Keyboard and Action

While getting my piano tuned recently, I had the ability to get some pictures of the keyboard and action components.  The gentleman who did the tuning was very knowledgeable and answered all my questions regarding most aspects of pianos.  What I’m sure would have taken him an hour or so to do ended up taking a bit longer mostly due to my questioning.  At one point I thought I was getting on his nerves and ask if I should leave him to his work, but he was more than happy to share knowledge.

Since my piano is still very new ( I bought it in October of last year) it is good maintenance practice to have a new piano tuned between 3 to 4 times during the first year as new strings will stretch.  I have experienced this time and again after having put new strings on one of my guitars.  After the first year, most tuners will recommend having your piano tuned at least twice a year.  Since temperature and humidity are the primary

Action Component

factors that affect a piano’s intonation, I imagine those two tunings would occur in the spring and fall.  In addition to temperature and humidity, the frequency in which a piano is play will also factor into how often a piano will need to be tuned.  I tend to play several hours over the course of a week so I expect to have to have it tuned again in the next few months.  Maybe even more so when my children begin there musical studies.

So now, I have all the recording gear I want at the moment(more on that later) and a newly tuned piano!  I’m sure you know where I’m going with this…

-Tim

Photopad

I was in the App Store the other day looking for new iPad apps. when I came across Photopad for iPad.  I wasn’t looking for a photo editing app but was intrigued that the app author states in the description that the app will always be free.  Now, free is cool but experience has taught me that free usually comes at some sort of sacrifice.  With much skepticism, I decided to investigate further and was glad I did.

Photopad is  is indeed a premium photo editing app that uses your on board photo library to edit and save images.  It has some nice utilities that I instantly found useful.  Unlike other free apps, it is not packed (as of this writing) with advertising which is a big plus in my book.  The interface is easy to work with and utilizes screen real estate very well.  As you can see on with my other posts, I like to take a lot of screenshots on the iPad and iPhone.  A problem I’ve run into in the past, granted not often, is a photo not making it to my site with the proper orientation.  I had the opportunity correct this issue with Photopad and had no problems.  The coolest part about my first test run was that the rotate function can use multi touch input to rotated images.  The crop and scale functions will take the same input as well.  So if you have a need for an iPad photo editing app, take a look a Photopad.

-Tim

Remote on iPad

Like some, I purchased Apple’s iWork suite for iPad when I finally received my iPad. Not for myself, but for my wife who is still seriously considering getting her own iPad to replace her aging MacBook Pro. While I haven’t done any significant work with the aforementioned apps, I find them well made. Granted, there are other tech blogs who have put the apps through a more thorough battery of tests and found them lacking to some degree. I generally find Apple’s software to be well made but beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess. My curiosity though, focuses on the already useful apps I have for the iPhone, yet are still iPad compatible. Specifically, I’m referring to iDisk and Remote.

Now, I’m a MobileMe subscriber and have found iDisk extremely useful in situations where I want to allow people access to files on my account. Moreover, my household has three Apple TVs. Needless to say, Remote is extremely useful. Especially when my children decided to lose the provided white remote in the depths of our living room furniture. So naturally, I was looking forward to using those same trusty apps with my shiny new iPad.

I can imagine Apple is hard at work with all sorts of updates and developing new products, but I’m a bit disappointed with the lack of an iPad version of these apps. I was a purchaser of the first generation iPhone and I remember how impressed I was when Apple released those apps for it. I suppose I expected a quick update to at least those apps once the iPad was released to take advantage of all the real-estate it has to offer. Those updates may yet still be in the works but for the time being, We’ll have to settle for the zoom mode.

-Tim

iPad

There are a lot of reviews on the Apple iPad, so I’m not going to cover everything save for those points of interest to me.   As I’ve stated in previous posts, I wasn’t quite sure I wanted one due to the fact that I was unsure how this device would fit into my life.   I already have an iPhone 3GS and a 17″ MacBook Pro.   I figured if I couldn’t accomplish what I need with those two devices, then something is wrong.   It wasn’t until I actually had the chance to pick one up at the store and play with it did I understand what all the hype was about.   It really is a lot of fun to work with and is as easy as using an iPhone due, no doubt, to it running the same operating system.   In the neatly craft box is the iPad itself, the typical Apple USB cable and a power supply.

According to Apple’s Tech Specs, the iPad weighs in at 1.5 pounds, but in your hands it feels much lighter.   It is extremely comfortable to handle.   The 9.7″ LED multitouch display is bright and vivid.   Looking at photos on the iPad is enjoyable.   The photos I took with my iPhone during my recent trip to Delaware are crisp and clear on the iPad.   As much of the tech world knows,

Pandora on iPad

the iPad sports Apple’s 1GHz A4 processor.   So not only is the iPad easy to handle, but is seriously responsive.   So much so, I would be utterly shocked if Apple didn’t stick this chip in they’re next iteration of the iPhone.   The streamlined OS and powerful processor make for a very enjoyable computing experience.

As for networking, the iPad supports 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1.   The addition of Bluetooth to the iPad gives you the ability to connect a Bluetooth enabled  keyboard or headset.   I’m also fairly certain you could pair it with a Bluetooth enabled stereo system.   As for wireless security, the iPad supports all security protocols the iPhone does including WPA2 Enterprise.   While on the subject of wireless ability, I’ll take this opportunity to express my first dislike about the device.   Like the iPhone, you can stream video from

Sheets for iPad

YouTube or websites with embedded video but you are unable to stream video/movies you own from iTunes.   I suppose this was done on purpose from Apple in an effort to sell more of the larger flash sized iPad models.   Our family has a fairly large movie library in iTunes and it would have been a nicety to be able to stream movies from iTunes.   Hopefully Apple will permit this functionality in the future.

Sheet Music

In all, I think Apple got tablet computing right.   There could be more Apps designed for the iPad in the App Store for me to be happy, but I did find one right away that I really enjoy and it was the first App I bought for my iPad.   Sheets is a music App that  turns your iPad into a sheet music stand.   It has over 1000 selections of sheet music built in and I would image the developers will add more in the future.   Since I also purchased the iPad Dock along with the iPad, I can now place my iPad on the music stand of my piano to read music while playing instead of printing sheet music.   The iPad is an extremely cool device.   If you are unsure about whether or not you would want one, I encourage you to stop by your local Apple Store or Best Buy and play with one.   That alone maybe the deciding factor for you.   It certainly was for me.

-Tim

One of the things I do every morning is hit my favorite news sites.   Since I was traveling most of the day yesterday en route to visiting family, I became out of sync with with the iPad aftermath.   To my utter amazement, Apple is hold a press event for the preview of iPhone OS 4 this Thursday!   Macrumors as some interesting speculation on what we might see from Apple this Thursday:

- There will be multi-touch gestures OS-wide. (Would make sense for that as the rumored OS for the iTablet is close if not the same as the iPhone)
- “A few new ways” to run applications in the background — multitasking.
- Many graphical and UI changes to make navigating through the OS easier and more efficient. We haven’t had this broken down, but we can only hope for improved notifications, a refreshed homescreen, etc.
- The update will supposedly be available for only the iPhone 3G and 3GS, but will “put them ahead in the smartphone market because it will make them more like full-fledged computers” more than any other phone to date. Everyone is “really excited.”
- The last piece of information is the most vague, but apparently there will be some brand new syncing ability for the contacts and calendar applications.

Could we finally see the ability to get Push Notification functionality from Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server to iPhone?   I certainly hope so.

-Tim