Lone Locust Productions

Category: General

  • Doctor Who – Review – Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone – Spoilers

    We’ve heading into uncharted territory now. Historically, I’ve reviewed most new Doctor Who episodes right here on the blog, but now that we’re doing the Fusion Patrol Podcast, I’ve been letting it slip.

    The fact is, we’re not really doing reviews at the podcast. I’ve likened to a book club discussion, although, not having attended a book club, how would I know? Basically, we’re just having a discussion about what we think about the episode – so, maybe it is a review. In any case, I’ll try to synthesize some of that down here as my “review.”

    Summary

    In Time of Angels, the Doctor is re-united with River Song, the archaeologist from the Doctor’s future, first introduced in Silence in the Library. River has cleverly arranged for the Doctor to answer her call and come to her assistance, where she is helping a crack military squad of clerics to neutralize a Weeping Angel: a bizarre quantum-locked alien species that can only move when they’re not being observed. The starliner Byzantium was carrying the angel, but it crashed on a planet, releasing the angel.

    As the clerics attempt to work their way through catacombs towards the wrecked ship, Amy is unwittingly infected by one of the angels. The clerics are being killed off one-by-one and only too late does the Doctor realize that all the statues in the catacombs are angels, and they are being brought back to life by the energy from the wrecked starliner. Surrounded, and trapped in a cave just meters below the wrecked ship, things look very bleak indeed.

    In Flesh and Stone, the Doctor manages to get the survivors aboard the ship, but the angels are aboard, too. As they make their way through an artificial forest inside the ship, the mysterious crack from Amy’s bedroom wall puts in an appearance, threatening to swallow everything.

    Amy must keep her eyes shut to stay alive, and she is left in the care of the cleric, but one-by-one, they are swallowed by the crack and cease to have ever existed. Amy must pretend to be able to see, to fool the angels into leaving her alone, and navigate blindly through the forest to reach the Doctor and River.

    Can the Doctor stop the angels and close the crack which threatens to devour the entire universe?

    Analysis

    From my point of view, this two-parter was an exemplary episode of Doctor Who. While it’s still fresh in my mind, I’d almost say the best episode since the series returned in 2005.

    In pacing, it is unlike any new series episode to date. Even though it maintains suspense from end to end, it is slower than most new series episodes. Midpoint during each 45 minute episode, comes an almost perfect “cliffhanger” point – as if this story was written to be four, 22 minute episodes ala the classic series. I much prefer this pacing and really wish Steven Moffat would convert all the stories into two-parters. That said, the resolution to the problem of both the angels and the crack did present itself rather quickly and conveniently right at the end and wasn’t really any of the Doctor’s doing. In effect, his cleverness just kept them alive long enough for them to get lucky. That was probably the most dissatisfying part of the whole story to me.

    We (the audience and the Doctor) are meeting River Song for only the second time, but from her timeline, she’s met the Doctor many times before, and knows about his future. Last time, we learned that she was someone very, very important to the Doctor in his future and that he trusted her with enough knowing his real name. This time, which is much earlier in her timeline, we learn that she is a murderer and is being held in prison for that crime. She has only been released so that she can help the expedition, “control” the Doctor and try to earn herself a pardon.

    During the first episode, it’s not revealed that she’s a prisoner, but it is revealed that the Doctor might not help her if he knew “…who and what [she is]…” At that point, I began to suspect that a beautiful piece of plot contrivance on the Grand Moff’s part would be to have had River die in the first episode that the Doctor meets (which she did) and for the Doctor to die the first time River meets him. That idea was bolstered in my mind when she stated that she had “pictures of all his incarnations” which is only possible if she’s in a timeline after the Doctor is dead. That she was his killer also fit with the “who and what” comment, in that what she is is his murderer. Logical to assume that he’d not want to help her under those conditions.

    I thought I was being particularly clever reasoning that out in the first episode, but then they started beating it over our heads in the second episode. Revealing that she was in prison for murder, they she’d murdered a great man, a hero to many. She herself even tells the Doctor, when confronted, that she killed the greatest man she’s ever known.

    In slippery Grand Moff style, though, the crack in time has put the idea in the Doctor’s head that time can be “unwritten” and he seems oddly comforted by that idea. Perhaps he thinks he can unwrite River’s crime, or, on a bigger scale, perhaps he can unwrite the Time War, the rise of Rassilon and the destruction of Gallifrey.

