The New iPad and Me
When Apple released the first iPad in 2010, I wished I had one but didn't want to jump into it, knowing that the next version will be much better. Indeed, the iPad 2 was more like it with the advanced chipset and increased RAM in a prettier body. For various reasons had to wait with the purchase, then tech rumors made it clear that the 3rd generation model will be much better for my needs with its high resolution display, as mostly I wanted to use it for reading... Still, I spent the past 6 months whining to Leslie about how much I want an iPad whenever we saw one in the store. Now the waiting is over, I ordered one shortly after it was released. It took a while for Apple to ship it here directly from China (while, as it turned out, I could have walked into Best Buy to grab one, unlike last year) but never mind.
I guess I got the ideal setup with a white 64GB Wi-Fi model, housed in a white CaseCrown faux leather case in the style I always imagined for my iPad. It's very pleasant for the touch and even if the device was too warm during average usage (it isn't), I don't feel it at all. I don't need a 4G model, mostly I use it around the house, or if I really have to, I can utilize my phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot. The 64GB storage feels like a bit of a waste right now, but it will come handy in the long run when I travel to Europe and carry movies and TV shows on it, while leaving my laptop home. Also, I don't plan to replace it for several years, unless something happens to it, so it should be somewhat future proof.
I work from my home, so my main goal was increasing productivity by moving all the usual distractions, such as news and blog reading, Twitter etc to this separated device which I don't bring into my office. Normally I leave it in the bedroom or in the living room, so when I sit down in front of the PC, that's dedicated work time. It feels like a good solution so far.
I love reading on the iPad, the screen is amazing, but as I can't really compare it to the previous generations, I just like it on its own. I was afraid that my monitor will look worse afterwards, but it's still lovely, no need to run to buy a new one. :) I use FlipBoard for RSS feeds, the only downside is that I had to set up Google Reader for it, but every desirable feed reader app seems to use that anyway. I bought only a few apps so far, like Garage Band and Solar Walk above the usually free necessities. I'm certainly not going crazy with checking out games and other stuff, meh... Somehow I just don't care much about them right now, but I bought some new Kindle books that I hope to read soon. I might be skeptical but I don't believe in iBook apart from being a nice PDF reader; I won't buy books from Apple. It's not their main profile and primary source of revenue (compared to Amazon) so they can say anytime that this experiment didn't work out, closing shop, nothing to see here... I believe in the future of the Kindle and Amazon can always bring out a better reader app for iOS. Not to mention that Leslie has a Kindle eBook reader and we share books, so it's kind of a no brainer anyway.
Perhaps the only problem I can find with the iPad is that it's bugging me constantly to redesign my website and support high resolution images, so it's definitely on my to-do list. :)
TemperNTC Class Library - Update
Just to let you know, I updated the TemperNTC Class Library article and the class library with a fix to the issue with the external sensor's sometimes unreliable initialization. Now it works splendid everytime you access the device.
 | Source code and tester application in C# for .Net Framework 2.0 |
TemperNTC Class Library
A few days ago I got a package from Hong Kong – my order from USB Fever, a TemperNTC USB thermometer with a remote sensor. I must say they have a very friendly customer service. My postal address in Hungary contains an á character in the street name which caused an encoding problem in their order confirmation email, so I wrote them about it to make sure it gets printed on the package label properly, or at least they could change it to an a. It was by night here and by the time I woke up, I got a reassuring reply with a photo of the package label, proving it's all fine on their end.
I want to use it for temperature logging and I'm glad I originally planned making my own device handler and logger software because the provided HidTemperNTC software is... quite Chinese, so I'm not terribly disappointed. It's okay for playing around, but absolutely unusable for what it was made for: logging. I won't go into details here, I don't want to bash the developers too much but attention to details and dogfooding should be part of their development process for sure.
It was a bit of a surprise that it has two thermometer sensors, an internal one in the USB device and the remote one at the end of the cable. The product description was a bit misleading I guess and I had a bit of a trouble reading the remote sensor, but at the end I managed it. Just like most of those who tried to do something with it, I use the HidFTDll.dll file's exported functions for the general device handling. While the function reading the internal sensor returns a temperature value in Celsius degrees, the remote sensor is not so easy: it requires a current voltage reading from the remote sensor called NTC and involves some mathematical witchcraft with an NTC lookup table. You don't want to know, just call my GetOuterTemperature() function and remember, ignorance is bliss.
The class library doesn't use more than .Net Framework 2.0 functionality and runs perfectly on
Basically this is all you have to do if you want to make this device work:
TemperNtc temper = new TemperNtc(true);
double inner = temper.GetInnerTemperature();
double outer = temper.GetOuterTemperature();
Update: The issue with the false outer temperature reading has been fixed, now it works reliably everytime you access the device. However, this still stands: if any of the sensors return an invalid value, it will return 1000 Celsius degrees, so you just have to ignore that reading.
Now that it's done, I can work on my temperature logger application that probably I will make available for anybody, when it's ready. Have fun with the class library!
| Source code and tester application in C# for .Net Framework 2.0 |
Speech Recognition
I just watched a series of video tutorials about how to use the Kinect SDK, thinking about what I could use it for in a hobby project. In the audio section the guy plays with the Speech Platform API to get certain spoken words recognized with the microphone array and I thought it could be fun to play with this API, but I never even tried the built in speech recognition functions. I activated it on the microphone built into the webcam, opened Word and tried to make it type something for me... Like the word type. This is what I ended up dictating, getting more and more frustrated:
Type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. tyyype.. screw you, type!
And this is what it put into the document:
High tying tie to high heat to high tide has to have the basic five tie issue is who you die.
For a non-native English speaker it's not a real confidence booster, is it? Or perhaps my computer just tries to tell me something... At least I didn't test with Cthulhu. :-)
Extended Weather Gadget
Yesterday I had yet another round with the Calendar Gadget bug after installing the latest IE 9 updates, but I managed to make it work again. Microsoft really should do something about it, because judging by the number of hits on my article from Google it's hardly a localized problem. Meanwhile I thought I could share something with you, a little extension I made for the standard weather gadget last year and it has proven useful since. I assume most Europeans are totally lost when someone tells the current temperature in Fahrenheit degrees, I know I am, so I wanted to have at least an idea what the normal temperature values look like, to get used to it and be familiar with at least 10 degree ranges. My little extension doesn't do more than displaying the current temperature with the user selected temperature scale, then with the secondary scale. As I use Celsius primarily, it's Celsius / Fahrenheit display for me, like you see on the examples below.
The forecast is displayed only by using the primary scale due to lack of screen estate. Maybe I will upload it to the official gadget gallery too, but for now it is fine to be hosted here. If you'd like to host your own gadgets, all you need to do is registering the .gadget MIME type as application/x-windows-gadget in your web server (fairly easy in IIS) and you're in business, Internet Explorer will offer installing it on opening the file.
| Sidebar gadget for Windows Vista or later |
Update: I uploaded it to the Windows Live Gallery where Microsoft authenticated it, so you can download it from there too. Lots of people already did and counting, it's amazing. :)
