Patrick Gentry

Technology is an expensive hobby, but one I love very much! Having grown up “on a budget” and very much still there, it often has meant I jump onto the latest and greatest new thing late. So it was with Asus ROG Ally Z1 Extreme (what a mouthful). I picked up this beauty off of Facebook Marketplace for 300 bucks!

But oh wow was it worth the wait! Having been an on and off PC gamer for years I have a fairly healthy Steam library of games, not to mention the collection of freebies I’ve gathered from Epic (which is also why I opted for a windows machine vs a Steamdeck). And even more interesting, with the Z2 generation being announced at CES and the power seemingly not that big of a leap over the Z1 generation] . I really am quite pleased!

As far as what I am doing with the machine, mostly it’s just catching up on a bunch of indies I hadn’t yet gotten around to playing. This thing is no slouch on AAA games. I picked up Jedi Survivor on sale a few weeks back and Ally run it well on low settings. My only quibble is battery life, if you’re running a AAA game on 15 W mode, you’re going to not even hit 2 hours of battery. This is fine for me since I’m just playing around the house and rarely play more than an hour at time, but it’s no Switch on the battery department.

If your needs are similar to mine and you value portability over graphics, then this gets a hardy thumbs up from me!

Check out part 1

The decline of Window Phone was just sad and it showed the difficulty of breaking into the American Smartphone market. As I started seeing the writing on the wall, and the slickness of the newly announced iPhone 5s (and and my wife was an iOS user). I decided to jump ship for the first time.

I’ve always traded in or sold my previous phone to fund the purchase of the newest shiny thing, but the iPhone 5s is unique for me because I still own this one (somewhere). This was the device that introduced Space Gray to the world! It was a cool color, but a touch disappointing coming off the really cool black color that the 5 had. This was also the phone that introduced Touch ID and that was the “wow” feature that really got my attention and helped pull me across from Windows Phone.

Next in the line up for me was the 6s Plus (yes I avoided bendgate on the 6) This one stood out to me for 2 reasons: 1. It felt HUGE for the time. 2. The battery life was amazing. Getting 2 solid days of battery on a smartphone was just incredible. It’s a shame that with all the advancements we’ve made since that phone has come out, getting a day of battery is still the standard. At least it hasn’t gotten worse?

Given that the 6 and 6s series was quite a bit more boring than the preceding models, I decided I would check the temperature over in Android land! Enter the Samsung Galaxy s7! It was a time of firsts, my first glass sandwich (ew), and my first Android phone. I was pleasantly surprised coming off the iPhone how everything was mostly just… the same. In the edge of cloud and cross platform apps, switching was (and largely still is) easier than one might think. It was these lack of differences that ultimately meant my trip down Android highway would only be for one brief exit. It turns out I’m just not that into customization (at least not in the few limited ways Android allows). And so, back to iPhone I go!

It was the year of a redesign! Arguable the most interesting and impactful redesign to the iPhone since the 4! The iPhone 10 X had arrived! And I opted for the 8 for some reason… The much forgotten about iPhone 8. It was basically a reskinned 7, except it added wireless charging (yay!) And traded a high quality plastic case for… glass (boo!). That was really it, this one was pretty boring. And so like the flip flopper that I am, I switched to Android again for the last time…

The Pixel 3 was a super fun refinement year. It lacked some of the really outstanding colors that came before(thinking of the blue of the pixel 1), but otherwise it was a fantastic phone. Even today in 2024 looking back on those pictures and seeing the jump in quality from the iPhone 8 to the Pixel, it was just an incredible leap in quality. Sadly I don’t have a good scientific set of photos to compare against here. The software was also really fun. I really enjoyed the “iPhone” like approach Google took with the Pixel line. It’s stock launcher was fantastic, but I still had all the world of launchers I wanted in the Google Play store if I decided to veer from the course. The only blemish for me with this device was battery life. I almost always had to top up at around 2:00 PM every day… ouch.

