Dan Jones

The Chewbelta is your Wookiee for the wide to work, as well as the latest Chebacculous Star Wars gift for your favorite fan. Slip the furry Chewbacca bandolier over a seat belt and press together the Velcro closures to turn s/he who sits behind it into the best co-pilot in history. (And, hopefully, the best driver in present day.)

According to your local Click It Or Ticket campaign the Chewbelta will make all who don it look so Wookiee-ing awesome they - and their kids - will never drive off without fastening their seat belts again. I'll bet a Chewbelta would also keep the rough, oddly sharp edge of the seatbelt strap from digging into my neck when I reach over to pick up my phone that has flown off the center console onto the passenger side floor mat.

Texts From Superheroes

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Word has been floating around on the street that Andy Rubin, the “father of Android,” would be launching a new company called Essential and a brand new smartphone. Rubin teased that phone earlier this year.

Now the Essential Phone is officially official, and it’s stuffed to the gills with features you’d expect in a high-end handset. That includes a 5.7-inch display, which will take up the lion’s share of attention thanks to its near-borderless design. The Essential’s display actually reaches further up than even Samsung’s Galaxy S8, but there is a bit bigger of a bezel on the bottom.

The phone itself is built using titanium for the frame, ceramic for the back panel, and Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for the cover glass. The other specifications include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor under the hood, 4GB of RAM, 128GB of built-in storage (no mention of a microSD card slot, though), a fingerprint reader on the back, USB Type-C, a battery that measures in at 3040mAh, and fast charging support. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack, but there is Android 7.1.1 Nougat.

On the back, there are a pair of 13-megapixel cameras, and Essential is following a trend started by Huawei. That second camera is a monochrome shooter, and the camera system features “image fusion technology” so that the Essential Phone can capture better low-light photos thanks to that monochrome sensor taking in more light. The primary rear camera also boasts a f/1.85 lens with Hybrid Auto Focus, combing Contrast, Phase Detect and IR Laser Assist Focus. Meanwhile, the 8-megapixel front-facing camera can record 4K video, too.

One other major takeaway: The Essential Phone is another go at a modular design. Essential is creating a 360-degree camera to start as well as a charging dock, and both will attach to the Essential phone via pogo pins that are located near the top-right edge. More accessories will be delivered in the future at some point.

And, finally, the Essential Phone is unlocked to work on all the major wireless networks in the United States, where it will be launching first. Customers can reserve their own unit right now if they wish, and it retails for $699.99.

So, who’s buying an Essential Phone?

About two weeks ago, my wife and I drove past a bunch of foxes walking around the cemetery next to the Pembroke (Mass.) Friends Meetinghouse. I pass it almost every day and have never seen them before. I knew we had gone by a great photo opportunity. The Meetinghouse, which was built in 1706, sits at a busy intersection. But it’s an ideal location if you’re a fox, I suppose. There are thick woods adjacent and a feed store a block away that sells live chickens. My wife, who is also a photographer, and I decided to return with our 300 mm and 400 mm lenses. We had never seen such a large group of foxes together like this. After that first day, we rarely saw them. Then on one evening, we saw the mother fox run through the woods towards the house. By this time, it was close to 7 p.m., and the warm sunlight bathed the foxes in a golden glow. It was that moment that we waited so long for. We both quietly walked the perimeter, hugging a rock wall like hunters, except armed with cameras. We split up, taking different sides. All the foxes were out now. It was a perfect moment. The cubs played and frolicked on the lawn, against the house, and around the headstones. They seemed impervious to us being there. We stayed until the mother took off with one of the cubs into the woods. We looked at each other and felt we had witnessed something extraordinary. From that day, we haven’t seen them since. -- By John Tlumacki/Globe Staff photographer

Two fox cubs played around an old headstone at the cemetery at the Pembroke Friends Meetinghouse, where they have a den underneath the house. (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)

They say that home is where the heart is, but if you ask Google and now Andy Rubin’s Essential, it’s also a smart speaker that can help you control connected devices.

Today, following the unveiling of its first smartphone, Essential has debuted a brand new smart speaker in the same vein as the Amazon Echo Show, which also boasts a display on it. The basics are all there: You can control the smart devices in your home, you can play music from it, you can get news updates, and more. The Essential Home will also offer up proactive information, letting you know when you should leave your house based on traffic.

The Essential Home is running a new operating system called Ambient OS, which includes support for a variety of platforms including HomeKit and SmartThings. The Essential Home will also work with digital personal assistants from the likes of Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Assistant, according to Wired.

