Padding About

Posted on February 19, 2011 by Granger Meador

At home with my iPad

I love my iPad, which I purchased in early May. So what lessons have I learned after using the iPad for nine months?

  • Save money on memory. Unsure of how I would use this trend-setting device, I bought the top-of-the line model with 64 GB of storage and both WiFi and 3G connectivity. Looking at my iPad this morning, it shows I have used:
    • 42.2 GB for audio
    • 4.4 GB for applications
    • 4 GB for video
    • 0.47 GB for “other”
    • 0.13 GB for photos
    • 0.02 GB for books

    So at first glance it would appear I chose wisely on memory capacity. However, I almost never listen to audio on my iPad, instead relying upon my Apple TV at home and my iPhone 4 on the road. So I could have saved $200 and done just fine with 16 GB of memory on the iPad. I also rarely watch video on it, although sometimes I’ll have a video podcast running as I wander around the house. Things might be quite different if I did not have an original Apple TV, but I do, and music and video are far better on my big HDTV and surround sound system than on any portable device.

  • 3G is nice to have. I have gone back and forth on using the iPad’s 3G connection. You only have to sign up for 3G service on a monthly basis, although AT&T is greedy and automatically renews the service each month unless you remember to cancel it before the renewal date. I’ve gone without the 3G service a few times since I was just using the iPad around the house, where WiFi is available and faster. But on the road I find WiFi hot spots are too rare to be of much use. Few restaurants in Oklahoma have WiFi and hotels are very unreliable about extending WiFi beyond their lobbies. And it is most frustrating to use the iPad with no active internet connection – you can read a book just fine and view articles you’ve already saved in InstaPaper, but you miss the web right away. And while I can make do with the iPhone’s browser, the iPad is a far more comfortable read for a guy in his 40s. The iPhone 4 now has a HotSpot feature where you can tether it to your iPad or laptop and use the iPhone’s cellular data, so that is an option.
  • A hardware switch for screen orientation is preferred. In one of the iOS updates Steve Jobs decided to change the switch on the side of the iPad from locking the screen orientation (the iPad can switch from landscape to portrait mode by tilting it) into a useless mute switch. I never have to mute my iPad but am often annoyed by the screen rotating unexpectedly as I carry the iPad around the house. So I’m glad to hear that the next iOS update should give the option of making that switch lock the orientation again. Steve is brilliant, abrasive, and fallible.
  • Multi-tasking is a mixed blessing and the battery life is so-so. I’m spoiled by the long battery life of my iPhone 4 and my Kindle 3. I’m often surprised that in a session with the iPad I may use up 20% of its battery life. While I’ve never drained it dry in a single day of intermittent use, it has led me to become somewhat obsessive about shutting down apps that might be running in the background. Apple added multi-tasking in an iOS upgrade, but in the task manager you can’t tell which apps are really running in the background and draining your battery and which are just listed because they were used recently. So I’m going to try to modify my own behavior and pretend there is no multi-tasking manager. I’m going to just let everything run and get in the habit of plugging the iPad in for a recharge each night.
  • Photo editing doesn’t happen. The next iPad will likely get some sort of camera, but I can’t foresee using a bulky tablet to take photos. So I presume it will primarily be used for video chats, something that does not appeal to me in the slightest. I have a slew of photo editing apps on the iPad, but I never use them because it is far too difficult and clumsy to get photos on to the device from my iPhone 4 and I’d rather edit the nice photos from my superzoom camera using Aperture on my Macbook Air or Photoshop Elements and ThumbsPlus on my desktop PC than with the iPad’s apps. So the Camera Connection Kit dongle for the iPad was also a waste of money for me.

So what do I find myself using my iPad for?

