Month: March 2020

A Personal Computing Revolution

Mark DavisLeave a comment

I’m writing this on a 2018 iPad Pro (11” with 512GB storage and LTE). I’m also using an external Apple Magic Keyboard 2 and Magic Trackpad 2. The iPad is plugged into an LG USB-C monitor at my sit-stand desk overlooking a forested canyon in Sedona. And it is, well, almost perfect. Almost, but there are remaining limitations (I’ll get to them), though they are well-balanced by the capabilities and I suspect will be remedied soon.

Overall, though, it feels like a compute revolution where a small, extremely light (1 pound or so) device is all I need to occupy much of my day. I’ll point out that I am not by nature an Apple fanboi. I have an HP laptop that dual boots Ubuntu Linux and Windows in addition to a Macbook Pro with Parallels hosting two Linux distributions for testing and continuing education purposes. I know I can live my online life in Chrome on Linux well enough, using Microsoft Office 365, Google Mail, 1Password, Qobuz, Netflix, etc. while still being able to build enterprise and startup software ecosystems via the Eclipse IDE, Java J2EE, Python, MySQL, AWS, Azure, etc. Did I forget anyone in there? Oh, of course there are Bitbucket, git, maven, Confluence, and all those helpers. All are just perfect on Linux once you fight your way through the package managers and occasional consults of Stack Overflow. I think I first installed Linux on a laptop in 1993, and it remains not for the weak of geek, but is constantly improving.

But what are the positives of the iPad Pro? First is the lightness and more-than-sufficient power. Photo editing via Affinity Photo is actually faster than on my Macbook Pro (2016) and video editing works well though without quite the professional completeness of a Final Cut.… Read the rest

A Pause in Attention

Mark DavisLeave a comment

I routinely take a pause in what I am doing to reflect on my goals and what I’ve learned. I’m sure you do too. I had been listening to the recorded works of Jean Sibelius and Carl Nielsen, but am now on to Sir Edward Elgar and Josef Suk. Billie Eilish and Vampire Weekend didn’t last long. I gave up on my deep learning startup to pursue another, less abstract technology. I revamped this site. I put trail running on pause and have been lifting weights more. I shifted writing efforts to a new series centered on manipulating animal physiologies for war and espionage.

These pauses feel like taking an expansive stretch after sitting still for a long period; a reset of the mental apparatus that repositions the mind for a new phase. For me, one take away from recent events, up to and including the great pause of the coronavirus pandemic, is a reconsideration of the amount of silly and pointless content we absorb. Just a few examples: The drama of Twitter feuds among the glitterati and the political class, cancel culture, and shaming. The endless technology, photography, audiophile, fashion, and food reporting and communal commenting that serves to channel our engagement with products and services. Even the lightweight philosophizing that goes with critiques of tradition or society has the same basic set of drivers.

What’s shared among them is the desire for attention, an intellectual posturing to attract and maintain the gaze of others. But it does have a counterpoint, I believe, in a grounding in facts, reason, and a careful attention to novelty. The latter may be a bit hard to pin down, though. It is easy to mistake randomness or chaos for novelty.… Read the rest