formation

From 2010-10-09 Fleet Week Airshow

October is my favorite month of the year, for several reasons.  It has the perfect fall weather that I like, not too hot and not to cold.  It also happens that my birthday is in October.  This year it was a particularly unique date: 10/10/10.  I don't know if it has any astrological significance, but see my previous posting about the power of the number 10.

Anyways V. took me out to the city and we had a wonderful day of seeing the sights... We parked at Fishermen's Wharf and had lunch at Hooters.  Afterwards we went to the pier and watched the Fleet Week airshow including a performance by the Blue Angels.  That's the other reason I like October, it's always when Fleet Week comes to San Francisco.  I had my camera with me and got some nice shots -- click on the photo above to see the rest of the photos.  And then for dinner we went to one of my favorite dining destinations in SF -- Espetus, the Brazilian churrascuria.  If you love eating meat like I do, you are doing yourself a disservice if you have never had dinner at a churrascuria!  We ate so much we had to roll each other out the front door.

If you know my wife V., you know she always tries to get me the latest in fancy technological gadgets for my birthdays and Christmas.  Well I wasn't expecting anything grand this year because we are trying to save up for the new house that we'll be moving into next month.  So imagine my dismay and outrage when I unwrapped her latest example of utter defiance.  An Apple iPad 3G.


I have to admit I wasn't that impressed by the iPad when it was introduced by Apple.  What is it, really, beyond a jumbo iPod Touch?  And why would I want it when for the same cost I could have a full-fledged laptop?

Several people I know got one, and they all tend to say the same thing.  "You have to try it, and then you'll get it."  And now I have, and I think I get it.  There's a few things remarkable about using it.  It's about the touchscreen interface, and how intuitive it is to use and navigate through the Web, flip through photos, and other objects.  Humans respond favorably to the sensation of touch, and when tightly coupled with a strong visual presentation, this is a significant break from how we traditionally have used computers and technology.  It's not just moving a mouse with your hand, and seeing a cursor move on the screen.  It's reaching out and touching an icon that you see in front of you, and seeing it expand or react to your touch, instantly.  It's also about how small and thin it is, small enough to hold in one hand and walk around with it, or sit on your couch and lounge around while swiping your way through the news or playing a game.  And it turns on instantly and is ready for you to leap onto the internet or into an app, with little or no start-up time.  I don't know if it's as "magical" as Steve Jobs would have you believe, but it is, like the iPhone before it, a game-changer in the technology world.

Now that I have one, and I'm told that the return policy is, well, not an option, the next question is, what to do with it?  One thing I suppose is to flaunt my technological superiority and hipness among my peers by dangling the lightweight tablet around my neck as a medallion, like the supa-fly funky fresh young man on the left.  Couple that with some kind of huge clock app (I'm SURE there's an app for that), and I'm Flavor Flav for the 21st century!  Yeah, boyeeee!

Here are some of the options I can think of, and will be exploring in the coming days:

Web and Reading.  Obviously a major function of the iPad is for surfing the web and reading articles, books, and email.  I haven't bought any books from iBooks yet but I probably will dabble in that, and maybe sign up for some online magazines.  So far reading the web and social networking has been great, especially with this app Flipbook that helps make checking up on your friends' activities and goings-on much more interactive and visually slick.  In the mornings I can roll out of bed, turn it on and immediately check traffic, weather, or the news without having to turn on a PC, and wait for the device to start up, load the operating system, etc.

Work.  I've already got my work email flowing in on the iPad, which lets me switch between multiple accounts on Outlook, Yahoo! and Gmail pretty easily.  The built-in viewers seem to open most PDFs, Word docs, and other typical business documents with no problem.  If I want to edit docs I'll have to splurge on some real business productivity apps like Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

Play.  Obviously there are plenty of games available for the iPhone and iPad.  There are plenty that are free to try out and they range from the simple like air hockey to more complex like Scrabble, and even to the highly complex like the turn-based strategy classic Civilization.  There are some racing games for the iPad that I will probably check out.  I just bought my first game which is a Real Time Strategy game called Land Sea Air Warfare.  I always thought a touch-screen tablet like the iPad would be perfect for playing a RTS and now I'll get to test that theory as I learn a new addictive game.  Oh, how many hours have I wasted playing RTS games?  A lot.

Photos.  Along with the iPad my family also got me the camera connect kit, which makes importing photos into the iPad a cinch.  So I am looking at the various apps available that will help me view, organize, edit, and share my photos more easily.  The view and edit parts are covered with a few free apps including a decent one from Adobe Photoshop, but I need to look for better ways to organize and then share my pictures online.  I've got the Photobucket app, but am considering buying another app that supports uploading to Picasa.  I'm a little suprised the built-in Photos viewer has no ability to really organize your photos on the iPad -- you basically need a Mac and iPhoto to do anything with them.  I guess it's Apple's not so subtle way of saying, "hey, you like the iPad?  Then you should buy a Mac to go with it."

Writing.  The touch keyboard is fairly easy to use especially in the landscape mode, but I might want to consider getting the wireless keyboard if I plan to do a lot of typing.  I am going to try doing more of my blog posting from the iPad to see how that goes.  A portion of this post was written on the iPad, but when it came time to add in photos and do some more writing I went back to my PC and keyboard.  For short posts it should be a lot more convenient.

Music.  Many have said or joked that the iPad is just a iPod touch enlarged.  So obviously it plays music.  The iPod functionality is nothing special, it just plays music like an iPod or iTunes.  It actually feels like something in between, it doesn't have all the same control features of iTunes like DJ mode or ability to edit ID3 tags, song titles etc.  But I'd rather just use my iPod Classic for playing music than have to plug in the iPad to speakers or use headphones with it.  I guess having iTunes and being able to shop for music is better, but maybe where it comes in handy is being able to run music apps like Pandora or Shazam.  But this functionality comes secondary to all the other functions in my mind.

That's it for this update.  Drop me a comment if you have ideas of other ways I could use my iPad that I haven't thought of yet.  After I have had a chance to use it some more I will give further impressions.