Bourbon Bartender “Meet the Masters” series – Interviewing Jason Fruits of Old 55 Distillery

Posted: May 7, 2023 in Uncategorized
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Jason’s a great guy and Old 55 has a fantastic product. Learn more about their distillery, process, and more in the interviews:

Part I:

Part II:

Part 2 of the Steve Nally “Meet the Masters” Interview Now Available!

Posted: November 26, 2022 in Uncategorized
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I’m having a lot of fun sharing this with you. Part 2 is out, and I must say my editing skills are getting better 🙂 In this video, Steve discusses single barrel vs. blending. Spoiler alert: Blending isn’t bad.

I’ve also created a Facebook page for Bourbon Bartender… Yes, finally. Check it out.

Looking forward to your feedback – and I hope you enjoy.

Happy Holidays!

-Auri

Introducing the “Meet the Masters” Series at Bourbon Bartender

Posted: November 20, 2022 in Uncategorized
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I’ve been wanting to do this for a while… Talk with master distillers and others in the industry and see what their job is like. Most YouTube channels, blogs, and so forth celebrate the drinking aspect of bourbon, whiskey, and other spirits. What about the industry? What’s it like to be the part of the team that makes all this great stuff? And thus, my new Meet the Masters series was born. It’s part of my Bourbon Bartender channel, where I try to educate others on all things bourbon and whiskey.

In my first installment, I had the grand opportunity to interview Steve Nally, Bardstown Bourbon’s master distiller. Steve’s a great guy. Funny, a storyteller, and wise in the ways of distillation and whiskeycraft. I drove down to Louisville the night before, imbibed a bit, then headed to Bardstown. Much to my surprise, they have EV charging stations! The distillery is going through a multi-million dollar expansion, enabled after the investment by Pritzker.

Steve and I had lunch, then a great interview. It’s fascinating how similar our two occupations are – he’s crafting whiskey, and I’m crafting software. There’s so much process and quality control, and at the same time creativity and a focus on teamwork.

After the interview, I stayed the night at the Old Talbott Inn and closed the bar with a few new found friends. The next day, I headed home, eager to figure out how to edit video with two camera angles.

Enjoy the video!

Transitioning from School to the Workplace as a Software Engineer – a fireside chat

Posted: October 6, 2022 in Development, Uncategorized
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I recently enjoyed a “fireside chat” at the Indy .NET Consortium, a meetup I run for local .NET developers.

I’ve had some good conversations with interns and others recently who have struggled with or had insights into this transition. My experience as a young developer was a bit different, because I didn’t take the traditional path of high school -> college -> workforce. Mine was high school -> college -> co-op -> left-school to work and create career -> go back to school -> leave school to work again -> work for startup -> work for consulting firm -> start a business -> shut down business and go back to workforce.

Our October 5 meetup talked about how the traditional path can be a bit jarring. The way I explained it to my employees was “In school, you can get an A, B, C, D, or F. And that’s OK. You learn from it. But in the workforce, you either get an A or an F. You can have as many Fs as you want, as long as you end up with an A. Sometimes, within reason, I’ll accept an A- or B+, but it’s rare. We’re paid to deliver, not pass lessons.”

You can watch the entire discussion below:

Bourbon Bartender: Buying Bourbon for a Friend

Posted: September 18, 2022 in Uncategorized
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I’m often asked what bourbon or whiskey to buy as a gift. So, I added a Bourbon Bartender video explaining how to tackle that topic. Enjoy!

Having Trouble With Your Phonak Hearing Aid and Android Phone?

Posted: January 26, 2021 in Uncategorized
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A friend with a hearing aid was having issues after upgrading to a new Android phone. He could pair the device with his phone, but couldn’t make or receive phone calls. What the heck – he used the app, and nothing worked like before! I worked on it for about an hour, and finally figured it out… What a terrible experience for him, so I hope this helps others. It boils down to the hearing aid requiring two different Bluetooth connections to make things work. This is very common with headphones, actually.

For those interested in the root of the issue: You have to set up the Bluetooth Classic connection before the Bluetooth Low Energy – a.k.a. BLE – connection. If you set them up in the opposite order, the hearing aids stop advertising Bluetooth Classic and you’re stuck with being frustrated. It’s probably a firmware issue Phonak needs to address. Unfortunately, that requires taking the device to a service center – not an optimal solution for those needing hearing aids.

This article assumes you already have the Phonak app installed on the new phone.

Step 1 – Unpair the Hearing Aids From The Previous Device

Make sure your hearing aids are no longer paired to the old device. In the Phonak app, choose Forget Device. I’m not sure of the actual verbiage, as I’m writing this without having the app handy. Then, under Bluetooth Settings in Android, tap the widget wheel next to all the Phonak entries, and choose Forget Device or Unpair Device.