  • Morning news. Each day I scan through headline stories from the Tulsa World (although I prefer to use its mobile news web page over its iPad app), the Bartlesville radio station, the New York Times, and the frequently disappointing USA Today. I’ve been trying out The Daily for over a week, but its stories, like those of USA Today, are too short and lack the kind of connectivity to deeper information which I would like. Its interface and layout are also more annoying than useful. I’d still subscribe to The Daily if it would have more in-depth news, but evidently that isn’t their business model. I’ve also tried using Flipboard to scan headlines from other sources, but while the interface is nice, I haven’t found compelling content to link to it.
  • Browsing, WikiPedia, and Facebook. The best thing about the iPad is surfing the net from the couch. I like Wikipanion for WikiPedia access, but Facebook’s own iPad app has odd failings and limitations. For a long time I just had the normal web page link saved as a shortcut on my iPad, but now I’ve discovered the Friendly Facebook for iPad app, and its interface works better for me, and it was well worth paying a buck to upgrade to Friendly Plus to get rids of the ads in the free version.
  • Kindle e-Books. I’d use the Kindle app on the iPad much more, of course, if I didn’t have a Kindle 3 with its easier-on-the-eyes and visible-in-sunlight display. But when I want to surf the web at a hotel or restaurant, the iPad wins hands down over the pitiful browser on the Kindle, so it is great to also be able to read my Kindle books on the iPad.

Given my past experience with the iPhone, I’ll probably skip a generation and do without the iPad 2, which everyone expects to be announced soon. I’d be wiser to just wait another year for the iPad 3. By then the battery in my iPad will be wearing out and I expect I’ll be ready for a more powerful, thinner, and lighter pad. But I do expect to use a pad like this for the rest of my days – the future is here and I like being in it.

UPDATE: I’m well on the way to Apple fanboy status. The iPad 2 was announced on 3/2/2011 as thinner, faster, and with a better cover design. So I promptly sold my 64 GB iPad WiFi+3G to Gazelle.com and will be ordering an iPad 2 on 3/11. But this time I’ll opt for only 16 GB of memory. And I think I may just order the WiFi model and use the new Hotspot feature on my iPhone 4 if I need cellular data for the iPad.

3/14/2011 UPDATE: I stood in line at my local Wal-Mart on the release day and snagged a 16 GB WiFi iPad 2. I love using Home Sharing to access my desktop’s iTunes library from the iPad, iPhone, MacBook Air, and new Apple TV. AirPlay is great for sending video and audio from my iPad to the Apple TV wirelessly. And while I like the new Smart Cover, it was only worthwhile upgrading to the iPad 2 because I could sell my old model for same price as the new one.

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Remix and Mashup

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Granger Meador

Years ago I subscribed on YouTube to anything put out by New York filmmaker Kirby Ferguson. He has posted videos ranging from the Iron Man dance, to how movies overuse Trajan, to punchline piracy.

Now Kirby has embarked on what will become a four-part video series, Everything Is A Remix. Parts 1 and 2 are out and I learned something from each. I’m donating to this project, for when I see really great work on the web and the artist asks for donations or offers up paid extras, I often respond. They should be rewarded for their effort and I have the selfish excuse that I also want this talented person to keep producing. I’ve donated money or purchased items for such efforts as:

Sita Sings the Blues is a perfect segue to Kirby Ferguson’s latest video project on remixes. Nina Paley’s animated movie used old jazz tunes by Annette Hanshaw and a variety of animation styles to retell the Hindu epic the Ramayana, mixing in the story of her own failing marriage. That’s what I call a mashup!

Part 1 of Everything Is A Remix focuses on remixing in music, using Led Zeppelin lifts as exemplars. (Sorry, but the embedded Vimeo videos in this post and some of the YouTube links don’t work on an iPad.)

Part 2 looks at the sequelitis afflicting the cinemaplexes, noting how Star Wars was both a pastiche of and homage to earlier films. And don’t be fooled by the early ending in part two…there is an addendum about how Kill Bill is a Hollywood mashup.

So what is the difference between a remix and a mashup? In my parlance remixes are alternate versions of a work, while mashups blend two or more works together. In my late teens I bought a number of remixed songs, which were often created as extended dance tracks for discothèques. I especially liked long remixes of songs from my favorite album of that era, The Lexicon of Love by ABC. More recently I’ve been charmed by remixes of old songs by another band from Sheffield, The Human League. Acoustic versions of pop songs are another type of remix, I suppose. I love Teddy Thompson even when it is just him and his guitar, and closer to home there’s even an acoustic version of Mmmbop, for goodness sake, and frankly it’s pretty good.

