Laying Hands on the iPad 2

Went down to my local MacLife Store to lay hands on the new iPad 2. If you don't already have an iPad and you are wavering on details, just go buy one. It's pretty much as advertised, five stars, etc. What follows is for folks who have owned the iPad 1 for the last year and contemplating trading up.

Going to knit-pick a little here.

Viewing it from the front, the buttons are indeed invisible. They fall on the sloping edges on the way to the flat back of the device. The slope comes to a rounded bull-nosed edge. I hate to say it, but even being 33% heavier (~0.2 lb.!), my iPad 1 is more comfortable to hold in my hands due to the flat edge about it's perimeter. Now, I didn't get to hold one that had the smart cover which could completely change my opinion. Really wish the floor models had been equipped with the cover.

Maybe the Apple Store in the Mall has floor models with smart covers? Not sure it's worth the trip. I find the Mall and the staff at the Apple Retail Stores irritating. I could write a thousand words for my blog on that.

Thinking out loud.

Yes, the device is snappier for anything that is graphics intense and I'm willing to bet you can have more layers in Sketchbook Pro before it crashes on you. For content creation the bump in speed might be worth trading up. In the latter part of 2010, I used my iPad for a lot of front end textual and visual creation. Now that I'm at the back end of so many projects, my MacBook Air is the device of choice. In a couple months, it'll flip flop again.

That's when I'll probably have to contemplate upgrading.

Conclusions. More of the same.

If you already have an iPad 1, and use it primarily to consume media, email, web content and similar. I'd probably stick with it. If you use your iPad 1 as part of your workflow, the iPad 2 might be worth some consideration for the speed increase. Especially if you use your iPad to create visuals and poke pixels in the low to medium resolutions.

How Do You Write?

In meeting with some people to review their writing, investigate forming a writing circle and encourage people who are trying their hand at crafting text, I've been asked a hard question. To categorize it as difficult is probably misleading. It's a question I haven't probably considered since the early days of my blog.

How do you write?

My answer to people is generally quick, vague, and malformed. Not because I want to be evasive about what I do, but that my method is constantly evolving. Every 10,000 words or so I am probably doing some small thing different. 100,000 words later, my style and motivation have probably departed the old and entered something entirely new. To write in that kind of volume, on a large number of projects ,while trying to find the time to play your (never gonna see 85) goblin on World of Warcraft? You get creative about being creative.

Stuff that occurs to me:

1. Be prepared to write anywhere.

Whether it's a 99 cent notepad and a pencil you stole from the bowling alley or a $300 iPod Touch with the PlainText and DropBox apps, make sure you have the means to write wherever you are. The most mundane parts of our life generally contain lots of waiting. Pass the time by creating text. Yep, I often generate 350-500 words on my iPod Touch, with my thumbs, while lying in bed waiting to get sleepy. It's not a lot, but it adds up.

If you did that much every night, it would add up to a novel-sized amount of text in 6-7 months.

2. It's all in your mind.

People make up all sorts of excuses as to why they can't write that book they believe is inside them. Generally speaking, I used to think there was a magical formula or set of circumstances required for good writing. Total and complete fabrication. It's all in your mind. People don't need more/less distractions to write, they just need to focus on the line or the blinking cursor and make text appear instead of excuses. Harsh but true.

Quit perpetuating your own belief that you need to have more/less people, space, noise, sugar, caffeine, motivation, or small gerbils named Kevin and just make the text happen. One. Word. At. A. Time.

3. Write Badly

This is something I've blogged about before and it is worth revisiting. Expect that more than half of the text you write will deserve little more than to gather dust on a shelf. If you plan to write in any kind of volume, quite a bit of it is going to be mostly unsalvageable crap. Depressed? Don't be. Lots of authors and novelists go right ahead and publish that crap anyway (that's what pen names are for) and guess what... people buy it!

4. Keep Track

Any good workout will require that you track your progress, writing down how many reps you did, and the amount of weight. If you're smart you'll add notes about whether it was hard or easy so you know what you need to do next time. Writing is no different. Keeping track of your average daily word count is a fantastic motivator. Set a goal and make sure you keep your average up while slowly increasing the volume.

