Editing files on iPad and sharing

Pages is not the only full blown word processor out there for iPad. After spending $10 on Pages, I discovered that Microsoft recommends Doc2 (that's doc squared) for use with Skydrive and any Word files that you might want to edit on your iPad and then turn around and edit on your PC when you get home.  I went ahead and got the Doc2 app and it works like gangbusters.  You can export from the skydrive app directly to Doc2, and back again after editing.  It is seamless.  It has my ultimate highest five star ***** rating.

You can find Doc2 software (created by Byte2) here.

oberster Gerichtsherr

oberster Gerichtsherr = Supreme Judge

"für das Schicksal der deutschen Nation und damit des Deutschen Volkes oberster Gerichtsherr"  - full quote from the justification speech, 13 July 1934, Reichstag.

Supreme Judge of the German People (German: Oberster Richter des Deutschen Volkes)

"...Although I had been willing to be lenient only a few days before, in this hour there was no longer any room for such consideration. Mutinies are crushed only by the everlasting laws of iron. If anyone reproaches me and asks why we did not call upon the regular courts for sentencing, my only answer is this: in that hour, I was responsible for the fate of the German nation and was thus the Supreme Justiciar of the German Volk! Mutinous divisions have always been recalled to order by decimation. Only one State did not make use of its wartime legislation, and the result was the collapse of this State: Germany. I did not want to abandon the young Reich to the fate of the old.

I gave the order to shoot those parties mainly responsible for this treason, and I also gave the order to burn out the tumors of our domestic poisoning and of the poisoning of foreign countries down to the raw flesh. And I also gave the order that if the mutineers made any attempt to resist arrest, they were at once to be brutally struck down by force (sofort mit der Waffe niederzumachen).

The nation should know that no one can threaten its existence-which is guaranteed by inner law and order-and escape unpunished! And every person should know for all time that if he raises his hand to strike out at the State, certain death will be his lot. And every National Socialist should know that no rank and no position relieves him of his personal responsibility and, with it, his due punishment. I have prosecuted thousands of our former opponents on account of their corruption.173 I would have to reproach myself if I were now to tolerate the same phenomenon in our own ranks..."

Docx to Pages

How to transfer Word files to my iPad and actually edit them? 

Microsoft Skydrive allows you to view any of your files on Skydrive with crystal clarity, but offers no editing feature (as yet).  You can open the PC site and use the Web App version of Word to edit files, but it is a singularly unsatisfactory experience on the iPad. We definitely hope this changes in the future.

So you have to use iTunes to import your docx or doc files into Pages. 

1. In iTunes click on your iPad in the Devices section on the left panel.
2. in the main panel click on Apps.
3. Scroll down until you see your Pages app displayed in the File Sharing section.
4. Click Pages in the Apps column
5. Click the add button in the Pages Documents column.
6. Add the document you wish from your drive or the cloud.
7. on the iPad click the + icon in the upper left, and choose copy from iTunes.
8. The file is downloaded into Pages and fully editable.

Return the file using the Pages export feature--you don't want to do the above in reverse do you?

Hopefully eventually Microsoft will offer an Apple ready app for Word editing, like they have for OneNote. Until then, the above 8 steps will have to suffice. 

Jomic Web Start

If you're like me, you work at a place that doesn't allow you to download and install apps on your work machine.

Which means, you can't read CBRs or CBZs at work.

Never fear mon ami; there is a solution!

Jomic has a web app that pops up and allows you to read online.  All you need is Java 1.4 or higher (Java 1.4 was released in 2002, so you probably do).  Amble on over to their site and have a look. And happy comic book reading on the company dime!

http://jomic.sourceforge.net/webstart/index.html

Pat Fraley and the summer audiobook narration event

This past weekend I attended the Pat Fraley summer master's class in audiobook narration. Pat is probably the preeminent voice over teacher/coach in the world. Hillary Huber and Scott Brick also coached us on our demo excerpts. Scott is an audiobook superstar with over 600 titles to his name.

It was a whirlwind, but I feel that I will have, after some professional editing and mastering, three incredible demo samples to post on my ACX profile and my website (which does not yet exist!). 

Because this was a master's class and seminar, the 10 students took turns working with the pros and recording their excerpts while the rest watched. Reason being, when you're in the hotseat, you can't absorb anything but adjustments and direction. When you're in the booth watching others go through the experience, you can absorb concepts and techniques. It was well worth the expense, which was for me, considerable, but after the fact, when you realize how much care and concern each of the pros (and that includes Andy, the sound engineer) showed to every student, it seemed like a fantastic bargain!  And of course, my peers, the other students! The talent, so incredible. But we're in Hollywood, in the thick of it, and talent's taken for granted. The blade is there; we're just honing the edge.
Pat Fraley's Summer Master's Event

Noir

Neo noir requires a number of things, a prose voice that snaps, crackles and pops and sex, drugs and violence. It simply doesn't work without sex, drugs and violence. Try to write noir without those elements and very quickly you find yourself in Bugsy Malone territory, which is real kiddie porn without the sex: it shows prepubescent kids behaving like adults, dressed like adults, and with adult motivations. When they get splattered with cream, you go, "oh, yeah, I know what THAT means..." So I had to just make my characters high school seniors. It helped to watch Twilight the other night. The girls joking about the size of their boyfriends' bananas set my heart at rest. Now I need a freaking ending. My highschool gumshoe Rick Swick has a wooden tanto, and I think he's going to go all buffy on Edward's ass. But there needs to be a couple of reversals before that happens. I hate plotting... Character development and rising action are fun and games. Endings are hard work.

Neo Noir Noodlings

My noggin is noodling for some neonoir nonsense. Reading James Ellroy's Crime Wave currently and hepcats, it is da bomb! Never have I experienced such piercing yet purple prose. It rocks, it rolls, it smokes, it cornholes, it's fabulous to the maxi, and it speaks to me fortissimo! Ooooh daddy-O, give it to me like fizz in the joint, like a flaccid acid skid, a methy-dexy knock out punch, and I do mean TKO, sweets.

I have in mind a high school neo noir, a melange of messy matriculators, devilish delinquents trying to score to the core. The maguffin: Mr. Frink's stolen test questions, and set in the scintillating seventies, so I can dispense with all that turgid technology like personal computers and cell phones. Kids have to hoof it in their platform shoes and bell bottoms if they don't have sweet rides provided by their permissive parents.