About 6 months ago, my favorite laptop – a Surface Book that I bought in 2015 – finally got to the point where it was unusable. The screen had been heated up and forced out from the frame by an expanding battery to the point that it was just pointless to continue using it for as much as I had been. I bought a replacement battery and screen, but have not yet attempted the repair (it’s a very delicate and tedious process and I’m waiting to be in just the right mood before I get started on it).
I have other machines, so things like databases and email and games and whatnot were not a huge problem. The biggest issue was that I had been using the Surface Book for several years as my de facto sheet music repository. GBB music, gig music, wind symphony music, tuba and horn etudes….all of my sheet music was on the Surface Book and there was no way I was going back to using paper music. So I needed a solution.
At first, I tried using my phone. Bad plan. I’m almost 60 and my eyes have been shot for 25 years. In a pinch, I can read off the phone, but it’s strictly for emergencies at this point. After determining that the phone wasn’t going to work, I tried using a small (6”) Android tablet that Sandie had no further use for. It was a definite improvement, but the screen real estate was so limited that doing markup on the music was difficult and nearly impossible. Also, the software options for music display and markup available for Android is/was pretty limited. There’s basically one program for it, and it just doesn’t work that well. Apple, however, has an excellent piece of software for musicians called forScore, and so I finally took the plunge and bought myself an iPad – something that I’ve been swearing was a pointless thing to do since the iPad was first released.
To a large extent, I still believe that. I use my iPad almost exclusively as a sheet music organizer/editor/displayer; but I’ve started to play around with the little thing more and more trying to figure out just how much I can actually use it for. And, much to my surprise, I’m finding that I do indeed have uses for it.
For years, I kept the GBB library updated and organized using Microsoft Access. I like doing it that way because…well…because I was an Access Developer for many years and I’m comfortable building and customizing programs to do exactly what I want them to do in Access. The biggest problem with that is that if I don’t have the machine with the database on it, I can’t use the data in it. If I want to check to see if the band has a particular chart while I’m at rehearsal, for example, I can’t do it unless I’ve got a computer with Access installed. When I was using my Surface Book, that was not a problem.
With the iPad, however, using Access isn’t an option. And there really isn’t a decent alternative, short of putting everything online in MySQL or something and building a front end that I can use on the iPad. I actually tried this, but the MySQL clients that I could find for iPad absolutely suck and weren’t worth my time.
Next, I built a Power BI application on my work laptop and pointed it to a OneDrive copy of my GBB database, and it worked great! Power BI is available for iPad and I can fire it up and search the DB easily. Unfortunately, I can’t UPDATE data with Power BI, and I also can’t use it unless I’ve got a corporate license (that’s why I did this on my work machine), and nobody’s got the time or money for that.*
So I started looking into “database” applications built specifically for the iPad and found one that isn’t too terrible called MyStuff2. In spite of the ridiculous name, and in spite of the fact that there’s no way to do any real programming with it, MS2 has done a pretty good job for me in helping to organize and build out the GBB music library, and it allows me to have a to-the-minute reference of the library with me when I’m at rehearsal. I had to do quite a bit of initial setup to get things like I needed them and to export the information from my original Access DB into MS2, but having done that, things are looking good.
As I start building more advanced stuff in the woodshop, I’ve also been able to use the iPad to help with that.
One of those tools is called Moblo 3D, which is a kind of limited CAD and allows me to model what I want to build, calculate measurements, and build shopping and cut lists. For example, Sandie wants some very specific shelving units build for the master closet. So I used Moblo to start sketching those out. Works pretty good, although I really haven’t spent enough time with it to understand all that it can (or cannot) do for me. It wasn’t totally free, but I can’t complain about $8 for this thing.
Another tool that I’ve been using in the shop is the iPad version of X-Tool Creative Space, which connects to my laser engraver and lets me design stuff for it. The engraver is still very much of a toy, but I’ve been able to use it for branding wooden creations (rather than using my physical metal brand), and most recently did some engraving on a baton box for a gift that the band gave to our founder/music director on the occasion of his stepping down after 25 years.
The concert, by the way – the finale of our 25th season – went really well. Joe, the director, pulled out all the stops and included a couple of championship-level test pieces near the end. A severe chops buster, but the crowd seemed to enjoy it, and it was an exhausting but exhilarating set list.
I guess the most recent tool I’ve added to the iPad is what I’m typing this on – the WordPress editor. I installed it a few days ago after realizing that – having purchased a mouse and keyboard for the iPad (specifically to use with the GBB library database) – I could probably do a lot more with the iPad than I had been previously. Restarting the blog entries seemed like a logical place to start, so that’s what I’m doing. Since the iPad is so portable, and since it’s so much easier to use as an editor than my phone is, I should be able to do updates from campsites (or anywhere else outside of my office) a lot easier than I’ve been able to previously. I’ll put that to the test in Canada (next month) and Michigan (in November).
For today, however, this has been enough.
*Actually, the GBB may be able to get a full-blown O365 license, including PBI, for a reasonable price by using our non-profit status. That is being investigated.