Category Archives: Web Finds

Winter ArtHop

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I am very tired of driving.

On Friday, after work I left Walwood and the overzealous front door swung back too fast and destroyed a piece of pottery that I bought for myself for Christmas. So already I was starting the weekend a little grumpy and bent out of shape. Thankfully it was the only thing that suffered damage so that’s at least a blessing in and of itself.

On Friday we attended ArtHop in Kalamazoo. ArtHop is a frequently held Friday event throughout downtown Kalamazoo. Many downtown galleries and art installations open up and host residents and tourists alike. Many places provide snacks and some provide complimentary glasses of wine. On most wintertime ArtHops it’s bitter cold outside and blazing hot once you get into these art installation galleries. Even with the front door open a shop can be jammed packed with people and be significantly warmer inside than you think. Dressing for these events is a challenge because you want to make sure you dress properly for the bitter cold and have a way to throw off layers if you are going to spend more time in the thick of a gallery or browse some curio shop. This season the weather has been off. Winter ArtHop was in the middle of mid-40’s temperatures, so that changed the playing field a lot and made the whole layer-up/layer-down switch almost pointless. There were lots of interesting art to see and all of it could be purchased but I didn’t see anything that I thought I had to have, or anything I wanted to give as a gift. Some places show off their interiors or use ArtHop to push their services. Some places just have unexpected things inside them, such as this:

Galloping Too Fast

And other places don’t actually have any art to sell, but use it to push their business. A few of these included salons downtown that specialize in fancy personal styling. The people behind the desk have exceptionally fancy hair and other places just push DJ’s:

Trying too hard

After we left these places and started to traverse the walking mall right smack dab in downtown Kalamazoo we realized we had run out of time to do the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts or Park Trades Center. So we instead toured the one place that didn’t have running hours because it doesn’t have walls. Bronson Park, right in the center of town (image by youngavenger) :

Christmas Tree in Bronson Park

Right along with this tour it struck me that I was outside at night and it was a cloudless night. Unfortunately the environment wasn’t good for actual skywatching. There were really only two objects visible in the entire night sky and that was the Moon and a very bright star. Originally I thought it was Venus, but after I used my iPhone’s StarWalk app I discovered to my chagrin that it wasn’t Venus but rather Jupiter.

After our time downtown and not seeing any convenient place to find a restroom we went back to Walwood Hall and dealt with our need of restrooms there. We were originally going to head to Red Robin down in Portage but since we were so close to downtown we changed our mind and went to Olde Peninsula Brewpub instead.

Responses

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I wrote a lengthy response to a blog entry I just read called “I’m Christian, unless you’re gay.” and I’ve included it below:

I just read your article, Dan, and thank you for writing it. I was raised as a presbyterian by my parents who had all the best intentions. When I was eight years old, waiting in the church library for my parents to retrieve me after sunday school I had a crisis of faith and subsequently lost it completely. Always after that it was just a mechanical pursuit, go to church, go through the motions… the callousness of children. As I grew up I was confused and kind of terrified by gay people. They weren’t anything but ‘other’ and for the most part I didn’t want to know and elected to avoid the subject as much as I could.

When puberty hit me, square in my too-short-jeans (they always seemed to be too short, because I was growing so fast) I discovered that my own sexuality was starting to develop around me. I say this in hindsight as a 36 year old gay man now, but back then, I had no concept at all about sex other than some vague ideas which entertained anyone I asked when it came to sex education. Mostly met with laughter and a shrug, it was uncomfortable for every adult I ran into. Over the years I found myself looking at other males and having feelings for them, females were there but they weren’t anything more than just people. I wanted more with the other males. I tried lots of ways to suppress and destroy what I was becoming. I would masturbate until the feelings I had went away and that was a way to cope for a while, then I thought if I found the right girl, she could save me from being gay. I tried very hard to be what I thought of as normal, and it all culminated in a really uncomfortable attempt at losing my virginity with my at-the-time girlfriend. I was so conflicted and so worked up that I never got to actually lose my virginity with her. A few days after my 18th birthday I was in college. I was online. I met another boy, also 18, another student and we started to talk. It was a few hours after that, sitting in the late-night-nobody-around student union atrium that I made my first overtly homosexual act. I reached out and laid my hand on the other boys leg and it was an incredible feeling. I finally found what I was supposed to be. When years of pain, agony, confusion, and suppression suddenly lift – it was as close to an epiphany as I think anyone can really have. Ever since then my life has felt good and right and correct. That this was what I was supposed to be. That in a very relevant way, this is how God intended me to be. That’s how it felt.

