I haven’t updated this in a while but if you follow my blog I wanted to direct your attention to tempesouth.com. Where you can find links to the scorecast, news and updates and track the progress of the team.
This is the first team from Tempe South Little League to ever win the District 13 Championship.
Go Tempe South!
When I first got my iPad, I was very impressed with the media capabilities. Watching Videos with NetFlix, Reading the Wall Street Journal, or USA Today and Epicurious is just gorgeous. It replaced my kindle the day I got it. And the games are decent, but there are still limits to what you can do with a touch screen (compared to a controller ) but the visual quality is outstanding.
Still, the one big draw back was creating content. Keyboard support is spotty, and there’s no easy way to flip between apps when you want to clip something from a website to put into a Pages document. Even creating emails felt like an iPhone app and not something you would expect to find on a useful computer with a screen this big. And don’t get me started about pen based input. It’s still a joke.
So I figured that the iPad would be mostly a reader or browser, until I saw Photosplash.
The first real program I used to create anything meaningful on my iPad was MaxJournal. During our vacation I kept a daily journal of what we did and attaching photos to it was cool. The iPad is still a nightmare to get photos on for me because I tied it to the iPhoto library on my home machine. Once you’re out on the road, getting photos onto it was not trivial. I had to upload them to a web page with another computer and copy them down. I know why Apple didn’t put an SD card reader on the iPad. There’s open, and then there’s open. Apple believes in open with their permission. But like Jobs wrote in multiple emails, if you don’t like it buy something else.
However, back to Photosplash. This is a very, very clever application that allows you to selectively color photographs. And for the first time, it’s a creative program that feels way more natural on the iPad than any other platform I could image. The gist of it, is that they made coloring with the tip of your finger feel intuitive, and natural. Like coloring with charcoal, or finger paints. The ability to zoom in – even beyond pixel depth, to smoothly trace a region or a line is just amazing.
In just a few minutes I was able to create these images, photos that would have taken me hours to do in Photoshop, mostly because I’d still have to figure out how to do it.
And for the cost of the program? It was well worth it. Now that I’ve seen it, it seems like it is possible – I can’t wait to see what else they come up with.
I have been using PDA’s forever. Going all the way back to the original Palm. Along the way, I was always obsessed with having a real keyboard. So I have a bizarre collection of foldable portable keyboards. Perhaps even more bizarre is that I kept them all. Well one of those turns out to be a Bluetooth keyboard manufactured by Think Outside (now iGo.com). After a little googling, I found the PDF guide for the keyboard and learned that
<Ctrl> <Left Fn> <Right Fn>
When held together will put the keyboard in discovery mode and low and behold the iPad will actually work with this keyboard! In fact, it works quite well. The Windows key acts like the Mac Command button, and the arrow keys and all the other function keys seem to work normally.
That has to be the first time ever that holding onto something for 10 years proved to be useful!
And the included Stand holds the iPad pretty well.
– Scott
There’s so many things to learn, it’s hard to keep track of them all. I found this one on Lifehacker.
I think like most people, I just don’t have the time to go through all my stuff. I often wonder who does have the time to tag every picture with faces, or to correctly label all your music. I’m sure it’s a wonderful thing if you do it, but my music collection has been a mess for… oh… 10 years? When did I go digital? Heck I don’t even remember. I do remember seeing my first iPod way back in 99. So it had to be shortly after that.
So I got a decade of crud built up in my collection and no amount of purging, murging or (what rhymes with *ging?) crying? pounding? well you get the idea. Nothing has really made it better. So we live in an uneasy truce. My iTunes library holds yet another project I will never get to.
But today I found a very clever hack with smart playlists that lets me enjoy my music without cleaning it up. Here’s the gist of it. A lot like using SQL queries to get lists of information that you then run new queries against (called sub-queries or views) you can create a smart playlist, then use ANOTHER smart play list to filter it. Essentially, you create 3 playlists, each that filters your music by quality and how recently it was played. Then you create a master list that combines those three. Songs you like a lot get mixed in more often. Using shuffle, it’s every bit as good as Pandora.
For mine, I had to weed out Spoken Word, Children’s, and about a dozen other non-music related genres. Then I created a list called “Banned” and anything that gets dumped in there gets excluded from my smart play list. Over time I can go back and decide if I want to keep any of that junk.