    On the other hand, if he tries something that big, perhaps he causes the crack himself?

    I would like to point out that, while I don’t really give a toss about season-spanning story arcs, I am pleased that this seasons story arc at least appears to be playing out meaningfully during the season, rather than just being a series of catchphrases badly interjected into the scripts with no bearing on the stories. The Bad Wolf syndrome has a been a great, dead albatross hanging around the nexk of the past four series, and I hope it’s gone forever.

    Amy, in this episode, is both playful, brilliant and somewhat useless in equal measures. The later is not really her fault, as she’s blind, about to die, all alone in a forest full of angels and terrified out of her wits. Who wouldn’t be useless under those conditions?

    All-in-all, one of the best episodes for a long, long time.

    No review of this episode would be complete without discussing the final scene, set in Amy’s bedroom, on the night before her wedding (also the night she left with the Doctor.) In no uncertain terms, Amy, having just been terrified for her life, tries to get a leg over on the Doctor.

    Prudish I might be, but the tone and content of the scene just felt wrong to me. It didn’t really have a place in a program aimed (partially) at such a young audience, but this is a criticism I’ve had ever since the series returned in 2005. This was just the single most overt expression of it yet.

    While I didn’t like it, it was logical. It’s the logical extension (at least in the TV world) of Amy’s lifelong obsession with the Doctor, her fears about marriage and her very near brush with death. It was a accurate portrayal of humanity.

    What I did appreciate, though, was that the Doctor clearly felt the same way: This is a totally inappropriate Doctor/Companion interaction, and he puts a stop to it. My hope is that this is the Grand Moff telling us that, “…we’ve pushed the issue to it’s logical conclusion and there’ll no more of that going on in the TARDIS while I’m at the helm.”

  • No Reason, just feel guilty

    I’ve got no real to make a blog post this morning, I just feel like I’ve been neglecting the blog lately.

    Ben and I have put out three episodes of the Fusion Patrol Podcast and we’ve got over a hundred subscribers, which boggles my mind. Pretty good considering we’re just rambling on about Doctor Who.

    I suspect that the statistics don’t account for unsubscriptions, but that could just be my pessimism in action.

    Recording via Skype is both remarkably simple (w/extra software) and incredibly frustrating, as there’s no obvious way to “balance” the various inputs. We’ve been swapping microphones and I think much of the problem is in the microphone input. If I could get two identical mike/headsets, it might work.. That wouldn’t address the possibility of bringing in a guest host in the future.

    After the current series of Doctor Who, we’ll be moving on to the classic series, Sapphire and Steel. It’s a real weird one.

  • Podcasting

    Last week, Ben and I put together our first podcast.

    I’ve decided to revive Fusion Patrol in a slightly different format. Originally, Fusion Patrol (made for public access television) was intended to be a community affairs type program for the science fiction community. It was supposed to be news and events and a showcase for local talent. As these things happen, it evolved quickly into more of a science fiction comedy skit program. Such is life.

    The new Fusion Patrol Podcast isn’t any of that. It about TV and Movies (science fiction, mostly, of course). I’ve always enjoyed watching a program and then sitting around with similarly inclined people and picking it apart discussing its merits and shortcomings. In that respect, I rather like the recent fad of book clubs, I just want to make this into a different media form.

    We’re picking the low-haning fruit for the next 8 weeks ago and we’re watching and reviewing the new episodes of Doctor Who as their air, but after that, we’ll be launching into old classics like Space: 1999, UFO, The Star Lost and The Prisoner.

    The podcast is now available in iTunes, or you can find it at podcast.fusionpatrol.com. You can also interact with us on twitter. We’re @fusionpatrol.

  • The Time of Angels – Preview of Something Great

    No, this isn’t my review of the first half of the two part story that started thus week with the Time of Angels.

    I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a podcast on science fiction/fantasy TV shows and, while we’re experimenting, it looks like we’ll get our feet wet with podcasts on the remaining episodes of the year’s Doctor Who.

    More details soon.

  • Victory of the Daleks – Review – Spoilers

    This is really going to me more about the Daleks than this week’s episode of Doctor Who, but we’ll do both.

    Victory of the Daleks is the Moffat-era reboot of the Daleks, and they desperately needed a reboot, but will this really be an improvement?

