Let’s start with the conclusion : MEH

The device looks awesome, feels good in your hand, but you really don’t know how, when and where to hold it. It’s too thin to be able to grip it well with one hand (you always have your finger on the screen at that point) and too big to work it with one hand anyway.
The CPU is blazing fast, web browsing is nearly as nice as on a computer and the speakers rock. We’ve been using it as an impromptu stereo the last days.
Oh and the battery? It lasts seemingly forever. Having used it at least 10 hours in the past three days, r battery only just died. So besides missing a good grip point, there are only positive tongs to be said about the hardware.
However, the software sucks. We all know iPhone OS. It’s pretty much the same thing on the iPad. Yes, some added UI functions, but it still feels like a lot went wasted. My biggest points are flash and multitasking.
My first thought was : hey, great, now I can just use the iPad to watch some movies before I sleep. Well, so much for that. Neither Hulu nor southpark studios support the HTML5, so no video there. However, once you found a video (for example with the ABC app), the viewing is awesome.
For multitasking, chatting sucks. With all that screen real estate, you don’t want to be using the full screen with a stupid chat window. It’d rather just have 15% occupied with a chat window. That’s the only time I really need multitasking,but it’s a pretty important use case to me.
Let me quickly go throughout the other use cases I’ve fooled around with:

- emails: if you have a table to lay e iPad on, it’s perfect for writing even longer emails. The client seems to be a bit nicer than the iPhones in the navigation, but otherwise nearly completely the same. No big news here.
- pictures : the iPad is the perfect picture viewer. Swipe through your pictures, zoom in and out seamlessly and all at on a screen about as big as a normal picture printout. Perfect for this!
- reading : looking the rotation is very useful here. It doesn’t beat the kindle in usability ( you always touch the screen somewhere and skip a page by accident) but other than that, it’s pretty useable. Still prefer a real book (which I don’t to a kindle)

Other than that, it seems that the apps are a lot more expensive than for the iPhone. And the iPhone emulation is a joke. IF you zoom the app, it’s not interpolated ( ie looks horrible) and if you don’t, you are wasting 60% screen. Oh, and can somebody give me an explanation why the iPhone onscreen keyboard is used instead of the iPad one?

Well, so much for my long first impression

Patrick

PS this was written on the iPad, so yeah, the keyboard is pretty darn good.

Achso, dieser Post wurde auf einem übergroßen iPod erstellt. Ganz lustig das Teil.

So Long,
Blitz

Sounds pretty boring, doesn’t it? – Well it ain’t that bad.

First of all, I like to sit in front of screen. Hah – surprised ya, didn’t I?
And, contrary to most other labs I’ve seen, the group I’m with is pretty communual. We share two big rooms with variing amouts of people. If you need a break, just jump next door and shoot some planes (we got a office crossbow. We use it to shoot a toyplane hung from the ceiling on a lanyard and a transistor). So the lab community makes that a lot better. But yeah, life could be more interesting.
Howerver, the projekt I’m working on is really great. We’re trying to tell if you’re stressed. JUST BY LOOKING AT YA. No, in all seriousness, we strap a chestband with sensors around somebody and digest all the information that gives us, using complex machine learning techniques. The whole system is supposed to run on mobile devices in the end. So your cell will know more about you than you think. I hope i will work out the way it’s planned. I’ll keep you guys posted how it goes.

So long…

The next days, we spent running around that small island. It’s bigger than thought, and with more people to it. The streets are the most crowded i’ve seen so far. And contrary to any other American city I’ve seen, not (just) with cars. But with bikers and pedestrians.
I just feels great seeing everybody running around on the streets. It felt like eerybody was homogenous. But very different from everybody around. Does that make sense? No? See, welcome to New York.
I just lved the city with all it’s weird people, it’s crazy american-European mixture and the overall vibe. NYC seems to always be in alert, agiated and a bit stressed out.
People are more grumpy than anywhere in this county. At the same time, everybody seems to be “a stranger” in that city. I didn’t feel like a tourist there, but rather like a guy that’s just there for a short time.

Okay, so after taking a week to complete this post, I’m now off to Florida to go roadtripping all over that state. Should be fun. In the meantime, you guys can enjoy the pictures in the gallery.

Pittsburgh today still has the repuation as the “Steel City” – as has the Ruhrgebiet in Germany. In both cases, it’s not true anymore. While the Ruhrgebiet still has some mills, Pittsburgh has none. O’Nan points out that the G-20 will be here to show that it’s “connection” to the labor force. However, Pittsburgh has (to me) little resemblance to a “working”, blue collar city anymore. Yes, certain neighborhoods still have that attire. But the city itself is and feels very much newer – white collar. It actually is a very good synomym for the world in the past 50 years. First, buzzling with steel and heavy industriy. Than the great decline. Than comes new work. The new work is not as plainly seen as before. You can spot a steel mill easily. Todays workplaces are hidden behind non-descript office buildings, sometimes hughe,  but nerver remarkebly. I think this relates to the way the world is today. Money is not anymore made in production, but in the more undercover, hidden way. The big players of the economy are not anymore the big production companies, but the banks and other companies, that deal in “virtual” products.

For Pittsburgh, the green boom in the past years was a big wave to ride on. I hope that the G20 summit will put an equal wave out for the banks to get back from the limelight into the open sunlight. And I demand that spot in the open sunlight for Pittsburgh.

