Now that I’ve been using my iPad for a while, there are certain programs I can’t imagine living without. One that I use on an almost daily basis is AirVideo, a delightful solution for streaming video across a local network. It’s a downloadable computer-side program that runs to stream video from any accessible location to devices. An application is available for both the iPhone and iPad for only $2.99.

Using the desktop app is incredibly easy, just add in whatever root folder you keep your media in. This can be on a local drive, or on any accessible usb or network storage. Using the client-side application on the iPhone or iPad, you can drill down into subfolders to quickly find what you’re looking for. This is incredibly convenient for quickly catching up on a show or movie. I can be watching something within 30 seconds of turning on my iPad. It’s much easier than having to add things into iTunes and then waiting for the AppleTV to sync.

I’ve found that videos encoded in handbrake at AppleTV quality stream fine over my 802.11G network and look great on the iPad. That high of a quality is too much for the iPhone 3GS. Fortunately the developers of AirVideo thought this through, and provided an option to have the computer streaming the file convert the video on the fly. There seems to be about a 10 second delay when starting up playback of the video, or jumping around using the timeline. Once it’s streaming I haven’t yet experienced a hiccup.

If you’ve got a cache of video media that you’ve been meaning to catch up on, I highly recommend AirVideo for streaming to both the iPhone and the iPad.

Note: As indicated in the program description, AirVideo will not allow you to watch DRM protected video. So no streaming of things you’ve purchased on iTunes!

Reposting an old page I found hanging around in my web directory:

Aperture Science logo… painstakingly recreated from a screen capture. I miss good old BBS ASCII art.

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Who’s in charge of my medical care? Apparently not my doctor.

My post-tonsillectomy Lortab prescription

I’m a little peeved with the insurance company right now. I just had my tonsils out on Tuesday, May 18th. My doctor gave me a prescription for Lortab, a common narcotic pain reliever and cough suppressant. On recommendation from the nurse, I have been trying to taking a full dose (15 ml) every 4 hours to stay ahead of the pain. Even so, there have been times where I fell asleep at night or during day for more than four hours, and so spread out my dosage past the minimum.

I was prescribed a 240ml bottle, with 1 refill. Let’s do some quick math, shall we?

240 ml ÷ 15 ml dose = 16 doses

16 doses × 4 hours = 64 hours of coverage = 2 days and 16 hours

We picked up my original prescription on Tuesday around 6pm, meaning that if I was taking the recommended highest dose, I should run out around 10am on Friday. Like I said, I was a little behind. On Friday afternoon I tried refilling my prescription so that one of my parents could pick it up for me as they were both working on Saturday. CVS said they couldn’t refill the prescription because it was too early. My dad called up my doctor for me (I still can’t talk at this point) and asked him to call the refill in to the pharmacy. He did so, and CVS called me back shortly thereafter. Even after my doctor calling in the prescription, the insurance company refused to pay for a refill until Saturday. Apparently the doctor isn’t in charge of my medical care, the insurance company is!

Now I had to wait until Saturday to go pick up my prescription, while out of pain medication, because Anthem refused to pay for the medication one day earlier. I’m none to happy with them right now. Of course I could have paid the $30 for the refill instead of waiting a day and getting the refill for $5, but it’s the principle of the matter. Why does the insurance company get to decide when I get a refill… especially when I was following the dosing instructions provided by my doctor, nurse, and the printed directions on the bottle!

Finally got around to trying dropbox. I wish I had tried it earlier, before I spent all that time fiddling with subversion. It does exactly what I want, sync a local copy of files with the cloud automatically across all my computers. This is so much better than having to copy things to a usb drive. The big bonus is that it automatically keeps versions of files for the last 30 days. Sounds perfect for collaboration on documents, or even just for keeping backups of things I’m working on by myself. I’m also giving it a whirl for use on a final project for a course, so I’ll have a better idea soon of how it functions with a group.

Free 2GB of file space, and based on my initial testing this thing looks like a must-have service.

Just a quick note for those of you looking for a program to do PDF reading and markup (highlighting, commenting, etc) on the iPad. As of right now (4/12/10), Papers does not offer these features. I’m hoping they will soon so that I can keep all my PDF work confined to a single program. In the interim, I recommend iAnnotate. It’s not perfect, but it does allow for syncing of a whole folder of documents, and uses standard PDF markup (meaning that it shows up in Acrobat and Preview). It’s only $7, and the author has promised there are updates coming to improve the software. The only issue I’ve run into so far is that I’ve run out of memory… so keep it to one document at a time (even though it supports multiple documents open in tabs.) Other than a funky interface, it does what I need at a reasonable price.

I’ve been doing some deep thinking and reflecting about why I never seem to get caught up on anything. My conclusion was that I spend too much time worrying about the how and not enough doing the actual work. Ultimately this is my own fault, but a large part of the problem rests squarely on the shoulders of technology. Having listened to Merlin Mann on the most recent MacBreak weekly and watched an archived TED video with JJ Abrams, I came to the conclusion that I have a problem. The reason that I can’t get anything of substance done is because I’m too focused on the details of how things works. It’s an issue when I’m supposed to be writing a paper, but instead I’m trying to learn how to use LaTeX so that it will look nice and handle the footnotes for me.

