I have been graduated for all of twelve days, and after moving, and cleaning the old apartment, I have been sitting around the new apartment.

My Jeep has a weird issue that restricts me from driving it above 40 mph, safely that is, and Hannah takes the car into work, so I can’t really go anywhere. This being central Pennsylvania, the drivers really hate it when you drive the speed limit, much less 10 mph slower than the posted limit, and this being central Pennsylvania, everything is distressingly out of walking distance. No, really, I would walk to the grocery store out of sheer boredom, but I draw the line at anything over 8 miles. Besides, this walking would be along the roads where the maniacs drive, and that doesn’t make me feel any safer than driving my Jeep does. So, I sit around the apartment.

I could get a job, maybe, though I have tried and haven’t been successful so far (apart from not having a safe car to drive) but my wife might be hired for a job that would require us to move to Wisconsin, and it isn’t fair to an employer to get a job and quit a week and a half later. So, for the moment, I sit around the apartment.

While I do, I watch baseball, blog a bit, but mostly think. I think about my life, and all that I have accomplished: graduating from high school, Bible school, and college; dating and marrying a wonderful woman; making a few friends; and, um, I am sure other things. If I were honest, or depressed, I would say that it doesn’t feel like I have really done any of those things. Sure, I have a woman who sleeps in my (our) bed now, and I guess in a few weeks Messiah College will mail me a diploma, but if I went by feelings, as far as I can tell I feel like I did when I was 15, sitting around at home playing Need for Speed on my computer.

Maybe that is because I sit around by myself most of the day. I don’t know, because I have no basis for comparison, not having ever had a full time, or part time, job that required me to be outside of the house. I honestly don’t know what kind of job would appeal to me, though the idea of lifting heavy things or working at McDonald’s turns my stomach. If it were up to me, and money didn’t matter, I would rather just hang out with my wife and create. Create writing, create art, create music, create photography…just create. Being alone for a large part of the day saps my energy and my creative momentum. Writing this blog takes most of what I do have. That might astound me, except for the observation that my most highly creative times in the past three years have come right after my favorite English classes.

Where do I go from here? I am not really sure. For the time being, I have to wait anyway to see what happens with my wife’s job/no job thing. On the complete other side of things, the past five years of college have worn me out more than I can say, so it is really nice to have no real demands on my energy besides dishes and making the bed.

Forgive my personal ramblings, dear readers, but that is what Thursday is about on this blog, and it is mildly therapeutic for me to write this stuff. Tomorrow is baseball day, and I have a feeling it may be a bit of a rant. The Indians haven’t been playing too well as of late.

Don’t forget to email me questions, musings, or random thoughts for Tuesday’s Q&A blog, or just to say hi.

Peace.

This time through the story, I was continually struck by how boring, monotonous, and detail-heavy the novel manages to be. According to the back of my book, Clancy’s included level of detail and realism resulted in a rumored debrief at the White House, but I found it unnecessary. Clancy is wont to give a detailed history of every character, ship, submarine, or term that he talks about, and very often he tells a part of the story from the point of view of a sub or person who is never heard from again. In and amongst all of his detail and dramatis personae, the story stops and starts like an old pickup truck.

The reader has to plod through most of the book before the action even starts, and then it is over in about two pages. Most of the book centres around the cat-and-mouse hunt for the defecting Russian missile submarine Red October, but that ceases to be interesting after the first few chapters.

Red October is certainly a well researched, planned, and thought out novel, but it fails to hold attention or keep the reader turning pages unless they really have nothing else to do. I confess that Red October is my bathroom reading, but if I was reading it in any other setting than the 20 minutes or so I am occupied thereby, I would not have continued to read it. I am fairly certain I won’t read the book again, once I finish it, which should be in a day or two.

I have read a few of Clancy’s other Jack Ryan stories, among them Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games, but I dont remember them well enough to know if they fall victim to the same troubles with plague October.

Honestly, for my time and effort, I would more heartily recommend that someone watch the excellent film adaptation starring Alec Baldwim and Sean Connery rather than read the book. The literary person inside of me cringes at that suggestion, but sometimes the book isn’t really better.

Starting next week I will blog through the next book I choose to read, which, for the moment, is a mystery. During my capstone writing course at Messiah College my professor assigned me the task of compiling a reading list for future reading, and I will be selecting one of the books from that list.

Please don’t forget to email me a question, pondering, or random thought for Tuesday’s Q&A blog.

