My two favourite applications so far are Swype and Wave Launcher.

Swype is a very clever replacement keyboard. Instead of trapping on the touchscreen keys you swipe your finger through the letters that speel the word. I was very skeptical of this keyboard when I first saw it but decided to give it a try because I hate typing on a touch screen as it is very slow and error prone. After working with it for a couple of days, I am VERY impressed! Swype’s very powerful and clever algorithms figure out the right word about 99% of the time, and when it is unsure it provides a menu of different guesses, the correct word is pretty much always there. You can also teach it new words, like my name for example. Watch the videos on the website and you’ll be impressed.

Simply Trace a Path

The word “quick” was generated from tracing the path shown above in a fraction of a second, by roughly aiming to pass through the letters of the word. A key advantage to Swype is that there is no need to be very accurate, enabling very rapid text entry.

I’ve already increased my input speed from 3-4 words a minute to about 20 words a minute. I think I’m faster with Swype than I am with the keyboard on my iMac! The guy in the videos can do about 40 words a minute. That’s mighty fast! Swype gets a big 5 stars from me!!!

Wave Launcher is a clever way to access your most used applications. Just a quick swipe up the screen and a beautiful arc-shaped menu of your apps appears, you slide your finger to the app you want and release. Voila! Wave Launcher gets 5 stars too.

(Photo que j’ai prise en lumière naturelle venant d’une fenêtre chez mes parents lors de notre dernière visite en Octobre dernier)

(Picture that I took with natural light from a window during our last visit last October)

If any of you readers have saved some of my previous posts, please do send them to me so I can repost them…

Thanks

It is unfortunate that all the good information I had posted on our Panama Adventure has been lost. I apologize if you came here looking for it and couldn’t find it.

It was with this in mind that I set out to shop online for a good quality tankless water heater, willing to pay for the extra shipping. So I settled on a commercial-grade “pro” Bosch water heater. I ordered it and had it shipped to Panamá via my Miami-based cargo aggregator. Once here it ended up costing four times as much as the locally sold chinese units. I was happy with my purchase, until I noticed the dreaded little line on the box: “Made in China”. And here I thought I was buying German quality… Turns out this unit seems to be very well made and it was obviously engineered in Germany and built to Bosch’s specifications. Still, I feel like I’ve been taken.

Next I decided to order some high-quality and energy efficient ceiling fans (a necessary item in every room here in Panamá). So I bought online and shipped to Panamá some of the best fans money can buy. I bought some Emerson fans whose tag line is: “The Original American Fan Company”. You guest it, the box says: “Made in China”. I also bought some Casablanca fans, this company’s tag line is: “The World’s Best Ceiling Fans”. Well, yeah, they are also “Made in China”.

This is getting very frustrating: everything is now “Made in China”. There is no way to entirely avoid Chinese products anymore. Reminds me of the little scandal in Ottawa a few years ago, when tourists discovered that their little Canadian Moose and Mounted Police effigies were manufactured in China.

If you ever had any doubts about China taking over the world, don’t! The American empire is in steep decline and China is just gathering steam.

Michel and I were co-owners of Palmex Panama and he was running all operations on the ground there. I now need to head down to Panama for a few weeks so I can sort out the business and find someone else to run it with.

Almost exactly a year ago I had come down to Panama to help him get our business started and we spent Christmas eve on his deck eating a wonderful meal we had prepared together. We drank lots of wine and rum while telling each other stories from our respective past and speculating on what lay ahead of us with our business venture in Panama. We laughed hard while enjoying the beautiful air of Altos del Maria and we felt like we were on top of the world. Needless to say, our Panama adventure will never be the same without him, and this Christmas will not be so joyous.

I am very sad that I will never see his smiley face or feel his famous bear hug again. I miss him dearly already.

Here he is with his wife Patricia and my wife Diane, at his place in Panama.