“But for me at least, the process of writing is wearing. I’m a grinder, and there’s a lot of chair squirming and wandering around and staring at the stars and sometimes some cursing that goes into the production of the daily sausage. And it’s a largely solitary pursuit, which appeals to my inborn reclusive nature, but can sometimes result in getting cabin fever from living in one’s own head too long. Editing, on the other hand, has its own collaborative and craftsmanlike pleasures and activates a different synaptic configuration than writing. You start with a piece of work already in front of you, and the job is to turn it this way and that to examine all its angles and components, to check for gaps or loose fittings, to do a little tweaking here and polishing there, and finally to set it loose at least a bit better than it was (and never any worse).”

This is an amazing natural photo that was not retouched with Photoshop. Quoted: “Horsetail Falls is a small seasonal waterfall that only appears in late winter and early spring. It flows over the east side of El Capitan, so as a backdrop it has one of the most impressive walls of granite in the entire park. Then – only for part of February, and only when the sky is clear – the very last sun rays of the day selectively linger on the falls, lighting it up with a golden glow that makes the water look like lava.”

• It’s not as thin as I thought
• The dimensions are about right; I guessed 11″ (I meant for the diagonal including the display, but the delivered display is 9.7″)
• I was right about the SSD, but I thought that it would be of a useful size
• Looks like it is inspired in part by the Mac Air
• No USB – oops got that wrong — how could they omit USB?
• As of this writing, it is not known how much RAM is in the iPad — dude, I would not buy the thing for that reason alone
• Sure enough, the battery is not removable, so you’ll have to find some other way of extending life
• Nothing special for handwriting recognition
• The OS is iPhone OS 3.2, not Mac OS-X Touch — users will pay for that decision
• WiFi and no WiMax
• Cellular service from AT&T, a decidedly inferior data network to Verizon
• Well, it does have speakers, microphone, and headphone jack, but no camera — you’re kidding — no camera
• iTunes access for sure

In addition to those shortcomings, here are some others that are truly surprising:

• The browser does not support Flash; you will suffer in your web browsing
• No multi-tasking
• No video output
• The dock does not do what you expect
• No printing to a connected device; get ready to buy a Wifi printer or make some other arrangements
• No optical drive
• Eye strain is likely to be a problem trying to read for extended periods of time due to the display technology choice
• iPhone apps may display very small unless they have been re-written for the iPad

You decide. No iPad for me…maybe never.

These are the apps I use in order of most frequent:

• Phone and contact lookup with integration to maps
• Maps, especially with the traffic layer turned on
• Music – listen to books on mp3
• Gmail
• Calendar to look up appointments, etc.
• Sportstap – keep track of you teams
• TED – view outstanding 18 minute videos from the TED conferences
• CardioTrainer – uses GPS to track walking workouts.
• Radar Now – show weather radar arond your GPS location
• Trapster – avoid speed traps and photo enforcement cameras
• WaveSecure – to locate Droid if misplaced, and erase everything if stolen
• Wifi Analyzer – check on your wifi signal
• Droidlight – use camera flash as a light
• Google Goggles – scan business card to add to contacts
• PageOnce – track financial accounts

One of my sons, Mark, worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory JPL in Pasadena, CA during the summers of 2004 and 2005. JPL is a NASA contractor and lead center for the robotic exploration of the solar system. JPL has done far more with it’s tiny budget than the massive NASA manned programs to improve life on earth.

What about Hubble? Weinberg notes:

It is true that astronauts made a large contribution to astronomy by servicing the Hubble Space Telescope. But if Hubble had been put into orbit by unmanned rockets instead of the Space Shuttle, so much money would have been saved that instead of servicing a single Hubble we could have had half a dozen Hubbles in orbit, making servicing unnecessary.

The Mars rovers were dispatched by JPL, and they did an incredible job, as noted by Weinberg here:

It is difficult to get reliable estimates of the cost of sending astronauts to Mars, but I have heard no estimate that is less than many hundreds of billions of dollars. The cost of sending Spirit and Opportunity to Mars was less than $1 billion.

Weinberg concludes:

The only technology for which the manned space flight program is well suited is the technology of keeping people alive in space. And the only demand for that technology is in the manned space flight program itself.

Quoting Wikipedia:

Operation Aurora was a cyber attack conducted in mid-December 2009 and continuing into early January 2010. The attack was publicly disclosed by Google on January 12 in a blog post. In the blog post, Google said the attack originated in China. The attack was aimed at dozens of other organizations, of which Adobe Systems, Juniper Networks and Rackspace have publicly confirmed that they were targeted. According to media reports, Yahoo, Symantec, Northrop Grumman and Dow Chemical were also among the targets.

By some counts, there were 34 firms affected. The Intellectual Property (IP) in each case was different. For example, it appears that a large amount of IP from an oil company was taken by the Chinese during this period. The property in question was bidding data on oil leases off the coast of Africa. The competition is China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

The budget plan calls for nearly $1 trillion in tax increases on upper-income families — largely by allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire. Banks, bankers and multinational corporations would face new fees and levies. And oil companies would lose $39 billion in tax breaks.

In all, the president’s budget would add $8.5 trillion to the federal debt through 2020, pushing the debt as a percentage of GDP to 77%, up from 53%.

If you are opposed to the budget (except perhaps for the tax breaks on oil companies), let your representatives know. They think you don’t care about your kids and grand kids.

• For most retailers, outlet malls have become clearance centers
• Some retailers are stocking the “gaps” in lines at outlets with “outlet-only” merchandise, not marketed through other channels
• Less overstock is available these days and much of that is going to TJMaxx, sample sales, and charity

We will soon know much more about the new Apple Tablet, on January 27, only two days from now. It could be entertaining to predict what sort of design Apple will announce and find out how far off I am once revealed. If I were designing a new Apple Tablet, this is what I would specify:

Thin…very thin…like an 8.5×11 paper pad.

11″ touchscreen.

SSD – Solid State Drive…no moving parts, low power consumption.

Inspired by the existing Mac Air notebook computer.

Multiple USB connections and Firewire.

4GB RAM, Intel low power processor.

Non-replaceable battery.

Mac OS-X Touch software.

Improved software for handwriting recognition.

WiFi and maybe WiMax.

Data plan for Internet access and media downloads, this time from Verizon Wireless.

Speakers, microphone, and camera(s).

All software in the iTunes library that works for iPhone will work for tablet device.

So far I can’t see an advantage of Vid over Skype.

If anyone knows why PG2 would associate NebuAd (now defunct) with SightSpeed, please leave a comment.

Also, If you see any significant advantage of SightSpeed/”Logitech Vid” over Skype, please leave a comment.