Tobias Tenney: Eclectic media producer
Words thrown at any topic that gets my fancy.
Dear WordPress,
I am using your iPad application right now to update my blog. I am not breaking up with you, but I wanted to let you know that I am keeping my eyes open for something better while I hope you improve.
Back when we were together on the iPhone it was OK. I understood your limitations and I was working with them. I didn’t blame you. I knew that when we wanted quality time together we had to go back to my laptop.
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I have been making a point to really use the iPad that my father got while I have been visiting the Bay Area. To really understand a new device you have to use it. Not just play with it in the store, look at it on the web, make assumptions based on blog reports or tech details gleamed off the Apple website, but really use the damned thing. To be absolutely clear, this goes for any new device; sorry iPad, you aren’t special in this department.
I have been surfing the web, poking at applications, writing a bit (as I did in my initial review of the iPad), reading books on it and the real test: Taking it to bed.
It did not call me back in the morning.*
“It is as if typing on a real keyboard has released my mental sphincter so that my mental flatulence is able to throttle the screen.”
iPad + Keyboard
For this follow-up review, I am again using the iPad to write the review with the WordPress iPad native application, but with a key difference: I am typing on the small Apple bluetooth keyboard tethered to it. I just finished tethering it and am testing this use case by writing this review. I can tell you right off the bat that my voice is different than when I was using the on screen keyboard. It is as if typing on a real keyboard has released my mental sphincter so that my mental flatulence is able to throttle the screen.
What I have come to realize is that the iPad is a wonderful Content Consumption Device™. [click to continue…]
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[NOTE: I have made some edits to the post on my laptop as the WordPress app for the iPad wouldn’t let me do everything I needed to. All embedded links have been done on my laptop and some other formatting. I will try to keep this clear. I was only able to type in content & insert an image. All other controls were missing. All modifications will be in italics whenever possible so it is apparent what was done on the iPad verses on my laptop. All hypertext links were done on my laptop and NOT on the iPad. All formating changes, such as bold text are done via WP on my laptop. Note that WordPress on mobile Safari was not useable enough to do this.]
My general conclusion is “meh”.
This is me writing this post on the iPad.
The first thing I noticed was that the screen PPI is far lower than the iPhone. [Editor’s note: The iPad is 132 ppi and the iPhone is 163 ppi.] I would have expected there to be an increase rather than decrease in that department. The second thing I noticed, because I am a UI nerd, is that once a menu item is activated, clicking the same button does not deactivate it. Some apps have apparently noticed this and fixed it while others have not. A small thing, but definitely a sad oversight on Apple’s part.
It is indeed a nifty device, but nifty doesn’t cut it for this price range. The WiFi model does not include GPS, so have fun getting directions on the go (not to mention there is still no way to save maps locally on the device, neglecting the obvious GPS downloadable apps that would be useless anyway). The lack of a camera is by far the largest problem as I have mentioned before.
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I have decided to post a review of every bowl of instant noodles I eat. I went to the local pan-Asian market and randomly grabbed a big stack of instant noodles that were self contained and did not require refrigeration.
The first brand I tried is called King Cup Kimchi.
It includes a bowl, egg noodles, powdered soup mix, and dried vegetable mix. [More pictures here on Flickr.]
Notes of interest:
-“open lid to this place”
-Energy is given in kilojoules (kJ) instead of calories.
The package lists it as spicy kimchi soup. It tasted mildly spicy, had small chunks of what appeared to be kimchi, had the umami of MSG in the subtle way a nail penetrates your scrotum, and did in fact taste like soup.
It remarkably tasted entirely like instant noodles.
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For some reason, this video has played in my mind a few times lately in seemingly unrelated context. If you did not grow up in the Bay Area, then it is likely you have not seen it. If you did, and within the right time frame, then you most likely remember Charley and Humphrey. They taught me lessons as a child I’ll never forget: Get lots of glue if you want to really get high after you steal something.
Their creator, Pat McCormick, was a staple for those who landed on KTVU in the 70s whether it be for Dialing for Dollars or Charley and Humphrey 1 minute interludes of puppeteiring and moral lessons.
