Snacking with Adel

So that keyboard thing. What’s been happening?

Well, for one thing, Logitech flaked out out me. Their answer to my email came days late of the promised 48 hours, and they apologized, it was just that they were having technical problems with their email system, but they’re here now, and they were happy to provide me a replacement. They had referred me to their Asian counterpart and if I could just send them a copy of the original receipt they’d see about getting me that replacement lickety-split.

Typical customer service crap. It’s as if they hadn’t read my original email, and just sent me a form letter. I told them in the first place the circumstances of the sale, that I bought it from a person who had an extra one, and he had originally gotten it from the States. So I patiently explained again in a second letter precisely that, and kindly asked, again, for a replacement.

It took another couple of days for them to reply, and in that reply they told me that they don’t really honor international warranties as of yet (surprise!), and since I didn’t have a receipt in the first place anyway, there was nothing they could do, their hands were tied. All of which they could have told me in the first place. And blah blah blah blah.

Sheesh. That was that.

The good thing was, the keyboard had gone back to working flawlessly the whole past week, and it’s working fine now as I use it to type this on my iPad. It’s as if nothing was wrong in the first place. Every morning, I’ve gingerly pressed the Enter key to see if the keyboard would connect to my iPad, and every time it did, and it worked the whole day. I’ve used it the entire week, everyday, and it chugs along as if nothing was wrong. I hope this keeps up, and if it does, then I’m still ok.

Some updates.

I got my Amazon credit yesterday. It was quick. As soon as I got home, the code appeared on my email, so I set about redeeming it from Amazon. (The guys from ERegalo wrote me another email confirming receipt, and asked me if I wanted a scanned version of the Amazon gift card. For the heck of it, I said yes, and they promptly sent it to me. Efficient bastards.)

Redemption was quick and painless, and I set about to purchase RetinaPad from Cydia. It went well at first – then hit a roadblock. The payment service said it was the first time I was using Amazon Payments, and could I please confirm my account by telling them my credit card information? Sure, but the problem was, I had no credit card anymore. Not for several years now, in fact. I couldn’t get certified, no matter how many times I tried, no matter if I tried it with my old card number, which apparently, was still stored in their records.

I tried purchasing something from Amazon in the hope that that would certify my account (I bought a Kindle single called My Seinfeld Year for $1.99), and it went through without a hitch, but going back into Cydia, it still asked for a card certification before it would allow my purchase to go through. No choice. I had to get a new credit card.

I don’t know if my old trouble would come back to haunt me, even though I had settled it some years ago, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. So I texted my old friend Topper, whose wife Reggie worked at a bank, and was trying to get me to apply for a new card years ago. He said, yes, it was worth a try, as long as I had some proof of billing, like a couple of cable or phone bills. I’m seeing him tomorrow to give him the papers and for me to accomplish the application forms. Fingers crossed.

On the laptop front, I finally decided to get an 11″ MacBook Air, the one with an i5 processor, with twice the RAM and twice the flash storage. Essentially the top of the line, short of having one built to order. Not that I really needed one, but it would make a great 50th birthday present for me. At least that’s how I justified it.

So I closed the deal for one last Sunday evening. It was good deal, P47k for a two-month old laptop. The original price online was P60k. The problem was, the seller was still a student (or a teacher, I don’t know), and had school, and the earliest he could break away was the weekend. Damn it. So I’ll have to wait, and sit on the cash I set aside already for it. Long damn wait.

So far that’s the state of my gadget life.

After a lot of soul-searching and vacillating, last night I finally jailbroke my iPad 2.

I had the untethered A5 jailbreaking program Absinthe for a while now, and it’s just been sitting in my hard drive, waiting for the time when I finally got up the nerve, or the lack of sense, to use it.

I already had done it before to my old, original iPhone (the one my brother is currently using, still jailbroken and unlocked), and I remember having Cydia sitting in my iPhone just like a regular app, and me downloading the free, illegal (I think; not quite sure) stuff. It didn’t cause me any heartache, confusion or any sort of problems other than the obvious one of betraying Apple. Then again, I already betrayed Apple by forcibly unlocking my AT&T device, what’s the harm in adding one more infraction?

So it was nothing new, really. I had bought and upgraded to a honest-to-goodness factory-unlocked iPhone 4 last year, and finally joined the ranks of legal iPhone users after so many years of illegality. And found it just fine. I didn’t really feel any need to jailbreak, but when the untethered A5 jailbreak that makes the new iPhone 4s and iPad 2s receptive to Cydia’s charms came out last week, the geek in me wanted to jailbreak regardless. Whether or not there was a need to. Just to see what it was like. Many people had already gone through the process; more than a million users had downloaded Absinthe in the few days it was out.