    Summary

    Winston Churchill calls the Doctor to the Cabinet War Rooms during the London Blitz to introduce his new secret weapon against the Nazi’s, the Daleks – although he doesn’t know them as Daleks, but instead as Ironsides, created by Prof. Bracewell.

    The Doctor goes F-ing crazy to try to prove they’re nasty little alien Daleks and when he finally confronts them face-to-face proclaiming himself to be the Doctor and they to be the Daleks they get all happy and leave, but not before revealing that Bracewell is an android they created as a cover story, but he thinks he’s a real boy.

    Back on the Dalek ship, they use the recording of the Doctor to prove they’re really Daleks and start the Progenitor device: A Dalek gene-bank to create a new army of Daleks. The Daleks threaten to destroy the Earth, the Doctor saves the Earth, but the Daleks escape.

    Analysis

    This first non-Moffat story of the Moffat-era is entertaining, but ultimately empty. It’s nothing more than a vehicle to unleash the Daleks into the Who-universe once more. The Dalek plan seems nearly hare-brained, the plot device that says the genetically-imperfect Daleks can’t activate the Progenitor device is ridiculous to begin with (wouldn’t it be better if anyone could turn it on with the right passcode?) and the resolution of just having the Doctor admit they’re Daleks being good enough to overcome the lockout beggar’s belief.

    Before I go on about the Daleks, let me take a moment to talk about the rest of the episode. Spitfires in space, fighting Daleks, yeah, Ok, that was fun. Winston Churchill, not much of a key player, looked a little fatter than I remember. Amy did a nice job, but then she’d brighten any scene she’s in. Prof. Bracewell as the misguided android did a nice job. (And he likes girls.)

    But let’s go back to the Daleks.

    Do you know what it takes to make a genuinely mediocre episode of Doctor Who? Answer: The Daleks.

    Confined in their metal city on Skaro, in a claustrophobic setting, they were a credible threat. Unleashed on the universe, they’re a joke. I’m sure the writers of the original Doctor Who knew that. Just look at the Dalek stories starting in the Pertwee era. They are absolutely the most unconvincing villains ever created, but they’re popular with the punters and they just had to keep bringing them back. Even back then, their master plans were idiotic. Hollowing out the cores of planets, running their own funeral parlor, etc. The power of nostalgia overcomes people when thinking about the Daleks.

    Then a funny thing happened, Russell T. Davies, an admittedly massively nostalgic fan of the original series, came along and he wanted his Daleks to be menacing – like he remembered them in the misty, poorly remembered corners of his mind. (Keep this in mind, They were never menacing, it’s just his memory failing.) So, during his reign, the Daleks were brilliant and massively powerful. One single Dalek could wipe out an entire city. They’re really, really dangerous.

    Problem is, if they’re so smart, that might be able to learn and adapt and become peaceful, even productive members of the universe. Not to mention that, but, if they did take over the universe, what would they do with it? Really, they’ve got no good motivation, either. Can’t have that, let’s make them insane too! It doesn’t matter how dumb the idea, right up to and including destroying reality itself, they’re up for it. They’re crazy, the audience will buy anything they want to do.

    No, we won’t.

    The Daleks should never have been made so smart and all-powerful that they could destroy all of reality, no more than the Time Lords should have been made powerful enough to destroy all of time itself. When you get villains that big and powerful any plot you come up with just gets dumber and dumber and the resolution more insane.

    The Daleks desperately needed a reboot (as do the Time Lords). Perhaps these new Daleks, unaware of what’s transpired, will be closer to the older Daleks. Big enough of a threat to take over whole planets, subjugate whole races of people, launch intergalactic wars. but not big enough to contemplate the total destruction of the fabric of reality. Let’s give the Doctor something I can believe he could defeat using his wits.

    So with this story, let’s all wish on the first star we see tonight and send Stephen Moffat some psychic messages. If we can’t have “no Daleks, ever”, then at least let’s wish for “sensible Daleks.”

    A lot of ire has been spreading across the ‘net regarding the look of the new Daleks. I can take it or leave it. Since they barely ever looked menacing, I don’t think the new ones are much of a departure. They’re bigger, they’re colorful, they’re still laughable.

  • Russell T. Davies has left the building

    Not a review of Victory of the Daleks but does contain a reasonably small spoiler.