’till tomorrow!

shadows slant as the sun arcs across the prison walls he walks his paces sinking to his cot and rising again he pounds the iron walls in frustration days come and go without count and number how long has it been? will deliverance….? falling into the corner he sobs running out of tears his crime, his punishment the love he showed and the kindness given for this they beat and mock forsaken he waits in the dungeon locked in a foreign land across the sands forgotten by all but his God but still this man the Hebrew trusts footsteps come

I wrote this poem some time ago about the Biblical character of Joseph. This poem takes place in the middle his story, while wrongfully imprisoned on a charge of rape. Go read the story in Genesis 37 and the surrounding chapters. It is an interesting story.

Trouble is: no one has sent me any questions. On one level, this is to be expected. I have no idea how many people actually follow my blog on a regular basis (I am probably in my brother’s RSS feed somewhere, but other than him, how many readers do I have?) and it has only been a few days since I first introduced this idea anyway.

Perhaps what I am looking for is vague, so allow me to explain. I am looking to receive a question, a species of interrogative statement such as: “Phil, what is your favorite color and why?” or “Phil, what is your opinion on the exploration of the galaxy?” or perhaps simply an observation: “Phil, I noticed that there was a rabbit in my front yard, and it was staring at me.” Simply share with me what is on your mind. One could also ask for a bit of clarification on something that I have written, for example: “Phil, what do you mean that you don’t like the designated hitter rule?” and then I could make myself clearer. There is no limit, really.

On another level, maybe I am just boring. No one has any questions for me because no one cares.

That is quite ok with me, actually. At the moment I am blogging more for myself than anyone else. Is that valid? I don’t know and it is a question I am thinking quite a bit about. For the time being I have quite a lot that I want to write about, and setting myself a deadline seems to be the only way to force myself to write. Tweeting and Facebooking those deadlines gives me a bit of (imagined) external incentive. If I imagine that someone actually is following my blog and reading, and therefore waiting in eager anticipation for my next post, than I am responsible to someone else for what I write.

So, for now, I will write in perceived isolation, awaiting the reception of an email or some other electronic message that contains a question from someone out there in the cybervoid.

You can find me on Facebook, my name is Phil Martin. You can email me via myself@philipjoel.com, and you can follow me on Twitter @PhilipJoelM.

My paternal grandfather became my patron saint of computers through the evolution of the home PC, and the rise of the Internet. He tended to upgrade his system fairly often, and when he did he would pass his old computers onto my family. My older brother Joe learned more about the inner workings of computers, but I jumped right into the mode of the everyday consumer user. I remember logging onto the very first Lego.com and StarWars.com, back in the day when the Internet was still a novelty. I loved games, playing DOS favorites Commander Keen and One Must Fall, and the very first Need For Speed game that launched their rise to fame: Hot Pursuit.

While I was such a PC user, let’s be clear, I was never a PC fanboy, I was aware of the other side of computing: the Apple computer. Some friends of my parents were Mac users from beginning, and whenever we visited for dinner, they would invariably stay late talking, and I would get bored and be allowed to play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego on the Mac.

Eventually though, through the mid to late 90s, Apple started to make their rise to dominance, which they are continuing through today, and I started to hear a lot more about them on a regular basis. I was so taken with them, that by the time I contemplated my very first computer purchase, I was dead set on buying an Apple computer. I hadn’t used one in years, and only knew about them by reputation, but that reputation was strong enough to convince me to spend three times what I knew I could spend on a PC.

My family was about to move to Papua New Guinea for mission work, and I didn’t want to lug my old beige tower and huge CRT monitor across the world. Besides, I knew I would soon be starting college, and wanted a smaller computer to take with me. So I sold my PC, and bought a 2004 generation Apple iBook.

Since that time I have owned another older iBook (a G3), one of the first Intel iMacs, a Macbook, and now currently use an Aluminum iMac and an iPad. My only prenuptial agreement with my wife was that she ditch her Toshiba laptop, and I bought her a Macbook Air. I will never go back to PCs, and that decision runs deeper than a Mac fanboy fascination.

I really believe that Apple will be the computer of the future. Computers began as a digitization of two things: math and file storage. Way back to the UNIAC and ENIAC days, computers were glorified building sized calculators. By the time Microsoft came along, computers were glorified typewriters that also stored all your documents. That is why Windows Explorer is a file manager. Programs, or applications (games, picture editors, and other things) really were sort of an afterthought. People began to see the potential of computers, and started to write more sophisticated programs for them to run. But still, computers were primarily file cabinets.

