I recently purchased a Tom Bihn Smart Alec Backpack. Tonight, I put it back in its original shipping box and will be shipping it back to Tom Bihn tomorrow. I wanted to review the bag here on my web site to provide some unbiased and alternative opinions to this bag that I didn’t find elsewhere.

My goals in purchasing a new backpack were:

1. Reduce the number of zippers and pockets in my backpack to a manageable number. My current REI bag has too many pockets and I’m always forgetting where I’ve put things in the bag.
2. Bag should Made in the USA.
3. Be somewhat unique and not like every other bag.
4. Have room for: 13” Laptop, DSLR with attached lens, magazines, kindle, assorted cables, external portable hard drive, travel meds, pens, markers, pocket digital camera, mouse, adapters, and a full sized computer book.
5. Works well on vacation, but would also serve me well as an everyday bag.
6. Fit under a typical airline seat.
7. Easy access to contents, and easy to put things into bag.
8. Be waterproof as much as possible.
9. Be reasonably priced, but be willing to spend more to get a better product.

Non goals:

1. Last a “life-time.” I want high quality, but I get bored with things like this and am likely to replace it in 3-4 years anyway. But, if it’s a good bag, I’ll buy a new bag from the same place.
2. Stand-up on it’s own. I’ve owned those types of bags and although handy, it adds too much weight for my needs for little goal.

The Smart Alec seemed to cover my goals quite well.

So, why did I return it? Because looks and customer reviews can be deceiving.

The ordering process and receipt of the bag were quite painless. The staff responded to e-mails when I asked about the right sized storage for my laptop (after a bit of prodding and tweeting).

The bag itself is put together extremely well and it’s obviously assembled with a very watchful eye. I definitely appreciated that. From the zippers to the fabric, it’s made of really nice materials and constructed well. I was very impressed.

First off, the bag could easily hold all of my gear. However, and this is what really irked me the most, is the fact that the main (and only real) compartment has an extremely inadequate opening for accessing the claimed 26L (1600 cu. in.) of available space within the bag. With the custom sized Vertical brain cell (an extra $60) designed to hold my 13” laptop clipped into the bag, the opening that may have been reasonable without the laptop bag became far too tight.

The bag has a few external and internal pockets. One side has a pocket intended for pens and the like. I think it held about 3 pens (unfortunately, I always carry more than that). There was another space in the same pocket for some other random stuff, but nothing felt overly secure and it all bounced around and jingled when carrying the bag. Since it was on the outside of the bag I wasn’t willing to put in my portable mouse or any electronic gear for fear of damage. I really wasn’t sure what was intended for this outside pocket. On the opposite side of the bag there is another pocket, that is intended for a water bottle. Although I didn’t test it, I saw no reason it wouldn’t perform adequately.

The side pocket did have a handy clip for things such as a keychain, which is a nice touch.

Below is a photo of the bag opened fully with the laptop carrying case inside.

And here you can see how the opening relates compared to a Nikon D300 with a 18-200mm lens attached.

Inside the main opening flag on the front of the bag is a zippered pocket which at first I thought was perfect. That is, until I realized this too wasn’t protected from external strikes and drops that could easily happen in a busy day (maybe putting it in the car, or riding the bus, etc.). So, some of the common things, like my ZuneHD and my pocket-sized camera would have to be stored elsewhere (things I use frequently). It would work fine for a pair of in-the-ear headphones and any gear like that (non-breakables). Unfortunately, I never found a location for those types of things to which I want quick access.

In the photo below, I’d stored my headphones and a portable mouse, but didn’t really like putting it there. Although I would have easy access to my laptop, the accessories for the laptop, such as the power adapter and my mouse would be difficult to access. There was a side pocket on the Vertical Brain Cell which did fit my power adapter. However, if the bag was reasonably full, I wouldn’t have been able to gain easy access to the pocket and the power adapter. 

For my wires and cables and portable hard drives, I went to Target and bought a $10 make-up case (although it just contained a few travel containers inside). Tom Bihn sells a product called the “Snake Charmer” for $30, but that seemed too expensive to me for what it is. Target had men’s shaving cases and such, but they were two to three times as expensive, and I really liked the clear bag idea (rather than the traditional “black bag”). This went into the bag. Here’s where the second big problem with this bag comes into play if you’re intending to use it frequently. Since the opening to the main compartment is quite limited, you’ll be forced to pull out the things on the top to access items lower in the bag. That was a big deal for me. I couldn’t imagine being on a plane, with my DSLR packed, and then need something at the bottom of the bag. I’d end up needing to hand things to my seat neighbors to hold while I dug through the bag!

