My dad is 71 and has Parkinson’s. He’s had it for over 10 years now, and I can see the desease progressing in him, slowly but surely.

Last fall I moved from the US back to Canada to live in his home town. I wanted to be able to spend some quality time with him before he passes on. A few weeks a year for the past 14 years just wasn’t going to cut it for me.

So I’ve moved home. I’m spending time with him, and I want to introduce him to the internet. You have to understand my dad, he’s computer phobic. I think he understands computers, but wouldn’t know the first place to start on a Macintosh. He understands email and internet websites, but would have no idea how to participate in emails or find web sites, or even probably scroll to the lower part of a page.

“What’s a scroll bar?”

“How does a mouse work?”

That’s brings us to the iPad. I wrote the night before it’s introduction that the iPad would need some killer app to really show us the potential of the device.

I think what we saw in that hour and 33 minute introduction was multiple applications, all re-done to support the larger size. All redesigned to truly support doing computing with your fingers.

(As an aside, I saw Avatar for the first time last weekend. When the first glimpse of the pad computers appeared on the screen, the iPad as version 0.01 of the devices is what came to mind).

To my dad. He still has pretty good dexterity with his hands, the Parkinson’s shakes haven’t hit him too much. I’m quite certain that if I set up an email account for him, and set up some web sites for him – cars, news, weather – that he could actually use the iPad, actually become a participating member of the internet society. And, frankly, that thought brings me to tears.

So, yes, I will be getting an iPad. Probably two, one for my dad, and one for me as well. Frankly, if the walled garden approach to applications is what it takes for my dad to get online, I’ll deal.

I’d encourage you to think about someone in your family who could truly use an iPad. Think of all those seniors in homes who are on fixed incomes – a lot would have family that could afford the $499 to bring them online. Or maybe you know of someone who has no immediate family, but you could help by setting up an email account, buy them an iPad, and show them around the device. Set up some favourite bookmarks. Buy them a few cool applications in their hobbie area.

This type of expansion of the accessibility of computing to so many more is what gives me hope about the future. It’s what is slowly making me believe the iPad is really the future of computing. And I’m going to do as much as I can to see that the iPad and future devices are a roaring success.

—-

Further reading:

Greg Knauss: ‘The Days of Miracles and Wonder’

Rob Foster: On iPads, Grandmas and Game-Changing

Daring Fireball: Various and Assorted Thoughts and Observations Regarding the Just-Announced iPad

Fraser Speirs: Future Shock

Steven Frank: I need to talk to you about computers.

The Apple tablet is going to be awesome, we all know it. But in my mind, what is going to make me want to buy one? The software..

Right before the PowerMac G4 came out, I was ready to plop down some money for a new Macintosh. I was leaning towards the next laptop that was coming out. What changed my mind was the introduction ofiDVD. Here was a way to put those home movies onto an actual dvd! Or make an awesome slideshow of pictures of a particular event for family.

It was a solution that I didn’t know I needed or was really possible. That’s what the tablet needs tomorrow. Something that I didn’t know I needed or was really possible.

An iPhone four times the size with the same applications isn’t going to cut it.

It’s not supported currently in Xcode 3.2 on Snow Leopard. Your best bet is to start from scratch, and do the manual move the build settings to the new target from the old target.

I might expand upon what happened in the future, but you could have easily substituted my name for Jesse’s in this blog post:

Wanted

(Via Rands In Repose.)

Panic Email, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Not all of us can do it this beautiful, but Panic is really setting the bar high in beautiful customer communication emails.

Young Lovers, originally uploaded by tompalumbo.

From a fantastic set of old photos taken in Paris. Well worth going through slowly..

Notice the dark, medium, and light circles around the numbers? I found these immediately distracting, and wondered why they decided to make them in this pattern? Are they significant in some way? Do they indicate some sort of relative importance to spots in the list?

As far as I can tell, no. Here’s an Acornified version that removes that distraction, and allows us to concentrate on the the games themselves:

Better, yes?

