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Hey young world, I heard you like mobile devices and presentations so I did a presentation on presenting with mobile devices. Here’s stuff I used to make the presentation.

Apple side

MacBook with Mac OS X 10.7.3 and Keynote [$19.99 for the Mac from the Mac App Store, or $9.99 from iTunes for iPhone or iPad]

iPad/iPhone with Keynote Remote [99c from iTunes for iPhone or iPad]

Windows/Android Side

hp mini netbook with Windows 7 and PowerPoint 2007 with the Boja PPT Remote Control Server

Asus Transformer tablet with Android 4 [ICS] and Boja Powerpoint Remote Control [free from Google Play]

CC/GNU FDL Photos I used in the presentation:

Keyboard by orangeacid: http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangeacid/204145200/

Portrait by borediq: http://www.flickr.com/photos/borediq/286201990/

!!! at Festival do Norte: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:!!!_no_Festival_do_Norte.jpg

American Muscle Car 2010 by sinamigos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sinamigos/4710060863/

Guy Kawasaki by SpecialKRB: http://www.flickr.com/photos/specialkrb/3317209561/

Guy Kawasaki explaining his 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html

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[For a little background on this place, read the Wikipedia article on Kmart or google "prototype kmart" for the first few sentences of one of the old articles from Detroit newspapers when it opened in '02.]

I read about the White Lake Kmart in the Freep, years before we moved to the area, and actually got lost on two separate occasions stopping in to see it on the way home from support clients in Detroit’s northern suburbs.  After we moved to Oakland county, I was delighted to discover that it was not that far from our place.

I started shopping here because… well, I’ve always had a soft spot for Kmart.
I guess that’s because I grew up going to Kmart stores all over downriver, and even a couple of the locations of their predecessor, S.S. Kresge & Co.  They were based in the area.  Walmart hadn’t become Walmart yet.  Heck, there were a small handful of Meijer stores in the area and they closed at, like, 11pm.

Although “societal mores” made it difficult to wear the clothes to middle school, the Toy department was epic.  So was the electronics area, with its Nintendo Entertainment System, right there on the counter, that you could totally play.  I bought my first hip-hop album at Kmart.  It was “He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper” by Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.  [My second one was "Raising Hell" by Run-DMC.  Had to go to Discount Records for that -- you know, because of the language.]

When we started to consider moving back to the Ann Arbor area, I realized that I was going to need to document this store to show it to my friends.  I had occasionally mentioned it in conversation — “oh yeah, I’m on my way home from the PROTOTYPE KMART near my house,” to — to what?  Impress them?  Make them think I lived in Tomorrowland, only with pontoon boats?  When pressed I would invariably describe it as “actually, quite like a Target, only green,” but I knew that didn’t really do it justice.

My other reason is that the retail world has changed so much since this store was developed.  Kmart has entered and emerged from bankruptcy and is now headquartered with its parent company in Illinois, far away from Troy — so this store will probably not get another makeover the one it got, in its time.  Most of the green accents in temporary signage have been replaced with the usual Kmart red, and this will probably continue until it is remodeled.

I spend far too much casual time on blogs like Labelscar and Malls of America, looking for pictures of the old days.  I didn’t grow up hanging out at the mall, exactly, but at the same time I have very vivid memories of them.  It is why, when we found out the child was coming, I told my wife it would always have a camera.  She has a nearly indestructible camera, and as much room as she needs to store her photographs.  Pictures are memories.  Mundane things are still memories.  Want proof?  Look at all the people mourning Livonia Mall.

I hope this store doesn’t get knocked down to accomodate a Home Depot, or anything else, in my lifetime.  But if that should happen, I think of this small set as a few handfuls of earth, ready to help fill the memory hole.

One thing I’ve never worked out was, how the hell did the stuck-up kids knew what discount store your clothes had come from, anyway, if they spent all their time at Jacobson’s?

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Awesome, no comments and no archives for… days.  It was a missing .htaccess file.

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A couple of things I noticed about the MacHeist 3 bundle [affiliate link] this morning:

Realmac’s Little Snapper is included.  Last year’s bundle included Snapz Pro, a similar product from Ambrosia [though the annotation and web storage puts Little Snapper closer in spirit to a product like plasq's Skitch].

