Shiny, Shiny.

Mama has been rocking a 5-year-old Motorola 551 for way too long now, and the replacement battery is nearing its end of life (when it deigns to charge from the wall plug at all). Last Saturday we paddled through the rain to the Apple Store to see if they had any iPhone 4‘s available for her birthday present, but I was unaware that they were so scarce right now. We left empty-handed. I was also going to see about replacing my MBP battery while we were there, but the throngs of people in the store (avoiding the downpour like we were) made that impossible too. At home, I jumped online and ordered a phone, which should be here sometime in the next three weeks.

As mentioned earlier, I took Jen out to dinner Sunday evening at le Petit Louis, a french bistro up in Roland Park, while our kindly neighbors watched Finn. What can I say? My bride was beautiful, the food was delicious, and the atmosphere was perfect. Happy Birthday, baby. Returning to our neighbors’, Finn was happily playing on the slide, while her counterpart had already melted down and gone upstairs for night-nights. She’s completely gotten over her initial fear of the slide, and now spends most of her time at the playground in a constant loop: up the stairs, down the slide. Up the stairs, down the slide.

Tuesday afternoon I went to store.apple.com, picked out a refurbished 15″ MacBook Pro with as many bells and whistles as I could afford (newest processor, RAM, widescreen display, fast video card), squinched up my eyes, and clicked the “buy now” button. It’s been a long time coming, and it took a lot of convincing myself that this was really necessary, but having a laptop that actually has a usable screen, working optical media drive, and functioning battery will be a huge improvement. FedEx says it will be here on Thursday, which is faster than I’d hoped for. I still need to pick up a Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter to run an external display, but a colleague at work tells me there’s a supplier online that has them for considerably less than the $40 Apple is charging.

At Home With An iPad.

Finn sat on the potty, looking intently at me with her big blue eyes. She had asked to use the potty three times in a half an hour, which on one hand is awesome, but on the other hand is a little tiring for Jen and I. We knew she was working up to something but it wasn’t happening, and usually the trick in that situation—much as it is for the rest of us—is to distract her from thinking too much about things and find her inner peace.

I sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her, and tapped the YouTube icon. Doing a search for “Sesame Street” returned a list of clips I knew she’d like, and we started out with a classic Cookie Monster bit. I flipped it over, the picture re-oriented itself, and she smiled while Cookie started explaining numbers. Almost immediately, there were prodigious results, and we watched a few more clips while things sorted themselves out.

There are many excellent reasons to have one of these things beyond a potty training aid. (For the record, we prefer books). Friday night after Jen drifted off to sleep, I stayed awake streaming a Ghost In The Shell movie from Netflix until 1:30 in the morning, something that was inadvisable considering I was on baby duty early the next morning. (Review: The movie was middling to poor, but it was good enough to get me sucked in. The Netflix app has a lousy UI but streams movies very well). I’ve tagged and labeled photos, updated my Mint account, written forum posts, looked for recipes, and checked the weather. It’s so much easier to deal with for certain things than a laptop would be, even with a screen-based keyboard, and it’s much easier to carry around.

Compared to a first-gen iPhone, it’s slicker and faster than a politician at a county fair; everything is immediate and smooth. It makes my 4-year-old MacBook Pro feel like a Mac Classic. I spent two hours watching the movie with a full charge and when it was over, the battery was still at 90%. Even better: the back was cool to the touch, unlike my MBP, which gets blazing hot. The browser is fast and responsive, scrolling and redraw is immediate (unlike my iPhone), and as a pretty heavy-duty internet user, I’ve only stumbled across one or two sites with video I couldn’t watch.

I’d like to say I’m writing this post on the iPad, but because it’s owned by my company I’m keeping my personal login details off the machine. There is a WordPress app available, and many of the things I use our backup laptop for are accomplished easily on the iPad. One thing that looks a little sketchy right now is printing from the iPad, but there are some solutions available and it looks like Apple may be working on something as well. I do find myself wanting to do certain things with it that I can’t (hook up a camera and download pictures, for one) but overall I see this as a no-brainer for our near-term future. I think we will wait, however, for when they put a camera in the next generation—shortly, I’m guessing, given the advent of FaceTime.

Flickr’s New Photo Interface

Wow, I’m totally digging Flickr’s new photo interface—they’ve done a bunch of things that make using it a lot easier. The share menu is so much nicer now (instead of two clicks to get to a chunk of HTML, they’ve made it a DHTML rollover) and the mapping widget is really slick. My Pro account is up for renewal in a few weeks, and even though I was planning on continuing, they’ve made me a happy repeat customer.

iPhone 4 guide

Here’s a link to Engadget’s iPhone 4 guide, including preview, pricing, and  availability. Both Jen and I are eligible for the “$18 upgrade” with a 2-year contract. I’d prefer not to give AT&T another two years of my money, but they’re still the only game in town. And I’m not paying $20/mo. extra for the “privilege” of tethering.

