News from Great Castle Wilson

  • Yes, the 9.7″ iPad Pro is the iPad you want.

    (This is an old post from June 9, 2016, recovered via the Wayback Machine…)

    If you’re looking for a tablet because you draw stuff for a living, then there’s no doubt the 12ʺ iPad Pro is the tool you want. It’s fast, the Pencil is as responsive a tool as you could ask for, and it has all the benefits of being part of the iOS ecosystem. And I can say this as someone who also owns a MS Surface Pro.

    The thing is though, if you’re actually in it because you want an iPad, you’re better off going with the 9.7ʺ. It’s almost exactly as fast as the 12ʺ, but its weight and form factor make it a tool that you will carry around with you all the time. By contrast, as Deb said, the 12ʺ is something you’d “always be worrying about bending”. It’s just too unwieldy to be anything but something you put in a laptop bag when you’re not using it.

    The other side of the question is whether an iPad Air would be just as good as your main iPad. All I can say to that is, if you want that to be true, do not try the iPad Pro. The Air is a great device, but the Pro really is materially faster. Really, with the lighter weight iOS running on it, the iPad Pro feels like it’s faster than my MBP for many tasks. It’s definitely the best way to read Notes email now.

    And speaking of which, I did indeed put the IBM security package on it, so I can now read my Notes mail and calendar, and get access to VPN, etc. To give you some idea of how much faster this is than my old iPad. My first gen iPad Mini took about 2 hours to install all the software. The Pro took just under 10 minutes. Very nice.

    Anyway, the iPad Pro is too expensive to be an impulse buy. I was lucky enough to have my wonderful wife Deb give me permission to get one as an early Father’s Day gift. Thanks, love. It’s awesome.

  • Divertimento Spring Concert

    (This is an old post from March 29, 2016, recovered via the Wayback Machine…)

    Please join me and the other members of the Divertimento Orchestra for a wonderful Spring concert:

    Donizetti! – Overture to Don Pasquale
    An exciting, rip-roaring overture with some brutally fast playing.

    Beethoven — Symphony No. 6 in F, Op. 68 “Pastorale”
    This is a deeply moving, powerful Symphony that paints beautiful images, from a shepherd tending a flock, to a ferocious thunderstorm. The more I play this piece, the more I discover in it.

    Grieg — Symphonic Dances, Op. 64
    Originally written for piano duet, and then orchestra, this is a cycle of four pieces founded on Norwegian folk dance melodies.

    The concert dates are:

    April 22 & 23, 2016 at 8 p.m.
    L’Eglise St. Thomas d’Aquin
    1244 Kilborn Avenue
    Ottawa

    Tickets prices are:

    $20 for adults
    $10 for Students and Seniors
    $5 for kids under 13
    Free for kids under 6

    I hope to see you there.

  • *sigh*… Yes, I lost data.

    Once again, I’ve lost data from the blog. This time it was the more recent posts. The wayback machine captured most of what I lost, so I may be able to recover it, but I may not bother.

    I hate mysql.

  • Who’s house is this anyway?

  • Context driven parsing

    I thought I’d record this here, because it’s such a great example of why context is important when recognizing text…

    Consider this:

    I suspect almost anyone who sees that image would parse it as a date, that is “13 December”. Of course, once you see it in context, at least the Tim Horton’s regulars would know it said “Black Decaf”.

  • The young lord surveys his domain

    He’s starting to lose the puppy shape.

  • Friends

    They’re still learning how to play together, but it’s clear that they’re friends now…

  • Apologies

    I realize the site has been down for a couple of days. Things continue to be quite complex/random here.

    Thanks to those who let me know. Apologies again for the downtime.

  • Lucas

    As many of you know, there’s a new addition to our family: Lucas.

    Things have been very hectic here for the last few days. We had a health scare with our adult dog, George, but it seems we’re mostly through that now. In any case, I don’t really have time for a full post tonight, but there’s a short clip of their first meeting on YouTube

    And here’s one more picture…

    Yes, he crawled between Deb’s feet while she was cleaning up and fell asleep. 🙂

  • Building a Static Website using IBM Cloud

    Update 3: Apologies to anyone who gets to this page, but I no longer maintain this pattern, and I doubt it will work any more.

    Update 2: Another round of updates to make sure the URLs and other content match the correct IBM Cloud branding.

    Update: I have upgraded my project to be a new IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery toolchain and updated the Deploy to IBM Cloud button below to point at my new repository. Learn more.

    Somebody asked me the other day if it was possible to build a simple, static website using IBM Cloud. With a bit of thought, I managed to get one going that used the nginx buildpack, but it turns out there’s an even simpler solution. On the CloudFoundry community site on GitHub there’s a “static file” buildpack that is just what you’re looking for. Given this, it’s just a handful of steps to get a static website going:

    1. Create a toolchain at IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery, with a repo and a pipeline.
    2. Create a manifest file with the buildpack: set to the static file buildpack
    3. Pour in some html content
    4. Configure the pipeline to deploy the app
    5. Commit your source to the repo

    Ok, even though that’s pretty easy, it might be a bit hard to get right if you’ve never done it before. So here’s an even simpler solution…

    Just click this button:
    Deploy to IBM Cloud button

    🙂

    That will take you through all the steps above, setting you up with a toolchain and all the tools you need to work with on IBM Cloud, along with example starting content for your website. It also takes care of deploying the site so you can see it running right away. All you have to do is edit the html files to be what you want, commit them to the repo, and you’re done.

    It even works if you don’t have an IBM Cloud account yet (although you’ll be asked to sign up for one).

    Now that’s simple!

    (… Ok, it’s not quite that sample. IBM Cloud uses API keys to access its services, including Cloud Foundry deployment. You’ll need to create one along the way. Luckily, that too is part of the flow that happens when you push the Deploy to IBM Cloud button above, so it’s *almost* that simple.)