I know I can write 5000-7500 words on a good day, but my average, counting only the 5-day work week, is somewhere around 3800 words since I started doing WP7 development. I've been trying to get my average back up over 4K but circumstances continue to conspire against me. Thank goodness I can catch up a little over the weekend. Nevertheless, I know where I was, where I'm at, and where I want to be in concrete tangible numbers. I can't stress how important that is.

5. Personal Fitness

I thought that taking a couple of hours worth of time out of my day to work out and get in better shape would hurt my daily average word count. A 60-75 minute workout in the morning and a 30-45 minute walk in the afternoon is a considerable chunk of my day. Still, it's done nothing to hurt my daily average word count. No, I don't think I'm generating a noticeably larger volume of text though either. Yes, the stuff I've written in the last six weeks since I started my work out regimen has been of much higher quality.

It goes without saying that eating right and getting your sleep is important. This is something every creative person I know struggles with. That being said, staying up until 1 AM writing this after an espresso and a pastrami sandwich is probably a little hypocritical. Just a little.

Goodnight.

Writing in the Dark

I've been reaching out to some friends and acquaintances about pulling together a writing circle. In theory it would give participants some structure to help schedule their writing habits, folks to bounce ideas off of, and other creative fuels. Creating a web presence of some sort that would allow people to work together on projects in a pseudo peer-to-peer way might be a nice addition to the writing circle. In that regard, I'm somewhat anxious to improve my meager web design/development skills.

I think one's writing can garner traction within the illuminated zone of a specially purposed social network.

However, I think that those people can only enjoy that illumination if they have done plenty of writing in the dark beforehand. By my own definition, writing in the dark involves the creation of large sums of text for the purpose of impressing no one, approaching only yourself as an audience, and existing for it's own sake. Journals, list making, outlines, world building and so forth, writing in the dark has many contrived titles. In the end, you are generating text within a context that does not include external illumination.

A truly great writing project is born of internal illumination after much of this writing in the dark. Try it. You'll see what I mean.

Preparation. Forethought. Taking notes. Call it what you like when you're sitting with your peers or your friends.

... but know it for what it really is.

My Friend Vinnie, Rest In Peace

My friend Vinnie passed away tonight. To say that I am distressed falls utterly short of describing how I feel right now. Even at my most cold and analytical I can see no silver lining or positive side to her loss. It is a tragedy that could be likened unto anything that inspired Shakespeare or Tennyson. My world is less one valiant person to share time and creative energy with.

Veronica "Vinnie" Goodman lived her life unfettered by regret or sorrow and would not deny anyone close to her the same, even as we are bereft of her presence. Nevertheless, I mourn bitterly her loss and in particular the empty place within my creative endeavors no one else can possibly fill. Her empathy and intrinsic goodness have and will continue to form the basis for many of the characters in my works of fiction. My memories of her will have to suffice.

You can't write of the human nature the things you have not been witness to. To that end, I can write so much better of things that amount to courage, perseverance and spiritual latitude. Vinnie approached life with a mind that was as open as her heart. She denied herself nothing that amounted to an experience worth having.

I have particular feelings about the use of the word "warrior". I believe in earnest that the folks who bear that moniker are defined as much by how they live life as how they face death. I sat with her often in Hospital rooms and marveled at her fearlessness. Through it all, she had but a single fear, that her young son would not remember the person she was, or what she stood for.

That will not happen. Her only fear in life will never be a reality following her death. Never.

Update: "I don't want anyone to say I lost my battle. If I lose my life to cancer it will not be because I lost my battle it will be because cancer is a sneaky bastard and it cheated." - Veronica Goodman

I wouldn't claim otherwise. Cancer is a sneaky bastard and it does cheat us out of people we'd prefer to have in our lives.

It's gonna getcha.

Vinnie's Warriors Fundraiser

Thanks to everyone who showed up and helped out.