I had researched it online, and didn’t find any urgent, pressing app that had me wanting to jailbreak. Vic Icasas told me about RetinaPad, which made iPhone apps look good on an iPad, Jason de Villa told me about SBSettings and how he couldn’t live without it and some of the other stuff he uses for grading his students, and several of my Twitter followers egged me on. There were a few naysayers, like Howard Paw, who said if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So I was on the fence.

Save for last night.

I guess it had something to do with the fact that the new MacBook Air I had worked so hard to get had to wait until next weekend before I could get my hands on it. Facing a week of anxious waiting, I decided to find something to occupy my time until then.

Enter Absinthe.

The nice thing about Absinthe’s jailbreak is you just click on the button that says ‘Jailbreak’, and basically just sit around and wait for it to finish. Unlike previous jailbreaks with their complicated methodologies. I remember it had me go into DFU mode and even had me count ten seconds while holding down the Home and Power buttons and then pressing some other key combination for x number of seconds right after. Something convoluted like that.

So I started Absinthe and waited. After fifteen minutes or so my iPad rebooted itself, and Absinthe was on the menu. I had to click on that and wait for it to reboot again, but after that, Cydia was good to go. I started it up, and it downloaded the necessary packages and stuff, and pretty soon I was downloading the free extensions. I got SBSettings (which required several tries; it couldn’t download properly the first couple of times) which improved Notifications and added several convenient setup buttons to the status bar, and some other stuff. And I got NoLockScreen, which bypasses the lock/unlock dialogue when you got something running, FullForce, which forces iPhone-designed apps to run fullscreen on the iPad (doesn’t work too well on the apps I’ve tried it on; maybe I’m doing something wrong), and Activator, which changes the behavior of the Home button and other stuff (which I still haven’t explored).

I also got Winterboard and some free themes to go with it. I’m using Black’UPS Darkness at the moment (that’s what it’s called), because it’s an interesting theme that doesn’t mess with the setup that much and just modifies it a little bit, changing some of the icons and stuff like that. I can’t figure out how to bring back the default theme yet, though, there doesn’t seem to be an option for that. I’ll figure it out.

Haven’t tried RetinaPad and some of the stuff you have to pay for, because I can’t just yet. Cydia requires PayPal or Amazon payments. I don’t have Paypal, so I had to buy some Amazon credits this morning through ERegalo. I took a picture of my deposit slip and sent it to them via email. I’m waiting for them to activate my credits so I can finally buy apps. They said maybe a half an hour or so, and it’s been over that already. Will check in a bit.

I’ll update you guys with my jailbreaking experiment periodically.

*Reprinted under a different title and slightly different text on Technoodling.net

I’m close to making a decision, and that decision is I just might get it.

The iPad/bluetooth keyboard is working, albeit just so; the keyboard hasn’t acted up for a couple of days and so far is working out fine. But I don’t know if it’ll flake out on me anytime soon. It could, and then again it just could not. The fact is, I don’t rightly know, and it’s like a big Damocles sword hanging over my head.

The old 13″ MacBook Air, the original one that I have, won’t boot up anymore. I tried it this week, and the thing wouldn’t even start up. I connected the DVD Superdrive and tried to boot up with the Snow Leopard disk and restore the system, but it told me it couldn’t install it on the Air’s hard drive. That development, coupled with the rapidly deteriorating hinge, seals the deal for the thing. Just as well. It has served me well, and deserves to retire.

Meantime, that previously-loved MacBook Air just went down in price by a grand. It still hasn’t sold (I think the seller isn’t getting a whole lot of bites), and I’m just on the verge of getting it. It’s a powerful little thing, the model I’d want to get if I had the cash to get it brand new – i5 processor, 4GB RAM, 128GB flash memory, 11″ screen, Thunderbolt, backlit keyboard. And only three months old. And at P47K, P13K down from original price.

I could get it; it’ll set me back by a lot, but I still got some cash left. 

I just met with Jason de Villa here at Starbucks. He gave me some stuff to review, and I gave him back some stuff that I already reviewed. I talked to him about my wanting to buy the Air, and he said, yeah, he’d want to get that unit too if he was going to get a laptop. And that the refresh wouldn’t happen until August or so; it’ll still be current for a while yet. 

I’ll give myself until the end of the day to decide.

It’s nice to write posts for two blogs at the same time, here and on Technoodling. I consciously write some of my blog posts to work for TN too, and have taken to reposting most of my TN reviews on this blog for volume’s sake, so that I have some posts on this as well, and not have to depend on my paltry output for content.

I’ve back-posted all my reviews already, what little there is so far, and even repurposed some tech commentary for inclusion in TN, even some that are a bit old. You’ll know what these are if you read closely. Most of my own new stuff I’ve reviewed and put on TN, but I’ve since run out of gear.