    Something extraordinary happened in Victory of the Daleks that really made me feel like Russell T. Davies is finally gone.

    As the Doctor and Amy tried to bring out Prof. Bracewell’s humanity, Amy asked him if he’d ever fancied someone he knew he shouldn’t. Bracewell admitted that he had and that the person had been… a woman!!!

    I hate to apply generalizations, but you know damned good and well if RTD were in charge it would have been a man.

  • E-Books and My Novel – an Unlikely Combination

    I’ve been doing some testing today on the iBook e-reader that Apple provides for the iPad. I’ve not-so-much been testing the reading experience, but testing the capabilities for outside material.

    You can, of course, buy books directly from Apple’s iBookstore and they even have a selection of free e-books – of exactly the kind you’d expect from Project Gutenberg – but you’re not limited to e-books strictly from the iBookstore. Apple has chose to use the epub standard. so I thought I’d give that a test.

    First, I went to epubbooks.com and downloaded a free book. By simply dropping it in iTunes, it transferred to my iPad on the next synch. No glitches.

    Next, I was working on a programming project and I needed to consult the online, PDF manual. Of course, I could have easily brought the PDF up on the iPad, but I remembered that some people used software to convert PDFs to epubs. I downloaded a piece of software called Calibre and soon had my PDF document converted to epub. The results were passable, although the PDF conversion didn’t always get the pages or pictures formatted correctly.

    I also used Calibre to convert and RSS feed into an e-book with mixed results. My own blog came out near picture perfect, but a friends apparently upset the applecart and the whole thing came out an unreadable mess.

    IMG_0121Finally, I took a Fusion Patrol novel I started writing last year and converted it to an e-book. Like some many other writing projects, I made it about a third of the way through and got distracted from finishing it. For a lark, rather than just checking out how well it had formatted, I decided to read it end to end.

    I don’t know how other people interact with their writing, but for me, writing is somewhere between a torturous chore to a matter of necessity. There are times when I just must write, but then as the steam wears off, it becomes painful to continue.

    Then comes the second-guessing phase. After a certain period of time, if I go back and re-read my earlier works I usually find (A) typos and (B) that I hate what I wrote.

    IMG_0122But every once in a while, I look back and I say, “Hey, that’s not bad.” and so it was with Fusion Patrol: The Penny Dreadful (working title). I actually like what I wrote.

    It looks good as an e-book, too. Consider this to be a “sample”.

    Now I have to finish it.

  • Doctor Who Theme Music

    It seems that most of the feedback about the new Doctor Who series is positive, save for one thing – the new credits and the new music.

    Now, I must admit the new music was immediately a huge letdown for me. It grows on you a bit, but overall I’m not impressed. I decided that I might be prejudiced against it because it was new and different. I decided I needed to listen to it – a lot. The other day, I put that version on the iPhone, hit repeat one song and let it fly during my entire commute. I contemplated every note, every sound, every voice and internalized them.

    Then, by way of comparison, I put all versions of the theme music (sans the 8th Doctor telemovie) into a playlist, put them on random and did much the same on my next commute. I’m now ready to pronounce judgement.

    First though, let’s standardize our frame of reference. The Doctor Who theme consists in four basic parts: There’s the opening beat, that, thinking back to the Tom Baker years, represented the opening of the time vortex, which follows the main theme itself, which is the sort of howly bits, then there’s the fanfare, which I believe Murray Gold called “the middle third” and was absent from Eccleston’s theme music but added back for the Christmas Invasion. This bit was also usually missing during Tom Baker’s era and only showed up on six-parters that required longer end credits. Finally there’s the ending which is mostly a rehash of bits of the main theme repeating out sometimes ending with a sting.

    Taking this new theme apart, I dislike the intro. Gold has added a new theme that isn’t Doctor Who at all overlaying and overpowering the proper parts.

    The main theme could be good, perhaps great. It starts well with something similar to the original electronic version, but they discordantly crashes into something orchestral with little high-pitched noisemakers that set my teeth on edge. They’re probably flutes or piccolos or something. Get rid of them. On the other hand, he also uses a small, discreet bit of choral music which works well, and makes it sound darker. best of all, it’s just a little bit, not like his overpowering choral Dalek tunes.

    The fanfare suffers the same problem, good foundation, damaged by high-pitched squeaky wind instruments. Some points for some very subtle wobbly sound effects that sound like things flying off into space.

