Category: GEEK

Taking a Break From Facebook: Creativity Returns

Being TechyMike, I always try to be on the leading edge (with a few noteable exceptions chronicled in this blog). As such, I was eager to jump on Social Media when it started, and have been active ever since. But, being TechyMike, also means I am, by nature, an introvert tending towards long hours of…

December 24, 2016
Pixel XL Depth of Field

Trying something new….posting from my new Pixel XL to TechyMike. Took a few pictures of Blaze and our fern this morning testing the depth of field of the Pixel XL camera. I first focused on the fern with Blaze blurry in the background. Then I focused on Blaze in the background and now the fern…

December 23, 2016
Google Pixel XL: Taking a Screenshot & Finding the Control Buttons

UPDATE July 2023: Things have changed since this, soooooo, consider this a History lesson on Pixel phones and android. 🙂 My Google Pixel XL arrived on Saturday, November 19, 2016. After opening it and going thru the set up procedure….the Pixel XL promptly downloaded Android 7.1 Nougat thereby making this techy geek nerd very very…

November 21, 2016
Google Pixel & Pixel XL Android Phones

Google decided it was time to develop hardware! Since I am (was?) a hardware developer…this is great news. Google announced several new hardware products yesterday (October 4, 2016), but, I am only super excited about one: The Pixel phones. Note: I will add more information as I get hands-on experience with this phone after I…

October 5, 2016
Google Cardboard Virtual Reality

Google Cardboard has been around for a year or two. Until now, I followed the progress of Virtual Reality with great interest, but, had not yet played with VR of any kind, soooooo, I decided to give it a test drive! Not having a ton of money, I did a search for the Google Cardboard…

July 20, 2016
Music: Google Play and iTunes

I realize that music CD’s are going the way of the dodo bird…..BUT…..we still have a great CD collection, and Lori keeps buying CD’s. As such, I have a TON of uploaded CD music on my Windows computer–in iTunes. But, I want to use Google Play as my cloud-based music storage location (I am Google-fied).…

June 8, 2016
Our Land Line Telephone: End of an Era

On April 10, 2016 the unthinkable happened……we cancelled our land line telephone service. 209-836-2044 is now disconnected / out of service. Really quick history: Lori and I are both old time Bell Labs employees in Holmdel, NJ. So land lines and telecommunications services are in our blood…. The passing of our beloved, battery operated via…

April 11, 2016
Cloud Based Computing: Confessions of an Early Adopter

A few years ago (mainly because I was broke and could no longer afford high-priced PC centric programs like Word, Excel, etc) I decided to start moving my PC-centric “stuff” off of my computer and into the cloud (I happened to choose Google, but, the choice is yours where you end up. Click here to…

March 29, 2016
How Watching Movies Has Changed Over the Years

This is 2015, errrr 2019 , 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and the technology choices for us to watch movies is dizzying! A bit of history…. I don’t want to start too far back, but, in the past 30 or 40 years there has been a remarkable technological shift in the way we watch movies…

October 20, 2015
Fun with Statistics: Do More Blog Posts Result in More Views?

My math skills are fading, but, I thought it would be interesting and fun(?) to look at some stats of my blogs while re-learning how to do some statistical analysis. I am using Google Sheets, and will add to this post as I figure out more analysis I can do…..while keeping it interesting and fun.…

August 7, 2015