These pictures are from November when I first got the Jawbone UP, back then there was so much keenness to try this little bracelet.
I didn’t mind that I had to go all the way to Mount Vernon to get mine because the at&t store in Bellingham was sold out of the UP that morning.
The UP is basically a cool little wristband step-counter and sleep tracker that syncs with the Jawbone iPhone app and displays data in a user-friendly graph .

According to Jawbone,

UP™ by Jawbone® is the combination of a wristband and iPhone® app that tracks your activity and sleep and inspires you to move more, sleep better and eat smarter.

As a self-proclaimed lover of ‘shiny new things,’ I took to the UP quickly and loved how unobtrusive and easy it was to use.
I’ve never been focused on tracking my fitness activity before; sure, I turn on my running app when I go running, but I’ve never tried to figure out overall how much I move in a day.
The band has three activity settings, regular, active and sleep. Active is for when you’re exercising.
I keep mine in regular mode most of the time except for when I’m sleeping. I thought I walked a lot, but wearing the UP put it in perspective.
I could do better, in fact I’ve made a few changes since I started wearing the band; I take the stairs, I try to take little walks during the day, I generally try to move more, and that’s what the UP aims to do.
I love the little buzzes (reminders) that remind me if I haven’t moved in two hours.
The sleep tracker is fairly helpful, it tracks sleep cycle, and shows light and deep sleep.
It has a built-in alarm clock that gently rouses you from sleep…
I find using the meal tracker a little cumbersome, same for finding friends who have the UP so I don’t use these features.

The UP isn’t without issues, I’m on my second device – the first had battery issues, couldn’t sustain a charge past a day, and then one day it died.
The replacement works perfectly so far, but I’m not sure how long that would last.
In fact the UP has been bogged down with so much hardware issues that Jawbone has a ‘No questions asked guarantee’ refund
Still, I love my UP, it’s helped me make some little lifestyle changes, I try to walk more, I’m horrified at how poorly I sleep and trying to work on it.

Pushing Daisies was a charmingly quirky series about a pie-maker who could bring the dead back to life by touching them – a second touch would kill them again.
The characters lived in this visually stunning whimsical world, where they solved bizarre murders using the pie-maker’s abilities.
Pie was a central theme in the show, with much of the action taking place in the pie-maker’s shop, the Pie Hole.

Pushing Daisies made me really want to bake a pie! And to this day, I can’t think of baking a pie without thinking of myself as a ‘pie-maker’ – said in narrator Jim Dale’s voice.

I had a few firsts last year as far as culinary expeditions go; I baked my first apple pie!
I’ve been meaning to bake a pie for a while now; it’s on my to-make list, I’m just not ready to delve into the complexities of pie crusts yet.
In Pushing Daisies, the pie-maker’s girlfriend bakes Gruyère into the crust of the very special apple pie (laced with homeopathic antidepressants) she sends to her aunts.
One day I shall try my hands at the perfect flaky crust, there’s vegan coconut oil crust I’m itching to try.

Being my first try, I figured I’d be forgiven for using store-bought pie crust.
I chose the TJ’s crust for its simple ingredients; flour, butter, palm oil, water and salt.
And the pie filling is an old recipe I’d been holding on to for years, it’s simple too, apples, lemon juice, sugar and spices.

Unfortunately something went wrong and my crust fell apart, it thawed and broke into pieces.
I just piled them on the apples and hoped for the best.
In hindsight, I should have re-rolled the dough.
Still, the pie turned out really well for a first try.
I feel hopeful… I’m on my way to becoming a better pie-maker

I had an Apple laptop at the turn of the (21st) century, a cute blueberry clamshell iBook – I spent a lot of time on it corresponding with a Tuareg man, I was certain he was my destiny.
I also started my first blog (a weird word back then), and discovered an amazing community of diarists.
I loved that little iBook even when it got buggy and crashed sometimes, and my biggest frustrations were software incompatibility issues and browser/website glitches.
In time I got a Dell laptop and somehow, and I’m not sure exactly when this happened – I became an Apple Hater!

Yes, I was an Apple hater.
It wasn’t the deep seething hate that consumes you; this was mild contempt with a dash of general indifference.
Like most ‘haters’ I thought Apple products were overpriced hypes with closed architecture.
It may have begun with the launch of the iPod, and the mass fixation that followed; everyone wanted one and proclaimed it an innovation.
My iriver MP3 player had all the features of the iPod plus a built-in FM tuner, yet no one raved about it.
Then the iPhone happened… I’ve ranted about the iPhone before so I won’t get into that.
I got the HTC Prophet (Windows mobile 5.0) a year before the iPhone debuted.
I loved my prophet! Probably because of all the time I spent on it – I joined XDA Developers and tweaked the heck out of that phone; it was as if I’d built my perfect phone.
The iPhone did not tempt me, as far as I was concerned my phone was superior to the iPhone.

