I almost want an iPad (Or NO FARMVILLE FOR YOU!)

Quick math quiz - solve for X: Old Dell Laptop + X > iPad - X

The solution in just a minute, but first some background. I, like most of the free world spent a great deal of time following the live coverage of the new Jesus Pad powered by Unicorn Tears presented by Steve Jobs himself (instead of being a productive contributor to my employer). At first I was wondering what was wrong with me. I just wasn't beside myself with crazy fervor over the iPad. I must be running low on Apple Kool-Aid, surely they couldn't have totally whiffed what was supposed to be their most revolutionary gizmo ever. It was just a big ass iPod Touch, no wild hand flailing like a futuristic Tom Cruise in Minority Report, no wireless HDMI, and not even a single camera (let alone two of them).

At least the price was a bit of a surprise. Sure, it still out costs most serviceable netbooks and even some full notebooks, but for a first gen Apple product to be under 7 bones, that was pretty impressive. Still I kept wondering what was wrong with me, why wasn't I trying to figure out the best way to make this thing a part of my life? I simply decided I must be in the process of losing my cool, I am a parent after all, and by the time the kids hit middle school the cool will be completely gone anyway.

So I did something odd, I simply went on with my life and got back to work. Then my thoughts wandered off into the realm of how my wife and I use our computers at home. We each have our own laptops (I inherit her old ones, she gets the new ones.) My wife's MacBook is getting to be of a certain age, so soon it shall be mine, and my old Dell can find a new life on a farm where it can frolic and play with other decrepit computers.

Then thoughts of the iPad and the $499 entry price sunk in. Hey, you know you could buy TWO iPads for the price of a MacBook and each have your own shiny new Unicorn Tear powered device. No more stupid arguments over who's the most downtrodden second-class citizen in the family. Being at work, my mind shifted to use case and workflow analysis.

My wife and I pretty much do the same stuff on our laptops; we just sort of fart around with them after the kids go to bed. You know the same thing everyone does, e-mail, Facebook, web surfing and so forth. Hmm... the iPad does that, and it offers a seemingly better form factor (and no wobbly lid and loose hard drive cage like my Dell). Holy cow, now I get it... NOW I'M COOL AGAIN!

I was ready to start pitching my wife on the idea when we got home from work. And I started thinking a little bit more about the specific sites we visit on our laptops. Then I had a horrible thought: No Tiki Farm! No Farmville! CRAP! My wife more than me is addicted to one of these silly Facebook games, and then I realized, it's Flash based. Early reviews of the iPad confirm there's no Flash. After a quick inventory of the sites I visited frequently, I realized there was a lot of Flash involved. It's kind of a big deal

Sure we've all lived with iPhones without Flash for a long time now, but that's a different animal in my mind. I use the phone differently, sure it's sometimes a bummer to not have Flash support, but I still prefer to do a lot of things on a larger screen. Not having it on the iPad on the other hand is a serious problem. Basically, I would need to have the iPad AND still hang on to my rickety old Dell so I can whip it out when I feel the need to watch Hulu or any number of other tasks. The old laptop still can surf the web, and check e-mail and do everything else the iPad can do, except I can't turn it upside down, the screen would probably fall off or something.

Yeah that seems kinda stupid to me too. So the answer to our math quiz is flash: Old Dell + Flash > iPad - Flash. It can do all the web surfing, watching videos e-mail fairly competently as well as play stupid little games where I have to try and annoy enough friends into joining my quest to plant virtual pineapples.

Ok, well it's early in the game the iPad isn't in anyone's hands yet, maybe Flash can make it into the iPad at or shortly after shipping time. Also, perhaps pigs will fly.

But then again, Steve's reasoning was that the resource hog nature of Flash would melt the poor little iPhone into a quivering mass of molten mobile phone processor bits. The iPhone just couldn't give Flash the necessary resources. Ok, understandable I've seen how some apps simply make my poor phone whimper in pain. And of course being a dedicated fanboi, I'd never question His Jobbiness. Well, except there's one thing I don't quite understand Mr. Jobs - unlike the iPhone, by all accounts, the iPad runs like a stripe-assed ape. Imagine I said that last part like detective Columbo.

