It’s Friday! Get up and dance with me to Céline Dion’s “Unison”. I vividly remember dancing to this track back in the day on a solo trip to Montréal.
J.P.
Accuracy.
“Hey Siri, how late is Starbucks open?”
“Starbucks is open until 21:00”.
I walk the 1 1/4 miles to this particular Starbucks and it turns out it closes at 20:00 instead of 21:00. Yelp says it closes at 21:00 but Google says it closes at 20:00.
Apparently Google knows what it’s talking about.
Looking around at the various Starbucks within reasonable walking distance from our home, there’s no standardization of operating hours. The location closest to home closes at 20:00 (8:00 PM). Down the street closes at 23:00 (11:00 PM). The one to the east closes at 20:30 (8:30 PM). The maddening thing about this is the hours often change. What closes at 20:00 this week might close at 19:00 next week because “yeah”.
There’s an independent coffee shop within steps of our building but I’m not a coffee drinker. I drink tea. The independent shop has a weak choice of teas on a great day and they’re usually out of tea by this time in the evening. Their hours are consistent though; they’re reliably open until 23:00 every night.
Perhaps I need to start drinking coffee.
The Future.
Every once in a while I need to watch one of the “A Day Made of Glass” videos from Corning Glass. The video above is the 2nd chapter of the “A Day Made of Glass” series. It shows Corning’s vision of what they see computing in the future looking like for an average family; of course it’s all based around glass surfaces and glass based computing devices.
I believe the most important thing to remember about our computing future is that we will need to forget what we’ve known as far as form factor goes, and data exchange will need to be open. As long as our devices can talk to each other and exchange data, it won’t matter who made the device.
iPad!
Apple announced some changes to their iPad lineup today and I’m just thrilled! I’m still reading up on the announcement, but the iPad Air and the iPad Mini have both been refreshed with the latest Apple processor and Apple Pencil support. What wonderful news!
I truly believe the tablet will be the computing device of choice in the future, so seeing the “lower end” iPads get refreshed by Apple helps build that momentum to the future I’m envisioning.
I’m especially excited about the new iPad Mini with Apple Pencil support. Before my iPad Pro 10 (with Pencil support), the iPad Mini was always my tablet of choice for when I was flying. It ran my preferred Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) ForeFlight beautifully, even though the iPad Mini 4 was starting to fall behind in horsepower for that particular use. Using the iPad Pro 10 and an Apple Pencil in the cockpit has been wonderful, as ForeFlight has grown in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years and features beautiful functionality with the Apple Pencil, but the iPad Pro 10 is slightly too big for the airplanes I fly (primarily the Piper Cherokee series, Cessna 172s, and now the Diamond Sky DA-40). It works and works well, it just feels like it takes up a little too much space. Having an option to go back to the smaller iPad Mini is wonderful news.
I’m happy to see that Apple made this iPad announcement today, so they can focus on their new services offerings and their big announcement next Monday on 3/25.
You know I’ll be watching the keynote.
A Simple Thought.
Just do what you love. Embrace who you are and do what you love. The rest of it will all fall in place.
Flying.
So I went flying today. It was the first time in 2019 that I sat behind the controls in the cockpit. It was the first time ever for partaking in this activity in a Diamond Star DA-40. After some ground school, a very pleasant instructor went up and I tried my hand at flying the DA-40 for the first time.
I’m expanding my horizons. I have personal goals I want to meet this year. Now that weather is starting to cooperate, it’s time to fly.
I’ll also be reviving my aviation blog during this coming week. In the meanwhile, I’m looking forward to another flight tomorrow.
Friday.
I’d write about the news today, but it would just be too depressing. So here’s a picture of Earl and me in Philadelphia in 2007.
Chirping.
Truman makes the oddest chirping noise when he spots a laser dot on the floor. I haven’t heard cats make this noise other than when they see birds outside and they’re inside. But Truman chirps and chirps and chirps as he gallops around chasing the laser pointer.
I decided to look this up and researchers believe cats make this noise when they’re trying to hunt something they can’t physically get at, like when a bird is sitting on a branch outside and the cat is stuck inside. Truman doesn’t see anything physical associated with the red dot on the floor, other than the dot itself, and therefore he apparently starts chirping trying to attract its attention.
One of these days he’ll get this dot.
Make Your Own Kind Of Music.
I needed to dance to this in my office this morning. We need more Mama Cass in today’s world.
