So it seems the US Military is trying to stop the worlds largest wind farm from being constructed in Oregon.  They reason that the windmills will interfere with a radar system in Fossil, OR.

Well that’s bullshit.

I worked on radar in the Navy. If you get a repeatable false reflection down range, you can tune it out. Radar in the eighties could do this so well we could see small boats coming in behind a lighthouse. The lighthouse has a known signature. Any deviation from the known signature is a possible target. We did this at SEA fer chrissakes, where you’re radar platform is constantly moving on all axis. Now we’re 30 years further in tech and they can’t figure out how to mask those windmills?  On land?

Something else is up. Not the radar.

“Hi Bob? Yeah it’s Jim at Conoco. Say, can you do something about this fucking windfarm of Obama’s up in Oregon?  Yes?  Excellent.  See you Thursday.”

OK.

Full day and a half of using my iPad and I can’t get it away from my teenage daughters – hence the snappy title.

• Battery Life:
  • Absofuckinglutely unstoppable. I’ve had it on for the entire day today, playing movies, surfing the web – ooohhh… the web surfing… and drawing on it.
  • As of 8:15pm, battery is at 65%
• UI:It’s cooler than SJ made it look in his easychair rollout talk. Smooth, fast and responsive without even one hiccup so far.
  • If you have an iPhone or a touch, you know what to do.
• Apps:
  • I bought iWork.
    • Pages: Pretty damn cool. Kinda hard to type fast on the slippery keyboard, but I think I can get used to it. Extremely intuitive interface with one exception: where are all the files kept and why are there multiple copies? Must look into it.
    • Numbers: Seems exactly as useable as pages – I’m going to mess with it tonight.
  • iPhone apps sometimes crash.
  • iPhone apps look a little yucky compared to the “HD” versions of the iPad apps.
  • Google Maps app is shockingly fast and useable. The multitouch stuff really is amazing in this.
• No Flash.
  • I have yet to find this a problem. CBS even has a (FREE) iPad app that lets you watch their shows (FREE) and it acts just like Hulu. I’m guessing that all the networks are going to do this if they like money. 700,000 sold in one day… yoiks!
• GPS, Compass, Accelerometer:
  • All work flawlessly with most apps, though some of the app store purchases seem a little “rickety”… possibly the new API – I know there were some changes between iPhone and iPad.
• Screen:
  • Sharp, crisp and fast.
  • Sticky fingers do leave some smudges though, I’ve had to clean it twice today but there’s been a ton of fingers on it.
• Movies: Awesome. Clear and sharp and very fast to load.
• Books:
  • I’ve purchased one book: Dies the fire, and it’s very readable – The one thing I might add is a “lock scree rotation” button. Occasionally, while shifting positions, the screen rotated on me.
  • There are a bazillion free downloads of all the classics. It felt funny loading Tolstoy and the collected works of Shakespear on it but I did it because I could.
• Mail:
  • Pretty much the same a iPhone mail with more room.
• Safari:
  • Holy mother of God this is where the iPad totally shines for me. The speed is fantastic, the refresh speed of the graphics is amazing and the multitouch to zoom in and out of pages at will is just so cool.

I had it with me at the aquarium today and the reactions were anything but ambivalent. I got one of two reactions:

1.) OMG is that an IPAD!! Want!
b.) Oh yeah, an iPad, I can’t believe you bought one.

The naysayers usually say: But it’s just a big iPod Touch…

My question is: “is that a bad thing?”

Still trying to figure out if this will replace the MBP… it might.

This is a seadragon viewer available from none other than Microsoft (click the full screen icon, it’s cool). Their R&D guys are also amazing. Gosh.. that’s a lot of amazings..

Skyboxes are six images that are mapped onto a cube that follows the 3D camera around in a realtime 3D space.  The skybox object is drawn first and then everything else is drawn on top of it.  It simulates a big giant sky.

I’ll post a tutorial in a while, I need to get these done first:

Me: home from a long day.
Deb and the Girls™: sitting in the living room watching some crappy chick flick.
Me: I think I’ll watch some olympics video on the NBC site…
NBC: You don’t have the right version of Silverlight.
Silverlight: Do you wanna?
Mac: Hey!  Are you sure?
Silverlight: Well?  Do you wanna?
Silverlight: Where do you want it?
Silverlight: Are you sure?
Mac: Gimme the password.
Silverlight: Click this.
NBC: Still can’t play your video.
Me: Refresh.
NBC: Loading Video!
Video: <volume=”10x”> AD AD AD AD AD AD AD!!! </volume=”10x”>
Video: Crappy slideshow with telephone conversation and blurry B-Roll!!
NBC: Here’s three pop-behind ads for ya!

Me: …

How can they think that I’ll ever come back?

This is my morning at the Aquarium:

Get it at the App Store.