Updates, iBooks, and What's New

Yes, I did remember I have a blog. I’ve been busy lately...more on that toward the bottom.

Every so often, I slow down and take part of my work day to run virus checks, malware and spyware checks, battery checks, and updates on the trusty MacBook. I do this during the week in case something goes wrong; I feel like I get better customer service during business hours than on weekends. (Not to mention I was camping this last weekend, and thus, not able to do the updates.) These updates inevitably take the better part of a morning, but always ends up giving me a laptop I can trust to do what I ask of it. 

The other day was one of those days. I’d put it off long enough, but with the update to my checkbook program, I didn’t have an excuse to put it off any longer.

Now, before you all snicker at me and remind me that “I thought Macs don’t have a lot of issues”, you need to understand: I work online, opening things that my students send me. Sometimes as many as 40 of these things daily. And bless their hearts, a fair number of them would be horrified to find out that there’s a nasty bit of code-a virus-attached to their homework, a little gift they don’t even know they have. While that code doesn’t affect the MacBook, it can reside on it-and then get sent to others with a Windows based computer. With as many students as I deal with, that could translate to a large number of computers that could be infected pretty quickly...plus some of the school’s units.

Add to that all the e-mail I get from barbershoppers, friends, loved ones and so forth-some of whom have admitted they don’t know much about computer viruses, much less computers-and you can see why I carry malware, spyware and anti-virus programs. It’s more to protect everyone else than myself.

Those all got updated because the operating system was updated. That means I am now running Mac OS X 10.7.4, otherwise known as Lion. That little chore-updating just the op system-took me the better part of two hours. Most of that is because I had to download Lion from the App Store...the download alone ran nearly an hour. I went and got some tea while it downloaded, came home and installed everything. 

I like it well enough...though I have had to make a few adjustments to my workflow. The two most obvious changes are Mission Control-the replacement for a switching program called Spaces-and another program I like better, called Launchpad. Launchpad lets me find my applications a lot faster. Mission Control-now that I’ve tweaked a few things-will actually be an improvement over Spaces. It’ll take me a few days to get used to the new op system, but it will be worth it as the MacBook seems to be running cooler and a little faster.

I still have one program to update, but that will have wait until my next paycheck. Fortunately, the programs I use the most were the latest versions, so I didn’t have to upgrade those.

The nice thing about all this updating is that I don’t have to patch everything every week. The downside is when I have do have to update, it can take some time and money. But it’s well spent in that I have a MacBook that can run rings around a Windows 7 computer, even now. 

The added benefit-and the one I’ve been the most wanting to play with-is a little gem called iBooks Author. A few of you know that in addition to writing a dissertation over the last year, I’ve also been writing some fiction on the side. It’s more science-fictionish than Christian, for various reasons. The main thing here is that I now have the ability to create both an iBook and an EPUB version of my books. I’m working on the iBook formatting for book one now; editing is taking some adjustments. Font changes, text size, and a few other tweaks that can happen now that I can see what a finished product will hopefully look like. It should remain about 300 pages in length, if all goes well. The EPUB version will have to be re-edited, and may end up about 350 pages plus. 

More about this little project when the first book is ready to go. I have three volumes completed that need to move into the final formatting, and am still writing a forth volume as well.  

Enough for now. 

On Steve Jobs Stepping Down

Well, it finally happened. After months and years of speculation on everything including health issues, it came to pass. 

Steve Jobs stepped down from his CEO slot at Apple. He remains Chairman of the Board. I don’t blame him for wanting to step down-after a liver transplant and pancreatic cancer, and making more money than some small third-world countries I think I’d want to slow down, too. Hey, we all get to that point sometime where we look at life-and what we’ve made of it, and what we’ve done-and say, “Enough already.”

I’m not going to say much-too much has already been said in the last twenty-four hours-but there are a few thoughts. 

His career included work on the Apple II (on which I learned to program AppleSoft), then taking over work on the Macintosh (now better known as the Mac) after the failure of Lisa, its predecessor. The iPad, iPod, iPhone-all have his fingerprints all over it, as does OS X. Add to that what he did with Pixar and music (iTunes)-and his work will live on for quite a long time. Plus he loved what he did. How many of us can say the same thing?

There have been many quotes that he’s given. This one is from a commencement speech he gave at Stanford in 2005: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

Another one was sent as a text message to an app developer who had infringed a bit on the iPod name: “Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.” (They did, by the way.) What I like about that quote is that it is to the point. No wasted words, no formality per se. 

And from that same speech at Stanford, there is “One Last Thing...” 

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

I’d say in some ways the man has done more with his life than any five of us combined has. I wish him peace and long life.

Enough for now. 

