I spent much of the weekend on my iPad. Some of that was working on designs in Graphic and some of it was research and writing. Unfortunately I have an iPad mini 2, which doesn’t support the new Split Screen, but it does support the Slide Over and Picture-in-Picture.
Actually sitting down and using it for the first time since Apple put it out in beta over the summer, I started feeling where the new multitasking could use some work. And then I read this article on Six Colors. They summerized nearly everything I was feeling, but I especially love these two ideas.
The Slide Over app picker sucks. Not sure who designed that, but being that Apple is encouraging all app developers to support iOS 9 multitasking, it is surprising that this interface falls apart if you have more than a handful of apps to choose from.
App Buddies. Cute term, but it is what I am doing on my MacBook. Mail and Calendar. Slack and Messages. Coda and Safari. Having this functionality on iOS would be amazing.
Overall, I have fallen back in love with my iPad. It is growing up and becoming a more productive device.
On Saturday I took a trip to Best Buy to play with the iPad Pro. And that sent me on a research trip over the weekend to see if it could replace my current setup. Right now I have a MacBook Air and a iPad mini. The MacBook is used for development and design work and the iPad is used for everything else. Unfortunately, the iPad Pro is way too large and awkward for use in bed, so I feel I would need to keep the iPad mini for that. And, so far, the “pro” software for iPad isn’t good enough to fully replace my Mac needs.
Here is how I see my uses:
MacBook Air: iOS Dev/Photoshop
iPad Pro: web dev/general
iPad mini: reading
Where design apps lack on iOS is slicing and outputting graphics, something required for development. If Pixelmator or Graphic allowed you to quickly slice and output images on iOS, I wouldn’t need a Mac for that.
Beyond that, I need Xcode for iOS. There is Dringend, but it requires a remote Mac to compile and it cannot open Storyboards/XIBs. Some of my projects are Storyboard/XIB free, but not all.
I would love to be able to replace my Mac with an iPad Pro, but unfortunately I cannot yet. I can use an iPad Pro for a lot of what I do, though. So I am considering one.
What do all of these have in common? These are things that Christians should be in an uproar about. Babies, the downtrodden, and the persecuted. Yet my feeds were clear of most of that while each of these events were at their heights. And now I see so many of my fellow Christians in an uproar about a cup.
Let’s be real. If you put Santa in a mall and don’t mention Christmas, you’re an idiot. You aren’t avoiding offending anyone or excluding anyone because the only holiday that involves a big jolly fat man in red this time of year is Christmas. Kwanzaa doesn’t. Hanukkah doesn’t. Only Christmas.
If you have a tree decorated with tinsel, lights, and ornaments: you have a Christmas tree. Calling it a holiday tree serves no one. No other holiday involves that tree.
But, as a free-market supporter and a conservative, I’m not going to force your business to call it a Christmas tree or to wish me a Merry Christmas. I might call you an idiot, but I won’t force your hand. I might choose to shop elsewhere, but I won’t force you to change.
So that brings us to a stupid little cup. Christians, when they see you stay silent about the murder of gays at the hands of ISIS and the selling of baby parts, what witness are you providing by complaining about that red cup? That $5 coffee is likely money not going towards providing an entire meal for a poor family or a week’s worth of water for a person in Africa. But you know, let’s complain about people not knowing how awesome Jesus is while we continue to not show them Jesus.
What I witnessed on a Dribbble shot the other day was more than disturbing as two men, David Kovalev and Eric Hoffman, voiced a concern about the nudity and sexuality of the shot being inappropriate for this site: they were torn apart by rabid wolves, insulted and mocked and the bullying continued onto Twitter. I myself got roped in when I expressed my solidarity with them and had to fend off a troll that ended his attack by sending me multiple nude images on Twitter.
This community once was a place to talk and receive feedback from amazing designers and peers unlike anything that came before. While DeviantArt was chock full of immature teenagers and young college students, Dribbble was largely full of professionals.
Now, it has clearly devolved into a cesspool where those that are loudest and rudest get the most amount of credit, and those that dissent are mocked and trolled to the applause of everyone else.
This isn't a community I want to be a part of, a community I want to support. Something has to change or I will likely not be renewing my Pro membership next year.
I posted this on Dribbble the other day after two men and myself were bullied on a thread of a nude shot— that another player posted— and followed onto Twitter for more ridicule for suggesting that this was not the place for these kind of images. Today I received the following from the Dribbble team:
Not only have they removed my shot and reprimanded me for “preaching” and “stirring up controversy”, they have threatened to suspend my account if I break their rules again. Rules that also disallow porn, nudity, or sex in shots on their site. But the original shot that we voiced a concern about remains. Along with the comments featured in my shot.