Check out more videos of Charley and Humphrey here on YouTube.
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Now I sit in the upper levels of a home in Maryland looking back on a well worn trip across the glorious Western Coast of the United States.
The Bay Area, Los Angeles, Portland & Seattle.
I consumed as much friendship, family, good food, good cheer, warm hugs, a wedding, hotel rooms, fine champagne, Scotch eggs, celebrated my birthday, and overall just had a blast.
I will be writing more soon. There is just so much to write about that I have the cloud of a large winged beast of pleasure hanging over me.
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Today Apple announced, with little surprise, a tablet computer called the iPad. Some nifty things going on, but very little in the “knock me over the head with Wow™” going on.
One thing in particular is lacking: A camera. [tech specs]
Now, this at first glance does not seem to be much of a big deal. The device is straddling the fence of the iPhone and the MacBook lines, both of which have a camera. The obvious similarity would be with the iTouch which lacks a camera, but I’m willing to bet that many iTouch users will understand my complaint.
Steve Jobs says iPod touch didn’t get a camera because “it’s a great game machine” –engadget
The iPad will be a wonderful platform for application development. Take all of the wonders that have come from the iPhone developer community and amp it up ten fold. e.g., You can now make a device that a doctor carries around from patient to patient and can easily access information, charts, etc. on the fly and with more granularity for drilling down to specifics or complicated interactions.
A camera provides a very useful input source for such applications. QR Codes, augmented reality, business card scanning, face detection, object detection, and all of the other wonderful things that we haven’t even thought of yet are now all closed off. A very large door for innovation has been closed in our faces before we even went to open it.
Will I need to have a camera dongle if I want to, say, make a Doctor Application™ that allows them to take photo graphs of injuries to be entered into the patient’s file? The Wine Taster Application™ won’t let you take photos of the label of wine you just drank that blew you away. Of course the lack of video chat via iChat is a striking feature set that is missing.
The built in camera on my iPhone is an integral part of my experience with the device. To have taken that integral tool out of the iPad was a very sad mistake that Apple has made.
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I am trying to turn this site, TobiasTenney.com, to do what I assumed were very basic things. I have made the wrong assumption that even though we do not have jetpacks, we should have easy access to a CMS that does all of the basic user desired modularity without having to get your hands dirty with CSS or PHP. (I can, but I don’t think I should have to.)
I want to have tabs at the top that then present a filtered view of my blog. I want “Video” to present you with all of my blog entries that I tagged or categorized as “video”. I also want to have a “Why I am Writing About Video” page that is included in this. The problem seems to be that I can add tabs that are “Pages”, but pages act like a static single entry. I could instead use “Categories”, but categories lack the functionality to be helpful (they seem to just show a dumb list of titles placed into the categories).
Here is the best example:
I would like to have “Audio” as a main tab with a drop down menu with my bands. I currently made sites for all of these:
•Audio (parent)
–Specimen (child)
–Plastination (child)
The above works out great, except for one thing. The “Audio” page does not include all of my audio related blog posts which can be seen by clicking on the Audio category.
Living in the future, but with no blogging jetpack to be had.
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I was listening to my iTunes pumping in random music and it came up with a song I wrote, but something was different.
The song is “Loose” by Plastination. I had completely forgotten that I had made an early alternate mix of the song that bumped up Jake Flood‘s amazing harmonica performance much higher in the mix. Sadly, a lot of the production work that I put into the song was done after this mix.
I present both mixes for your enjoyment:
“Loose (original)” [MP3]
“Loose (Harmonica Mix)” [MP3]
The song is hyperbole about the Rock’n’Roll Lifestyle Stereotype™.
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My dear friend, who shall rename nameless unless he waves me down to place him name here, acquired something of pure foodie beauty: A 4oz. white Piedmont truffle the size of a small fist.
The look of fried chicken is only captured on pseudo film. In person it looks more like a round knobby bit of ginger. Before you can see the nodule of fungus, you can smell it.
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