art taylor

One of my more heavily used iPad apps is Scrabble. Those who know me, and know I like Scrabble, have all been beaten by me, often severely! HAH!

That aside, I'm trying to figure out precisely what the 'Computer' did in this game. It played 'lutzes' on a TWS and DLS for 49 points. Then I looked and saw that it played the L off a P, forming 'PL'. Wha?

So I checked to see what the game settings were for dictionary, as PL is not on the TWL or SOWPODS list of valid two-letter words in Scrabble.

OK...not quite sure why that's the default, but I won't make that mistake again. Looking up 'pl' in the online version of Merriam-Webster, I saw that it's not even a real word there, but only an abbreviation. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pl

I rather like that, in a corner (hah), the 'Computer' in Scrabble will cheat. However, I'm getting it off that 'M-Webster' setting. I can't make it too easy for the scoundrel.

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China_office_and_bonus_crazy.zip (641 KB)

The view from the hotel room was fairly panoramic. This view is stitched together from about 20 random snapshots.

As for my hotel room desk, I didn't bring a laptop on this trip. I had my iPad and iPhone in my carryon bag (which is too small for my laptop anyway) and packed my bluetooth keyboard in my checked luggage. Unfortunately, my brilliant plan was foiled upon checkin when I discovered that the hotel had wired access only. Normally, if I had a laptop with me, I would have been ecstatic about this, since hotel wireless tends to suck at the best of times. I had enabled international data roaming on my iPad right before leaving, but the rate was something like 20MB per month for $60. That's one or two emails or one set of directions from google maps.

Since it was relatively early (around 5pm) I wandered into the "computer city" area and tried to ask for a wireless router or access point. It was kind of hilarious trying to explain what I wanted to someone who spoke no English. I thought I'd be able to use generic terminology such as "802.11g" and "WiFi" to get my idea across, but I ended up drawing some pretty dreadful pictures of cables, and antennae and junk like that, before finally just dragging the guy over to show him what I wanted. I found a Chinese Linksys knockoff box that cost all of 180 RMB (about $26 at the time), so I was in business.

The last photo was a bit of craziness that's pretty common. A girl will often sit sideways on the back of a moped. Usually, they're holding on to something, but this one was only holding onto her magazine. They rode alongside the car for a long time, through traffic and pedestrians, and I kept expecting a horrendous accident. One of my...favorite?...things here is the pure chaos that is traffic. Chinese traffic laws seem to boil down to two things: A) the biggest thing wins (bus > van > car > scooter > bike > person) and B) push it as far as you can. There are these great crazy ladies in orange vests waving red flags and yelling at people in the intersections, but it didn't seem correlated to any particular activity. I think they just liked to yell and wave flags.

Unsurprising to most, I was foolish enough to buy an iPad. After some unpleasantness this morning, I ended up picking up one later in the day. I grabbed the dock and case, because I find it terribly annoying to prop up my iPhone to watch videos.

I also set it up with a wireless keyboard for grins. I have a desktop computer, an iPhone, and a Macbook Pro I am using with less and less frequency. I am entertaining the notion of getting rid of the laptop altogether, and using the iPad when I need a portable with more typing throughput than an iPhone.

Obviously, it would require the ability to edit code, etc., and I'd love a web-based IDE, but failing that, I think ssh would do in a pinch. I could pack all of this gear in my bag and not weigh it down half as much as the MBP, which doesn't fit in my preferred daily carry bag (or "murse") anyway.

One thing I am finding a little tough to deal with is the lack of a mouse. The whole notion of reaching out and using the touch screen is not yet intuitive and reminds me of the gorilla arm warnings from the jargon file.

And, because one has to do these things occasionally, here's a shot of my home office workspace. The resolution is low because the iPhone takes grainy pictures with relatively low inside lighting, so I scaled it down to avoid looking completely bletcherous. However, if you are sharp-eyed, yes, that's a scientific calculator (HP-35s) on my desk, right next to a computer with Mathematica, SAGE, and Calculator.app. No, I can't really explain it either.