On Social Media

So there was a social media conference in Seattle, and I was in attendance. There were classes and discussions for SMS, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogging. There were “intermediate” sessions and “advanced” sessions. 

I discovered that there needed to be a middle ground as the intermediate session was a little too basic, and too many people’s eyes got that deer in the headlights look in the advanced Facebook session. (They started talking about coding a Facebook app, source code, and Google Analytics, and I could hear the eyes glazing over. Seriously.) The same occurred in the YouTube session when there was a discussion of the Insight function for one’s channel. 

But sitting there got me to thinking. Never mind how much social media has changed how we do business, but how much computers and the internet has changed our lives just in the last sixteen years. 

As I sat there, thinking back to 1995...there was no Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or MySpace. (Some would say there’s no MySpace now.) There wasn’t really laptops as we know them now; it took Apple’s Powerbooks, Windows 95 (really), and Intel’s Pentium level chips to really kick things off. We will not discuss BBS’s or AOL (sometimes privately referred to as America Offline). Most of us had computers that sat on desks; cell phones were still a bit of a novelty-and we all had landlines. 

My, how times have changed. 

They wanted us to turn off our cell phones, but then realized that was counter to tweeting. (So they asked us to set them on vibrate.) It used to be that we weren’t reachable 24 hours a day; now we can be reached at all hours. Even beepers weren’t that bad as they could be turned off if need be. Computers were tools that aided productivity; now people produce reports that nobody reads simply because they can. Social media used to be a night home watching the TV with friends and family, or maybe taking that cute thing you were dating to a movie with friends. We used to call that a “double date.”

In the end, I’m glad I went to this seminar. I still have to write up the official reports and get them in the hands of those who sent me...but I do think about how all this technology has changed our lives, and how it will continue to change lives well into the future.

Enough for now.

On Visiting the Mothership

On a recent trip home to Concord, I had the opportunity to go to Cupertino, where the Apple campus is located.

Well, okay. In all fairness, I had to talk my beautiful and charming bride into stopping as we went to visit her aunt in Half Moon Bay. But as I was going with her to work on a few items on her aunt’s Mac, I figured this was as good a chance as any. And after being left on my own for better than five hours there with what seemed like little to do at the time, she bought me dinner as well as my lunch expense. Not bad for a day’s semi-work.

Now it’s no secret that I am working on becoming Apple Certified in a number of things. I have already been certified in iLife, and am working on both iWork and Mac OS X support. While I will never write a lot of code or build new hardware, it will be a good backup in case the economy tanks again or further. But it isn’t something I can pursue in earnest; quite frankly it isn’t cheap and it takes time and I am short of both of those kinds of resources. On the other hand, I can earn much of it back in a few repair and update jobs, if and when that time comes.

Now you need to understand that from Concord, Cupertino is a good hour plus away and wasn’t exactly on our way. But we had plenty of time, and Deena really was a good sport about this. When we got there, we drove around a bit the campus, which is huge. We walked in the front entry, looked around, and walked out as we would need an ID badge to go any further. (You can see some pictures here. I can't say I took them, however.) The only thing that we could determine that was open to the public was the Company Store. There, along with all the usual suspects of Macdom that I could just as easily get at my local Mac Store, were the t-shirts, hats, water bottles, pens, keyrings, etc. all with the Apple logo on them that one simply can’t get anywhere else. Of course I bought stuff; don’t be silly. (I even got the t-shirt that says “I visited the Mothership,” from which I took the name for this post.) But that isn’t really the point.

The point is, I guess, that I actually got to see some of the place where things like Macs, iPods, Safari, and most of the stuff I use day to day got brainstormed. And while it really won’t change my life all that much (if any), it was neat to simply go and look. I can say “I’ve been there. I’ve seen the Apple campus.” (To which many of you will yawn and say “who cares.”)

But beyond that, there actually was a deeper meaning. It’s called a working vacation. Another poorly kept secret is that we both are in real need of a true vacation (which won’t happen until August), and that we both needed to do things. I work online and really couldn’t take much time off right now. Stuff is backed up rather nastily. Deena had school stuff that had to be done. We both were ragged, dog-tired, and in need of a break from the same-old. Mom needed some help with a few things down south, and so off we went to help her out.

This qualified as a day off from a busy schedule of helping mom out. My regular work sat mostly undoable (no wi-fi connection, which in hindsight was a blessing). This allowed a logjam of pent-up mental stuff to drain-along with some fatigue, some frustration, and a few other buggered emotions. While I was waiting for Deena and her aunt to return, I took a few phone calls, logged some long overdue paperwork, and caught up on some reading. (I also did the few things to her aunt’s Mac that needed doing.) This downtime-which started off by visiting 1 Infinite Loop-was what this doctor needed to do a little brainstorming of his own to help rectify a nasty set of issues. Realistic, workable plans got made and have already been implemented. This has lowered my stress level, and thus will make me more productive.