Trolls, Spam, Anonymity and Censorship

There was a pretty decent editorial on Engadget about anonymity on the internet. They seemed to be trying to find a way to combat the excessive amount of trolling in their comments sections and made a thinly-veiled suggestion that maybe things would be better if people had to sign in under a verified real name. I'd link the article but it got pulled right after I commented beneath it. If it is still there somewhere, darned if I can find it.

My response to the editorial was shorter... but here's the expanded version:

I've been pretty hard on the US Government for their inability to find proper ways of regulating the internet that didn't amount to stupidity or censorship. If heavyweights like the folks at Engadget are struggling with the moderating the comments sections beneath articles, maybe it really is a problem. I was just spinning through Boing-Boing and saw a similar post about using mini URLs in the comments section to combat spammers and advert-bots.

I went ahead and committed some of my not-so-considerable brainpower to the problem and did a quick look around at the various sites I read and contribute to. Other than taking the Daring Fireball road and just not having a comments section at all there are three things I see to being key to preventing spam, trolls and so forth. None of those things have a thing to do with depriving people of what I see as their right to privacy online.

1. Hire professional writers who have a college level vocabulary.

Articles and content that are written well, by professionals, will deter a portion of the sub-human population that assuredly makes up a percentage of online trolls. I believe that an article written by someone who knows how, sans 1337speak/slang/etc, should act as a natural deterrent to certain types of trolls. It's clear from the way many trolls use language, words with more than two-syllables are pretty tough.

You can't fix stupid. Trolls are almost universally ignorant and will generally seek to verbally spar with people they consider their near equal intellectually. I find that whenever I engage or confront trolls in the comments section a few well placed ten cent words take the wind right out of their sails. Where pointing out how ignorant or irrational they are fails, illuminating their stupidity sometimes succeeds.

Read an article at Gizmodo (if you can figure out their cockamamie new format) and then read one from Ars Technica. Look at the threads beneath the articles on both sites and draw your own conclusion. From my perspective the comment sections on Ars Technica are far less painful and sport fewer trolls*.

2. Exercise Editorial Control

Sites that act as thinly-veiled mouthpieces for controversial corporate entities are going to be targets by trolls and regular folks alike. People crave objectivity most of the time and innately sense when you're faking it. If you're going to play that game with your readers, expect them to give you crap. When it's clear you're doing whatever you have to just to get hits and/or sell advertising anyone with a brain can generally tell.

If you don't seem to care about your content, no one else will either. It's common sense.

I rarely see someone giving the folks at Mac Rumors crap for their content. It's clear which team they are rooting for. They don't prevaricate with their audience in the slightest and to that end seem to suffer fewer trolls* than sites who aren't up front about who they think is a good and who they think is crap.

EDIT: Ask your readers within the textual portion of the article or content what you want to see in the comments section. Give them a clear option to participate in a positive way.

3. Forums

Having a separate place where people can discuss and moderate themselves is always a good thing. Generally they can find others of a similar mindset, commiserate in an area designated for the purpose and move on. The trolls, spammers and advert-bots will continue to do what they do, but they'll be easier to spot and kick without accidentally alienating someone who was just having a bad day.

Setting up a forum is easier than dodging around two dozen comments sections a day hunting trolls.

Why is anonymity important?

The internet is a wondrous resource, but there are many times when people need to be anonymous. To that end I think a lot of people would or could be barred from contributing to the online community if they had to shed that buffer.

Folks with general anxiety disorder come to mind. The folks who are related to a member of law enforcement, a federal judge or celebrity probably find anonymity a necessity every once in a while. Then there are all the other occasions when having the option to be anonymous is important.

Example: Your mom/brother/spouse/gerbil is dying of AIDS. You want to find a support group to help you cope with everything going on without compromising your own or your mom/brother/spouse/gerbil's identities online. It's an extreme example, but I can think of plenty others.

The moral of the story?

You can't get people to make good choices (for the right reasons) by reducing the number choices available to them.

*Maybe these sites do suffer the same amount of trolls and have found an efficient way of weeding them. It speaks to their perseverance and the pride they take in the content they provide regardless.

iPad 2, why I might get one.

