I’ve been typing this post on the iPad. It’s the first serious typing I’ve done on it. The autocorrect works fairly well, but it takes a little getting use to in terms of hand/finger placement. The symbol options takes a little time to learn (@, apostrophe, and quotes).

One of the most annoying thing about multiple-touching is precision tasks. I hate the magnifying glass – cursor slide – to correct a misplaced letter.

For the most part, I see the iPad as a consumption tool and not much of a productivity tool. Yes, I know that Apple put iWork applications on here, and yes, I’m blogging — but beyond simple typing ( which is hard enough — I’m trying hard to avoid index-finger typing ) anything that requires precision tasks, extensive typing, editing, cloud communication, will be hard to sustain.

This is great for watching video, reading the news, casual browsing etc — consuming. But not easily creative.

Watch– next week, I may do next week’s class lecture on keynote through my iPad.

The italics portions is my opinion. Scroll down for the relevant material.
I like honesty and straightforwardness. Everyone likes to know the truth.

There’s a kind of allure to not knowing things. It’s the idea that showing some leg but not all of it. And largely, the popularity of oversized glasses hinges on the masking a large portion of your face. The observer’s brain and facial recognition and curiosity mix into a big mess. (But this may be something I don’t want to get into.)

But I also think that not some things are better left un-said. I had two odd situations this past month. The characters are really similar, their actions are different, but both stories end with me having a bad taste in my mouth.

1. Be Straightforward
I had been hanging out with “Stacy”, an asian girl, for a while. We had been going out, dinner, play, etc. Phoned, texted, yaddda yadda. She told me to call and text her more. She said she would make more time for me. Great?

To cover my bases and ‘just to make sure’ I asked her the other day if she had a boyfriend (we had a late night car ride where she went on about how she broke up with her previous boyfriend in December, and we started hanging out the end of January.

She said she has a boyfriend and they’ve been dating since January. It was one of those WTF moments that used to get me mad. But it didn’t. I’ve been riding at a moderate emotional range since last September. So I told her we’re not hanging out anymore and left it at that.

She should have told me she had a bf well before I asked. Sometimes I wish I had the courage to ask people “What were you thinking?” more often.

2. Leave it unsaid
I was at the casino last night playing Blackjack, card counting. I don’t usually chat with other players while I concentrate on the ‘count’ and remember deviations.

There was a little asian girl(“Fran”), who looked like my sister, Grace (not Gloria), playing at a different table. At one point, she sat down between me and some other guy. She chatted with him for a while.

Between shoes, the dealer said he taught Fran how to play the other night. I normally don’t like to play with inexperienced players (maybe it’s my superstition acting up), but I decided to help her a little on the basic-est of Basic Strategy.

Between shoes after that, Fran would go back to her previous table where her friends “Trudy” and “Linus” sat. After a little, they come play with us all for a while. I decide to not count for one shoe and talk with them a little. They’re all students, Vietnamese and they end their sentences with “man!”. (She keeps stealing my pho, man!). Trudy and Linus are siblings. Linus and Fran are dating.

After an hour, they all leave. But 2 minutes later, Fran and Trudy come running back:
Trudy: “Fran has something to tell you.”
Fran: “Shut up, no I don’t!”
Trudy: “Fran thinks you’re cute for a Taiwanese person. But she thinks you’re too old for her; it wouldn’t work out.”
They run away.

I didn’t think about flirting with Fran or say much past “You should double-down” or “I would split those”.

Stacy and Fran, you both have boyfriends. Do me and everyone a favor: put a freaking sign on your foreheads and leave me alone.

Last semester, I arranged and directed music to an LSU theatre production of Maria Irene Fornes’s Promenade , music by Al Carmines. It was an “experimental” musical at the time in the 1970′s, that didn’t reach much success. Fornes’s obsurdist approach to forming the piece may have rubbed audiences the wrong way.

The LSU production of Promenade was a large success, being sold out every night and not not being a main stage show. The work I put into it did pay off in the connections I made with the theatre department. I am looking to do sound design and compose music for at least two shows next fall semester.

This semester I started work on my opera- Southern Werewolf. It’s a one act opera for soprano and baritone, based off a play by a fellow LSU grad student in the theatre department of the same name. It’s a story based in Southen Louisiana, around Lafayette parish. It’s a love story between a werewolf and vampire.

Closing my account involves a fax, where an email, internet, or phone will not do. I’ve sent a fax 3 times with instructions to close my account, everytime I call to confirm the closure, the outsourced representatives are annoyingly incoherent, diliberatly dodgy in their responses or absolutely have no idea what they’re doing. I just want my money. This is the last time I deal with this financial group. ever.

…

During intermission at an LSU play, my neighbor, returning to his seat, asked me if I was Nepalese.
“I had a friend who was from Nepalese.”
Nope, I’m Taiwanese.

I played Double Dragon 2 for the first time yesterday on my mac. I can not believe how hard it was. I was literally stuck on one section, where I had to jump a string of disappearing platforms, for an hour. One hour. I don’t know how anyone could have done it on the classic NES. The attack buttons change with the orientation of your character! Punch is not always A and kick is not always B. Jumping is A and B..

I had the luxury of using the built-in game genie, which prevented me from losing lives from energy loss, water, and pits. I feel like I had a better gaming experience than I would have back in 198X, getting to play it a quiet booth in a coffeeshop.

One of the first things the graduate advisor told me 2 years ago during orientation was that it was going to be hot in Baton Rouge. And the best way to stay cool walking around campus was to find routes that involved the most shade, even if it involved a longer route.

He was completely right. Walking from the school of music to the library doesn’t take longer than 5 minutes. But within those 5 minutes on a normal, I’ll have sweat more than I do at the gym.

I’ve figured out several routes that involve walking through administrative buildings that I would otherwise have no business being in and hugging building walls with large overhangs to avoid heat stroke. I swear, my next school wil have much cooler climate.