iPads, Codea and Eleanor

Continuing the trend over the last two years, I woke up early to watch Tim Cook announce the latest revision of the iPad (sans numeral). One change this time to my little ritual of eating potato chips in my jammies while following the live blogs was the additional duty of checking in on our little baby girl grizzling (obviously because she wanted to be kept up to date on the news). With daddy and daughter excited about the most recent awesome Apple device I pre-ordered one straight away that morning and had it delivered to the office on launch day.

I absolutely love the new screen. It's fantastic for reading and viewing photos, although in truth I've now found it hard to take or even find photos that are sharp enough to show off the new Retina display. The increase in weight and thickness are certainly noticeable but it didn't take long to get use to that. The other great addition in this new model is a much improved camera, which I've been using to add snapshots of documents and whiteboard drawings at work to Evernote. The resulting photos are more than usable and I don't bother with a photocopier or scanner anymore when capturing discussions and diagrams.

Another purchase that I made to compliment the our little Apple infused household was the new AppleTV. I've been waiting for an update to the little black box (which now supports 1080P) and I'm glad that we finally have one as AirPlay is such a great feature. Browsing your content on an iPad or iPhone and slingshotting that to the big screen is so much better than clicking incessantly through menus on our TV remote. Particularly happy with being able to use our Plex server on the TV now, even if there seem to be some teething issues with lock screens activating when you pause a show for too long. Hopefully the rumours about Apple opening up the AppleTV platform to apps will mean that it won't be long before we can get a native Plex client on the AppleTV itself.

Something else we tried with AirPlay yesterday was mirroring the iPad screen during our weekly call with mum and Uncle Wing on Skype. I thought we'd try it for a bit of a laugh but I thought it worked out really well as Eleanor could see her AhMah and AhKong from wherever she was playing in the room. I turned on the back camera of the iPad and followed Eleanor around, which gave the grandparents a great view of Nelly playing while Alison could still interact with the TV. The disconnect also meant that I could show what Nelly was like laughing and touching the faces of her grandparents through the TV, without the previous downside of accidentally hanging up on the iPad.

My other latest geek indulgence has been scratching my game development itch with Codea on the iPad. I never thought that programming on a touchscreen device would be feasible (at least this soon) but I've had an blast over the last week knocking up a game prototype together. The app allows you to develop games (other applications as well but the API is clearly geared towards game development) in a dynamic scripting language called Lua. The experience is so fluid and the API exposes some pretty complicated functions of a tablet device (multitouch, accelerometer, sound, graphic manipulation, keyboard support) in a really simple manner. The barrier of entry for experimentation is so low and the results so immediate that it really becomes a pleasure to code, which is certainly a departure from some of the heavy weight enterprise development that I do for work.

What's also impressive is the speed which the API is expanding. The last few updates have added support for a physics engine (using Box2D) and 3D graphics. There's promise for networking support for multiplayer games to come in the future and eventually the ability to export these sandbox games into XCode so that developers can publish their efforts to the App Store. At the moment the only way to share code is to copy the source and paste it somewhere on the active forum for other developers to import into their own Codea app.

In less than a week I put together a simple prototype of a puzzle/memory game that I wanted to try. The idea is to memorize the randomized sequence which the game scrambles the tiles and return it to the original layout, which becomes progressively difficult as the sequence gets longer. A cross between Simon and a picture tile puzzle basically. Codea even allows you to capture video of your program running, so here's a short clip of the working game on YouTube.



Little Nelly has been doing some real growing up over the last few months. She's now cruising naturally and has begun to attempt free standing on her own. So far I think her record is about 5 or so seconds, so I'd expect that walking will not be far away. Life at day care has improved and she seems to be having fun with the other kids based on reports from the centre, which has made Alison's transition back into the work force two days a week a little easier to cope with. Eleanor's verbal skills continue to expand (in inflection if not phonetic variety) and I managed to convince her to crawl across the room to "bring Daddy the blue square" yesterday which was immensely rewarding. She's also a lot happier playing by herself for longer periods, although when she tires of that we often hear a frantic battle cry as she charges on all fours through the house to find you. It's hard to believe that our baby girl is morphing into an increasingly independent little person. *sniff*

If there was one milestone that really hit home how much time has passed it would have been Lily's first birthday last weekend. We had a great time at the Roma Street Parkland with Jeff, Julie and the birthday girl (who as always, looked gorgeous in pink). It's crazy to think that we met a little more than a year ago at antenatal class.

Which obviously means that there's another beautiful girl that will be celebrating her first birthday soon. AhMah will be flying out in two weeks and we have most of the party plans nutted out. I suppose it goes without saying that we're all more than a little excited.

 

Washing Machine and Kinect

Alison got a bit of a fright last week when she heard a loud pop accompanied by a blue spark from the washing machine when she started a load. While the power light seemed to indicate that the machine was still somewhat functional, we couldn't get the old thing to actually start filling or spinning. Assuming that this came about due to a combination of age and the unnaturally humid weather, we decided it was best to just get a replacement. The front loader was progressively taking longer to finish cycles and would have been too small to accommodate our growing family anyway.

Expecting a rush of people looking to replace their white goods from the recent flood damage, Alison and I braved the traffic out to Indooroopilly in search of a decent deal on a washing machine. The Good Guys provided just that deal with a 7.5KG Whirlpool top loader for what seemed like a ridiculous price, supposedly over three hundred dollars under RRP and potentially even a little under cost to move stock. The salesman at Harvey Norman that we asked to price match thought so too, but did it anyway in the spirit of competition, so one week later we now have a much bigger beast to handle our laundry.



Being a top loader this of course will use a lot more water than our previous model, but at least we can open the lid whenever we miss a sock now. Amazingly this also finishes a cycle in about 15 minutes which is at least twice as fast as we're used to. Fantastic stuff.

Inspired to continue cleaning out more old bit lying around, I gathered an impressive pile of Gamecube, 360 and PS2/3 games that I had hidden away in back cupboards. Obviously these weren't going to be getting any use from me, heck I don't even know if I still have a Gamecube lying around or if I'd sold it off, so it was time to cart them all to Game Traders for an appraisal. The tally came up to $175 of in store credit, which was conveniently close to another purchase that I'd been considering for a while.



I followed the articles on Project Natal pretty closely before they launched the Kinect and thought it was full of promise. As the release date grew closer however I got a little skeptical about the available titles and decided that I would pass until something compelling came along. Santa must have picked up quite a few units over Christmas as most people at work got a Kinect with a few games and were surprisingly very happy with it. I have no doubt this is nothing more than the second round of the "Wii effect" but with just $15 to make up the difference I too have joined the millions of people forced to rearrange their living room to play this thing.

