I wrote this a long time ago, it seems, and never got around to pushing the publish button. Just a few notes I typed while I was using it…

• I can position it without worrying about how the page catches the light.
• Very bright. Usually use it at half-brightness or less.
• A pleasure to use at night with brightness dimmed, especially in reverse light-on-dark text.
• Super-awesome to eat with — no smoothing or holding pages, etc. It just sits there giving me text.
• I use my iMac less often, which also means I’ve been listening to music much less than before.
• RSS browsing is more difficult. It’s not great with Google Reader. The upside is that I’m more picky about what I open and send to Instapaper.
• Speaking of which, Instapaper so completely rules. Indispensable.
• Best travel device ever?
• Typing is much easier than I expected, especially with the autofix in place.
• I love being able to email myself my notes really easily. I should have been doing this all along.
• It’s also great for work stuff because it’s a reliable backstop that I *want* to use, unlike the craptop I was assigned.
• It’s not a fixture or a centerpiece. Enter the room and it’s just lying in there with the pile of books or lost in the blankets somewhere. No biggie, very low impact on the surroundings. It doesn’t take over a space like computer or a TV does.
• Everything is a hot zone. I wish there were a way to desensitize it sometimes.
• The iPad has near-silent operation. This is a HUGE plus for me. No fans, no drives spinning. No clicking mouse. No mechanical tap tappity tappa on the keyboard. No paper rustling. This is a very peaceful experience.

I liked these three articles related to the iPad:

• The iPad doesn’t need to do everything
• Habit Fields
• Creative Space and iPad

Obviously it’s not metal and glass, and therefore not as rigid, but I love how this thing feels. Ingredients:

• 1 copy of Ellen Lupton’s Thinking with Type, which has about the right dimensions
• 2 thin pieces of packing cardboard, cut to specs
• 30 quarters for ballast
• tape

Mine came out to 680 grams, right on par with the wifi-only model. Your results may vary, but that’s what the quarters are for.

A common criticism of video games made by non-gamers is that they are pointless and escapist, but a more valid observation might be that the bulk of games are nowhere near escapist enough. A persuasive recent essay by the games theorist Steven Poole made the strong argument that the majority of games offer a model of play which is oppressively close to work.

It is reasonable to assume that your audience is sympathetic, or at least interested, for anyone who is bored can promptly switch you off by turning a knob. But though presumably sympathetic, the audience has no power over you. It is just here that a broadcast differs from a speech or a lecture. On the platform, as anyone used to public speaking knows, it is almost impossible not to take your tone from the audience. It is always obvious within a few minutes what they will respond to and what they will not, and in practice you are almost compelled to speak for the benefit of what you estimate as the stupidest person present, and also to ingratiate yourself by means of the ballyhoo known as ‚Äúpersonality‚Äù. If you don‚Äôt do so, the result is always an atmosphere of frigid embarrassment. That grisly thing, a ‚Äúpoetry reading‚Äù, is what it is because there will always be some among the audience who are bored or all but frankly hostile and who can‚Äôt remove themselves by the simple act of turning a knob…

The poet feels that he is addressing people to whom poetry means something, and it is a fact that poets who are used to broadcasting can read into the microphone with a virtuosity they would not equal if they had a visible audience in front of them. The element of make-believe that enters here does not greatly matter. The point is that in the only way now possible the poet has been brought into a situation in which reading verse aloud seems a natural unembarrassing thing, a normal exchange between man and man: also he has been led to think of his work as sound rather than as a pattern on paper. By that much the reconciliation between poetry and the common man is nearer. It already exists at the poet’s end of the ether-waves, whatever may be happening at the other end.

• I was happy to see that two photos of mine are being used in the Wikipedia article on Pine Grove Furnace State Park, from my earlier hike this summer. I think that makes me some kind of expert.
• Another photo from my hike is at some random $noring-related blog, of the dedicated snoring shelter at Tumbling Run, Pennsylvania. Of course, next door there’s the non-snoring shelter.
• If you happen to Google for “big hanging balls,” (I recommend you don’t) my photo of a big hanging ball sculpture in the High Museum comes up on the first page.
• My photos also come up for Schatten Gallery and El Toro Ferocio, both parts of recent exhibitions at Emory University.
• Lastly, one of my favorites: I’m the number 2 result for 65536 iv, a screenshot from when I ventured to the very end of an Excel spreadsheet.

• I restored the link to subscribe to the RSS feed for this site, which I took away some time ago in an inexplicable fit of madness.
• The sidebar now reatures a running list of what’s playing in my iTunes, updated every 10 minutes or so. I suppose you can get the feed for the music, too, if you need immediate and comprehensive information.
• I refreshed the about page with better copy, linkage, and a handsome photo.

And I did some screw-tightening here and there in the background. Then again, I’d not be surprised if I simply screwed something up.

Scott: IM to me combines the worst aspects of the telephone and e-mail—

Merlin:—and being a teenager.

*i.e., want