Ahhhh....Sleep

I think bed is one of the greatest inventions in the world.

Comfy mattress, clean sheets, big fluffy duvet, new pjs: that's my idea of heaven. Chuck in a book, a mug of coffee and Oscar for company and I'm well set to stay there all day. Perhaps the occasional foray downstairs to scavenge in the kitchen cupboards but you get my point.

I really like my bed.



Quite the fan of being asleep too! I have super vivid dreams - don't worry, I'm not going to detail them all in full for you. Nowt so boring as someone telling you about their dreams - and I also have the handy knack of being able to wake up, go back to sleep and pick up where I left off in the dream. Much fun.

I really think this helps contribute to the fact I am horrendous at getting up in the mornings though. Dreams are fun, waking up is not. I'm terrible at it. Can fake it to the extent that I'm capable of sounding awake, having a full conversation with someone, then rolling over and going back to sleep and having little to no recollection of it afterwards. About the only thing that will get me up is being hit in the face by the cat.



It has been known for people who despair of my snoozy ways to employ sneak tactics like texting me pictures of Moomins to horrify me into waking up but that's not really a long term solution. Damn effective in the short term though! *shudders*

I saw Rosie talking about Sleep Cycle on Twitter a week or so ago and I was really intrigued. I promptly paid iTunes the very reasonable price of 69p for the app, shoved the phone under the corner of my sheet and set about seeing what it would tell me about my time in bed.

It turns out that I was totally right when I thought that I slept like a dead person!



What else? Well, Oscar consistently bounces on me around the 6am mark demanding his breakfast:



My sleep quality is alright:



But I definitely go to bed too late:



The thing I'm really enjoying (other than the geeky pleasure from checking the graphs every morning) is the alarm function on it. You tell it when you want waking up by and it makes sure it rouses you gradually, so you're not in deep sleep when the alarm blares out. I'm definitely feeling less dead in the mornings and that's a huge improvement. Over the past few months it's been a positive if I wake up feeling tired rather than exhausted, so to actually feel vaguely normal first thing is brilliant!

An Ace(r) Christmas Present

Recent attempts to blog from the netbook have taken hours. I wish that was an exaggeration. My last post took 1 hour and 40 mins to edit five photos. I spend inordinate amounts of time wailing "Don't 'unresponsive script' me, you stupid machine. Arghhhh, just work!"

It does my head in but when I'm off work it's my only option. I always blog before or after work or on my lunchbreaks but now I'm home I'm limited to the crappy netbook or the iPad. Shouldn't moan really, should I? I'm a big Apple fan but even their most diehard supporter will admit to the flaws. You're locked into their systems, it's hard to import files from elsewhere and unless you have the most up to date devices, this causes a big old problem when it comes to photos. My iPhone is a 3GS which is almost four years old now and the camera is RUBBISH. My iPad is amazing and I love it for games and social media and general browsing but the camera is also pants. That makes life really difficult when it comes to blogging. I don't think it's worth upgrading the netbook to a laptop (they feel massive now!) but I've been looking at tablet reviews for a while.

The timing couldn't have been more perfect for an early Christmas present to arrive.





Acer sent me an Iconia tablet to review and here it is!



As an Apple girl I've never actually tried an Android device before and I'm rather impressed. Still need to sit down with the manual and work out all the little bits and bobs that aren't in quite the same place as on my iPad but it's all incredibly simple to set up and start using. Nothing has baffled me so far!


Spot the blog...



One huge plus for me is that you can plug stuff into it. On this tablet there's space for a HDMI cable and a micro SD card slot. I have 4 normal SD cards for my camera but no micro ones (d'oh!) so haven't been able to test that out quite yet but one of these clever gadgets is currently winging its way across the Atlantic to me. It's rather hard to track down but I'm pleased I found it, especially as it's cheap and has free postage. Once it's here the Iconia will be the perfect blogging device.

Negatives? Well, it kinda depends on how happy you are with Google interference in your life - it wants to auto default to a lot of things that I'd rather not sign up to. You just don't hit the OK button for them. I find it a bit less intuitive to use than my iPad but that may just be conditioning. The touch screen is definitely a bit less sensitive (especially the space bar for some reason) but it's still decent.

Overall, I think it's great. It feels nice to use, it looks well made and it's very reasonably priced for what it is. It's not an iPad and you're not paying that premium for the Apple design but you're getting a very nifty little tablet for your money. Definitely worth adding to your Christmas list.


*[]*
Acer sent me the tablet for review purposes. All opinions are my own.

Time & Tech

I'm always a little intimidated when I see tweets saying "just scheduled blog posts for the next 3 months. Yay!!"

