2011 MacBook Pro Unboxing

Posted Sun Mar 6, 2011 in

After four years (and change), I decided it was time to upgrade my main computer, a MacBook Pro I bought at the end of 2006. It was a good machine and served me well. But it was getting a bit long-in-the-tooth and showing its age.

I use my notebook for everything. It is my work machine and my personal machine. I use a Winder$ box for a couple of things — my numerical models and World of Warcraft. Everything else is done on my Mac.

I need more memory because I use a lot of data at times. I need more processor because some of the things I do require a lot, and the delays were beginning to show.

So, it was time. Yesterday we drove to Reno to the Apple store and I bought a new notebook. The unboxing of the new machine is here.

Now I’m in the process of preparing the old machine and the previous generation for hand-me-downs. Wife gets the most recent machine and the MBP she was using goes to Daughter and her family.

Now it’s time to retrieve the box from the storage unit and finish up the process. I want to ship Daughter’s computer tomorrow.

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Writing and the iPad

Posted Sun Jan 23, 2011 in

I started carrying only my iPad with me when traveling. I like to travel light and carrying the MacBook Pro adds a lot to the load. The computer itself isn’t awful — it’s not svelte. But the additional infrastructure (power supply and cables) adds bulk to my travel kit.

I can handle most routine tasks with my iPad with some few exceptions. The most notable is that I don’t have all of my current files with me and the second is that there isn’t an implementation of TeX for the iPad (although there might be a workaround). Email, browsing, online research are not an issue. Use of an external keyboard makes text generation almost as easy as with a full-size machine.

The Apple wireless mini-keyboard (Bluetooth) is a decent writing platform. I choose to use a full-size keyboard at home (and at work), but for travel the mini-sized keyboard is fine.

I like Evernote a lot. However, the iPad implementation does not do rich text. Therefore I lose formatting if I edit an Evernote note (with my iPad). I don’t want to give up my formatting.

I suppose I could keep my Evernotes in plain text. Or I could Or I could move textual material from Evernote to another repository (like Dropbox. I’m contemplating use alternative writing tools on the iPad and synchronizing my writing on Dropbox.

I’ll post more later as I work through these thoughts, play with one (or more) text editors on my iPad, and learn to use Evernote (and Dropbox) better.

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Kindle 3 Ereader

Posted Sat Jan 15, 2011 in

Last week I bought a Kindle 3 (WiFi) ereader. SiL’s brother brought his to Lubbock over the holiday and I had a chance to play with it. What started me was the screen contrast. The most recent e-ink displays are eye-popping for text. (Low-density graphics look decent too.)

I know I jumped through many hoops rationalizing my purchase of a nook a year or so ago. After my experience with the poor contrast of the Sony ereader (because of the touch screen), I bought a nook because of the much-better display. I avoided the Kindle because it was (essentially) tied to the Amazon store. I like the idea of open source standards, like epub (even if it doesn’t completely support what I want to accomplish).

All that is fine. But things change (life is a dynamic thing). I find myself buying materials from Amazon more frequently than I expected. The development of Calibre means that conversion between Kindle (essentially mobi) and nook (epub) formats is not difficult (providing you remove the DRM from purchased and downloaded files). The Kindle is lighter and has a better screen. My iPad will display anything, although the iPad is not a preferred reading platform (at least not for long periods of time).

So I find myself using the Kindle much more than that nook. There are a few books that I have not been able to remove the DRM. I haven’t tried that hard, but using the drag-and-drop tool I downloaded isn’t work. The DRM appears to be removed, but the file won’t reconstitute after removing that DRM. It’s not that big of a deal, at least not to me. The files are available on the Barnes iPad software and that’s good enough.

I’m committed to using a ereader whenever possible. The only books I want to buy and store are those that are professional references. They won’t be available for awhile — not until the technical details are worked out for displaying mathematics on ereaders without resorting to graphics kludges. That might mean a combination of epub and MathML (epub is basic HTML), or it might mean new software for the devices that supports some form of XML. There might be another approach (short of PDF — <blech>), but so far I haven’t seen any reports describing that.

