iPad: Abc app reviewed

Ok, now granted it's the second day, but some aps hit the mark and some missed ever so slightly... The abc player is cool, let's you watch your shows on abc! Wis hulu had one, since abc is one of their share holders you wonder why they don't, but anyways the application it self is cool, quality is very good, it acts
Just like their web site and allows you to review the shows, find one, watch it etc. Once you start watching it let's you switch to landscape format but there are a couple of thugs wrong with it..

In full daylight it doesn't. Compensate at all like the native iPad does, it's impossible to watch tv in sunlight on that particular app... Maybe all of them, stay tuned...
The commercials were pixilated, who cares right? Well they should, makes them look cheap and wrong on such a crisp clean device... It was actually very distracting when watching them, to the point where I don't remember the commercial at all, just the pixilation. Now this is something I have also noticed on hulu, so it might just be a symptom of new technology and apathy on the part of the advertising community...

If you have to leave the show for whatever reason it remembers where you are, but unlike hulu I can't tag a series as something I care about so that I can be reminded when I come back later that there is a new episode... I have a horrible memory, for just about everything, so having something remember what shows li like and show me when there is a new episode so I don't have to remember...

Over all a good app, does the minimum it should and I am sure with later versions they will make it a little friendlier to use.

I will spare you the sordid details.. But my ipad is here

After what seems like months my iPad finally arrived today. For those that know me well they will know that this is like three or four Christmases rolled into one, you see I am a self procrlaimed geek, though I am sure others hold that opinion as well....;)

The first thing I noticed About the ipad was that it wasn't as big as I was afraid it would be... It's smaller than a magazine, the screen is amazingly sharp. I was just outside playing with it in the full sunlight and there were no problems seeing the screen. Typing on it is also next to natural, the landscape keyboard is very natural feeling! Even the portrait one is easy to get used to. You do have to put it down if you want any kind of typing speed, and my pinky keeps hitting the enter key but other than that it is really amazing. The adaptive text, it probably has a real name but thats what I will call it, is also amazing, it allows you to keep typing and guesses the word that you meant to type, for sausage fingers here, that's a good thing because I don't always hit the right keys..

I downloaded a bunch of apps so I I'll review them as I get more familiar with them, started out with some of the free ones, but there are all kinds of terminal emulators (geek speak for, I can remote control my computer downstairs if I want to and watch hulu since the ipad doesn't support flash.) and other software. One thing that I have found so far is that iPhone apps, while they might work, are very pixilated and I am not sure I would bother buying any of them if I were you.

The speaker in the pad is amazingly loud, for those of you with a first gen iPhone, its nothing similar, you get at least 5 times louder than the iPhone which makes it a good media device for sharing with people... Please share responsibly, last thing I want to hear is someone elses tv show while I am trying to sleep right jenn?

I went and did it....I pre-ordered an Ipad.

For the past 5 years I have been wanting a tablet computer, the thought of an always on PC that fits in your hand has had me mesmorized forever. What I proposed about 10 years ago was a portable hard drive that had a docking station, you grab your hard drive, and it automatically saves what you were doing and shuts down. Walk to work, slap it into the docking station, back up you come…. Going to a meeting, grab the hard drive, walk to the meeting, slap it into the docking station and so on… It was a little more than a hard drive, but you get the idea…

So when the Ipad came out I was intrigued… if you read my blog you know that I was looking at the archos for awhile, but all of the reviews I have seen say that the archos is slow, doesn't work very well etc… This is the problem with taking a computer based operating system, and trying to dumb it down to fit it into a less powerful device… Apple did the reverse. They took their admittedly amazing iphone OS and gave it more processing power. It can't help but fly…. Now before you poo poo it, yes its not a computer. Yes it won't do everything a computer can do… but other than surf, and write emails and the occasional note while in a meeting, I don't need it to do anything else… If someone comes up with a remote desktop app for the ipad, you'll never hear anyone wish for a computer again….:)

To be fully effective at work I would need:

1. Ideally, remote access… failing that.
2. Emails
3. Oracle client
4. Putty
5. Winscp
6. Office type suite.

So lets see, I can winscp and putty from my blackberry, office type suite is out of the way, so really all I need is a light oracle client and I haven't checked the app store yet to see if one exists….:)

This won't be a device for all, and when I get it, I'll blog all about it, from it…:) So if you're unsure of its usefulness for you, wait it out… if you're a fan boy, buy one, if you’re a Mac hater don't…. I'll post unbiased first hand accounts of what the thing is like. I own an iphone, I really don't like Mac PC's, not my comfort zone… So decide if you want to take what I am saying as fanboy praise or honest to goodness review of a new type of device.

The makers of the ARM processor that runs most of our phones and all of the tablets on the market have said that they are expecting 50 different tablet devices to come out over the next 18 months, could be their own marketing people trying to sell more processors and make computer manufacturers panic, but hey…

Now I have an excuse to drive erraticaly

So after 18 months of being in NJ I finally managed to get my car plated... The process involves importing your car at the jfk airport where they validate that you do in fact own the car, and it is the car you said it was, and it meets epa standards (which is a letter you have to get from the manufacturer for 85$).

The whole process was long but relatively painless. I took the 1 hour drive from the house, and spent 1 hour driving around the airport looking for the building. Anyone who works at jfk or knows someone who does, tell them to imrpove the signage... Its really pathetic.. Anyways I arrived at noon, just in time for lunch break... When I got back at 1, the process was completed as there was no line, and I was back on the road at 115.

Over to jersey dmv, again no linean out of there at 245... So an entire day shot, just to get two bits of metal to put on my car...but now at least my crappy driving will be put up to, well he's from new jersey.

Jillian Michaels 30 day shred: I quit.

I timed this really poorly is what its coming down to. As a fat mostly lazy guy I'm taking advantage of every opportunity to get out of exercising to the point that I can't honestly say I am doing the shred anymore. Its been about a week since the last time I exercised and I have quite simply fallen out of the routine I was in. Holidays and sickness stopped me from completing this, that and a lack of will power.

I'm going to modify my routine and start 3 days a week next week to try and keep it going, but the shred is over and so is the blogging about it. I know a lot of people were reading this and keeping up, some people even began the routine as a result of my taking the plunge, carry on and don't take my bad example to heart, stick it out as long as you can it gets easier the more days in a row you do it.

Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred: Day 17

OK well lets just say, that taking 10 days off from any exercise routine is a bad plan. And that if you are going to do so, trying to pick back up where you left off, increases the bad plannedness (its a new word, look it up) exponentially.. This morning, I jumped back to Cycle 2, and I wanted to die... Jillian says, I want you to feel like you are going to die, mission acomplished. I couldn't finish the cardio on phase 3, I just sat on the couch trying to avoid passing out, watching the skinny bitches have at it... just couldn't do it.

I almost passed out in the shower after the fact, yeah, not my finer moment... but I'm back on the wagon, scary thing is that 3 days from now I should move to Cycle 3... we'll see how likely that is all things considered. My 30 day shred might extend to 40 or so to ensure I finish the CD...

My friend at work is going to try out the CD as well and I'd be interested to hear back from anyone who also started up on this excellent road trip... how are you holding up? Have you been consistent?

Happy New YEAR! Time to work off the Christmas stuffing...

While most of my co-workers have complimented me that I seem to be melting away, I feel like I am stuffed from the Christmas goodies my parents sent us home with, so time to get back on the exercise wagon.. I'll restart my Jillian shred tomorrow (backing up 3 days or so on Round 1) and get back to posting. Jenn also bought me one of the other DVD's from the biggest loser collection that I will sample and let you know at some point (probably this weekend).