My initial reaction is always "woah, REALLY??", accompanied by a mixture of being massively impressed yet slightly sickened by their organisation. Mostly I'm gobsmacked these super-efficient bloggers have the time to write that many posts at once. Do they write super fast? Write really short posts? Already have a massive stock of beautifully edited photos?

Not that I've ever sat down and timed myself but I reckon a blog post can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to 4+ hours, depending on interruptions/how helpful or awkward technology is being/how many photos need editing etc. I'm better and faster when I get into the swing of things. Like with any creative project, I find that as soon as I've started on one thing it sparks off all sorts of ideas. This is where a good notebook is essential, or all those fantastic ideas swiftly disappear into the mist. Where I tend to fall down is finding the time to get things written up and having the equipment available to do it on.

My problem at the moment is that my blogging is restricted by available technology. I'm the happy owner of an iPad and much as I love that for internet browsing, social media and games, it's not ideally set up for blogging.

Neither is my netbook which is getting a bit old and knackered now. It's so hard to edit photos properly on such a small screen, plus it really needs a serious sort out as it's painfully slow at the moment. I mostly use my work pc to blog on (again not the speediest machine in the world but at least it's a proper size) and that means blogging time is restricted to my lunch breaks, or after work. There's only so much you can squeeze into that time period!

This is me when Blogger and PicMonkey both decide not to play ball. It happens often.

I'm plugging along nicely at the moment and have forced myself to be a bit more productive and get things written up and scheduled. It's definitely helped. That feeling that blogging is a chore and that I'm way behind on things hasn't hit me for a while. Weekends start to get quieter for me at this time of year and it seems a shame not to curl on the sofa and get some blogging done. It's going to require a new machine though! I've been looking at Acer laptops and Acer tablets as they seem reliable and reasonably priced (a winning combo, especially so close to Christmas!) but then an ex-colleague popped into work the other day and she had a fab Microsoft Surface tablet with a keyboard/cover thingy and it was so nifty I want one of those too! Decisions, decisions...

How much technology does one girl need?

Bed and Blinkbox

I have a funny attitude to technology. I either scorn it or entirely fail understand the appeal of it and it takes me a long, long time to eventually join in with the masses and become hooked on whatever it is. Mobile phones back in the day, iPhones more recently, then Kindles, Twitter and now iPads. I'm suprised I ever managed to get my head around blogging.  I'm still about the only person I know who's never been on Facebook.

Anyway, I was jamtastic enough to get an iPad for Christmas and I love it. I'm sure this comes as no surprise to anyone that has one but it's just so useful! I wasn't quite expecting it to be so good. It's like my phone but bigger and therefore a million times better for entertainmenty type things.


I love it so much I bought it this pretty polka dot case.

I've turned into quite the gamer since I got it. Newsflash: games are better on an iPad than an iPhone. I'm now mildly obsessed with Hay Day and Mirrors of Albion.

But it's also super useful as a portable mini tv and I've finally discovered the joys of being able to watch tv online. I've got the BBC iplayer app, the ITV one and the 4OD one. I even have Sky Go on there courtesy of my excellent brother and his generosity when it comes to his Sky package. It's much easier to curl up in bed with my iPad than it is to do battle with the shit tv in my room. Honestly, it drives me mad. It never bloody works. I'm going to end up throwing it out of the window one day, rock star style.  It's much, much easier to tap on an app and have the programme of my choice up on the screen within seconds.



Blinkbox very kindly gave me some free codes to try out and review their service and I rubbed my hands together with glee. It runs via tvs and computers as well but I think we have established that I like using my iPad, haven't we? Once I'd decided whether I'd rather try out tv or film (tv won, just) I set about the tricky task of deciding which episodes and shows I wanted.

The winners were:

• Private Plane from Blackadder Goes Forth because Lord Flashheart drawling "well this isn't a reasonable use of my time and resources but I'm gonna do it anyway" is one of my favourite lines of all time.
• Noël from series 2 of The West Wing because I adore Josh, the cello music is stunning and it all makes me cry.
• Winter Is Coming, the first episode of series 1 of Game of Thrones. Mostly because I really love the books and have been avoiding watching it in case it ruins them for me, but I can't hold out any longer.

They're happily living on my iPad and I can watch them whenever I want, even with no wifi. Hurrah! I also succumbed to the lure of their cracking Movie Monday offer and bought Jackpot for 99p. I missed seeing it at the cinema and although that 99p hasn't bought me the film, it's got me a 30 day rental and that's a bargain as far as I'm concerned.

There was nothing else to do but make myself a cup of tea and a fishfinger sandwich, then curl up under the duvet for a warm, snuggly evening of bliss and excellent tv.