Neal Tucker

Time for another year-end wrap-up along with my list of resolutions for the coming year.  If you don’t read this, I don’t blame you; there are a million of these written every few seconds, I’m sure.  But of course, this one is a decade-end wrap-up, which is obviously less frequent than the simple year-end ones.  Ignore this mundane first paragraph.

This decade was (and will remain) the Formative Decade for a generation (mine).  Some grew up in the 60′s, and they experimented with drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.  Others grew up in the 80′s and experimented with roller skates and hair metal.  We grew up in the 00′s and experimented with iPhones and Radiohead.  The coming 10′s will be the Formative Decade for another generation, but it remains to be seen what they will experiment with.

The 20th century was a transformative century for technology, and the first 10 years of the 21st century have continued the progress.  We don’t have flying cars, but we have cell phones that put the entire world at our (quite literal) fingertips.  2009 has been another year in the mass-market technological transformation of the global society.  We saw the unprecedented exploration of the social web, the explosion of Twitter, and the promise of a new mobile web (and an Apple Tablet, which I predicted a long time ago…if I do say so myself…and I do…say so myself…*ahem*).

Ten years ago I was at a friend’s house here in Birmingham, Alabama, awaiting the destruction of Y2K.  Of course, it never came.  The new millennium came, but Y2K didn’t.  Here we are ten years later, and Y2K10 is upon us (I don’t expect that to catch on, and not only because no one will read this far into this blog post – if you’re still with me, “You’re a trooper,” as my Mom says.)

What will the new year bring?  I don’t know for sure, of course, but I have my thoughts, my predictions, my resolutions.  What follows are those thoughts, predictions, and resolutions.

I think (like innumerable others) that the iTablet will revolutionize the tech-market, and TV will move to the web like Bill Gates predicted years ago, although not in the way he would have preferred.  I fear that the US will be involved in Iran (And Yemen? Or Israel? What about North Korea?) like we are in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the US/UN will further seek destruction of  nuclear weapons on a global level.  I hope that we lift ourselves out of the global recession (depression?) in 2010, though that remains to be seen.

As for my New Year’s Resolutions, they are as follows, more or less….

1. Finish the C.S. Lewis corpus.  I’ve wanted to read all of a particular author for some time, and I’ve read more of his than anyone else.  David Mamet is a very close second.  Maybe I’ll make him my 2011 goal, unless the world ends a few years early.

2. I have a few exercise/diet goals that I won’t detail here, but that’s a staple of any resolutions list, so I know you aren’t surprised or too terribly upset that it’s on my list and not detailed, respectively.

3. A goal for 2009 was to journal every day for a few weeks.  I will make that a goal for 2010, as well, because it was a very rewarding experience, and I would like to journal more often.

4. And here is my most ambitious goal for 2010, I think.  I saw someone do this on Facebook, and I think it’s a great idea.  I would like to take a picture every day for a whole year.  I’ll post them on Flickr in a specific gallery, and at the end of the year, I will hopefully make a book or poster or something to celebrate the whole endeavor and look back on the year in pictorial fashion.

Those are my big ones.  I might come up with a few more, but those are the ones that I wanted to share.  If you read any of this, thanks for doing so.  I don’t know what to write in expectation of the next decade, though it will be the formative years for most of my 20′s.  I’m excited about it, though, and I’m looking forward to a fantastic New Year and another influential decade.

I hope your New Year is bright and full of opportunity.  Goodbye 2009 and the 00′s!  Happy New Year!  2010!

Auld Land Syne,*

Neal

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*Means “long long ago” or “days gone by” according to Wikipedia.

P.S. If you’re looking for a good to-do app for all your resolutions, check out http://teuxdeux.com/

We all need a place we can go, our place, where we can go to work on our stuff.  Ommwriter has attempted to do that on your desktop.  Take a look at their video.  The app just launched and has already exceeded 20,000 downloads.  (Did I mention it’s free..?)  Enjoy.

[Unfortunately, it's only for Mac right now.  I don't know if they have plans to extend this bucket of awesomesauce to PC or not.]

Click here or right click on the video to watch it in another window.

Just got a new Blackberry Curve 8330.  It’s incredible.  My life has finally culminated to a pinnacle I fear it will never reach again.  I jest.  But leaving all that aside, let’s discuss my sweet new gadget with whosits and whatsits galore, that my (beware the lack of commas here for a sec) wonderfully awesome incredibly loving parents got for me for my birthday (early, since my birthday is May 4th…but you knew that).

First of all, it isn’t a touch screen, which is a huge plus in its favor.  If it isn’t made by Apple, a touch screen is like a bad game of golf.  It makes you question everything about your very fragile existence, all things golf not excluded.  The same is true of the products that are created by companies that aren’t Apple when they attempt the elusive “touch screen” mobile device.  I personally had the LG Dare, a well-meaning phone, but one whose promise isn’t much more than that, just a promise.  It wants so desperately to be the iPhone, but it just isn’t there yet.  In a few years when things start to really get there with touch screen technology, then maybe.  Now, granted I have not used the G-phone yet with T-Mobile, but I’ve pretty much only heard great things.  So with those two exceptions (iPhone/iTouch and the G-phone), stay away from touch screen mobile devices.

Since it isn’t touch screen, it has freaking buttons! I bout lost my shiz when I was able to actually click real live buttons again.  Buttons with substantive physical presence.  And it’s QWERTY, which is fantastic.  I learned to type QWERTY, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it, so typing ABC123 just isn’t my thing.  Intelli-type was good in its day, but QWERTY is here to stay, so just hop on board, friends.  And learn to type without looking.  You’ll thank yourself.

It has the ability to download apps, something I’ve never been able to do on the phones of my Christmas past.  It also has the Blackberry App Store, like the iPhone App store, so hopefully it will live up to its predecessor.  Indeed, time will tell.  So far, though, with themes and apps, I’m slowly making this phone into exactly what I want/need.

Going off of that: I have wanted for some time to get to the point where I was able to really only take one or at most two devices with me when I leave the house.  I’ve really wanted it to just be one, with all my contacts, calendar events, music, email, social networks, ceiling cats, etc., all over it, ready for me to delve into my handheld world at a moment’s notice.  I think I’m eerily close.  The one thing holding me back right now is the music factor.  I love music.  Period.  It’s what keeps me going a lot of the time.  In fact, as I write this, I’m listening to Pandora on my Blackberry.  As such, I like to have lots of music.  With a 4GB miniSD chip, only so much can go with me.  I need to be able to put something like 20GB of my music on my phone in order for it to essentially be a contender with my 80GB ipod/8GB iTouch combo that goes with me wherever I go, especially on the CTA, making commuting more of a chance to listen to music than a pain in the arse.

It’s the best phone I’ve ever owned as far as I can tell, and I look forward to seeing what I can do with it.  You may think I’m ridiculous for being so excited about technology.  In that case, screw you and the high horse you road in on.  I keed, I keed.  But seriously, get over yourself.  And get a Blackberry, so I can message you.

Talk soon,

Neal

I got a few of the things I posted about earlier in the weekend.  I got the boots and the printer.  However, the printer is actually a little better than the one below, because it’s a photo-printer.  It’s still HP, so that’s good.  And the best part about it all, Ash’s parents bought it all.  They didn’t have to, of course, but they did, which was amazing.  I had no idea they were going to buy my boots, so that was a great surprise.  I had been told they would buy the printer, but that was still awesome.