Author: shahid

It Is Much, Much More Important Than That

 

Gerrard lifts CL trophy 2005

Seven years ago to this day, I collected my Decree Absolute from the Principle Registry of the Family Division. I shuffled outside, looked up at the sky, and a few tears rolled down my face. I sobbed three or four times, but my face was a stone mask. I have never known anyone to sob like that. After three seconds of grim-faced absolution, I walked on, with no hope in my heart, alone.

I encountered a homeless man. Like many I struck up conversations with before, he claimed to have been a soldier. I told him that I too was homeless. This was true. The only difference between me and him was that he had accepted his status and was living in accordance with it, I was in a state of denial, characterised by a state of free-fall that only the reckless know. 

I was jobless, and had been for longer than I dreamt possible. I was homeless. I was in debt. My health was wrecked, my diabetes in life-threatening shape. My beloved children were not with me. And now I was finally divorced. Well at least one thing had gone right.

Only two years before, I was on a six-figure income, a picture of health, but no deeper than that, driving a Mercedes S-Class, Platinum AmEx, £1000 suits and on top of the world. I was not rich, but I was certainly comfortable. 

Now that was ashes. And every time I experienced rock bottom, the rock turned to dust, and gave way to deeper, more humiliating lows.

I went to my friend’s house that evening to watch the match. The match? If you’re a Red, you will surely not have forgotten, just as I have relived it, thanks to a DVD that never fails to rouse me. It was the 2005 Champions’ League Final in Istanbul. My beloved Liverpool, a shadow of their former glorious selves, had somehow made it to the final of the world’s most prestigious club competition, 21 years after they had last achieved victory in the same event. That was about the time I felt I had last experienced my golden era, even though it only felt normal at the time, because winning does feel normal, you get used to it quickly and when it goes, it’s like quicksilver, no, it’s like a chameleon, or worse, like a mirage. 

Liverpool, a club battered by the tragedy of Hillsborough, mocked by upstarts claiming to be their new superiors, haunted by the horror of Heysel is a living entity that is intertwined so deeply with the threads of my own life, that I can interchangeably describe my life’s major events and Liverpool Football Club’s defining moments.

Heysel? May 1985. When my friend (also present at the flat of a mutual friend 7 years ago tonight) had inspired me to get push on with making games and when I released Chimera.

Hillsborough? Oh God. So many bodies. So many youngsters. They were there to watch football. And they have yet to get justice. And the impact of those images lessens not a jot, and the lessons of an out-of-control press prepared to pimp any lying garbage to a gullible readership are still being learned and relearned and every time we refuse to address the original disaster, those images are burned and re-burned. And my life? 1989 was when my coding career started to grind to a halt and I started to have my first financial meltdown, running screaming into the street after hypoglycaemic night terrors.

1965 marked the year of my birth, but it also marked Bill Shankly’s first major achievement, winning the FA Cup with Liverpool for the first time. I wasn’t born when we won our first FA Cup. In my early childhood, I didn’t even support Liverpool. Like many kids, I supported whichever team my Dad did. And that was Leeds united.

Diabetes came in 1974. Also the year we beat Newcastle in the FA Cup Final and when I started supporting the Mighty Reds, thus choosing my own path. And my love affair with Liverpool began.

1977 – the last year of primary school – the last year of Keegan at Liverpool, the last game for Tommy Smith, ever, and the European Cup for the first time.

“That’s nice! That’s McDermott! And that’s a goal!”

“What a delighted scorer! It’s Tommy Smith!”.

Liverpool stamped into my oldest memories, their goals transmuted into words by Barry Davies.

Fast forward.

2005.

Homeless.

Cold.

Sick.

Broke.

Jobless.

Lost my kids.

Divorced.

And Liverpool, a team that got to the final against all odds are 3-0 down at half time and I’m outside my friend’s flat smoking a Marlboro thinking “Let’s just not get humiliated. We got found out. We’re no longer the team we used to be. Let’s just keep what little dignity is left, shall we?”

Then the impossible happens. It really happens. It really, really, really happens.

My life changed forever that day.

I learned something with tears in my eyes for the second time that day as I saw Gerrard loft that symbol of ultimate glory high above his head.

That even if your opposition is formidable, even if you think you have been found out, even if the world thinks you have lost, even when you think it is all lost, that you can turn it around and win again. 

I suffered other setbacks. I was blind. I had mini strokes. And worse. But fast forward to today:

2012

Beautiful home

Warm

Healthy

Comfortable

Working for the company that sponsors the Champions League

My kids live with me.

Re-married

I’ve won on penalties.

And I’ve learned this.

That if you think you are beaten, if you think you are at the lowest, deepest, most humiliating ebb, with nothing in the tank, not even your hopes, that if you just keep walking on, if you will just keep walking on, through the wind, walk on, through the rain, though your dreams be tossed and blown – walk on

Walk on

With hope

In your heart

And you’ll never walk alone.

You’ll never walk.

Alone.

Paper vs Penultimate

Commenting on Evernote’s acquisition of Penultimate, John Gruber says:

Penultimate is a great app, but I think it’s been eclipsed by Paper.

Having bought just about every note-taking app for the iPad, I have to say that Paper is not without its flaws.

