taken with my iPhone 3GS, pano by AutoStitch.

Many people ask how I spend most of my year on the road, and what I bring along.   The how is a different story.  It's tough, leaving friends in New York for long periods, and leaving my home that I love.  But, work is work, and you gotta go where the work takes you!

As far as the "What do you bring" question, the picture above is of my current setup in my standard corporate apartment in beautiful Burbank, CA.  I'm currently working on Don't Sweat It for HGTV, for which I am the co-host on camera and the construction supervisor off-camera.  That means I do most of the project planning, a lot of the shopping, and write the basic instructions that get posted on HGTV.com.  Let's go through the rundown... (full disclosure:  many of the links below are Amazon Affiliate links.  If you buy anything from these links, I'll get a kickback, er... commission.)

1. iPhone Dock.  Never leave home without at least 3 chargers for the non-replaceable-battery iPhone.  And it sync's. Have a charger for the desk, the car, and the bedside.  (Not pictured is my Logitech Pure-Fi alarm clock)

2. Construction Master 5.  This handy little calculator does pesky things like fraction math and figures the angle of ascent on a 4.5-12 roof pitch and how many 7-3/4" steps it takes to go up 11'-4".

3. Seagate Hard Drives.  I travel with at least two.  The current setup is an 880 GB Time Machine Drive, a 500GB clone (Carbon Copy Cloner has saved my ass more than once), a 500 GB drive full of movies, and a 250 GB drive hooked up as an EyeTV archive.  For the record, I also use Carbonite as an offsite backup.  I have a little paranoia about losing data...

4. NeatWorks Scanner.  I try to do away with a lot of clutter, and receipts are clutter.  I scan them weekly, and the amazing NeatWorks software OCR's them, and lets me categorize them.  I have categories set up for all my tax categories, electronics, pet, and more.  It's like iTunes for boring stuff.

5. 13" MacBook Pro.  I have a few Macs, but this one is the workhorse.  My 20" iMac sits at home alone most of the time, since I'm on the road a bunch.  My MacBook Pro 15" has a bad battery and a bum SuperDrive, so it sits under my TV as an EyeTV and Plex / Boxee machine.  But this little monster can keep up with everything I throw at it.  And it's super-portable.

6. Hannspree 23" monitor.  I usually don't carry around a big extra monitor, but I knew I was going to be in LA for 3 months, so I thought it was worth it.  My workflow involves 50+ emails a day, OmniFocus, iCal, OmniPlan, iWork, VectorWorks, DropBox, MobileMe, and a custom Filemaker 10 application that I built.  Fitting all that on a 13" screen is tough.  The small expense of an external monitor makes me more productive and much happier.

7. Apple Keyboard.  I love that it feels like my MacBook.  I hate that it requires a USB connection.  When will Apple come out with a wireless keyboard with a number pad?  I need my number pad!!

8. Apple Magic Mouse.  Some hate this thing, but I love it.  I have huge hands that never sit on a mouse, so the low profile doesn't bother me.  I love the feel, and the multi-touch top is genius.  It's made even better with Magic Prefs.

9. NetFlix.  to be honest, I go through very few actual discs a year.  I use the hell out of the streaming, though.  It's brilliant, and there are few other ways to watch season one of The A Team.

10. Standing Desk.  I'm a stander.  I like moving about when I work, so no chair for me.  If the hotel or apartment doesn't offer a standing desk, I'll run the the hardware store and make one.  In this case, the dining room table has some old deck handrail pickets zip-tied on to the legs.  This makes the desk a perfect height for me.  It may be a little ghetto, but it works.

11. Accordion File.  I try to be as paperless as possible, but making TV and planning construction projects both require a lot of paperwork.  This little file gives me plenty of slots for all the episodes, plus administrative stuff.  And no wasted paper on manila folders!  Plus, it has a convenient carry handle.

12. Pencil Cup.  This one is made from a disposable coffee cup I rinsed out.  I'll feel less bad about throwing it away when I leave LA.

