Happy New Year!
Okay, back on the computer because it’s more conducive to typing and I think better when I can let my fingers just type away. Still cool to have the iPad for blogging in a pinch, though.
The week between Christmas and New Year’s always passes by way too fast. It’s like being loaded into a slingshot and getting propelled through a week– time just gets away from you and very little gets done. For example, Year in Review posts. I’m actually going to make them this year. Promise. 😉 But getting them done before New Year’s, as I’d intended, just wasn’t happening. So they’ll have to wait. But, I wanted a post up on 1/1/11, as a (knock on wood) symbol that this year, this year (dramatic emphasis), I’m actually going to get some substantive blogging done. I’ve gone back and forth, made good tries at it and such, but always get caught up in, well, life and other responsibilities.
This year, I so resolve, will be different. Hold me to it.
So, since I have more time to write, let’s talk about that iPad. It really is a wonderful device and it’s been responsible for me getting to bed around 2 AM all week. “I’ll just refresh Twitter one more time” I’ll say. Or “One more round of Bookworm”. “Wait, I kept meaning to look that up on Wikipedia.” Minutes turn into hours. Sleep deprivation turns into headaches. And I keep doing it again.
But it is a wonderful device. Having been on a serious Doctor Who kick this year (after following it intermittently on PBS for two or three years), I despaired of seeing the latest Doctor Who Christmas Special during the holiday season because I don’t get BBC America. But $1.99 on iTunes come December 27th, a copy over to my iPad, and there I was, watching the Doctor slide down a chimney because it was Christmas and he thought, “What the hell?” I’ve used iTunes for TV episodes before, but they’ve never been as easy or as useful to watch as they are on the iPad. For the first time, I’ll probably buy a season pass for Doctor Who Series Six once it starts airing later this year so I don’t have to wait for the blu-ray set. (More Doctor Who stuff on a later blog post. Seriously, I’ve got a list to work through.)
It’s also proven to be a capable gaming platform, moreso than I’d have originally thought. The Secret of Monkey Island is an old PC point-and-click gaming series by LucasArts that’s had something of a resurgence the past few years, with souped up remakes. I’d bought the first remake when it was on sale on Xbox Live, but play is understandably clunky when you need to move a cursor using a joystick. I never got very far into the game. So, when I saw them for the iPad and on sale for Christmas at $0.99 apiece, I grabbed both games and am now chugging along. Pointing and clicking is much easier when you can simply point and tap. 😉 Add in sales on games like Risk and Scrabble and the iPad is easily the gaming device I’ve spent the most time with this Christmas.
Tricking out my iBook and Kindle apps has also taken up time. The recent series of free Star Wars eBooks, The Lost Tribe of the Sith, have sat mostly unread on my computer after downloading them in PDF form. A simple drag and drop loads them on my iPad, ready to be consumed in a more comfortable spot. I’ve even managed to take stories authors like Brandon Sanderson offer for free on their website, C&P them into a word processor, fix spacing, slap a cover page on them, export as a PDF, and voila. Instant eBook.
Even added my own videos using Handbrake.
New Year’s is about regrouping from the last year and facing the coming one with the right attitude. Tools help. I’m finding the iPad to be one hell of a tool.
I wish you and yours a Happy New Year! 2010 in review is coming in the next few days. One post I’m looking forward to getting into is “Video Game Purchase Frequency”. See, back in 2001, for purely self-indulgent reasons, I started keeping track of the video games I bought, the order I bought them, divided by year. With 2010 now over, that means I have a full decade of my game buying habits from which to squeeze out pie charts and analyses. I can tell you one thing, I scaled WAAAAAAAAAAY back for 2010. I might even have the habit under control now.
In any event, Happy New Year once again! Onward, 2011… geronimo! (You’d be smiling right now if you were a Who fan. 😉 )