Espresso is a competitor of Macromates‘ TextMate [MH1].

Features in Acorn [and Picturesque to a lesser extent] sound a lot like Pixelmator, from last year’s bundle.

I am curious how developers from previous bundles feel about this.  Not enough to ask  them or anything — this isn’t Waxy — but it’s easy to see who isn’t bothered.

Ambrosia is apparently still on board, because WireTap Studio is included this year.  Likewise for MacRabbit [CSSEdit] and Espresso.  Boinx is a three-time MacHeist star, first with FotoMagico, then with iStopMotion, and this year with BoinxTV.  And I just realized, RealMac is the maker of RapidWeaver from MH1, which could be considered a competitor of Espresso.  [You could also note that FreeVerse (last year's WingNuts 2) is back with Big Bang Board Games, but it's not like you only need one game to do your job the same way you might only need one text or photo editor.]

Maybe I’m making a tempest out of a teapot?

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Good show Wolverines. Shame about Oklahoma but they were number two after all. See you next year!

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SUSAN TUSA/Detroit Free Press

I would daresay the gallon of pickles in the trunk [not pictured] is as much of an economic challenge as my decade-old Japanese sedan, but this makes for a better sign, right?

If I ever see her at a light, I’m going to encourage her to find a union sign shop to make her a nicer sign.  Even the Westboro Baptist folks have prettier signs than this.

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Mike Duncan, the RNC chairman, told Steve Inskeep last week that he had visited forty-six states.

Inskeep didn’t ask, but what I want to know is, which four did Duncan skip over?

[EDIT: fixed html and reworded link]

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“He tripped in front of her and she shoved him to keep from falling into him, and twisted her knee trying to recover,” said Prue Rosenthal, a library board member.

This reminded me of the first time I ever met Josie, as an AADL employee [years ago -- please note that I do not speak for the AADL in any official capacity].

It was August 2004, and the Great Blackout of the Eastern Seaboard had just started about an hour or two prior.  We had finally come to the realization that the power was not about to be restored and cleared the Northeast Branch of patrons [yeah, the branch in the Plymouth Road Mall - this was 2004].

The librarians were up front closing up for the day and I was in the back of the library tidying the computer area.  Josie entered through the rear [from the parking lot], saw me, and exclaimed — politely, but authoritatively — “WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY LIBRARY?”

Once we were properly introduced by other staff, she was nothing but sweet, but I’ve always known she had the eye of the tiger.

Feel better soon, Josie!  Now, who wants to hear a Fred Maxwell story?  [Again, I do not speak for the AADL.]

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Well, Goldbug, here’s why I think the outrage over Labor Day at the single Tyson plant in Tennessee is stupid:

• The union asked the company for this. Yes, it is fairly astounding to me that the holiday honoring organized labor is not going to be honored by organized labor, but an organization representing labor is obligated to represent its labor. which by some reports is a majority of the plant’s workers.  “By some reports” is weasel words, yes, but even the most conservative number is around 250.
• These are not the terrorist Muslims. They’re not even from the Middle East.  They are from Somalia, it’s in Africa.
• It’s a single Tyson plant. Tyson is more powerful than you can possibly imagine and they have plants everywhere.  It’s not like the company has converted to Islam wholeheartedly.

If 1% of the message board idiots decrying the corrosion of Christian values actually put their money where their mouth was and got in touch with a local farmer, they could all eat terrific quality meat and make things better in their community.  [We do this -- it requires a chest freezer and some meal planning, but it's so worth it.]  They can rant and rave until the cows come home, but as long as they take the money they saved at Walmart and treat themselves to Hooters, they won’t be putting Tyson out of anything.

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When I wasn’t looking, the Handbrake dev community released a
Development Snapshot that allegedly fixes the XVID encoding issue that 0.9.2 had [in short, that it just wouldn't encode XVID in AVI as instructed in my post on my Panasonic DVD player].

Handbrake continues to be the Carla Bruni of DVD tools.  Beautiful, sort of French, and… this metaphor is awful.

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