This is what happen..!

iPad case

I’ve had my iPad since launch day. I’m in Canada, so I bought one from a fellow who went to the States to get one.

I didn’t have any protecting case for 2 month. I didn’t wanted to order one online and I was able to wait for supply to come to Canada. In that time, my iPad mostly stayed at home that whole time. I did find some pretty nice cases on the net. One of the best cases that looks like a Moleskine and without any bad reviews is the DodoCase, a real nice book kind of case that are made by hand in California. They cost 50$US, almost the same price as other well built case. but the thing is it takes 4 to 6 weeks for delivery. And I can’t wait that long!  ;-)

So I went out and bought Apple’s own case. It protects the iPad ok, it’s thin, it converts to a typing position. It’s well built…  BUT…  I don’t like the way the edge are finished. It doesn’t look like it was made by Apple as some details are not well polished. And it cost 45$CAN which is almost the same price as the DodoCase.

I don’t exactly know if I’m going to keep Apple’s case. I might buy a DodoCase and wait for it to arrive. I do have protection at the moment that should help me to wait.

But I still need to think about this.

iPad apps

I might start making posts about iPhone / iPad apps that I’ve bought. I don’t normally buy a lot of apps, but these apps are so good and are cheap that I don’t see why I wouldn’t buy them.

Reeder - Best iPad news reader app. It sync with your Google reader account, nice interface.

AirVideo - Best way to share video from your computer to your iPad / iPhone, it does conversion on the fly.

Logmein - This one cost an arm… But It’s so much valuable. If something doesn’t work on the iPad, I can always connect to one of my computer, fast and works great, way better than any VNC apps out there.

Photogene - A cool picture / photo processing app. The iPad should include something like this.

Photo Transfer App - Creates a wifi network so you can transfer photo from your iPad / iPhone / computer wirelessly. Take a picture from your iPhone, send it to your iPad for processing.

Instapaper Pro -I’ve used the free version on my iPhone, but they haven’t done any free version for the iPad. The new interface is nice and you can send article from mobile safari.

Pinball HD - In need of some entertainment, this is a cool and fast casual game.

Color Splash - An other picture / photo processing app. Turn your apps B&W and only add color to an object.

As of right now, I’m only missing an IM app. There are a lot of apps for the iPhone, but none too tempting for the iPad. I’ve only seen Beejive IM, but at 10$, I would like to have more choice before taking a decision.

I do have more apps installed on my iPad, but for now, this post is about paying apps.

Android Land

“Android Land” will probably be a series of post regarding my finding / hints on Android based phones.

I just purchased a new Nexus One. It’s my second one as I had the T-Mobile, aws band version when it got out. I now have the AT&T version that has 3G working in Canada.

With my first one, I had some anoyance with the fact that SMS notification didn’t vibrate at all. I had look everywhere in setting to find nothing. Well this morning I found where to look for. As this is not really intuitive and kind of proves that Android was built by engineers. Here how you enable vibration with SMS.

Open “Messaging” -> Menu Button -> “Settings” -> Vibrate option is at the bottom of the list.

Oh, and this is a pattern, same thing for email. You need to go in the email settings to enable vibration for incoming email.

Open “Gmail” -> Menu Button -> “More” -> “Settings” -> Vibrate option is at the bottom of the list.

I dipped my toe in Android land

I’ve been using a Google Nexus One phone since 3 days. I’m using it exclusively, keeping my iPhone 3GS without a sim card and power off at home. This is a nice experience because I was always curious about this new phone os. I never tried version 1.x, so I can’t tell how much it evolve since day one. What I can say for now, I like it. But there are a few things that I would like to point out.

• Keyboard layout needs a bit of getting use to. This is probably due to the fact that I’m coming from an iPhone and I’m used to it’s layout.
• This one bugs me a lot, I can’t change the language while in a text box. I speak french and english, and I write email / im / sms in both language. While typing, the dictionary / replacing tends to slow me down.
• Android market, there is a lot of good apps, not as much a on the iPhone, all seem free at first. I found out that some apps have a pro version, but where do I buy..? It looks like every dev needs to sell their apps from there own website.

Other than that, I’ve been using DoubleTwist to drop music and video from my iTunes. And it works great.

Weewar Stats

For almost a year, I’ve been playing Weewar, an online game based on Advanced War for the Nintendo DS.  It’s a turn base game that you receive email when it’s your turn to play. It got chat, around 12 types of units, air, land and sea, it’s really cool and fun.  You should try it.  I’m “optikz” in the game, friend me up and let’s play.

This post is not to gain friends on the game, but to promote a web app that I’ve been working on.  I used to use a Greasemonkey script to gather stats while playing.  This was nice, but I sometime played from other computers that I do not fully control.  That’s where my new web app comes in handy.  It gives me almost the same stats as de GM script, but on a website with an iFrame at the bottom with the game I’m playing.

It’s been really fun to work on, I hope it will gain popularity.

Here’s the link:  http://weestats.com

Jolicloud on my Sony Vaio P

Well my Vaio P has been gathering dust from quite some time now. I’ve stop using it as it was too slow and even in Linux, I wasn’t really satisfied. I’ve been waiting for some time to try something new on it, but the Intel GMA500 video card is kind of keeping me away from a lot of distro / options.

Jolicloud looked promising, but it took them like 2-3 month to release a GMA 500 compatible version. I’ve installed it Sunday and I’m quite pleased with it. It’s basically a Ubuntu Netbook Remix branded with Jolicloud and using their Social featured package management. I haven’t tried UNR 9.10, so I can’t tell if this is the reason why everything is working. But it’s fast, and my hardware is fully supported. I can even use the hotkeys to set the sound and britghness. Their package management is full of usefull web apps. They use something like “Fluid.app” on OSX to create native looking web apps.

I’m happily using my Vaio P again, and in 3 months when I’ll visit Hong Kong and Beijing, I’ll probably be bringing it with me instead of my Macbook Air. On vacation, it will probably be the best weight / size notebook to take on the other site of the world.  =)

2010 resolutions

This year, I’ll make things simple… As making a list of things I want to achieve is probably one of the worst thing you can do. Last year I only did 3 things out of 9. Maybe 9 was too much. Thinking about it, it should not, cause you have 12 month to do stuff. You could spread it all over evenly and be able to do one thing a month.  But history says it doesn’t work. So let’s do it 3 things on do it great.

1. Loose some weight; (this can be tricky, but achievable)
2. Get one security certification; (work on doing my cissp, I need this for consulting)
3. Work on my consulting cie. (I got my first gig, beginning January 4)

That’s it, 3 things, 3 easy things.

Happy New Year peeps! Be safe.

Looking back on 2009

Let’s have a look back at the big highlights of 2009.

Olivier my second child (last one) was born on the August 31.

I’ve bought a house in Montreal.

I’ve lost a job, but I’ve reinstated my personal company and started to work for myself. This is good as I found a consulting gig 2 weeks down the road. I will now work on stuff that matters to me.

As for my 2009 resolutions, here is what I have achieved out of 9.

• I did start drinking more tea. By the end of the year, I was drinking tea 2 times a day. It feels really good.
• I did de-clutter a bit. This is probably due to buying a house and moving in. The more I packed / unpacked, the more I threw away.
• I worked on a sleeping schedule, but I lost it after my new born got home.

That’s about it for my old resolutions… I did lost some weight, but I got it all back and some more. I’m not proud of it… This will probably be what I need to work on next year. Starting January, I’ll be planning and working on what I eat.

I’ll definitely do a 2010 resolution post, stay tuned!