Working with the sensor is pretty fun and technically I'm reminded of the novelty of the Playstation EyeToy with the polish of the Wii remote. Unlike the EyeToy, the Kinect does a much better job of detecting your movements and the user experience is far more integrated into the Xbox menu system. There is still a noticeable lag when moving the cursor but with practice you soon learn how to move around the screen relative to your body. The facial recognition is particularly impressive and it's refreshing for Alison and I to be able to jump in and out of games without worrying about signing in or swapping controllers. As the marketing catch phrase goes, "You are the controller".

Only expecting an afternoon of entertainment from this we refrained from buying more games aside from Kinect Adventures, which comes free with the sensor. The mini games are pretty fun but I don't think it's going to have a lot of replayability. Great for parties and showing off technology to others but there's not a lot of substance there. One thing it does well to draw you in is automatically saving photos while you're busy making a fool of yourself. An ingenious addition as seeing your friends in stupid poses is a cheap but effective means of endearment.



The disc also came with a few demo titles, including one that has been getting a lot of positive attention in the reviews called Dance Central. It's a rhythm dance game made by Harmonix which already had something going for it in my books, but the execution is a clear indicator that serious, quality games can be made for the Kinect. Unlike any prior dance game, this one actually has you dancing real moves and assesses you on your accuracy. No more stomping feet a la DDR or semaphore mimicry from Para Para Paradise. The Kinect sensor is sensitive enough to identify the most subtle limb movements and with over 600 separate dance moves from shoulder popping to leg grabbing in the game. This is dance simulation with real credibility. Granted, you are limited to a space of around 1.5 metres to pop'n'lock but it's enough. I enjoy getting out on the dance floor whenever I get the chance (not that I consider myself any good mind you) and from what I can see this is a real winner. Will likely even learn a few usable moves for the next party we go to.

Accumulating Stuff

It's funny how life seems to work against your best intentions. I would be the first to admit that my love for all things shiny and new does little to help our bank account or mortgage, but I've honestly been trying over the last few months to keep the gadgetry purchases to a minimum. Sure, it hasn't been that hard given that most of my luxury time has been spent on playing just one game but I reckon I deserve points for effort.

Of course this would be the month that threw us some mandatory roof repairs, a financial screw up where I transferred a significant amount of dosh to the wrong account, a car that refused to start, obstetrician bills, a large dentist bill for a crown to replace my fractured molar and to top it off... our Topfield Set Top Box decided to break. Granted not the most financially damaging event by comparison but I'll put up with practically anything except for a threat to my personal entertainment.

My view on extended warranties has centered around the philosophy that defective products would likely break in the first year, which means that it's a fairly rare case where I pick up the extra two years offered at the check out. Kinda ironic then that the two big purchases that I opted to buy into the extended warranty have both broken down, one of which thankfully was the latest Topfield blow up. There was a moment of panic when I couldn't find the receipt from the Good Guys but I eventually pulled it out of a completely unrelated folder in our filing cabinet (perhaps it's time to get a new system). The warranty company took their sweet time processing the request which meant that we had to cope with the horror of unpausable live TV or recording ability for a good three weeks (gasp). This weekend however they finally came through and we were asked to pop down to the local store to pick up a replacement, not a Topfield but what I hope to be a far more reliable Beyonwiz DP-Lite



The system will take some getting used to but so far it seems to be doing the job. I certainly like the improvements to the EPG and a bump to the amount of storage from 320GB to 500GB is welcome. Hopefully history won't repeat itself but I once again grabbed an extended two year warranty so we'll see if this turns into a self fulfilling prophecy.

Our other purchases this weekend have all been for the bub, and it's kind of scary how much we've gathered in a short afternoon. A colleague of Alsie's has been desperate to offload the majority of her baby gear now that her two sons have no need for rattles and wraps, so we took a drive out to their house to have a peek at what was available. In the end we pretty much picked up the whole lot for a very reasonable price, which means that our place is now filled to the brim with a subset of work tools for parenthood. These include:

• Cot
• Four wheeled super transforming stroller
• Nappy bag
• Diaper dispenser
• Baby bottle sanitiser
• Assorted colourful toys to keep Daddy and Baby entertained

I'm sure there's a good reason for it but surely there must be an easier way to design a stroller. We unfolded it when we got back home and it took the next ten minutes of straining, pushing and twisting to get the darn thing to collapse again. It was a nostalgic moment for me as I thought of my childhood Transformers (tm) toys that required a degree in Mechanical Engineering to work out.

Most of the goodies have been tucked away in the study now, but one acquisition that's made me take stock of this experience was setting up the cot in the back room. We now have a nursery, along with stuff toys that I've had for years to be passed on. It's the first of what I'm sure will be many new bits of furniture and decorations the baby's room and I can already feel the house changing into a family home.



Mum's flying in on Wednesday and this will be the first time she's seen the house since the renovations and changes. Boy is it going to seem different.

Final Touches and More Macs

Yowzas, it's been a long time since I've posted anything. I'd like to blame it all on how busy and difficult things have been at work, which certainly hasn't been a picnic over the last few weeks. In truth, it's really because we haven't done all that much of interest, and no one wants to hear someone whinge on end about how hard they think they have it at the office. This weekend we managed to get into something a lot more constructive, which I can comfortably share with the greater Internet.

The last section of the house in our renovation plan that has been demanding attention was the little corner under the verandah, next to the storage shed and where the rubbish bins live. As the lowest point on the property, the ground there has always had drainage issues and been damp from run off from the porch. Not particularly nice when you have to take the bins out to be collected after a night of rain. It's not an area of the house where we spend a lot of time so we've managed to ignore it up till now. Thankfully John refused to let us rest on our laurels and forced the team to regroup and roll up our collective sleeves to get stuck into fixing this problem.



Our main challenge with this mini project has always been finding a retaining wall block that looked reasonable and was easy for us to install. Numerous trips to the nearby landscaping place always ended with disappointment or uncomfortable compromises, at least until we found this little block. Simple to stack, looks the part and it didn't cost all that much either. With John's practiced method of smoothing bedding sand he and Alison had the start of a retaining wall up in no time.



Next came the paving of the area to allow us (well... me really) to take the mower and tools in and out of the storage area). We have become really familiar with these 400mm blocks by now and if I'd be quite happy if I never have to lay another one of these ever again.



All this took pretty much all of Saturday and we were stuffed by the end of it. I know I've definitely lost all my landscaping stamina in the extended break we took from manual labour. Things were looking a whole lot better at least, though we still had the steps and some tidying up to do.