I’ve taken to this commentary schtick just to have stuff to put in. I’m kinda disappointed in the stuff they do give me to review, mostly inconsequential stuff like computer pouches and camera bags, and I’m loathe to review some of them. I still have a couple of these items to take care of, and I guess I’ll get to them this afternoon. Thank God Jason texted to ask to meet me tomorrow and give me some earphones Howard asked me to review. Anything but bags.

But then again, I’m sort of shorting out on reviewing earphones too. Where are the new phones and laptops and cameras? The game consoles and desktop computers and tablets? Where are the substantial accessories like big speakers and newfangled gadgets and stuff like that? Sigh. Or maybe the manufacturers aren’t sending TN new stuff, and the guys have to rely on their own purchases to have something new, like I do.

Oh, well. Guess I’ll just have to wait until they throw me something nice. Or if I buy something new. Sigh.

Computer bags come in all sorts of sizes and designs these days. There are fluffy, gay bags that explode in all colors of the rainbow, and there are staid, utilitarian, tough bags that are almost military spec’d. Some are simple, plain bags that provide minimal protection, and there are those that are so complicated and feature-laden, with pockets and divisions for putting in practically everything you own, including the kitchen sink. The choices are bound to drive you crazy, and it’s hard to sort out through all of them.

Leave it to Sumdex to create the no-nonsense bag with just the right combination of specs, and have no other extraneous features except the very thing Sumdex is famous for – their wonderful shock- and impact-resistant material that the entire bag is made of.

The ungainly-named Sumdex NeoMetro Super Light Flap Brief bags come in different sizes and colors to accommodate different sized laptops. I tried out the one for the 13″ MacBook Pro or Air or any 12.1″-sized PC laptop, and the one for the 14″ MacBooks or any of the 15.1″ PC laptops. Aside from the sumptuous, lush Sumdex material that comprises the whole of the bag, they come with a nice strap that has a nice, comfortable shoulder pad made of the same material. This padding is great protection for your laptop, and is worth the cost alone.

There is a front pocket for your everyday little gadgets and knick-knacks with their nice, non-obtrusive logo attached to one side, a large secondary pocket with three inner pouches for your chargers and other things, and a big rear pocket for magazines and other paper thingies. The NeoMetro Super Light Flap Brief’s main laptop division is unique in that it has two corner catches that hold your laptop in place and keeps it secure when you’re moving around. The zippers are sturdy and durable, yet smooth and luxurious in operation. It was a pleasure carrying something so stylish, plush and light, but doesn’t scrimp on protectiveness.

On the whole, the Sumdex NeoMetro bags are great, no-nonsense computer bags that exude style and class. Now if only Sumdex could get their long, odd product-naming conventions in check, everything should be all right.

Price: P2,950

Availability: All Sumdex outlets, Digital Hub/Digital Walker

Like
Great Sumdex material provides excellent protection

Dislike
Compartments might be too simple for some folk

 It’s maddening. Now it works, and seems to work fine. Dammit.

Finding out there isn’t much to do today (save for the usual important but everyday stuff), I head on to the mall to catch a movie (‘Haywire’ starring Gina Carano), and find out I’m a bit too early. So I head on to my usual place, with my trusty iPad 2 and my not so trusty broken bluetooth keyboard, to wait out the film. I bring out my iPad 2 (after I order my usual (a tall brewed coffee in a mug, with two Spendas) and bring out the keyboard, and wouldn’t you know it? It works now. After conking out on my the past few days, usually when I’m about to use it outdoors, it works.

What am I going to do now? I complained to customer service at Logitech yesterday and am waiting for an answer. Then again, it’s just as well. Something is indeed the matter with this keyboard, after conking out on me several times in the past few days, I should get it replaced or something. Meantime it’s doing just fine, working as it usually does, taking in my text with aplomb and switching apps and stuff. Who knows, it’s probably going to go dead any minute now (although it hasn’t really gone down as I was using it, save for that first time when it went out in the middle of typing a sentence)?

I can’t tell what’s bringing it down – a loose connection somewhere inside, something I tried to trigger by flexing the case this way and that; or a faulty charging system, a wonky battery. I charge it overnight, which is really unnecessary, but just on the off chance that that could be it. Yet it wakes up and works the minute I plug the micro USB, which is the mystery.

I’d better take advantage while it’s working and do that bag review for Technoodling (why I don’t do it on my other Mac is beyond me). So excuse me while I do it.

Ok, I’m on my last legs. I had to try and see if this keyboard is really giving up the ghost before I even attempt to have it serviced, or better yet, replaced by Logitech.

I let it charge a long time, overnight in fact, and brought it over this morning to the Philippine Heart Center, where I was scheduled to try and get my brother’s medical records today. While waiting there in the corridor by the Records section, I turned on the keyboard. Dead as a doornail. So I was relegated to just surfing on the iPad as I normally do, sans keyboard.