Most of the things I’m reading are now on my Kindle. I’m working my way through Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matt Crawford and it’s a recommended read if you’re interested in work/education philosophy. Crawford is an interesting man and I appreciate the way his mind works. He writes pretty well for a motorcycle mechanic. <grinning>

The Kindle will go with me when I head for DC for the annual Transportation Research Board conference. I’ll have some downtime to read (and write) in between sessions and committee meetings. The iPad will also go (along with an external keyboard), but no computer. The nook will also stay home.

Now I think I’ll go get dressed and take Wife to breakfast. I think this is the first weekend we didn’t have something to do in awhile.

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The iPad

Posted Mon Oct 25, 2010 in

Indian Hills RainI’m writing this on my iPad, using the wireless Bluetooth keyboard I bought for my MacBook Pro a few years ago. Most of the time, the MBP is connected to a wired keyboard (full-size numeric keypad is very useful), so the wireless keyboard is now set aside for use with the iPad. At least, that is my intent for now.

I bought my iPad a few months ago. I don’t recall exactly when, but long enough that I think I have a good idea of how I will use it. I thought I would share a few of those ideas on my weblog. Maybe this will help someone else along the way.

The iPad is nearly perfect for consumption of content. I use a feed reader to track the websites I follow regularly. I tried a couple of them, but Reeder is my current choice. The interface is nearly perfect for the iPad. It’s beautiful. It’s easy to use.

The continued talk about the lack of Adobe’s Flash on the iPad bores me. A colleague and friend tells me that is the only thing about his iPad he doesn’t like. I really don’t care about Flash. I can’t think of a site I visited in recent history that required Flash. Furthermore, I eschew sites that rely on Flash for the user interface. It usually bores me.

I use Tweet Library for most of my Twitter work. I like that it keeps an archive of my twitter activity so I can return to my writing, even if it’s nothing much. Tweet Library is a first release, so some features are missing. For retweets, I’m still using the official Twitter client [iTunes link]. I also can manage my Twitter account using the Twitter client, so it will probably remain on my iPad.

I follow quite a few sites using really simple syndication (RSS) feeds. Those are curated through Google Reader. I used the website through mobile Safari, but find it a little clunky. It works well enough, but is not elegant. However, the excellent Reeder is a wonderful iPad interface to Google Reader. The interface is perfect for IOS, it’s gorgeous, and it works. The only thing lacking is the ability to manage my Reader account; that has to be done through the website (at least for now).

Email works well. I read and write email on my iPad all the time. I don’t touch type on the soft keyboard (at least not yet), but I can two-finger type fast enough for the kinds of responses usually needed. Longer writing can be delayed until I get to a keyboard (or I can use the keyboard I’m writing this with).

When away from the computer, I manage my images on my iPad. I bought the camera connection kit and was able to migrate images from my Canon PowerShot G11 to the iPad for review and light editing. Posting to Flickr is trivial through Flick Stacker. Browsing Flickr using Flick Stacker is an excellent experience and I can get lost for hours looking at others’ images.

See what I mean about the iPad being an excellent device for content consumption?

So, I can see using my iPad as a notebook replacement (net book?) when I’m not working, but want to have a computer along for browsing, working on my weblog, managing images when I’m away, handling email, and keeping up with my friends and feeds. The next time I leave the house for a vacation, I’ll leave the MBP behind and take just my iPad. I can carry the iPad, support systems, and my wireless keyboard in my messenger bag and still have room left over for my journal, reporter’s notebook, and other necessaries. I’m already carrying it in my bag when I’m out and about and don’t want to use my iPhone for email and such. In a pinch, the iPhone is fine. But for more serious work the iPad is much better.

I have a lot to learn about content creation on the iPad. I think it can be done (after all, I wrote this entry in its entirety). I think I can use my iPad for presentations, too. I’m going to do my next seminar with my iPad as the presentation tool. I might want to add a text editor to my collection of software, as well. I don’t usually use a word processor, although I could use Pages to capture text.

