UGREEN 145W 25000mAh Power Bank

The UGREEN 145W power bank is probably the best power bank currently in the market. With a 25000mAh capacity and a total of 145W (100W + 45W) charging power, you can quickly charge not only phones and tablets but also laptops.

First Impression: Apple Watch Sport

apple-watch-sport - 10I got my hands on Edong’s Apple Watch Sport and, with his permission, I unboxed it, took some photos, and played with it a bit.

The packaging is unusually big and bulky for Apple who have been steadily reducing the size of their product packaging for years. But it seems to be part of their premium and luxury message for the Apple Watch.

The 42mm case is rectangular and made of aluminium with a space grey anodized coating. Everything is smooth and rounded with no sharp edges or corners to be seen or felt. Knowing beforehand that it is 42mm, I wasn’t expecting that it would be quite small and light. But it is.

The Ion-X screen covers the whole face and is rounded at the edges. It is black and shiny when off and the display is very sharp when on. Nice to look at in either state. It has force-touch which means touching it with varying levels of force result in different actions. It is also very responsive though force-touching needs some getting used to.

The digital crown on the right side is big and quite effortless to turn and push. So with the other button.

The back has those scifi-looking sensors for reading your heart-rate.

The strap is black silicone rubber with a clever clasp. You button it on and slip the excess strap under the clasp. Very neat. And you can change straps or bracelets without any tools.

The whole watch is well-built. It looks and feels the high-end device you expect from Apple. Even more, it looks and feels like a futuristic device from science fiction. But aside from small nods to traditional watches it doesn’t pretend to be a watch but instead steps ahead and defines itself as a new class of wrist wear, the so-called smartwatch.

It looks like Apple has another winner on its hand (or wrist).

PlexConnect: Connecting Plex and the Apple TV

The Apple TV is a nifty little device but it’s nowhere close to being able to play anything you want. It cannot play from USB drives. And it can’t play network shares either. Not from AFP, not from SMB, not from DLNA. There’s no app store for the Apple TV (yet) so there’s not installing and running the Plex Player app. So it can’t play from from Plex Media Server either. At least not directly.

Fortunately, there is a workaround: PlexConnect. And it is genius! You see, some of the built-in Apple TV apps get their UI and content from remote web servers. So it was a matter of hijacking the web traffic to from one of these apps and redirect it to PlexConnect running on local machine. PlexConnect then communicates with Plex Media Server and serves up modified UI and content to the hijacked app on the Apple TV. Of course, the hijacked app won’t work as before anymore.

Normally the hijacked app is the Trailers app. But since I didn’t have the Trailers app on my Apple TV, I used the WSJ app instead. If you have the same situation then in the instructions below replace of “trailers” with “wsjapp” and replace of “trailers.apple.com” with “videoapisecure.wsj.com

Here are the consolidated instructions (from https://github.com/iBaa/PlexConnect/wiki/Install-Guide) for Mac OS X:

1. Install Plex Media Server
2. Download PlexConnect (https://github.com/iBaa/PlexConnect/archive/master.zip)
3. Extract and drag PlexConnect-master to the Applications folder
4. Open a terminal window (Terminal.app on Mac) and run the following command

openssl req -new -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -out ~/Desktop/trailers.pem -keyout ~/Desktop/trailers.key -x509 -days 7300 -subj “/C=US/CN=trailers.apple.com

 

openssl req -new -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -out ~/Desktop/wsjapp.pem -keyout ~/Desktop/wsjapp.key -x509 -days 7300 -subj “/C=US/CN=videoapisecure.wsj.com

5. This will create two files on your desktop: trailers.key and trailers.pem (or wsjapp.key and wsjapp.pem). Next run the following command:

openssl x509 -in ~/Desktop/trailers.pem -outform der -out ~/Desktop/trailers.cer && cat ~/Desktop/trailers.key >> ~/Desktop/trailers.pem

openssl x509 -in ~/Desktop/trailers.pem -outform der -out ~/Desktop/wsjapp.cer && cat ~/Desktop/wsjapp.key >> ~/Desktop/wsjapp.pem

Three files should now be on your desktop trailers.pem, trailers.key, and trailers.cer. (or wsjapp.pem, wsjapp.key, and wsjapp.cer).

6. Place the .pem and.cer files into the following folder:

/Applications/PlexConnect-master/assets/certificates/

7. If you’re hijacking the WSJ app, you need to edit the PlexConnect configuration:

/Applications/PlexConnect-master/Settings.cfg

Set hosttointercept to “videoapisecure.wsj.com“:

hosttointercept = videoapisecure.wsj.com

8. If you’re hijacking the WSJ app, you need to edit the Settings script:

/Applications/PlexConnect-master/Settings.py

Change line 35 to (note the red dash):

(‘hosttointercept’ , (‘trailers.apple.com’, ‘[a-zA-Z0-9_.]+’)),

9. Run PlexConnect by first opening a terminal window (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal), then type the following:

sudo “/Applications/PlexConnect-master/PlexConnect.py”

Provide your Administrator password to complete PlexConnect startup.

You should now see messages like these in the terminal window: PlexConnect Terminal

Write down the IP_Self: ###.###.###.### address. This is the IP of your PlexConnect server

SelfIP

On the Apple TV, choose Settings > General > Network > Wi-Fi. Then Choose your Wi-Fi network Name WifiSettingsChange the DNS setting from “Automatic” to “Manual”. WifiDNSEnter the IP of your PlexConnect server as the DNS server.DNSIP

Go to the AppleTV settings menu. Select “General” then scroll the cursor down to highlight “Send Data To Apple” and set to “No”.

With “Send Data To Apple” highlighted, press “Play” (not the normal “Select” button) and you will be prompted to add a profile.

Enter (without the quotes): “http://trailers.apple.com/trailers.cer” (or “http://videoapisecure.wsj.com/wsjapp.cer“)

Launch the Trailers (or the WSJ app).

Now you can play media from your Plex Media Server library on your Apple TV.

Enjoy!

UPDATE 6-22-15: Changed from old “secure.marketwatch.com” to new “videoapisecure.wsj.com”. Based on discussion at https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/168109-plexconnect-suddendly-stopped-working/.