Later that afternoon, at my favorite coffee shop, I tried again, to no avail. So when I got home, I dug up the original packaging it came in, and looked for the email support page of Logitech. I had to go create an account first, though, before I could complain, but it was smooth sailing from there. I logged in, punched in the model, serial and part numbers, and told my story. They promised a reply within 48 hours. We’ll see. If they reply favorably, I’ll get a new keyboard, and if not, I’m out $99.

It’s sad, really. I had high hopes for this setup (which is working now; I’m using it to type this post after plugging it in and having that blue charging light go on for a few minutes). I was really hoping to have a viable laptop replacement in my iPad 2, but these recent technical problems have foiled that. It always conks out, and at the most inconvenient times (mostly when I’m out). When I’m testing it at home, though, it seems to revert to working condition, like now.

Real bummer.

More updates on my current favorite topic.

I met up for a lunch and movie date with my daughter today, and I brought along my iPad setup as I normally do these days. I got to our meeting place early, so I thought I’d get started on a Technoodling post. Everything went well; the keyboard functioned as well as it normally did, which is what I expected, having tested it out thoroughly yesterday. Upon waking up today, I checked it and it turned out fine, and I thought everything’s as it should be. Back to normal.

I wrote most of my post while waiting for Ea, and the keyboard was working just great.

Ea finally arrived and I put my setup aside, and we went about lunch and dessert and a movie and everything we normally did on a Sunday like today. Then the day ended, and we went our separate ways, hers to church with her friend Liel, and me home. Upon reaching home, I tried out the keyboard and …nothing. It was dead again. Damn it.

So I hooked it up to the micro USB cable, and the blue charging light came on again. It winked out after a while, and I tried the keyboard again – it was fine and working dandily. It’s still working now, as I write this post on it, a couple of hours later. Looks like it’ll work through the night and into the morning again.

But damn, I don’t know what’s wrong. It stops working at some inopportune time for some reason, only to revive and work again as soon as I plug it back in. I don’t know what to do.

That Macbook Air thing looks mighty fine lately. In fact, I entertained thoughts of purchasing one of the previously-used ones on the net, and I had given an outrageously low offer to a guy selling one low-end unit. After an exchange of texts, the guy finally, amazingly, agreed; we were texting back and forth while Matt Damon tried to figure out why he had bought a house that came with a zoo. I gave some excuse that I couldn’t get the money together until Tuesday (tomorrow is a holiday, Chinese New Year or something like that), and he renegged on the agreement. (Secretly, I was relieved, because I wasn’t sure if I really wanted an 11″ Air with only 2 gig RAM and 64 gig flash memory.)

Thing is, I had actually considered getting a real laptop, instead of settling for this jury-rigged contraption of mine that got it into its head for the keyboard to conk out every now and then. Heck, I don’t know. Came real close to getting the Air today, though.

Sheesh. Will continue testing. And the saga goes on.

I admire Apple‘s efforts at improving education. God knows its about time to dispense with the old textbook paradigm and lugging the heavy, increasingly obsolete books around in a backpack from class to class. Apple’s recent launch of iBooks 2 and iBooks Author is a great step towards this, but despite the drive to bring down costs, there is a small, but significant hidden penalty to all this, I think.

The books are damn big!

They’re large and take up a lot of iPad/iPhone space. DK’s Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Life tome is already almost half a gig large. But that’s nothing. The Pearson Biology textbook is a whopping 2.7 gig in size! I know they’re relatively inexpensive, and we’re all thankful that they all top out at $14.99. But imagine loading up four or five of these “big” textbooks on your iPad – that would be, what, already 10-12GB or more?

Considering that the vast majority of cash-strapped students only have 16GB iPads, that would mean giving up a lot of the apps they currently have to make room for the textbooks. I know, we all have priorities, but this problem is certainly a big thorn in their side.

To give up what makes the iPad unique and enjoyable in favor of what’s “needed” sort of defeats the purpose of the device. Sure, most apps are only a few megabytes in size, but how about the larger, more complicated ones, like GarageBand?

I’m not knocking Apple and it’s efforts to bring education into the 21st century. Far from it. Just wanted foks to stop and take a good look at what’s really here in front of us now, and think about it. There’s a fair distance to go, really, before we can safely say that we’ve done all we can to improve the education situation. We can bring the sizes of the textbooks down to more manageable levels, or, failing that, maybe bring down the costs of iPads and other technologies so students can afford to get the higher capacities. Something like that.

But it’s good to have these new, revolutionary breakthroughs in the field. Where would we be without these little feats? We just have to take care that we don’t get carried away by our successes and pat ourselves on the back.

Reprinted from Technoodling.net