So if the iPad is a speed demon, is there actually a reason (other than it is kinda crappy) Apple will put forward as to why Flash won't work on it this time?

While I wouldn't mind cashing in my old Dell for my wife's gently used MacBook, I'd much rather have other options. I burn my incense and swing the dead chicken over my head at my little shrine of the great Apple (while facing Cupertino of course) and pray that there may be a lasting peace made between the houses of Adobe and Apple and the iPad could indeed become a respectable citizen of my leisure time.

I promise you Oh Great Jobs, I won't be greedy, I won't ask for Flash on the iPhone. I will trust in your wisdom in such magics, but please please let me live a peaceful existence of technical equity with my significant other.

Until then, you can find me at the store buying duct tape for my trusty old Dell.

RD Tabs

RD Tabs by Avian Waves is one of those applications that I have to download before I can even thing about using my work computer to accomplish anything resembling work.

On the surface, RD Tabs is a remote desktop application that gives you a tabbed interface for multiple remote desktop windows. When you have to have multiple remote machines up on your desktop simultaneously, this thing is a godsend.

The application is also packed with other handy goodness for presenting remote windows. You can have your window dynamically sized based on the application window. You can use global settings so that every connection by default will disable audio for example. Settings can also be managed on an individual connection basis. There is also the ability to save connections as favorites, as well as a handy drop down of your most recently accessed remote desktops.

RD Tabs also supports the newer versions of the RDP protocol found in Vista and server 2k8. The application was created by a Windows administrator to handle daily admin tasks. You can grab a copy (or read more) over at http://www.avianwaves.com under the tech section. You can also check out the other applications (I’ll do a writeup on XS BAP in the future) as well as original music written and performed by the developer.

PyTivo

Welcome to my random musings of stuff I find useful, and blissfully cost free Remember, a lot of this stuff involves a lot of time and sweat from real people. You should support these efforts if you find them very useful by whatever method requested by the authors.

I’ll start off the festivities with a little writeup on an app that has transformed my TiVO from a simple DVR to a whole house video jukebox system.

PyTivo is an open source effort that uses a number of different open source tools to convert just about any video format you can think of and serving it up to any Series 2, 3, HD, etc tivos on your local network. When configured, your PC, or Mac, or Linux box will show up on your TiVO in a similar manner to other DVRs. Just select the video you want to transfer, and depending on your network speed and quality settings, either go find something else to do, or start watching right away.

PyTivo can be configured to serve up both Standard Def and HD content, and can even down convert HD content to your old caveman era SD TiVOs eliminating the need for multiple copies of the same content. Most video formats are supported including VOB, MKV, AVI, MP4.

I run PyTivo on my iMac with a USB external HDD. Oddly enough, the original version of PyTivo is actually pretty difficult on the Mac. You have to install the actual PyTivo as well as compiling a version of FFMEPG to run on your Mac (which involves XCode tools and downloading the components from an online repository). It’s pretty intimidating at first, but once it’s up and running its very stable. By contrast, the PC version is a simple single installer and you’re up and running. All versions use a web interface to tweak the settings.

Fortunately, someone has finally stepped in and built a GUI version of PyTivo called PyTivoX. The GUI version is very easy to configure, but does lack the ability to control some of the advanced settings from within the GUI (you can still modify the configuration files to change the advanced settings as you would in the regular version of PyTivo). I ran the graphical version briefly, but as I had my older version up and running with the advanced settings configured, I stuck with that version.

Once everything was up and running, I pretty much only have to fire up the DVD Player when I don’t want to take the time to rip a DVD. The kids wants to watch Finding Nemo for the 43rd time on any TV in the house? No problem, it’s on TiVO.

Useful links:

PyTiVO project: http://pytivo.armooo.net/

PyTiVO discussion forums: http://pytivo.krkeegan.com/

The steps I followed to install the original PyTivo: http://www.tivoblog.com/archives/2008/12/01/how-to-install-pytivo-on-a-mac/

PyTiVOX: http://code.google.com/p/pytivox/