Digital Brainwaves

iPad and unitasking

Jun 15, 2010 Brainwaves, Geek Comments

Dave Caolo writes today at The Unofficial Apple Weblog about how, with all the emphasis and hype and interest in multitasking,  one of the coolest things he likes about it after using it for a few weeks is that it does just one thing at a time.

It’s amazing how eagerly we invite distraction upon ourselves. Consider how frequently we do two (or more) things at once. While an app launches, I check Twitter. As a Web page loads, I Command-Tab over to Mail. All the while, iTunes plays music, and I’m thinking about what else must be done today.

I became keenly aware of how infrequently I focus on one single thing when I started using my iPad. For the most part (yes, you can play music in the background), it does one thing at a time. In fact, when I’m using an app on the iPad, it becomes that app.

WeatherBug makes it a weather station. Launch Twitterrific and your iPad becomes Twitter. The New York Times turns my iPad, for all intents and purposes, into an (abridged) issue of that newspaper. There’s no beep, chirp or other electronic fidget to lure me away from simply reading a story.

Having owned an iPad now for a little over a month, I’ve found he’s right.

Over the last month, I haven’t stayed caught up on the different Google Reader RSS articles I’ve wanted to read. Like Mr. Caolo, I’m definitely an information addict.  I found a very-well-reviewed new Google Reader app yesterday (also on TUAW, ironically) called Reeder, available both in iPhone and iPad flavors.  Through most of yesterday evening, I just zipped through all of the back articles I wanted to check on, getting back down to zero, and the unitasking environment of the iPad helped get me through it without being distracted by Twitter, Facebook and other web pages — my iPad wasn’t any of those things at that point in time; it was just a feed reader.

Open for comment: how do you handle distractions when you’re working online?

Pauley’s new Impala

Jun 8, 2010 Brainwaves, Geek, Photos Comments

For those who hadn’t heard yet, I have new wheels.

Pictured: my new 2009 Chevrolet Impala LTZ. Officially, the registration says “Blue” for color; while it looks very close to what GM says is Aqua Blue Metallic, it could also just as easily be Slate Metallic, too. The interior is gray leather.

Its only previous owner appears to be a Hertz rental shop in Hawaii (I’ve never been there, but apparently my car has!), and it only had about 12,800 miles on it when we bought it from Auction Direct USA in Victor, NY. Under the hood (more photos likely to come later on this) is a 3.9L V6 engine, getting 233 hp. The car is capable (see the “FLEXFUEL” badge on the tailgate) of running on E85, but considering 1) it’s not as easily available in Rochester and 2) it’s not as powerful or as efficient as gasoline, I’m likely sticking to gasoline for the time being. Features include power sliding sunroof, rear spoiler, built-in remote start and keyless entry, Bose 8-speaker sound system, heated seats and dual-zone climate control (passenger can set heating/cooling temperature independently from the driver).

Have a look through the Flickr set to see more of the car, as well as the new Empire Gold plates being issued in New York State.  They’ve generated quite a lot of reaction, both good and bad, but I kinda like them.

She’s here!

May 10, 2010 Brainwaves Comments

…and we’re headed to California. Back in a week!

Illegal immigrant integration? How about no.

May 3, 2010 In The News, Politics Comments

An article in yesterday’s Washington Post attempts to diffuse some of the myths surrounding the illegal immigration debate. It’s pretty straight-forward, if biased toward an opinion in a few spots, but one paragraph jumped out to me, in a section about immigrants’ integration into American life and society. The section overall points out that integration doesn’t happen overnight, and immigrants do work in large numbers to learn the English language and become educated.  The paragraph below, however, stuck out like a sore thumb:

However, the unauthorized status of millions of foreign-born immigrants can slow integration in crucial ways. For example, illegal immigrants are ineligible for in-state tuition at most public colleges and universities, putting higher education effectively out of their reach. And laws prohibiting unauthorized immigrants from getting driver's licenses or various professional credentials can leave them stuck in jobs with a high density of other immigrants and unable to advance.

Ummm…  isn’t that the point? If it’s illegal for them to be in the country, why should they be getting the benefits designated for  residents of a state? Sorry, but I don’t have a lot of sympathy for illegal aliens complaining they don’t have the same privileges as legal residents. I have no problem extending such benefits once they’ve left the country and re-entered through legal processes, at which point I’d be happy to see (and help) them integrate.

…

Apr 26, 2010 Geek, Photos, That's Hot Comments

For those who hadn’t spotted the Twitter and Facebook posts yet.

Yvonne’s new Malibu

Apr 20, 2010 Photos Comments

Malibu 01
Originally uploaded by Pauley2483.

Yvonne wanted to share some pics of her new car with her friends, so here are some. It’s a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu LTZ, pimped out with (almost) every option there is. Makes my ’94 Lumina look pretty sad by comparison (you can see it in the background of a few of the shots).

Apollo 13, forty years later

Apr 13, 2010 Geek, In The News, Spaceflight Comments Off

As I’m writing this, it’s a little under a half-hour to the exact 40th anniversary of the oxygen tank rupture that severely damaged the Apollo 13 spacecraft, Odyssey.  To mark the occasion, of sorts, I just finished watching the film Apollo 13 again. On one hand, it still amazes me what everyone had to go through not only to make normal missions successful, but to come through in pinch after pinch to make #13 survivable.

I’m not sure anymore, with reports of funding and program cuts, that NASA will send anyone to the moon again soon, if ever; government programming to get people to the International Space Station after the end of this year seems to be in doubt. I’m curious to wonder, though, what might come from private business ventures. Time will soon tell; I hope it’s within my lifetime, as I would love to see humans on the moon again, and beyond to Mars.

So, yeah…

Apr 6, 2010 Brainwaves Comments

We’ve surprised everyone we’re gonna surprise, so it’s time to come clean.

As of last Saturday night, my wife Yvonne is a legal permanent resident of the United States.

I’ll go into more detail later on.

Idol blogging suspended

Mar 28, 2010 Blog News, That's Hot Comments Off

There’s been so much going on in life lately that I haven’t been able to keep up all that well in blogging American Idol episodes, and so I’m suspending my blogging of them for this year. I haven’t decided yet whether to restart next year or not, or just watch it like everyone else… but I do plan to keep up with Project52 and keep posting something once a week. Stay tuned…

Pauley’s ‘Get Psyched’ Mixes

Mar 23, 2010 Music, That's Hot Comments Off

In a late-December-2005 episode of “How I Met Your Mother,” Barney Stinson was excited about the new “get psyched” mix CD he’d created. Thanks to the website TV Squad, high-definition TV and a DVR, we know the track listing on the prop CD, as Barney wrote it:

1. “I Wanna Rock” — Twisted Sister
2. “You Give Love A Bad Name” — BJ (Bon Jovi)
3. “Lick It Up” — KISS
4. “Paradise City” — GNR (Guns N’ Roses)
5. “Dancing With Myself” — Billy Idol
6. “Rock You Like A Hurricane” — Scorpy (Scorpions)
7. “Panama” — Van Halen
8. “Talk Dirty To Me” — Poison
9. “Thunderstruck” — AC/DC
10. “Dr. Feelgood” — Crue (Motley Crüe)
11. “Round and Round” — Ratt

Between finding the track listing online and having some songs in my own iTunes library that would psych me up, I was inspired to create a mix or two of my own. I gave myself a few conditions: 1) I could reuse the same artists from Barney’s mix, but none of the same songs, 2) an artist cannot appear more than once on a mix and 3) I also can’t have used a song on a “road mix” CD I’d previously created (I have a few CDs burned from iTunes playlists for driving in the car).
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