13. Mophie JuicePack Air.  Long days on set can kill an iPhone.  This brings it back to life.

14.  Amazon Kindle.  Just plain rocks.  I have about 40 books, The Economist, and the New York Times delivered daily to my Kindle.  I will love it unconditionally.  Until my iPad is delivered.

15.  Landline Phone.  This came with the apartment.  It becomes infinitely more useful in conjunction with Google Voice.  

16.  Fuji WP-Z.  This little camera is great.  It's an easy to use 10 MP waterproof (and, therefore, dustproof) point-and-shoot.  The dustproof part is really handy when you build stuff for a living.

17. Motorola Rockr S9-HD.  These headphones sound great, work with my iPhone as headphones and headset, and recharge over mini-USB.  They are fantastic when hiking, working out, or just cleaning house.  They get used daily.

18. CallPod.  This thing is easily the best thing that's happened to traveling gadget nerds in a long time.  It's a 6-way charger that has hundreds of adapters to choose from.  My CallPod charges my iPhone, JuicePack, Kindle, MotoRockrs, Jabra headset, Kodak Zi8, and still has an extra opening for any standard USB charger.  And the Pod itself gets power from either a wall wart or mini-USB.  This thing saves me carrying 11 different chargers.  

19.  Kodak Zi8.  I lost my Flip Mino HD, so I decided to try something else.  The Kodak has comparable picture quality, but adds an external mic input, a removable SD card, and an option to charge over USB or through the adapter (which I have for the CallPod).  It's a little bigger than the Mino, but it's so much more useful.

20.  Just a small folding table.  I like to spread out when I work.  

I hope this answers some questions about how I work on the road.  I know it seems like overkill to some, but I've built a pretty efficient workflow and travel scheme using these tools, and it works for me.  How do you travel for work?  Feel free to comment below!

The Name:  I was wrong.  Totally.  My first sentence was "This will not be named iPad."  Oh well.  More on that later.

The OS: I was mostly right.  Basically a blown-up iPhone with some UI tweaks.  

Multitasking:  Still limited to Apple Apps, but I'm betting that will change.

The User Interface:  Not at all revolutionary, unless you think about it.

Content:  Nailed that one.

3G: Optional, like I said.  I was surprised by the $30 unlimited data package, though.

Hardware and Price:  I was pretty spot-on, except the SD slot thing.  But there is an SD accessory, so half a point.  And deduct half a point for the OLED.   But it's not regular LCD, so it's a wash.

My score this time: 4 out of 7.  Yay D+!  Now, what does all this mean?

I do not like the iPad name.  I just think it sounds weird.  But, so did "iPod" a few years ago.  Maybe that's why Apple chose the name.  There's something in the back of your brain that may relate iPad to iPod and do some subliminal stuff in your grey matter to make you like it.  Or not, I don't know.  But it fits the brand image, and looks good on the back of the device.  I still like "Newton Pro" or "Newton 2", but I get why Steve Jobs wouldn't want this beauty to be associated with the less-than-stellar PDA that came out of Apple in his absence.  I'll just get it engraved on the back.

As far as multitasking goes, here's the way I see it...  There are a lot of new hooks in the iPhone 3.2 software development kit.  (BTW, the iPad runs iPhone 3.2.)  Some of the more important ones are:

• Shared storage, which allows you to save a document into a folder that all apps can see.  This is huge, since now Apps can share data.
• Improved text, called "Core Text":  Hopefully this will eliminate the "really big text" problem when scaling iPhone apps to full screen.  I'd rather see more words than bigger letters as the window grows.  Core Text fixes this.
• Desktop files: You can mount the iPad as a folder on your desktop and drag and sync all those iWork documents, or any other file.  And remember those shared storage folders?  They can be desktop folders, essentially syncing a folder of iPad documents to your desktop and back again.  Then all those files can be used in any app that supports shared storage.
• Bluetooth and dock keyboard support
• Identifying Apps: Apps can be set to open a file type, just like the desktop.  If you get a Numbers spreadsheet e-mailed to you, it will open in Numbers when you tap it.  For any app/filetype.
• PDF creation: Any app can now simply add PDF creation as part of the SDK.  I'm guessing Apple built it into iWork for iPad, then just put that code out there for the masses.  Now any program can "print" to a PDF file, then e-mail it.
• Scalable Apps. Some Apple apps on the iPad have 2 lives:  One portrait life that is all text with a little status bar, and landscape life, where the text-y part slides over and a sidebar with more info eases in.  Any app can have a different interface based on orientation.  A developer can also make a single app that looks one way on an iPhone and different on an iPad.  And it can have different layots in landscape or portrait on either device.  Imagine being able to buy, say, a Twitter client (did I mention I'm on Twitter?) one time, and load it on both devices.  You'll get a simpler version on the iPhone, a live timeline feed on the iPad in portrait, and a multi-column list feed in landscape.  3 for 1 deal!

What does all this mean?  First of all, iPhone 3.2 (which is the iPad OS, confusing, I know...) is what devs are writing for now.  But Apple has dutifully released a new iPhone OS at every WWDC since the iPhone was born.  I'm betting this year at WWDC in March, They'll unleash iPhone 4.0.  All of the above iPad mojo, and iPad and iPhone multitasking will become a part of the unified iPhone 4.0 OS.

The content is awesome, but not surprising.  Apple will lock down books and newspapers like they did music and video, and the world will follow.  There are a lot of people who say "I won't buy anything from Apple!  It's all DRM'd and locked and closed, and stuff."  True, but Apple sells more music than anybody.  Period.  They are also tops in online video sales, music video sales, podcast downloads, and they own 97% of the mobile App market.  Apparently most people don't care if their content is locked.  Magazines and books will flock to this device.  And I'd bet the Kindle hardware guy at Amazon is butting horns with the Kindle software guy, who wants to write an app for this thing.  Apple is becoming a content company.  The hardware is beautiful, intuitive and simple.  But it's also there to sell you stuff.  iPods sell music.  AppleTVs were supposed to sell video, but never really took off.  iPhones sell apps, and the iPad will sell all of the above.

The OS/UI question is what I really want to talk about.  People don't get it yet, but this is a game changer.  You may be saying "Aahh, it's just a big iPod touch.  Big deal."  Well, it is a big deal.  My niece was playing number games on my iPhone at 3 years old.  A septuagenarian acquaintance (that means 70+) uses one.  The iPhone is a device you can pick up and push the power button.  Then it says "slide to unlock", then you tap a button, and an app opens.  It's simple.  You don't have to worry about which things you tap and which things you double tap.  You don't have to close things, you just stop using them.  No saving things.  No menus sliding up or down or over, covering what you're working on.  You don't have to slide your hand around on a desk, and try to match that movement to a little arrow on the screen.  If you just hit the power button, it turns off.  That's the beauty of this software.  Everyone knows how to use it, and it doesn't even come with a manual.  Things are where you think they might be.  

Moving that to the iPad.  If you use this same idea on a more powerful and larger machine, you can sell it to kids in 3rd grade "Mom, it has e-books and math games!" or,

Imagine this scenario including your grandmother who has never touched a computer. 

"Gran, just leave it in this stand, and it'll show pictures.  If you want to read a book, tap this button.  If you want to read email from the kids, tap this one."

Done.  Much better than

"Set the screensaver to use this shared folder as a source for the slideshow, then if you want to read a book, open the Kindle App.  Remember to save it before you close it, or you may lose your place.  If you want to read e-mail from the kids, open your browser. Oh if it asks you to run an update, hit "Yes", then "trust site", go to gmail.com and login.  Remember, if a site asks you to install something, say no, but say yes to OS updates."

Which conversation would you rather have?  

If you're a power user, this won't be your only computer.  But it may be the computer that sits next to the sofa so you can look up stats as you watch the game, or tweet your thoughts about Oprah's dress on the next Golden Globes.

