On A Lesson in Self-Publishing

Happy New Year, culture lovers!

For a number of you, you may not know this: I’ve been writing in my spare time. What started off as a short story to get a dream out of my head has blown up into what is now a six book series called The Cosantóirí Chronicles. There are plans and outlines for at least one-and as many as three more-books in the series, guaranteeing I’ll be writing more for at least the next year. The “average” book when I get done is in excess of four hundred pages each, including a glossary; in nearly two years I’ve written six of these. That’s three a year, average.

So you know: These books are not Christian Fiction. These are more Sci-Fi/ Fantasy, where there are moral people. They tend to be the kind of books I like to read-but I’ve said before these aren’t for children or immature teens. I choose to be a Christian that writes-not a Christian Writer-because I truly feel that the storyline I’ve been given is a gift. 

Late last month, I quit writing (after completing book six in the series) and did some editing. My supervisor at Master’s-Dr. Dennis Frey-has told me for years on end that “There is no such thing as good writing. There’s only good editing” and he’s right. Boy, is he right. (He’s right a lot by the way, and I don’t say that just because he’s the president of the school I work for.) Part of that editing was to take the time to create both Kindle and iBook editions, instead of just ePub editions, so I could enter both the Kindle Publishing Direct and iBookstore markets. 

But after creating three iBooks I’ve chosen to not create any more for now, and to focus instead on Kindle versions. There are several reasons for this, which I’ll explain below. But you need to understand that up front, it wasn’t an easy decision to make. I like the fact that iBooks Author now has a prose-only template. The program itself is easy to use; I can take a completed document and turn it into am iBook in roughly two to three hours. That’s the only upside, however. The negatives are many, at least to me:

1. The interactive nature of an iBook is fantastic. You can click a link and it will take you to a glossary description of that term. That means I have to create and populate the glossary. It’s also what takes better than half the time to create an iBook from a finished document. That takes time away from editing and writing other books in the series. By going with Kindle, it creates a .mobi file in a matter of seconds-and the only downside to it is that the reader will have to turn to the glossary in the back, just like I do when I’m writing and editing.

2. iBooks Author requires you to use an iPad to check the formatting for your book. In addition, it seems that any book you create using the program is only readable on an iPad. That’s great for sales of Apple product...but lousy business for a self-publishing author who does not own an iPad. (Yet.) iBooks is Apple-specific, and while I don’t have an issue with that, there is a marketing issue. There are Kindle programs for iPhone, Mac, and Windows that allow you to read the books you download, which allows for a broader acceptance of the work to be read. 

3. The iBookstore requires that each iBook has its own International Standard Book Number-or ISBN-number. That’s not inexpensive; $250 for ten. As I see six completed books-and maybe one to three more-that’s $250 for a bulk assignment. Right now, that’s money I simply don’t have. Kindle Publishing Direct simply assigns an ASIN number (Amazon Standard Identification Number) and is done with it. Of course, if I just want to sell ePub editions on my own, I don’t need either one.

4. Finally, I have to look at what is an easier sale. Not everyone has an iPad, and so just doing a version for that as a self-publishing job is more time and effort than it’s worth. It’s not a matter of being lazy. If I had to start all over again, I’d probably write each volume as an iBook and then export it as an ePub as well. It does become an issue in that it takes away from the rest of my life and the rest of the work I do. 

If all I did was write for a living, I’d be all over iBooks Author. I like it; it’s an easy enough program to use. But for me the downside outweighs the positives right now. I may change my mind later on, though, and finish the set out in iBooks. (But only after I get an iPad to check the product out on.) 

A final note: another good e-book program is Calibre. It’s available for Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and as a portable system. They recommend a donation; I do as well. It’s a little clunky-but powerful, and will open all e-books except for iBooks.

Enough for now.

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 the iPhone 4 and Travel

I have a new piece of Apple gear. No great shock to just about all of you; you all saw it coming. 

I finally have an iPhone. Specifically an iPhone 4, 16GB model. Verizon made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. 

Now, in truth I wanted to wait for the iPhone 5. But I had a credit that was due to expire the end of July, and the phone I use for work purposes was approaching four or five years of age. The issue wasn’t my personal phone at all...it was the need to upgrade my work phone. I chose to do that by getting an iPhone, and taking my Samsung Alias 2 and making that my work phone, as it’s just over two years old. (And, I might add, in far better shape than the old LG that had been the work phone.) This saves the school money in the long term, as they don’t have to buy a new phone.

The iPhone is fun for me. I can now look up stuff on the fly without needing a wi-fi signal which for me would have been nice when I was in high school or college and was curious about something. The nice man at Verizon said I’d use my trusty MacBook less. 