I was stinky mad about Apple's decision to not release the full technical information about the iPad 2. When I went through and read the reviews of the device by John Gruber and Engadget a few things occurred to me.

First, by my own reckoning, the amount of RAM being placed in other tablet devices seems excessive. This isn't to say that your casual user wouldn't benefit from a full gigabyte of RAM occasionally, but I struggle to think of when. Not releasing the spec might be Apple's subtle way of avoiding the issue.

The Engadget reviewer seemed to think the device should have had more than the 512mb that everyone seems think the iPad 2 has. Like everyone who makes that assertion, they are vague as to what exactly that extra RAM would be used for. John Gruber didn't have much to say other than folks with 1 gigabyte expectations would be waiting awhile.

I didn't have those expectations. I assumed it would the same RAM it had before. For a device that basically does one thing at a time while keeping track of a few small things in the background, 256mb is plenty. That manufacturers who went with Android seem to consistently go for 1 gigabyte of RAM makes me think those devices need it for some reason. That, or you are being charged for 768mb of RAM you don't really need.

Both of those situations are not very appealing.

Even Notion Ink's Adam is outfitted with 1 gigabyte of DDR2 RAM. Does Android and it's derivatives, having been designed for the smart phone form factor somehow need more memory when optimized for a tablet? Sure, seems logical.

Gruber said the Xoom scores ever so slightly faster during one comparison but states that the test (Sun Spider) relies on the underlying JavaScript engine and not so much on hardware.

Considering the most rudimentary function of RAM in a device it's importance seems to diminish where solid state drives are concerned. That being said, your bottleneck would seem be the processor in that case, the part of the iPad 2 that saw the biggest upgrade.

Hardware monkeys correct me if I'm wrong.

I guess my question then becomes how many of these Android devices have expandable memory slots and what role does RAM play in accessing storage placed in those slots if any? I wish I was a more casual consumer of technology and could just take all this for granted.

Regardless, Gruber's review all but sold me on upgrading to an iPad 2 just for the iMovie and Garage Band apps. Having seen the dual cameras put to good use with FaceTime is pretty compelling. Given my previous posts on such things it would require some considerable humility to trade up.

I'm all about seeking humility.

-- sent from my iPad mini. n_n

Sword-erymanship

Graphic for the mobile game I'm working on. It's blocky-simple because at the back end, the visual will only be the size of a postage stamp on the screen. I did one for each of the weapon selections, sword, bow and staff.

The iPad 2, why I won't be getting one.

From the best "iPad 2 hands on" article I could find from the good-good folks at Ars Technica - "The several Apple reps that we spoke with in the briefing area were not willing to give up details about how much RAM the device has; one representative said that those details "aren't important" and that the company would rather keep that under wraps to focus attention on the new A5 processor instead."

Oh really? Apple, allow me to retort.

Let's assume that one of your users is a writer who regularly generates anywhere from 3000 to 5000 words daily in his eternal quest to be a better writer and uses his iPad as an essential part of his workflow. THAT USER has an iPad that he often reaches for to make tweaks and edits to sizable (75,000 words plus) works, in the middle of the night, on the go or hanging upside down. For the most part THAT USER's original iPad performs that duty admirably, even if it takes a few moments to render those documents.

To that end, THAT USER is regularly cutting and pasting large quantities of text, graphics and similar between various apps to create and edit his works and projects. THAT USER's iPad is his sketchbook, notepad and even a place to refine and finish textual and visual works on the go. THAT USER can't sit at his desk for eight hours straight and sometimes needs to sit in a coffee shop, under a tree or out in the urbanscape to garner the needed inspiration.

THAT USER's iPad is important. Would THAT USER want to know the amount of RAM the iPad 2 had relative to making the choice to trade up?

Yes, of course he would.

Apple's decision to play games with my (and my wife's) iTunes Account was frustrating. The lackluster customer service I've received them from the past was disheartening. Prevaricating with me on a device that is important to my workflow?

Too. Far.

Microsoft. Courier Device. Now. (*Dreaming*)