This is the next step in computing.  There's a long way to go, no doubt.  It's a simple device designed to test the waters of touch.  Not like Windows has done.  You can't take a mouse interface and throw a touch screen on it.  You have to rethink the whole shebang.  Where do you hold it?  How far do your thumbs reach?  How big or small does a control need to be to fit a fingertip?  What shape is that fingertip when pressed from different angles?  

I think this iPad was what spurred the iPhone into existence.  Technology wasn't good enough for this device three years ago, so they made a smaller one and threw a cell phone in it.  They released a 3" iPad with cell radio and called it the iPhone.  Now, you can make a 10" screen that is crisp and bright and responsive and doesn't suck juice like a '78 Plymouth with holes in the muffler.  Now, you can get 10 hours of battery.  Now, speed and memory are cheap.  It is the next step in the evolution of computing.

I know I'm an Apple fan.  I get it.  But looking back on the last 30 years of computing, Apple has never been the first.  They sit back and let others make mistakes, then they think, design, rethink, redesign, and come up with something that doesn't invent the device, but reinvents it to actually work well.  Think about it.  The Apple II brought the home computer home.  The Macintosh made graphical interfaces and the mouse mainstream.  The iMac brought all-in-ones back, and the iMac also was the first consumer device to drop floppy drives and replace all the exterior ports with USB.  Then came the iPod, which we can all agree that changed the MP3 player forever, and the iTunes store, which changed content delivery.  The next step was, of course, the iPhone, with which most manufacturers are still trying to catch up. 

And now, the iPad.  It drops everything everyone knows about tablets, and starts from scratch.  They dropped all the UI elements from mouse computing and thought about how you'd TOUCH it.  That's why it will work.  Now, imagine 5 years from now, when the iPad 6 has a 4Ghz processor, a hi def OLED display with pressure sensitivity, 500GB of NAND Flash memory, 30 hours of battery life, and a touch-based OS that has had half a decade to mature. I can't wait.

I've already signed up to pre-order one.  As soon as they are available, I'll have one.  I'll probably get the middle-of-the-road 32 GB version with WiFi.  I don't need 3G access all the time and don't want the extra monthly charges.  I also have WiFi just about everywhere.  Plus, I know in 2011, there will be a new iPad, with 4G/WiMAx, 128 GB and 20 hours of battery, 2 cameras and a vial of unicorn tears.  I'll just have to upgrade, then...

OK, OK...  that may be a little hyperbolic.   But there are a few things of note about this particular event.  

First, there is the timing.  Last year, Apple announced that they would no longer be attending MacWorld Expo, the traditional late-January trade show where Apple would provide the Keynote Speech, usually introducing an amazingly awesome product in the process.  Apple said they didn't like having to rush products through the holidays, struggling to get a demo and a working piece of hardware by January.  Fast forward a year.  Macworld Expo moves to February, and Apple is staging an event in... late January.  

Now, why would Apple back out of the largest Mac-related trade show on Earth?  Because they don't need Macworld.  It's sad, but true.  Those Stevenotes are live-blogged, bootleg-streamed, speculated on, and written about.  It doesn't matter when or where those Stevenotes are, bloggers and journalists (and yes, I believe these are 2 different jobs.  Sue me.) will follow.  PR and hype follow Apple, not the other way around.

While the timing of the event is of note ("Hey, Macworld!  Eat this!  I'm having my event anyway, and ahead of your schedule!! Pbtpbptptpbptbpt!), what everyone has been talking about is the new Apple slate/tablet/pad/flat thingy.  There's a lot of speculation about it, so I may as well jump into the fray.  And for the record, I'm pretty bad at this.  You can check out my predictions for the September 2009 event here.

The Name

This will not be named iPad.  Or iSlate, iTablet, iTouch, or iJesus.  I think there will be no "i".  The "i" is for phones and pods.  Tiny things.  This thing will be much bigger and more expensive.  My guesses are, in order of probability: Canvas, Slate, or Mac Touch.  I like the "Canvas" best, and fits with the invite, which is either paint splatters on a canvas or a flyover of seagulls that just ate some really colorful berries.  The "Slate" came from a domain filing by Apple a few weeks ago, but I think that was a red herring.  Did you notice everything at C.E.S. last week that runs "Windows 7 Tablet Edition" was called a slate?  That's because all those companies that make much bigger, heavier, and clunkier tablets read that Apple registered "slate" and tried to get in on it.  