Once the Internet went mainstream and Mac rose from the ashes, Apple turned the computer into a machine that was about the program, not the files. In other words, it wasn’t that you could also store your pictures in a digital format on your computer, but it was that your computer could show you pictures in a way never before thought possible. Music on the computer wasn’t just an alternative to a CD player, but a whole new way to play music. And movies, and so on. While the PC could do all those things, the Mac was built from the ground up to be all about those things.

Mac took the daily life things, and exploded them. My iBook was my first step into the larger world of computers that were not machines to be used, but were extensions of myself, in the same way that clothing is not just something humans wear, but part of their being.

To be continued….

Ever since 1997, when Interleague play was adopted into Major League Baseball, the Reds and Indians have been meeting as state rivals, and similar matchups take place all across the nation. The New York Mets are playing the New York Yankees, and the Philadelphia Phillies are hosting the Boston Red Sox. Later in the year the Chicago Cubs will host their cross city rivals White Sox.

All in all, I like interleague play. Before 1997, anytime a team, or even a player, from either league saw one from the opposing league it was during Spring Training, the All·Star Game, or the World Series. The separation between the American and the National Leagues was a mile wide and a wall of iron. The only real difference between the leagues, as far as rules go, is in the American League with the implementation of the designated hitter, a player that bats in place of the pitcher, but who doesn’t play defensively. Despite this minor difference, the leagues seem to have an intangible difference: the National League is said to be more offensive, the American League is more of a pitcher’s league.

I like interleague play because I like seeing teams from opposing leagues play each other. Because the separation existed for over 100 years, the novelty is still fresh. Secondly, I have been an Indians fan my entire life, which means I have become a bit of an American League fan, but I have never really liked the designated hitter rule. My personal philosophy is that if you play defense you play offense. Pitchers should not be exempted because of their “special” status as a specialized position player. National League pitchers have been hitting since the dawn of baseball and still manage to pitch extremely well. Let’s not forget that Babe Ruth, the most legendary hitter in all of baseball, was a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. Sure, pitchers today are way more targeted than in Ruth’s time, but I think the logic holds.

Lastly, I like the idea of interleague play because it brings teams to town that otherwise a fan would not often see. Cleveland and Cincinnati are close enough that one could make the occasional drive to the other city, or in Chicago or New York one can simply take a subway or cab to the other stadium, but I doubt many people make the 5 and 1/2 hour drive between Boston and Philadelphia to be a fan of both the Red Sox and the Phillies. Now, at least three times during the season, a fan can see opposing league teams ride right into town and play the home team. In the era of internet and TV televised games, going out to the ballpark is still time well spent, and if you can see a team you would never before see, that is a bonus for fans.

As of 2010, every team in each league has played every other team at least once, and I hope that Interleague play continues into the future. I for one look forward to seeing which National League teams will come into Cleveland, and which cities the Indians will visit that they normally don’t see. This year, I am eager to see the Philadelphia Phillies cruise into Cleveland, because having spent several years in central Pennsylvania I have become a Phillies fan. Because my teams sit in opposing leagues, the opportunity that I would have to pick one over the other to cheer for is a limited prospect. In a few weeks, I will be forced to make that decision, but it is easy: I cheer for the Indians. Always first, foremost, and forever. However, my rational assessment of each team leads me to believe that the Phillies will beat the living daylights out of the Tribe, as currently the Phillies are the best team in the National League, and the Indians are close to the worst team in the American League. But, there is still plenty of baseball to play, and anything can happen.

Speaking of which, while I was writing this post, the Reds jumped ahead of the Indians 4-1, but in the last Indians’ at bat, Shin-Soo Choo of the Tribe went deep, hitting a two run home run helping his team tie the game 4-4. The top of the sixth is under way, and still either team could wind up with the win.

This is why baseball is the best sport in the world.

After several months of unintentional hiatus, my blog is back! I would like to welcome any new readers that I have solicited.

If you would like to be more active, please register and you will be able to comment, and if you were to contact me, there might even be the possibility of a guest post. Also, if you are good with editing, and would like to help, I might distribute a few editing privileges.

On Saturday past, I graduated from Messiah College, the liberal arts college in small town Pennsylvania that I have been attending for the past three years. I graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in English.

