Standing On Boxes

So, I’ve had my iPad for almost 24 hrs. What do I think so far?

The key board – haven’t quite gotten used to it. It might be the same, technically, as the iPhone or iPod touch keyboard but it doesn’t feel the same when using it. On the iPhone, my fingers are so big that I have to use it and just believe that I’ll hit the correct key.and I do but it feels a bit like magic. On the iPad? I have to pay a bit more attention to the keyboard.

And I really want some arrow keys. I’m having real problems moving the insertion point in text boxes. Mostly because the text is so small. That being another gripe. The text being small on an iPhone makes sense because the device is small. But a lot of these iPhone apps modified for the iPad don’t allow me to change the font size. Instead, I’m stuck with iPhone sized fonts. I don’t remember seeing a default font size setting for the iPad. Hopefully that will be in iOS 4.0 (no, I haven’t looked. I haven’t had a chance to really dig into it yet.)

Font size in Mobile Safari is another issue. I want it to work like it does in regular Safari or even Firefox — increase just the font size, not the whole viewport. (In grown-up Safari it’s “View-Zoom Text Only”) Some websites provide that on their pages but not all. In some cases I can do the double-tap to zoom in on a chunk of text but that only works if the page uses markup elements that make sense.

Pages – a similar problem – I want the text to be zoomable but not permanently but I can’t find a way to do it.

Looks like all of my problems would be solved by text being zoomable. My insertion point issue would also work better with larger display fonts. Now I just to tell Apple.

(more to say on actual apps and usage later…)

(Or attempting to anyway.)

A “Fixit” is a story, fan fiction, where the writer attempts to “fix” some event, often controversial, that occurs in a tv show, movie, novel, or etc. (I’m sure there are other names for it but that’s what I call them.)

Usually the fix involves changing some traumatic event – e.g. character A doesn’t die. Or character A comes back after dying. Fixing something that upsets a subset of fans.

Not every fandom with fans writing fan fiction has that kind of pivotal event but examples and some fixes include:

• BtVS – the death of Tara in the episode “Seeing Red”. Fixes include:
  • Having the bullet hit someone else.
  • Having her leave town before it happens
  • Someone else looking like Tara dying instead
  • Someone resurrecting Tara
• BtVS – Buffy dying in the episode “The Gift”. Possible fixes:
  • Buffy not jumping
  • Buffy not dying from the fall (Note: I don’t consider her ending up in a different dimension after falling thru Glory’s portal to be a fixit. That’s just a crossover excuse.)
  • Dawn jumping instead. Or someone changing things so Dawn never exists.
• BtVS – Rescuing season 3 Faith (from the Mayor, from herself, etc.) could be seen as a fixit
• SG-1 – Janet dying in the episode “Heroes” or the first time Daniel Jackson dies (Not sure which episode that was)

So –

As part of my BtVS/SG1 crossover Portal Girl and the Science Lady, I decided to do a Janet “Heroes” ‘fixit’ and save her.

The issues:

• How and when do I insert the BtVS characters into the episode? Realism goes out the window here.
  • “Heroes” is already a very packed episode. There isn’t a lot of room to add to it.
    • Idea so far – after SG-13 heads for P3X-666 General Hammond gets a phone call from the President.
    • Need to stretch out the timeline. It isn’t clear in the episode how much time there is between SG-3 being sent as backup and when they are attacked by the Goa’uld while exploring the Ancient city. So, hours can be added without seriously changing the story.
    • Need to deal with the camera/documentary crew running around.
• How is Janet rescued?
  • Need to get Buffy & co. thru the Gate with Janet. Serious suspension of disbelief will be required.
• What effect will this fix have on SG1 (BtVS is already post-canon)
  • Janet alive. Injured? Uninjured?
  • Woolsey? Still doing a secret report (the one the next president uses to put Weir in charge of Stargate Command?)
• Other questions:
  • In an SG1 episode prior to this one, Carter is missing. Did Dawn know? Why is Buffy rescuing Janet but they didn’t go after Sam? Or do we just ignore that it happened? Or it happened before they met.
  • How long after they meet in Vegas does this (Heroes) occur? Long enough for the twins (C&C) on Buffy’s team to go thru training (as mentioned in earlier chapter)?

I delete it anyway. It never makes it out of the moderation queue. Ever. And it’s obvious what it is.

It’s been getting rather heavy lately. But I’m still not letting it thru.

Tonight? Two Studio Ghibli films.

My Neighbor Totoro – another Miyazaki film. Two girls (Satsuki (10?) and Mei (4) and their father move out into the country (in Japan, of course) while the girl’s mother is in a hospital (a 3 hour walk away).

A “cute” enjoyable movie. A mild Miyazaki. The girls are the central characters but just barely. And none of them are particularly strong natured characters. I could see elements of characters in other Miyazaki films in the two girls. Satsuki ‘reads’ like a younger Kiki but she moves around like Chihiro from Spirited Away. Mei reminds me of Ponyo except not as manic.

Whisper of the Heart – written by Miyazaki, based on a manga, but he didn’t direct it.

A very crowded movie. Unlike a Miyazaki film where actions centers around the characters, this one has a lot of things happening in it around the characters. The main character, Shizuku, wants to do something with her life. The only problem being, when she finally becomes inspired it happens when she should be studying for her high school admittance tests.

A good movie, if you’re into that sort of thing. In fan fiction it would be categorized as ‘pre-ship’. And lets not forget the Japanese version of “Country Roads” at the end. The song is part of the plot.