How lucky are we that John and Sheena sacrificed their Sunday morning to help us finish things off. With the steps in, more mulch and a small trailer load of gravel we now have a properly tidied corner of the house that we'd be happy to show to visitors. There's even a new garden bed for us to plant where Alison has visions of a passion fruit vine, given that the one we had out the back has been ravaged by possums and never really got enough sun to begin with. Rather pleased with the results though some of the steps may need a bit of concrete later on to hold them in tightly. Hopefully our efforts will survive the first down pour we get.



The other project I had this weekend was to get my new computer setup finished. I've noticed that since I got the iPad I've been using my MacBook less and less, aside from firing up XCode every now and again to have a play. In fact, I've been using my old Toshiba a lot more, which had been relegated to Torrent duty, especially to do development work and play the odd PC game. I still needed my MacBook plugged in to sync the various iDevices around the house though, but it became pretty obvious that I was using both machines inefficiently.

Always one to try and simplify (and keen for an excuse to get a machine capable of running the recently released Starcraft 2), I decided to sell the two laptops to consolidate down to a single desktop. Portability shouldn't be as important anymore with the iPad and I know that I'll want something that's always on to serve media and download torrents. The newly revamped Mac Mini appeared to be the best choice. Now that it supports HDMI out of the box I've even been able to connect it up to the old Hitachi TV as a second monitor.



Not a bad rig really, though I've become so used to having more RAM with OSX (the machine comes with a default of 2GB installed) so I immediately placed an order for 8GB of RAM which should be arriving next week. Also picked up a 1TB Firewire 800 hard drive for a fantastic price to serve as the main media store, with my old 1TB as a secondary and the 500GB as a Time Machine drive. The internal 320GB drive is pretty slow so I'm eventually going to swap that out for a 64 or 128GB SSD to keep things running nice and smooth. All up that should serve as a pretty nice server to store content, cut some code (IntelliJ and XCode should run pretty nicely with 8GB of RAM I would hope) and play the odd game.

Of course this is even better now that we get Steam on OSX. Starcraft 2 is freaking fabulous so far and I can see myself sinking an unhealthy amount of time into it. Hopefully the machine should be grunty enough to run Diablo 3 when that comes out too. Oh, another great thing I love about this little baby is how quiet it is. I haven't heard the fan kick in once when playing games or watching YouTube. Power consumption is supposed to be brilliant too which is a great feature for a device that will be on all the time.

There was supposed to be another big purchase this week with the release of the iPhone 4 in Australia. Unfortunately I didn't attend the midnight launch this time and am now paying for that lack of commitment with a three week wait for the phone to come back into stock. I did however manage to get one month off my phone bill by signing up to the raincheck option at Optus so I guess it's not all that bad. At least I'll have my Mac Mini to keep me busy in the mean time.

That's about it from here. Alison and I will be off to Adelaide for a little holiday to see Kath and Andrew next week which we're super excited about. Can't wait to try all the food, see Frankie (the dog) and just have a chance to relax. Feel like we certainly need it.

iPad, nay iPads

It's almost hard to believe that the iPad has finally reached our shores. Friday was a pretty exciting day in the office for those of us that either had a device ordered or planned to try their luck at the store. I eagerly checked the mail room for deliveries several times that morning before giving up to head out for a run. In fact while jogging through the luscious pathways of the botanical gardens I happened to glance at my phone nonchalantly, before sprinting the rest of the way back to the office at Queen Street. My delivery you see, had come.

Having had a few days to play with it my conclusions are unsurprisingly positive. The device is uncompromisingly attractive to the eye and unfortunately, fingerprints. I had the good fortune to play with one beforehand so the heft of the machine, due no doubt to the two oversized batteries, wasn't all that shocking. You do eventually learn how to hold it and distribute the weight of the screen with efficiency. Battery life by all accounts is absolutely amazing. I've hardly put the thing down and have used it for well over five hour stints at a time between brief charges and the battery indicator hasn't fallen below 56%.

The first thing that you notice after turning it on is how vibrant the screen is. It's marvelous to play games, read books and enjoy photos with other people as the viewing angle remarkably wide. I have no problem leaving it flat on the table to read something free handed, something I would not be able to do with the screen of the iPhone.

Applications of course are the real draw of the iPad. I've been doing a fair bit of research into the standout apps and loaded them up beforehand.

Evernote - I couldn't live without this at work. I'm even composing this post in it
iBooks - there's not much choice in the iBook store at the moment but it's ok with ePub support
Comiczeal - a great app for reading comics in cbz/cbr format is made infinitely better by removing the need to scroll to see the whole page
Numbers - I'm a bit of an Excel geek so I need my spreadsheets. Was a little disappointed that they didn't have pivot tables but the function list isn't too bad overall
Wired magazine - more of a gimmick and a tech demo but it's interesting to see where the publications may go in the future
Instapaper - brilliant for taking long articles out to read. Especially as I don't have the 3G version of the iPad

Typing on the full sized onscreen keyboard in landscape has been an interesting experience. It's certainly large enough that you expect to be able to use your normal touch typing skills, but the lack of physical keys means that you have to be a lot more cautious about accidental touches, not an easy thing when one is used to resting fingers on the home row of the keyboard. The layout is also certainly different from a traditional keyboard so that is taking some getting used to as well. I'd almost liken it to using a mechanical typewriter, where the timing the release of a key before typing the next letter is crucial to maintaining a consistent tempo and speed. The auto correction in iPhone OS is pretty useful once you start trusting it again.

I've been showing the new toy to everyone that exhibited the mildest note of interest so Alison has had to listen to me parrot on non-stop all weekend. She's had little opportunity to actually use it but had grudgingly admitted that she was impressed and could see herself getting one in the future. Since I knew we were going to be in Chermside to check out the Apple store, I decided to strike while the iron was hot. This would be the only way I could guarantee that my iPad remained solely for my use.



I also picked up a wireless bluetooth keyboard just incase I need to type longer reports, though in truth I really want to give the virtual one a good go first. Now that we've been a little indulgent and splurged for an iPad each I doubt we'll be using the laptop for much aside from downloading files and work. Still early though so it should be interesting to see how our habits change over time. All in all definitely no regrets.

Although, it would be nice to be able to watch Masterchef on the iPad which can't be done as it doesn't support Flash video. In saying that, the channel Ten website has been crap lately with streaming video so it makes little difference in the end. Story for another time perhaps.

Back in Brisbane

It's a good thing that we came over to Malaysia with very little in our bags, because there's no way we would have fit our shopping for the return flight otherwise. All three of our bags were packed to capacity and if the airport scales are to be believed then we've accumulated another 7.5kg of clutter. As previous posts have indicated I'm also unfortunately carrying a bit more weight on my person for the trip back to Brisbane.



The flight back was pretty comfortable and I'm impressed with the service on Qantas. We asked and got upgraded to an exit row which was vacant so our legs got some much appreciated stretching room.

