Go Magic Bear!

Today at Chabot College, Magic Bear had his second swim meet.

The sky was cloudy but fortunately the it showered only after we came out of restaurant after the meet. 

This time, Magic Bear had to make turns in two of the four events: 50 breast and 100 free.  Although he was not flipping, his side turn was not too bad.  In his last event of 100 free, he was able to stay very close to his peers who did good flips. He was getting very close to B time for his age group.

His current order of favorites are: breast, free, back and fly. He has good endurance and does better with longer courses.

Go Magic Bear!

Magic Bear's first swim meet

Last Saturday Magic Bear had the first swim meet. 

Magic Bear tend to drag his feet at any firsts; he didn't want to put on his swim trunk in the morning of the meet at home. His mom and I had to use some extra coaxing to get him onto the car.

Once we get there, the meet was already under way. I got anxious and went straight to the registration desk.  I found his name on the list. Magic Bear initialized on it, and cycled the three events we registered him for: 25 Breast, 25 Fly, 25 Free.

I paid close attention to how the event is run:  'ready - set - go' appears to be 'long whistle - on your mark - beep'.  Magic Bear got ready after a few laps in the small warm up pool.

For the first event, Magic Bear was in the 3rd heat. During the first two heats, I noticed that one child was standing on the deck instead of on the starting block.  I told Magic Bear that if he is not used to the starting block, jumping from the deck would be OK too. But he appears not afraid of the jump. So there he goes.

And he was all right.  The posting appears to show him getting an 8th place ribbon for the C group for this event.

The second event was well after lunch.

His goggle was still on top of his head when he stepped on the block.  I had to call him many times trying to get his attention.  Finally he realized, put on his goggle, adjusted it.  The buzz sounds and off he jumps.

Finally, the "25 Free" event came.  I knew he is more than ready for it.  Although he could have jumped a bit further, he was crawling fast, doing the 3 stroke breath left and right just as I had trained him, catching up on the leader of the pack. Right after reaching the wall, he turned slightly and looked at the clock on this side of the pool. A picture perfect moment I wished I had a camera ready for.

Switching to MBP

Finally I decided to give a try on the mac.  Man, it turns out way easier than I expected.

I have been a PC/Unix user for so many years.  iPhone 4 opened my eyes on how intuitive a good user interface could be.  Since I have been using PC mainly for web browsing and running linux virtual machines, I thought there is nothing to loose with a mac. And I have so much to gain by trying my hands on writing iPhone programs.

I made up my mind to get an early 2009 unibody 17 inch MBP (macbook pro) from craigslist. This is because I always wanted high pixel counts for a notebook. And the unibody MBP is the one with the latest multi touchpad.

After booting up mac OS X snow leopard, it took me a while to find out the touchpad default needs a heavy 'click' to register a button click.  Once I configured it for 'tap' click, it feels so nice that I don't miss the touch stick on my Thinkpad at all.  I am glad that I bite the bullet for the 17in MBP instead of one with smaller screens.  Although it is a bit heavy, nothing compares to being able to use such an intuitive user interface with a big beautiful screen.

The good:
- Trackpad: generations ahead of any windows including seven. That is one of the two main reasons I am switching to a mac.
- 17in screen: 1920x1200.  I could use a 15 in MBP but it would be a 'downgrade' on resolution from my 15.4in Thinkpad.
- mac OS X 10.6.4: everything feels so well integrated, instead of many pieces in Windows. Also the shell is of native unix.
- design: the unibody case, keyboard touch, tight seam, all makes this machine one class above the best PC notebooks.  Even the packaging gives one the feeling that it belongs to Tiffany's instead of Fry's.

The bad:
- Some learning curve.  (getting around configuring trackpad click, finding the app to download iphone photo, etc)
- Higher price.  A similarly equipped Thinkpad is only half of a MBP. But once you get used to MBP, you will forget about how much it costs.  So, the luxury is to be enjoyed.

I have set up xcode and iPhone SDK.  I will see how long I can stay away from MS Office by keeping things online through Google docs.