Hospitals

Camped out at a hospital for several hours, I realize that time is something that can just as easily be spent as used.  I wasn't prepared for this to distract myself from what was going on.  No entertainment downloaded.  Just a tv with cable and boredom all around.  So I find that I can download classes from iTunes U, and I should have been doing so all along.  But I never did.  And now I face a ridiculously slow hospital wireless network connection to download things I have plenty of time to watch.  And because I didn't have much of a plan, I'm writing this here using thumbs, and remembering my typing classes.  Sure, it's been twenty years since I took typing, but those thoughts still randomly come to mind.

The next morning.

iTunes U is pretty neat, and I think I’m liking it more and more since I’ve been playing with it.  It is an individual effort technology, though.  The information may be provided, but the end user still has to put in the effort to learn.  I’ve been spending my recent time with a networking class.  I’m convinced it will be more interesting once I make it past the introduction section and into the “meat and bones” of the subject. Given a larger screen size, iTunes U would be even better.  But I’m still just using my iPhone to view all this.  So tiny screen it is. 

Too much to learn

I have been listening to various stuff on the TED app.  I’ve found a couple that I like, and a lot that are boring.  On the like factor are Peter van Uhm: Why I Chose a Gun; Paul Kemp-Robertson: Bitcoin. Sweat. Tide.  Meet the Future of Brand Currency; and Gary Vaynerchuk: Do what you love (no excuses!).  So TED has some interesting stuff.  It’s just a matter of finding time to examine it all.  I still have another 10 from my initial round of examination. 

The TED app has some problems, though.  I’ve talked about my problems with iTunes before.  The platform is good, but has glaring problems that keep it from being monumental.  TED is the same way.  You can’t seem to close the app and go looking at other things while listening to the talks.  I usually listen, not watch them.  So there’s that problem.

I also looked into iTunesU.  Which could be really, really great if you have an iPad.  I don’t.  iTunesU offers lots of free courses so you can effectively teach yourself almost anything.  Kind of like constantly auditing college courses without going in to debt to do so.  The only problem is you’re trying to take a class by staring at a really tiny screen.  And that leads to eye strain-o-vision.  Might be cool if you could use a regular web browser to view the classes, and that might be a possibility.  I haven’t looked.  I haven’t even had a chance to look at any of the classes I selected. 

The biggest problem I’ve found with the iTunesU app is courses are organized by university, and can’t be searched by subject.  So if you want to learn something, say… like computer networking or advanced pottery making, then you have to dig through hundreds of universities to find what you want to learn.  A subject wise search would really make this a great app. 

Combine all the education stuff I’ve found with Khan Academy, and it makes me think I need a lot more time in the day.  I wish this kind of information was available ten or fifteen years ago.  Maybe then I would have finally passed that computer science degree.  Doubtful.  Calculus still haunts me.  But it makes me realize that even though the technology has changed, and understanding what is going on to any extent requires advanced study, the knowledge is much more readily available. 

Fifteen years ago, if I wanted information I would have to head to the library and dig through the stacks until I found what I was looking for, and then read a completely out of date book in hopes of learning how someone else did something and then figuring out a way to apply what was taught in an out of date book in a modern setting.  Now, I can sit at the comfort of my kitchen table in my boxers and watch lectures, completely free of charge, on everything I want to learn.  But I don’t have time.   And it’s mostly because I made a lot of bad choices in my early adulthood.  But… I guess it’s time to play catch-up.

on TED and other apps

I’ve been looking for good apps on the iPhone.  I guess I’m obsessed with education, so that’s what I seem to be looking at recently.  The most recent ones I’ve added are TED and iTunesU.  I haven’t spent much time on iTunesU yet, so I’ll talk about TED. 

I’ve heard there’s a lot of brilliant things said at the TED talks.  It’s very possible my choices on what to listen to from the TED talks are wrong.  But so far, I’m not very impressed.  I find it nice to be able to listen and identify things I want to hear.  But some of the talks aren’t very impressive.  I listened to one about teaching statistics before calculus.  It lasted three minutes or so, and wasn’t the most persuasive thing I’ve heard.  I think there might be some basis for the idea, but three minutes isn’t enough to convince me.  My own experience tells me the guy is right, but if you want a fundamental change in math teaching, you’re going to have to spend more than three minutes.