Give it a whirl. The only thing that confused me is that iTunes will change what options you have available depending upon what you are filtering against. For example, select “Author” and you get one set of options. Select Last Played and you get a different set of options. Just play around to see which song attributes have which options. Ultimately by combining different lists (rather than creating one UBER list) you can make some very powerful song combinations. I’ve been listening to mine all afternoon and nearly all the things it’s playing are awesome, including some music I haven’t heard for a long time.
So give it a whirl. It’s cool.
For quite a while I’ve used 1Password on my Mac to keep the 10,000 passwords I have to manage across all my accounts. This week I came across two tools that I’m very impressed with. The one problem with 1Password is that it doesn’t support google chrome (yet). And there’s no PC or Linux equivalent.
Well, Last Password (http://lastpass.com) is an amazing application that supports EVERY SINGLE browser I use. It stores all the information with one master password and early on I’ve been very impressed with it’s integration and utility.
The other nifty little tool I found via lifehacker.com. It’s a site called Password Card. (http://passwordcard.org). A Password card is quite clever. It’s basically a simple index card you carry in your wallet that allows you to create strong passwords and not have to remember them. How does that work?
Simple, you remember an index into the card, like square blue, or diamond green. Right now I’m playing with a triplet to recall like square white h9 or solidcircle purple v8. What does all that mean? You go to the solid circle symbol, then scan down to the purple row, and start reading off 8 characters vertically.
The reason for the 3rd option is that not all sites agree what makes a “strong” password. Some love the 8 random characters, symboles and digits, others need to see 9 before they thing a password is strong.
The genious of this system is that all you have to remember are simple things like a symbol name and a color, but the password itself is really difficult. You print the card, laminate it, and stick it in your wallet. Even if someone gets your wallet they won’t know what indexes to use to get your passwords. I’ve been using it for a few days, and so far I’ve been slowly upgrading all my passwords to “strong” passwords. It seems to work pretty well, especially with a tool like lastpass to help.
—
Update: It’s harder than I thought it would be to remember things like color, symbol, direction count for each website. And as good as last pass is, it can’t cover every situation. Like desktop apps that need to login. For example evernote, or iCal, or Mail. Keeping track of the symbol / colors is trickier than I thought.
The last two nights of little league baseball have been crazy. I watched both my sons teams build huge leads, and take certain victory into the last inning only to give it all up. We didn’t lose, but we didn’t win. That makes 3 ties for me this season. Coupled with my 3 at the end of last season I have 6 total ties. I think that has to be a record.
The last two nights were the wackiest as both teams took commanding leads into the last inning. Tuesday night, I brought in a developing pitcher and figured what could go wrong? 3 runs later and loading up the bases I watched the tying run come to the plate and I thought, man we need to end this. So I brought in an ace. Bang. Grand slam. THEN we get the out to end the game. Score 9-9. We have up 7 runs.
The culprit was everyone waiting for someone else to make a play. Any one of 3 or 4 kids could have won the game at any time if they caught the ball, threw the ball, or held onto it. But the real culprit was me who left the developing pitcher in too long. I think now I realize it’s better to pull a kid while he’s on top then to let him struggle.
This is probably why you see Major league managers pull a hot pitcher. Because they grab theme before they get into trouble. So everyone is thinking why are you pulling that guy? He’s on fire! Yup, but he’s about to go very, very cold.
I mean, if you’re going to give up the lead that’s the way to do it right? Then follows the gong show of dropped pop ups, ground balls going by two fielders to the fence, kids out of position, and beautiful strike out pitches getting past the catcher so they’re called balls. Kids not catching the ball when it’s thrown to them, or not hanging on to it for that final out. It didn’t help that the umpire completely blew a call at home plate early in the game which cost us a run. We had 5 or 6 chances to end that game and win it. 4 or 5 kids could have saved that game. No one did.
We took a 7-1 lead into the sixth inning and gave up 5 runs with 2 outs. Final score, 7-7.
I keep telling my kids that we’re tough to beat, but the reality is also that we need to finish. All of my latest ties we have allowed the other team to come from behind. I saw this play called Honus and me. In it Honus Wagner said, “Baseball is organized humiliation.” I also saw in the epic Ken Burns documentary about baseball that, “Baseball is made to break your heart.” Earl Weaver said baseball is the greatest game because, “you must give the other man his turn.” You can’t run out the clock, or play keep away, you must give the other guy his turn.