There are folks who are best known for remixing, such as FatBoy Slim, aka Norman Cook. I used to just sit and watch music visualizers while playing Praise You, which filmmaker Spike Jonze would turn into memorably funny performance art. Wikipedia reports the song has a vocal sample from Take Yo’ Praise by Camille Yarbrough, a piano sample from an audio test track caused Balance and Rehearsal, a guitar sample from It’s a Small World from a Mickey Mouse Disco album, and the song’s bridge even samples the theme from Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Even more impressive to me is how FatBoy Slim transformed the original slow version of Brimful of Asha by Cornershop into a spectacular pop confection. And need I point out that the song itself is a tribute to Asha Bhosle, who looped songs for over 1,000 Bollywood movies? We just keep mixing.

Now there are entire albums being reworked, such as the Whipped Cream & Other Delights Rewhipped covers of the original album by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. In another case we have more talented musicians reworking the songs of a gifted oddball in Discovered Covered for Daniel Johnston. Compare Beck’s take on True Love Will Find You In The End to the rough original, or Daniel’s performance of Go to that by Sparklehorse and The Flaming Lips. Should I point out that Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse and Vic Chesnutt, who both provided covers for Discovered Covered, have since committed suicide? No doubt they treasured the sublime poignancy of Daniel’s songs and empathized all too well with the heartbreaking story of his mental illness and struggles with manic depression.

The first musical mashup that latched on to me was when Soft Cell released a version of Tainted Love which blended seamlessly into a cover of the Supreme’s Where Did Our Love Go – at the 2:24 mark in the video link. Blending the 1964 Supremes hit with this huge 1982 hit makes sense when you realize that Soft Cell was just covering the 1964 original of Tainted Love by Gloria Jones. I force my students to listen to this mashup every year as we use an old phonograph to calculate conversions between angular and linear speed.

A couple of years ago I bought a Beatles mashup, Love, in which Giles Martin intermixed various songs and alternates takes. It is a curious joy to hear Drive My Car blending so effortlessly with What You’re Doing and The Word. That led me to seek out other mashup artists, such as:

  • World Famous Audio Hacker, whose Triple Southern Mash is a delightfully odd and unauthorized mix of the Beastie Boys, Warren Zevon, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, while Rise of the Virals is an 8-bit audio tribute to Tron. The unauthorized nature of his mashups may be why this artist has almost disappeared from the web as of late.
  • The Avalanches, whose Frontier Psychiatrist has hilarious audio inserts from 37 spoken word records and many other samples, some of which are nicely identified here.

I’m looking forward to the next parts of Everything Is A Remix, and the endless remixes, mashups, and homages to come. As you will note, I do insist on the Oxford comma, despite the rude put-down by Vampire Weekend.

Posted in music, video, web link | 1 Comment

Big Snow

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Granger Meador

February opened with a big snowstorm which shut down the city for a bit.  Here’s my video shot during the storm with photos of the aftermath as I spent the next morning shoveling.

Click here for a Flickr slideshow

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Queen Wilhelmina

Posted on January 30, 2011 by Granger Meador

Queen Wilhelmina State Park (click image for slideshow)

At the tail end of January the weekend forecast said highs would reach the 70s in western Arkansas, so I made plans for a lengthy day hike. The target would be Queen Wilhelmina State Park just across the Arkansas border along the Talimena Skyline Drive.

Knowing how cloudy the Skyline Drive can be, I took lower and safer roads for my night drive to the park. Thankfully I’d researched the route in advance, so I noticed when Trixie the GPS lived up to her name and tried to steer me 10 miles east of Mena. That couldn’t be right, as the lodge is only about five miles from the Oklahoma border. But Trixie did take me right by the turnoff from the low road that would climb up to the Skyline Drive and the Lodge, so I just followed the signs.

Online reviews had correctly pointed out that the lodge had a nice staff but a ho-hum facility. This is the third lodge atop Rich Mountain, which projects about 2,600 feet above sea level, about 100 feet lower than Mount Magazine, which I visited seven months earlier. The first lodge was built in 1897 by the Kansas City, Pittsburg & Gulf Railroad as an unusual retreat for passengers. The railroad was largely financed by Dutch interests, which may explain the decision to name it after Holland’s young Queen Wilhelmina. The lodge was only open for three years and then abandoned and left to fall into ruin.

