technology

Like most people, I under-use what machines I have. By far the most shameful is my thus far nonuse of the ipad. I thought it would be the perfect and not merely occasional traveling companion. But, I never learned its tricks and traits enough to take it anywhere at all.

Until today. With Ed’s help I tackled the skinny thing, determined to learn it well enough so that on our next trip (mid-August), I can use this newer, younger, and most importantly – lighter baby.

And I have to say, I feel as if I’ve leapt into a different world of tools and tricks. For instance, there is the photo stuff. An app for $1.99 gives me superhuman powers – to do magical, wonderful things and then, with a click of a button – send the whole crazy mess to flickr.

Need an illustration? Okay. Take the first (and actually the only thus far) photo snapped by the ipad. No, the machine can’t make Ed smile, so here we are, grimacing, or hiding, or some combination of the two. Click, tamper, send.





Of course, what I really want to do is to download photos from my camera and I needed a trip to the Apple store for that – to get a USB port. (The must be a reason not to have put one into the sleek body of the ipad. There must be.) It’s always a learning experience to go to the Apple store and so I don’t think of it as a wasted hour at the mall. More like a time to allow some of that incredible geek brain power to rub off a tiny bit, so that I can finally learn, for example, what happens when I push the on-off button on the iphone not once, but twice when I’m turning it on. Bet you didn’t know either!

So, I remain glued to my various machines today – a shame, considering the weather. Life is about compromises and deferred gratification. Tonight. I’ll go outdoors tonight. To listen to music and later still, to count fireflies and watch the stars come out. Yeah.