Whereas a laptop computer often involves a calculation including the weight versus the length of time one will be out and how much work one expects to get done, an iPad is light enough to take everywhere, even without a bag to hold it (which can be important if you need to give the impression that you’re dashing off to a meeting rather than leaving the campus).

One class of software that is useful for writing work on specific projects is general writing apps. Some notable apps in this space are iA Writer and Nebulous Notes. Each of these has a custom keyboard, which can be invaluable if you often make typing mistakes when using the iPad’s virtual keyboard. With the regular keyboard, it is impossible to change the insertion point with precision, often requiring you to retype significant chunks of work to correct a couple of typos. Custom keyboards vary in the exact selection of extra keys they offer, but invariably include keys to move left or right a character or a word at a time, allowing you to delete only actual mistakes.

Regular writing apps push one towards a file- or project-based workflow, which may not always be appropriate. Perhaps you have a flurry of ideas which you know are valuable but which don’t yet fit into a clear structure, and you just need to get them written down. In these cases, a journaling app is probably the best choice, since these apps don’t require you to make any decisions before you start writing, and their very structure offers subtle encouragement to write at least something every day. My next post will feature a table offering my assessment of four journaling apps for the iPad. Each of the apps has at least one feature that in my opinion represents an advance over most of the competition. The features included are all ones that I consider potentially valuable, though the selection of features that are actually valuable will vary for each person. Someone who just requires a tool to encourage them to write every day and to store their writing could profit from any of these apps.

• Yasaka New Era
• Tibhar Legend Destroyer

The problem with both of them is that they’re not available in Japan. It’s of course quite possible for me to import rubbers, but the fact that they’re totally unavailable over here suggests to me that they’re perhaps not being made at all any more, and what I’m buying is just leftovers.

Anyone know whether this is true? And anyone care to suggest alternatives if indeed it becomes impossible to get hold of these?

Look into embedding a Pearltree into the Group.

“If you look closely at the intro videos Apple plays whenever it launches a new product, you’ll notice a few constants. One: Apple’s design guru, Jonathan Ive, is in every single video. Two: Ive hasn’t changed his shirt since 1997 when the original iMac launched. Also, Cheryl Vedoe marks the only intro reel appearance by a female employed at Apple. And that was just once, in 2001. Scott Forstall is the only other one currently on the repeat wearer … Read More

via teqnolog

This makes sense if the book does indeed have so many errors. However, the petition doesn’t mention what the errors are; nor does it link to a blog post or similar where the errors are detailed.

Update: Here is an errata PDF produced by the APA. And here is the APA Style Blog, which I never knew existed. An Inside Higher Ed article has more details on the situation.

Several of the ones I was looking at initially ruled themselves out because they contain carbon or similar materials. Others, such as the Ma Lin Extra Offensive, looked like they were a bit too fast. And anything heavy, or whose weight I was unable to find out easily, was knocked off the list. Most obviously, most blades simply aren’t available with a Chinese pen handle, so the list was short to begin with.

Since I don’t really know what’s going to suit my long term, I also decided to go cheap. And because I decided to go cheap, I eventually opted to buy two rackets with similar specs. The idea was that alternating two rackets would allow me to get a sense for how rackets differ in feel, and this would also allow me to try out 4 different rubbers.

So here’s what I got:

• Donic Appelgren Allplay Senso V1, with Yasaka New Era and Donic Vario Big Slam
• Xiom Fuga, with Andro Plasma 380 and JUIC 999 Elite Ultima.

My coach said I really needed to put the New Era aside for a year and use something softer and spinnier, so I’m thinking of replacing it with a Xiom Yanus.

Of course, trying two blades with different rubbers means it’s difficult to compare either the blade or the rubbers because each depends on the other to quite an extent. So I may try moving the rubbers around at some point.

At the moment, my feeling is that the Appelgren setup suits me best.

How about adding a metadata pane to every slide (not just every presentation), allowing us to search (and eventually, I hope, browse, too) our individual slides, independently of the slidestacks, or presentations, they belong to.

This could alleviate to some degree the “locked away” nature of a slidestack, allowing us to access the information therein as necessary, as well as repurpose individual slides in new slidestacks.

Two kinds that I have seen around are the Yoshida Kaii racket, and the Ma Lin family of rackets. The Ma Lin family comes in several flavors:

• Ma Lin Extra Offensive
• Ma Lin Carbon
• Ma Lin Soft Carbon

There are some other types of Chinese-style rackets that I haven’t seen in the wild, but have found in catalogues and through net searches:

• the Kan Yo Fiber Special (80g)
• the Butterfly Chinese AL
• Waldner Senso Carbon

Does anyone have any recommendations? I think I’d like to keep the weight of the blade down to around 80g, to allow more flexibility with rubber thicknesses. But I don’t really know what 80g feels like compared to 90g, and it’s possible that weight increases from rubber thickness would dwarf 10g from the blade. Any insights?