In 1957 Arkansas purchased the area for a state park and the stones from the original lodge were used to construct a new lodge which opened in 1963 but was destroyed by fire in 1973. So today’s lodge dates to 1975. It has no grand spaces, but a comfortable lounge and restaurant with picture windows affording a south view from the rim of Rich Mountain. I’d reserved the cheapest room and the friendly lady who took my reservation over the phone had warned me it was on the second floor with no elevator service and only had one small window. That suited me fine, since I’d be on the trails all day.

My room was compact and clean and throughout my stay I was impressed with the hospitality of all of the staff. After a large breakfast I set out to take two of the park’s three small trails – the Lover’s Leap and Reservoir Trails. The park straddles the immense Ouachita Trail, so that is also an option allowing you to walk as far as you like east or west out of the park. I first strode over to a little garden area with a windmill and lounging frog sprinkler.

Across the way I could see another of those nice signs Arkansas has at every park, this one for the Lover’s Leap Trail. The actual trailhead was down the slope next to the train track, which wound its way off around the rim of the mountain. Each trail had its own blazes, although the trails are so straightforward that blazes are superfluous.

I encountered a couple I’d seen in the restaurant and told them I was glad they had decided not to leap. The trail changed levels with the help of some wood steps and then I reached a platform for the trail’s namesake vista, where I shot a panorama. From there I could see the anchoring ridge rock before turning downslope to reach the intersection with the Ouachita Trail headed out east along the ridge. I turned to remain on Lover’s Leap, reaching a nice section of trail where a rocky bluff had been reformed into a trail bed. I knew this park was built long after the CCC era, but someone worked hard here, and I was glad to find a marker stone crediting a 1996 trail crew. I suspect they did some additional work farther along.

The trail crossed a bridge and the lodge loomed above me where Lover’s Leap met the Reservoir Trail. I followed it on westward down the mountain’s southern rim to a walk-in campsite and then down some older stone steps which were serviceable but hardly up to CCC standards. They quickly led to the old reservoir for the original lodge. Then I retraced my steps and climbed up to the lodge.

Outside was Old Glory and inside I came across a portrait of Delta Meador, evidently a resident of the Ouachitas but not a known relative of mine. I took advantage of the outdoor WiFi signal to upload my trail track and associated iPhone photos to EveryTrail.

 

Click for Lover’s Leap & Reservoir Trail Photo Map

That took an unreasonably long time, so I decided to head into the lodge for the burger special for lunch. I was well nourished for my more ambitious afternoon hike along the short Spring Trail and then westward along the Ouachita Trail for as long as my feet or the sunlight would allow.

I reached Dierks Lumber Company’s Engine 360, a steam locomotive built by Alco-Schenectady in 1920 as DeQueen & Eastern’s 360. I got a shot of it ready to steam off into the pretty afternoon sky.

Nearby was the Wonder House, which is really two houses which are joined together by a rain roof. Inside are reportedly park historical displays in buildings with nine levels, a 21-foot long bed, a trap door, and ice-free stairs – whatever that means. However, it was locked up tight.

The Spring Trail began behind the park amphitheater and ran to a spring which I’ll admit was so unimpressive I never even noticed it, popping out at the other end of the trail after half a mile. I spotted the heavily marked trailhead for the Ouachita Trail, which winds 225 miles eastward from Talimena State Park in Oklahoma to Pinnacle Mountain State Park west of Little Rock, Arkansas. Remember how the trailhead on the east end of the mountain had only the one stone marker? Evidently that is equivalent to four post markers, one of which said a pioneer cemetery was 1.25 miles down the trail – that sounded promising.

I spotted a quadruple tree by the trailside and a sign pointed out a nice vista, although there were noticeable unexplained smoke plumes out across the forest below. Soon the trail ran alongside old stacked rock walls, which traced out a lost pioneer community on the ridge of Rich Mountain. A fallen tree had left the world’s largest splinter sticking up beside the trail, and then I exited the park across a wooden bridge.

