A blog by James: Gamer, Father, Geek.

Some Twitterfolk have been murmuring about getting iPads and I think @OnlyRad has just ordered one so I though I’d make a short(ish) list of essentials!

Reading Apps

I use RSS feeds extensively to keep up to date with all my favourite websites, in fact the only websites I manually visit are BBC News and Facebook. If you’re using Google Reader then the app for you is Reeder (£2.99). It’s slick, simple and offers nice options like sharing articles and a Readability function that can retrieve the whole article for those RSS feeds that only have the first paragraph or so of a story.

Next up is the Kindle app (Free). I prefer it over iBooks because Kindle books are cheaper and you can read them on a PC, Mac, Android and eventually within any web browser so you’re future proofing your eBooks.

Comics wise you can’t go wrong with Comics. Sure most comics are a year old but it’s good for catching up with older stuff. It has lots of publishers on board (including Marvel and DC) and I think all but the Marvel ones can also be viewed online too. Each comic is about £1.19 which is pretty good.

If you come across a lot of ‘must read’ links throughout the day, you should get yourself Instapaper (£2.99). A large number of apps support it and you can use a bookmarklet to send links to your Instapaper account. When you launch Instapaper it downloads all the articles, strips out the ads and presents it in a very simple way for you to enjoy on or offline at your leisure.

The iPad reads a lot of popular file formats off the bat, but if you want a great file reader you need GoodReader (£2.99). I read a lot of PDFs and have found GoodReader essential, not only for it’s easy organisation of your files but the fact that it connects to my Dropbox account and pretty much any other cloud service you will need. They are constantly improving it and it’s PDF annotation features are matching some PDF apps that cost almost 10 times as much.

Productivity Apps

The built in Calendar is ok but very basic. If you want better integration with online calendars (like Google Calendar), and a decent todo list/organiser, go for Informant HD (£8.99). It’s pricey but worth it if you like to organise your life.

For note taking, I only recently got this but it’s fantastic, Springpad (free). It is also available on other platforms including it’s website and all notes sync automatically. You can attach links, files, locations and more to your notes and you can even present them on a pinboard. In addition to this you can share your notes with others so it would also be great for organising parties/events or even collaborating with work as you can set notes to be public.

The iPad isn’t really a creation device, it’s a consumption device but if you really want them, the Numbers, Keynote and Pages (£5.99 each) apps by Apple are pretty good. If you’re after a database app, you can’t go wrong with Bento (£2.99) either.

Misc Apps

I have tried out a large proportion of the Twitter apps, and the winner for me is Twitterific (free, in-app purchase to remove ads). The reason being it’s simple, stable and it colour codes replies, DMs and mentions differently so if you’re skimming it’s very easy to see when people are talking to or about you. The official Twitter app is pretty and simple, and Osfoora is great if you want all the bells and whistles such as managing lists and using GPS to show you the locations of where other people are tweeting, but Twitterific is the one I always go back to.

For the lazy amongst us, getting up and going to the next room to see if a file has downloaded on your other computer is just too much. SplashTop (£2.99, free version also available) to the rescue! It’s a very simple VNC style app that lets you connect to your PC/Mac and control it remotely. The best part is the speed and quality is good enough to watch videos, so if you want to see a Flash video, get it streaming on your PC and watch on your iPad. I did this with 4OD to watch the first series of Misfits and it worked a treat.

IMDB is one of the most frequent websites I use. It’s a database of movies, tv shows, computer games and more that has information on actors, directors, writers, crew etc. The essential website to answer the question “Ooooh, what have we seen her in before?”. The app is just as good as the website with a nice interface. It is also free!

Also for the lazies who can’t be bothered to get the remote (or you know, are not at home!) is the TV Guide app (free). Has listings for all the UK channels and if you have Sky+, you can even remotely tell your Sky+ box to record something.

Games

I have a lot games on my iPad so I will just narrow it down to 3 essentials.

First up is Infinity Blade (£1.79). It’s a simple premise, you duel opponents on your way to defeat some evil guy. You can dodge, parry, attack and use spells. It’s very addictive and the graphics are stunningly amazing. If you want to show off the power of your iPad, this app is essential.

Next up is Plants vs. Zombies (£3.99). Zombies want to eat your brain and your only defence is an army of plants. It’s a tower defence style game and it’s brilliant.

Finally is Cut the Rope (£1.19). A piece of candy needs to travel from the rope to the little monster using the physics of swinging the ropes, bubbles, blowers and teleporters. It’s not too challenging until the newer levels, easy to pick up and play

So there’s the best apps I’ve come across so far, but of course half the fun is looking for new and exciting ones so it is by no means a definitive list.

Today I just want to write about a special moment. The kind of moment where you almost have an out of body experience, looking at yourself and what’s going on as if to capture the moment in a mental picture.

Today’s was nothing extraordinary. No special occasion. Just on the sofa having a cuddle with the wife and then our daughter Hannah joined us. She’s an affectionate little monkey and likes big family cuddles. She likes to make her Mummy and Daddy kiss, literally pushing our heads together. She’ll do this several times with a huge grin on her face and then we get to kiss her. Almost forgetting the other family member, Hannah then called out for Patch the dog to join us. Luckily she doesn’t insist we kiss him.

