Wore my new boots I got for Christmas today, and they’re surprisingly painful to walk in over concrete. But they look good. Priorities and all. However, I think long hikes through the urban jungle are off the list for these:
Okay, I’ve had my Droid for a little over a week now. Overall conclusion: I LOVE it. There are some aspects of it which I think could be improved upon, some of which may actually be fixed, as the Android OS continues to be upgraded, but all in all, it rawks hard.
Of note, as soon as I booted it, my Droid informed me that it had an OS upgrade that it wanted to install, which I ignored the first half dozen times the notification popped up—as I was too busy playing with it to want to give it a moment to load and reboot—but which I finally allowed it to implement when I had a brief pause in oooing. However, I hadn’t had enough time to really get to know Android 2.0 to be able to identify the changes and comment upon the upgrade from 2.0 and 2.0.1. But I like that OS upgrades can be pushed to my phone without me having to download or install anything manually.
(Some of) the Pros:
• First off, the screen resolution is nothing short of spectacular. As someone who depends upon her eyes for both work and recreation, I simply can’t gush enough about the Droid’s amazing screen. The incredible crispness and brightness allow for unstrained viewing of teeny-tiny letters which I would otherwise be squinting at on my laptop or desktop monitors. It’s utterly wowsome and must be seen to be believed.
• The Droid multitasks like a speed demon. On the drive to Elgin, we were using the GPS to navigate and check traffic conditions, playing music via Pandora (Internet radio), checking out the Avatar movie trailer on Flixter (well, I was, fosteronfilm was driving and listening to me make impressed noises at the video quality and streaming speed), keeping an eye on weather conditions with Weatherbug, and sending last-minute Christmas gifts via Amazon.com on the Droid’s browser—while I also checked email in a gleeful-compulsive fugue state. The Droid responds lightning-fast and can easily switch back and forth between applications without batting its red, glowing eye. Wi-fi is faster than 3G, of course, but I didn’t see a huge lag when switching between 3G and 1X (although there was one).
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Happy Christmas/Solstice/Hanukkah/whatever December holiday you observe! Merry merry merry!
OMG! Matthew got me a Droid for solstice! *squee!* Updating status on shiny new toy…
My reading of S. Hutson Blount’s excellent story “Littleblossom Makes a Deal with the Devil” is now up at Escape Pod! I’m way amused by Steve Eley’s (sfeley) intro. He called me a “powerhouse in the genre.” Hee!
This is my first time reading for the Escape Artists folks—who I adore and have sung praises for many times—and I hope I managed to do a credible job. It’s a different sort of nervous being the reader instead of the author.
So go listen! It’s free!
+300 and -200 (different) words on The Stupid Novel. Beginning to think I should start calling it something other than “The Stupid Novel.”
2.5K words on The Stupid Novel, to the detriment of my holiday to-do list. How is it mid-December already??
John Ottinger invited me to join his panel of guest bloggers this week at Grasping for the Wind.
My post, “Creative Procrastination: Kanji, Word Families, and TXT SP3EAK,” is now up.
And herein the schedule for the whole week:
Saturday
• The Book Smugglers Best Reads of 2009 by The Book Smugglers
Sunday
• Are We Post Genre? by Harry Markov
Monday
• Ramp Up Your Reading: More and Faster by Bill Ward
• Creative Procrastination: Kanji, Word Families, and TXT SP3EAK by Eugie Foster
Tuesday
• Ramp Up Your Reading: Do It Better by Bill Ward
• Book Buying: Telling Readers Where to Go by Jim C. Hines
Wednesday
• Ramp Up Your Reading: Expand Your Horizons by Bill Ward
• A Love Affair With Stories by Karen Miller
Thursday
• Working With Young Writers by Shaun Duke
• The Write Stuff by Stephen Hunt
Friday
• Science Fiction and the Death of the Human by Shaun Duke
• Shared World Fiction: Spinning Stories Out of Unmapped Bits by Rosemary Jones
Saturday
• Science Fiction Ain’t Dead (So Shut Up) by Shaun Duke
• The Things An Author Does by Pamela Freeman
Sunday
• A Golden Age for Short Fiction by Joe Sherry
I had a funny dream this morning. Can’t remember much about it, but I woke up laughing. Wish I could wake up laughing every morning.
During my commute to work on the eastbound train, a woman was sobbing her heart out while a man sat red-eyed and mournful beside her.
As I was ascending the steps of the capitol, I passed a shirtless man descending them. He grinned at me, revealing many missing teeth, and wished me “good morning.”
The world is full of stories.
Ruthless cutting of -1.5K words on The Stupid Novel and Part 4 is now at zero draft. Rah! Onward to Part 5; entering the final stretch. And with only three more weeks left in December, it really does feel like a race.