All that makes baseball probably the hardest of all to close, but we need to learn to close it. the lesson for my guys? Everyone can make a difference. Everyone. The key, is that when the opportunity comes to you in the form of a little white ball, make a play. Don’t wait for someone else. You be that guy. Be the guy to pick it up. Be the guy to catch it. Be the guy to throw it. Be the guy. Make a play.
If we can do that, I know we’ll win.
Well, after spending most of the Easter Holiday focused on my iPad I learned a few things.
My favorite apps so far?
None of the games have clicked for me yet, that’ll take some time but I know it’ll be a great gaming platform.
After a full day of use, my iPad ran down to about 18% of charge, so I threw it on the charger and grabbed my kindle. I started reading Bullpen Gospels by Dirk Hayhurst (funny but kind of depressing). I bought it through Amazon and started reading it on my iPad. When the batter got low I switched to my real kindle (v2) – but after an hour, I just couldn’t find a decent reading light – I went back, saw my iPad had charged to 40% and I snagged it and resumed reading on it. I may never use my kindle again.
However, there is one stupid thing about both the Kindle and iBooks readers – it’s the margins. Books have margins because (among other reasons) you need somewhere to hold the book without covering the text, or to take notes. But ebook readers a) don’t need margins for notes and b) I have the edge of the iPad or the kindle to hold. Why do I need another INCH of useless screen space? Can’t I just zoom to the width fo the content? This is the most stupid oversite in all these readers forcing me to use 1″ of screen for absolutely no reason. Get over it and let me zoom to the content width – just like mobile Safari.
The guys that nailed this are Marvel with their comic reader. I may actually start buying comics again. I think that was the first time I enjoyed reading a comic in 30 years. It’s better than the print editions.
So all in all, love the iPad. Will be interesting to see how much I really use it going forward, but it is now my default reader, of all kinds of media.
My iPad
So of course I pre-ordered my iPad and my less than 6 month old Kindle started to shoot me dirty looks. But you know, it’s another Jobsian hyped product and well… I had to have it. I’d read all the stuff I was supposed to read. Scanned all the blogs. Updated my iTunes at midnight. And here I sit on Easter Sunday playing with my new toy. (And my wife and children are standing over me wondering why I’m playing with this instead of them on Easter Sunday)
Okay, everyone has pretty much reviewed all the same things so I’m not going to cover any of that. What I’m going to hit are the stuff that wasn’t obvious to me from reading to the reviews good and bad.
Wow, this is unlike any other device I’ve ever played with. You just can’t get the experience of skimming through content with an iPad like you can on a touch or a phone. The big colorful screen making skimming USA Today, or NPR like nothing I’ve ever done. And in a world of been there done that, new experiences are to be relished.
I have a net book, a laptop, and desktop, and a kindle, and this thing blows them all away. I never really enjoyed reading on a pc, sitting in my chair like a kid at school, and cuddling up with a netbook… well just sucks, even if you try to rotate the screen. As for my kindle? It is AWESOME at reading paperback books, you know novels, but anything else? Come on. Just navigating to a chapter or verse is a nightmare. But the iPad? It really feels new and different. This I give an A+
It’s not really the bad. It is really more like the missing. I told my brother, the iPad is the exact opposite of a netbook. A net book is everything you want except the screen. Everyone knows the screen on ALL net books blow. Why? Probably because if they fixed that no one would pay for the much more expensive laptops. But an iPad is nothing but screen. And nothing else of a computer – no usb, no hard drive, no upgradable memory. No physical keyboard. Zilch. The bluetooth keyboard support for the iPad is nice, but an expensive add-on.
No where the iPad has a lot of room to improve is when it comes to creation. For example, that nifty photo in this article? I had to take that with my iphone and post it with my iphone then copy it over. There’s no camera or way to capture pictures with this thing. Also, a lot of apps are missing basic functionality you expect from a computer but don’t miss on a phone. For example, log into gmail with safari, then try to forward someone an email… wha? You can’t. Or how about in mobile mail, you want to make some text bold, or italics, or underlined… forget it. Really? You’re kidding me.
Also basic features you just get used to on a PC, I want to send an email to my baseball team and include a link to the game schedule and… iPad doesn’t multi-task. Instead of quick switching to a window in the browser with the information I need, I’m opening and closing apps. Man that feels clunky.