As I said, I lost my Christian faith, but I started to build another around me. Instead of buying into things I could not possibly believe (affectionately called the hocus-pocus of Christianity) I started to read. I read about Christ, about Siddharta Gautama, the first Buddha, about Moses and Mohammed. I wandered and ranged over as many religions as I could get books on – Zoroastrianism, Shinto, Wicca… you name it, I had read at least something about it. Over the years I have synthesized my own faith and it struck me that the core of almost every faith on Earth can be summed up by the Golden Rule. In so far as you would do, do as you would have others do unto you. That was all I needed. I found that every religious “teacher” was basically shaping this one rule into differently shaped and colored packages and selling that to their believers. I felt uniquely good. I knew myself, I knew what Jesus was trying to teach me (along with the others) and I knew I wasn’t wrong for my feelings. Shortly thereafter I had several other epiphanies including one which revealed my purpose in life. So I know why I’m here and what I’m supposed to do. That’s incredibly comforting.

As I grew up I was regularly exposed to a nebulous menace from the established religions. They didn’t want me, they didn’t love me, they thought I was broken. They called what I did with other men a sin and as I got older I started understanding things better and this understanding helped me avoid “Jews” and “Christians” and “Muslims” because they were toxic human beings who were uniquely unpleasant and unhealthy for me to be around. I loved that in America, with it’s secular approach to everything I could deal with people right up until I had to really know who and what they were. I didn’t come out of the closet to them, and life moved along well. Deep down I was filled with a kind of deep sadness. I knew what the teachings of Christ were, but everyone was muddled in Leviticus and completely confused about what the story of Sodom and Gemmorah was really about. It wasn’t about sex. It was about treating guests well and honorably. As I got older and my thoughts and tastes refined through education and experience I came to see modern Christians as hypocrites. I went thru an anti-Christian phase where I actively hated the shape of chuches and the people I saw spill out of them on Sunday mornings. My anger was rooted in my disbelief that people can go weekly and hear sermons of love and tolerance and then when it’s all over, they go back to their mean wretched vile little lives. It was anger at just how meaningless their faith had become. They were the clockwork drones of the Church. They went, they heard, they sang, they got all dressed up and all of that, but they never really listened. Once service was done, they went back to what they really were– Horrible human beings. From my mid-twenties thru my early thirties I actively cultivated a marvelous misanthropy. I hated my kind. I hated human beings. We were monsters. The very worst possible thing ever created. Satan doesn’t have shit on us, we’re so much better at his game than he ever was.

In the past few years I have mellowed on my misanthropy. Most people don’t really care as long as their little lives are not upset. I also got over my sadness that nobody had listened to Christ, or any of the others. We were all so busy killing, cheating, maiming, and otherwise blowing each other up – and that life trudged forward helped dissolve all my sharp edges about religion. It doesn’t matter if religion tries to make people better, they’ll be what they really want to be and life will just keep on going.

Then the gay marriage flap started. Generally I don’t care one way or another, but on a more civics-minded level all I really do care about is equality. I don’t care for tolerance, I’m not looking for love from strangers. I’m just actively interested in them keeping to their own little lives and not trying to hurt me or kill me for who and what I am. I’ve been in a loving relationship with another man for 14, soon to be 15 years. This relationship has lasted longer than my parents relationship did and longer than many straight relationships do. Yet I cannot get married. It’s fine actually. It was a shock to me just how much people don’t really care when it comes to certain things… I was hospitalized recently and the hospital, a methodist-linked hospital at that had no qualms about respecting my partners rights and even went so far as to have a lawyer handy to help me fill out medical power of attorney for the both of us. So, Hospitals don’t give a flying rip. I asked my Credit Union if my partner could have an account based on our relationship and once again, they didn’t care and were fine with it. I could fill out my last will and testament and that would set my wishes after I die, that really isn’t an issue either. Neither is the religious angle of a marriage as I would prefer to have a pagan handfastening ritual than anything else and I have a priestess who’s ready to rock-and-roll if given the word. So what does it come down to? That CONTRACT that you all (the intolerant, so don’t feel upset, if that isn’t you) don’t want me to have access to. That’s all I’m missing. I’ve got 14 years down, all of this other stuff too, everything but equality with the rest of you.