He lied. I’m actually using it more. Not just for recharging and updates, or adding apps to the phone. (Very few games, no added photos or videos, and no music. That’s why I have an iPod.) I find that looking some things up is easier when I know where not to look. Traveling is going to be a little easier; now I can check for e-mail and stuff like that on the fly.

Speaking of traveling...traveling in the digital age can be a pain. When I was in high school, all I needed for a trip had to fit in a small to medium suitcase, a flight bag, and a sleeping bag and pillow. Tape deck fit in the flight bag, along with a few tapes and a 110 camera and some film. My pills were limited to a few extra days over the trip length. Clothes were t-shirts, jeans, a hat, and clean underwear and socks. Band jacket for band tour. 

Now I can’t get out of the house without several chargers, the iPod, iPhone, Macbook, my Minolta DiMage Z6 and extra batteries, several books and magazines, a card reader for the card in my camera, several flash drives, a GPS and all its needs, and a six-outlet power strip. Clothes? A vest, jacket, polo shirts and t-shirts, several pairs of pants in case one rips or I get sloppy with lunch, clean underwear, socks, a knee pillow, a hat or two depending on where I’m going. If I’m driving instead of flying, my pillow makes the trip as well; it’s tough to cram a memoryfoam pillow in a suitcase. Pills? I have to take a week’s worth or more: vitamins, prilosec, carbamazepine, fish oil, fibre, cal-mag-zinc, Claritin in season (The season is March through roughly the Fourth of July), vitamin D supplements (it rains in Oregon a lot, so seeing the sun is a rare sighting) and a digestive aid. My backpack weighs as much as my suitcase did in high school, and my suitcase needs a small crane. 

And that’s when I’m traveling light. 

You think that’s bad...the missus being the woman she is can, on occasion, be far worse. She packs for every conceivable thing, from getting a last minute invite to a state dinner to the apocalypse. You single guys are laughing because you think I’m joking. You married men are laughing because your wife does the same thing. You ladies aren’t laughing, because you all pack the same way. Do you really need to pack a sweater in the middle of summer? If we are gone more than four days, the suitcase requires a herculean effort to get into the trunk. She kids me about packing for a weekend in a ziploc bag; more than once I’ve been called a sick puppy for packing my entire clothing needs for a weekend in a small duffel bag. That’s because I refuse to take a parka with me in 100 degree heat, especially when we’re staying in a motel. 

In all fairness, sometimes I pack too light. I now have four swimsuits because I kept forgetting to pack one. So it does work both ways, and no, Deena does NOT pack my stuff. 

Married techogeeks, you know the drill. Pack all the gear and stuff, travel to where you’re going, and stop wherever it is you’re going to and set up a mobile command center. I’m no different. NASA didn’t send this much digital stuff to the moon, much less the International Space Station. (At least they had the Canada Arm to help unload it all.) Set up the laptop and make sure you’ve connected to the web. Plug in the phone, so it has a full charge on it. Plug in the GPS, and make sure it’s charging. If you have a portable DVD player for the car, better charge that, too. (We don’t have one of those.) Charge the iPod, if need be. And because the missus and I are a mixed marriage-I’m a Mac, she’s a PC-we often have her laptop or netbook, plus her phone, digital camera, mp3 player, etc. It’s a good thing we don’t have kids; there’s no room for them in the Honda when we go somewhere. And by the time we’re done setting up, we don’t have a hotel room...we have a Borg regeneration chamber.

I wonder what we’ll have to carry next. 

Enough for now. 


ADDENDUM:

It has been pointed out to me by my charming bride that since her surgery she no longer packs a parka or a sweater for 100 degree days. Instead, she now carries a fleece jacket or a sweatshirt. Nor does she carry her entire wardrobe, unless she’s with her quartet. (Just half of it. I, like most men, am not capable of understanding how any woman can have a closet full of clothes and still say-with a straight face-that you have nothing to wear. It must be A Girl Thing.) 


In my own defense, however, I must point out this whole article is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, except the Borg part. We really do carry that much electronic gear with us. And the Macpack still weighs in impressively.

Thoughts on MacWorld 2011

I recently attended the MacWorld 2011 Expo and Conference in San Francisco, and found it quite interesting. There were exhibits, classes, and all kinds of interesting things to see. There were all kinds of things for your iPhones, iPads, iPods...and yes, there were even a few vendors there for Macs.