Got a little ripped off by the cab ride from the airport, but it was good to just get home without fussing with public transport and a walk up the hill. The house is still standing and the garden remains in good shape, with grass that's suspiciously short (no doubt thanks to John) and a rapidly spreading mass of courgettes that aren't content with remaining in the vegie patch. The grevillea and himalayan ash have grown tremendously as well, and we look forward to the shade they'll provide up front. We were especially pleased to see the progress our neighbours have made with the retaining wall and fences, looks like we'll be able to re-landscape that section of the house soon.

Read some rotten news about the iPad when we got off the plane. Seems like I'll be waiting another month before I can get my grubby mitts on one, due to lack of supply. Damn the iPad for being so darn popular.

Nice to be back home. At least we won't have to go back to work till Monday.

Detox, Delays and Darn Big TVs

Well there goes one working week of trying to be healthy and it's been pretty good so far. Feeling like I have more energy in the mornings and generally more upbeat, which is saying a lot because work wise the past five days have been absolute $H!T. As a condolence, I was cheered up that my peers nominated me for an award at the Buzz Night on Thursday so there's a silver lining in my rumbling storm cloud of work issues.

I've managed to avoid eating anything fried and abstained from the booze for five days, but the next two will be a real challenge. Alison and I have decided to go on a 48 hour detox, which involves drinking the contents of these two boxes as our only means of sustenance (yikes!). I have actually been on a liquid diet before but at least I allowed myself to have glasses of milk to keep the hunger pangs away. These Goji berries had better pack some staying power.



This morning I woke up to receive some rather disappointing news when I checked my daily feeds. It seems that Apple have finally made an announcement regarding the availability of the iPad, which unfortunately spells out that they won't be released outside the States before late April. Not great news given my plans to pick one up on our trip back to Malaysia. The plus side is that when they do get released in Australia they'll be coming out with the 3G version at the same time, so I can at least resist the urge to pick up the first WIFI one I find before checking out what the carriers plan on doing (not that I have high hopes for Australian telcos). I guess this also means that I'll be able to read a few reviews before dropping cash on the counter so I'll know if it's a huge bomb.

Perhaps to console myself after reading the bad news, we somehow got into a TV buying mood. John's recent upgrade meant that Alison's parents had a bigger TV than we did, an intolerable travesty I'm sure you'd agree. We hadn't planned on getting one this soon, but on an unrelated trip to JB Hifi to pick up "This is it" on Bluray (we enjoyed the movie and love extra features), the call of the Sales tag was too much to resist.

In saying that I think we exercised some restraint here and only matched the parents in panel size (46" if you must know). We ended up getting the Samsung L46B650 for a decent price, and even convinced the sales guy to chuck in the Bluray disc and a wireless dongle for free. For a moment we were considering spending the same amount for a larger albeit inferior panel (a Hisense) but deferred to the wisdom of crowds after reading some opinions on forums.



Really happy with our choice from what I've seen so far. The contrast ratio is amazing compared to our old Hitachi and I'm still getting over how smooth the video is at 100Hz. We were watching an episode of Bones on the Apple TV and I thought the picture was bordering on freaky, which is pretty good considering the source media is just a compressed TV Rip. Must have some pretty good upscaling. The extra HDMI ports also mean that I can finally move the Wii off composite input.

As for the old TV, that's going to be heading to the new office/store room. I have plans on using it as a gaming TV (so that I don't bother Alison when I get in a PS3/Xbox mood) and perhaps even as a monitor for the MacBook. I'll need to pick up a Mini-DVI to HDMI converter as the Hitachi doesn't support VGA input but the cables seem pretty cheap these days.

Carpet and iWant

I'm sitting on the couch typing this on my MacBook, sniffling from a combination of dust from the new carpet in the next room and tendrils of cigarette smoke from the tradie outside. It's a relief not to have to put shoes on to walk through that part of the house, and I'm glad we don't have to see that god awful garage floor anymore.



Now that the house is functionally complete (still have more to do around the west side where the bins are), we can start rearranging our accumulation of stuff so that we aren't living with two store rooms at the back. Heck knows what we're actually going to do with those rooms once we clear the junk out of there, but I'm leaning towards a music room or library. Let's hope I can resist the urge to buy more furniture and stuff to fill it.

Speaking of stuff to buy, everyone has no doubt heard about the expected release of the Apple iPad. Engadget has a pretty good guide of what we know about the iPad from various sources and can be read here. I'm certainly not alone in saying that I've been waiting for Apple to release a tablet-style device for some time now, so I woke up especially to catch the news of the keynote coming in on the 27th of January. I'll let you watch Jobs work his magic for yourselves, but suffice to say I was feeling pretty convinced that the shiny object in his hands would be my next must-have-item. In saying that, I was sleep deprived and fully in the clutches of the Reality Distortion Field, so in a desperate attempt at objectivity I had to set my systemic fanboyism aside and questioned my initial zeal and lust for this device. With a few nights sleep and some time to mull over how I see this appliance fitting into my life, I think I've arrived at a rationalised and adult decision.

I WANT IT. I WANT IT NOW!!!



The internet and mass media as a majority have actually landed firmly on the other side of the fence of opinion. Google for articles on the device or pick up a paper and you'll likely read about the disappointing lack of any number of features including multitasking, cameras and the lack of Flash support. Perhaps the most common comment that's being used to dismiss the latest offering from Cupertino has been a terse "It's just a big iPod Touch". My personal reaction is that actually isn't a bad thing at all.

Others on the net have written with greater flair on the subject of why the iPad is actually the start of something big and special in the world of computing. You can read my personal favourites here, here and here (that last one penned by the awesome Stephen Fry). Purely for narcissistic indulgence (after all, that's half the point of having a Blog isn't it?), I'm going to list a few of my own thoughts as well.

It's just a big iPod Touch

Yes, and I think that's actually a good thing. Microsoft have been trying to create a Tablet like device for close to ten years and have failed at each turn due to the fact that cramming a desktop UI model into a miniature form factor plain does not work. It didn't work for Windows Mobile (which incidentally was one of the main reasons why I bought an iPhone in the first place), and it hasn't worked for Tablet PCs. Creating a working tablet device would require a paradigm shift away from windowing systems and desktop mimicry, so it's actually not surprising that Apple decided to just extend an existing and incredibly successful model that they have with iPhone OS.

Aha, but if that's the case then is there any point in getting one of these iPads, especially considering I already have an iPhone? Well the key I think to my justification (call it rationalisation if you will) is that there is an operative word to the iPad death cry on the lips of myopic pundits.