The paper cuts of not being on iOS (iMessage and the like) with my wife finally got to me when it was upgrade time again. And so I switched once again to the iPhone 11! This was a great year to swap over as the camera improved a lot over the X and Xs and was basically a step sideways from my beloved Pixel 3. All the other niceities of iPhone were still here. The screen size was a real stand out as well at 5.8 inches. It was a smidge smaller than the Pixel but still big enough for activities. I had no complaints with this device!

Next the penultimate device, the 13 Pro! This is where things get less exciting as we are very much in the modern era now. And the 13 Pro was totally “fine” in every way! Great camera, great screen, I even liked the blue color of the 13 Pro, (though it wasn’t as nice as the blue on the 12 Pro line). My only quibbles with this device was the slight size increase (5.8 to 6.1 inches) and the weight… this thing was a brick! I like the shiny look of the stainless steel but the weight was terrible. It was on this device that I opted to get a cellular Apple Watch so I didn’t have to carry the phone with me on walks.

And finally… the 16 pro! Even with Apple Intelligence MIA, this phone is probably one of my favorite iPhones I’ve purchased! The weight has been cut down slightly from the 13 pro, the Dynamic Island is neat, camera control makes for a nice camera launcher, the always on screen is useful, the 5x zoom is welcome as well. My only quibble is the color options on the 16 pro line are somehow even worse than the 15 line.

It’s been a fun journey! At this point I’m “all in” on the Apple ecosystem, I don’t see myself jumping ship (certainly not back to Windows). It will be interesting to see what the future holds on my next upgrade in 3 years.

Data in almost all of it’s forms is fascinating. Macro (think country, state, even world data) all the way down to the most personal (my own health data tracked over years on the Apple Watch). Digging into the context for any particular bit of data is passion of mine.

Years ago after listening to the No Dumb Questions podcast discuss making an annual playlist to replicate the feeling of radio and albums you would listen to over the course of a year. It felt like a really obvious and fun way to use music as a time travel device. I now have 6 years of music playlists to travel back and get those feelings from those years. I thought it would be fun to take a look at my 2024 Playlist and see what data I can pull out!

Starting with the macro… I grew up on country in the 90s and have held a strong affinity for that particular flavor of country. Modern country on the other hand is largely a no more for me… dog. My tastes in the last 10 years have gradually moved into a more folk/roots/Americana feel and those flavors are heavy in the 2024 list.

Getting a touch more micro, I really enjoyed The Ache by Brandon Heath this year and with all the time spent on that album it shifted the Spotify algorithm into a more Christian acoustic direction and I’m not even mad.

With the birth of my daughter in November Ben Rector has been in heavy rotation, especially Daughter. There are probably more tidbits to pulled out, but at this point I’m curious what will be served up going into January.

Also known as “starting over.” As my little girl turns 3 weeks old the age old debate of having kids young vs in one’s 30s is tumbling in my head. In this stage, parental sleep is at a minimum, and unknowns are still at a high. What will her personality be like, what side of the family will she look like, when will she sleep for more than 3 hours at time? What still remains to be seen is the answer to my headline question. But as of now I have feelings.

Having yet to return to work, my feelings will likely change, but experience feels so much more valuable than raw youthful exuberance. It’s not even a feeling of “it’s all going to be alright.” Having lived more life, I’m far more aware of what can be thrown my way. No, a lot of my feelings of assurance come from having leaned on the support structures of my life, knowing those structures have held up continue to lend confidence for the future.

God has been faithful through difficult circumstances, from financial, to health, family and beyond. Additionally my wife has grown and matured (more than me by a long shot) since our first kid and her strength is a sight to behold. I could go on, but given the maturity of our care network, the idea (and reality) of having kids in our 30s has been far less daunting than I would have imagined it to be in my 20s. We’ll see what I think a year in.