In the end, life will trudge forward. Perhaps the intolerant will die off and we’ll eventually be equals under the law. I will always hold out hope that someday Christians will wake up and listen to Christ. Maybe not be so monstrous and evil and horrible.

And as for you, Dan, and your article. You have woken up and I thank you for what you wrote. I’m sorry that so much pain and horribleness has to be in our world and that you have to be the lone voice of love and compassion that Christ was all about. I try my best to imagine that other people feel as you do and that feeling fills me with hope for the future. You seem like such a dazzling and wonderful gem, and so much a minority, so very alone in being so awake.

Gays are not monsters. We’re just people. We cry and we hurt. We hurt when you ignore your messiahs lessons about love and compassion. And we hurt the most when we can’t celebrate the people we love like you can all because you keep us under your heels. It hurts when you declare that God hates us, it hurts when you deny us basic equality. Next time you look in the mirror I hope you see yourselves for who and what you are and you weep for what you have become. Feelings are everywhere. Step lightly.

Inconstant Heart

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Reading the most recent report about how neutrinos have been observed moving faster than the speed of light. An entire section of both classical and quantum physics is founded on C, the symbol for the speed of light, to gracefully be the maximum limit that any physical object can move in our universe. Now we see that this may not actually be the case, at least for neutrinos.

This got me thinking about a few things that are upsetting about science. First is this, second is the classical reference for a kilogram is somehow decaying and isn’t what it used to be. I have to admit to not being a expert but I think I may have spotted a pattern. Perhaps the values for these constants are not constant. Perhaps the expansion of the universe is itself having an effect on the overall shape of spacetime. Perhaps that with expansion comes a vastly fluctuating (or maybe dropping) of all physical constants. Perhaps everything is “on the move”, so you have h, C, G, and other constants that aren’t really cemented down but actually drifting around with the universal shape of spacetime. As the universe expands, the shape changes. We think of C and G at least as perfectly constant, but what if that isn’t the case? What if C and G were vastly higher in the deep past and their rate of change is imperceptibly slow, however still occurring? What does that mean for all these mathematical structures we’ve developed, when the constants that we have come to depend on fluctuate over time? E=MC2, when C isn’t a constant?

Perhaps if G isn’t a constant, and it was much stronger in the past, then could that explain why when we look at the most distant objects in the universe, and therefore backwards through time itself be the cause for every object to be so redshifted? Perhaps the “expansion” of the universe isn’t like we imagine it, perhaps that the universe is indeed a static size but that the dimensions are changing all on their own, that the overall size of the universe is static, but that spacetime geometry itself is changing (somehow) and causes these previously thought constants to shift. That the value of G, which is now 6.67×10-11 N. What if it was something like 2.7×10-2 N in the deep past?

If the geometry of spacetime is indeed changing over time, perhaps that would help explain why string theory which demands eleven or more dimensions in order to work properly may have been very obvious billions of trillions of years ago but over time these dimensions have shrunk down to almost nothing. We can’t prove our theories about the structure of the universe and the physics of it easily because we’re so “late to the game”.

I have to believe that I am not the first person to think about this possibility and I have to assume that there is something I’m forgetting or don’t know that would preclude this possibility. In either case, it is engaging to think about before I’m shot down by a real physicist. 🙂

Nook vs. Kindle vs. iPad

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I’ve been watching a lot of the press surrounding the brewing three-party war between Apple, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, and Amazon over the tablet space for the past few months. I was one of the first people to be in line two Aprils ago when the first generation iPad was released by Apple. I bought it without hesitation, knowing that it was exactly what I had wanted and dreamed of all this time – a much larger version of my beloved iPod Touch. As I’ve had some opportunity to use different devices I’ve discovered that at least for me, each device that I own serves a particular purpose. Here’s a handy list of the device and what I use it for:

  • 24” iMac – General computing, work and writing.
  • 13” MacBook Laptop – General computing, work and writing.
  • First-Generation iPad – Convenience browsing, game playing, reading comic books, cookbooks
  • iPhone 4 carried by Verizon – Telephone and 3G data access with the HotSpot feature. I use it for mobile data access, taking pictures, scanning prices and comparing retailers and writing down notes and ideas for my writing. Sometimes inspiration strikes when you least expect it. Also enables me to play Foursquare, as well as many other location-aware games and activities that my family has come to enjoy.
  • iPod Nano 6th Generation – Contains my entire music library and is the device I use when I want to play music. Also has a very useful pedometer that I use to track my steps and calories burned while I work.
  • Nook SImple Touch – Contains a giant book library and is the device I use when I want to read.

I have to be very clear here, I am an Apple fanboy. If Apple makes it, I’ll use it. Over the years all the Apple devices have worked exceptionally well and over time they have gotten better. I still love using my iPad and my iPhone. There are four devices that I simply cannot go without whenever I travel, my iPad, my iPhone, my iPod, and my Nook. The iMac is a work-only machine and I leave it at work all the time. My MacBook I use from time to time, but I actually prefer to work on my iPad to my MacBook unless I’m writing something very long. The iPod Nano fits in my pocket so easily, or clips to my shirt so well that carrying it everywhere I go is a non-issue. My phone keeps me in touch, mostly over SMS and iMessage, and secondarily by the voice service itself. The majority of this post isn’t about these other items that I find indispensable, but rather about the tablets.

I can speak for the iPad and the Nook Simple Touch. I was absolutely sold over the iPad, especially when it comes to reading comic books. As for reading “regular” books, the glossy display and backlit nature of the iPad does start to wear down the eyes plus the native book app in the iPad, which is iBooks, doesn’t support the font I like the most, which is Helvetica Neue. I was a little dubious about the Nook Simple Touch at first, but the device won me over with it’s eInk display and it’s expandability via a microSD card port on the upper right corner of the device. The Nook Simple Touch has a lot of really compelling features going for it which made it’s purchase a sure thing. Here’s a list of what I like about my Nook Simple Touch:

  • Size – It’s perfectly sized. It feels a lot like a paperback book, this size really is a sweet-spot for me because this device can fit in my front and rear pants pockets when I want to carry it without having it in my hands and it can be easily stowed anyplace a book can go.
  • Weight – It’s surprisingly lightweight. Even with the microSD card, which only adds maybe a gram or two to it’s total weight, the whole package is very light.
  • Textured and Contoured Back – The rear of the Nook Simple Touch is contoured to fit my hands and rubberized so that I can keep a nice grip on it without having to strain.
  • Interface – Ever since the 1.1.0 Nook Firmware upgrade the device has been surprisingly quick on display updates and the touch sensitivity has also been tuned and I notice it. You can either use the side navigation buttons or a tap or swipe on the display to advance pages. It has a built in dictionary and wifi, with some social features but so far I haven’t explored those enough to report on them.
  • Compatibility – The Nook Simple Touch (as well as the iPad) both can open and display ePub format books. There is a special place in my heart for the ePub format. it’s open, it’s well understood, and there are tools like Calibre which I can use to convert PDF or DOC or MOBI format (actually there are a huge number of formats that Calibre understands) and convert them all to ePub. I bought a 4GB microSD card and was able to store thousands of free eBooks on my Nook without even a second glance. I know the books will work, I know they are configurable, it’s perfect for me.

So now I’m witnessing this war brewing between Apple, B&N and Amazon. I’ve never really used a Kindle, but I assume it’s most like the Nook devices. The latest device to be released, and is shipping now is the Amazon Fire. I’ve heard a lot of people going on about how the Fire may be Amazon’s answer to Barnes & Nobles Nook Tablet and may compete with the iPad. Out of curiosity I went to Amazon’s site where they describe the new Kindle Fire and as I was reading along several alarm bells went off in my head all at the same time. Here’s a list of issues I have with the Kindle Fire, even before laying my hands on it:

  • Eight hours of battery life – Even my iPad can beat this rating. I will hand it to the Kindle Fire that they were able to squeeze such a battery lifetime out of a device that was smaller than the iPad, but when you are watching video I will bet real money that end users never see these eight hours of battery life, let alone their hedged-bet of seven and a half for video playback.
  • Incompatible with ePub format! – This one took my breath away! Any device should at least be compatible with the ePub format, but Amazon has elected to support their own format called AZW instead. There are other formats supported, but ePub is not on that list and my library is configured to support ePub and I prefer it that way.
  • Prime Membership – If you want the most bang for your Kindle Fire buck, you’ll have to spring for an $80 a year Prime Membership. This could be useful if you do a lot of Amazon.com purchases but I don’t. It’s a little creepy that Amazon sells you a device and then charges you over and over again to use it fully. Feels more like a cash-grab and/or a gyp to me.