    Finally the outgoing part is mostly fine, gone are the obnoxious instruments, leaving us with the pleasant version, but all too soon, it’s over. Here’s hoping next year they’ll try again and learn from this mistake.

    It used to be that there were “Science Fiction Theme Song” albums where various artists where Neil Norman, Jeff Love or some orchestra would cover Sci-Fi theme songs. Universally, Doctor Who did not make the translation well. Particularly bad were the orchestral versions, for precisely the reasons I’ve outlined here. The pitch isn’t suited for an orchestra. It shocked the heck out of me when Gold was able to pull the Eccleston/Tennant version off using an orchestra. I think part of the success was lowering the tone and not hitting those high notes.

    Still, it’s not the worst “official” version of the Who theme tune, that honor goes (as with so many other “worsts” in Doctor Who history) to the Sylvester McCoy version.

    It’s all subjective, but here’s my countdown.

    1. Early 1970’s Pertwee and into Baker version. It’s just a slight variation on the Derbyshire original, but it adds a few extra “hissing snakes”, plus the signature string.
    2. Original. For being the same as the above but just (slightly) less cool.
    3. Colin Baker, Trial of a Time Lord Edition (Dominic Glynn). I’ll take heat for that and it does suffer from 1980itis in the sound of the instrumentation, but I thought it was an improvement over the earlier Peter Howell version because it added a series of dark undercurrents to the theme and I like the FX of little things spinning off into space. The fanfare is bit off, though.
    4. David Tennant/Donna Version (Murray Gold). Yeah, I like the electric guitar.
    5. Eccleston/Tennant Version (Murray Gold) Orchestral done as right as it could have been.
    6. Baker/Davison/Baker (Peter Howell) Somewhat similar to the later Domic Glynn version in that it’s just too 80’s guy with synthesizer in his basement (see Look Around You on computer music), but in this case, it has no flourish. When I first saw it I thought, “this is exciting and fast” but it became vapid rapidly upon repeated exposure.
    7. Matt Smith Version (Gold)
    8. Sylvester McCoy version. (Keff Mcculoch). Poor McCoy, like Colin Baker he got shafted by the production crew and the BBC. Nothing says, “let’s kill Doctor Who” to me like this theme song to me. The theme is lost in the backbeat and it’s the least musically interesting of the bunch.

    So there it is. I’ve been meaning to rank the theme songs for years now and I’ve finally gotten around to it. Let the complaints begin! 🙂

    *Edit 2014-09-20 – edited to properly reflect the guilty and clear Mark Ayres name!

  • iPad Notes and Review

    I promised my incoherent thoughts on the iPad after days of use and here they are… in no particular order.