"It's a big iPod Touch"

The increased screen size suggests a lot more than larger movies and a glorified digital photo frame. It offers greater levels of interaction that is now afforded by superior screen real estate. While iPhone apps will initially be the only third party software available, it won't take long for iPad specific apps to arrive and present a more intuitive (dare I say intimate) level of mobile productivity. Lots of people assume that the overlap in functionality will heavily rest between the iPhone and the iPad, while I actually see (or at least hope) to have the cannibalisation occur at the other end of the bridge, with more and more applications that I work with on my MacBook being transferred to the iPad.

The promise of this can already be seen in Apple's own offering of a redesigned iWork for the new device. I'd imagine that most of the following things I use my laptop for will fall by the wayside:

• Browsing full size websites - sans Flash but here's a hope that HTML5 comes along sooner rather than later


• Word processing - Typing on a larger screen should be easier than the iPhone, and there's always the keyboard dock. Great for blogging on the go


• Image Editing - Photoshop for processing RAWs on this would be super! Once again, transferring photos over to the iPad with the camera connector will be really useful while on holidays


• PDF/Comic/Graphic Intensive reading - I do love GoodReader for the iPhone but it's still hard to read a text with lots of graphics unless I'm on a computer. I'd guess that reading PDF text books will be fantastic on an iPad


• Finance Tracking - I'd love to see something like MoneyWell on an iPad. Finance apps for the iPhone never did anything for me with the smaller screen


• Note Taking - I take short notes in Evernote on the iPhone but if I'm at a meeting then I still currently need my laptop. The iPad would be so much better for this

That's not even touching on all the potential when it comes to games on a larger format screen. I'd love to get my hands on an RTS designed for the iPad. Granted that the lack of keyboard shortcuts may be a problem initially, but I wouldn't be surprised to see new UI grammar being invented for the multitouch screen that will allow us to compete at the same level as keyboard/mouse jockeys.

So this is bye bye laptop/desktop?

Heck no! This has been marketed as a device between a laptop and a smartphone and I don't think that's just greed on Apple's part. There are still a number of activities that make more sense on a fully fledged computer, but the thing is most of these aren't really day to day activities, more akin to what one would use a server for.

• Downloading Torrents - Can't live without my movies, TV shows and games. I'm unlikely to chain a mobile device to the wall all day to get the latest episode of How I Met Your Mother


• Encoding - Once again, ripping a CD/DVD or burning media doesn't really make sense to me on a tablet


• Serving media - Of course the same machine in our house that downloads media would need to stream it to the Apple TV and other portable media players, iPad included!


• iPhone/iPad Management - Apple haven't said too much about how the iPad and iPhone would interact with each other. It would be great if I could sync between the two devices without the need for a desktop hub, but I don't know if that's going to happen


• Programming - Unless they release XCode for the iPad, I can't see how I can give up my MacBook

The last point is an interesting one I think, though I doubt anything will come out of it. It would be pretty cool to be able to close the loop and create simple applications on the device itself without having to use OSX.

So your iPhone becomes a dumb mobile

Far from it. I still think that there will be lots of apps that make more sense on the iPhone as a smaller and always connected mobile device, especially when I only plan on getting the WIFI only version of the iPad. Social networking, RSS feeds, media, GPS navigation and casual gaming just to name a few, not to mention having a ubiquitous camera for taking pictures and movies. I also think that the iPhone will be a better device for listening to music, as I've always been paranoid about missing phone calls when I have my earphones in.

It depends on what App Developers do, but I think the iPhone would also make a fantastic satellite device for the iPad. They both run the same operating system (basically) so I could see applications with functionality stretched across both devices. Perhaps a note taking application on the iPhone synced to a text book app on the iPad. A Scrabble boardgame with the iPhone used to display your tiles. A graphics application with the iPhone acting as a palette. You get the idea.

So no disappointments then?

Hrmm... not quite. My cheery optimism for the gospel of Apple can only take me so far. Granted that some of the things on my wish list are a symptom of waiting for the iUnicorn (that mythical Jobsian device that does everything from solving world hunger to toasting waffles), but a guy can still dream.

• Touch-inspired iLife - iWork is great and I'm really happy that they released that, and of course Photos is getting closer to iPhoto with each release, but I was kind of looking forward to seeing Garageband and iMovie at least on the iPad. I'm sure that the App Store will cough up an alternative before long but it would have been nice to see Apple's take on this


• No iBooks store in Australia - Granted I'd still probably be using Stanza to read my free ePub books anyway, but it would have been nice to see the iBooks store as a worldwide release. It took quite a while for iTunes movies and TV shows to come here, so hopefully the wait won't be as long


• Revolutionary Text Input - A large size keyboard seems a little unimaginative, and I'm not entirely convinced that this will be easy to use one handed. Placing the tablet in landscape mode on the lap makes sense, but I think it will still be important to type while standing or on the move. Will have to try it out first hand


• The Name - Enough has been said about this, have a look here. I mean iPad... really? I guess if Nintendo can make millions selling a console that sounds like a bodily function then anything goes.

Another sticking point I have is with the demonstrated user interface. Holdonaminute, no I haven't done an about face. I do think that blowing up the iPhone OS to a larger screen makes sense as a whole, but there are a few tweaks that could have been made on the Home screen to take advantage of the extra space (aside from god ugly backgrounds, what's the deal with that?). Increasing the number of Apps that fit on a page by another column would have been nice. That lock screen is also looking pretty stark. If I had to guess though, I'd say that Apple have simply stuck with what's familiar to get people familiar with iPod Touches and iPhones to adopt the system, and will unveil an evolutionary UI change in the next version of the iPhone OS. Of course there's that iUnicorn again...

So you're getting one then...

Yeah, hopefully in March when they release it and when we're back in Malaysia. I've got high hopes for the thing and my gadget lust is going into overdrive. Especially when I consider how even the first iPhone model released has changed with each new version of the operating system.

I sit here on the couch typing this on my MacBook, smelling some much needed rain falling on our drought stricken grass, and I wish I were holding an iPad. Horrible name and all.

Fan of Games

Phew, we've had a quite a productive weekend. Firstly I'm pleased to say that we've officially signed the contract with our builder so there's no turning back now. One would argue I suppose that turning our backyard upside down would have been the point of no return but there's something final about putting your mark to paper. Unfortunately the job won't actually start until the week after (officially on the 13th of October) so we have to put up with unworked ground for a little while more.



The fans and lights that we ordered also came in this weekend, so we dumped all that in the garage we just cleared last week. Great timing as we have a sparky coming through on the 12th to install some of the lights, fans and GPOs inside the house. This will all be happening on the same day that we're having insulation batts installed in the roof to help deal with the upcoming summer heat. Rather nice as the insulation is largely subsidised by the Australian government, score!