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

- John McCrae

“I will never forget standing outside the chemo treatment room knowing that the medication needed to save my life was only a few feet away, but that because I had private insurance it wasn’t available to me,” Linda wrote. “I read a comment from someone saying that they didn’t want a faceless government bureaucrat deciding if they would or would not get treatment. Well, a faceless bureaucrat from my private insurance made the decision that I wouldn’t get treatment and that I wasn’t worth saving.”

Likewise, Americans take 10 percent fewer drugs than citizens in other countries — but pay 118 percent more per pill that they do take, McKinsey said.

Remind me again why people don’t want to change American health care?

Op-Ed Columnist – Unhealthy America – NYTimes.com

(Via .)

Fall Colours, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Testing my new Canon S90. I’m going off of the “the best camera is the one you have with you” – so I chose this one, good sensor and pocketable.

It’s for an immigration lawyer firm in Nova Scotia. Still – interesting they might be praying on American’s dislike of laws here.

Get your iPhone ring tones of the engine of that beautiful car at this url: http://speciali.ferrari.com/458italia/index_en.html

(Via: Straighline)

This September I will be returning to Canada to participate in a walk on the 12th to raise funds for Parkinson’s research. My family in Canada (pictured above) have been doing it for years now, to support my father, who has had Parkinson’s for over 10 years now.

Click on this link: http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?SID=2308262 to go to the donation page and click on the Sponsor me button at the bottom of the page.

If you live in the US, yes you still can donate funds – they will be in Canadian dollars, and you will get a tax receipt emailed to you.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

When I was volunteering with high school youth at our old church in Lake Oswego, we played the DVD version of these videos, and had small group discussions about the particular topic – it’s still some of my fondest memories, being in these small groups and listening to youth explore their religious beliefs.

I hope more of these dvd’s show up as apps! I can’t wait to start showing these to my daughter and discussing them with her.

Recently an update to my small pregnancy tracking application was unexpectedly delayed for a month and a half. Towards the end of that time I was pretty frustrated, with no communication at all from Apple.

But then I got a very nice call from what I would call the person that gives developers the bad news. He was extremely polite and pleasant to talk to, and informed me that the application description can’t have any mention of giving part of the proceeds to charity. The reason being someone might come back to Apple asking for a charity receipt or proof that the money actually went to the charity in question.

I changed the description while we were talking, and a day and a 1/2 later the update was available on the app store.

What did I glean from my conversation with him?

• There is a ‘first level team’ of app store reviewers that go through a predefined list of things to check.

• If anything is found, it’s marked for follow up or outright rejected, and the first level reviewer moves on to the next app.

• At some point these next level people get around to looking at the marked apps and contact developers.

I do believe that Apple is working hard to be more transparent with the process, and over the upcoming months we’ll see the app store become a better place to sell our software.

How Pixar shades food

Clouds Over Sierra 16, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Sadly I only had my iPhone. But they turned out pretty well, at least colour wise. The iPhone did capture the colors pretty well.

“You can avoid reality but you can’t avoid the consequences of avoiding reality!”

I’ve asked him who said it – I’m presuming it wasn’t him. If it was, I have even more respect for the young man.

cotton, originally uploaded by D’Arcy Norman.

I miss living in Calgary… breathtaking!

I’ve had the great fortune of being able to help test this the past few months, and even with all the other great iPhone Twitter clients out there, I keep going back to using his.

Best Twitter so far on Birdfeed?

@erikprice: Birdfeed is, without question, the Helen Hunt’s rain-soaked breasts of iPhone Twitter clients.

If you complain about the price of $4.99 – just think, it’s about the price of a good loaf of bread – and I guarantee you’ll be supported for a long time on that $4.99.

Del Oro theater in downtown Grass Valley, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Pretty good picture for the iPhone.

• Being a father to a wonder 10 month old daughter.
• Exploring iPhone development

Yes, that can take up a ton of time.. well, all my free time.

