Sunday, April 25, 2010

It's the iPad

So I got an ipad ten days ago...this is a REALLY nifty device...going to change personal computing as we know.

What makes it different: you DO NOT interact with the operating system. Ever. This means you can't actually look at files qua files. Only as things you manipulate via applications...so when you "save an image" from Safari, it is actually copied directly into the "iphoto" application's storage and knowledge...no "find a folder, supply a name, click save, go to iphoto, open/import, find the folder, click the file". Anytime you need to enter text, you tap the field to do that in, the virtual kbd pops up, you type away...

What it does NOT do: well, it does not let me make these blog entries--the blog body text is entered in a javascript widget, not a regular text field, so ipad cannot see the thing, thus no kbd, no typing, no nothing...well, you can enter the title, and the label tags below...but that's it.

This is really bad--this device is ideal for a blog-on-the-go, and it can't be done.

What is really cool: last friday I saw a Tesla car just outside my office bldg, at lunchtime. Decided I needed to send my wife a text msg about it, I don't have my phone (just the ipad), how am I going to do it? when I got to the cafe with wifi, got logged in, looked online for help on this, it says "grab this free ipad app" by clicking on a link which takes me right to the app store, I click again to install it, that takes a few seconds, then tiny bit of setup and I can send a msg. Fabulous!

I actually bought the ipad app for Bento, as well as the G5 version, so I could see about converting my filemaker databases over to something I could sync with the ipad (had been thinking about having them on my android phone, but this is going to be better...once I can get the pictures incorporated (non-trivial: I have about 2000 images in those databases I want on the ipad).

Still...I love this gadget.

Friday, April 02, 2010

Computer games on Steam

Steam is a really nifty delivery mechanism, and a lot of older games are moving over there...just this past week, the entire Quake collection was available for $15. Hard to beat that...

Except that all too often, you can buy a game that literally WILL NOT PLAY. Is Valve actually testing any of this stuff?

I'm running Win7 x64, and I have some serious trouble with things. I have had several demos fail to run, and a couple of things I've bought also would not run. I think a couple of demos have even failed to install.

Surely it doesn't take an Advanced Degree(tm) to figure this out? At the least, the Steam client should be able to detect your machine properties and tell you that it won't run certain things.

computer parts

got some some bonus money from work a couple of months ago, so I bought myself this:

HP 21" Touch-screen monitor

which is just as cool as the name implies. works right out of the box on Win 7.

so imagine my surprise when i attach the other monitor and make this one the 2nd mon...yeah, the touch point x/y is assumed to be the primary monitor, so it does things on that monitor!

that's right, either the monitor or (more likely) Win7 does NOT know that the touch-screen might not be the primary monitor.

Looks like I'll have to switch them. Gad.