Not content with the amount of money we're already throwing into the house, I somehow thought it would be appropriate to pick up something I've been eyeing for a while... a Playstation 3. One of the new discounted Slim versions that is. To be fair, I've been saving up my pocket money for this for months now (or some other lust worthy gadget) so this shouldn't affect our renovation coffers.



We got a reasonable deal on it and picked up Little Big Planet as well as Metal Gear Solid 4 to play. We had a taste of LBP at Kath and Andrew's one night so we knew it would be wicked fun. It's been a while since I've played an MGS game so I'm a little pathetic for now but hope to improve with practice. At least I have a full collection now of consoles and can look forward to great stuff like God of War 3 and Final Fantasy XIII.

Speaking of Final Fantasy, I stumbled across this little video the other day and was extremely impressed. It's basically a mashup with the Dead or Alive and Final Fantasy girls having a big melee. Great choreography for a fan made video and certainly epic in scale. I'm a bit of a sucker for these things.



This is actually the second in a series (the first can be seen here) but it's the longest with the largest cast. Oh and of course Tifa kicks butt once more so I'm obviously pleased, although I was a little torn between cheering for her and Hitomi. The others in the series are certainly worth watching as well and I'm eager to see more.

Just one more game related video. I've somehow managed to miss the announcement of a little game called Torchlight. It's by the same people who did Hellgate London, which I thought was a disappointment. This on the other hand looks quite promising and I shouldn't have too long to wait before finding out for myself as it'll be released on the 27th of this month. Something to tie me over till Diablo 3 comes out.



Alright, now back to playing games. :)

Father's Day Purchases

There was a bit of excitement in the Liley household this Father's Day. Granted, most of the clapping giggles came from Alison and myself (though I detected a hint of enthusiasm from the parents) but I think to whooping was justified. I'm proud to say... that we've dragged John and Sheena kicking and screaming into the Audio/Visual 21st Century.



Gone is the behemoth of a TV that blemished their living room and enter a modestly sized Sharp 32" Aquos. Not only can we watch TV in Toowoomba without cringing at the cropped widescreen programming, but as the "family tech support guy" I no longer have to wrestle with a boulder when I need to plug in new equipment. Even though my joy is mired by a parthian shot from the old CRT, as I've pulled my left arm helping John carry it to the garage, it was so worth it. The event would have been even sweeter if we'd picked up a DVR to complete the package but I guess there's always next time.

While Alison and I hadn't explicitly planned on coercing John into buying AV equipment, we did predict potential for growth in electronics and remote controls in the lounge eventually. With the knowledge of John's distaste for clutter we picked up a Logitech Harmony 515 universal remote for him for Father's Day. I've been using one of these for a while now and it's amazing how easy it is to program compared to universal remotes of old.



Unfortunately I did run into a few issues getting input switching to work on the Aquos (how ironic). Unlike most TVs I've worked with, the Sharp doesn't have specific IR commands for each input source, rather relying on OSD menu navigation to change between them. Given that state isn't available to the remote, this meant that changing from TV to DVD was only possible with dirty hacks (ie, switching channels to force TV input followed by moving down input sources a known and static number of notches before hitting enter). Not quite the straight forward experience I had when working with our Hitachi, but I got there in the end.

Now armed with universal remote and decent TV I'm sure that John and Sheena will be able to enjoy their TV watching with gusto. At least once we get rid of the four (yes count 'em, FOUR) VCR players they have with the aforementioned DVR. The struggle continues.

As an aside, we've had some success with our little fruit and vegies we planted. The strawberry plant had a few flowers which were chomped repeatedly by some garden pest, though we now have a growing and thus far uneaten strawberry! The assumption is that our fruit stealing nemesis has either given up or merely biding time while the berry ripens under our care. Our real success story however is the lettuce.



Look at the bunches (what's the collective noun for lettuce anyway?)! They're practically overflowing out of the barrel so I think it'll be another week before we start clipping off the young leaves for a little salad. Thoroughly satisfying for amateur green thumbs.

Our other achievement was finding the right succulent for our rusty watering can turned planting pot. We've been hunting high and low for something I'd seen in a magazine once. Finally found them at a nearby nursery and learned they're called Burro's Tail (sedum morganianum). We punctured the bottom of the can and filled it with potting mix and the crassulaceae (isn't Wikipedia wonderful?).



As we packed the mix pretty high in the can I employed what I thought was a delightfully ingenious method of watering while avoiding overflow. I put the spout of the can under the tap and let 'er rip with the can tilted on an angle. The role reversal amused me to no end. Seemed to do the trick though I've reverted to more traditional methods since.

I've been working on a something special for this little blog for the past few weeks, though it's taking a lot longer than I thought it would. Hoping to reveal the results sometime in the next week or so. Watch this space!

Cinematic Steamboat

The flu (porcine or otherwise) has been raging across Brisbane over the past few weeks. You couldn't walk down the corridor at work without passing a battery of coughs and sniffs, so I guess it was just a matter of time before I succumbed to the virus. Knocked me out for the count for four days last week which was a worry as I'd been looking forward to a steamboat lunch we'd organised for Sunday. Copious handfuls of paracetemol and multi-vitamins thankfully allowed me to recover in time for a shop, house clean and food prep before the guests arrived.

We were playing hosts to old steamboat buddies Kath and Andrew, as well as introducing Nat and Naomi to the experience so I thought I'd capture the event for posterity. It was really just an excuse to try out the video camera properly on the iPhone 3GS and I must say that I'm quite happy with the results. Cobbled this little clip together in iMovie while Alison was out at choir practice.



Had lots of fun doing it so I might try my hand at more videos in the future just to bump up that flagging YouTube account.

Edit: Grrr... seems like YouTube have a cruddy watermark on embedded movie clips which obscures the text in my video. Click here to watch the clip on the main YouTube site.

iPhones ahoy

Went into the Optus store in the city the other day to ask a few questions about the iPhone 3GS and found out that they were planning on doing a midnight launch for the Friday the 26th release. Compelled by an unreasonable fear that the phones would be sold out (or that I would have trouble getting a white 32gig version at least), I begged and cajoled Alison into lining up in the cold on Thursday night.

We got to Queen Street at about half past ten but even then there were probably 20 people in the queue already, each of them sporting a complimentary Optus scarf and beanie to cope with the weather. This was just the start of a long wait, thankfully punctuated by free merchandise, hot food and distractions from the hired entertainers. The event was covered by B105 and a camera crew though we tactfully avoided being interviewed much to Alison's relief. Overall I'd certainly rate this launch over the Wii based on the amount of free loot that I loaded into my bag.



