ipad

Monday various

  • Two from Roger Ebert: on racial intolerance and on why he tweets.
  • On the set of David Lynch’s Dune with Sean Young. Weirdly fascinating. I wonder if it’s at all worth revisiting that movie. I keep thinking I’ll re-read the book, but I think I’m worried it will just encourage me to read them all. [via]
  • Charlie Stross on the iPad [via]:

    The iPad doesn’t feel like a computer. It feels like a magic book — like the ancestor of the Young Lady’s Primer in Neil Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. It’s a book with hypertext everywhere, moving pictures and music and an infinity of content visible through its single morphing page. The sum is much weirder than the aggregate of its parts. Criticizing the iPad for not doing Netbook-or laptop-like things is like criticising an early Benz automobile for not having reins and a bale of hay for the horses: it’s a category error.

  • The Sea of Galilee is out of fish. [via]
  • And finally,inside the Vatican’s private library. [via]

Sunday comes round again

So today…

I read some Kaleidotrope submissions, while lounging in the backyard with my iPad. The weather was just too nice to stay indoors all day, and that slush pile isn’t getting any smaller. I’m usually pretty good about responding to submissions within a couple of months, three at the outset, but I do still have some stories sitting in my in-box from February and March that need to be answered. That need to be read.

I watched this week’s Doctor Who Confidential. Because sometimes you just want to peek under the hood and see how these things work.

I got a propane tank refilled — or, rather, swapped out an empty tank for a new one — at the local Home Depot.

I went for a short walk. Along the way, I listened to this week’s episode of Studio 360, which was really terrific — Martha Plimpton’s Springsteen cover and Josh Ritter especially — but which made me sorry all over again that I hadn’t managed to get tickets to the live taping in Manhattan last week. I’ve been to the Jerome L. Greene Space before, for a live taping of the Sound of Young America — a taping that’s now available on DVD, as it happens — and it’s a really nice intimate venue. The show sounded great on my headphones, but I suspect it was even better in person.

I plodded away at the New York Times Sunday crossword, this week back on paper, since the slightly weird formatting of the themed answers made it impossible for them to offer the puzzle online (and through their iPad app). I’m not sure I like that theme, though I’ll admit it’s a clever structural trick. In the end, I think I find it simply more aggravating than anything.

I mowed the back lawn.

And that’s about it. Time, I think, for bed.

Monday

My mom’s still not feeling well, but she has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, and my father’s been staying home to nurse her. He also picked up the dog from the kennel this afternoon, where Tucker has been since Friday evening — since dropping him off Saturday morning, before six, wasn’t an option. He’s clearly happy to be back home.

Beyond that, it was pretty much just a normal Monday. My new iPad case arrived in the mail, and I really like it so far. It’s a different kind of case than the one Apple sold me, in that it doesn’t open up, to be used while the iPad is sitting inside it. But I like the look of this case a lot more, and it seems to offer the same, if not a higher, level of protection when carrying the device around.

I sat on the couch with the dog this evening, using the iPad (I don’t think he likes it), and watching tonight’s episode of House. I’m not entirely sure what to think about House anymore. I’m growing increasingly less forgiving of the show’s faults with each passing episode, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should just bail on it. I thought that tonight’s episode was considerably better than the show has been in awhile, but mostly because it was nice to see Andre Braugher again and bring the focus again squarely onto House, the character, like they did in the powerful season premiere. (A premiere that, I’ve thought more than once, maybe should have been a finale.) The episode mostly discarded the elements that haven’t been working so well, or at least pushed them to the sidelines, which was a welcome relief, but also underlined why those elements are such problems. I think House is proof that a show can be acted very well, and even be written well, scene to scene, and still fall apart when it doesn’t know what to do with its characters. When it forces them into relationships that don’t make sense, into behaviors that are inconsistent with their past actions, or into scenes that exist only to keep those relationships and behaviors going.

There’s one more episode left in the season, though, so maybe they can turn this thing around yet.

“Nothing is less real than realism.”

As part of a Mother’s Day present, we spent the weekend in Washington, D.C., where the Phillips Collection is hosting a special exhibit of Georgia O’Keefe’s artwork through May 10th. The title of this post is actually taken from a quote by O’Keefe, who wrote:

Nothing is less real than realism — details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis that we get the real meaning of things.

My mother is a fan of O’Keefe’s work, so my sister got purchased six tickets, with her husband and his mother joining us as well. (Of course, the museum didn’t actually check our tickets when we entered the special exhibit, but that’s another story.)

It was nice, even if it did mean we had to leave New York around 6:30 Saturday morning, and even if my mother isn’t feeling particularly great now, on Mother’s Day proper. (I’m hoping it’s just a stomach bug and a fleeting one at that.) We had a nice visit, and the weather was particularly pleasant all the time we were there.

It’s surprisingly cold and windy in New York for this time of year, and I’m mostly just watching some television, like this week’s fun but silly episode of Doctor Who (I’m worried they may be laying on the “big bad silence is coming” bit a little too thick, but if nothing else Matt Smith continues to really amuse and impress me.) I actually did this week’s Sunday New York Times crossword on my iPad in the car ride home — along with reading a fair amount of Kaleidotrope slush — and if that alone isn’t a good enough reason to have bought one…well, okay, it’s probably not, but it is easily one of my favorite apps so far, enough that I purchased the year-long subscription.

Anyway, it’s back to work tomorrow. I fear I managed to make this weekend sound less interesting than it was, but it’s been a long one, with a long car ride home, and I’m a little tired.

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!

Thursday various