Harry Snooze Potter

I *like* Harry potter movies, I really do. They are fun, action, exciting, sometimes silly and occasionally dramatic. So with mild anticipation we went to the latest Harry Potter movie "harry potter and the deathly hallows". I knew it was "Part I of II" so I expected it not to end with any sort of completeness. But what I did not expect was the agonizing 2 hours 30 minutes BEFORE it ended to be so intensely confusing and boring. It was so boring and slow that my 11 year old son literally fell asleep halfway through and spent 30 minutes snorring ... seriously ! He was only awakened by a very loud scene.

Maybe this is one of those movies where you "had to have read the book". But to my mind its one of those movies "only a mother could love". A huge amount of time spent slipping in cameo shots of past characters who I couldn't ever remember, and who played no real part in the plot. That is, what thin plot there was.

Ok here's the spoiler plot as far as I could figure out. The Bad Guy wants to kill Harry so he goes on the run. Well more like a long walk and sleep. Somewhere along the lines we discover he has to get and destroy some of these necklace thingies. Why? I dont know. And to do that he has to get a sword. Which eventually he finds in a frozen lake. Then his friend uses it to destroy the necklace. Why harry couldn't do it ? Guess his friend who wandered off 1/3 the way through the movie had to have something to do. Then he does some more running around ... eventually there's yet another "dramatic fight scene" then its over. Oh yea there's some subtle romantic sub-plot I cant figure out. An interrupted wedding which I thought was harry's until the end and some wands and for 5 minutes an interesting fable about the "Deathly Hallows" ... which has something to do with the plot but who knows.

And what few plot bits there were, were obvious takeoffs from classics (Lord of the rings, Star Wars, etc) but not done as well and dropped like rabbit droppings from time to time to add a tiny bit of confusion to the otherwise consistently boring trudging story.

Nothing more to write, that was it. Atleast the Titanic had some good sweeping images and a plot I could understand "gonna drown in the cold ocean".

Sorry to Potter Fans, maybe you'll love it. But if your interested in going to a movie for Entertainment, skip this one and watch the car rust instead.

iPad Drawings

I found a "trick" in the Brushes app. It lets you load a photo and then mix it into the main drawing area. You can then draw "over" the photo and remove the photo at the end.

Voila !

iPad Second Impressions

Its not been 3 weeks since I've got my hands on the iPad. I was about to write this review ON the iPad but found that for some reason I could not get Safari on iPad to focus on this text entry field !!! (-1 for review !)

Since my first impressions I've lugged my iPad to a conference in Canada (www.balisage.net), used it daily for email and browsing, read 2 eBooks, watched 3 movies, created a dozen "paintings" and overall used it fairly exhaustively.

Conclusion. Its much better and useful then I originally thought, but I'm not throwing out my laptop.

Touch Typing.

After a week or so I got prety good at touch typing. If you have a desk or lap to put the ipad and can use both hands and use it in landscape mode I could nearly touch-type. By 'nearly' I had to hold my hands very still since there is no tactile feedback, but I could type without looking at the keyboard ... sometimes even error free. But not as easy as with a real keyboard. I quickly put it back into my backpack at the conference and whipped out my laptop.

But its good enough to write 2-5 paragraph emails and I found while sitting in my living room recliner I would use the iPad to write emails instead of going to the 'extra trouble' of leaning over to grab my laptop and booting it up.

Reading

Reading Emails is a joy. Even more so then my laptop primarily due to the fine control over zoom. Its easy to zoom into an email so its just big enough font to read cleanly reguardless of if I have my glasses or not or the room lighting.

EBook reading is quite good. I've been using it instead of my Kindle but with Amazon books, for the last week. The nicest thing is the backlight so I dont disturb my wife quite so much by having a LED light on my chest while reading in bed. However I do find it does cause eyestrain sooner then my Kindle and I like the physical page buttons on the Kindle better then the iPad. But it makes up for it with a backlight and larger screen. Almost on par.

If I already had an iPad I would think twice about buyiung a kindle. But if All I wanted is a book reader, I'd suggest a Kindle.