Only A Rose

A small rivulet carried iron oxide across the trail, and then I spotted the low wood rail fence surrounding the old cemetery. Various gravesites were decorated with flowers, including one more recent stone for Bill Hefley, who passed in 1952. The forlorn artificial rose at one grave site called to mind the great song Only A Rose by Geraint Watkins, an old Welsh boogie-woogie player, joined in performance below by friend Nick Lowe on the guitar.

I’d noticed that trail ran just south of the Skyline Drive, and a short trail led up to the highway from the cemetery. A sign pointed out that the Oklahoma state line was only about three miles farther westward. That would stretch my hike, but I decided to go for it.

I saw a rock ledge above me alongside the trail and clambered up for a respite. I was listening to the last part of the immense The Pillars of the Earth, and a broken branch on a nearby dead tree reminded me of the hangings which bookend that long tale of medieval England.

With that happy thought I ventured down the trail, where at the Mile 49 marker I spotted an immense boulder field down the hillside from me. I relied upon a malfunctioning trekking pole to help me negotiate the rough hillside to admire the immense spread of stone.

Back up on the trail I passed a tree perch and then the sky above me was pierced by a large microwave relay, which dwarfed even a big tree beside the trail. I passed a thick rock shelf and finally reached the state line, where a trail sign gave distances to distant landmarks.

I ascended to the Skyline Drive, where a sign informed me I was in the Upper Kiamichi River Wilderness. I crossed the road to a turnout, where I discovered a sign about how an 1877 survey found that the 1825 survey for the border of Arkansas had been too far west. They left the line where it was, robbing the Choctaws of 136,000 acres. Good old Uncle Sam. A short trail led north to the supposed 1877 marker, but damage made it undiscoverable. However, I could easily spot a 1935 survey marker.

I only strayed far enough into Oklahoma so that Arkansas could welcome me back, and quickened my pace to beat the sunset back to the lodge over five miles away. Back in the park I followed the narrow rails of the miniature train track to the shed where the Rich Mountain Scenic Railroad’s train was hidden away. A cute sign proclaimed this was the Southern Belle Depot, but like at so many other depots in this part of the country, there were no passengers. Perhaps they were frightened away by the tree ghoul lurking alongside the track.

I reached the lodge as the Golden Hour approached, with the Arkansas state flag flapping in the breeze. The Queen silently greeted me and I hurried to my room for a much-needed shower. I had walked over thirteen miles and was footsore but happy.

 

Click for Ouachita Trail Photo Map

I had a little steak dinner with a scoop of ice cream for dessert in the lodge restaurant, after stopping at the front desk to retrieve my iPad. I’d loaned it to the restaurant manager as I left for my afternoon hike, as he was considering purchasing one but had not had any hands-on experience with one. Yes, I was careful to shut down my personal services and wipe the histories on the iPad before loaning it out. He wasn’t the only one who commented on my device in the restaurant – no Apple stores in the Ouachitas. My obvious use of electronics paid off, since as I returned to my room the desk clerk stopped me and held out my set of ear buds, saying they’d been found on the stairs and she figured they were mine. Darn pockets!

I had to upload my EveryTrail track and iPhone photos from the long afternoon trek, and then had oodles of photos from my superzoom camera to edit. I was slowed somewhat since I was using Aperture, a popular Macintosh photo app, for the first time. My Windows version of Adobe Photoshop Elements had protested about another installation on my Macbook Air, so when the new Mac App Store went online I took advantage of a good deal on Aperture so I could have a native app for photo retouches on the road. It wasn’t too hard to figure out and gave good results, although it can’t stitch together panoramas and GPicSync won’t run on my up-to-date version of the Mac OS. So I used Parallels to run Windows Live Photo Gallery for panoramas and used the Windows version of GPicSync to add geotags to my photos. It all worked well, although I never managed to finish the post that day as the lodge WiFi was t o o   s l o w.