I don’t really believe the Kindle Fire will pose much of a risk to the iPad and iPad 2 class devices. I haven’t gotten a chance to hold either of the more relevant competitors devices in my hands to give it a right and thorough review. Based on just the description from the manufacturers alone, and even considering the Nook Tablet costs $50 more than the Amazon offering I can say just from the start that the B&N device is the one to get. Better battery life, better storage, better hardware, ePub format, that’s the one that I would get if I didn’t already have an iPad.

Keep your eyes peeled on this blog. I doubt I’ll ever get my hands on a Kindle Fire, but I’m pretty sure I’ll eventually be able to review the Nook Tablet.

Working Out

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My workout regimen is a nightly two hour long cardiovascular adventure.

I start the first hour on the treadmill and over time I have increased the angle on the treadmill deck progressively all the way up to where I now use it, at five degrees of inclination. I set the speed at 3.8 miles per hour, which is enough to get my heart pumping but not enough to take my breath away. I read once that if you were going to use walking as an exercise that if you are short of breath or breathing so that you cannot maintain a conversation well, that you are exercising beyond your capacity for maximum cardiovascular benefit. At some point walking has to drop away and give up to running. I was doing some running on a Nike+ program but when I started to run into joint aching that was a pretty clear signal to me that perhaps I need to stretch out my expectations of running, at least in the short-term. This time on the treadmill, at least by the computer in the treadmill declares that I burn around 745 calories for the entire hour.

The second hour I spend on the Elliptical Trainer. This machine replicates the general motion of cross-country skiing mixed with stair-climbing and walking. I set the time to be an hour and the “difficulty” to 14 out of 20. I don’t really know what the units are for the Elliptical trainer when it comes to its “difficulty” and I think that each machine manufacturer has it’s own concept of this. When I finish with this exercise I’ve burned about 845 calories.

I do this every single night, except on Sunday. That’s the day I select to rest and recover. So far it’s working very well for me. I do have some mildly entertaining problems, first of which is that I sweat a LOT. Even when I wear UnderArmour, which is supposed to wick sweat away. I find myself soaking my entire kit to saturation and then the sweat starts to rain off of me. It’s not just a little either, not a pitterpat, but more along the lines of a light rainstorm. I try to keep from swinging my hands too much so I don’t accidentally splatter nearby people who really would rather not take a shower from me. The sweat gets going on the treadmill but goes out of control on the Elliptical machine. It runs down my face and into my eyes and stings. So I’ve altered my kit and now I have a towel with me. I mop myself up every two or three minutes and by the end I’m wringing what I imagine to be about 300 to 500 milliliters of water out of myself. They say Cancer is a water sign, of this I have no doubt. Along with my issues with water, it’s getting colder outside. No longer can I work out, then dash outside to hop in my car. I did that once, and when the 40 degree air hit me it took my breath away. Evaporation consumes a lot of energy, in moments I was shivering. Now I take my time, change, wear more seasonally appropriate coverings so the short jaunt outside to my car isn’t so breathtaking.