The Mac Touch also makes sense.  One way Apple could justify a $800+ device is by putting it in the Mac family, not in the "i" family.  I say: Canvas.  But, to be honest, there's a little bit of me that wants Apple to drop the "i" and the "mac" all together.  Just make it an Apple.  And call it a Newton.  Pretty Please??

The OS Question

iPhone OS or OS X?  The answer is yes, and no.  The beauty of the iPhone OS is that there is one screen that all iPhones use.  This makes developing much easier when you know what screen your App will play on.  The big problem with Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Android is that there are a ton of different screen sizes, resolutions, and form factors to deal with.  This means all graphics and UI elements need to either be: designed to the lowest common denominator, or be flexible and flowable.  That second one's hard without some SDK (software development kit) help. 

The iPhone OS is great on a 3" screen.  It has a great UI, the best software keyboard available, and is easy to use with one hand or two thumbs.  The problem is blowing it up.  All roads lead to a 10" screen on this new tablet, and your thumbs can't reach all the way across the screen when holding it in both hands.  So, a "blown up" iPhone OS won't work.  Also, we need to re-read the previous paragraph about fixed resolution on Apple App store applications.  

My take:  An iPhone OS based operating system (which is already based on OSX), with some additional features.  I'm betting they'll announce the iPhone 4.0 Software Development Kit, which will supply the tools to make iPhone and tablet apps.  Developers can choose to go for iPhone apps, tablet apps, or develop a scalable app that works on both.  Anyone who thinks the tablet won't run the 120,000 iPhone apps that are out there is delusional.  I'm guessing standard iPhone apps will run in windowed mode at native resolution on the bigger screen.  Kinda like those dashboard widgets.  Of course, Apple will come up with a nifty way for the tablet keyboard to work with an iPhone app floating in the middle of the screen, but how they do that is a mystery to me.  And everyone else.  But that leads to a new problem...

Multitasking

The tablet will multitask, but not like you're thinking.  The problem with multitasking on a mobile device is battery life.  If you're running, say, a Twitter client in the background, it wants to keep you updated.  It does this by pinging the server every so often to pull in new information.  The problem comes when you go to do something else, and forget that Twitter app is running in the background.  Then it pings and pings and pings until your battery is dead.  That's the big reason Apple won't allow it on the phone.  

But, there's more screen on a tablet, so this may be where a little desktop OSX makes it's way to the forefront in iPhone OS.  If I were designing this thing, I'd put a dock on it.  Maybe not the traditional Leopard-style dock, but a dock that sits on one edge of the screen that holds all your running apps.  If you swap away from Twitter, for instance, it would just swoop into the dock, and let you know it's still working.  And it will still support all those App store push notification goodies.  Just a thought...

If I'm running a GPS App, say Navigon Turn by Turn, and I want my passenger wants to find a restaurant. So said passenger opens Yelp and starts searching.  Does this steal the GPS signal from Navigon?  On a normal computer, it would.  But because Apple came up with Core Services in OSX, and transferred them to the iPhone (and this tablet, which, by the way, still does not exist), it just works.  Why? Because Core Services are at the OS level, not at the App level.  Several different apps can know where you are in the world because the GPS chip reports to Core Location, and your location data is injected right into the operating system.  Core Services are cool.  They take a lot of the work out of developers hands, and make for a unified user experience by standardizing things like Location, Audio controls, Video playback, and tons more.  Google it.  Oh, and that fixed resolution thing?  That's pretty easy to overcome with Core Animation and Core Graphics.

Apple has been heading towards mobile multitasking for a while, and i think the tablet announcement and iPhone 4.0 SDK will unlock it.

So, multitasking? Yes.  