Sunday morning I awoke to find a dozen or photos had never uploaded. Hotel WiFi is the bane of the blogger. I had breakfast down in the restaurant, finding the entire mountain top shrouded in a cloud. I moved out of my room and tried finalizing this post using the lounge WiFi, but that too was far too sluggish. So I hopped in the car and drove down the mountainside through the cloud. Thankfully the low road was clear, although it was overcast and cold. I zipped home to finish up this post and do some laundry, knowing that in a couple of days we might have a heavy snow – what a contrast to a warm day of hiking on a mountain ridge.

Click here for a slideshow of this day hike

Posted in day hike, music, photos, travel, video | 2 Comments

Back on the Trails in Tulsa

Posted on January 22, 2011 by Granger Meador

Traipsing in Tulsa (click image for slideshow)

I did not hike for the first three weeks of 2011, instead fighting a sinus infection which I managed to enhance with a rash and hives via an allergic reaction to penicillin. That was a reminder of childhood which I could have lived without! Thankfully today I finally felt strong enough to tromp some trails.

A snow had closed school on Thursday, but by Saturday morning the roads were quite clear and I drove south to Kilkenny’s Irish Pub in Tulsa’s Cherry Street district. I had the delicious “Chatsworth” boxty, which is a grilled potato pancake stuffed with slow-cooked chicken breast sauteed with fresh garlic, shallots, mushrooms and red peppers in white wine, and topped with white wine sauce. I followed that up with Irish Balloons – fried pastry balls dusted with powdered sugar and served with sweet Irish whiskey butter sauce. Oh my!

After gorging myself I ventured over to Woodward Park, a frequent haunt of portrait photographers. I was so happy to be walking out in nature again that I danced my way down snowy slopes to a silly tune on my iPod. Descending snow-covered steps and using stepping stones to cross the frozen creek over to Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit, I admired the winter sun radiating about his upturned head. Passing the faux wood bridge and frozen grotto by the frozen creek, I reached Rosalind Cook’s Poems and Promises, struck by how from some angles the figure seems to defy gravity. I don’t care for her facial features from some angles, but I do like to gaze across her right shoulder and prefer her to the nearby nymph.

I found I felt good enough for a hike, so I ventured over to Redbud Valley. The trip took longer than expected, as a parked train blocked my way, forcing me to take Tiger Switch Road over to Catoosa and wind my way over to the preserve past an old quarry. Unlike many visitors, who turn right to enjoy the loop along the bluffs, I took the snowy path through the woods and across the glades to maximize the length of my walk. Striding past a picturesque bench, I carefully navigated the crevice down through the bluff and posed below a rock arch. The springs at the end of the bluff were stilled, and I only encountered one group of hikers during my entire two-mile walk.

The footprints of earlier hikers made the bluff trail easy to follow despite the snow, and I traipsed along and under the bluff, admiring the clefts and threading the rocky passages and narrow ledges. At the end of the trail I spotted a dilapidated adjacent barn and lengthened my journey by reversing course to follow the creek below the bluffs. It had eaten away a section of trail, collapsing the wood walkway. Reaching the crooked fence at the far end of the bluffs, I again reversed course and returned to the car.

There were a few hours of daylight left, so I drove east to the main portion of the Oxley Nature Center, pausing to shoot an active quarry from the warmth and safety of my car, with blast whistle signals shrieking in my ears.

At Mohawk Park I headed straight for Blackbird Marsh. As expected, the walkway led out over a frozen scene. I sat on the edge of the walkway, dangling my feet onto the ice below. The icy surface of the marsh certainly wasn’t strong enough to support my weight, but I enjoyed supporting myself on my arms while putting enough weight on my legs to make the ice shudder and groan. On my stroll back to the car, I encountered three deer. They scurried across the trail, then paused to stare at me intently. They won the contest, and I retreated to a bench at Meadowlark Prairie and caught the glimmer of the sun across the frozen surface of the pond. Then I watched birds above Lake Yahola as the light failed.

Dinner was downtown at Spaghetti Warehouse, then I drove past the BOK Center over to Boston Avenue Methodist to admire how its Art Deco spire speared the night. Nearby bronze children danced as my day drew to a close, having walked over four miles after three weeks of languishing at home. I’m back on happy trails.

Click here for a slideshow from this adventure

Posted in day hike, photos, travel | 1 Comment