Counterintuitive Rant

iPad Counterintuitive RantI suspect I currently use my Mac around 5 hours a day, my iPhone probably 1 hour a day and my iPad another hour or two every day day.

I've used the Mac for 20+ years, and I've used my iPhone for 3+. I've only had the iPad for just over 4 months. I've had jobs where I sat in cubes in front of Macs and PCs for 8 to 10 hours a day.

I'm starting to get frustrated with the User Interface on the desktop. Specifically, I'm tired of having to scroll the windows in the wrong direction to get them to move.

Bear with me here. It's a learned behavior (MS Windows People, you learned the exact same behavior so don't start bashing the Mac, it's the same on Windows, Linux, etc).

To scroll a window (like the one you are reading right now) down, you have to grab the scrolly thingy (sometimes called a "thumb") on the side of the window and drag it down. If you are lucky enough to have a Mighty Mouse™, a Magic Mouse™, or any one of a billion other mice with scroll wheels, you can just hover your mouse over the window itself and scroll down. That'll make the window go down too.

But on the iPad, that magical thing that has untrained my brain, to make the window scroll down, you place your finger on the window and move the content up and out of the way.

Suddenly, the way we've learned to do it for the past 20+ years doesn't seem like the right way any more.

I only bring this up because when I use my finger on my track pad for my laptop or on my Magic Mouse™ for my desktop, it now feels like I'm scrolling 180° in the wrong direction to move content around in windows.

How can one device get it so right that it makes 20 years of learning obsolete so quickly? I think the desktop machines have some catching up to do…

*The Magic Mouse is a mouse that ships with Macintoshes that has no buttons or scroll wheels, but is essentially like a curved track pad that's laid over a classic mouse. It senses what your fingers are touching and whether you are right clicking or left clicking or scrolling, and has multitouch capabilities like the iPad/iPhone ecosystem.

Free Cases For Everyone!

iPhone Case Thank YouApple today released an App at the App Store for ordering your free bumper or case if you have an iPhone 4.

It doesn't require you to say you're having antennae problems, or anything, other than which case you want.

Launching the app requires you to put in your iTunes password, and then it takes you to a gallery of available cases from Apple, Speck, Griffin, etc. All of the available cases are black. Even the bumper from Apple. Black.

Which is fine, since I wanted a black one.

So it seems that in 3-5 weeks they'll be shipping me a case.

If you have an iPhone 4, and want some love from Apple, you can start by downloading this app: Case Program.

note: in the screen shot, I'm running some location tracking software in the background, I don't think that the iPhone 4 Case Program is the App causing the little location tracker arrow to show up in my menu bar.

Delicious Grass Flavor, plus vanilla.

Column Delicious Grass Flavor, plus vanilla.I'm no vegan. I'm not even a vegetarian. Nor am I anything else when it comes to diet, really. I see what I want and I eat it.

I've been through phases where I haven't eaten any beef (talk about a hard thing to explain to my Texas relatives), or when I've shied away from milk, or chocolate, or wheat.

I've been diagnosed with a jillion allergies. If it's processed food from the neighborhood supermarket, I'm probably allergic to some ingredient contained therein.

In the past year or so I've really started paying attention to the things I eat. I have eliminated MSG, olives and olive oil completely from my diet, and I seriously consider the ramifications before I eat anything with processed sugar, corn syrup (especially HFCS), chocolate, caffeinne, or wheat. I still eat them, but only sparingly and with full knowledge of how much of each I've eaten recently.

Also in the past few weeks, we've been on the adult cycle of trying to lose weight. So we started doing Slim Fast. If you don't know, it's basically a starvation diet where you drink a canned beverage for breakfast, one for lunch, and then "have a sensible meal" for dinner. YOu also get to eat three snacks of around 100 calories each during the day.

It's nice because there's no thought that goes into it, and it's fast. Two minutes after you decide it's time for lunch, you're finished and ready to go back to whatever it is you were doing. Each can of goo has around 200 calories in it.

So it adds up thusly: 200ish calories at breakfast, 100ish calories at around 10:30, 200ish calories for lunch, 100ish calories around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, pig out and eat as much as you can at the restaurant for dinner. :) So before dinner you are supposed to have had around 600 calories. Which isn't much. But it's doable.

And it appears to work. I've lost around 10lbs since beginning in June.

The problem is that Slim Fast only comes in 6 flavors: Vanilla, Strawberry, Coffee, and 3 different kinds of chocolate. With the chocolate allergy and the avoidance of coffee, that leaves me with two flavors for most of my "meals".

So we went to Whole Foods to see what they had to offer on the meal replacement aisle. We bought one of each to try them out and see what I think, and I had one of them for lunch today.

Here's the rundown: Today's sample was "Vega Sports Natural Plant-Based Performance Protein" – the "Vanilla Flavor." I know, I said I was bored with vanilla, but that was Slim Fast that actually tastes like vanilla. This is some Vegan protein thing that taste like freshly mowed lawn with a hint of vanilla. I didn't want to stray too far from the norm…

While Slim Fast lives up to it's name (it's fast), this one required mixing it with a liquid. I chose Milk, because I didn't want it to be too vegan, or vegan at all, for that matter. Plus I wanted the extra calories that milk had to offer. And while I may sound like I am whining, I had to stir and stir and stir. This stuff has a natural aversion to being mixed with milk. It took almost 10 minutes of stirring to get most of the powder dissolved in the cow juice.

But science must go forward, so on I went.

