Month: November 2015

I just got to play with the Apple Pencil for the first time today!

Originally shared by Christopher B

I just got to play with the Apple Pencil for the first time today! WOW! I know Apple haters love to talk shit about it, but they don’t know what they are talking about! Which is why they don’t use any Apple products, they are used to an inferior user-experience for everything so when something is great they don’t know what to do but knock it without even trying it or owning it! I am here to deflect that bullshit! 🙂 I am only kidding about most of that!

I am not kidding about this though; The Pencil is the product that can go with the old saying “Apple doesn’t do something first, they do it right.” They did it right! It shits over anything Microsoft, Samsung, Wacom or insert shitty product from whatever company here that I have ever owned or even played with for 10 minutes!

The reason? As usual it comes down to the hardware + the software! Everything that it does it does it in a way that just works fanfuckingtastically!

There is ZERO UI to it, it just works by itself. The only knock on it in my opinion is the slickness of it but I can only imagine how many Kickstarters there will be for the Pencil in 2016! Charging stands, Pencil caps, rubber grips, etc.. They are all coming in full force and there are probably a ton of them already but I haven’t really checked in to it!

The other thing I want to mention is that the Pencil is not a stylus! It is not even close to being one. It doesn’t work like one. It is an art tool! Which is why it is called PENCIL! So if you are not into art or drawing then you probably don’t need to spend $99 on the Pencil but I imagine there will a ton of new apps that will incorporate the Pencil in 2016. We shall see!

Lastly, the Pencil is not for me. The iPad Pro is not for me, not yet anyway! I don’t draw and I don’t have a need for it. I was intrigued by it and after playing with it I was more impressed with the 15 minutes I spent with it. Don’t even get me started on palm rejection and all the brilliantness that the iPad Pro does when it recognizes a palm press and a Pencil press, it is a really impressive piece of hardware!

Currently reading Hot Earth Dreams: What if severe climate change happens, and humans survive? by Frank Landis.

Currently reading Hot Earth Dreams: What if severe climate change happens, and humans survive? by Frank Landis.

Update: I forgot to mention that you can read a sample of it here: https://heteromeles.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/hot-earth-dreams-sample/

Black humor abounds in this pessimistic but realistic look at the future. Landis has a background in plant ecology and he describes what appears to be a fairly realistic research based view of the changes the earth is likely to undergo over the next 400,000 years. That’s the length of time that human created changes to the atmosphere will take to work themselves out.

What sort of planet will our immediate descendants have to face (keeping in mind that a lot of people who will live to see the year 2100 have already been born. The author assumes that we will probably be unable to constrain ourselves from emitting the 1.4 gigatons of carbon currently locked up in the world’s estimated fossil fuel reserves. This may be overly pessimistic but Landis does have recent history on his side. Even if we manage to change our behaviour today, we are still in for a bumpy ride.

Rather than try to put that future out of our minds as most of us would doubtlessly prefer, we need to start thinking about it and dreaming about it. Our science fiction needs to embrace it. We need to be able to talk about it and to start planning for it because a whole lot of bad stuff is going to start happening. And like many bad things they are going to start happening all at the same time.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017S5NDK8

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams.html

“On August 19, electrical cabs began to ply for hire in the streets of London in competition with the ordinary…

“On August 19, electrical cabs began to ply for hire in the streets of London in competition with the ordinary hackney carriages. The new vehicle resembles very closely a horseless and shaftless coupé, carried on four wooden solid rubber-tired wheels. A three-horsepower motor is supplied with current by 1,400 pounds of storage batteries. The cabs can travel up to thirty-five miles per charge and at speeds up to nine miles per hour. It is intended to have electric supply stations at other parts of London besides that at Juxon Street, Lambeth.” 

— Scientific American. September 1847

Good to see.

Good to see. Personally I think communities are not a very useful feature but then again that’s probably just me. You know I’d never join a community that would have me as a member.

Originally shared by Jannik Lindquist

What do you know? TechCrunch​ writing a good introduction to the new Google+. My, how the times has changed 🙂

http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/17/meet-the-new-google/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=sfgplus&sr_share=googleplus&?ncid=sfgplus