What has it done for me personally? Well, I’ve lost a lot of weight. I started this adventure at 280 pounds, and I was wobbling around there and 278, back and forth. Mostly that was my sedentary lifestyle expressed in my weight. At this point I was hypertensive and really on the road to later disaster and I knew it. Now I weigh in at 242.6. I have lost 37.4 pounds. It’s interesting to see where it loses first. The first zones that showed immediate and surprising (almost shocking) improvement were in my legs. I used to have what I affectionately described as thunder-thighs, because I keep a lot of my weight there. That has since started to drop away. The next place was my ass, which as pretty much disappeared. Then I started to notice the drop in my face and neck, and oddly enough, my wrists and arms. The most resistant area for weight loss is the obvious regions, right along my trunk and back. So I still have a belly and love-handles, although the further I go the more I am noticing that I’m starting to develop an actual body-shape that is in line with my overall goals. I’m never ever going to look like the other gym bunnies, and I’m okay with that, but I am tired of being fat, and that fat made me tired. In a way I’m tired of being tired. That leads into the next expected-but-still-a-surprise personal result for me, my energy level has shot way up. All this exercise has also done wonders for my mood. When I carried all the weight I was always tired and irritable and generally a moody bitch. Now that I’ve shed a lot of that, I find myself not so quick in the grouchiness arena. Exercise physiologists say that regular exercise has benefits for mental health in addition to what it does for the body and of that I believe them. Body image is very important to me and it struck me square between the eyes a few days ago. I was about to head into the gym and I was wearing too much bulk, so it wasn’t terribly cold and so I stripped down to my UnderArmour Heat Gear Tee. Almost always I want to put something else on over that because I’m self-conscious about how I look with such form-fitting clothing on but that day I tossed off the layers and didn’t give it a single thought. When I got half-way to the changing rooms at my gym and noticed that I just had on my heatgear tee, and that I was okay with that, that feeling was like a blossoming reward for all the hard work I had been doing. It’s only going to get better, and I have another 42.6 pounds to lose. When I get to 200, then I’ll be just right where I want to be.

Working out this way is exceptionally dull work. I get out of work at 5, get to the gym around 5:30, and I really don’t get started on the machines until 6pm. Two hours of working out push my days to 8pm before I can even think of going home. While I’m working out I found that mental diversions really help. Listening to Podcasts works okay, but often times I get transfixed by the timer on the machine and then it just drags on and on. Reading on my Nook Simple Touch is better, especially when I can make the text very large. I sweat too much, and so the Nook has fallen out of favor in this use because I don’t want to drown it in sweat and short it out and kill it. What works best to keep my mind occupied while my body chugs away is my iPad. I’ve found that Flipboard, DC Comics app, Uno, Bejeweled 2, and Qrank really work well to keep me entertained so the time just flies on by. When I’m working out at the Anytime Fitness in Kalamazoo, they offer free Wifi so it’s great and very easy. When I’m at the Anytime Fitness in Portage, they don’t offer free Wifi, so I have to create my own Wifi through my iPhone. It’s not too bad, but I do wish I could get Wifi down in Portage as well.

When I began this new regimen I started out dreading my afternoons, schlepping off to the gym and huffing and puffing and sweating like a rainstorm. Now I think I might be getting addicted to working out. It’s not that I really like it, but it’s an odd sort of craving I have now. It’s good for me and is one of the reasons why I’m dropping weight so very quickly and I really don’t have a problem with that. I just wish I had more hours in the day to do the other things in my life. But if trading some fun for what I’ve been able to do for and to myself over these past few months is very much worth it.

iOS 5.0.1 / Learning My Lesson

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iOS 5.0.1 – Learning My Lesson

I was on the edge of my seat along with everyone else, there was word that Apple was going to push iOS 5.0.1 OTA to all the upgraded devices. Then TUAW made the announcement on Twitter that the upgrade was live and ready to go. I opened up my iPhone and there it was. 56MB upgrade waiting for me. I tapped the Upgrade button and off it went.

I was filled with fear when it came to my iPad First Generation device. Right after iOS 5.0 was released for my iPad and after I upgraded that device to iOS 5.0 I noticed that my iPad lacked the advertised multitasking gestures. I felt dejected so I moved along without. Shortly after that I noticed on the LifeHacker blog an article that would guide me through using the RedSn0w jailbreak tool to hack-in the multitasking gestures on my iPad. I moved ahead and applied the patch and watched with horror as my iOS device went through various cycles of rebooting and loading and one really upsetting sequence when it was just text, like it was the Linux kernel starting up. One of the reasons why I really love Apple is the insulation away from the expectant horrors of text startups. Never knowing if you are going to read “FAILURE” or “Kernel Panic” or something messy. I’d prefer to hide all of that behind helpful routines in a classical dialog box once the OS comes up and deal with it then. But I squeezed my eyes shut and when I opened them my iPad was waiting for me with the multitasking gestures enabled. I enjoyed my iPad and for a time everything was going wonderfully. Then Apple announced iOS 5.0.1.