The only thing that really got changed was perspective. Issues and problems I faced when I left are still there, but now I have some personal resources to deal with them. I’m not totally drained, and if I take care of myself and follow my planning, things should lighten up in roughly two to three weeks.

That change started by taking some down time and visiting “the Mothership.”

Enough for now.

My Life with Computers

Computers have changed over the years, mainly for the better. The sleek, speedy MacBook I now enjoy is light years ahead of the IBM Thinkpad that I had prior to the Dell that died about a year ago. (Come to think of it, the MacBook is light years ahead of the Dell.)

I got to thinking the other day about my very first computer. I’m talking about the unit I got when I first went to Moody. The backstory: I had gotten a bit spoiled when I came home from the Navy; I had used Dad’s computer for various homework assignments, and LMC had a computer lab. So when I arrived at Moody and discovered that these things called typewriters were still in play, I panicked. One of the worst kept secrets in the world is that I can use a word processor such as Pages or MS Word with speed and grace, but I can’t type well enough to make a difference, even on an IBM Selectric 2.

Now, we didn’t have the TRS-80 Level 2 that Dad got while I was in high school. That unit had been replaced, and really, would not have helped me much at all. PC’s were king, and still pretty expensive. However, Dad found a neat little unit for me. The Epson PX-8, otherwise known as the Geneva, graced my desk for the three years I was in Chicago. I also had the TF-20 hard drive, the additional battery wedge/Ram upgrade, a Seikosha dot-matrix printer, and a modem that would connect me to Compuserve, at a rate of $6/hour. In essence, it was “the whole ball of wax.” Dad got it for me through the DAK catalog, and it was a lifesaver.

The Geneva, right out of the box.

The Geneva’s OS was a little something called CP/M, instead of DOS. The programs that came with it were on chips you installed as needed (WordStar, Portable Calc, and Portable Scheduler), and the memory was pretty limited, but I had something very few people did on my floor: A functional computer setup that allowed me to type and print from my room. Nice in those Chicago winters, let me tell you! And while I couldn’t type fast enough to take notes, I could do assignments quickly (and neatly, I might add) enough. Add a few dust covers and a printer stand from Egghead Software--when it was a brick and mortar store at the time--and I was in business.

Once I graduated and returned home, it wasn’t long before I got married, and we got a new/used computer from Dad, and another while I was in Seminary. In fact, the next truly “new” computer we had for our own use wasn’t acquired until 2000, when I was looking for work and using this “internet” thing to assist me. We got an HP workhorse desktop that survived some five years, and was replaced by another HP desktop that I ended up selling to by Father-In-Law to finance the move to the wireless setup the included by then the Dell and the HP laptop Deena has.

The Epson sat, well loved but unused, in its component boxes until 2004 when we moved. I ended up donating the thing, sadly, but at that time we had something like four computers, two of which were in use--the HP desktop, and the IBM Thinkpad. Someone got a true collectable, and I unloaded a piece of gear that I just couldn’t see holding on to, especially as we were moving out west.

Unlike the DX-150A I replaced, however, I don’t think I’ll be buying another Geneva. Some things are better left as pleasant memories.

Enough for now.

Moving day has come...

My blog, take two.

You’ll notice that this blog starts on October 2, 2009.

That’s not entirely true. It actually started January 11, 2008 over on (what was then) Yahoo 360.

But times change, and Yahoo 360 has morphed into some sort of social networking site. And while I like being social, what I really wanted was a place to write about what I thought. I know it’s hard to believe, but I have been accused of being slightly opinionated from time to time. (You have been duly warned.)

Plus, since it became some sort of social networking site, a number of readers have complained that they can’t read the Heaping Pile o’ Blog without first signing out of Yahoo. They also made it more labor intensive to write on the thing.

In short, it was becoming a pain in the lower half of my anatomy. (I’ll let you choose whatever part you wish.)

That’s why I moved here to Blogspot. Nice, neat, simple, and I can actually use some HTML to liven it up a bit. I know just enough HTML to be dangerous, having done a little website building in my time. I can add pictures, such as one of my Man-Cat, for example.

About the URL: Cpromptpoke is an old Applesoft command. Way back when, in those days where you actually programmed a computer, I learned a lot of programming in BASIC. (We all did, as kids.) There were programming languages called COBOL, PASCAL, and FORTRAN, but BASIC was what we learned first.

Then came the home PC revolution.