I have also recently moved into a splendid little apartment, one with windows and a tall airy ceiling, and I feel like my life is moving forward. However, I have been unable to find a job, but for the moment, I am very glad that I haven’t. The past few years have been really tough for me, and I am physically exhausted from the past few days of graduating-moving-cleaning and am mentally exhausted from all the college.

But, while I am weary, I am also excited for the future. Part of that future is a commitment to regular blogging, something I really enjoy but, as a college student with a myriad of other things to write, never really had the time to do. Now that I am free I want to write something every day, for the discipline in writing and for the joy of sharing my thoughts.

I have devised a simple schedule of one topic per day, to help me plan and keep writing, and also to make sure things stay easy to follow for my readers. The schedule, tentatively, is as follows:

Monday is iGeek, and I will post about my iPad, Apple, and other tech things which excite me.

Tuesday will be a double post day. I will start with Q&A. If you have a question, query, or wondering that you want me to write about, email me, and I will select one and write about it. I will finish with a poem. I consider myself to be a poet, and will write, or revise, a new poem every Tuesday.

Wednesday is about literature and language. iRead day will be the day I disseminate and parse through whichever book(s) I am currently reading. Nothing too formal or academic, just my thoughts based upon my college degree.

Thursday will be my iLife day, the post being about myself, and my life, and something interesting or significant that occurred during my week.

Friday, always a fun day, will be about baseball. I love the sport, and watch every game that I can. I am a die-hard Cleveland Indians fan, and will be till the day I die. (Today’s game vs the Kansas City Royals starts soon!) I have also become a Philadelphia Phillies fan, but will always love the Tribe first and most. Anyway, Friday I will talk all about baseball.

Saturday and Sunday I will take off, though there maybe eventual guest posts if anyone wants to contribute to my blog.

Anyway, sounds like a plan, and I hope that you can enjoy the experience.

Follow me on Twitter @PhilipJoelM, and email me stormrider@desertflood.com.

Be seeing you!

I was intrigued by this newness in the iTunes store, and was curious about the comprehensive nature of the Extras, but haven’t had a reason to try it out until yesterday. I am a massive film nut, and watch all the special features I can, usually springing for the $20 2-disc DVD set at Wal·Mart just to get a whole extra DVD of featurettes, interviews, and FX breakdowns. But, I also like to have the digital copy on my computer, which usually means a complicated process involving Mac the Ripper and Handbrake.

iTunes Extras seemed it could be the perfect solution for me and I decided to give it a whirl. GI Joe: Rise of Cobra was recently released, and I saw the movie in theaters, and was reasonably entertained, and put the movie on my short list to buy, and yesterday bought it for the new release price of $14.99 from iTunes. I accepted this price because it is about the same as the 1-disc from Wal·Mart which usually don’t come with many Special Features, so if this was a digital edition + extras, it seemed like a good deal.

It wasn’t, really.

After buying, and waiting for the download, not only do you have a digital copy of the movie, but you also have a secondary file called “Extras”. When you click on it, a menu comes up that looks very much like a DVD menu, but inside of iTunes. This then has a “Play Movie” button, a “Special Features” button, and a few others. But, what was disappointing was there were only 5 or 6 special features, and of those, only one was longer than a minute (it was 6 minutes). Two even seemed to simply be scenes from the movie, but without the soundtrack. The only interviews were with the Special Effects director, and a few blurbs from the principal actors. The only really interesting feature was a whirlwind history of GI Joe from a Hasbro executive.

Now, I am willing to chalk this up to GI Joe not having good special features, but I just can’t make that fly. Having already spent money on the movie I am not willing to buy the DVD and find out, but I have been watching Special Features for very many years and I haven’t seen a DVD that doesn’t have at least a 15 minute “Making Of” and a few shorts on key action scenes in about 8 years. Most of the good ones even have “Behind the Scenes” on soundtrack, sound editing, lighting, or other parts of the filmmaking process. GI Joe actually lacking on special features just doesn’t make sense. What I want to see is the process of filming, the journey undergone to bring the story to the big screen. This is all lacking in the iTunes Extras.

I am willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt, and say that as the idea is a new, it is therefore underwhelming, but my analysis at this junction is that it is not worth it. I really want this to get off the ground, and want to see as many special features available to download as on a DVD, but I think I may be waiting a while longer for this to come to fruition, if it ever does.