I tried three times to upgrade my iPad, and each time there was an unknown upgrade error. I knew full well what the problem was. The hack was in the way. Apple was running a checksum on the kernel on my iPad and it was failing that check, so no upgrade for me! So I tried in vain to see if there was a way to back the hack out of my iPad and it turns out, there wasn’t one. So I meekly trudged forward, hat in my hands, head bowed and restored my iPad back to factory specifications. It erased everything off my device. Really that was okay, since the last time I did this upgrade to iOS 5 it was a loss-tastic failboat to hell. I’ve been keeping everything on my Dropbox, so losing the files on my iPad really wasn’t a risk for me anymore. When I woke my iPad up, it was as if it was fresh from the factory all over again, but this time with the self-starting parts of iOS 5 doing the lead-in with me. I set it up, and when I came across the backup/restore options I elected to restore my data from iCloud, and I had a valid backup from 8:30am this morning, so that worked well. Then it looked just like I had to start from scratch all over again for about 30 seconds and right after that iCloud came crashing down into my device – all my apps are now busy loading from iCloud. We’ll see how that turns out, but one this is for certain, I’m done with these jailbreak/hack tools. I lost an entire afternoon to the silly botch that was that hack and I can’t afford to lose time like this in the future.

At least I was able to claw victory from the gaping maw of defeat, that I am thankful for. There was a way to go back and I wasn’t trapped with a half-life-half-stuck device. I’m not going to do that ever again! Yikes! 🙂

Buddhify

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First Look at Buddhify

I read on, I think, LifeHacker about a new app called Buddhify and since the price was right, about $2.99 I decided to buy it and give it a go. I’ve meditated in the past, here and there in little bursts and have had a surprisingly easy way of letting go. I have to admit that I haven’t done it in a very long time and like any machine that goes too long on one path, eventually I feel all hot and dry. It’s not the pleasant meaning of hot, but a more parched and wearing-down kind of hot. So this morning I was listening to A Way With Words podcast mostly because it was in my Podcaster playlist. I paused the program and after finishing a portion of my regular morning tasks here at work I decided to open up Buddhify and give it a whirl.

I used the first program which for me was a clairity meditation that concentrated on hearing. The program is lead either with a male voice or a female voice, that is a feature I really do appreciate. Whenever I can have the option, I prefer the male voice, what a surprise. The app is written by and produced by a company in Britain so the accent follows along. I find it easy and comforting, it’s different enough to be novel and keep my attention but not jarring enough to shake me out of my meditation. I chose my first one from the home set, which you can do if you are sitting somewhere with your eyes closed. This is something that I can do relatively easily at work, as long as it doesn’t last too long and people get the wrong idea that somehow I’m napping on the job, which I am not. During the meditation I found it very easy to follow along and about three-quarters of the way through this short program I actually felt my consciousness change. It felt a fair bit like physically falling, but my body hadn’t changed state at all. Really the best way I can relate it in words was that I slipped into a really relaxed and comfortable state. It’s very much like the quietness that overcomes me in the ledge right before and right after sleep comes over me. There is this area, where I can be fully awake and aware and control myself but the “agitated mind” hasn’t woken up yet. I don’t form plans, worry, or dwell on thoughts in this state and I value that feeling. This of course would make everyone who enjoys meditation smile as I am sure they understand perfectly what I am trying to describe.

As I continue using Buddhify, which I wholly intend to do I will keep on writing down my experiences and blogging about them. If you have an iOS device, I really recommend that you plunk down the cash and buy this program. It actually does something you don’t expect and that novelty should be treasured. That you can get it for so little a price is very surprising. So far I’d rate Buddhify a 5 out of 5.

Nook Simple Touch Firmware Update 1.1.0 Review

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Barnes & Nobel Nook Firmware 1.1.0 Update

I just got an email from B&N regarding my nook, that there was a firmware update available for my device. I couldn’t help but download this update immediately and see what it was all about. The download clocks in at 110MB and takes just a few moments to copy to the Nook drive on the device once you plug it in. I was waiting in vain for the display to go to sleep so I hit the sleep button on my nook and it dutifully went to sleep. I pressed it again and the nook software update boot loader appeared. The nook took about three minutes to load the firmware update and once it was complete it went back to sleep using the default “authors” screensaver.

