Why I did not blog this week

I promised to write a longer post about the blog silence earlier this week. I guess I could put it in a single sentence, or even better- a single word. My reason was an iPad. But I think it will be better if I elaborate on that a little bit.
It is about a month now that I have my iPad. I read books, magazines, e-mails on it. Many “school” evenings, I do not even sit if front of my desktop anymore. My iPad goes with me everywhere. I appreciate the portability and how handy, light and all-inclusive it is. No cables, mouse, nothing else needed. So, when I was going out of town for several days, I decided to do an experiment and do not take my laptop with me. Just an iPad. I felt comfortable that it will suffice. And here I was in for a surprise. Let’s go through some of the reasons you can think of I was not able to blog those past several days.

1. Did I not have Internet connection?
No, that’s not it. I had w Wi-Fi in a hotel working perfectly well, and most of the day I was in the conference center with Internet available, too. I also had an iPhone which I could have used to set up a private hot spot. So the fact that my iPad is not 3G enabled.

2. Do I find the keyboard on iPad impractical?
That’s not it, either. In fact, one of the first accessories for my iPad was this case from Acase which enables me to position my iPad very comfortable for writing on the table. Or just keep it on my legs. I can easily type quickly with both hands. Reasonable speed. With help of T9. No, I am sure I could write even a longer blog post without ay problems.

3. Did I not have a blogging app?
Nope. In fact, I could just open my blog in Safari, if I wanted, but the truth it, free WordPress app for iPad has great interface. I have it, I use it. I was checking what is happening on the blog, monitoring the Comments, for example.

4. Was I not able to transfer photos from the camera?
I thought about that early enough, too. The second accessory I bought was the connection kit. Thanks to that, each evening I could download the images right to my iPad and check them on the larger screen. And there is the truth- unprocessed, even over- or underexposed images look fantastic on an iPad! It also provided a back-up copy of all the images I shot during that time.

5. Was I not able to post-process the images?
Yes, indeed. It took me by surprise and took a while to figure out what happened. My iPad was able to generate beautiful and considerable sized previous of my images all right. But the apps I had to post-process the images where not able to read RAW. Great disappointment to me. I had free post-processing app Adobe Photoshop Express, and it loaded only tiny thumbnails. Most of the images, especially the orchids i wanted to share, were underexposed on purpose, to allow for shorter shutter speed and a sharp photo. They needed some work before posting.

So, I ended up with a break from the blog. Which is a pity, as I was able to use just about anything else I needed with my iPad.