All you kids out there, who are are so used to having everything computerized, have I got a news flash for you: It wasn’t always this way! Instead of going online to play games or talk, we actually went outside to play and/or talk. Sometimes to talk, we used a little something called a telephone. It hung on a wall or sat on a table, was connected to the wall by a wire, and didn’t take pictures or have fancy ringtones. It used a bell to get our attention, and you dialed a number by using...a dial. When we did get to play a video game, it was a little something called Pong.

And once the Atari 2600 came out, we could play Missile Command and Space Invaders. Pac Man was a big deal. There was something called IntelliVision, Nintendo was a huge advance, and TRS-80’s, Commodore 64’s, (with a whole 64 KB of memory...not GB, not MB, but KB as in Kilobyte) and Apple I’s were on the landscape. We were lucky if we had a disk drive; most of us backed things up with tape. You know...a cassette tape. And in those days, you programmed a computer. Not just load a new program onto the hard drive. You wrote and debugged the program yourself.

Then came the Apple II. This was a great improvement over those Commodore 64’s and Apple I’s. (For some odd reason, I still have a soft spot for the TRS-80, tape drives and all.)

Applesoft was what I learned by taking a college course in PC on an Apple II of some extraction. It was designed to set memory location address to x. (You programming geeks might recognize the command better as C:\Poke addr,x.)

What is a blog, but one’s memories online? Hence, Cpromptpoke. A place to send my online memories.

Enough for now.

(Posted 10/3/09)

In which an Apple takes a byte from my wallet....

This is the last article written on my Dell. It’s also the first written from my new computer. Read on....

Pause for a moment of silence. My Dell laptop is dying a slow, painful, heat-related death. Before you ask, it is resting comfortably on a cool-pad. It helps, but only so much, and yes, I have backed up almost all my files. The disc drive itself seems okay. The problem is the motherboard...and I’m afraid its terminal.

In the last month, I’ve had two blue screens of death that I have cheated. The cursor has developed a mind of its own, wandering from one corner to another and requiring me to use both the mouse and the pointer to wrestle control back. Mostly, I reboot it after letting it sit for a few minutes, and it seems okay. The screen pixilates and requires flexing it back and forth (as if I were opening or closing it) to get it to come back. I find it is using 100% of the CPU more often these days.

Two weeks ago, it managed to lose the wireless card. I thought it had shut down for good, having decided to go to wherever good wireless cards go to die.

It is not looking good for the poor thing.

It also means, as of this writing, I am in the market for a new laptop. I’m deciding between another Dell, an HP, or a Mac. You have read that correctly. For the first time ever, I am seriously considering a Macintosh.

Most of you who know me also know I haven’t been a huge fan of Apple. It’s nothing personal, mind you, it’s just that Bill Gates was bright enough to capture some 90% of the market rather easily. Macs (and by default, most Apple products) just were not keeping up. The last time I used a Mac for any length of time was in the early 1990’s, when the company I worked for was thick with them. Survived the transfer from System Six to System Seven. It was big stuff back then. Took two Mac U courses on Word and Excel. Heck—my “Intro to the PC” course at Los Medanos College was based on the Apple IIe. (It might have been an Apple IIc...I’ve slept since then.) One of my temp jobs had me using a Mac for a day. So it’s not like I’ve never worked with Apple products before, or recently.

Even after buying my iPod Touch, I’ve still been a bit leery about the Mac thing. My photographic and musician side has wanted one for years, but the practical side of me—you know, the one the works for a living—has deemed it more prudent to get a Windows-based unit, since that’s what everyone else uses.

The problem is, as leery as I am about a Mac, I’m more wary of Vista, and the soon to replace it Windows 7. Vista is buggy, even after SP1, and Win7 is based off Vista, according to my computer folks who actually do the computer thing for a living. Doesn’t fill me with warm fuzzies, kids.

And since Black Friday is coming, as I write this, now is the time to put the Dell to rest. Mourn not, gentle reader. It’s had a good life, for a Pentium 3 based system.

----------

Update: After some soul searching, a lot of asking around, and more research than I’ve done for a computer in ten years, I bought...a MacBook. The 13.5” model, aluminum frame, OS X, etc. It’s nice.

It’s not perfect--far from it!--but it is stable, will do what I need it to do (Mostly--I did have to load Windows XP on it), and should still be running four or five years from now.

There’s a learning curve. I’m using Pages from iWork to write this, and it’s a bit different from MS Word, and I may end up replacing the wireless printer router as it doesn’t play at all with Macs. (Since the printer sits right next to me, though, I can load the driver on the Windows side, use it there, and plug in the printer for the Mac side for now.)

My goal, however, is to use the Windows side for work only.

Oddly enough, last night my wireless card on the Dell came back to life, for who knows how long.

Enough for now.

(posted 12/03/08)