I woke up my device and started to poke around the edges looking for what was updated. Of course I glanced at what B&N1 was pushing:

  1. Breakthrough E Ink® display – best just-like paper reading, even in bright sun
  2. 25% faster than any other eReader ” Best-Text™ Technology for sharper, ultra-crisp fonts
  3. Longer battery life -read for over 2 months on a single charge*
  4. Ongoing enhancements and other performance improvements

As I was playing around with the device it struck me just how fast everything was responding to my touch. In previous firmware iterations I would have to tap several times for the interface to respond to my touch. Now it is much more crisp and fast. Another thing that has markedly improved is the speed with which pages are painted on the eInk display.

From the points above, some of them are new features, some aren’t. #1 is just what the device has already, so the firmware didn’t deliver anything for that. #2 is very subjective, I wasn’t expecting the update to the nook firmware so I didn’t spend any time eyeballing the fonts. On my nook the only font I use is Helvetica Neue, after falling in love with it from my exposure to people who were mad about typography here at work. The speed of the text, which is the other part of #2 was patently obvious. The speedup is very noticeable and very welcome. Point #3 is generally true, my nook simple touch has a kick ass battery life, perhaps the update will lengthen the battery performance but I haven’t been using it long enough to judge that point yet. And of course, there is #4, which apparently hides a whole host of interesting mystery items. I have to imagine that somewhere there is a technical document that details all of these updates that were glossed over in point #4. Perhaps if someone from B&N reads this, they could comment. That would be nice.

In the end I think that B&N should apply this patch to all the nook simple touch devices they have on display in their stores and they have done a really great job addressing things that at first you didn’t think you had a problem with, but once addressed you find you really appreciate. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a review unit of the new nook tablet and then I can write up a review of that. It should be a lot of fun, as I can compare it to the iPad and the original nook color tablet. I’m looking forward to it! 🙂

  1. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/Software-Updates-NOOK-Simple-Touch/379003175 ↩

iOS Newsstand

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On my way to Grand Rapids with Scott I decided to investigate the new Newsstand feature in iOS 5. I had downloaded three magazines, Comic Heroes, Men’s Fitness, and Mac Format. I opened Newsstand and started to look through the issues I downloaded. I was under the impression that I had at least a free sample.

Boy was I wrong! These “Free” issues were just stub-apps with more prices and a place to subscribe. This fails to reflect the way people usually buy magazines at brick and mortar stores. You can open up a magazine and browse before buying. Can’t do that in iOS!

So it’s a gyp. A bait-and-switch and now it’s tarnished what piddling interest I had in those aforementioned magazines. It’s also tarnished the Newsstand über-app as well. It’s really just a trap. It baits you with free and then thumbs its nose at you with a crass subscription ask or a expensive per-issue price.

It’s simple enough to ignore Newsstand completely now. I had piddling interest in magazines anyways. All the content, really good, fresh, relevant content is on Flipboard or Google Reader, or hell, even Safari! Better yet, those options have a great price tag, free.

Paris Hotels

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LiveJournal 10/10/2003 –

Found out to our chagrin that apparently Expedia.com has some of the best rates for all the travel search engines on the ‘net. We’ve nabed two potential “Paris Vacations” defined by their hotels.

Option One – The Best Western Aulivia Opera – $1,155.08

This is a three-star hotel close enough to the center of the city to please Scott and I, and cheap enough to not break the bank for our first Paris visit. On the map it’s around the Marais section and unless we find out that it’s infested or run by zombies is ‘good enough’.

Option Two – Jolly Hotel Lotti – $1,453.32

This is a four-star hotel that caters primarily to the Italian and Tourist crowd, while it has a REALLY good placement being just 800m from The Louvre it does give a little affront to being parsimonious about this whole trip. 

So – not knowing if anyone else has visited Paris and have any suggestions (please make them if you’ve got them), these are my two selections. Is it worth the extra $298.24 to get an extra star and not have to metro and/or walk from Marais to the center of the city – or is it too much?