I listened to one about a guy who built a windmill generator in Africa at 14.  Pretty neat.  But mostly done through interpretation.  And there was another one from Tim Berners-Lee about the wonders of open databases.  Though it really wasn’t about open databases, it was a status report a year later after encouraging people to create open databases.  Which I think might be useful information, and got me to thinking about databases in general, but that’s neither here nor there.

So far, my selection of material is pretty sucky.  But I’ve got 16 more that just might find me something interesting.  I’m looking forward to hearing from Bill Gates, T. Boone Pickens, and Elon Musk.  Those seem more interesting and are likely to inspire or educate me more.  Maybe it’s that I have a different goal in what I’m trying to get out of the TED app.  But everyone says the TED talks are some brilliant stuff. 

Guess I just haven’t found it yet.

Return of the iPhone

So, it's been a bit since I've had my iPhone.  What do I think now?

1) I'm not sure if I talked about this before, but I like the camera.  The built in panorama feature is excellent when trying to document rooms.  People don't see in what equates to one camera.  They look around in panorama.  The dual camera system makes for easy aiming of pictures in the back seat.  The picture was resampled from 9MB to 471 kb.  So it's not near as good quality as the original.  

2) Facetime.  Facetime allows you to call someone and see them.  Or, if you are a tech, you can swap the camera around and aim it at what you are looking at so they can see what you are looking at.  That's what I like it for.  Verbal directions always suck.  People have a picture in their mind of what you are trying to tell them, and it either works or it doesn't.  With Facetime, you can show them exactly what you are looking at and they can draw their own conclusions.

3) Bluetooth sucks.  Flat out.  Nothing good can be said about the Bluetooth on an iPhone 5.  My Plantronics M50 that never disconnected on my Android.  But randomly during the day, my iPhone will quit playing audio through the headset.  My wife has a BodyMedia Fit.  If you want to use the iPhone as a display, then you have to re-sync every single time you want to view what you've done through the day.  Functional Bluetooth is sucky Bluetooth. 

4) Battery life sucks.  Nothing good can be said about the battery life on an iPhone 5.  If you have any services turned on, the battery will fail before 6 PM if you unplug it at 8 AM.  That's unacceptable to me.  That's not even talking about using the thing a lot.  That's a quiet day.  I had to charge my phone back up twice today while I was in the office just to make it to 6 PM.  I have to plug my phone into a wall charger at lunch if I expect it to make it through the day.

iPhone 5

Ok...  so I no longer have a Droid.  I've now joined the Apple contingent with my iPhone 5.  I think that's what it is.  It's shiny.  It's fancy.  It was in an Otterbox before I had a chance to touch it.  I'm not sure what to think about it.  Let me be clear: I didn't buy the thing.  Every two years or so, my company changes phones.  I started out with a Blackberry, then I moved to a Droid.  Now I have an iPhone 5. 

I'm not sure what I think about it.  App wise, the iPhone has a better assortment and better integration with Microsoft Exchange Server than the Droid had.  I wrote something about task orientation versus time orientation.  During that post, I extolled the Droid for being a collection of applications that didn't fit very well together.  Microsoft Outlook 2010 has a lot more to do than just send and receive mail.  It has a calendar and task features.  I used to use the calendar extensively to plan my day, but that didn't work very well because my job is interrupt driven, not time driven.  I can try and plan things to happen at a certain time.  But rarely does it work that way. 

So I wanted to migrate to task driven days as opposed to time driven days.  That works better for me because if something breaks, my task list is still there to tell me what to do.  With time driven, if the even gets more than a couple of hours behind schedule it was a pain to find what I was supposed to do.  With the task list, I just map everything out and check them off as I finish them.  And if I get interrupted, I go about my day and eventually finish what was broken and get back to my list.

Now, I do have to say that most of the stuff you need for the iPhone is built directly into the iPhone.  With the Android platform, there wasn't much built in so you had to go hunting apps down the instant you get the phone.  The iPhone is a standalone platform without anything being added.  That's good in some aspects, and sucks in others.

I still don't like the way iTunes works, though.  Getting music on the iPhone is quite possibly the biggest headache I have to deal with.  And I listen to music a lot.  The other big complaint is the battery life generally sucks.  If I'm listening to music through my bluetooth headset, a Plantronics M50,    Plantronics 85550-01 M50-85550-01 Bluetooth Headset (Google Affiliate Ad)then I generally have to charge the iPhone at lunch if I expect it to make it through the day.  Which is kind of annoying.  But so far, everything else works pretty well.