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Snow Leopard

Posted Thu May 13, 2010 in

Snow LeopardOK, so things have been a little quiet here. Between travel, work, and my off-line (dead-tree) journal, I run out of words before I run out of places to put them. So bite me.

I started doing a lot of thinking about my computer layout, after looking at the Apple iPad a week or so ago. In fact, after we returned home, I decided it was time to retire the PowerMac Dual G5. It is just getting long in the tooth and is noticeably slow at certain things, like dealing with awful flash movies — and web-type stuff similar to that. It was fine for doing the light computational things I typically do. But, when dealing with images and other graphics, the MacBook Pro was better.

So, last weekend I backed up the internal drive of the PowerMac, made sure all of the files I want were extracted and housed securely on my MBP, checked everything one last time, and then I did a bare-metal install of Leopard. I downloaded the 10.5.8 combination updater and patched the OS before shutting down the system and pulling all the cables. The machine is now staged in the foyer until I can retrieve its box from storage. Then I’ll decide whether to send it to a friend or sell it on eBay.

We spent part of Saturday in Reno. One mission was to visit the Apple store there at the Sierra Summit Mall so I could buy a copy of Snow Leopard. I also picked up a copy of the most recent iLife package (think that iPhoto is again in my future). Saturday night I popped the shrink wrap on Snow Leopard and installed it on the MBP.

The install went simply and the bit of patching required was minimal. I now have a working copy of Snow Leopard installed on the MBP and am running it daily. There are a few new features that I’m learning, but mostly I bought a lot smaller footprint for the operating system and that’s a good thing.

The retirement of the desktop really simplified my computer life in that there’s one less machine to deal with. My workroom is much quieter as well, because the fan on the NVidia I installed was quite noisy. The fans occasionally run on the MBP, but that’s just normal for a notebook.

So, we’ll see how this goes. I’m expecting good things as I learn my way around the new OS.

Now I need to write about crashing my iPhone and that experience. Maybe that’s something I’ll do for tomorrow.

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Exploded Battery

Posted Sat Feb 13, 2010 in

Exploded BatteryThis morning I was helping Wife install the calibre software she needs to manage downloaded content for her nook. Calibre is highly recommended for working with electronic books (and other content).

After the software install, it was time to plug in her nook (ereader). When she picked up her MacBook Pro to plug in the USB cable, the battery fell out — yes, the thing just fell out of the case! Well, part of the battery fell out. It was just hanging there in two parts.

This is the first instance of a catastrophic battery failure I’ve seen. I don’t know if it popped or just swelled until the case split. But, it’s clear a new battery is required. I guess that means I need to make a trip to Reno this weekend to purchase a new battery.

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15GB of Email?

Posted Fri Jan 29, 2010 in

A few years ago I ruminated on 100MB of Email. I haven’t checked lately, but a couple of months ago I looked at the size of my office email database (sucky Outlook) and it was about 15GB (of email and attachments).

Over a period of about six years, my email storage rose a couple of orders of magnitude. That includes the attachments, which have grown substantially over the last few years.

I archive the email associated with each project when I close out the project. The email archive (and I’m using an Outlook PST for the moment) goes into the project directory, which is stowed in the “completed projects” directory on my external hard drive. A copy of that directory is made each week during my regularly-scheduled maintenance. When I add new projects to the completed-projects directory, I flag them (color the directory listing). Every three months or so I burn all the newly archived projects to a DVD and store it. Then I reset the colored directory listings to “normal.”

I think there is little reason to archive all this material. Once the project is finished, it is unlikely I’ll have to return to it for reference. But, sometimes I need something I did for a previous piece of work. Sometimes litigation happens and I need to recover the email archive. It’s worth the small effort to trap that material and keep it for later reference.

I’m still ruminating on the amount of email I have archived. I have a lot of personal email as well. I’m seriously considering trashing the lot of it and only keeping those things that are required for the business portion of my life. The other material is transient in nature and I think I’ll never go back to re-read a bunch of old emails. That’s particularly true given the nature of some of the “stuff” in them.

It’s a thought…

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