Category Archives: Miscelaneous

Affordable Noise Canceling Earbuds

I’ve started traveling more for business recently so I started looking for some reasonably priced noise canceling headphones. I only looked at earbuds, because I like to travel light. I’m not an audiophile, but I like pretty good music. I wasn’t about to pay $300 for the Bose QuiteComfort 20i, so I decided to try the Audio-Technica QuitePoint Earbuds ATH-ANC33iS with it’s 4 star average review rather than the older and 3.5 star ATH-ANC23 model.

After 2 hours on a commuter plane and 10 hours on big jets, I’m satisfied with my purchase. The headphones canceled about 50% of the prop noise from an Embraer EMB 120 and 90% of the jet noise from an Airbus A-320 and Boeing 757. They blocked 100% of refrigerator and computer fan noise (sitting next to my gaming tower). Unfortunately, the noise canceling circuitry also adds a subtle hiss. It’s barely noticeable when there is ambient noise, but becomes apparent in quite situations. Fortunately, the simple solution is to turn off the noise canceling when it’s quite.

For audio quality I listened to a selection of my music that has a pretty good audio range. The bass was fairly boomy, but the audio wasn’t the crispest. It sounded similar to the Apple EarPods that come with new iDevices.

I haven’t had these long enough to comment on battery life. The one AAA battery that came with the earbuds has been going strong for 12 hours.

Overall I give the Audio-Technica ATH-ANC33iS QuitePoint Earbuds a 4 out of 5 on value but 3 out of 5 for sound quality.

Redeem an iTunes eGift in the Mac App Store

If you receive an iTunes gift via email, but don’t want to open iTunes, do the following to redeem the gift in a different program (e.g. App Store or iBooks):

  1. Open the email with the iTunes gift
  2. Right Click on the "Redeem Now" button and copy the link. The menu option is usually called something like "Copy Link" or "Copy Link Address…"
  3. In a text editor paste the link. The link should look something like https://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/com.apple.jingle.app.finance.DirectAction/freeProductCodeWizard?code=XABCD1234ABCD12X&mt=1M
  4. The gift card code (same as scratching off a physical gift card) is the text between "code=" and "&mt". In this example it is XABCD1234ABCD12X (not a real gift card code)
  5. Paste or type this code into the Redeem page of any of Apples app stores

Forcing an iTunes Charge

Recently, I received an offer from American Express, where I would receive a statement credit if I used my card on iTunes. Unfortunately, I already had a gift balance on my Apple ID and didn’t expect I’d spend it before the promotion expired.

I used the following steps to charge my card immediately and just add to my account balance:

  1. In iTunes, go to the Store menu -> View account (appleID@email.com)…
  2. Edit your payment details to the credit card with the promotion.
  3. Click the home (icon) button near.
  4. Under Quick Links on the right hand side of the window, select Send iTunes Gifts.
  5. Enter your own email address, select an amount that qualifies for the promotion, and click Next.
  6. Pick a design and click Next.
  7. Click Buy Gift to charge your credit card.
  8. Look at your email for an iTunes Gift card you can add to your account balance.
  9. Switch your credit card back to your original card.

Note: I’m not sure why it isn’t possible to buy/send gifts from the Mac App Store. As far as I know, you have to use iTunes.

Selective Amazon Product Preview Popups

As an Amazon Associate, I appreciate being able to easily incorporate popups; however, the Product Preview javascript, turns every single Amazon link into a popup. There is a very simple way to for some links to have popups while disabling popups on others.

The standard link to

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003L1ZYYM/?tag=tidgubi-20">AmazonBasics HDMI Cable (6.5 Feet/2.0 Meters)</a>

renders as follows: AmazonBasics HDMI Cable (6.5 Feet/2.0 Meters) (hover to see the popup)

It appears that the Amazon code parses links for "http://www.amazon.com", so updating the link with "https" to

<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003L1ZYYM/?tag=tidgubi-20">AmazonBasics HDMI Cable (6.5 Feet/2.0 Meters)</a>

renders without a popup as follows: AmazonBasics HDMI Cable (6.5 Feet/2.0 Meters)
The link works fine, because Amazon automatically redirects from https to http.