I want to be efficient, but the cost in terms of time and effort is absolutely killing me. Even beyond that, the effort that I put into using all these electronic systems to help organize my life means that I’m offloading the important information. I can remember where I put that PDF of the article about tablet computing in the classroom, but I can’t remember the author’s name. This isn’t a huge problem in terms of everyday activity, but in academia, we’re expected to remember all this stuff.

Maybe the iPad will be good for me, and many other people that are affected by computer overload. No multitasking might be a godsend.

I’m at a loss on how to fix this problem. Should I go back to a typewriter? Should I load a basic linux on my netbook and stick to that when I have important work to do? I need to find a way to be okay with being imperfect, and to focus on content and have the details get the hell out of my way.

My favorite mug for coffee

It’s just the right size (12 oz.), and the handle is a comfortable shape.

Sadly Starbucks seems to no longer be selling these. Anyone know where I can find a few more?

As a student and researcher, there are a few basic things I’m looking for in the Apple iPad

• A word processor
• Web browser
• PDF reader with markup

At the Jan 27th presentation, Apple announced that each of the iWork applications was ported over for the iPad (Pages, Keynote, Numbers), so that takes care of the first. It’s running Safari, so that takes care of the web broswer. That just leaves the third and most important application.

I think it’s fabulous that textbooks will finally be available in a usable device. Not only that, but the iPad is powerful enough to do interactive animations and video… so publishers can go far beyond the written word.

As almost anyone in academic can tell you: we read a lot of articles! Absolutely necessary is a decent PDF reader with the ability to do basic markup (highlighting, bookmarks, notes). Personally, I would be thrilled if Apple ported Preview over to the iPad. It’s PDF manipulating abilities are perfect for 99% of what I need to do. If Apple doesn’t make a preview-like application, then there’s a nice opportunity for a company like Mekentosj to port Papers to the iPad along with a PDF reader/editor.

I have Papers for the iPhone, but quite frankly… trying to read something inflexible like a PDF on a tiny screen is just a pain.

Back in 2003, I purchased and tried using an Acer C110 tablet for just such a task. Windows XP tablet edition was SLOW and I didn’t have the software I needed. The touch interface on the iPad, and long battery life will certainly make a big difference in the usability of the tablet. The one question: will anyone develop a usable stylus? I’ve tried a pogo and it was terrible. It had bad precision and was quite unresponsive with tapping. I’d rather not have to use a stylus, but it might be nice to have for drawing.

I was browsing through my Google Reader this evening when I ran across a Google Alert that came up for my name. Upon further investigation, the alert came from a site called docstoc that was hosting a PDF from the UConn Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa. I’m 100% sure that neither I (as acting webmaster), nor anyone else from the board gave permission for our documents to be hosted on a third-party site. (see here).

There is no information on the “user” who supposedly uploaded the document, nor do the category or many of the tags make any sense based on the context or content. Here’s what I think is going on:

docstoc offers a revenue sharing model for users using AdSense: they split the revenue 50/50. Based on the abundance of user accounts with no social-networking connections, obscene number of uploads, nonsense keywords, and lack of cohesiveness in the collections, I’m guessing multiple people have decided to game the system. I made a user account and checked… there’s no captcha on the upload form. My guess is that someone created a robot to scrape PDF documents and upload them into docstoc in the hopes they could make money without doing any work (they even offer an API to make uploading easy). And of course, docstoc has no incentive to stop this sort of activity because all of these illegal postings of content not only make them rate higher in search engines, they also get 50% of AdSense earnings. A little searching shows that I’m not the only one to notice problems with illegal content on docstoc.

I also did a couple quick searches and found dozens and dozens of PDFs ripped off the site I manage at UConn. I will most certainly be bringing this to the attention of the Office of the Attorney General.

Yes it’s trite, but it’s time once again to make resolutions for the coming year. Here are mine, and how I plan to accomplish them.

• Create more, consume less
  This is the year where I’m going to try and spend more time making things and less time passively consuming things. I dropped my cable in the fall and have been much better in avoiding television. I probably only watch 3-4 hours per week. Anything educational or intellectually stimulating is exempt from this resolution, such as reading or audio books.
• Cut down on drinking coffee
  I’m over-caffeinated on a regular basis, so I’m going to try and limit myself to 2 coffees a day. One first thing in the morning and one following lunch (I may have to make an exemption for Thursdays during my all-day treks to NYC). I’m going to try and substitute tea, leaning towards herbal, whenever I need a hot beverage.
• Get more sleep
  I spend too much time not sleeping and affects everything else in my life. I find that when I’m rested, all of life’s troubles are easier to deal with. This is going to require some experimentation to find out the amount that is ideal for me. This could be tricky in conjunction with cutting back on caffeine. I’m guessing it will be in the 7-7.5 hour range, which is far more than the 5-6 hours I normally get during the work week.
• Get and stay organized
  Here’s one that a constant resolution list member. I will continue to work on becoming organized. My iPhone has certainly helped in keeping me on track with appointments, and my next step is to get all my projects in better order. It’s a daily struggle dealing with all the different things in life, but knowing what I have to do each day and not worrying that I’ve missed something is an emotional place I’d like to get to this year.