The User Interface

It's been said that the UI is "like nothing you've ever seen", and I believe it.  What you can guarantee, is that it will not be OSX with some touch slapped on it.  I'm looking at you, Microsoft...  A desktop OS is not a touch OS.  Never will be.  a mouse is a single-pixel pointer with a tiny onscreen arrow showing you where that pixel is.  You can't just move that paradigm to touch, where my ham hock of a hand with kielbasa fingers smush down dozens of pixels with each tap while simultaneously blocking 25% of the screen with my palm.  That's why all those Windows tablets suck.  They don't account for the anatomy of the pointer.

Remember way back in '07 before the iPhone was announced?  Everyone put up fan art predicting what it would look like.  An iPod with a phone!  A phone with a click-wheel!  The only thing everyone had in common was they were all wrong.  Apple came up with something out of left field, and despite doubts, it worked.  It still works.  It's getting a little long in the tooth and could use a visual update, but the interface still beats everything else out there.  If you read the Apple User Interface guide for the iPhone, you see how much effort they put into user interface.  They figure out how large a button or toolbar has to be to be hit with a finger.  They know how many pixels one has to traverse in order for the OS to register it as a "swipe" and not a "tap".  Now, scale this up to 4 times the screen real estate and add in a bunch more gestures.  That's why it works so damn well.  

The issue will arise with input while multitasking.  I've been super-interested in user interfaces lately, and could write a whole post on this, but here's the short of it:  On a "real" computer, the window that has focus gets all the attention from the input device.  Usually a keyboard and mouse.  But what happens when you add things like accelerometers, compasses, and GPS or cellular devices that also can provide input.  Back to the GPS example.  I know Core Location will take care of sharing location data, but the turn-by-turn apps also use the accelerometer and compass.  What if my passenger wants to play Super Monkey Ball while I drive?  If SMB takes over the accelerometer, will my GPS go all crazy and drive me into a lake Michael-Scott-style?  These are things smarter people than I will figure out.

The tablet is going to be iPhone-ish, more than likely.  A set of icons in a home screen, swipe, pinch, zoom...  All that will be there.   And then a bunch of stuff that will blow your mind.

For keyboard input,  I'm guessing proximity sensors everywhere to see how you are holding it.  If you're holding it 2 handed (think iPhone thumb typing) and get to a text input area, a split keyboard will pop up, half under each thumb.  If you're holding it in your arm, clipboard style, a keyboard will float near the input area ready for one-finger tapping.  If it senses it is flat on a desk, a nearly-full-size laptop style keyboard will appear.

I'm also betting a lot of the MacBook-style MultiTouch gestures will make it in there, like Expose, two finger scrolling, and the twisty-move.    

What you can guarantee, though is that this tablet will be versatile, and the UI will change fluidly between e-booking, movie-watching, picture-viewing, app-running, and maybe waffle-making.  Mmmm.  Waffles...

Content

www.appletablet.netMake no mistake. Whatever this is, it will be made to suck money out of your iTunes-shaped wallet.  Rumors are flying, but it's pretty credible that the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Condé Nast magazines have been in talks with Apple.  I'd bet the Disney properties including Pixar, ABC and ESPN will be a part of this thing, too.  It will play video like a champ, but also give you a new way to read magazines (watch out Zinio), newspapers (you're welcome, Rupert Murdoch), and e-books (Kindle, we hardly knew ye...)  

There are some (I'm looking at you, Leo Laporte) who think that it will have a Kindle-like WhisperNet service that will add a few hundred dollars to the price of the device, but then give you free access to content.  I disagree.  First, the Kindle WhisperNet delivers books.  Just plain old text, at about 500kb per book.  That's a half a megabyte being shot through the air over a cell phone data network and landing on your Kindle as a $10 book.  It's just not feasible to do that with media.  Imagine the back-end costs of shooting that version of Pippi Longstockings you just bought in HD over a cell network.  First, it would take forever.  Second, it's over a gigabyte.  That's a number any cell carrier would balk at.  This device will sync over WiFi and dock using a standard 30-pin iPod connector.  That's not saying cellular won't be an option, but it wont be included, and will have the same limitations as the iPhone.  OK, one caveat.  Maybe there'd be a WhisperNet-type thing for book and newspaper content, but I still doubt it.

