Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Pen and paper are out and the Tablet and stylus are in

Pen and paper are out and Tablet and stylus are in.
That is the "sea change" we are going to see come 2012.
I rarely use a pen nowadays, most likely filling a government form or at the bank.
The other day one of my students asked for my pen and he never returned it.
He is becoming like me.
He was filling on of my surveys and I obliged.
Ten years ago, if this happened I would have been angry.
It is very similar if somebody asks for pen at the counter / Water/Electricity Board, ten years go. I used to say NO, rudely of course.
I remembered that he did  returned it when I wanted to go to the bank . I borrowed a pen from our secretary and went to the bank and I did not either till next day.
She a steno-typist rarely takes short hand notes, now.
All of us are hooked to the keyboard and the computer.
However, I do not like lot of paper being used.
That is we are felling trees and not environmentally sound practice.
If the pen disappears and the paper disappears, I don't care.

But we need a replacement.
Yes we are going to get it soon.
Long before "I kick the bucket"
Not a computer we want a tablet with a stylus.
To that you add Xournal, we can fill a electronic form on the fly.

Xournal makes filling an electronic form breezy.
I love the idea of the tablet which reminds me of the Slate and slate pencil.
I wish that its alternative name should be "THE SLATE".

It is said that in USA they are abolishing cursive writing in school which is a stupid idea.
We are different from Apes because of we use our finer coordinate movements for manipulative skills.
If one wants to become a vascular surgeons or a neurosurgeon these are very essential skills.
Chinese make their (actually parents) children to learn these skills early in their life. These skills are essential in shop floor too.
In time to come Americans might need Chinese to perform neurosurgery on them, if they do not teach finer manipulative skills.
That is why when they come to Asia they cannot eat rice with their hands or used chop sticks.
Coming back to stylus, tiny stylus and ekle can be dangerous in young children.
I have seen young ones poking their eyes (accidentally) with coconut ekle, fine gadgets in instrument sets etc.
The tablet should be hardy an they stylus should be safe with a blunt end.
They should be child safe.
Lest few children might lose their eyesight by accidents of the nature  I mentioned above. 
I hope these items from Amazon hit this country before my manipulative skills and eyesight fail.

Ten or More Things Apple Mac won't tell its customers.


Ten or More Things Apple Mac won't tell its customers.

1. It is a Unix derivative i.e. BSD (Berkeley Systems Distribution) which form the basis for both Mac OS X and the iOS that powers the iPhone. 

2. It was hooked to a O.E.M platform (Power PC) till recently.

3. BSD is what Darwin is based on.

4. Darwin is Apple's Open Source Unix operating system foundation. 
Somebody should revive this, now that Steve Job is no more.

The Darwin kernel is equivalent to the Mac OS X kernel plus the BSD libraries and commands essential to the BSD Commands environment.

5  It uses Open Source OpenGL - Standard 3D graphics library

6. jEdit  4.3  
7. Perl  5.10  Accessible through Terminal under Utilities
8. Python  2.6.1  Accessible through Terminal under Utilities
9. Python  3.3  Accessible through Terminal under Utilities
10. Ruby  1.8.7  Accessible through Terminal under Utilities

Items 6 to 10  are programming languages (now mostly platform independent) which made the backbone of  Linux.

11. Audacity   is a Linux derivative

12. Thunderbird is a Linux derivative

13. VLC    Media Player is a Linux derivative

14. Geogebra             is a Linux derivative

15.TeX

No operating system is Pure and I have not used OpenOffice or Libre Office since they originated from Sun Solaris Sytem and later became Open Source.