computers

iPad, therefore iAm

So can you guess how I spent my day off?

If you guessed mailing copies of Kaleidotrope to award judges (and a couple of contributors), finishing a chapter of that art therapy book (which I think is shaping up pretty well, actually), filling the bird feeder in the backyard, walking and playing with the dog, and just pottering around the house…well, you wouldn’t be wrong. But obviously the big news of the day was that my iPad, ordered exactly one month ago in a mad “what the hell” moment, finally arrived.

And I have to say, so far, it’s really quite cool. I didn’t experience the same sort of orgiastic thrill as, say, Stephen Fry at unpacking the box, but it is tough not to be at least a little impressed by it. Apple certainly knows how to make pretty looking things.

I almost missed the FedEx delivery, arriving back home from the post office (and grabbing some lunch) at the exact moment that the deliveryman was walking to our door. I then spent the next hour or so installing the latest version of iTunes — you do need to hook the device up to a computer with iTunes installed, so it’s not exactly “turn it on right out of the box” — and syncing the two systems.

And then I started playing with it. And you know, I really am quite impressed. This is what it looks like after I started downloading (mostly free) apps:

So far I really love the NY Times Crosswords, and the Dragon Dictation is surprisingly good at transcribing voice to text. Netflix’s player was a little unresponsive when I tried it this afternoon, but the video quality was excellent. The same goes for the ABC Player, with which I could easily imagine watching Lost (and, heaven help me, Happy Town). Both Marvel’s reader and iBooks are impressive, in the free samples I’ve tried out, and who doesn’t like a good game of Scrabble? The other apps there I’m still testing out — I downloading Skype, for instance, even though I’ve never actually used the service before, and I still haven’t decided which Twitter client to use, Echofon or TweetDeck. I’m sure, as I continue to use the iPad, I’ll find plenty of compelling evidence to suggest that both sides (pro and con) are right about the device.

Ultimately, is it worth the hefty price tag? I don’t know. The real test will probably be the next time I have a lengthy commute, or how well it handles reading Kaleidotrope slush, or maybe in an app I haven’t yet discovered. I do know I’m not remotely sorry I bought it, and I am finding it incredibly difficult to put it down.

Wednesday various

  • The very real problem of digital decay:

    Electronically produced drafts, correspondence and editorial comments, sweated over by contemporary poets, novelists and nonfiction authors, are ultimately just a series of digits — 0’s and 1’s — written on floppy disks, CDs and hard drives, all of which degrade much faster than old-fashioned acid-free paper. Even if those storage media do survive, the relentless march of technology can mean that the older equipment and software that can make sense of all those 0’s and 1’s simply don’t exist anymore.

    Imagine having a record but no record player.

    Does this mean the people in my office who print out a copy of everything are on to something?

    There’s also the fact that, on a purely aesthetic level, digital archives tend to be pretty boring things. A novelist’s handwritten notes, for instance, are a lot more interesting to future readers than his half-finished draft in Microsoft Word. I think Emory University’s archive of Salman Rushdie’s work — this “access through emulation to a born-digital archive” — is a neat way to address this fact. [via]

  • The writer and editor in me liked this: Sentenced.
  • Fed Up With Lunch: The School Lunch Project — a teacher eats her school’s cafeteria food every day for lunch, with pictures! [via]
  • I don’t know that being able to identify Star Wars figurines with your mouth really makes you much of a fan so much as just a really weird kid. [via]
  • And finally, FutureStates : Play [via]:

Thursday various

Thursday various

Wednesday various

  • A computer that can generate bad puns? Ladies and gentlemen, I have been rendered obsolete! [via]
  • “Australian scientists have discovered an octopus in Indonesia that collects coconut shells for shelter — unusually sophisticated behavior that the researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal.” Looks like dread Cthulhu has finally discovered Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
  • You know, if I was best known for smashing watermelons with a sledgehammer on stage, I might be a little mean and bitter too.
  • Oh my. Particle physicists have been searching for the “boob element” for decades! [via]
  • And finally, Unusual Stop Motion: Videogame [via]