Step 2 – Factory Reset the Hearing Aids

Make sure the hearing aids are off. You can do this by holding the power button on each bud until the light turns red and letting go. Once they’re off, count 5 seconds. Now, on each bud, hold the power button until the orange light turns on and then off – don’t let go until it turns OFF. Then, power down the ear bud again.

Step 3 – Power On the Hearing Aids

Now that they’re reset, power them on again. You can do this by holding the power button until the green light flashes, then letting go.

Step 4 – Pair Bluetooth Classic

Do *not* launch the app first. Go to Bluetooth settings on your phone, then Scan for devices, and choose the Phonak device that has a headphone icon next to it. You’ll see a couple icon types – but you need the one entry that has the headphone icon. This indicates the “Bluetooth Classic” connection, if you’re interested in such technical details. Accept the pairing request prompts that will show up after you tap to pair. If prompted to make/receive phone calls with the device, confirm you want to do so.

Step 5 – Pair Bluetooth LE

Now that you’ve paired Bluetooth Classic, launch the Phonak app and run through its setup process.

Step 6 – Done!

You should be good to go. I hope this helps those of you frustrated by such a crazy experience.

AppCenter Not Building Native Android APKs? Try this…

Posted: December 11, 2020 in Android, Software Development
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So I recently ran into an issue where Microsoft AppCenter wouldn’t build my Android APK… It would find the source, build successfully, then fail to find the resulting APK.

If you’re running into this issue, try the following:

This is based on @johnclarete’s idea, which I had to modify due to it relying on Flutter’s config.

  1. Modify the build.gradle file in your Application folder as follows:

Find the android { part of the file and paste in the buildTypes part:

android {
    compileSdkVersion 30

    buildTypes {
        appcenter {
            applicationVariants.all { variant ->
                variant.outputs.all {
                    def currentFile = new File(outputFileName)
                    def filename = currentFile.getName()
                    outputFileName = "../../../../../Application/Application/build/outputs/apk/${filename}"
                }
            }
        }
    }
  1. In AppCenter, you should now have an “appcenter” Build Variant option.
image
  1. Disable Build Android App Bundle.

That worked for me. I hope this helps others.

Video: Installing a VR Pulley System

Posted: August 23, 2020 in Uncategorized
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My friend Mark and I recently installed a VR pulley system. It’s a much less expensive alternative to Wireless VR solutions, none of which exist for Windows Mixed Reality, which is my headset type.

You can watch the video below:

Special thanks to Thrill for his three-axis pulley suggestion.

Automatically Choosing Android Splash Screen for Light and Dark Modes

Posted: July 8, 2020 in Android, Development, Programming, Xamarin
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A friend reached out today and asked “Hey, I need my splash screen to be themed based on whether Dark Mode is selected on the Android device.” I had never done that before, so I was curious how it should be done.

Dark Mode is new to Android 10, a.k.a. Android Q. Not as tasty, but hey, gotta ship something. It has a range of benefits, such as lower energy consumption, looking cool, and frustrating developers without budget for theme-aware apps.

It turns out, after some sleuthing, it’s relatively straightforward.

First, this article assumes you’re following the “splash screen as a theme” approach, which you can learn more about here. The example is for Xamarin.Forms, but the same approach applies to regular Android development.

Basically, you have a “splashscreen” style, and you set it as your app’s theme in the Android manifest. Then, you “swap” to the real theme in MainActivity. For example, what I use in an app, located in resources/values/styles.xml:

  <!-- Splash screen style -->   <style name="splashscreen" parent="Theme.AppCompat.DayNight">     <item name="android:windowBackground">@drawable/splash</item>     <item name="android:windowNoTitle">true</item>     <item name="android:windowIsTranslucent">false</item>     <item name="android:windowIsFloating">false</item>     <item name="android:backgroundDimEnabled">true</item>   </style>

Note my drawable. I want a different drawable for my dark vs. light (normal) theme. Here’s what is different:

  • The parent is now Theme.AppCompat.DayNight
  • I’ve added a different set of drawable folders for the Dark theme images. These are the same folder names, with -night appended to the end:

different drawable-night folders

In this example, I haven’t yet added the other folder variations, but you get the point.

The theme swap code in MainActivity is as follows:

protected override void OnCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
{     TabLayoutResource = Resource.Layout.Tabbar;     ToolbarResource = Resource.Layout.Toolbar;     // Swap back to the normal app theme. We used Splash so we didn't have to create a special activity.      // Cute hack, and better approach.     // Idea from URL: https://xamarinhelp.com/creating-splash-screen-xamarin-forms/     Window.RequestFeature(WindowFeatures.ActionBar);     SetTheme(Resource.Style.MainTheme);

That’s all there is to it. If Dark mode is enabled, the splash.png from the -night folder will be used, otherwise the normal image will takes its rightful place.

If you have any questions, please hit me up in the comments.

Special thanks to this StackOverflow article for the –night hint.

More info on Android Dark Theme can be found here.

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