After hearing my wife tell me to get my own laptop for the past few years, I decided to get one except I decided to get an iPad. I already had an iPhone, so I had a real good idea of what you can and can’t do with it. Even still, I decided to jump in.

As soon as My iPad arrived, my daughter asked me if I just got a big iPhone. Of course, I couldn’t resist pretending along and proceeded to answer a call on my iPad. But she was right, it really is just a big iPhone with a much bigger screen and a better form factor that puts visions in my head of Star Trek Enterprise. Again, I digress.

The first thing I played with on the iPad was typing with the new keyboard. The keys are about the same size as the keyboard on my laptop when I use it in landscape mode. I do have some difficulty with it as a traditional keyboard user. I think the biggest issue I have is the loss of touch to help reassure me that my fingers struck the correct key. I find that if I use the iPad in my Lap, using the Apple case which props it up at an angle, I am able to visually get enough reassurance that I can type at a reasonable speed. Even still, I find that I am still correcting about every tenth word because of hitting the wrong key. Outside of using the keyboard on my lap, I find that I have to return to a hunt and peck mode of typing.

The next thing I played with was integrating the mail and the browser with my gmail and google reader accounts. I found that google has done a nice job with their initial implementation of their browser based email client for the ipad. It looks very similar to the native iPad email, but it supports the threading feature I love in gmail. Google reader basically looks the same as it does on the iPhone. I am hopeful that google will put a little effort into that interface like they did their gmail interface for the iPad.

I also got around to playing with Facebook. It looks the same as it does on a standard PC browser. I do find that the interface not being optimized for a touch screen device makes out a little more difficult to use on the iPad. Additionally, some of the games, like Zynga’s Mafia Wars suffer from some of the same issues of not being designed for a touch panel interface and I also find at the DHTML that they employ takes a little longer than I would Ike to render in Safari.

Even with these complaints, I am still enjoying my iPad because I find that the size of it with it’s fundamental capabilities really meet my daily needs. But there are a few things that I would really like to be able to do with it in the future:
* I have a Windows Home Server in my house which I use to share my music, photos and videos. I would really like to be a to run an application with capabilities similar Picasa that would allow me to import pictures from my camera and copy then to my CIFS share. Additionally, I would Iike the ability for the slideshow to pull pictures from my CIFS share when I put the pad in photo frame mode. Additionally, I would like to be able to play movies and music that are stored on my server on the iPad without syncing with a laptop. Remember, my wife doesn’t want me using her laptop.
* I really want multitasking. I am really looking forward to seeing OS4 on my iPad to see if it will solve my concerns.
* I would like to see a camera for video conferencing on it.
* I would like to see the device integrate with google apps better.
* Java capability for safari would make a lot of the web pages I visit work much better.
* I agree with Steve Jobs on flash, but fact is that there are a lot of websites that use it. I really wish he would swallow his pride and support it even if it is slow.
* I hate it when apps are designed to only be viewed in one orientation. When I am using the Apple case, I want to view each app in that landscape orientation. I don’t want to keep spinning the iPad around to view the app in the limited orientations they support.
* I miss my tabbed browsing. I know you can basically do the same thing, but I just like seeing what pages I have open by looking at the tabs.

Overall, I am enjoying it, but I am longing for more capabilities the more I use it.

More to come…

For the longest time, I was a fan of using Gordian Knot to rip my movies in xvid.  Once the x264 standard came out, I was really interested in trying to compress my data even more and see if I couldn’t get the same image quality.  In my eye’s opinion, I believe I have been pretty successful at ripping full DVD movies.  The following is a set of instructions on how I use MeGUI to RIP my DVD movies.

Copy VOB to Computer:

On my computer, I have AnyDVD installed.  It’s the best program I have used to remove the DVD copy protection.  I then use the old DVDDecrypter program, version 3.5.4.0, to rip the movie on the disk to a vob file.  Within DVDDecrypter, make sure you select to create the additional file “Chapter Information – OGG” within the IFO Mode tab of the settings window.  Additionally, I set File Splitting to None.  Next, on the Mode menu, select IFO mode.

Now insert the DVD.  DVD Decrypter will automatically detect the movie stream and highlight it.  Select the location on your hard disk where you want to copy it and click on the DVD->HD icon.

Special Note:  I have found on Windows Vista I have to run DVD Decrypter as the administrator or it won’t detect the DVD drives.

After DVD Decrypter is complete, close it and open MeGUI.

Create D2V file:

In MeGUI, select tools->DG Indexer->D2V Creater.  This will bring up another window where you will select the VOB file for your movie as the Input File.  Make sure to Demux the audio track you want in final ripped movie.   I usually just demux all tracks.  Then select theoutput filename of your d2v file.  It should be something.d2v.  Then select the Queue button and close the window if it did not do so automatically.  Now click on the Queue tab on the main MeGUI window and click ‘Start’.

Note that some movies confuse DVDDecrypter and you end up with some tracks leading into the movie and it can mess up the audio sync in the movie.  If you run into this, I usually manually run DGIndexer and then clip the front end of the movie until I get into the Chapter of the movie where it really starts.  Then save the project to a file.

Create AVS Script:

In MeGUI, select Tools->AVS Script Creater.  This screen may pop up automatically after DGIndexer finishes running within MeGUI.  Select the AutoCrop button on the Options tab.  It will determine how much black space is on the outside of each sceen.  Then select the Resize option and select the Suggest Resolution.  On the Filters tab, select the source type.  Movies are usually Progressive.  I always select the Noise Filter with it set to Minimal Noise.  Now select Save and close the window if it does not do so automatically.

Video Encoding:

On the main MeGUI window, select the Input tab.  You will see your movie information already entered into the video encoding section.  Select the encoder setting to x264: DXVA-SD-HQ.  This is the best quality codec for 480p or less input.  (See this avsforum post).  Select the output file format to be mp4.  Select the Enqueue button within the Video encoding section of the page.

Audio Encoding:

On the same main MeGUI window Input tab, you will see the Audio track information already filled in.  I use the Nero AAC: NDAAC-HE-MultiChannel-128kbps Encoder setting.  To use this, you must have Nero installed on your system or the Nero Audio codec dll available to MeGUI.  Select MP4-AAC as your extension.  Select EnQueue.

Subtitles:

If the movie has subtitles you want to include with your ripped version, from the main MeGUI windows, select Tools->VobSubber.  In the VobSubber windows, select the original VOB file and then chose which subtitle tracks you want to include.  Then select the Queue button.

Start Ripping:

On the main MeGUI window, select the Queue tab.  Select the Start button on the bottom of the window.  Now you wait.  Depending on your computer, anywhere from a couple hours to much, much longer.

Mux the Audio/Video tracks:

From the main MeGUI window, select Tools->Muxer->MKV muxer (I use MKV because I can include the original chapter information in the movie).  In the Muxer window, select the mp4 file you created in the Video encoding section as the Video Input.  Select the audio file you created in the Audio encoding section.  Select the Chapter information from the .OGG file created by DVD Decrypter.  If you have subtitles, you can select that file as well.  It should be noted that you may need to modify the subtitles file to set the “Forced Subtitles” setting to ON.  Select Queue and close the window.  On the main MeGUI window, select the Queue tab and the Start button.   You should now have a ripped version of your movie sitting in the output folder specified in the muxing window.

One final Note:  This should only be used for Movies you own!!!!!

Enjoy!