There was quite a bit of excitement when the doors finally opened at 12:00, though this faded quickly when we realised how slow the applications were being processed. The food continued to come out at least but by then we were sick of fried nibblies, our bags were incapable of holding any more free gear and the entertainment was about to clock off for the night. By 1:20am we were pretty relieved to find ourselves at the front of the queue.



Processing our application turned out to be a fairly simple process in the end, with only one minor slip up on their part regarding Alison's Internet plan. Not too shabby for a mobile phone company. The big controversy of the night was actually an oversight on my part. I'd dragged Alison along to this ordeal on the assumption that I'd need her to sign up for a contract in her name and provide proof of identification. Turns out since the billing account is solely in my name, I could have easily done this for her phone number without her. Can I just say how lucky I am to have a supportive wife that didn't rip my head off for costing her a night's sleep for no good reason. Love you lots baby. ^_^;

By a quarter to one we'd left the store with phones in hand. We got home at about 2:15am and I had just enough energy to play around with the new Compass app for a few seconds before plugging the phone in to sync and retire for the night/morning.

As an cherry on top, I failed to realise that my new iPhone would inherit all my alarms after synchronisation. This meant that I was forced to stumble out of bed at 5:30 to turn off both alarms on phones at opposite ends of the house. Joy, the price we pay for technology.

More iPhone goodness

A concert wasn't the only thing exciting last Thursday. I'd been counting down the days for weeks as I know that the 18th would mark the release of Apple's iPhone OS 3.0 update. In typical geek fashion I somehow managed to wake up at 3am just in time to download the new operating system for my favourite smartphone.

Impressions so far are hugely positive. I did however hit a minor setback initially when I didn't completely unjailbreak my iPhone before updating, which caused some of my apps to become inaccessible. Aside from that I'm just gushing over the improvements that are now available, and keenly awaiting updates to current applications to take advantage of new features.

Highlights for me are:

• Spotlight Search through the whole phone (Rocks!)
• Landscape keyboard in Mail and Messaging
• An improved Safari
• Copy and Paste!

What I can't wait to see is what apps will start to use the new Notification Services and Peer to Peer features in the OS. Of course Peer to Peer would be useless unless we had two iPhones in the house... an intriguing point...

Luckily for me Alison has been running into issues with her current phone and is open to the idea of taking my current iPhone 3G. Which conveniently leaves me with the opportunity to get a new iPhone 3GS! Oh happy days!


The new hardware should speed things up quite nicely. Not much information in Australia yet on what the plans and pricing are going to be for it but I'm sure we'll know more tomorrow in time for the speculated release date on Friday (26th of June). In preparation for incoming gadgets I picked up $120 of iTunes gift vouchers for a sweet price of $90 (a special $30 for two $20 gift cards) at Big W to cover all the new apps we'll no doubt be buying. It's a good time to be a geek.

Easy Back Rubs

Alison and I have always had our share of back issues, no doubt compounded by our lacklustre exercise regime and below average constitution. Neither of us are trained masseurs obviously though we do try our best to give each other decent shoulder rubs. As such we've been known to jump at every opportunity to use automated options like Uncle Wing's luxurious massage chair in Kajang or free airport foot rejuvenators.



Of course we'd never ever dream of buying a home massage device for ourselves. That's for old people. So our latest purchase is undoubtedly an embarrassing admission of our advancing maturity.



It's not quite as decked out as Wing's but we hope it'll do the job at the end of a hard day. The HoMedic QRM400 certainly seems to give your back a work out.



Fits quite nicely on our second couch and it'll be great to use while watching the telly. I know I certainly appreciated it after mowing the yard this afternoon.

Weekend of Games

It was Australia day yesterday which meant that we had a full three days to do typical Australian things. BBQs, trips to the beach, fishing or perhaps a game of backyard cricket would all have been blokey ways to pass the time. I on the other hand decided to amp up the geek meter this year and dedicate the long weekend to serious gaming.

Saturday kicked off with a little house party that I've been looking forward to for a while now. It started off innocently enough as a simple way to get some of the guys from work that live around the area together for a little out-of-the-office get together. The nature of the activity, which turned out to be Rock Band at our place, soon attracted other would be plastic rock virtuosos and the selected invite list eventually doubled in size. Not that that's a problem as we finally have a house that's capable of hosting three people without drastic furniture rearrangement.



We rocked out pretty much non-stop from 3PM to 10PM with a short but necessary intermission for pizza. I think I've created a bit of a monster as most of the guys are planning on getting Guitar Hero to practice at home before the next meet up. I'd say the most disturbing thing was Chris' persistent selection of No Doubt when it was his turn to sing. No one should have to witness a 6 foot man sing "Just a Girl" without imbibing a debilitating amount of alcohol first.



Sunday was our first chance to see the Game On exhibition that has been at the State Library since November. It's supposed to be a historical view of video games with plenty of interactive displays. I must say that I was really psyched to go see it, and in truth probably built up my expectation a little high. Not surprisingly, the show didn't quite deliver and we both walked away feeling that it could have been something more.

It shouldn't come as a shock that the Sunday of a long weekend right at the end of school holidays would be a popular time for families to take their children to an exhibition about video games. The show was split into two rooms at the library and the organisers had imposed a maximum number allowed in at any time to ease traffic and waiting time for the games. Even so, the rooms were absolutely jam packed with kids that had no qualms about hogging the popular displays in defiance of an unenforced five minute time limit. Struggling air-conditioning and teenage hygiene weren't a great combination either for the enclosed space.

I was hoping for a lot more text and information about the different genres and culture of games over the years. While there were a few displays on old video game consoles and Japanese niche games (train simulators, dating simulators and pachinko), on a whole I didn't feel like I learned anything I didn't already know. The floor was basically packed with a bunch of emulators with arbitrary games from various eras and genres, with no real theme around their placement. To make matters worse, quite a few of the game displays were non-responsive or plagued by poor instructions. I'm being particularly harsh I realise on what was obviously designed to be an event for the "common people" rather than obsessed geeks. I can't help but feel however that there was a lot more interesting information that could have been on display.

The thing wasn't all bad though, I got to see and play quite a few games that I'd only read about up till now. Steel Battalion was a highlight for me as the game never arrived on Australian shores due to lack of public interest. You actually had to flick six toggle switches and press three buttons to get the "mech" powered up when you start playing! Talk about geektastic!



Other highlights included being able to play Spacewar! on what I'd assume would be an approximation of the PDP-1, checking out concept art for Monkey Island, playing Densha de Go with a real train controller and seeing first hand how bad the Atari Jaguar's controller really was. There was also a pretty nifty Pong exhibit.



Australia day itself was a veg day on the couch for Alison and me. We whittled our national day away with episodes of Studio 60 and various games on the 360. Still struggling to make our way through Gears of War 2 as we've sorta lost our mojo since playing the first game. Once we grew tired of dying in next generation glory we downloaded Bionic Commando: Rearmed so we could cark it retro style instead. All good fun.