So we have to go, but here’s the bottom line after playing with it for a day. iPad has a long long way to go to be a competent content creation platform, even for bloggers. The lack of a camera is a big big omission. What’s more, the work pattern is so different, you just don’t realize what you’re missing until you reach for it and realize the platform doesn’t support it (like no scroll bar on the side of this text entry box in the word press blog page). And while Apple keeps hyping that flash is about video – Flash realistically is also about charts, and graphs, and useful tools (speakeasy.com), or livestrong.com weight management tools (yes, I’m trying to become a lesser person.) Video is perhaps the largest and… (wait for it) flashiest part of the web, but by no means is it the only useful application of Adobe’s signature web technology. Man I hope Apple and Adobe work this out.
But nothing, beats an iPad for enjoying wonderful media created by other people.
For quite a while I’ve felt like there were two types of people writing about history (or well anything). The first type, wrote from passion. They wanted to share with everyone something they enjoyed and what they had learned. The second type were writing to prove they knew something. The first type I considered a teacher. The second type I considered an academic. Well, the academics have invaded Wikipedia and ruined it. In an attempt to look up something obscure this morning, I turned to wikipedia and found this at the head of my article:
Now, I don’t mind that someone finds the quality of information not quite up to snuff, but the alarmist box at the very top of the article is nearly longer than the article is. What was great about Wikipedia was the idea that it was a community voice. I can go ask my friend a question about something and he can share with me what he knows. I don’t need citations, or protection from commercialism. I just want to know about something and it seems to me there should be a little more appreciation for the people that take their time to share this information and a lot less shouting from the people looking for proof.
Can you imagine if we treated everyone we talked to like this? Every scrap of information from your Doctor, to your best friend, to your government – come to think of that why can’t we get text books that are as accurate as Wikipedia? Or is that too much to ask? Probably is because then what we would have is books full of these types of screaming banners and we’d teach kids more about nit picking than life learning. So in the mean time, why not tone down the alarmism Wikipedia and relegate these warnings to a few tags out of the way. In other words, get out of the way and get back to what you were good at, allowing people to share information – even if it isn’t perfect.
One of the amazing things that has happened since I started GameTruck is the amazing people that have joined me in this business. Four years ago in my garage I had this crazy idea to create the ideal environment to play games with your friends. We’d pull it up to your house. I built a prototype in my garage, we research trailers, and trucks, and portable generators. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I knew I needed to do it. My brother Chris joined me on my crusade and my cause became his.
It was up and down. I remember buying a copy of the secret in Florida while I was going there to open a Studio for the Walt Disney Company. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know if GameTruck would survive, but after reading that book I realized I spent a lot of time focusing on things I didn’t want and not things I did. So I spent more time focusing on the future I wanted. I wanted orders. I wanted bookings. We wanted people to experience our parties. And when I got home, they called. Bookings went up.
I wrote an email to all our family and closest friends and I told them about my dream and I asked for prayers. And they prayed. And people called. By the summer a miracle had happened. Disney had a change in strategy and Florida was no longer in the cards. But more miraculously GameTruck business had exploded. Even more amazing a fantastic partner materialized out of thin air and David Wachtel joined me on my quest to build a brand new business, heck and industry.
It felt like yesterday but that was already three years ago. And yesterday the most amazing thing happened. I flew to Atlanta to meet a group of brand new Franchise Owners. They had their GameTrucks pulled into a circle in a giant parking lot – a pack of bright green elephants glowing in the soft spring rain. I was in awe. Here was an idea, that had started in my garage, a dream I had not only of making kids happy, of bringing people together with the best of video gaming but also teaching them how to be great gamers. Giving 
them a role model. But I also was helping people realize their own dreams of owning their own business, of establishing their own true asset, one that could generate more income than it could consume. From California to Georgia, from Portland to New Jersey, all across the country people – great people, were joining me, joining us the GameTruck team on our mission to change the way people play.
I was in awe. Richard Bach wrote that the law of the universe is Magnetism. The Secret says the same thing. The Bible tells us that we can do miracles if we can believe. So many people have said it much better than I but I stand as a witness to the power of a dream. Yet, the most motivational quote I read this past year came from Zig Ziglar, and it is this, “You can have everything you want in life. Just as soon as you help enough other people get what they want.’” I love that quote because it puts focus and vision on everything we do.
We help people play together. We help people get into business. We help people be successful in play, in business, and perhaps someday even in life. I am amazed and honored to be part of such a great group of people. I think I’m finally learning what it means to be living the dream.
– Scott