  • It’s pretty useless without the full in-app purchase of around ten dollars, which makes it more expensive by quite some margin than the competition, though hardly a stretch given that most writers, myself included, won’t hesitate to shell out more for a Moleskine or three.
  • The performance leaves something to be desired, even on the new iPad, with initial strokes being missed or messed up.
  • It doesn’t work well at the edges. Try starting a stroke near the bottom and sliding up and the slide out tray keeps coming up. This means you get the illusion of a blank slate, but the behaviour of the pen is inconsistent across the whole page area.
  • The page turning that apes a BlackBerry PlayBook bezel gesture doesn’t always work, causing unwanted marks to appear.
  • The “rewind to undo” mechanic is flakey, when you don’t get this right, you leave a mark on the page, when you do, it’s not clear how much undo history you have and the granularity is tough to predict.
  • The orientation is forced to landscape. That makes it very hard to use without a stand. 
  • The centrefold is implicit, but sometimes, you really want it to be explicit to match up with the zoomed out view, just in case you are interested in writing on “both sides of the page”
  • Penultimate handwriting is always silky smooth. There is nothing more important than this, not even the admittedly beautifully thin strokes allowed by Paper.
  • Having to step out of the writing view to add pages to the end is a pain.
  • There are no templates. It would be nice to be able to write on lines.
  • There’s no image insertion, though I’m sure this will come at some point.

Paper tries to do things differently and follows the same minimalist school as Clear on the iPhone, but sometimes, this causes problems. With the IAP, Paper is a beautiful app and goes on the first page of my iPad, but Penultimate stays at position #1, at the top left.

The New iPad – The Bad Stuff

It’s not all rosy in Apple’s Walled Garden.

 

Take the curvature of the back panel in tandem with the thinner profile. This actually makes the new iPad less comfortable to hold than the iPad 1. It digs into the palms at the corners and over a short period of time quickly becomes tiresome.

Then there is the interface between the touch-screen glass and the metal back, which curves to meet the glass. It’s inconsistent. There are no issues with this interface on the iPad 1st generation, but on the new iPad, there is some roughness. This roughness alone makes the interface between hands and device especially uncomfortable. It lacks the quality I’ve come to expect from Apple. I can’t believe the likes of John Gruber have missed this, unless I’ve got a dud.

The curvature of the back panel is deliberate of course, it gives the appearance of thinness without requiring it. Apple has realised since the rev A MacBook Air (yes, I have one of those too) that a side-on shot of a device with taper gives the illusion of the object floating in space and thinner than if the height was determinable by a single, two dimensional plane. It’s just design. And it works, even when you know the truth.

What doesn’t work is the configuration of interfaces along the edges. There is no way around this for Apple until they get the device _really_ thin, at which point they can take the iPhone 4 route and go back to the metal band design language. It’s really difficult to insert the dock connector without seeing the port. It takes longer to find the lock button. I fumble around for the volume rocker switch and I’m never really sure if I’ve hit the right bit until I see which way the volume is going. I have to visually find the on/off switch. This is ergonomics 101. It was spot-on with the first gen iPad and it’s just broken since second gen.

From time to time I like to experiment with Xcode, openFrameworks and targeting the iPad with toys. It’s how I wind down from time to time. The new iPad suffers here too as far too often, debug processes are left hanging on this device, necessitating a full power cycle. This means I’m no longer interested in experimenting and will stick to the Mac. Life’s too short to file RDAR requests that will never get answered. Life’s too short to file RDAR requests full stop.

The battery life is definitely shorter. The first gen iPad lasted forever. The new one is still mightily impressive, knocking every laptop under the sun into a cocked hat, but you have to think about whether it will last two reasonably busy days. First gen did two days without breaking a sweat.

It does get warm. Certainly not blisteringly hot the way my MacBook Air rev A used to get, but pretty warm when you’ve been gaming for ahem, a few, ahem (60) minutes with the brightness turned up to maximum. Taking the brightness down a few notches helps a lot I’ve found. It’s definitely hotter at the bottom left on the back panel.

This might sound lame, but I often mistake the camera at the top for the front panel button. It’s because I was used to just a single visible circle on the first gen iPad and so mistake the camera for that circle. I would be surprised if I was the only one who made this mistake.

It’s definitely lighter, but it’s no Kindle. That means it’s still not comfortable to hold in a single hand, but then I expect it never will be.

The Smart Cover, which I eventually caved in and bought is not so smart. I hear the cover switch being triggered in my bag as the covered device moves around; I often trigger the cover switch even when I’m just carrying it in my hand. It’s hopeless folding it over the back for reading, so I just take it off, which is a shame, because that’s the only time it does cover the back and if Apple think their fans don’t care about the backs of their devices, they’re wrong. I use a cut-to-size polythene sleeve. It’s paper thin and it protects both sides.

The Smart Cover does works well in its two stand orientations Though and while we’re closing on a positive note, the Retina Display, the raison d’être of the device is a thing of wondrous beauty. I knew it was coming as soon as the iPhone 4 came out and I knew I’d buy it when it came. It did and I did. The power of the thing is also impressive, taking everything in its stride and restoring the tarnished “magical” label.

Despite the flaws, the new iPad is still the one device I would not do without. This article was written on it, on a 98 bus, without the Smart Cover, at less than full brightness.