After upgrading my Surface 3 to Windows 10, a very annoying bug surfaced where I’ll be writing with the pen and all of a sudden any and all touches (pen or finger) are interpreted as right clicks.
For a few days, my only recourse was restarting.
I have since learned that you can avoid a reboot by going into Device Manager and Disabling/Enabling the Surface TouchScreen Device (Human Interface Devices -> Surface TouchScreen Device).
Here’s a PowerShell script I now have hooked up to a keyboard shortcut for when it happens again:
While vacationing in Traverse City, Michigan last week, we took a cruise on the Tall Ship Manitou operated by the Traverse Tall Ship Co. We had a fantastic time on the 2 hour cruise in Grand Traverse Bay.
Our 7 year old, David, spent quite a bit of time asking questions of Captain Brandon. Captain Brandon took the time to thoroughly answer all of these questions, and in a manner that further encouraged his curiosity. To top it off, David was able to steer the ship under the Captain’s directions for at least 10 minutes. That’s an experience he’ll never forget.
Aside from being excellent with kids, the ride itself was fantastic. A very tasty turkey wrap was served and plenty of great beer was available for purchase. The crew was fun, lively, and open to questions as they went about the business of operating the boat.
If you’re in the area and looking for a unique way to spend a couple hours, check their availability and give it a try. You will NOT regret it!
This post is meant as a warning to those fellow internet searchers looking for information on South Manitou Island at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Northwest Michigan. We visited last week during our vacation (3rd week of July) and were looking forward to a great time.
Unfortunately, none of the literature we encountered about the trip mentioned the possibility of ferocious, swarming, biting flies! Our family now refers to the place as Fly Island.
Upon our arrival, we walked to the Lighthouse and were immediately greeted by dozens of vicious flies attacking our legs. We brought insect repellant (with DEET) with us, so we thought we’d immediately douse ourselves and be fine. Oh no, if anything, the flies seemed to be attracted to it!
Unlike typical flies, these things would grab onto our legs, hold on for dear life, and bite like crazy. Simply moving wasn’t enough to get them off of you. Thinking back, they really only attacked our lower leg and ankles, but they made our few hours on the island absolutely miserable.
The only recourse we found was to continue walking, FAST. Anywhere there was sun, they seemed to swarm us – the dock, the beach, the trails, you name it. It wasn’t until we were deep in the forest trails did they finally leave us alone – and then the mosquitos were everywhere. We ended up cutting our hike very short, and sat in one of the outbuildings for over 2 hours, swatting flies, until the boat arrived.
So, beware. We were wearing shorts, which in hindsight was a mistake. If you’re going to go at that time of year (late July), you should probably bring pants and thick socks.
Hopefully this post finds you before it is too late, best of luck!
I’ve had my Surface 3 (4GB of RAM model) since the day it was released, use it heavily daily for both work and home, and love it. This past week it has taken its first road trip, vacation, and I couldn’t be happier with it.
Devices, Devices, Devices
Replacing my laptop on a trip isn’t an easy task for a tablet. I take lots of photos and lots of video, which means I need to be able to pull this data off of a few different sources (Canon 7D, GoPro, and Sony camcorder). Then there’s the sheer bulk of data to deal with, over 100GB on this trip the last I looked. Rather than trying to fit everything in the 45GB free on the Surface (by shooting less, deleting more, etc.), I decided from the start to store everything on my USB 3 2TB Western Digital My Passport external hard drive.
The Surface 3 has a single USB 3 port and a USB On-the-Go port. Unfortunately, I didn’t put much thinking into how I was going to hook everything up until the day before we left and I was unable to purchase an On-the-Go adapter. So, in order to get everything attached (CF card reader, external hard drive, second external hard drive for Lightroom import backups, and possibly simultaneously the camcorder), I ran to the store and picked up a small USB 3 hub by J5Create. I’ve had terrible experiences with USB hubs, but so far this one has worked admirably.
A typical import setup, minus the camcorder.
The Surface 3 was handled simultaneous photo import, copying to an external hard drive, with import backups going to second hard drive. Many times, I was also copying video off both the microSD slot on the Surface to the external hard drive and the camcorder via USB to the external hard drive. The Surface 3 handled it all incredibly well.