The bottom of the Smart Alec does have a bit of padding, which is somewhat inconsistent with the manufacture of the rest of the bag (with so many pockets and such not having any protection).

In the photo on the left, it’s probably difficult to see that there’s another pocket deep in the bag (3/4 of the way down the inside of the bag). I didn’t know what to put there, as it would be completely inaccessible if the bag was even slightly full. There was no zipper either, so if the bag wasn’t full, the contents would have slid out if the bag was tilted beyond 90 degrees.

The photos on the Tom Bihn web site show a fully packed bag. I can’t imagine how much careful layering and work it would take to properly organize and fill the bag like that, and how much time it would take to unpack/repack. Again, a larger opening for this bag would help dramatically, especially if using one of the Vertical Brain cells.

If your needs are similar to mine, I wouldn’t buy the Tom Bihn Smart Alec.

The total price, with the Vertical Brain Cell was $190 US.

Not recommended.

Honestly, I eat maybe 1 or 2 beef cheeseburgers in a year (and I don’t even care for most cheese!). Regardless, I still thought this web site, Cheese and Burger Society is really well done (pun not intended!).

It uses Adobe Flash, but really to good effect. There’s a voice over for each recipe.

“Number 7… it’s not for the guy who makes spreadsheets for a living.”

“Limburger, I once fought off three hungry bears to protect my Limburger. True story.”

There are interesting cheese facts:

Famous for its pungent tendencies, this brave and bold Belgian cheese does nothing but intensify with age. Limburger was created to complement the highly flavored meats commonly eaten in Belgium and Germany. Today, a single cheese plant in Monroe, Wisconsin produces all the surface-ripened Limburger made in the United States.

(Monroe, Wisconsin is relatively close to the WiredPrairie homestead.)

Jeffrey Carver has provided a number of his science fiction books for free on his web site here. I’ve just completed reading the free Chaos Chronicles series (books 1-4) and enjoyed them quite a lot. Each book isn’t very long, so it’s easy enough to get through the series without drowning in sci-fi tech details.

My only “new year’s resolution” this year was recorded on Twitter thusly:

So, I just threw some money in Jeffrey’s tip-jar as a thank-you for the e-books. I’m sure it was more $ than he would have gotten directly from me if I had purchased the physical books from a reseller like Amazon.

Amazon has the fourth book in paperback at $7.99: Sunborn (Chaos Chronicles)

Adobe has been dragging their feet for more than 18 months on this one – they can’t seem to ship a working DNG Windows Imaging Component compatible codec for a 64 bit based Windows system. Along comes the FastPictureViewer WIC RAW Codec Pack – which fully supports DNG on 64 bit Win7 machine. From my initial testing and reading other reviews, it makes DNGs (and other RAW file formats that would require other codecs) just work.

It also works on Windows 32 and 64-bit Vista and Windows 7 (and XP SP3).

It’s donationware (meaning you should donate to the author if you want to continue to use it after a trial period).

I use DNGs exclusively – and was frustrated by the lack of explorer thumbnails when browsing folders (as was my wife when she’s looking through our photo folders stored on our Windows Home Server).

Sweet!

• Longer battery life for Kindle (Global Wireless): You can now read for up to 1 week on a single charge with wireless on. Turn wireless off and read for up to 2 weeks.
• Built-in PDF reader: Your Kindle can now display PDF documents without losing the formatting of the original file. Send PDF documents directly to your Kindle (via your @Kindle address) or drag and drop PDF files from your computer to your Kindle (when connected via USB). Learn more.
• and a few other things …

Get it here manually, or wait for the auto update.

Kindle 2.3 Update

I immediately added a few manuals for cameras, etc. – things that I take on vacations with me that I occasionally wish I had the manual for. I had converted them using their free service before, but it left them a mangled mess too often. The Nikon D300 manual for instance, is very readble now on the Kindle.

Thanks Amazon for this upgrade!

My wife and I decided to switch our cell phone service to Verizon, to join the USA’s most awesomest network. We bought 2 new Android phones, figured out what plans to get … it took about an hour and half in the store.

Having learned our lesson last time we tried to switch wireless carriers, we declined the automatic number port and got new numbers instead. We confirmed that we could port the numbers later and cancel our existing AT&T service ourselves.