The resulting drink, and I think I'm being fairly liberal when I call it that, was cold and green. Those are the only nice things I can think of to say about it. I drank it over an hour ago and my throat is still grainy/gritty. mmmm.

I'm not hungry. I can attest to that. We'll have to see how it goes as the afternoon progresses. Right now, I'm thinking it's almost time for my mid-afternoon snack, but I'm not craving it like I have been. Maybe this is a good thing, or maybe just mixing it up a bit is the good thing.

Again, the jury is still out. I'm still stocked up with Slim Fast in the fridge, but I have more of these non-HFCS things to try out. I'll stay in touch.

At church this morning

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Happy Birthday #6

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Go Reilly!

Las Vegas Slideshow

We're back from Vegas, baby.

Here's the slideshow of the family pictures from the trip:


LasVegas2010 Las Vegas Slideshow

High School Graduation

WilsonHigh  High School GraduationTonight Tim and I went to Kristin's graduation ceremony. I counted 340 kids in the program.

They did all the usual things. They had choirs, they had the band, they had 14 valedictorians (all with perfect 4.0s), they recognized the foreign exchange kids, they had speeches and they processed.

The main speech by their principal was a rah-rah go out and conquer the world speech that sounded pretty good until further reflection.

She encouraged them to never surrender, never give up, never compromise.

That sounds all well and good when you're talking about your own personal values and your stance against personal things, but that's not how she phrased it.

It felt more like she was saying don't listen to the other side. The Republicans are wrong. Or, if you are a Republican, then the Democrats are wrong. Never surrender. Never compromise.

What the hell kind of thing is that to teach our children. What ever happened to things like "share" and "turn the other cheek" or "working for the common good". Are we too anti-everything-not-us now that we don't dare ever compromise? How is any committee ever going to get anything done?

I don't like where these kinds of thoughts are headed. What do you think?

So, congrats Kristin! 12 years in the making! Stand up for what's right but know that you can't always have it your way. Sometimes you'll have to work with others instead of working on them. But you knew that. Now, go out and make the world a better place…

Present Time

7yy Present TimeIt works like a charm.

Do this out loud:

Say your name. Say what time it is. Say where you are.

It's simple enough, but it's always good to get a reminder.

Bringing yourself back into present time this way means that you aren't thinking about how you're going to lose that extra pound or two. It means you're not going to be able to worry about why your next paycheck has been spent for two weeks already. It keeps you from thinking about anything else.

Even if it only disrupts your thought for the time it takes to say it, that can be enough to help you get out of the constant worry that's going over and over in your head. Like the way you can use jumper cables to start a car so it can drive off in a completely different direction.

It's good advice to remember occasionally.

Breathe, and present time yourself. You will be glad you did.

Too Many Things Apple Today

tooManyThingsApple1 Too Many Things Apple TodaySafari 5 was released quietly today and I have to say so far I really like it. I approve. Go download it from Apple if you haven't already.

Yeah, that iPhone 4 hardware is cool and all. Renaming the operating system iOS was genius (it was iPhone OS). That FaceTime thing is cool, with it's easy switching from front facing and rear facing cameras, and it's supposed to be open-sourced tomorrow so hopefully people will get excited about new technology instead of bitch more about the lack of old stuff.

(Did anyone catch the coy way Steve said FaceTime would be on over 10million iDevices this year? not iPhones, but iDevices. Does that mean front and rear facing cameras on iPods and (dare I say it) iPads?)

Yeah, I watched all that and I simply must have one. Or two if Tim wants to use one, too.

But the cool thing that came out today that I can use today was Safari 5. It is faster. It has some cool plug-ins coming (Coda Notes from Panic is one I'll require all my clients to use from now on…). My new favorite feature is the reader.

When you are looking at a blog like this one and there is too much going on (pictures, ads, links, surveys, etc), just click the reader button next to the URL at the top of the page and it'll dim out the website and scroll up a white page in the center with LARGE text and embedded pictures and none of the extra clutter. Gone is the color layout, gone is the crap you don't care about, gone is the microscopic print that my old eyes can't read.

I'm sure the pureblood designers hate this, but we users are loving it! Go Apple!

…now if they'd just start syncing iTunes wirelessly to my iPhone like they do to my AppleTV… I'm just sayin'…

Facebook Suck

Facebook Facebook SuckIt used to be that I would blog a lot. Lately though, I've been lucky to make two or three entries in an entire month.

I blame Facebook.

In the old days I would post all the fun stuff I ran across here on the blog. It gave me a place to say "hey, look at this link" to my friends and family. Sometimes I'd cover several things a day.

Now I use facebook. It's too easy to just post a link there and be done with it.

So I started posting lists of the links I posted on Facebook during a given month. That system is mostly automated on my iMac now, but it just isn't the same as frequent updates.

So where do I turn for more substantial blogging ideas?

I could go on about how I liked David Tennant better than Matt Smith (and I might since I'm trying to come up with something to blog about every day in June). Or I might just start reviewing cool software like that thing I installed today that makes my iPad behave like a second screen to my mac (and I might do that after I've had more than a day or two to play around with it). Or I could just make wacky predictions about WWDC and what Steve Jobs is going to say to the world in about 12 hours (free MobileMe anyone? oh please oh please, have better cloud stuff for wireless iTunes syncing…)

But I won't. I'm going to go to bed now. It's easier to just blame Facebook and drift off. Maybe I'll be more energetic tomorrow.