BWare

I’m a techy kinda guy. But I tech where it’s appropriate. I didn’t buy a DSLR until the digital F100 came out, but I had digital P&S’s before that – I saw the future, I just didn’t want to spend a lot of money on it til the tech had matured. Ditto with smartphones – first was an iPhone 3GS.  I skipped the first gens.  But I had a first-gen CD player in 1982, a damn good one, cause the tech was appropriate [1]. I didn’t buy a personal computer for myself [2] until the Titanium G4 MBP [3].

So I didn’t get an iPad until Gen 3, when the display got good enough to use for a portable programmable portfolio. In one sense, it doesn’t have the awe-inspiring effect on me that it does early adopters, because I’m not upgrading from the old display. To me it just looks like it’s supposed to look [4].

But the issue for me is, even with the latest Jobs-approved tech, I still can’t roll it up and stick it in my back pocket. I’ve been walking around a large Northern European city the last couple of days with a NYer in my back pocket, so that when I rest shanks’ mares, have lunch, beer, espresso, whatnot, I have something to read [5].  It would be awesome to have a thousand-page book, WWF, email, Reeder, and the four latest issues of the NYer at hand in an iPad-sized package, but I’m not carrying an $1k iPad around in my hand – I’m a klutz, and easily distracted (too easy to walk off and forget it).  I don’t want to carry a backpack, cause I’m already totin’ the not-light D700.  The only way I can think of is the manpurse, but for me it holds the Seinfeldian stigma [8], even though no one would look twice over here.  I do have a Chrome bike bag, which is almost a manpurse on a daily basis, but since I’m risking my life biking in, at at least 4500m peak risk-levels, if not K2 levels, it feels manly enough.  I didn’t bring it on this trip though, would have been just one more thing to carry, and it’s not really a checkable baggage item like the Pata MLC is.

So the iPad has not yet worked its way entirely into my travel routine.  Email me suggestions if you have them.  Besides “nut up, get a manpurse” and “get a girlfriend.  Who carries an iPad-compatible purse.”

1. I still have a Technics SL-1200II and my original B&O turntable. Appropriate tech. I have 1k vinyl albums.
2. Aside from cheap x386 Linux mail/webservers. Not a personal computer.
3. Which still runs at the same speed as my current laptop, albeit on 7 year old apps. It’s not worth buying another battery for though, and the screen is lo-res and dim.
4. Until I load up an un-Retina app, and see “wow, how bad is that, that’s what those guys had to live with.” But it looks fine until you compare.
5. There’s not (yet) always free wifis, and it’s not worth racking up huge cell phone bills roaming, even on someone else’s dime [6].
6. My, and by “my”, I mean “my employer’s” iPhone is not unlocked, even though we pay unlocked prices for them out of project funds. And I know from experience that I don’t get re-imbursed if I buy a burner phone and PAYG SIM card, but my employer will happily pay a $1k overseas phone bill. So because they won’t pay $75, they’ll pay $1k instead. I tried to save them money once, and it ended up costing me money. They lose money, I lose money — I pick them.
7. I gather that I have an instinctive knack for looking like a local, most everywhere I go.  At least judging by the number of times I’m expected to know the rules, understand the language, and give directions to people who look even more lost than me (daily).  This will be the subject of subsequent blog fodder.
8. Don’t know why – I manscape [9], I moisturize [10], but I draw the line at red parachute pants and the manpurse.
9. Cause I work out 2x/day and therefore shower at least 2x/day, and because when (not if) I hit the deck, I want the road rash to heal – it’s just easier to shave everything [11].  It makes the bike seat, wet suit, condoms, and speedos easier to live with too.
10. I’ve seen my slightly older non-moisturizing friends’ skin – ugh.  Godzilla?  Made a believer out of me.
11. TMI?