I may not have an aussie tan today like most of my co-workers but colour me a happy gamer.

Ready to rock!

Our collection of fake plastic instruments has exploded recently on account of the release of two big games I've been waiting for. The first is Rock Band which has finally reached our shores after being released in America over a year ago, even spawning a sequel which we won't see down under till next year most likely (grr). The second game was Guitar Hero 4: World Tour, the next progression in the series which introduces some interesting new additions.

I remember saying the first time I saw Guitar Freaks and Drum Mania connected in an arcade that a full band music game would be absolutely brilliant. Rock Band came out last year and aimed to give us exactly that experience. Assuming you get the full pack and an extra guitar, you and three friends can make up a band complement of vocalist, guitarist, bassist and drummer. Of course the game can be played solo using any of the instruments but it really shines when playing through a song that everyone knows and loves. *cough* Living on a Prayer perhaps.

Not wanting to lose out to their music game rivals, the developers behind Guitar Hero decided to follow in Rock Band's foot steps and released a full band experience with their latest offering as well. After much consideration I decided I absolutely needed both games to provide the largest set list possible. I'd picked up Rock Band and a guitar last week, followed that up with the Rock Band drums for the weekend and finally received my pre-ordered full instrument pack of Guitar Hero 4, with yet another set of drums, a second guitar and a karaoke like microphone.

Now fully equipped we just needed two friends to rock out with so Kath and Andrew were happy to oblige (even though they were supposed to be packing for a very exciting trip to Europe on Monday). It's amazing how much fun the games are even though our fingers and throats are now fairly sore from the long play session. The biggest surprise was how fun the singing turned out to be as the general consensus initially was it would be too embarrassing to have a good time. Thankfully the microphone volume is configurable so the vocalist can hide behind the audio of the original artist need not feel quite so self conscious (unless they try to free style eh Kath?).



While I enjoy both games, I can't help but feel that Rock Band is a slightly better package overall. Once Rock Band 2 comes out to bring the full set list close to 200 songs (replacing quite a few offerings from Guitar Hero 4 in fact) I'd say that will be the party game of choice. It's nice to have options though.

New laptop for the family

John's been talking for some time now about getting a laptop for work. We've been keeping an eye out for reasonably priced laptops that would suit his needs but nothing has really stood out as price worthy. Most of the sub-grand lappies were all criminally ugly and horribly ill equipped to handle the ubiquitous plague of Windows Vista.

Finally managed to hit pay-dirt this weekend on an impromptu trip into Harvey Norman while we were out doing odd jobs. A Compaq Presario was on offer with enough grunt to run reasonably and wouldn't scare away the aesthetically sensitive. In fact, at $950 it even outspecs Gemini in some areas, and I paid considerably more than that a little over two years ago. Ah, the life of a technology enthusiast.

Fueled by the excitement of our purchase, we invited ourselves over to John and Sheena's for the night on Saturday so that I could set the new machine up and give John a quick walk through with his new machine.



John was suitably impressed by the electronics disclaimer, in four languages to boot.

I spent most of the afternoon, and probably half of mum and dad's download quota, setting up the machine. It's disgusting how much trash HP and Microsoft have installed by default, most of which are obviously trial versions that are meant to entice further purchases. Being the cheapskate that I am, I promptly removed these to install FOSS equivalents. Well... maybe just free...

• Open Office
• Picasa
• Skype
• AVG Antivirus
• Chrome

Alison and I then subjected John, who was very patient, to a basic but thorough tutorial in computer use. I think he did very well and I'm sure he'll be making good use of the computer in no time. Might need to find a free typing tutor for him to speed up his chicken pecking though. :)

iCaved

I've been joking a fair bit lately about heading out to pick up an iPhone but honestly never thought I'd actually do it. Rationally I figured I'd wait till the rumoured iPod refresh on the 9th of September to see what new toys would roll out of the lust factory in Cupertino... but impulse once again got the better of me.



We drove out to Carindale this morning to pick up a yummy white 16GB iPhone on the lowest Optus plan possible. It only gives me an anorexic 100MB per month but I'm hoping that I won't be using that much data to check email, a little surfing and using my iPhone apps. Alison forced me to pinky swear that I wouldn't be looking to upgrade my phone in the next 24 months for the duration of the contract...

So far it's been an absolutely gorgeous experience. Browsing with Safari is far better than anything I've tried with a PDA (and yes that's including using Opera Mini on Windows Mobile). The interface is responsive, good looking and most importantly makes sense for a hand held device (that means no freaking start menu Microsoft).

Apps that I've downloaded so far have been pretty impressive too. Twinkle has been an obvious stand out given my recent foray into the world of Twitter. Evernote of course is great which I've talked about before too. Then there's the mobile version of Net News Wire which even syncs with my News Gator account. NICE!

Downsides so far have been the usual smudging that seems to be prevalent with any Apple product these days (the white helps a little), though in truth the screen gets just as smudgy on my HTC Touch. The 16 gig may also feel somewhat claustrophobic as my culled 9 gig music collection takes up a fair bit of my space. Certainly glad that I didn't go for the 8 gig version.

Overall though it's pretty much what I expected. Chalk up one more happy Apple whore.

Braeburn just got a boost

Thought I'd use what little luxury money I had lying around to give myself a little treat and picked up some RAM for the MacBook. I've been toying around with XCode lately and have noticed Braeburn chugging along with all my normal apps open at the same time. Worse yet, if I don't close some of them down things just slow to a crawl when running Parallels for the odd Windows program that I still need to use.

Grabbed four gig of "Mac compatible" memory from UMart and have noticed an improvement in responsiveness already. Even now I've got pretty much everything I'd ever want open and my little Mac is handling it with nary a Page Out.



Ahhh... look at all that free space. Yes, Quicksilver is a memory hog but I just can't live without it anymore.

Speaking of apps that I can't do without, I've recently developed an unhealthy attachment to a nifty note taking program called Evernote. I started using it at work to take notes for jobs and processes but have since been using it at home and on the move for everything from receipts to project ideas for the new house. It has great support for tags and searching (it even searches for text inside photos!) which means that your notes are easily recalled when you need them.

The brilliant thing about the app is that it's cross platform and (get this) it syncs your notes between your computers! If installing an application on a computer isn't possible then there's also a web client available, though it's obviously not as responsive as a local installation. You do have to create an Evernote account to sync but this is a painless process and it's ABSOLUTELY FREE if you only need to sync 40MB worth of notes a month. They even have an iPhone version which would provide you with access to your notes regardless of wherever you are. Shame I don't have an iPhone yet... *grumble*