This is 2015, when people that complain about nudity on a site meant to be work friendly are threatened with suspension and bullied by the community for speaking up. Because #tolerance.
Even though we live in the age of freely accessible information, thanks to you, the Leftist lynch mob, our citizenry is dumber than ever, calling for justice before you know the crime. Demanding a white cop be strung up and killed for daring to be white and on the job, or a hunter to be hunted and killed himself, you never never pause to say “Hey, maybe there’s two sides to this story and we should wait for answers.” No. What matters is merely your hatred, the hashtags and the race to be the dumbest flying turd-nuggets in the wicked brigade of #JusticeWithoutFacts.
Another week, another liberal lynch mob angry about another situation they barely understand, but don't care to know much about other than the race of those involved. Can we get just one media team to say, “Guys, maybe we can wait until we know more before we light our torches”? This is just ugly, guys.
However, the phrase has taken on a different sentiment as it is often worn by anti-Muslim protesters as a badge of honor during rallies and is seen by some as a provocation.
Only Liberals could hail as art and brave a “painting” of Mary made of cow dung and pornagraphic images in one breath and scold those taunting jihadists— that are throwing gays off rooftops and selling young girls as sex slaves in ISIS— for being provocative in the next.
The reality is that this is no more provocative than the Coptics in Egypt tattooing crosses on their wrists or any Christian wearing a cross around their neck. It is a statement to the world that we are not afraid of death because Christ defeated it.
Those that love free speech stand by free speech. Those that you claim this hat tries to provoke are tired of a group of people using death threats— and killings, rapes, and more— to shut up the opposition. They are bravely facing down an enemy that is fearlessly tearing through the Middle East and you pansies are too afraid of offending anyone to speak the truth. It’s why I love George Orwell more and more.
In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
I thought of that parable when I read the headlines that announced the news that Playboy would cease the publication of nude photographs of women in its magazine. From any moral perspective, that should appear as good news. The headlines might suggest that Playboy has had a change of heart. A closer look at the story, however, reveals a very different moral reality. Playboy acknowledged that its decision had nothing to do with any admission that pornography is morally wrong. Instead, the publishers of the magazine were acknowledging that their product was no longer commercially viable as explicit pornography because pornography is so pervasive in the Internet age that no one need buy their product.
Scott Flanders, Playboy CEO, told the media that his product had been overtaken by the larger culture. “You’re just one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And it’s just passé at this juncture.”
That is one of the most morally revealing statements of recent times. Playboy has outlived its ability to transgress and to push the moral boundaries. As a matter of fact, it was a victim of its own sad success. Pornography is such a pervasive part of modern society that Playboy is now a commercial victim of the very moral revolution it symbolized and promoted for decades.
It’s tempting to imagine this means that the first humans called their parents mama and dada, and that those two warm, hearty words have survived the slings and arrows of human history to remain in use today. But the notion is too good to be true. Over time in language, sounds smush along their way to becoming new ones, and even the meanings people assign to a word drift all over the place.
[...]
The answer lies with babies and how they start to talk. The pioneering linguist Roman Jakobson figured it out. If you’re a baby making a random sound, the easiest vowel is ah because you can make it without doing anything with your tongue or lips. Then, if you are going to vary things at all, the first impulse is to break up the stream of ahhh by closing your lips for a spell, especially since you’ve been doing that to nurse. Hence, mmmm, such that you get a string of mahs as you keep the sound going while breaking it up at intervals.
[...]
Papa and dada happened for a similar pan-human reason. After babies begin making m with their lips, they pick up making a sound that involves a little more than just putting their lips together—namely, putting them together, holding them that way for a second, and then blowing out a puff of air. That’s p—or, depending on your mood, b. Alternatively, babies also start playing with their mouths a little further back from the lips—on that ridge behind the upper teeth that we burn inconveniently by sipping soup when it’s too hot. That’s where we make a t or a d. The order in which babies learn to make sounds explains why the next closest usual caretaker to mom is so often called papa or baba (or tata or dada).
Yes, it is tempting to imagine that the first humans called their parents mama and dada. You can believe that evolution made babies start with two sound groups and emotions immediately tie them to people, or you can believe that God designed us to know what to call our parents from the get go. Simplest answer is likely correct.