    iPad notes

    • Carrying it is awkward. There’s just no good way to carry the iPad by itself. You’d think it would be natural to carry it like a textbook, but it isn’t. No matter which way you hold it, your fingers are grasping slick glass on one side. it doesn’t feel secure or natural. Therefore…
    • A case is mandatory. I tried to get away without buying one as they’re ridiculously expensive (for what they are) but the iPad just needs something. I think, perhaps, in the future I’ll get one of those portfolio types similar to a zipped up paper pad, but for now I’ve just got a neoprene sleeve.
    • Videos are fantastic. Hand down, video looks great on this thing. Whether it’s iTunes movies, videos I’ve made myself for my Apple TV or Youtube videos, they really shine. The lack of a 16:9 aspect ratio isn’t that big of a deal. Youtube videos on webpages now play inline rather than jumping you to the YouTube as the iPhone does, which is very refreshing and apps like ABC’s TV service is magnificent. Pity ABC hasn’t got jack to watch. Here’s hoping soon for Hulu, CBS, NBC and the others to follow suit. I hear, but haven’t seen the Netflix streaming rocks, but I don’t have a Netflix account, nor am I likely to ever get one until the have a pay-as-you use plan rather than a flat monthly fee. Not enough movies in the world that I want to see to justify a monthly expense.
    • Brightness control is inconvenient. The iBooks program recognizes that easy to adjust brightness is critical for using a screen like this and builds it right into the program. Sadly, I’m learning that’s a forbidden, undocumented API that Apple alone uses and other programs cannot use it without risking Apple’s wrath or rejection. To change the brightness otherwise, you have to dig into settings, which is a hassle when you’re just moving from room to room. Supposedly, the iPad has auto-brightness but it doesn’t seem to work too well. I’ve not noticed any dimming or brightening at all.
    • Many apps are “splitting” into an iPhone and an iPad path. I think it’s pretty clear that Apple would like all developers of iPhone apps to use the dual-target, universal binary to produce a single app that runs on both platforms and takes advantage of the environment its running on. There are pros and cons against that modality. Yes, it’s great when I pop open a program that I had previously purchased on my iPhone and discover it’s been ported to run bigger and better – and yes, it is better – but at the same time, any graphic intensive program would require that higher resolution graphics be stored within the application bundle, resulting in bloated app packages, straining your already full iPhone for no benefit to the iPhone. Consequently, many programs now have iPhone and iPad versions. This is confusing because I don’t know which app developers might have released a newer better version since it is outside of the normal upgrade path provided through iTunes. But that’s not all…
    • Apps are beginning to cost more. That’s great if you’re a developer. iPhone apps have been pigeonholed into the free/$0.99-4.99 paradigm because that’s the prevailing wisdom. iPhone apps are an impulse buy and that means low-price. The price is completely divorced from the amount of effort involved in the development. Apple has sent a signal by releasing Pages, Numbers and Keynote at $9.99 – it’s OK to charge more for advanced apps. That’s great, but it certainly will (should) slow down app purchases. That said, I think I’ve spent more on iPad apps already than I have in their entirety on my iPhone. OmniGraffle has put out what looks to be a kick-ass flow charting/design program, but at $49.99… it’s going to have to wait. Come to think of it, Omni Group’s programs on the Mac are always just a little too expensive for my blood.
    • iPad apps are better. Ooo, this will probably get me in trouble with somebody but, here’s how I see it. iPhone OS is brilliant, it really is a ground-up rethink of the computer operating system which is what was needed for the iPhone. Previous mobile phone approaches (are you listening Microsoft) took the computer OS and scaled it down. That is, they cut it down. That was the wrong approach. Let’s face it, the iPhone’s screen is small. There’s not much room to work with and they made it work. Now, on the iPad, it’s like they’ve been taking steroids. It is bigger and better and the ground-up rethink is really paying off because you can do so much more, but you’re still working within an intimate space. I don’t know that you could continue to scale it up indefinitely, but at the iPad’s size, it’s wonderful.
    • Any purchased iPhone/iPod Touch apps you have will transfer to your iPad. In case you didn’t realize that, the copy protection applied to your purchased apps is applied at the iTunes library level, not the device level. That means if you’ve already purchased it, it will load right onto your iPad, assuming (a) that you’re using the same iTunes library and (b) the app is compatible with the iPad. (It might be possible that one isn’t, but the vast majority are.)
    • iPhone apps don’t cut it on the iPad. There’s an odd sort of delight when you pop open one of your iPhone apps and it turns out it’s already ported to the iPad. More importantly, there’s a crushing letdown feeling when you open on and all you get is the iPhone penalty box. Similarly, there’s a letdown when they don’t. The single size mode just feels bad and the double-sized mode looks awful. Very few of the programs I have on the iPhone are acceptable on the iPad.