Mobile technology just speaks to me. Don’t get me wrong, the power and flexibility of a Mac (or PC) are unmatched by anything on the mobile side. That being said, having the ability to carry a computer that can run your business, take great pictures, connect with your family, and listen to podcasts in your pocket never stops being incredibly cool.

My journey started with the Zune… and no, not the super cool Zune HD. No no, it all started with the brown brick. Even in the moment I knew this thing was huge and ugly. The software experience, however was chef’s kiss emoji so so good! I was in love with the huge, overlapping text, and overall minimal aesthetic.

My very first smart phone was actually an iPhone 3gs. I bought it 2nd hand a good ways after release. I was pretty young at the time and don’t remember much of the details around this purchase.

No, my first purchase that was truly impactful came after I had dove deep into the Zune ecosystem. When I learned that Microsoft would be following up the Zune with a phone variant (similar to Apple spinning the iPhone out of the iPod) I was incredibly excited. It was this excitement that sent me deep into blogs such as windowscentral.com(then windowsphonecentral.com). The obsession was real. Enter: Samsung Focus!

Ahh yes, the Samsung Focus. I remember this one being mentally divisive. On the one hand, I was beside myself with excitement to finally be getting my first Windows Phone. Worldwide there were 10 phones that launched. Sadly the United States got the most vanilla of the bunch. For the Windows Phone hopefuls in the US we had choice between the Samsung Focus (a traditional, plastic candy bar slab phone), HTC Surround (a slightly smaller, slightly thicker candy bar phone, with a slide out speaker), and the LG Quantum(a very plain phone with a slide out keyboard).

The 2nd round of phones I don’t remember quite as much about. I ended up getting the HTC Titan. It was massive for the time at 4.7 inches diagonal. This was also my very first aluminum unibody and wow do I miss this material choice. Years into the glass sandwich design of almost all cell phones today, thinking back on the cool, light feel of the aluminum just feels satisfying in my mind. I really wish that something would have come from the rumors of breakthroughs in wireless charging that works through metal so we could move beyond glass. However the next phone on the list managed to bring wireless charging to a phone in a way that still felt high quality.

The Nokia Lumia 920 was easily my favorite Windows phone I owned personally, and is probably my favorite phone period. The size (for the time) was perfect at 4.5 inches diagonal. This phone also is a shining example of how a company can take high quality polycarbonate (plastic) and make it feel premium. This phone just felt good to hold. It was also among the first phones to have wireless charging built in! The other headline feature of the 920 was it being the first Windows phone in the States to include a Pureview camera. While this wasn’t the 41 megapixel behemoth that would later come in the Nokia 1020, it was still an impressive shooter.

After the 920 I was pulled into the Apple land and bounced around a lot between Android and iPhone. We’ll dig into that a bit in a future post.

Only a year late, but on episode 097 of Hemispheric Views there was a duel… of the app defaults. Since then many many posts of folk’s defaults have been posted. I wanted to throw my 2 cents in as well!

• Mail Client: Outlook (personal) and Gmail (work)
• Mail Server: Outlook (personal) and Gmail (work)
• Notes: Obsidian (for blog stuff), Apple notes (personal), Google Keep (work)
• To-do: Reminders
• iPhone photo shooting: Camera Control ~80% of the time, swipe left from lock screen otherwise
• Photo Management: Photos
• Calendar: Calendar (personal), Google Calendar (work)
• Cloud File Storage: OneDrive
• RSS: Reeder
• Contacts: Contacts
• Browser: Vivaldi(personal), Edge and Chrome at work
• Chat (not messages): discord mostly, some telegram
• Bookmarks: none
• Read It Later: none
• Word Processing: Rarely used, but Word when I do need something for this
• Spreadsheets: Rarely used, but Excel
• Shopping lists: Reminders
• Presentations: none
• Meal Planning: None
• Budgeting and personal finance: Simplifi
• News: mostly google, or sometimes Apple news for headline stuff
• Music: Spotify
• Podcasts: Castro
• Password Management: 1Password