J.P.

Upgrades?

So last week Apple announced an upgrade to their iPad Pro line and their “regular” iPad. There wasn’t a big event around the announcement; it was more of a “here’s some new stuff” press announcement, which Apple occasionally does.

The tech world is not impressed. Neither am I.

A month or two ago I replaced my 2018 iPad Pro with a newer 2020 model. The reason I went this route is because I wanted to use the same Magic Keyboard from my 2018 iPad Pro for my new 2020 model, and I figured Apple would change everything about the 2022 iPad Pro. This is what people wanted, a new chassis with things like the front facing camera moved to the side (or the top of the iPad Pro in landscape mode), like a traditional laptop. They did not do this. It’s the same chassis, using the same accessories, just with the faster M2 chip. The current software available for the iPad Pro barely taxes the M1 chip announced back in 2020, there is absolutely no reason to upgrade to an M2 chip. There’s nothing out there that needs that horsepower. Plus, there was no Magic Keyboard refresh announced for the iPad Pro, so we still go without a row of function keys. Not good for a techie, we still rely on things like the Escape key.

The new iPad, or the iPad 10, has a new design. The webcam has been moved to the top of the iPad in landscape mode and uses the same design language as the iPad Air. However, the new iPad 10 uses the older Apple Pencil, not the magnetic version found on the other new machines. And because the original Apple Pencil is designed to use a lightning port for charging, and the new iPad 10 has a USB-C port, to charge your pencil you have to buy a dongle from Apple to convert the USB-C port to a lightning port.

Apple sure loves its dongles.

They’ve been saying for years that Apple has lost its way a bit since Steve’s passing. The company needs a strong leader that is willing to get their hands dirty coming up with solutions. I feel like Apple is devolving to their 1990s era when they had way too many products and the lineup was confusing. As I mentioned on social media last week, all that’s missing is the iPad Performa.

25 October 2022 by Apple. 0

And So It Begins.

I wish I could say I’m excited about the impending holiday season. I don’t even really get excited about Halloween anymore. Perhaps I’m becoming a cranky old man.

While the holiday experience is enjoyable, there’s a certain magic in the air that seems to be missing, at least for me. The coziness of the holidays has been replaced by Black Friday Sales, Online Tuesday Sales, 24 hour shopping experiences on Thanksgiving day, electronics, electronics, electronics, and trying to figure out what to buy people who don’t want to tell you what they want so you have to guess.

I’m not that perceptive in that area.

Halloween is in full swing. I doubt our carved pumpkins will survive the desert heat to make it to Halloween, but we went through the motions and I’m filling up on roasted pumpkin seeds.

Fiber makes the holidays better.

24 October 2022 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Rock.

We had a load of landscape gravel delivered to our home earlier this week. The load was seven tons and we all opted to move the gravel where it need to be ourselves. Today we finished the project and got the Yavapai (that’s the color designation, apparently) gravel where it needed to be.

I think the results are acceptable. My arms appreciated the work out.

23 October 2022 by Desert Life. 0

Test entry.

I think I have solved my strange characters issue in my blog. When a database is over 20 years old, it’s bound to have some rust.

This is a test entry with ‘lots of punctuation’ and off-beat characters like an é and an è. This is from my Mac.

Here’s a paragraph from my iPhone with è and õ and ü

And here’s an entry from my Linux machine with “quote marks” and ‘single quote marks’ and back ticks

And then one more paragraph from my “iPad Pro” with lots of things going on, including é and è and ø and ü and º degrees

22 October 2022 by Geek 0

Caturday.

Truman and the combined forces of Lucky and Jinx (our canine representatives in this entry) have come to some sort of understanding.

  1. Canines do not bother kitty when he’s in Daddy’s office
  2. Tails that brush by kitty on a bench are fair game
  3. If one of the canines sniffs a feline butt, the feline shall do the same to the canine

The three of them have actually come to some sort of understanding and I haven’t heard a feline drama scream of dissatisfaction in weeks. I think everyone has decided to be friends.

22 October 2022 by He's A Feline. 0

First!

I went for a ride to the southeast of Tucson and drove through Sierra Vista and around nearby Fort Huachuca. It was in Sierra Vista that I discovered the very first McDonald’s Drive Thru.

I noticed the “McDonald’s” in the main sign and the “McDonalds” in the little sign.

21 October 2022 by Desert Life. 0

View.

There are days when I really can’t believe this is actually our back yard.

20 October 2022 by Desert Life. 0

Music = Art.

I was a senior in high school when I first heard this track and I found it absolutely entrancing. I was driving a 1976 Pontiac Astre (a Vega wannabe) and had this song on a cassette that was given to me by a friend. For me, this is when I realized that modern music could truly be art. The ambience of this track is entrancing.

From 1985 heres Art of Noise with Moments In Love.

19 October 2022 by DJ 0

Reflective.

Before the current technology of highly reflective tape, and other 21st century materials, were used to make the road signs along the nation’s highways, we had letters called “Button Copy”. These are metal or ceramic letters with reflectors embedded in the letter, approximating the shape of the letter when illuminated by vehicle headlights.

Lots of folks will say the technology is outdated because new nEW NEW is always better (a 21st century attitude if I ever heard one), but in actuality, button copy signs had a shelf life measured in decades, while today’s signs are expected to last one decade. Original signs did not use reflective backgrounds, only the message legend was illuminated, but back in the 80s some in the U.S. government decided the color of the sign needed to be reflective as well, and that’s when button copy began to struggle a little bit. Signs were actually a little too bright when designed to be completely reflective, and the button copy was washed out by the rest of the sign panel.

ADOT can’t decide whether they’re going to get rid of the metric signs along Interstate 19 and convert the whole road to the inferior English Units. The roadway was built when the United States was strongly considering moving the metric to come up to speed with the rest of the world, but then Reagan was elected to office and we began the whole “‘Merica!!!” movement and for some reason the metric system became associated with the devil and conspiracy theories.

ADOT did replace all the metric signs with new metric signs in the late 1990s, some of the last “button copy” signs to be installed in the United States. Many of these signs stand today and aren’t doing too bad in the reflectivity department for being over 20 years old.

The sign on the left lost its Interstate 10 route marker years ago. I don’t know why it wasn’t ever replaced, probably because the sign was going to be replaced and then they couldn’t decide if they were going to keep the metric system on the roadway or not so it just stays there missing.

18 October 2022 by Geek Random 0

Vote.

Pima County here in Arizona is big on early voting. I like taking advantage of this perk and we did our civic duty by voting today. We just dropped our ballots off a the post office.

We often hear that this election is the most important election of our lifetime, and I’m actually feeling that vibe these days. The U.S. government is in such disarray at the moment and voting is our only weapon to actually help mediate this chaos.

I’m not looking forward to the election cycle after these midterm elections are over, because we all know that as soon as the last ballot is cast we’re going to be hearing about the 2024 Presidential Election. And quite frankly, I don’t really want to hear about that. I’m not particularly fond of anyone in office right now, but we’re doing the best we can do with what we’ve got.

Just go out and vote. Please.

17 October 2022 by Why. 0

About Me.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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