In difference to German schools, most American colleges and universities are what you call campuses. Everything relativley close together in a space just occupied by the school. But it also means, that most members (ie Students) live on campus or close by. Hence, most schools here provide recreational facilities on campus. Especially as nearly every school has some kind of Athletics program, the facilities would be vacant on non training time.
As CMU is a research oriented school, the athletics department is pretty bad (the athletics group the school is part of is called “nerdy nine”). It still has one, tho. And you can go training anytime it’s not used by one of the teams. Wanna go for a swim after work? Sure, just show your ID and they will even provide a Towl. Really cool service.

But to get to work in the first place, I’ve to use the Bus. To be honest I never expected to be a public transport comuter in the states. I didn’t think it was possible outside of the major cities. I guess Columbus must have been a pretty bad example in this direction. I mean the system here is no camparison to Munichs, runs relativly seldom (all 30 minutes) but as multiple Buses go where I need to go, it’s all good. Well, not quite. As I’m not employed by CMU nor a Student, I don’t get the free Buspass all others get. But the Busdrivers don’t look to close on my ID. The only difference would be a small white bus sign. And so far, nobody has noticed. If they ever should start noticing, I would have to pay a full 70$ a month.

Speaking of Buses, you know what’s crazy in this city? It’s love for Sport. They have a pro team (and good ones at that) in Hockey (Penguins), Baseball (Pirates) and in Football (Steelers, last years Superbowl winners). Additionally, the Footballteam from University of Pittsburgh (aka PITT, called the Panthers) is pretty good. So the city really gets it’s craze on about their teams. The freaking BUSES show “Go Steelers”, “Lets go Pens” or “let’s go panthers” every couple of seconds. The destination display at the front and the side is temporarily replaced with one of these slogans. I’ve never seen are more sport crazy place.

Flickr shot of the Skyline of Pittsburgh, copyright by michaelrighi

So long for now. There’s more to come!

PS: those who wonder about the “half citizen” thing: I have a CMU ID card, however I did not yet get my Andrew ID. The computer freaks in my humongus readership might recongize that. Andrew (after both original donor to the school, Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon) is the main Mail and Authentification System at Carnegie. All access to (digital) services is done of that system. Basicly mytum in working

Anyhow, this is how it’s going to work: in this post, i’ll give a brief timeline of where I’m at, what’s happening and such. The next post, possibily coming sometime today, will be more about my feelings for Pittsburgh.

Just generally, i don’t consider Pittsburgh to be the gugly place it’s usually said to be.To be quite honest with yyou, it’s the most livable city i’ve seen in the states so far.

So I arrived in Atlanta after spilling my coffee on the first flight and annoying the teeny horrible resolution in-seat entertainment on the next one last Saturday. Was really happy to see Alex and enyojed the time in Atlanta (more detailed account on her blog ) On Tuesday morning (getting up at 5:30 sucks) I tried to take the plane to Pittsburgh. I tried, because I could not check in my baggage anymore, since only 44:10 minutes left till depature. And 45 were needed.  So I had to pay another 50$ to get the next flight.

At Pittsburgh Airport, I took out the rental I had reserverd and got a Mustang. Nice Welcome I must say.  However, driving around Pittsburgh proved to be horrible. Contrary to most other American Citys, Pittsburgh has NO grid-structure to call it’s own.  So I travelled from one river-bank to the second to the third just to realize I need to be further east on the second. It took me about 2 hours to reach the school.

And I actually didn’t go to CMU on thursday. No real need to, I figured. I walked around campus (It was around 2 pm) and just enjoyed the city. The rest of the day was spent with searching for an appartment. It took me three days to find one, which I finally moved into on Friday. Friday was the big day anyways. I started working in my lap, talked to my Advisor and moved into the new room. So that was pretty succesful

Before friday, I lived in a Motel 10 miles from town and spend my days in coffeeshops and fast-food joints (everything that had to offer free wireless)

So now the last thing i’m missing is a Campus ID card and my Account to get started.

So long, I’ll get to more updates soon!

Wobei ich es interessant fand, das ich durch die ganze Amoklauf-Sache mitbekommen haben, das irgendwelche trottel das eh schon grauenvoll nerdige und pedo-bear lastige 4Chan (vorsicht, /b/ ist verlinkt – nichts für nicht-Volljähirge oder Eltern)  mit dem Deutschen KrautChan gecovert haben. Das ist ja fast wie StudiVZ vs. Facebook. Nur cool, das die Presse anscheinend Fakebilder aus einem Imageboard (das nunmal nichts anderes macht als Bilder zu faken) als echt annihmt.

Wobei Facebook eh das genialste ist, seitdem meine Gastmutter drauf ist. 70 Jahre und in einem Social-Network. Beat that, StudiVZ

Sitze gerade in der S-Bahn richtung Flughafen und grübele ob es eine Luftballon-Phobie gibt.

Anscheinend gibt es dafür keinen Griechischen Begriff (ja klar, aber für Freitag den 13 schon?!), aber es scheint einige Webseiten zu geben, die sich damit beschäftigen (und mit dem notwendigen Fetisch dazu – wie üblich ). Allerdings scheint es eher Leute zu geben, die davor Angst haben, das die Dinger platzen (was mir herzlich egal ist) und nicht wie ich eine Phobie vor dem Geräusch haben, das entsteht wenn mann über die Oberfläche streicht.

So, und wie nennen wir diese Phobie jetzt? Rein technisch wäre es wohl eine Acusticophobie, aber das ist Langweilig. Also, wer hat etwas besseres?