Over the next several years I felt smug for not falling for the Apple hype, my laptops were Windows, (there was the Linux running Eee PC I used briefly), and my phone and mp3 players weren’t Apple.
With two pivotal incidents last year, I went from Apple-hater to owning several Apple products.
The first, was the announcement of the iPad, it was the first of Apple product that I felt was worth a little hype (not a whole lot though!), then I took one look at it and I had to have it – I envisioned many scenarios where it’ll come in handy.

The second incident came from dissatisfaction with my phone; I got the Google G1 phone (HTC Dream) in the summer of 2009.
It was exciting, new OS, open-source and all.
My issue with that phone was that there were no updates available for my hardware beyond version 1.5 (Cupcake), which basically rendered my phone obsolete three months after I’d gotten it.
Of course, I could have found cooked ROM and customized the phone to my specifications, but that wasn’t why I got the phone; I wanted a phone that I’d loved as is.
It no longer makes sense to me to pay money for a phone and spend ridiculous amounts of time tinkering with it (doing potentially illegal stuff), I’m not a developer, I just want a phone that works.

I could no longer deny the appeal of the iPhone, maybe I’m just getting old but I liked that it’s easy to use and works relatively well.
So I got the iPhone 4 in May of last year.

This Christmas I got a new MacBook Air to replace my aging Windows laptop, it’s going to be my primary computer – and this officially makes me a Mac user, I’m no longer a PC (except for work).

In the end there wasn’t a long drawn out decision to switch, and so far I love the simplicity and ease of use of my MacBook Air.
Maybe we’re still in the honeymoon phase…
I still don’t like iTunes, and I miss Live Writer – I haven’t found a worthy Mac version yet.

So I’m not quite the MacHead, it took me a decade to come around and i’m quite enjoying this switch.

This is the iBook G3, a blast from 1999

Not to be mistaken with iBooks, the e-book reader that debuted with the iPad.

Nostalgia is a weird thing really; these colourful clamshell machines were quite revolutionary when they came out.
There are some out there that still believe this little machine changed the game; It was the start of the fun and bubbly consumer laptop

Here’s the 1999 introduction video from Macworld 1999.
It’s kind of cute watching that video over a decade later; the crowd went wild at the mention of the handle.
And the specs… wow, technology has come a long way, and costs much much less.

Ten years from now, today’s shiny new gadgets are going to be vintage!
I still can’t get over the fact that it was considered lower priced at $1,599.00

So I went from being a non-Apple person to visiting two different Apple stores in two days while in New York.

I bought the iPad from the famed cubed store on Fifth Avenue; which is open 24 hours a day.

Upon activation I realized that the device was seriously limiting in content and Apps when logged in through my iTunes Canada account.

I couldn’t even download iBooks which is a free and major part of the whole iPad experience.

The iPad is currently only available (and supported) in the US; it doesn’t come to Canada (and the rest of the world) until late May.

While Apple isn’t discouraging folks in other countries from purchasing them (like it did initially with the iPhone) access to iPad Apps and content is limited to the US only.

A way around this is to open a US iTunes account (while in the US) using iTunes gift cards.

This isn’t exactly a secret; people do this all the time in order to get access to awesome US content.

During our time at the Apple store,  there were two guys from the UK, another guy from Canada and a couple from Germany all buying iPads, some were buying two each.

While in Chelsea the next day we skipped over to the Apple store to get our gift cards.

And since our hotel was unfortunately having some bizarre Wi-Fi issues, we set up our US iTunes account too.

Some Danish guy at the store bought a $1000.00 worth of gift cards, this is because you can’t buy US iTunes gift cards outside of the US.

Well, you could on Ebay and other questionable sources, but that’s another thing altogether.

So I guess the idea is to load up, fortunately for me I’m down in the States at least once a month.

The set up itself was easy and quick; then I downloaded a few more Apps, bought some books and just hung out at the store.

For a while I considered what it’ll be like to use the iPad exclusively, like this guy who is using it wholly for a month.

A lot of people consider it more of a consumption device rather than for production.

Which is true in a sense unless more production Apps become available, imagine having a full-feature Lightroom on the iPad.

I do almost everything on the iPad these days, emails, read blogs, books, videos, etc.

The only times I use my laptop is to edit pictures or write longer blog posts.

You know I didn’t know that Apple really had a ‘Genius Bar’?

I’d like to work in a place where my job title includes ‘genius’ even if I’m not necessarily a genius.

That way I can tell people at dinner parties that I’m a ‘genius.’

Everyone at the Apple store looks so happy, maybe it’s something in the hardware.

Did I mention how amazing the battery life is?

I can go two to three days of constant use before I get a low battery warning.

The battery life alone could count as magical and revolutionary.