It was that moment, all on the sofa cuddling, kissing and laughing which was the special moment. Surrounded by the most important people in my life, completely content. It’s nice to revel in these moments. Not because they don’t happen often but because I think I’m very fortunate to have them at all given all the bad things that happen in the world.

Happy James is happy.

Ok so at the start of the summer holidays I decided to grow a beard. I have had many half hearted attempts before but usually become too self conscious, especially as working in a school kids aren’t exactly subtle about commenting on your appearance. So 6 weeks with only my friends and family able to complain seemed like a good chance.

So I stuck with it and I kinda like it. I know my wife doesn’t but hey, to me it’s one of those things you have to try at least once. The way I put it to her was if she is allowed to shave her legs and put makeup on to make her feel feminine, I should be allowed to grow a beard to feel masculine. It’s not like it’s permanent either, I have varied the length of my facial hair for yonks and I doubt I will always have a beard!

So anyway what prompted me to blog about this is the baffling social rules that say it’s ok for people I’m not even overly friendly with to comment negatively on it. To tell me to have a shave or ask if I lost my razor.

Ok if this is acceptable, I might just start saying “Hey fatty, lose some weight!” or “Good grief woman that top is hideous. Did you run out of nice clothes?”.

My point being if I have chosen to grow a beard it is my choice, it did not come about through laziness. You don’t like it? Keep it to yourself. My wife can tell me that because she’s my wife. A casual work acquaintance can keep their trap shut though!

So yes it may be scruffy, it may not suit me and it may offend you, but it is my body to do with as I please.

I have recently discovered that my daughter’s mind is like a sponge. Of course logically I know this is true of children, but it’s still taken me by surprise. We started putting on In the Night Garden on a regular basis for her a month ago. She loves it. So I got her an In the Night Garden book after about a week of her watching it. I read through it with her, and just decided to ask her where a certain character was. To my surprise she pointed to them. To see if it was a fluke, I asked her where another one was and again she pointed to the right one. I went through all the characters (5 in all) and she got them all right, time after time. My mind was literally blown. This little 16 month old girl who can’t speak a word had learned the names of all these characters without any intervention from us.

It didn’t take long to realise that she obviously understands much more that we think. So I got her a ‘My first words’ book. It must have over 100 things in it, pictures of animals, people and objects with the words underneath. She’s had it about a week and she can identify probably 20 of those consistently. That’s with probably less than 10 mins per day reading through it. Although she has started forming some words, on the whole she’s not speaking but I do love that for most of the animals she recognises she can do the noises for them if I ask her (again, bright enough to know when I’m asking her to point and when I’m asking her to make the noise).

I’ve no idea where this puts her on average compared to other kids her age, but even if it’s not true I think she’s a little genius. Added to that she’s gorgeous, funny, active and affectionate, I really do count myself the luckiest Dad in the world.

New Years Resolutions. Those promises that nobody really adheres to. They’re rubbish. So I won’t make them, but I am making promises and aims that just coincide with the start of a new year.

For Christmas I got my wife a little book of promises I’ve made to her. I won’t list them (some may make you blush and/or vomit), but the general gist of it and the reason behind it was that with the arrival of Hannah, she has dominated our lives, so for 2010 I have promised to be a better husband, to focus more on ‘us time’. Hannah will always dominate our lives, and rightly so, but there’s no reason we can’t plan to do more couple-y things!

So they are my promises, and here are my ‘aims’. Things I aim for in 2010.

Work: Little and often. It is the habit of a lifetime that I shall never break, but I can try and make a dent into it. It has always been my nature to work on things last minute. I actually perform better under pressure. My job doesn’t help things. With school holidays never more than 7 weeks away at any time, the temptation to leave work until then is great. And of course, without fail, once those holidays do arrive I don’t want to do any work at all. However, if I just did about 30 minutes a day and perhaps more at the weekend, I’d probably easily keep up!

Gaming: I have already started to, but I need to try more things! I play WoW to death and miss out on some great indie games. I also have the terrible habit of buying a game and then not playing past the first couple of hours. I need to get round to doing those games! Mass Effect, Fallout 3 and Dragon Age stare at me with sad eyes from my shelf every time I fire up WoW.

Blogging: More of it. I like writing. I think I am good at writing. Not in the creative sense. I’d struggle to write a story. But I just like composing letters, emails, posts etc. Trying to perfect them. I also miss the glory days of being well known in certain online communities. Those were fun days, but those sites are now dead or dying, so I guess I miss the ‘audience’. I know few people in life with my interests, and I can count how many of those I actually see in person on one hand, and of those that I see more than once a year on one finger, so an outlet for my interests is needed, even if these words fall on blind eyes. Were things in life not as good as they are and I had never met Kat, if I hadn’t decided I want to be a teacher, the idea of being a games journalist/blogger (delete as appropriate to your snobbishness) is a fun one. A dangerous one, I don’t think I could live the freelance kind of life. But it’s fun to imagine what it would be like.  So I think I’ll post more on things that interest and outrage me and just pretend there is an audience.

Lottery: Seriously, I really need to get round to winning the jackpot. I need to stop buying these faulty tickets, they just don’t ever win.

That’s it really! So, imaginary audience, what are your promises and aims for 2010?