To afford it I sold my second brand new (formerly known as) Mighty Mouse on Ebay. I say second because this is the second replacement Mighty Mouse that I have acquired from Apple, courtesy of my iMac’s Apple Care.

While the Mighty Mouse was a technological wonder when it arrived on the computing scene, it contained a hold-over from previous generations: the scroll ball. Instead of a scroll wheel that went up, and then down, the scroll ball was capable of 360° movement. This seemed like a new idea on a mouse, but really, it was a very old idea. Before some genius applied laser tracking to mice, they literally rolled around on a ball. All Apple did was put the ball on top of the mouse, and use it for scrolling. Honestly, I don’t know why no one thought of that before, or tried to market it. However, back to my replacement mice, the ball-on-top was prone to the same problem as the ball-underneath: gumming. Rolling the ball around on your desk, or even mousepad, invited the ball to pick up dust, dirt, grime, and whatever hangs around on your computer station. Rolling your fingers around the scroll ball on the Mighty Mouse had the same effect. The only difference is those old mice used to be really easy to clean. The scroll ball on the bottom was very easy to remove, clean, and replace. The scroll ball on the top was completely integrated into the casing of the mouse, and only by literally breaking it open could you clean it. So, I had not one, but two Mighty Mice replaced because eventually the ball would quit sensing the scrolling I was trying to do.

I wanted for some time to replace my latest gummed-up Mighty Mouse, but had been hearing rumors of a new mouse from Apple, and so waited. Sure enough, the Magic Mouse was released a few weeks ago. I immediately called Apple Care, and negotiated for a new mouse. Secretly I hoped that they would note that I had a wireless Mighty and out of the goodness of their hearts upgrade me to a Magic (all Magic Mice are wireless) but alas, they must have a few old Mightys in storage. However, my good friend the global garage sale came to my aid, and some dude in Manhattan bought my Mighty.

Thus in the need for a mouse, I went to the Apple Store and ordered a Magic Mouse. It arrived a few days later. After the obligatory install of new software and a reboot, I was up and running, or should I say, gliding. The Magic Mouse glides. Having used a variety of mice in my technological career, this is the smoothest mouse I have ever used. It sits on two parallel runners on the bottom of the mouse, and however they are designed, they make the mouse fairly float across my pad. Add to this a decent amount of weight built into the mouse (the Mighty Mouse felt a lot lighter) and the movement is the best you could hope for. Also, they say that the laser sensor is among the best ever designed and at least to my mind, the pointing seems more precise, but this could just be my imagination.

The mouse is precisely symmetrical (or would be except for the Apple icon). It is no bigger front to back or right to left. It is slimmer than the Mighty Mouse, and a tad shorter. It is also about 3/4 the height. You might think that this screws up ergonomics, and admittedly I know nothing about that, but it feels great in my hand. My arm-wrist-hand is flatter and in more of a straight line when I use this mouse, and I don’t have as much of an incline using the Magic as I did using the Mighty. People with really big hands might have trouble with it, but for us average folk, it shouldn’t be a problem.

But, to my favorite feature…the surface!! There is NO scroll wheel, NO scroll ball (“only a ray shield prevents beaming!” um…) because the Magic of the Magic Mouse is in the multi-touch surface. Using the same technology available on Macbook/Pro touch pads, and the iPhone/iTouch surfaces, the Mouse senses where your finger is and what it is doing, and interprets actions from your phalange motion. A sweep of a finger down the mouse surface scrolls. A click anywhere (literally, anywhere, front or back or middle) on the left is a left click, same with right. The scroll is accelerated, so if you swipe, it scrolls fast, if you slide, it scrolls slower. And it is still 360° scrollable. Finally, a two finger left/right sweep advances forward or backward in apps that have a forward backward (Safari, iPhoto, etc).

Finally!!!

No gummed up scroll ball. No only up-down wheels. Unhindered, effortless, magical scrolling. Always. This is by far my favorite part of the Magic Mouse, though it is all amazing.

In my mind, this is the best human/machine interfacing device since the keyboard. It is sleek, sexy, functional, state-of-the-art, and on the cutting bleeding edge of today’s best (for this type of hardware) technologies in a single piece of hardware. If you like the Mighty Mouse, you should love the Magic of Apple’s new Mouse.

I do.

But, I have been writing, and you can see a short piece that I wrote for my school about the upcoming on DVD film District 9.

Peace.