Since I’m going to be away from wi-fi for a spell during my Arizona trip, I thought it might be smart to see whether I can update the DogSite via iPhone. Too bad I didn’t think about doing this a couple months ago. The joys of technology may be boundless, but so are the headaches.
Text updates work OK, kinda, sorta — I have to type in the HTML window instead of the Visual window — but pix are a no-go on the Flash-impaired iPhone when using Safari. I tried an end-around using TwitPic, but no joy. Anyone out there with a little more experience? I’m running an old version of self-hosted WordPress (2.6), which may be the source of my troubles. There’s a WordPress app for iPhone, but it requires WordPress 2.7.
The long-awaited Apple tablet was announced today, and the name — iPad — is apparently causing much snickering for perfectly predictable reasons. Hell, I snickered myself when I glanced at the live-bloggery surrounding what appeared to be an iPod Touch on growth hormone.
The iPad: Insert your favorite sanitary-napkin joke here.
“That’s fuckin’ stupid,” I thought. “Who wants one of those?”
As Pogue notes, the iPad seems aimed more toward consumption than creation, which means it’s not intended for the likes of me. When I go somewhere I need a full-featured laptop, with Photoshop, Office and other bells and whistles (like an actual keyboard). I’m driving, not flying, so I’m not interested in watching movies, streaming video or reading an e-book. What I want to be able to do on the road is pretty much what I do at home — write, edit, take photos, wrestle with race results (which show up in everything from Excel to PDF to Cretan Linear B), download really filthy porn and hack into the FBI database to see what they’ve got on me this week.
But for the gadget geek who simply must stay wired on the go, it’s a pretty damn’ smart little piece of whiz-bang — and dirt cheap for an Apple product at $499 for the basic model.
Aftermarket add-ons include a smart, foldable carrying case, which both protects the iPad and lets you angle it for more convenient movie-watching or typing on the virtual keyboard, and an actual keyboard-slash-dock that charges the iPad and lets you add a camera connection kit and output audio to a stereo or powered speakers. So nobody is gonna get away with paying half a hundy for this thing. The add-ons will add up.
And once enough hipsters break out their iPads at the local java stop, people will forget the risible connection to sanitary napkins and the snickering will cease. It will be replaced, as per usual, by drooling.
• Late update: One of the Twitterati says that “MaxiPod” would be a better name. I can’t imagine how I missed that one. I must not be drinking enough.
It’s New Technology Weekend here at the DogHaus, what with the installation of a refurbished Sony Blu-ray player to feed the TV and a new iMac to feed the rest of us. How odd to find oneself in the 21st century just like that.
The Blu-ray install involved an acceptable profanity-to-success ratio, since the owner’s manual is surprisingly straightforward and both the Sony and the Toshiba TV have HDMI ports. Our obsolete Sony home-theater setup does not, but it does share optical digital connectivity with the Blu-ray. And hijo, madre, puto, cabron, does the sound output all of a sudden get a whole lot better when you plug that bad boy in. And all this time we thought the salesperson at Ultimate Electronics was bullshitting us. That cable’s been gathering dust around here for months.
The iMac, meanwhile, is getting its trial by fire today and tomorrow during my shift in the VeloBarrel, which presently involves posting stories and photos from cyclo-cross nats in Oregon. One interesting hurdle cropped up this morning — it’s not clear whether my copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, which I use for RGB photo editing, will function properly under Snow Leopard, a.k.a. OS X 10.6.1. Some folks say si, others no.
While Adobe will graciously permit me to upgrade to a full CMYK version of Photoshop CS4 for a mere $599 US, I would rather spend that hard-earned cash on tasty food, strong drink and a proper solstice present for Herself, who after all has had to jog 19 laps around the sun with Your Humble Narrator. This is not exactly a day at the beach.
So if any of you have experience with Snow Leopard and Elements 6, please feel free to chime in. Otherwise I may just buy a $70 copy of Elements 8 for online photo editing and keep using the G4 and P-shop 4 to color those silly-ass cartoons.
Meanwhile, Harry Reid should punt Joe Lieberman to the GOP where he belongs. Let the miserable prick give the Elefinks brain cramps for a change. The cocksucker is as reliable as MacWrite II on a Cray supercomputer.
The Pelkey media center: A Dell Inspiron 8130 laptop married to a 46-inch Sharp LC-46SB54U, run via 802.11g wireless and Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse.
I bet the cable-TV people weren’t happy to read this in The New York Times, where today it’s the most e-mailed story on the site.
But as usual, the press is a day late and a dollar short as regards the inexorable march of cheapskate technology. My man Charles Pelkey canceled his landline and cable TV six weeks ago — he and the family rely on cell phones and computer-delivered video from Hulu, Freeonlineepisodes.net, Netflix and elsewhere.
Like me, Charles is something of a hoarder, so he didn’t need to buy a Mini like the pioneers profiled in the NYT. He simply hooked up a 4-year-old Dell laptop to the tube via analog RGB cable and instantly saved himself something like $90 per month.
I had tried a variant of this some months back, using Herself’s MacBook and a set of composite video/audio cables, but the results were disappointing, as in heavy wine consumption, much profanity and very little watchable TV. So the other day I invested in a Mini-DVI-to-DVI adapter and a DVI-to-HDMI cable and hey presto! Instant streaming video on the 42-inch Toshiba. Audio comes from the headphone jack via a splitter plugged into red-and-white audio cables attached to the Sony home theater. A simple 3.5mm PC audio cable run straight to the TV works, too.
Like Charles, I’m not hurting for hardware, so our investment is minimal. Buying a new Mac for work will let me dedicate my 3-year-old MacBook to streaming video, so we won’t have to be booting Herself’s ’puter up and shutting it down all the time, connecting and disconnecting cables, so she can manage her various social-media obligations. I would prefer to use one of my retired G3s, either the 500MHz PowerBook or 800MHz iBook, but their video cards ain’t got the stuff.
And we can probably do without the nifty wireless mouse, too. Our living room is so tiny that it’s no trouble to walk the four paces from couch to computer for switching video sources. Besides, I’m a great fat bastard and need the exercise.
Got outdoors yesterday for my first ride since dislocating my communications system (the middle digit on my left hand), and while it felt good to be cycling outdoors for a change, it also felt kinda creepy and weird.
The reconfigured Voodoo was just fine. But I haven’t had to rehab’ a damaged body part since my last broken collarbone in 1994 or thereabouts, and I had forgotten how tentative it always makes me. I kept lifting the damaged paw off the bars for every little bump, which is not always such a hot idea. But I lasted an hour without incident and was glad to have taken the plunge.
Especially when I awakened to 18 degrees, which is pretty much where the thermometer has been pegged all day. Got to get ’em while you can in December. And the splint came off today, so I may be riding inside for a while anyway, even when and if the sun shines.
I read some of the comments and a few of these poor sods are on their third bum iMac. The things apparently are showing up with shattered screens, flickering screens, bootup issues, wireless keyboards and mice that won’t hold a Bluetooth connection, or just plain DOA. And the problems apparently are not confined to the 27-incher — there are a few 21.5-inchers in there as well.
Is it hardware? Software? A combination of the two? Or the fact that at least some of these iMacs are shipping in anonymous brown boxes that don’t tell the purchasers — or the delivery people — anything about there being pricey computers inside?
So, pffffbbbbllllllhhh to you and yours, wiseguys. I think I’ll wait until Cupertino chases the Chinese cooties out of this lot before I lay another truckload of Dead President Trading Cards on the Black Turtleneck Mob.
Mad Blog Media 