Just bought a new vacuum (I didn’t pay that much $$ for it) to replace the “broom vacuum” (actually one of those hand vacs attched to a long handle with a brush attachment) I’ve been using in my apartment.

All I can say is “Wow!” — just one run through my apartment and the canister that holds the dirt (it’s a bagless vacuum) was full! And the filters? Choked with whiteish powder.

Scary! My poor lungs!

Welcome to the social. Again. All new, watch out for the wet paint.

Check your iPhones and Androids at the door.

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No, I’m not going to buy a new MS “Kin” “Social” phone. For me or any of my family.

I just thought the phrase was amusing in a cringe-worthy sort of way. And shows how out of touch the people running this marketing campaign probably are.

I’ve had the designs for several iPhone apps floating around in my head for the last year. Nothing fancy. And not things I could sell (ideas related to my day job). An internet/client/portal kind of thing. Unfortunately, I haven’t had any real time to get beyond the design stage – and no incentive to do more than tinker. Maybe someday. Anyway…

Apple changed the Developers Agreement for OS 4.0 yesterday. There’s been a mild uproar from the usual suspects — folks whom it would never affect anyway since they never plan on doing Apple/iPhone development – for whatever reason.

The basic idea appears to be that – if you (developer/software co.) want to sell your iPhone app thru the iTunes AppStore, you have to use Apple approved software dev. tools. Of which there appears to be only 1. XCode 3.2.3+. And Apple approved API’s and libraries. Which means – C, C++, and Objective-C (which is C with a twist of Smalltalk syntax). And none of the cross-platform tools ->

Some pundits claim it’s a shot across the bows of Adobe, since it basically kills off their CS5/Flash to iPhone app generator (that they are supposed to announce/release next week. Ouch.). (Another skirmish in the Apple/Adobe Flash-wars?)

Another possible victim is Novell’s MonoTouch (It lets you use Mono (Novell’s .NET clone) and C# to develop iPhone Apps.)

And then there’s iSqueak – a version of Squeak (Smalltalk) for the iPhone. Not sure where it fits in – it might survive since it IS built with XCode. (Not that you can get it from the App Store since it breaks at least one App Store rule. But the the person who ported it to the iPhone has used it to generate several iPhone Apps that are in the store.)

I believe there are a could other similar cross-platform development tools that violate the new rules but I don’t remember them.

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The point? IMO – Ordinary mortals (aka non-developers and non-tech-pundits and non-tech blog denizens) aren’t going to care, as long as developers keep writing new and interesting software for the iPod/iPhone/iPad platform.

Me? I couldn’t afford the Adobe tools anyway. Monotouch was $1000/year the last time I checked. iSqueak? I’ve been tinkering with Squeak for years but never written anything “real” (I just like the environment). So none of those really affect me.

Apple only charges $99/year for their iPhone Dev. program (aka access to the App Store) but XCode is free (It just requires a Mac to run it on. And a test device would be good when using beta versions of the iPhone SDK.)

So the rule change doesn’t affect me personally. I couldn’t afford the possible commercial non-Apple cross-dev tools anyway. And I’m not one of those people who thinks Apple is evil so it doesn’t really upset me.

But I really need to find the time to do something .

Any interest?

You can d/l them from TtH in ePub format.

They don’t seem to work in the desktop version of  Stanza (Which has been in permanent beta since Amazon bought them) so I can’t test them in the iPhone version.

Calibre seems to have no problems with them (I’m not thrilled with Calibre but it appears to work.).

I haven’t tested them on an iPad (yet), but on a Mac w/iTunes 9.1 you can drop a .epub file on it and they appear as books.

I’m thinking of being “lazy” — Download them from TtH in ePub and then tweak them so they look the way I want them to.

The official, basic Apple iPad case I ordered to go with my iPad? It showed up today. (Now I just need the iPad to go in it. “Shipping late April.”)

Since everyone, by now, has seen one of those many “iPad unboxing” videos or photos, I thought I’d do something different and photograph unboxing my official Apple[tm] iPad case

Unfortunately, it isn’t too impressive.

1. I took the pictures with my iPhone.
2. The light here isn’t the best (And the iPhone has no flash – of any kind)
3. The case is some kind of ‘sueded’ rubberized material that doesn’t photograph well with an iPhone. It appears grey-ish.
4. The light reflected on the plastic wrapper so I couldn’t get a good picture of it in that.

Maybe I’ll recreate the event when I get home ? I have a MUCH better camera there I can use.

We’ll see how well the case works out but I suspect I’ll something a bit more durable once they start coming out (I have a 1st gen iPod touch and it was months before I found a case for it that I remotely liked.). This one seems a bit flimsy AND it collects dust like crazy. When I leaned it against something to take one of those pictures it ended up grey from the dust. Guess I won’t be reselling it in a couple years on eBay (Original iPad case, slightly used.).

Compared to the case that I bought for my Newton? It isn’t that impressive. Of course, that was almost 20 years ago and only Apple was making accessories for the Newton when it came out.

You can’t get an iPad yet (this Saturday. Or in 3 weeks if you want the 3G/GPS model) but you CAN buy iWorks and a bunch or other iPad apps from the App Store. Right Now!

I have the Mac version of iWorks. Haven’t started using it a lot yet but I do like ‘Pages’ so far. I was a huge Wordperfect fan. It got me through college (running it on an Atari ST), it was a word processor in the truest sense. Pages isn’t quite the same but put it in full screen mode and it doesn’t get in the way like Word does.