    • My Bejeweled 2 scores are going way up. That having been said, at least Bejeweled 2 is passable on the big screen in double mode, and my scores are going way up. It’s much easy to see and manipulate those little jewels on the bigger screen.
    • I am not enthralled with programs that have functions that only work in one orientation or another. That requires a little explanation. You may recall the other day that I said at the Best Buy I was having some problems with Pages on the iPad. Specifically, I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the damned document and start a new one. Answer: You can only have that menu in portrait mode. In landscape, which is the easiest to type in, the menu doesn’t come up. I don’t like that. Developers – stop it. Do not do that. Bad developer, bad, bad, bad. Rolled up newspaper time for you. The user should decide which orientation works best for them.
    • You can type on it. At least, you can type on it better than the iPhone. In landscape orientation I can type two-handed, 10-fingers and quite quickly; however, punctuation is still penalized by having to switch to a secondary keyboard mode and it begins to jar the fingers knocking on the screen after a short period of time. I’ve never really had too much trouble with typing on the iPhone, but the iPad is better – hands down. (Actually, I think all my typing problems on the iPhone are actually a plot by the developers of the iPhone Facebook app. I think they’ve written the code to randomly misspell one word in every Facebook post I make, not matter how careful I am.)
    • Not enough books and you can’t see what they are until you own an iPad! The iBooks reader is gorgeous and works well, but, before I bought the iPad, I wanted to know what books were available. No can do, the only way I can find to see what’s on the iBookstore is to have an iPad and iBooks. Silly Apple. There aren’t enough books (yet) in the store, and hardly anything on sciences (especially paleontology.) I imagine there’s plenty of fictional bestsellers for the dim sheeple, but I don’t care.
    • Kindle works nicely, but isn’t as polished as iBooks. Amazon cranked out their Kindle app for the iPhone rather quickly and it’s also very nice. I liked it on the iPhone, but after purchasing a couple books, I never finished them. It’s too much of a eye strain to read them on the phone. Joy of joy, my previously purchased books synced right onto the iPad and were at exactly the point I left off. I’m finally going to get to finish Capture the Saint by Burl Barer (the only Saint book I haven’t been able to buy in print) and The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. (I know, I know, you’d think I’d have read that, wouldn’t you, but… I haven’t. But I will now.)
    • There is no comfortable position to sit and use the iPad. At least I haven’t found one. It’s too heavy to hold as a book for long periods of time and I think that may be exacerbated by the thinness of it. It feels a little unnatural to hold, but then a lifetime of holding books feels natural because that’s what I’ve done for a lifetime. I have a size and a weight expectation. We’ll see if time will change my opinion on this.
    • Mail and Safari are particularly nice. They’re really nice, The big screen for Mail and the inline videos for Safari really seal it as a great way to browse and read mail. There’s a buggy or two in Mail, especially when changing orientation. You can get out of a mailbox, work your way back to the root, even start down towards another mailbox and, if you rotate the screen, you’ll find yourself back in the original mailbox you started from. That’s annoying. It’s especially bad when you have the iPad fasted to the airbag section of your car’s steering wheel and using it to read mail while you’re driving. Sometimes if you make a fast turn, you spin the wheel enough to change the orientation and you loose your place*. Thank Apple for the orientation lock.
    • No problems, so far, with wireless. Others are reporting problems with their wireless connections. I’ve not experienced any problems. It worked first time, zero hassle, immediately. it even worked when we took it out to restaurant yesterday and glommed onto their free by authenticated network.
    • File sharing is weird to implement. Programs can now “save” files into user space for later retrieval, such as Pages being able to save PDFs, Word Docs and Pages Docs for moving to another computer, but it’s all done through iTunes and completely non-intuitive. I knew it could do it, but I had to look up how to do it on the ‘net. Minus several points for hiding this important feature where no one would look for it.
    • I wonder if the need for apps will decrease on the iPad when people realize the browser is more full featured. Steve Jobs recently pointed out that, at least for the iPhone (and therefore the lion’s share of this market) people use apps more than web browsing – hence the initiative to create Apple’s iAds service for monetizing apps – but I wonder if that’s because an app can deliver a much better experience than a web app on the iPhone? Safari’s browser is much better on the iPad. It’s possible that people will again begin to shift back towards online services over apps.