Amazed.

I’m working on an information architecture document here at work, and streaming live footage of the BP oil pipe at the bottom of the gulf. Currently there are two ROVs hovering over the fresh cut in the top of the pipe, and one of them is using a sawblade to (I guess) dress the cut before they do whatever is happening next.

I take my hat off not to BP, but to the incredibly skilled workers and operators who are piloting million-dollar machines by remote control five thousand feet below the surface of the ocean to fix a problem that never should have happened in the first place. They make it look easy.

Portal.

Steam for the Mac went live a couple of weeks ago, so I downloaded the app and set up an account to poke around. They’re offering Portal for free for a few weeks, so I downloaded that and played with it for about a half an hour last night. What an awesome, addictive game.

LOST and Found.

Last night, while watching the second-to-last episode of LOST, I decided to tear into my MacBook Pro to replace the LVDS cable: the wire that sends pretty much all of the signal to the LCD display, and what I suspect is the root cause of the issues with the lower half of the screen disappearing for the last five months or so. I found one available online for $12 last week, and figured that $12 was cheaper than $1,200 for a new MacBook, which is what I’ve been mulling over for a few months now.

Because I wasn’t able to find the exact service manual or take apart directions for the model A1151 17″ MBP, I got stumped by removal of the clutch cover, and no amount of searching at 11PM revealed anything that would help. So I reassembled the case and rebooted, which went fine, but upon logging in I found the trackpad button had become extremely sensitive, to the point of being unusable. So I’m back to considering a replacement, which is not a happy thought.

At this point, I think I’d keep the MBP on my desk at home and get something more portable, like a standard MacBook, for carting back and forth to the office. As much as I love a 17″ display, I don’t use it enough at work as a hardcore workstation to justify the extra $1,000.

I’m currently listening to a 9-year-old album by Ivy called Long Distance, which is slightly uptempo chilled francophile pop (does that make sense?) I also have the new album by Delorean on heavy rotation, which is good; I’ve been sick of all the music I have for months now, so I like having some options.

And, quickly: last night’s LOST was…good, I guess. Rushed, to be sure. I think they’re trying to wrap up two seasons’ worth of explanations and story arcs and mythos in one abbreviated season, and a lot of the action feels forced and tossed-off to me. I wasn’t expecting a “very special episode” dedicated to Jin and Sun, but their departure (while in keeping with the “rules” of the show, as explained last night) was pretty quick. I’d developed an attachment to certain characters over the last six years, and so having more than one of them disappear quickly has been a bit jarring. While I’m glad the writers didn’t resort to maudlin half-hour goodbyes, it would have been nice to get just a little more time with folks, especially since they’ve all hiked across the island seventeen zillion times just to meet up with each other.

Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections | Electronic Frontier Foundation

I have a Facebook account, and I do try to keep it as minimal as possible, because the company’s continuing policy is to erode as much privacy from user accounts as possible. The EFF just published Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections, which is a handy guide to seeing exactly what they’re sharing (everything) and how. Remember, to Facebook, you’re not a user, you’re a product. Your personal information is bought and sold every day, and there is no “privacy”.

At least with a weblog, I can choose to share what I want with the world.

Thoughts on Thoughts on Flash.

Steve Jobs wrote a love letter to Adobe today, and predictably, the internet is losing its mind. It seems like people land on one side of this argument or the other: Flash is a security hazard/resource pig/aging dinosaur, and Apple is closed/proprietary so this is the pot calling the kettle black. Personally, I’m agnostic about Flash either way, but I do know that it slows my Mac to a crawl (when it doesn’t crash my browser) and chews up battery power like a pothead in a convenience store. Adobe’s claims to the contrary are pitiful.

Wake Up! Go Back To Sleep!

I’d really, really be happy if I could find a reason for why my MacBook Pro decides to wake itself from sleep at some point on my way into work every morning. I’m annoyed because sometimes I won’t know about it for a half an hour, after which I pull it from my bag and find that it’s been cooking itself to dangerous temperatures without going back to sleep—something which exacerbates the issues I’ve been having with the display. I’ve found some mentions of the problem here and there, but a year’s worth of sleuthing has turned up nothing conclusive.

At this point, I’d really just like to have a new laptop.