On her Droid phone (the Eris), she got maybe one bar of service, if she stood in the right place, and faced the proper direction, with her arms at the proper height.

On my Motorola DROID, it was about 1 to 2 bars of service. A call between the two phones sounded absolutely terrible, with cut outs and so much vocal digitization that it was a very unpleasant experience.

Yes, there was “3G” service at our house, but making a phone call seemed to be a challenge – so, sorry Verizon. I can’t hear you now.

(And I’m aware of the Wireless Network Extender, but it has a bunch of caveats about size of house, network bandwidth, etc., that we can’t necessarily adapt to).

Phones will be returned.

AT&T didn’t even know we temporarily considered other options.

Oxo Good Grips Food Scale with Pull-Out Display

I’ll be honest, but I don’t own one of those yet. Our digital scale is functional, but not nearly as fun or useful as this awesome scale from Oxo. I saw it reviewed recently on America’s Test Kitchen last week and nearly walked over to our existing scale and accidentally knocked it into the garbage (whoops!). Amazon has it for $49 and it’s gotten awesome reviews. (49 people have given it nearly a perfect 5.0 rating!). As soon as our digital scale needs replacement (or a little earlier than that!), this is the scale I’ll buy (or an even better version!)

If you don’t see what’s cool about this – it’s the fact that you can actually read the measurement even with a large plate sitting on top of the scale! Oxo has some cool products – you can tell their designers actually think about how people cook, and how just repeating what other companies are doing often isn’t the right answer.

Back to (un)regularly scheduled blogging.

I switched from my ASP.NET host (at Crystal Tech) to a LAMP host (Dream Host). I really hadn’t been using the ASP.NET features at all and the cost was about $10 more a month than I could spend elsewhere. After some searching, I decided on DreamHost. The prices are competitive, the features are competitive, the employees are active, and they are carbon neutral/green hosts. Their control panel is extensive (and generally very easy to use!) and the set of features they’ll allow you to tweak, although not endless, is significantly higher than other hosts I’ve used. ASP.NET hosts tend to be extremely locked down and unnecessarily expensive.

The also offer unlimited storage (who doesn’t besides ASP.NET sites these days), but also they legitimately allow you to store up to 50GB of personal data – as an offsite back up if you want. That’s unique. With a few  clicks, you can configure Google to be your host of e-mail and calendars as well.

I’ve created a promo code for them which offers $50 off and 1 free lifetime unique IP address.

The Promo code is WIREDPRAIRIE1 (make sure you type it in when prompted during sign-up to get the promotion!).

I broke down and decided to pre-order a Kindle 2 today. Here’s what Amazon had to say about it:

New Features & Enhancements

• Slim & Lightweight: Just over 1/3 inch and 10.2 ounces
• Books in under 60 seconds: Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds; no PC required
• Improved Display: Reads like real paper; now boasts 16 shades of gray for crisp images and text; even reads well in bright sunlight
• Longer Battery Life: 25% longer battery life; read for days without recharging
• More Storage: Take your library with you; holds over 1,500 books
• Faster Page Turns: 20% faster page turns
• Read-to-Me: Text-to-Speech feature means Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud.
• No Wireless Bills: No monthly wireless bills, data plans, or commitments. Amazon pays for Kindle’s wireless connectivity so you won’t see a monthly wireless bill.
• Large Selection: Over 230,000 books, plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines and blogs available
• Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise

Here are my reasons (in addition to those above):

• No more the ugly duckling: Version 1 of the Kindle only a tech-head could love (or someone who just loved the idea, and could ignore its lack of design).
• More Software Development Related Titles: Books such as Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed, Concurrent Programming on Windows, and Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0, all available under 60 seconds directly to the Kindle.

You can check your wireless coverage here.

This is by far the most popular item I’ve ever loaned out to friends and family:

Fluke 62 Mini Infrared Thermometer

It’s a digital thermometer which is able to read the surface temperature of an object by simply pointing at it. It’s great for determining the temperature of hard-to-reach surfaces as well as objects that are close. It has a small red-laser for accurate targeting of a surface.  You can use it to check the temperature of your oven for example to verify the accuracy of the oven’s set temperature (they’re often less accurate than you’d think).

I, and many others, have used it during a cold winter to try to find cold air leaks, cold spots, poorly insulated walls, and electrical outlets (and more!).

I’d highly recommend it.