iPad Orchestra

It’s not a truly amazing performance or sound coming from this orchestral method, but it is a good start. iPads may not be the best of synthesizing musical instruments today, but I cannot wait to see what the future of has in store. This is only the beginning!

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My Review of “The Host”

I have gone without reading any fiction for almost a year. It was high-time I picked up another novel, and with my new iPad, I wanted to test reading an e-book. I shopped around for The Host, and found the edition and price I was interested in from the Barnes & Noble e-reader bookstore.

Reading on the iPad is great. Granted, it was a learning experience, to read a 560 page book on an e-reader has it’s pros and cons. But I foun I had the hang of it before page 100. I’m glad I invested in the e-book format. I know now from experience that I can recommend e-reading. It really isn’t all that different from a hard copy, if your eyes are good.

The Host is the novel by Stephanie Meyer—the author of Twilight—she has written since she finished the  Twilight novels. The Host has nothing to do with vampires. This book is about an alien species that takes over the human race on earth. Really, it’s about one alien of this alien race, and her experiences with the human race, as she comes to favor mankind over her own kind.

In a clever way, the story is an update on the premise of Jekyll and Hyde. The idea with the classic Jekyll and Hyde is that there are two personas in each person; one good, and the other evil. Only one controls the heart of man at any given moment, but these two demeanors are in constant war with each other. This is just the tip of the iceberg with the Hyde story. I recommend you look into it for yourself. It’s a great novel.

In The Host, while there is not this sort of literal split personality like that of Jekyll and Hyde, there is a metaphor for it. The alien’s soul is like that of, maybe, somewhat like the holy spirit, actually. The heart of man is still present, and so the human heart, and the alien soul, are at odds continuously in the main character. Now, this is how the moral values are represented. This is not necessarily how the social and cultural differences of the characters are metaphorically represented. There’s a lot of science fiction to the story of The Host. That said, it’s much more than just a sci-fi flick. There’s drama, romance (not half as much as in Twilight), and suspense.

I like a good story that explores the conflict of the human heart. Man’s soul is basically evil. The Bible says so. It couldn’t be any clearer. However, we are either ‘ruled’ by our fleshed—the evil side of human nature—or we are living in the Holy Spirit, and our Lord lives through us; thus making it possible for us to do good. In so doing, as the Lord lives in us, we are ‘dead’ to the flesh. The metaphor found in The Host is great for expanding one’s understanding of such a spiritual dynamic.

While I do think that the Twilight series is a great work about great characters with a weak story (at times) I think something different about The Host. The Host is a great work about mostly great characters with a great story. So the strength of The Host is the overall story, and some of the characters are weaker than those found in the Twilight stories.

Do I recommend you read The Host? It is slightly more ‘mature’ than the subject matters of Twilight, while still being easier to grasp and easier to discern. A world of vampires with their complex moral ethical controversies are harder to deal with than the pure and simple outrageous possibilities of the aliens in The Host.

So, The Host is good for high school graduates, young adults, lovers of science fiction, and those that simply enjoy Stephanie Meyer stories. I’d give The Host ★★★½ out of five.

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My Experience With My iPad

How am my liking my iPad? I love it! I use it for practically anything. For instance, right now I’m using Dragon Dictation to make this blog post.

Dragon Dictation lets you pretty much dictate any kind of paragraph, any kind of information, and add punctuation, give direction as you see fit, to have letters, e-mails, lists, and a texts written for you. You can then copy and paste the text as you see fit for any application on your iPad. Continue reading

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July Fourth Special Show

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Pixar’s President Ed Catmull gave an awesome interview recently on the dynamics of upper management and creative work at Pixar. It’s the best interview I have seen all year! Check it out: http://bit.ly/9jRKBv

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Searching for Meaning

Today I came across an abbreviation that I hadn’t seen before in a Facebook comment stream. This one peeked my interest because of the context, so I went over to Google (the search engine, y’know) and started to look up the abbreviation to learn what it stood for.

What I was looking up isn’t important—I’m not going to tell you—but what popped up in the Google drop down I thought was more interesting. Continue reading

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Apple has exceeded my expectations with their smartphone device today. I cannot say I’ll get one, but only because I’m unhappy with the cell service provider options. Still, this promotional introductory video tells you everything you need to know [link to video].

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I came across this well-written overview of fanboyism and brand loyalty. Interesting perspective, although, perhaps only highlighting selective, and subjective, facts the article itself wishes to note. Check it out here at Gizmodo.

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My Review of MobileMe

MobileMe [Apple's product details] is a service by Apple, Inc. that syncs your email, address book, browser bookmarks, and calendars on all your Apple computers, iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. What I’ve stated are its core features and practical uses, but MobileMe can do other things too, like web photo galleries, and locate your lost iPhone. Continue reading

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Conforming Culture

People want it there way. Businesses try to give it to them. Then, when people change what they want, businesses are left in the lurch, so to speak. This happens in tech all the time, and has happened in big ways recently for some top companies. Apple was popular with the invention of the iPhone. The iPhone, to date, is still a modern marvel. Yet, techies (I am among a minority of techies, it seems) chose to move on from the development of the iPhone to the latest device on the block with all too many assumptions; one big one being what’s newest is best.

This is not to say iPhones are unpopular. They just aren’t popular with many PC loving tech geeks (PCLTGs). PCLTGs want to feel free to use “open” standards and know their apps are “unhinged.” They want liberation from Apple’s standards of a good app and a bad app. They think freedom for great products comes with no boundaries. Continue reading

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