Purim Parade

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Last Friday was Sasha’s Purim Parade at preschool.  It makes for a great excuse for all the kids to break out their Halloween costumes for an encore performance.  Sasha went in her Ariel costume to, uh, commemorate when Queen Esther Williams of the Mermaids drove the Romans from Atlantis? Is that how this works?

Sammy’s Thomas the Tank Engine Story

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Thomas chuffed along.  Suddenly he noticed he was on the wrong track to fill up the oil car.  So Thomas backed up and chuffed onto the right track.  And then, he arrived at the oil thing.  He lined up the car.  The machine put the oil in.

Suddenly, Thomas noticed that the crank was stuck on the oil pump.  So Thomas wheeshed away to tell all the engines.

Thomas saw Duncan.  “Hello,” Thomas said.  “Did you know that the oil machine was broken?”

“Yes,” said Duncan, and he chuffed away.

Then, Thomas reached over to get his next load.  He coupled onto a very special coach.  Along the way, he met Sir Thomas Hatt.

“Hi Thomas.  I see you’re pushing the special coach today.”

And then, Thomas kept chuffing on.  He chugged away.

He passed Duncan again, who was still at the signal.

Then Thomas kept chuffing along.  Duncan backed up, and Thomas backed up.  He switched tracks and hooked up to his old cars.  And then he chuffed away.

Thomas chuffed right past the signal.  By the time Thomas chuffed past, Duncan had to stop again because the signal had gone back down.

Thomas was tired.  He was pushing a lot of loads today.  He really wanted another train to help him.  And suddenly he saw who wanted to help him:  It was Duncan.  So when the signal went up, Duncan chuffed away to help Thomas.

Then, after Thomas coupled onto the big load, he pulled and pulled into the siding and Duncan got out of Thomas’ way.  Thomas chuffed into the siding.  Duncan chuffed into the front, coupled onto the front car, and the two engines chuffed away.

A @SashaRotton Dictionary

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If you ever want to have a conversation with my daughter, it would be helpful to know the following words:

app·a·cha
noun
applesauce.
ORIGIN sounds like applesauce

choo choo
noun
train.
ORIGIN from the sound that trains make

hot dog
noun
Mickey Mouse.
ORIGIN from the “Hot Dog Dance” at the end of every “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” episode.

nom·nom
noun
food she likes.
ORIGIN I think she got this one from the Internet

for·cha
noun
sweater or sweatshirt.
ORIGIN I have no idea

Thoughts 19 Hours Later

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The few who've managed to touch the iPad so far seem pretty much sold on it.  Fox News' Clayton Morris, for one, can't wait to get his hands on it.  But I'm not sold yet.  Maybe I will be once they appear in stores and I can try one out for myself.  But until then, I have a few specific problems with it that lean me on the "not buying" side of the fence.

1) No camera, ergo, no video chat.  How *great* would this have been as a Star Trek-style communications pad?  Unfortunately, this is a hardware limitation and would require a whole new revision of the product in order to solve.  I do believe the iPad will eventually have a camera, and I think there's a bit of disappointment amongst all the Apple fanboys and fangirls that it doesn't have one now. (Still don't get the purpose of a microphone with no camera in this day and age. Strikes me as really strange.)

2) Perhaps there will be a third-party solution to the camera thing, but that brings up a separate point.  What is still not known is Apple's degree of allowance regarding hardware expansion devices.  They, themselves, have come up with several add-on devices that connect through the dock port: a card reader, a USB-adapter (again, for connecting a camera), and a mechanical keyboard.  But their control over the dock port has been extremely tight on the iPhone and iPod Touch to this point, so I'm not optimistic that they'll be any more open on the iPad. Hopeful, but not optimistic.

2) No multitasking.  Frankly, multitasking on the iPhone/iPod Touch doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  There's just not the screen real estate to run applications side-by-side, so you can really only do one thing at a time anyway.  True, there's the whole issue of background notifications that was a thorn in the side of IM client writers, among others, for a long time, but Apple essentially addressed that using push notifications.  And yes, I would really, really like to listen to Pandora while web surfing on the iPhone and I can't do that now.  Those things can (and should!) be fixed.

But the iPad is a different story.  How great would it be to have on one half of the screen some sort of ESPN or NFL app listing all the scores and stats, in real time, of games in progress, and in the other half of the screen your Twitter client of choice where you can carry on a conversation lamenting how your team can't get it done in the red zone? (Forgive me, I'm a Redskins fan.) On the sleek form-factor of an iPad, without bulky keyboards to take up space, well *that* would rock.

And *that* could be solved in software.  The next round of Apple rumors is likely to involve iPhone OS 4.0, and whether multitasking will be unveiled.

So I'm in "wait and see" mode. I still love the idea, I'd just like to see some of these issues addressed before I send in my preorder.

Posted via email from taupecat’s posterous

Grading Myself

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Update: oh, I was pretty close on the “official Apple case that could be used as a stand” thing too, wasn’t I?

Well, let’s see how I did with my predictions:

  • Well, I couldn’t have been further off on the name. Apple seems stuck on the “i” prefix, though they avoided iSlate in favor of “iPad”. Honestly, iSlate would’ve been better.
  • Hardware keyboard = yes, Bluetooth keyboard = no. There’s an available hardware keyboard dock which I’m not thrilled about. But there IS (thanks to @macosken for pointing this out to me) Bluetooth on the device, so 3rd part Bluetooth keyboards are not outside the realm of possibility. Of course, no Bluetooth keyboard yet exists for the iPhone or iPod Touch, due to Apple’s limitations.
  • No OLED option, I think because the size of the device vs. the cost of OLED screens. But there are several options as far as memory size, plus 3G access is a separate charge, meaning you don’t HAVE to get 3G capability if you don’t want it.
  • No camera. WTF?
  • But YES on the microphone. DING DING DING! I got that one right. Of course, I had assumed video recording capability which would require a microphone. So the fact that there is a microphone without a camera leaves me slightly baffled.
  • It’s 0.02 inches THICKER than an iPhone 3G(s), so I was wrong there. But they’re comparable.
  • Even though it’s not OLED, it’s still (technically) HD, boasting up to 720p.

So overall, I don’t think I was any better or worse than anyone else as far as predictions go. The price point I was sorta right on, saying that the low model would go for $499, but I figured that would be for a 32GB model. Instead, that’s what Apple’s charging for their 16GB model. I think most people were calling it a lot higher than that. But yes, I did say the 64GB model would go for $699 which is what it is (minus 3G), but to be fair I had thought that the 64GB model would be OLED (which it’s not).

Overall, I’m giving myself a C. Your thoughts?

Martha Coakley’s Mr. Burns Moment

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The moment when Martha Coakley compared Curt Schilling, the hero of the 2004 Boston Red Sox World Series win, to a Yankees fan was the moment she lost the election.  It couldn't have been any plainer had she spat out, Mr. Burns style, a piece of Blinky, the three eyed fish.

Hopefully, that one moment in time hasn't doomed efforts to reform healthcare, but it may have.

Posted via email from taupecat’s posterous