TOP Going Dim; Print Sale Delayed

I'm very sorry to announce this, but I'm going away again for a few days, so TOP might be going a dark for the next few days. Hopefully it will be just a brownout this time, and not radio silence, but I have no idea if I'm going to be able to post anything from where I'm going. I'll try*. I'm just not sure yet.

I'll be back on Saturday.

Accordingly, Ctein's Print Offer will have to be postponed for a few days. It was originally scheduled to begin on Wednesday, but will be postponed for four days and will begin at high noon Central Time, Sunday the 28th.

Again, SORRY! Both for the interruption of services and the postponement of the sale. I hope you won't hold this against me and never visit again...please do come back next weekend. I will be on good behavior after that, and will never go away again**.

Mike, TOP Camp Counselor and Director of Activities

*I went to the Apple Store this afternoon fully intending to buy a MacBook Air, but I came home with an iPad2. I have no idea how to use it yet. I have high hopes that I'll learn enough about it soon enough to be able to write posts from the road, but Murphy's Law has been known to keep me firmly in its sights, so who knows.

**I suppose that is a rash promise. But not for a long, long time.

Comments

[Jallu]

Have a wonderful time wherever you are going and don't worry about us!

[Friedrich]

Do what you have (or want, or need, or "need") to do, and take the time you need.

I, too, bought an iPad 2 (I'm a software developer and wanted to try it out) and still am not using it very much, except as a semi-mobile web/mail/reader device. But maybe that's because I lug my MacBook Pro nearly everywhere I go.

If you want some pointers to interesting apps, or have interesting apps to tell us of, I'll be looking forward to that post.

[David Nicol]

Take care, I hope all is well.

We'll still be here when you get back.

[mark]

Love your site. I'll wait patiently for your return, as I'm certain will everyone else.

I love my iPad2. I use it all the time. Just bought my wife and son their very own. My daughter has the original version, and my other daughter has to make do with her inherited (from me) 17" MBP, 21" iMac, as she ruined her 15" MBP. :-(

[Richard Alan Fox]

Enjoy your vacation, and please when you return write a bit about your choice of Apple device.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

That kind of sudden disruptive event isn't usually something good; so best wishes on whatever you have to deal with.

[Nicholas Hartmann]

Watch out for that iPad: it may change your life. I got one a month or so ago, took it with me on a week-long multi-conference trip instead of the laptop, and discovered that with it I could check and respond to e-mail, read my news feeds, figure out where to rent a bicycle, look up stuff on the Web, read a book, listen to any radio station in the world, AND plug into a video projector to present a 40-minute paper. Not to mention the stored maps of the entire U.S. with which I tracked my location in flight all the way from central Colorado to San Francisco. If I had had the SD card adapter I could also have downloaded, edited, and re-posted all the pictures I took.

Anybody wanna buy a well-cared-for MacBook with lots of accessories?

[Andrea B.]

One word for you: Stylus.

As much as I adore my iPad, which I now use for almost everything, the experience was vastly improved when I got the stylus. No need to go all fancy, the inexpensive Targus stylus is great.

And one does eventually get used to the keyboard and its levels. Cool thing is that characters like ø, è, and ñ are so easy to call up by an extended press on a letter.

Don't go crazy in the app store at the beginning. Let your usage evolve slowly and get reccies before purchasing. The app quality is a little uncertain now - sometimes stellar, sometimes disappointing.

[Markus]

Hi Mike,

let me say that I´m reading your blog regularly since a long time, and I can´t even remember the web without Mike´s TOP level pontifications. It´s always worthwhile and rewarding reading. Thanks for all the effort, esprit, nonconventionalism, cutting-edge intellectual humor - and incredible productiveness!! Hope you are feeling fine. As David Nicol wrote: We'll still be here when you´re back. I certainly will!

Best regards
Markus

[Eric Rose]

Poor Mike, you have become assimilated. Are you off to the Apple neural reprogramming facility? Just joking. Hope all is well.

[Stephen Gilbert]

Mike,

Not that you can't write on an iPad, but if you have one of those Apple wireless keyboards, you're golden.

Steve Gilbert

[Craig]

Mike i always seem to be away from Internet every time you have a print sale. I thought this time i would be able to as we were going away on Saturday but alas it sounds like we'll be in the air again and after the 9 hour flight i'm sure like last time it'll be sold out!

[Arthur]

Folks, don't believe his lies! This just like the Lehman Brothers deal! He's going off to live a cushy lifestyle with his iPad2 after taking all our money!!!! This may be the precursor to the great blog crash of 2011. I'm taking all my money out of blogs and putting it in penny stock web sites. If you're smart, you'll do the same!

[charlie]

Be well....and good move on the iPad2

[Leslie Clement]

Don't scare me like that! I thought you were going away for good. I'm relieved it's only for a few days.

Regards,
Leslie

[Edward Taylor]

Mike -

You'll love the iPad. Since you're a writer, let me recommend the Apple bluetooth keyboard.

Ed

[Ed Hawco]

Good luck using the iPad to make a blog post. I've had my iPad for over a year, and I love it, but it really is a machine for consumption (reading and looking) not production. Typing is tedious, and you'll frequently find text boxes that either won't accept input or don't have scroll bars, making them really hard to work with.

BTW, the first thing you should do is abandon Safari as the browser. (Keep it on the machine, just don't use it.) There are several much better browsers in the App store. I use Atomic browser, which gives me tabs (as opposed to Safari's highly annoying page switching). Also, you can set it to "emulate" other browsers such as Firefox, so it won't automatically load the mobile version of web sites (the way Safari always does).

Working with photos can be frustrating too. It's great for VIEWING photos, but since the iPad has no visible file system, working with photos will drive you crazy.

[ctein]

Dear Craig,

This will not be a limited-number sale. So long as you get in your order before noon, a week from Friday, you'll be fine.

~~~~~~~~

Dear Nicholas,

I just had a similar experience. A six-day trip to the World SF Convention. Did not fire up my MacBook Pro once the whole time. A new record for me.

It'd have been different if I'd had any serious writing or photo work to do. Didn't. Everything I did, I did thru my iPad2.

What app are you using to track your flight?! Last time I traveled by air, I decided to see if NavFree could track where I was in the air, since it keeps all its maps on-system and doesn't need cellular or wifi for anything, but I think the 10,000 meter Z axis value confused it-- it kept reporting I was off the map.

I'd love an app that would tell me where the plane/I am while in flight.

pax / Ctein

[Ctein]

Dear Ed,

I concur about third-party browsers. I am fond of Perfect Browser, because of its excellent emulation of other browsers (handy for us HTML code monkeys) and the ability to resize display fonts in a nicely customizable way. But Atomic looks very good, too.

As for typing on the iPad2, I am gradually coming around. First trick is to let autocorrect do a lot of the heavy lifting and proofread the results later. Select/Replace is also a very powerful efficiency improver.

Well, when you're a lousy typist like me, anyway.

The other trick is that when faced with a text entry box, ala this one, double finger swipe scrolls the text WITHIN the box, while single finger swipe controls the entire page scroll. It took me forever to discover that one. Sigh.

pax / Ctein

[Bdewey]

I love using my iPad for showing off photos... so much so that I started writing software on evenings / weekends so I could do a better job editing down what I want to show. If you (or your readers) are interested, here's more information:

http://www.brians-brain.org/pholio/

(I hope this doesn't run afoul of your policy of advertising in comments!)