No, Apple was not here officially. There were some Apple people wandering around; one spotted my hat on day 2 as I spotted his credentials after seeing his hat first. (His was a black ballcap with Apple’s logo; mine is a gray Mao-military style cap with Apple’s logo.) Apple pulled out of MacWorld a year or so back. So did a number of vendors. But that didn’t stop the people from coming, myself included.

Walking into the Expo, my initial reaction was “These are my people.” Most of the attendees were courteous, and while there was a boatload of us crammed into Moscone West, it didn’t feel crowded. (A good thing, as I have alluded to in the past I am not really into being in large crowds for long.) I could tell some funny stories but I’ll keep most of them to myself. One I will share was from a couple walking past me, and provided me with my favorite line of the week: “That’s not true. I’m twice the geek your first husband was.”

As usual, all the sales people were doing whatever it took to get your attention. One booth had a woman in a some strange clothing. I thought at first she was supposed to be an space alien; turns out she was a Lady GaGa impersonator. (Which shows you how much attention I pay to today’s music.) 

I didn’t go to this solely for my own amusement. While I am a user of Apple products, and am learning about how things work inside my MacBook, I really went to this to see what kinds of software would be available for some of my students. We have roughly 300-500 students using Macs at Master’s, as near as I can estimate. In that respect, I admit to being a bit disappointed as really there wasn’t much there for them. (Maybe they should have called it iPadWorld.) I got to talk with some other distance educators doing the same thing I was, and having the same issue. (I rather enjoyed the networking aspect of this.) 

That notwithstanding, I was thinking of bagging it early, until I sat in on a session called “The Mac in Education” and came to the realization that while the Mac is in no danger of being phased out anytime soon in favor of iPads (or your favorite brand of PC in favor of a tablet), I can see a time coming--sooner than later, I suspect--when the how of education and some businesses will change.

With that realization, I went back through the Expo with new, fresh eyes. There’s a lot to be excited about, if you will allow yourself to look past the immediate, to look past the ways we have done things for many years and see some possibilities. 

One of the things that really, really hit me is the outdated concept of the computer lab. When I was learning AppleSoft in my “Intro to the PC” class at LMC, there was a computer lab with a number of Bell+Howell Apple II+ desktops in it. Even moving those up to today, you have to maintain 24-36 computers, power them,  upgrade them every so often, replace parts that break, etc. That gets to be expensive when nobody's using them. At the Energy Lab on Hawai’i, when students come in, they are issued (loaned) iPads. They can then work in any of the classrooms, and not just the computer lab. (In point of fact, the Energy Lab does not have a computer lab.) If the batteries run down, they can either be charged or plugged in. 

I can see that classrooms and schools will have wifi or whatever number G available, and the parents outfit the kids (remember, schools get educator discounts) with an appropriate iPad or tablet. They then get the books downloaded, they’ll have the programs and apps they’ll need to compete assignments, they’ll have access to teacher’s notes (with hotlinks to further reading), pictures, and...

...the new teaching paradigm will be much more interactive. It won’t just be facts and figures (save for math, I suspect), but interacting with those facts. For the example used, it’s not enough to know that Columbus landed in America in 1492. What were the ramifications of the “discovery” of the New World? How did that impact the Native Americans? The Europeans? Columbus himself? This will become the new way of teaching: facts, mixed with a certain amount of logic and analysis/synthesis. In short: Young people will actually learn to think, and not just regurgitate.

As one working in Christian Education, this is exciting stuff. There’s also that part of me that wishes we had this kind of tech when I was at CVHS and LMC; I would have gotten more out of this kind of interaction with the material. (Not to mention my back would have been grateful to not lug large amounts of weight on the bike ride home--or back to the parking lot at days’s end--when school let out. An iPad weighs far less than 5-6 400 page books, several pens and pencils, and other required school paraphernalia.)

As a whole, we--as adults--have to embrace the tech. (We don’t necessarily have to understand it...but we cannot be afraid of it.) And really, that’s the message I want to share. I went in looking for software...and came out with a changed perspective.

I’m looking forward to coming back next year, and taking in a few more sessions.

By the way...if you are interested, my pictures of MacWorld are here. (No, I didn't have one taken with the Lady GaGa impersonator.)

Enough for now.

On the iPad

So I had five minutes to play with an iPad on the day of release, and another ten minutes to play today. It’s an interesting piece of work, and will doubtless continue to have a throttlehold on the news over the next week or so. You’re not sure if this thing is worth the money and effort.

That’s a good question.

Now, my electrogeekness can tell you the same things that you can read online. It’s a pound and a half, sleek, fast, and in a fairly short period of time will have apps out the wazoo. (Technically it does already, as it will run all the apps that my iPod does, and that an iPhone does if you wait for the 3g model.)

