, I never want to write a line of pure Java again, MEAN Stack is extremely fast, easy to setup, and couple that with cloud services like OpenShift, I can prototype our solutions and iterate with our customers much faster.

I plan to detail in this blog my transformation from Accountant, to Java Developer, to MEAN Stack Evangelist!  Stay tuned for more information.