One of the focuses of the Essential Home is privacy. Essential says it will avoid communicating information with the cloud when it can, preferring to keep everything local and on device while it’s communicating with the other connected devices in your home.

That’s all we know about the Essential Home for now. How much would you pay for the Essential Home?

"You know you're getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you're down there."

As front-end developers, we're well aware that different browsers (and versions) support different web platform features. We make choices based on the support of those features balanced with what analytics tell us about what browsers our users use. For example, if our Google Analytics tell us only 0.01% of users are left on IE 9, perhaps we'll decide it's OK to start using Flexbox and .classList.

Enter Autoprefixer. Autoprefixer has become a ubiquitous part of CSS build processes because it helps us with cross browser support almost effortlessly. Even though IE 10 only supported an older Flexbox syntax, we didn't have to worry about that because Autoprefixer did it's best to port the modern syntax to the older one, and it did a great job at that.

Autoprefixer allows you to configure what browsers you wanted to target with the prefixing. This means you don't have to generate prefixes for every browser ever (resulting in potentially more code output than you want) but instead only generate prefixes for the browsers you've decided to support. There are lots of ways to use Autoprefixer, but let's say it's a part of your Grunt build:

grunt.initConfig({
  autoprefixer: {
    options: {
      options: {
        browsers: ['last 2 versions', 'ie 8', 'ie 9']
      }
    },
    your_target: {
      // Target-specific file lists and/or options go here.
    },
  },
});

As you might guess, that Autoprefixer configuration will process based on the last 2 versions of all major browsers as well as specifically do what is needed for IE 8 and IE 9.

That's great, but Autoprefixer isn't the only tool out there making choices about browser versions.

Indeed.

I bet many of you have worked with Babel or at least heard of it. You write as modern of JavaScript as you like, and it processes it into JavaScript that will run in older browsers. There is a project called babel-preset-env which allows you to configure what browsers Babel will compile down to. For example:

"babel": {
  "presets": [
    [
      "env",
      {
        "targets": {
          "browsers": ["Edge 15"]
        }
      }
    ]
  ]
},

There we are specifically targeting Edge 15. Just as one little example, Babel won't even bother converting anything in const a = `string`; because Edge 15 supports const and `backticks`. But if we told it to also target IE 10, we'd get var a = "string";.

Browserslist is about a single configuration for all tools that need to know what browsers you support.

We just looked at two major tools that can be configured based on which browsers to support: Autoprefixer and Babel. Doesn't it make sense to be targeting the same list of browsers? (Yes.)

Enter Browserslist.

browserl.ist helps you see exactly what browsers you're targetting based on a configuration string.

With Autoprefixer, just by having a Browserslist configuration, it will automatically use it.

{
  "browserslist": [
    "> 1%",
    "last 2 versions",
    "IE 10"
  ]
}

That's an example of having the configuration stored in your `package.json` file. There are other ways to make sure a Browserslist configuration is available though, like having a BROWSERSLIST environment variable or a `.browserslistrc` config dotfile.

Babel still requires babel-preset-env.

There are other interesting tools using Browserslist.

For example, your linting setup can be configured to warn you if you use code that isn't supported outside of your Browserslist setup. This is done with the eslint-plugin-compat plugin for ESLint.

On the CSS side, the same can be done with stylelint and the stylelint-no-unsupported-browser-features plugin.

Those things feel like a natural extension of Browserslist, and it's really cool they exist already. Perhaps slightly more surprising is PostCSS Normalize, which actually builds a CSS "reset" (Normalize isn't really a reset, but you know what I mean, it handles cross browser differences in CSS) based on the browsers your target.

If you'd like to read a bit more, check out the article Autoprefixer 7.0 and Browserslist 2.0 from the developers behind these projects.

Even better, check out an example repo of all of these things combined together in a minimal example.

Browserslist is a Good Idea is a post from CSS-Tricks

The Humble Mobile Bundle: Epic Platformers

Jump to it! The Humble Mobile Bundle: Epic Platformers has one week left, and we just added VVVVVV and Goo Saga!

Heads up, Samsung Galaxy device owners, because there’s a new app on the Play Store that you might want to check out.

SoundAssistant is a new app from Samsung that is pretty much what it sounds like. The app will assist you in controlling the audio on your Galaxy device, giving you added controls and the ability to fine tune volume.

Included with SoundAssistant is a toggle that’ll let you control your phone’s media volume with the volume keys rather than the ringer volume, as well as a feature that’ll let you set the volume of individual applications. There’s also a Floating Equalizer that includes 150 steps of volume control so that you can get the volume setting just right.