Sports Illustrated put up a nice demo of what they want to do for slate devices.  See it at Vimeo.  

The Hardware, and the Price

It's pretty much confirmed (as much as you can confirm a mythical product no one has ever seen) that it will have a 10" screen.  The rest is up for debate.  

I'm betting on a device that looks like the first generation iPhone.  The front will be all screen, with the familiar home button, and that's all you will see.  The back will be mostly aluminum with the black plastic stripe that holds the radio.  The sides will house the traditional mic and speaker holes, an 1/8" audio input/output jack, a 30-pin dock connector hole, and an SD slot.  Yeah, I said it.  SD slot.

Inside, there will be WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth, with the compass and accelerometer and whatnot that every smartphone has these days.  Some are speculating a SIM slot, for a bring-your-own data plan, but I think that will be optional.  (Almost) no one wants another damn cell phone plan.  They will offer low-cost ($10/month) tethering to iPhone customers.  The rest of you are S.O.L.  You should already have an iPhone anyway.  The good news will be an expanded Bluetooth profile, allowing for keyboards to be paired with the tablet.  Steve won't mention that keyboard part, though.  Touch is the future, so why would any luddite want a clicky-keyboard?

The Price?  More than you want to pay, but low enough that you still will.  I guess 2 models:  A $699 model with an LED backlit LCD screen and 32 GB of flash memory.  Then, there will be a $999 version with an OLED screen and 64 GB of flash.  Otherwise, all specs will be the same.  And I'll buy the OLED version.

All this is rampant speculation, as happens in the weeks leading up to any Apple event.  Whatever happens, we'll be hanging on every word and Keynote slide.  You can bet the presentation will begin with numbers (a billion iPods sold!, A trillion Apps downloaded! iTunes is the number one music seller in the universe!) and will progress to uneventful updates to existing product lines.  Then Steve will do the "one more thing" thing and pull something magical out of his hat.  And I'll be pre-ordering whatever gets revealed.  

It's subtle, going from black to white and all...  In the coming weeks and months, I intend to update the blog more often and I'll be doing a lot of things publicly, so the news section will get updated far more often.  I'm also working on sections with episode guides and more.  

The "white album" phase will last until I get bored with it.  Once OLED screens become more prevalent, I'll switch to a black background to save energy.  (FYI... OLED screens basically have individually backlit pixels, so black pixels are just "off")  

Until then, enjoy the blanco simplicity of channelJimmy.  

As far as tape measure throwing accuracy goes, this guy is up there.  I'm sure there were several spilled coffees, poked-out eyes, and probable electrocutions in the learning curve of "Using A Tape Measure To Do Everything You Could Do By Walking Over There", but I contend that those sacrifices are worth it.

I smell a new Olympic sport!  I'm looking at you, Rio...  

Tape Measure Master - Watch more Funny Videos

I took statistics in high school.  Based on sample size, you get a margin of error (MOE).  The larger the sample, the smaller the margin of error.  As a consumer of cable news from all sides, these polls usually have a MOE of +/-3%.  That means there is a sample size of about 1060.  

Rasmussen Reports, a company that does polls for a living, (mostly for Fox News) put up a poll asking this:

Did scientists falsify research reports to fit their theories on Global Warming?

And the results were:

• 59% Somewhat Likely
• 35% Think it's Very Likely
• 26% Think it's Not Very Likely

Now, I'm no rocket scientist, but I got out of third grade 'rithmatic with flying colors.  That adds up to 120%. The best part is that Steve Doocy even says the first two numbers are "95%" then says the other 26% think it's not likely.   

