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Unplugging

My vacation ends tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be back at work, sifting through the hundreds of emails that arrived when I was away and ignoring them.

I also didn’t keep up with twitter, or facebook, or my feed reader. For the first week, I was a real luddite: no computer, no phone, and it as it turned out even no television. Unplugging felt good.

I read a couple of good books, went for long walks, took lots of photographs, took naps. Spent hours beachcombing and staring out into space. I got a massage. I ate great food (and wonderful candy, and drank possibly the best ever iced coffee). I pretty much didn’t do anything I didn’t feel like doing for two weeks.

As I prepare to deal with tomorrow — the emails, the meetings, the flow of updates — I want to remember this relaxed, rested feeling and how it isn’t something I can get only two weeks a year.

I’m going to try to not give in to a sense of hurry. I can be busy, but can opt out of needless anxiety. I’m going to resist constantly feeling behind and the need to catch up. I unsubscribed from everything in my feed reader; I’ll build it back up as I see things I like, and as I remember to go back and resubscribe to the things I actually miss.

Going forward, I’m going to try unplugging every Saturday. I’m always thinking I want more time to read, more time to spend on my photography, more time to devote to not-quite-yet formed project ideas, and choosing to spend one day a week offline seems like a good way to find that time.

Swyping not typing

I’ve played around with swype for only a few minutes, but here I am writing a blog post about how awesome it is.

Writing as in composing this on my phone and it isn’t painful. First thought: this is what text entry should be like with screen keyboards.

Delightful. Easier than I ever would have guessed and I’m just getting started. I think it will change how I use my mobile.

It never occurred to me that text entry wouldn’t suck.

In praise of suckiness

I’m not a gadget geek. The droid incredible is nifty.

I’ve had my new phone (HTC Incredible) about a week now. It’s my first smart phone. I decided to get it when I realized I was feeling a bit left behind not having a fancy mobile device of my own to experiment with, and that I could stop bitching about how crazy it would be to pay that much for a phone because, well, it really is a little computer that happens to also make phone calls. It isn’t really a phone.

My thoughts so far

I like the 8MP camera. The only app I’ve paid for so far is Vignette for Android, an app that lets you apply all sorts of filters and framing effects. From what I can tell, it is like Hipstamatic for the iPhone, only it does a bit more. I created an android set on flickr — I can title, tag, and upload right from the phone with flickroid. It’s true that pics seem to look better on the phone than on a computer screen, but the quality is pretty decent, good for a phonecam.

The twitter app from twitter seems sufficient so far. I don’t keep twitter on all the time, I just sync it when I’m out and about and have some time free to read through tweets. I do sort of miss my tweetdeck columns, though. I wonder if reading tweets on the phone will change my following behavior — I can see noisier folks being more annoying on the phone. I was getting some people’s tweets sent as texts; I turned that off.

When my iPod(s) die, I won’t be getting new ones. I have an ancient nano and a little orange shuffle, both in questionable health. The sound quality of this device appears to be as good as the pods, and with the ability to fill a 32 gig card, I just don’t see the point in another device just for music. This is a huge change for me — I never thought I’d want music on my phone. But then, this really isn’t a phone

I use Mint on the phone more than I ever used it on my computer. When I have my laptop it’s easy enough to log in to my bank directly, so I didn’t really bother with Mint. I’m not a tracker and I don’t feel the need to tie my whole financial world up in one app — I just don’t need to be reminded of the size of mortgage or 401k account all that often. But being able to quickly determine if a payment has cleared because I can now avoid my bank’s convoluted phone system is fabulous.

I may give up my wallet. Not because payments by phone are happening (where do you think I am, Asia?) but because I have to carry the phone in something… it is so nice and shiny and deserving of more protection than cramming it into my jeans pocket possibly with my keys and change. So I got a golla pouch for it, one that has a little zip compartment for cards and bills. I’m experimenting with leaving the wallet at home for two weeks to see if the golla bag is actually better. I figure that is long enough to stop panicking because my wallet isn’t in my back pocket.

Things I haven’t done yet but think I want to do

Find a super easy way to post things to delicious. I read some web stuff on the phone, but more often I’d like to save it for later here must be an easier way to post things to delicious. I need to be able to cut and paste text into the note field in delicious, not just add tags.

Create a mobile stream. In part this would be to learn what is possible and easy, and what is a real pain. I’d consider it an experiment.

Start using Evernote. Everybody seems to love it, and it apparently it does everything short of clear smoke from Canadian forest fires and clean oil from the ocean.

Things I can do, but don’t want to do

Connect to exchange server. I spend enough hours online already, I don’t need to be instantly notified whenever I get email from work, especially as most of my mail is coming from folks three time zones away. If I really need to, I can access work email in the browser.

Leave background syncing on. First, they should probably call this option Battery Killer as it does insanely sap battery life. Second, I don’t want to be so interrupt-driven. I appreciate that I am able to get email from all my accounts, notifications from twitter, etc. etc. but I don’t need to see them the instant they are sent to me. Really, I don’t.

Play with facebook. In the past couple of days, I’ve only used facebook to send an email to someone whose email address I didn’t have. I’ve always liked twitter and flickr better. I’m just not convinced I need fb on my phone, even if my phone thinks I do.