Over at Macworld, Ben Long wrote an interesting article where he pretty well summed up many of the negatives of the iPad. Let's hope someone from Apple is listening. I've been struggling to find ways to do things like edit documents and transfer files and yes typing is not straightforward either. I lent my iPad to a friend and watched as he tried to type and got aaaaaaaasssssllllllll because he was letting multiple fingers touch the keys. These things aren't a deal killer for me. I like the size and weight of the iPad. But Ben makes some excellent points. Last night at Max and Irma's, our waiter asked about the iPad. I told him it's great as long as you don't try to make it your main computer (yet). Read Ben's article. Read about somebody trying to make their iPad their main computer.

I should also mention what a pain it was to create and edit this article on my iPad. I use Drupal and it comes with a visual editor that the iPad browser simply cannot figure out. I have to switch to the "plain text editor" which means that for URLs I'm typing h t t p : / / and etc etc. And this very article caused me problems with too many colons, not enough slashes, and misspelled HREF. And isn't that the sort of thing Apple wants to make easy for me? So why oh why can't the webkit JavaScript engine on the iPad work with drupal's visual editor. Also I cannot properly drag and drop things. I thought this thing was supposed ti speak html5. Isn't drag and drop on the list of features to support? I'm not jumping in my car to drive back to the Apple store for a refund but I am spending a lot of time visiting jail-breaking sites.

I hooked up my bt keyboard and now I've got arrow keys. I still don't have full Drupal visual editing support but at least I'm not trying to get the Ipad to tell the difference between a scroll and a select! So does this mean I gotta pack my bt keyboard any time I want to use the iPad for "real work". For now I think it does. I wonder if Apple will see their way clear to allow a different browser on this thing.

Update: After all this talk about the iPad, I bet you're wondering "Will it Blend?"...

The liberal media has been drawing a connection between the Tea Party movement and bigotry for some time, but now the University of Washington has announced the results of a survey that support this conclusion.  It's too bad because I wish there was a credible inclusive conservative option so people with conservative values wouldn't feel they had to run into the arms of kooks in order to be listened to.

Read More at Futurity.org...

“Are we in a post-racial society? Our survey indicates a resounding no,” Parker says.

Conducted by telephone from Feb. 8 to March 15, the survey reached 494 whites, 380 blacks, 
77 Latinos and 64 members of other races. The sampling error margin is plus or minus 3.1 
percentage points.

Of course, for me the fact that they feel they need to report the race of the persons surveyed tends to convince me we are a long way from a post racial society.

Here is a diagram showing the elegant simplicity of moving files to and from my iPad! Way to go, Apple!

I stumbled across this youtube video of some guys dropping an iPad in their car...

Be sure to watch the video all the way through...

In a recent post, I mentioned that I was on retreat this past weekend.  It was there that I found out that the retreat director I'd known for 10 years died last week.  Fr. Jim Thoman was a deeply spiritual man of faith who advised me often and I will miss him. Visitation was yesterday and today and the funeral is tomorrow.

This past weekend I went on retreat and took a break from all the tech news, health care news, etc.  But this morning as I was catching up on reading my favorite RSS feeds, I saw an article about some ugly stuff that went on on Saturday.  I was appalled.  While I'm relieved the bill passed, I'm disappointed in how the "other side of the aisle" approached things.  Even this morning, as I listened to John McCain blathering on about how people wanted this thing overturned even after he had promised the same thing in his campaign, I was more disappointed.  I think our political discourse needs conservative input, but right now there sadly just aren't any sane conservatives running around.
I don't want my web site to become regarded as a beacon for either party or any particular cause but I feel strongly about health care.  It turns out that our friend Denise came to church with us this weekend and she explained that because she doesn't have health care she must pay $150 out of her own pocket for orthopedic shoes, inserts ans orthopedic hose.  And she still can't afford the surgery.  Hopefully the passage of this bill means that in a few years' time, she won't have to focus so much attention on how to pay for health care. 
Congrats to Democrats and shame on "The Party of No".  Ok. That's enough politics for a while.

Yes, this post title is a tweet...
This is it! The House votes on #hcr this weekend. Call your Rep, tell them to vote "yes"! 202-224-3121
Driving by Beaumont Hospital the other day, I saw about a dozen tea partiers out there protesting health care.  I wonder how many of them were millionaires because those are the only ones that will be able to afford a stay in that very hospital if hcr gets defeated!  I haven't seen people out protesting for hcr so I decided to get more involved via those methods I'm able: email, twitter and my web page.  
 
Here is an email I sent out earlier today to encourage people to support health care reform...
 

I saw an interesting article over at cnn.com that somebody out in Colorado is throwing a funeral for IE6.  And it's about time.  I took this occasion to switch off IE6 scripting for this site as well.  If you're trying to view this site in IE6, don't take it personally, but please go away and come back with an updated browser!

In all fairness, I should elaborate on why this is being said and why I am taking the time to deal with it here.  MS browsers are notoriously standards non-compliant.  Furthermore, they are a security nightmare and fundamentally allow anybody with a web site to become an administrator on your pc.  A good indication of the health of your browser is to head over to acidtest.org and view acid3.  Most desktop browsers do fairly well while most mobile browsers get tripped up pretty quickly.  For instance, the browser on my Blackberry returns FAIL/FAIL and never makes it to any numerical score.  The browser on my iPod touch scores 100/100.  This means that when I'm trying to look something up on the internet, if I'm in range of wifi, I ignore my BB and use my iPod Touch because I have high confidence in being able to actually get the data I'm going after.

An Imam has come out with a 600 page Fatwa saying suicide bombers are destined for hell.  Those who wish to use Islam as an excuse for violence and hate have never really had anything to hide behind, but Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri spelled it out for them in his Fatwa.  I'm reminded of that joke email that was going around after Sept 11 about the real "virgins" that await suicide bombers.  More at CNN.com...