A blog by James: Gamer, Father, Geek.

It’s what makes the world go round. It’s also what I’ve never, ever been good at managing. So I’ve decided to give it a go. I spent a couple of days playing with the Numbers app for iPad (a scaled down version of the OSX equivalent of Excel) to keep a closer track on my expenses and hopefully save some money. I have OU course fees that need paying next year and for a change I don’t want to slap it on my credit card!

Speaking of credit cards, I really need to stop using them. They really are the devil. I’ve done a little debt tracker for them and it’s scary to look at. The good news is my main bank loan will be paid off in about 2 years which frees up a large chunk of money a month that should go towards paying off the cards, and I think a year after that it’s possible we’ll be getting a decent amount of money that could either go towards a new house or pay off any other debt.

Of course this is all in theory. I know what I’m like, and when unexpected things crop up the credit cards tend to come out. However it is worth trying for and so I’ve set up a second current account that I will transfer some monthly ‘me money’ to be used for luxuries for me, I will make sure some money goes into my savings account and the rest is for the bills!

My next post will be related to money saving, and it is an idea borrowed from ‘devious2k’, I’m starting a ‘Pile of Shame’, a list of games I own that I have not completed or in some cases never even installed. The idea is I’m not allowed to buy any new games until then old ones are completed.

Downside to the day was I’d lost my voice so had to take the day off. Upside was that my iPad was dispatched a day early!

It is the most lovely piece of technology I have ever had the pleasure of holding. It’s sleek, sexy and fast. I opted for the 32gb 3G version. I have a nice case for it on order, but the Amazon delivery slot for it is 1-3 months which I think is just code for they aren’t released in the UK yet and they’re just guessing a time frame.

Oh and of course this post was written on the iPad with the WordPress app. I can actually type just as fast on here as a regular keyboard. The downside is I am making more mistakes than usual and the keyboard doesn’t have an apostrophe key. The iPad does compensate somewhat for this with it’s auto correction but it’s a little hard to get used to. I suspect practice will make perfect.

My advice is if you have the money to burn, buy one. It’s the ultimate tech luxury item. If you consume a lot of information and media that is internet or electronic in nature, get one. If you’re not sure then see if you can try one out at an Apple store, but beware they are hard to resist!

Although overall fallout of the election is not yet over, these quotes have made me laugh:

“Our growth and resilience is truly inspiring. The BNP has arrived and will be knocking on the doors of power sooner than some ever imagined!”

Let’s see, they had a 1.8% increase. Assuming their money hasn’t run out and they don’t destroy themselves through in-fighting, and an election every 4 years, why yes you’ll be in power in a few hundred years!

I have been weighing up whether or not I want to sell my Macbook to buy my iPad. The kicker is that I know someone that I could probably sell it to quickly. As the majority of my internet activity will likely switch to my iPad, the Macbook gets a little redundant. However, I think I just can’t do it. I’ll be selling it for half of what it cost me and saying goodbye to quite a lot of nice software. Plus, 3 years on it’s still a cracking good laptop. So I decided to keep it.

As I have my gaming PC and a netbook I thought there’s not a lot of need to keep my Windows Boot Camp partition about. So I decide to reclaim that space. It did not go well. I’m not sure what I did wrong, but frankly I’m surprised that I was able to fuck things up. That I know of, I didn’t do a damn thing to my Mac partition. Anyway, basically I lost all my stuff.

Enter: Time Machine! It has saved my bacon once before. But I am not very good at backing up. I usually ignore those “You have not backed up in 200 days” style messages. But I decided to do a backup in mid Feb, and for that I am very glad because before that my last backup was August last year! The problem is all my photos and music is obviously digital. You can’t retake those photos and you can’t (in the case of iTunes) re-download the music. I do copy most of my music to my gaming PC but not always straight away. So I could have lost a lot of money’s worth of stuff! Luckily any photos I lost should be on K’s laptop, and the best ones I usually upload to Facebook anyway.

So the moral of the story is, back up your stuff!

I’ve mentioned them plenty, but seriously their debut album is miles ahead as my album of the year. There’s not a single track I don’t love. Don’t be put off by her at times miserable look in the videos (the latest one is better), the music is pure genius. I really can’t get enough of it still.

BUY IT!