    Those are my thoughts so far. Perhaps they seem a bit negative, but they aren’t. All in all it’s a great little device and the potential seems limitless. Next time, I’ll talk about some of the specific applications, like Popular Science Mag+ electronic magazine and Marvel Comics e-comic reader. (I’m going to have a guest reviewer and well-placed insider in the comic book trade giving me his feedback before I write that one. Will the iPad finally kill the comic book? Will there be a super-hero created by bitten by a radioactive iPad? Find out next time… or whenever I get around to it, same bat-time, same bat channel.)

    *Oh, and people, that part about the driving and stuff… totally a joke. Like my wife would let me have the iPad when I driving. She’s totally monopolizing it to read The Lightening Thief.


  • I’ve got an iPad

    I’d written up this long, convoluted post about my travails trying to get an iPad, but by the time I’ve gotten around to posting it… I finally got an iPad. I guess I’ll recount the story anyway.

    Let’s rewind to Saturday, April 3rd, the very first day of iPad sales. As you may recall, it was at that point that I started saying, “I want an iPad.”

    Saturday: We went into the Best Buy on Camelback road at around 8:00PM and, although the store wasn’t terribly busy, there was still a cluster of people around the Apple mini-store. There were 4 iPads on display, all of them was being tested by children. A small group of people were standing by hoping to get to play with them.

    One teenager, the oldest, seemed the most oblivious, so I came and stood right next to him and made a big production out of trying to watch everything he was doing. He was still oblivious.

    After about 5 minutes, his parents and a couple other kids came over, he then started to explain the iPad to them in great detail. After two or three minutes of him gushing on, his mom said, “Have you been on this the entire time since we left you?”

    “Yeah.”

    She looked at me, “Are you waiting to try this?”

    “Yeah”

    …and she kicked him off and gave him a bit of an earful. Good for her.

    While I’d been waiting, I’d noticed that people were actually buying iPads – they weren’t out of stock.

    I played around with it and came to my somewhat surprised conclusion. (Which I’ve documented elsewhere) I went and got Irene and the kids and, after a little wait, got them onto an iPad. Moments after Irene said, “I want one.” I checked with the Apple guy who told me they had a “couple left” of each of the models; however, Irene wasn’t quite ready to buy.

    We went home, leaving that damned teenager once again reattached to the iPad and giving his family a lecture.

    On the way how we thought about it. We considered turning back. Best Buy closed in under 30 minutes. We just had time… but… we didn’t.

    We went home to check to see if there were any government employee discounts. There aren’t.

    We checked to see of there are any educator discounts. There aren’t.

    Amazon hasn’t got them, so there’s no tax-free option.

    Basically, if we wanted an iPad, there’s no option save for paying the $499 + tax.

    I checked online and realized that Best Buy was closed on Easter. That meant that whatever stock they had at closing time Saturday would still be there at opening time on Monday. I hatched my cunning plan: An early lunch, timed to arrive exactly when Best Buy opened and an iPad would be mine!

    Other obstacles got in the way, but ultimately, I found myself pulling into the parking lot of Best Buy, 5 minutes before they opened, fully expecting to walk in, straight to the iPads and buy one before they had a chance to run out.

    Apparently, 40 other people had that idea, too, because there were that many people standing at the door waiting for it to open… and so I didn’t get an iPad. Again.

    Tuesday:IMG_0265 At lunch, John and I went to the Apple Store at the Biltmore. They have many more iPads on display and, just as at Best Buy the other day, Could see that people were buying and leaving with them. I decided to buy one right then and there. When I finally got the Apple Store employee’s attention (they were very busy) I learned that they didn’t have any 16GB models left, just 32s and 64s. I won’t be too harsh on him, but he indicated first that they got less 16s than the others and that people were realizing that 16 just wasn’t enough. I felt like I was being given a very direct suggestion that I should buy a bigger iPad; however, that’s not in the cards. The 16 is absolutely the most I can possibly afford

    The Apple Store guy had no idea of when the next shipment would be in.

    Friday: I had read on Thursday that people who had pre-ordered their iPads and didn’t get an April 3 delivery date, began receiving notices that their iPads were winging their way out of China. Figuring that Apple would no doubt also getting more stock at this time, I decided to try again. The kids had a half day at school and so I left work at lunchtime and still had an hour to go before picking up the kids. I stopped in the Apple Store and the same guy was there. I asked again about the 16s and the answer was negative. “Just 30 minutes ago we got a truck load of 32s and 64s, but not 16s. They don’t tell me how many we’re getting, what types or when they’ll arrive.”

    Discouraged, but still with about 45 minutes to kill, I started playing with the iPads on display. 5 minutes later a female Apple Store employee came up to me and said, “Excuse me, [Apple Sore guy] (indicating the guy I’d previously spoken to) tells me you’re interested in a 16GB iPad.”

    “Yes”, I said.

    “I’ve got good news. 3 minutes ago a truck pulled up with a shipment of 16GB iPads.”

    …and so I have an iPad, but not before she really put the hard press on me to buy… MobileMe (which would have extended my existing subscription out to about 3 years), AppleCare for the iPad (even if you want an extended warranty, you don’t need to buy it until 1 year has nearly passed), a case and/or docking accessories.

    I existed the store 5 minutes later with nothing except an iPad.

    I’ll post some thoughts on it tomorrow, but for now, the whole family is really enjoying it: Except when I have to fight to get to use it, that’s already becoming a problem.