I'm a fair guy.  I'm an independent guy.  I'm not a member of a political party, and I get my news from a lot of places.  "Self," I was thinking,"maybe Fox just rewrote the poll and those "Very Likely" people were a subset of the "Somewhat Likely" group.  It would be falsifying a result to fit their agenda, and it would be delicious irony.  So, I went to the source.

BUT NO!!  The poll, which I found using this new-fangled thing on the interweb called "Google" can be found on Rasmussen Reports.  And, sadly, this is the way the report is written.

Rasmussen is obviously a right-leaning pollster.  Some recent polls are titled "Tea Party Tops GOP on Three Ballots", "41% Favor, 51% Oppose Health Care Plan", and "Number of Democrats Falls to a Four Year Low".  If you click on the "In the News" portion of the site, you'll see quotes by Minority Leader John Boehner, and polls quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, Fox News, a couple local Fox stations, and the only poll in the top 15 in a "liberal" paper is in the San Francisco Chronicle, and that story is about Barbara Boxer's "thumping" being "good for a GOPer."

Lesson of the day:  Ignore polls.  They are crap, especially when they are biased.  Scott Rasmussen is a shill.  Fox News is fine in the midday, but the prime time lineup is decidedly Right.  The morning show can be run by anyone who reads good.  (Poor grammar intentional...)  And MSNBC is no better.  They are pushing a pro-climate agenda, including a recent story I've seen all over the place about a federal law requiring a homeowner to replace appliances when selling their house to meet Energy Star requirements.  This would be a very lucrative law for MSNBC's parent company (for now) General Electric.  More on that soon.

Why don't we eliminate the wart?  I looked high and low today for an in-wall USB outlet that would charge my USB-compatible devices (including my Kodak Zi8, iPhone, Jabra headset, Motorola Bluetooth headphones, Kindle, and more...) and couldn't find one.  So, I did what any passive-agressive geek blogger would do, and I made a (poorly done) Photoshop mock-up.  So, I present to you...  The BusBoy.  See what I did there...  bUSBoy.  Ha.  You're welcome.

Seriously, though, why isn't this built yet?  A 120 volt outlet and a built in transformer powering two 5v USB chargers that can easily be wired into a single J-box as a new installation or DIY replacement.  Seems like a no-brainer to me.  If you want to build one and sell it, feel free.  I'll only require a $0.075 licensing fee per unit.  C'mon, seven and a half cents is a bargain for that kind of genius.

"Why?", you ask?  Well, my interests have evolved and my future plans have changed as well.  I started my first website way back in 1996 when I had an AOL homepage my junior year of college.  I set it up as a portfolio to document my scenic design and architecture work.  I thought it would help get me a job.  It didn't.  It did, however, teach me HTML 1.2, hard-coding web pages, and how to set up a site so it was easy to change a page or a banner.

Fast forward 13 years, and I'm still doing it.  The Carpentry Lounge began as a showcase for my home makeover tv work and my interest in sustainable building.  All of that is still true.  But I'm neck-deep in technology, computers (mostly Mac!), gadgets, sustainable building, social media, live-streaming, politics, and more.  The "Carpentry Lounge" was too narrow.  Maybe channelJimmy is too wide.  We'll find out together.

I've imported all the old articles from the Lounge, and I'm working on categorizing and tagging them all.  I've also started a new section, "NEWS", that basically updates you on what show I'm currently working on, or where I am in this great big world.  This way, if you only care about what I'm doing, and not what I think, you don't have to sift thru the opinion, which will be far more opinionated now.

We're working on some great things for the site, including possible live streaming (or at least recorded clips) of Don't Sweat It and Dear Genevieve behind-the-scenes fun!  Stay tuned.

Senate Health Care Bill (link to pdf)  Officially called "H.R. 3590, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act"

The one thing I immediately notice is that it's not a new bill, it's an amendment to an unrelated bill about first time homebuyers that are federal employees.  This is because a bill cannot start in the Senate, it starts in the House.  You can only propose amendments in the Senate, so Senators regularly amend unrelated bills so they can start debate on the issue while the House is still debating. 

If you're interested in how a bill goes through the process, enjoy this video.