The Art of the Title Sequence

From the press release:

He received a liver transplant because he
was the patient with the highest MELD score (Model for End-Stage Liver Disease) of his blood type and, therefore, the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a donor organ became available.

From Wikipedia:

In interpreting the MELD Score in hospitalized patients, the 3 month mortality is:
40 or more - 100% mortality
30-39 - 83% mortality
20-29 - 76% mortality
10-19 - 27% mortality
<10 - 4% mortality

Take that for what you read into it - but I pray that Steve gets better, not so that he can go back to Apple and make the stock go up, but so he can live a long life with his wife and family. Those of you who have gone through losing a loved one will understand. Pray for him and his family please.

Magazine/Book stack, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Life has been busy.. this is my reading stack, backed up from like September of last year.

But I wanted to say – wow, what a great conversation – the lady who called was genuinely happy about me coming, and excited for next week. And she’d happily turn off that flag for me in my account.

A pleasant change from faceless application rejections (of which I have not yet experienced).

(Via Seth’s Blog.)

This is one of the hardest concepts to understand and put into practice – I remember many great discussions in my MBA classes where people were reminded not to consider those sunk costs when making decisions, or analyzing a company’s decision.

Think about your personal life. How often have you said “well, we better do this because we’ve already paid for it”. Perhaps that isn’t the wisest course of action.

A great blog post by Justin on thinking about what your next application needs, but also what it doesn’t need. Worth the read.

The set

A sampling:

(Via Ranchero.)

Brent makes some great points on Steven’s essay, both worth the read.

I often think similar things about the state of development software these days.. Xcode and Interface Builder, while great, still aren’t as far as I was hoping we’d be by now.

When I try to help young people get into Mac programming, I realize just how complicated it still is. Learn C. Learn about objects. Learn Cocoa. Learn Interface Builder.

It just seems too hard, doesn’t it?

I don’t know of a solution. Do you?

Snap Of A NYTimes feature, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

This is a very cool feature by the NYTimes – people can drop by and enter one word a day on how they feel about the economy.

Check it out, and enter your word:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/30/business/economy/2009-economy-words.html

I entered ‘optimistic’ today.

Reconfiguring the American banking structure to look more like the Canadian model would help restore much-needed confidence in a beleaguered financial system.

Score another vote of confidence for Canada.

I just ran across this wiki about the Newton 2010 date problem (Props to StevenF) – after 18:48:31 on January 5, 2010 a NewtonScript int variable overflows, and well, problems happen.

I know when we were working on the Newton in the late 90’s, we weren’t really considering 2010 – in reality who really does? That was 14 years away, we were bound to still be around by then, right?

Well, maybe not. Maybe your code is going to last that long. Maybe some structures or patterns you’ve designed seem fine, but have some upper boundary that you’d NEVER HIT.

Start looking for those problems now. If you find them, stop, and spend the time to fix them. If you can’t because of a fixed API… well.. what do you do then? Make sure you fail gracefully.

The key in Gruber’s argument is this: 

And those of you who object to these generalizations — those of you shaking your heads and saying to yourselves, No, I very much do want to specify by hand the file name and location in the hierarchical directory structure for every bit of data on my system — are almost certainly, I would wager, computer programmers. To argue that users should embrace manual file system management for every bit of data they wish to store is to argue against human nature.

My parents, in fact almost every non-programmer I’ve met doesn’t get documents. Often they don’t get folders either. 

Worth remembering when writing your next indie Mac hit…

Looks as those President Bush has chosen Calgary as the first place he’s going to give a post-president speech. I wonder what the reception is going to be like?

Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors. Yup, it’s Canada. In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada’s banking system the healthiest in the world. America’s ranked 40th, Britain’s 44th.

I am proud to be a Canadian! Well worth the read if you are wondering how Canada didn’t fall into the traps that the US and Britain fell into.

His set of good cartridges , originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

He’s got a ton more I guess (a few hundred) that he’s collected over the years from different garage sales.