There’s a mono audio switch in the SoundAssistant app, too, as well as a feature called Scenarios. With Scenarios, you can set a specific date and time for your phone to enable a certain audio setting, like enabling vibrate mode while during your work hours on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.

SoundAssistant looks like a pretty nifty app for Samsung Galaxy device owners. The app adds some new features, like the Floating Equalizer that’ll give you the ability to fine tune your audio outside of the app, and in general looks like it’ll make listening to audio on your Galaxy device a better experience.

You can find SoundAssistant in the Play Store at the link below.

If you're crafty, you can probably make a personalized custom coloring book of your wedding, your trip to Italy, or your best Instagrammed food photos all by yourself with a few flicks of some Photoshop filters and some high quality printer paper. But for those who don't do DIY graphic design, Colored Moments has not a bad gift idea here with their service of turning 5, 10, 15, or 20 of your favorite photographs into the pages of a wire-bound coloring book.

The custom coloring books are hand-assembled and bound on hardback covers for laptop shading. All pages are perforated for clean removal in case you want to hang one up, or put it through the shredder when you decide you hate the other person in the photo.

Speaking of which, Pro Tip Time: Order a Colored Moments custom coloring book as a proposal gift for your girlfriend. Use the first 4 / 9 / 14 / 19 photos to trace all the wonderful moments you've experienced in your relationship thus far. And then for photo # 5 / 10 / 15 / 20, insert a shot of yourself putting a ring on a lady's finger* with a sign that says, "Will you color (and marry) me?" in the background. I'm just sayin'. It worked for me.

*If you need a lady for this, wait a few minutes outside a nail salon and ask one walking out with a nice fresh paint job to stand in. I'm just sayin'. It worked for me.

Anne Rothwell, Press Officer at Lancaster University, reports on a new study by linguists Panos Athanasopoulos and Emanuel Bylund, who “have discovered that people who speak two languages fluently think about time differently depending on the language context in which they are estimating the duration of events.” The paper is “The Whorfian Time Warp: Representing Duration Through the Language Hourglass,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Apr 27, 2017; unfortunately, it’s beyond a paywall, but the abstract is available here. The crucial bit:

Contrary to the universalist account, we found language-specific interference in a duration reproduction task, where stimulus duration conflicted with its physical growth. When reproducing duration, Swedish speakers were misled by stimulus length, and Spanish speakers were misled by stimulus size/quantity. These patterns conform to preferred expressions of duration magnitude in these languages (Swedish: long/short time; Spanish: much/small time). Critically, Spanish-Swedish bilinguals performing the task in both languages showed different interference depending on language context.

Very interesting, if it holds up; thanks, Ariel!

"The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men."

I had the best grilled chicken wings I ever ate on Super Bowl Sunday in Charleston, SC this year. Then the next day I got grilled chicken wings at a different spot and they became the best chicken wings I ever ate. Charleston has some damn fine grilled chicken wings. Which I have thus far been unsuccessful in replicating*, but as one who never gives up trying when his stomach is involved, I am curious about using these sprayable wing sauces from a St. Louis dude named Zach in my next wing grilling attempt.

Zach says he crafts his wing sauces with the same attention and precision brewmasters put into crafting their beers. To put a cherry on the point, he uses beer bottles as the vehicle for his mists of flavor. He came up with the spray method as a way to save time, effort, and, most importantly, the sauce itself during wing preparation. Cleanup is reduced too when you don't have to mop through a pool of goo in a bowl to coat your wings, and every square inch of your grill grate, while cooking.

Zach's Wing Sauce will appeal to the health conscious out there who prefer grilling their wings to deep frying. In addition to eliminating the vat of oil, grilled wings with sprayable sauce will contain no fillers, preservatives, or artificial ingredients. In his Sweet Heat, Sriracha Lime, Better Buffalo, Chocolate Chipotle, and Mesquite Heat flavors, Zach includes only recognizable ingredients, and each sauce is vegetarian and dairy- and gluten-free.

*One of the restaurants did share that they put their wings in a sous-vide machine before grilling them.

The Hydro-Ball Wind Spinner isn't just a fetching piece of kinetic yard art, it's a Daddy's Little Helper that waters the grass or flower beds so you don't have to.

The spiraling bronze sculpture from Wind & Weather connects to a standard garden hose at its base. Driven by the waterflow, the Hydro-Ball spins and pivots, with holes in its outer rings spurting steady streams outward, and holes in the center driving water inward to turn the spinner's inner spiral. Grab a Bluetooth speaker and a mini LED disco ball, and it'll be like having a Bellagio fountain in your backyard.

The Hydro-Ball Wind Spinner measures 89" tall x 18" in diameter.