hey, nils.

I’ve never been a big tweeter. Twitter? Tweetist? Anyway, I’m coming to realize that Twitter is more of a business currency than a social tool. I’ve started following several folks who post very useful and interesting links and/or stories that affect my industry more than my personal life. I stumbled upon this Twitter persona generator from visual.ly and thought I’d have a go at it. I give you…. Nils According to Twitter.

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I haven’t posted in a while but thought I’d check in real quick to post a few things. On December 1st we bought a decent digital piano (Casio) from Costco. It’s the full 88 key keyboard with weighted hammer action keys, plus all the bells and whistles you’d expect from a synthesizer. Katrina plays the piano quite well but I’ve never learned. We picked up some books to teach both me and the kids and we’re all learning. So far I have been able to learn several new songs with two hands and I’m learning to read music for the first time. I’m terribly slow at it but I’m getting there. Katrina is quite patient and I’m hoping to get to the point where I can become creative with it and hopefully play a few hymns.

I have to admit, I’m a quitter. I often get excited about learning something or doing something that requires a lot of commitment and I think it’s great and then I get bored of it or unmotivated or distracted after a few days or weeks (or sometimes even months) and I give it up. For example, running, exercising, learning Spanish, running, exercising, dieting, learning javascript, running and exercising. To name a few. We’ll see how this endeavor goes. So far so good. last night I played (very slowly) the right hand of I am a Child of God a few times. It’s fun to be able to read and play the notes and know what they mean. It’s all been gobblygook until now.

Christmas was awesome. The kids had a lot of fun and loved their gifts so Katrina and I loved Christmas. We spent it with family and took lots of pictures. They’re on Facebook so I may be too lazy to post here. But who knows.

Work is going well. The company continues to grow each month and though we’re not rolling in the billions of dollars we are in the millions (as a company) so that’s cool. I expect things will pick up even faster this coming year and I’m really looking forward to it.

There’s plenty more to talk about but I have a Sunday School email blast to send out so I’m going to do that now. My 31 subscribers are really counting on me, ya know? Peace out.

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She’s quite the little silly goose.

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So Katrina and I ran our first half marathon this weekend and it was somewhat pathetic but at least we did it. It took us 2.5 hours using our run five minutes walk one minute technique, which kind of morphed into run four minutes and walk two minutes and so on and so forth. Anyway, I think I’m good on the whole running thing. Its out of my system.

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I haven’t posted in a while so I thought I’d put up some of what’s been happening in the last couple of months. This is by no means a complete history but these are some of the photos on my phone.

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After being an iPhone user for years, I decided to make the jump. I purchased an LG G2X running Android 2.2 (Froyo). Now that I’ve had the phone for about a month, I’ve noticed a lot of differences and a lot of similarities. A lot of pros and a lot of cons. I thought it might be helpful to some if I were to make a list and keep track of what I find. I’ll do my best to update this list as time permits.

It’s worth mentioning that I went from an iPhone 3Gs to the G2X, so hardware isn’t a fair comparison. The G2X has a dual-core processor, 1080P Camera, HDMI out, 8 MP Still Camera, front-facing camera… the list goes on. A more apt comparison would be with the iPhone 4, which is more robust but still not as stacked or powerful as the G2X. The iPhone 5, however, is coming, and should be pretty impressive. I’ll try to focus more on the platforms (iOS vs Android) rather than the hardware. OK – let’s get started.

First Impressions of Android:

• Wow – it’s easy to set up. I entered my gmail account info and suddenly I have my calendar, my email, my Picasa photos, my blog setup, my Google Docs, my address book and phone numbers and more. That’s pretty sweet. Luckily I had been syncing my iPhone with my Google Contacts so those were already loaded within five minutes of opening the box. Nice. This may not be nearly as helpful if you’re not a gMail user – or not an avid one.
• Apps are Easy to Get. Just like on the iPhone, there’s a centralized location for getting apps – the Market. Similar to the App Store, you’ll find lists of top free apps, top paid apps, sortable by category and ready to install. Very familiar, very simple. I did have to enter my credit card info in order to buy apps but, like in iTunes, that info is saved, making it easy to purchase. One thing I love about the Market is that I don’t have to enter a password for free apps – only for paid ones. No more password request screens every time I want to try an app.
• Buttons! It’s easy to get used to the home button on the iPhone so I had to learn what these four buttons were underneath the screen. Here’s the rundown:
• Menu: The first button is the menu button and it was tough to remember that it’s an app sensitive menu. When I’m in mail, it’s the mail app’s menu button. When I’m on my home screen, it’s the general menu.
• Home: Much like the home button on the iPhone, this one takes you back to the home screen. If you hold this button for a few seconds you’ll see your recently opened apps, too.
• Back: This serves as the back or previous button and, like the menu button, works differently on different apps.
• Search: I admittedly haven’t used this one much – in fact, I had to check just now to see what the fourth button is. I guess I need to do more of my searches with that button.
• Flash! It’s so nice to be able to view Flash content on the phone again. I usually have to click on it for it to load (it’s not automatically there) but that’s much better than no Flash functionality.
• GPS is Less Accurate. This, of course, depends on which phone you have but I’ve noticed that when I use great apps like Runkeeper Free to track my daily walks, it usually thinks I’m walking super fast because once or twice during my short mile and a half stroll the GPS will jump from my actual location to a spot 500 yards away and then back within a few seconds – giving the illusion that I have super powers. Well, I do, in fact, have the ability to pop my ears manually at high altitudes but that’s a different super power. But I digress.
• Install Apps from any computer – I love this one. I could be at my downstairs computer while my phone is upstairs charging. I’ll hop on the android market place in a browser, see an app I like and install it on my phone. Bam. Just like that. Sure enough, I go upstairs when I’m done and the app is there waiting for me. I love this one.
• Way Less Stable (phone dependent) – The LG G2x is plagued with bugs, causing it to reboot randomly and freeze up from time to time. It kind of drives me nuts. While these behaviors don’t plague all Android phones, they exist partly because of the huge number of hardware configurations that Android runs on. Apple doesn’t have this problem because they control both OS and hardware. That’s one for Apple.
• More to come.

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