Touch operations.

Still in love with the magic feelings of the touch. Last week I put on a full screen protector sheet and am considering removing it. It seems to blur the screen slightly (or maybe its my eyes) and seems to make the touch screen slightly unresponsive. But its hard to tell for sure without 2 iPads neck to neck to see if this is my imagination or its real. But it just seems slightly more blury and slightly harder to activate touch. I am thinking of pealing off the protector and going naked (as apple suggests ... they no longer suggest screen protectors !)

Movie Watching

Wow. Thats all. 3 letters. Wow. I watched 3 HD movies in bed in my hotel which I had previously downloaded (DO pre-download ! The hotel Wifi was horrible).

I had to plug in my earphones to get loud enough sound. Other then that it was amazing.

Real HD resolution video and clear sound. A fantastic experience for watching a movie alone.

Overall ... I'm still impressed

Very impressed. Cant wait for V(N+1). A phone ? Camera ? Video Camera ? Better file exchange ?

iPad First Impressions

A perk of being a mobile developer is that I often get new "toys". This week I was lucky to see "on vehicle for delivery" both an iPhone 4, and an iPad.

This is my impressions.
Impressive. I have to say that the iPad is by far the most elegent piece of electroncs I have ever seen. Its an exillerating joy to hold, look at, touch and interact with. It truely feels like "magic". Ever so gentle feather light touches animate the device and open magical doors into ... what ?

Thats my conundrum. What is this device ? I'll tell you what its *not*. It isnt a phone. So the fact that it looks like a big iPhone is misleading. Its not a phone ! So ok, is it a laptop ? No. Its not a laptop. Even with the generous (about 80% full size) onscreen keypad which is vastly easier to use then the iphone, its still not touch-typing. I cant imagine typing this blog for example. I did type a few sentances, and I'm getting better, but for text entry, its not a laptop replacement. Plus the apps are not the same as a laptop or desktop.

So what is it. Its not an iphone, its not a laptop, its not a desktop. Here's a few things it can *morph* into.

A really expensive and huge iPod.
A digital photo frame.
A hand held web browser that actually browsers the "Real Web" (not the mobile web).
An artistic device. I did this last night in bed playing with the "Brushes" app





An HD Movie player. Yes. Its *incredible* looking as a movie player, by far the best screen I've seen on ANY TV. Movies can be bought from iTunes for about $5 for HD and $4 for SD. So far a dismal selection but more is comming I'm sure.
Also works with Netflix (for $10/month which I already have a service fee).

An Email reader. Great builtin email app like the iphone but better.
A document viewer, previews .doc and .xls files as well as pictures etc.

A gaming device (what 100,000 games available.

But really is there one tangible term for what the iPad is and is it worth the money ?

I honestly dont know. I wont be throwing out my laptop. I wont lug it around as my ipod. I certianly cant replace my iphone. And dont even touch my desktop dual-21" HD monitors with 4-CPU*2 hyperthreading 8GB monster.

What is it ? thats the question. Apple has created something that previously didn't exist and is now in the process to create a market and desire for it.

I can say this, its a "Game Changer". Kudo's to Apple. Even more then the iPhone they've pulled a rabbit out of their hat and created magically something from nothing and *SOLD IT*. I think this will be the Harbinger of things to come. The device to copy, mimic, attempt (and fail) to improve. Apple is in the lead yet again.


But what is it ? And is it worth the $500 ? I cant say.
But you wont pry it from my dead cold hands.

Love those targeted Ads

I'm a slashdot junkie, I even have a Google Widget for Slashdot.
Almost fell out of my chair when I saw this one. Nice targeted advertising !

Trains Part II

My "experimental" small shelf train layout is about complete. I'm pretty impressed.

Tonight I have the 'pool table guy' coming over to move the pool table to the other half of the basement freeing up a large section to start on the 'Real Thing'.

Considering this 6x1' "experimental" layout took me about 4 months, I predict a good 10 years of fun ahead of me !

Ignorance

Ignorance is a blessed shadow that follows me though life. No matter how much light I put on it, it gets stronger.