That’s not what you want to know.

I can tell you that it doesn’t run Flash (and if you don’t know what that does, that’s okay), it does have a productivity suite, and watching movies will be fun, along with all those books you said you wanted to read. The iPad is designed to be a media center. Books, music, games, a little letter writing or note taking, and checking your e-mail is what this is designed for.

You knew that already, I suspect.

I should tell you about prices, add-ons, and a hundred other things--all designed to protect and enhance your using experience.

I won’t, because you can look that up yourself.

No, the real question you want an answer to is “Do you think I should get one?” The simple answer to that is that there isn’t a simple answer. If you have a laptop...maybe not. You with laptops will want to pause and think about it.

But if you have a desktop computer, such as an HP or iMac, the answer is yes, you want one. If you’re thinking about a netbook, get this instead as I think you’ll be much happier with it. If you’re under 30, a tech person or Apple fanboy (or fangirl), and need to be on the leading edge, yes, and you may already have yours in hand. (If so, congratulations.)

If you’re over 65 and travel a bit, you might like it as well. Plane flights are long boring things anymore, and this will be a fun thing to have to play solitaire, read a book, watch a movie, and compose a letter to Aunt May. (Wi-fi is limited on many flights, even now, so you may not be able to surf the web or check e-mail from 15.25 KM, or 50,000 feet-whichever comes first.) The iPad is easy to use, lightweight, easy to maintain, and will serve you in good stead.

For those of us between 30-65, however, it might be a different story. Many of us have laptops we like. Money is a bit tight, especially for those of us with families to deal with. (Although you might want one for the slightly older child to use while on a long road trip.) I won’t be getting one, at least for now. Part of it is cost; the one I want is nearly $900. It has 64 GB memory and 3G capability. (Anything less then 32 GB of memory is a joke to me.) Here’s the other part.

I have a MacBook that I have updated to Snow Leopard, the most recent iWork and iLife suites, and dropped 2GB more RAM into it, for a total of 4GB RAM. (It is indeed like having a new MacBook.) It goes many places I do, because I work online. If I were able to go to Director’s College this year I would want my MacBook, as I can use my iPod to record the lectures and classes-and then simply transfer those to the MacBook at day’s end. However...an iPad would have been nice to have in Hawai’i last summer, as opposed to the MacBook, as it weighs less and eats less room in a carry-on. I was on vacation and thus only checking work e-mail once daily. (It was during an enrollment period for a program I help oversee.) Plus, since weight is at a premium on any flight, not having the MacBook allows me to pack stuff in my carryon I might actually need to bring.

That’s my take on the iPad. Right now I can see all kinds of potential. Several years down the road I can see a number of students getting one, downloading their books for courses, taking notes in lectures, and even writing papers with it. In three to six months from now as more apps are made specifically for the iPad, it becomes a better piece of gear. If you can wait until, say, summer--or better yet, Christmas--you will have a nifty tablet that you’ll be able to customize and really make worth the purchase.

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.

MacBook and iPod Update: One Year Out

Well, okay. Not quite a year out; The iPod won’t hit a year until November 13, and the MacBook won’t be a year until November 26.

Background refresher: As has been mentioned before, I’m no stranger to Apple products. My “Intro to the PC” course at LMC was based on the Apple II+ Bell and Howell model, based on the pic in my LMC catalog from the time. I used a Mac while at (what was then called) First Collateral Services from mid 1991 until the end of April 1993, which was thick with them. I survived the transfer from System Six to System Seven. This was a Big Thing. I took two Mac Academy courses on Word and Excel while there. One of my temp jobs for the U of O had me using a Mac for a day.

In real life, however, I had bought into Microsoft bigtime. They had all the programs that I needed to be productive. I used MS Office, MS Money, Windows, MSN Music (the store), MS Picture it!, the whole enchilada. I even had a Hotmail account. I used these for many years (except for the Hotmail account).

But as time went by, I got tired of the constant security issues. MSN Music became Zune.net. MS Money is no longer. I wanted Frontpage...well, it’s gone, too. Vista came out, and everyone I talked to hated the thing. Memory hog, buggy, etc. I had started using Safari about this time last year, as I found it far better (and more stable) than Internet Explorer.

Then came the need for a PDA-like gadget. I was directing one chorus, assistant directing another, juggling two part-time jobs, plus Deena was in a big chorus. There’s a lot of dates I needed to keep track of for various meetings, rehearsals, extra office hours, etc. Plus I needed a calculator that worked. And I wanted another device that had music playing capabilities. Thus, the iPod touch.

