David in Spain

A little bit of everything

Category Archives: iPad

No electric but I still had internet.

Mifi for mobile internet

MASmovil.png

As happens far too frequently here in Spain, I had no electric for the morning. Supposed to be from 8am until 1pm but they turned it off early and then didn’t turn back on until after 3pm. So had phone working but couldn’t run the router without electric, so I had to fall back on to the MiFi (Huawei E5830) that I have with a SIM card in from MásMovil. I have a pay as you go SIM which is working out pretty good in terms of usage and cost.

I am also, I am very happy to say, at the end of the Telefonica Movistar contract with my iPhone. Hard to believe I have had it now for 2 years and it is still pretty much like new and working great. I did order a battery clip on today to extend the battery life. Not that the battery is giving problems but more because the unit was heavily discounted. Usually £38 or more and I got it for under £15. Worked out at under €20. I think it will give me a bit more life out of the phone. I can’t afford a new iPhone4 this year. Anyway as I can now change mobile phone company I will move the phone to MásMovil also. They have a Contrato Máslibre which will cost me €14.90 for the phone calls side of it and then €5 for 300mb. I could opt for 1GB download a month but I doubt if I will need it.

Just wondered if I need to get the 300mb because I could just carry around my MiFi unit and get the data in that way. But for the sake of €5, then why not?

Of course Telefonica are doing their best to slow the portability of my number to a different company, because they are robbing bastards. Wondering how long now it will take to get the SIM in my hand. With the previous one I got it took a couple of weeks and that was just a straight purchase of a SIM card.

While I had no electric for the morning I was able to do some reading using my iPad, the battery life in that is brilliant. Loving the iBooks application because I can put in bookmarks, notes and highlight text wherever I like. When I use the PDF reader within that application it is good because I can zoom in to images and look really close, which is very useful. On the ePub side of things I can make the text bigger or smaller but I don’t have the zooming ability.

Platja d’Aro going crazy for the summer

Back at the camping site again and the guy that was away for the last two years is back working, he really should retire. He is so slow processing the customers and he has another old guy for company working just as slow next to him. Because of this I have been pushed out to work more outside the reception which in some ways is good although I prefer being in the reception. A bit less stressful perhaps but quite a bit more boring. At least I have time to think about things I want to ponder.

The boss is a pain, but isn’t that in the job description for most bosses. Always ready with a telling off for the slightest thing to who ever is in the firing line even if not necessarily the culprit. Never has any words of encouragement for the staff and is not too good at motivation the workers, because of that. At least he does have a lighter side from time to time and can make a joke. now and then.

Good for me to practice my Spanish as I have to be speaking and listening all day long. I am missing my work on my Mac computers, and the experience with this working for other people convinces me that I should be learning programming and working freelance and also making my own products to sell. Getting only one day off per week hampers my learning efforts although I have been getting some study in before going i to work.

For the last few months I have been diving in to the programming. I started off with Objective C learning and some Ruby, and lately I have been getting stuck in with PHP which again like ruby is getting me to think like a programmer. I happened to mention on Twitter that I was learning PHP and was almost immediately asked if I was well on enough to be able to tackle a php programming job. That is a good sign that there is possibly work out there for me to do. Just have to get good at it thats all.

I do have a couple of ideas for the Mac iPhone and iPad applications centred on my interests of trading on Betfair and also for the education end of things. A lot of maths will be needed to do what I have in mind for the Betfair angle, but not an impossible amount. I can start with something that is more for information on a technique and later move into using the Betfair API to add more functionality.

The course I am following is on Lynda and is very good, fairly easy to follow. With this one I feel I have made some strides with the understanding of the processes of programming, learning things like For and While looping statements and the if then else logic that is the bread and butter of making computer programs work. Another area I have moved forward with is the using MySQL to make database type of applications and use with PHP.

Apple iPad Worldwide availability

The iPad availability Europe situation is not good as it stands at the middle of April. There was recently an announcement from Apple to say that they were not going to supply iPads to Europe for another month. The release date for the iPad for the UK, Germany, France Spain and some other European countries will not be until the end of May, with a pre-order date of 10th of May.

Apple should at the very least had plans to be able to ramp up production faster if needed and as the problem stands now they should have made sure that European iPad developers could get an iPad because they need the physical device to get the apps ready and working right.

Of course it is not just in Europe the iPad is not getting out the rest of the world either. Apple are bound to look after the most vocal customer base first and there local customers as in U.S. citizens. So much for there being a World Wide market now, when Apple looks after one section of its customers before the rest.

Read more about the iPad and the accessories at Amazing iPad

Posted via web from Mac 20 Questions

Am I going to buy an iPad?

I like the look of it, I want one but don’t really need one. My wife will be getting one of these beauties though. She is a teacher and has been on the look out for something exactly like this for using with her work. She wanted a MacBook Air for the lightness of it and this is lighter. The iPad has a super looking version of Keynote on there for $10 and she can do all her information management that teachers have to do easily on this device.

Best of all – She may let me touch it from time to time, perhaps even use it?

Posted via email from Mac 20 Questions