Lightroom and Smart Previews
My setup has the Lightroom catalog residing on the Surface 3, but the photos on the external hard drive for capacity reasons. I initially thought I would just have to edit photos with the external hard drive attached, until I remembered a feature I’ve never used introduced in Lightroom 5 called Smart Previews. Once configured, after import and while the external hard drive is still attached, Lightroom generates smaller versions of the full-sized photos you can view/edit/export when the originals are offline (the hard drive detached).
Generating the Smart Previews takes a while, so I usually kicked off the import as we were unloading at the cabin after a day out swimming or sight seeing.
Once the import and preview generation was complete, I put away all of the devices and was able to edit photos as time allowed. Lightroom 6 has an excellent Tablet Mode for editing which I took extensive use of while laying in bed at the end of the day.
Wrap Up
The combination of the Surface 3’s ability to handle many devices at once and Lightroom’s Smart Previews and Tablet Mode make the Surface 3 an excellent travel companion.
If you’re contemplating a Surface 3 but the Atom processor name worries you, like it did me, fear not.
I recently came upon the need to show a WPF window in an Outlook add-in, preferably centered on the Outlook window (WindowStartupLocation = CenterInParent). Easy enough, but without setting Window.Owner, it will appear in an uncontrolled location when calling ShowDialog().
Setting Window.Owner is where things get a little tricky.
Searching online produced a few variations of the theme of using the WindowInteropHelper class in combination with the win32 FindWindow API with the window caption discovered via Reflection. Yuck. Surely there’s a better way.
Enter System.Process. One of the properties of the System.Process class is MainWindowHandle, which Microsoft states:
The main window is the window opened by the process that currently has the focus (the TopLevel form).
Sounds like exactly what I’m looking for. A quick call to Process.GetCurrentProcess() and we’ve got everything we need. The final code to show the WPF window is:
SomeView view = new SomeView();
WindowInteropHelper helper = new WindowInteropHelper(view);
helper.Owner = Process.GetCurrentProcess().MainWindowHandle;
view.ShowDialog();
I’ve been a first-gen Paperwhite user since shortly after it was released and I have been nothing but pleased with it. It was miles ahead of the other Kindles we in the household have owned.
The Voyage is another big step forward. I was expecting an improvement, obviously, why else would I have upgraded? What I was not expecting was how much of an improvement it is over that first Paperwhite.
The Screen
And what a beautiful screen it is! Ultimately, the higher resolution screen is what caused me to pull the trigger on the upgrade. The Voyage is sitting at 300ppi compared to the predecessor’s 212. This, combined with the much improved screen contrast, makes the screen look like a printed magazine page. Incredibly crisp and easy to read. Texted seemed to get a little fuzzy on the smallest font and line sizes on the Paperwhite – not so with the Voyage.
The Voyage comes with a glass screen, something new to Kindles. I was afraid this would hurt readability due to glare, but with their technology you can’t even tell there is glass on it when you aren’t touching it. Nicely done.
The Light
Until upgrading, I didn’t realize the faults of the Paperwhite’s screen. It lit up, making night reading pleasant. End of story.
Well, the Voyage’s light can get much brighter (adding to that great contrast) and is distributed so much more evenly across the screen that the Paperwhite’s screen looks rather ugly to me now.
The Speed
I didn’t think I cared too much about the processor speed on my Kindle. Until I fired up this one, that is. Menus are very responsive, so much so that I’m actually browsing around the Kindle Store and Goodreads on it now. Overall navigation is much improved by this.
PagePress
No more moving your hands to swipe/tap the screen to go to the next page! You still can if you want, but they’ve added pressure-sensitive areas to the screen’s bezel for page navigation. My only minor complaint is that I wish these glowed just a tiny bit for reading in the dark – at least on my first night I found it a little difficult to locate where to press.
Origami Case
The Amazon-recommended case is called the Origami case, named so due to how the case’s cover can fold up and function as a Kindle stand. I’ll be honest, I thought it was just a gimmick when I ordered it, but I’ve already found myself folding it up to read hands-free. The other nice surprise is that the entire case is magnetic: the folds are held magnetically; the cover closes magnetically; and the entire case holds onto the Kindle magnetically.
Overall, a fantastic device and well worth the upgrade.
