Happy New Year fellow CRIMPers!

Posted by MadaboutDana
Jan 6, 2014 at 02:18 PM

May I join in wishing everybody a wonderfully positive 2014!

As far as crimping goes, I find that I’ve recoiled into fairly conservative mode (for the time being). Currently, my main apps are:
- Wunderlist for task management (because it’s so totally ubiquitous);
- OneNote for notes, scans, screenshots etc. (because it’s cross-platform and has an amazing OCR function)
- Notebooks for notes, web pages, and literary stuff (because it’s cross-platform and reproduces web pages to such a high standard; the new version for iOS is lovely, too)
- CintaNotes (coupled with SimpleNotes) for quick note-taking and transfers from desktop to iPad

However, there are plenty of other apps/applications I toy with occasionally, when I have a little spare time.

I’ve grown somewhat disillusioned with Android on my Galaxy Note 1.0, especially in view of Samsung’s attempts to become a world-dominating power that totally owns all your personal data, but also in view of the many other Android apps that require total access to every corner of your system before they’ll run properly. I’m seriously contemplating either a return to an iPhone or a move to Windows Phone (lower-end Nokia smartphones are going for very reasonable prices at the moment). But I’m also thinking of experimenting with the new CyanogenMod version of Android…

In terms of desktops/laptops; yes, I’m tempted to move to Apple: first, because of the ghastly cryptoviruses out there at the moment, which are primarily Windows-targeted, and second, because I’ve just bought and set up a state-of-the-art 27” iMac for my son, who’s a budding film director. Okay, it was expensive, but it’s an astonishing machine! He runs Windows on it most of the time, because that’s what his expensive film-editing software runs on - and it’s still an astonishing machine! (It’s an astonishing TV, too, but obviously that’s a secondary function, hem!) But first, I have to find a way to convince my FD that it’s worth the fairly significant cost of changing platforms… (curses, curses!). Personally, I like iWork, and feel that the software cost would be modest; on the other hand, Accounts run on Windows, so that puts a bit of a spanner in the works.

And I’ve just finished reading Charles Stross’s very entertaining series of Laundry novels (four of them), in which a valiant super-secret service fights to prevent incursions by ghastly, tentacled Lovecraftian horrors from alternative spacetime dimensions - very witty and highly computerate; Stross has one of those planet-sized brains that impress you every time you read his stuff. Thoroughly recommended.

Have a good one, everyone!