The one person I could have used some computer advice from--Dad--sadly was no longer available to ask questions. So I did my homework, and checked everything out. And bought the MacBook. And then discovered that the nice folks from Microsoft had, shall we say nicely, led me astray. My next comment will undoubtedly frost the true Mac believers: Apple isn’t perfect...far from it. There have been a few glitches. But compared to Microsoft...those have been negligible. For example, security is tighter. I don’t have to upload a patch every seven to ten days.

Today: I can do as much on my Mac as I could on my Dell, and I have far less trouble doing it. Pages is actually better than Word, Numbers is slightly better than Excel, and I haven’t played enough with Keynote to compare it adequately to Powerpoint. I still think Safari is a better browser than Internet Explorer, and you can download a Windows version. (I have made it the default browser on my father-in-law’s new HP.) iPhoto is at least equal to Picture It!, and in some cases, better. And since I leave my e-mail on the web, I don’t really know if Mail is any better than Outlook Express (or whatever has replaced it).

The one downside is that I finally did have to get a new wireless printer router. I am now the happy owner of an AirPort Express, acquired May 1. It reads both the PC and the Mac and thus we can both use the printer wirelessly again. (Well, we will when I can figure out the Bonjour/Windows 7 issue.)

So...should everyone go the route I did? Again, I undoubtedly will frost the true Mac believers...but the answer is no. For example, Deena didn’t; she spends too much time in Windows at her job and needs it for her schooling. And since she really likes her mp3 player and it works well for her, why replace it? My mom and my in-laws probably shouldn’t go Mac either; they like what they have, they like what they understand, and who am I to argue? Andy, my very best friend since dirt was young, wants to build his own PC. He has the smarts to do it, too. (I’m actually a bit jealous of that.) I’m guessing that’ll be a Windows job, unless he goes Unix.

**grins**

Everyone else, however, is fair game.

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)

I Have A New Toy...

I’ve enjoyed playing with my new gadget lately. It’s something I swore I’d never, ever own. Ever.

It’s an iPod. More specifically, the 32 GB iPod Touch.

Some background: I have had an mp3 player for the last three and a half years. It still works quite well, all 40 GB of it. (Well, okay. Technically, it’s 38.113 GB, but what’s a few gig between friends?) It sits on my dresser, and cranks out music nightly. It goes on trips with the missus and I. It’s been all over the US, having been bought for a 5 week road trip in 2005 so we would have music while driving across the plains, southwest, midwest and so forth. It’s got over three hundred discs on its little hard drive; I could set the thing to play and come back days later and it might finally start repeating something. The battery has a good ten hour life on it, if I detach the power cord, down from fourteen hours or so when I first bought it. Not bad for three-plus years. In short, I am quite happy with it.

When the first iPods came out, they were so expensive. All that money for a fancy disc drive with earbuds. Which is ultimately why I bought the Creative Zen Jukebox. It was something like $110 less. Okay, so there wasn’t too many options for the thing...but it did what I asked it to do, which was to play a boatload of music. What more does one ask of a unit named “Jukebox”?

Fast forward to today. My old electronic planner is on the fritz; the letters “O” and “P” no longer function and I can’t call up a whole month, anyway. My solar calculator has seen better days as well. My Daytimer (yes, a paper one) is too bloody big to fit in my pouch. (I use a fanny pack from REI. Deal with it.) I could really use the ability to check e-mail without hauling my laptop (which, by the way, is dying a slow, painful, heat-related death and is another story for another time) all over. The Creative Zen Jukebox is sitting, with speaker cable and power plug attached, on the dresser making it a somewhat of a pain to take to the gym. And, my cell phone is coming due for replacement as well.

I confess: I was looking at a BlackBerry. Which is something I have looked at for the last five or six years, but could never bring myself to the point of actually buying one. I mean, I just didn’t want to pay for web connect time via cell or bluetooth, and I am not all that keen on using my phone as an mp3 player at the gym. When I am working out, I really do not want to have a call come in when I am panting and out of breath on a treadmill. (It gives people the wrong impression.) Besides, it plays music on its own at times. Seems the “start” button activates a little too easy in a crowded pouch.

The iPod Touch fills many of those functions (except for, of course, the phone). And I don’t have to pay the monthly charge for internet for it; I can use wi-fi when I need it. I have some video on it, photos, an app for a to-do list, a few games...it does everything I need it to do, and then some. I used it to take notes on a Master Director’s class this last weekend, as well as checking the weather. I have sent e-mail from it. The calculator has worked well, as has the calendar.

And, yes, I have put about three days worth of music on it, so far.

So I am quite happy with my purchase.

Enough for now.

(posted 11/27/08)