I could have been a better geek in 2012. When it comes down to it,
there just aren't enough hours in a day to do all the gaming, social
networking, rooting, modding, and general geekery we'd like to. When
forced to make the choice between a family vacation
or staying home to indulge in nerdy pleasures like crunching the data
generated by the newly flashed firmware on my Wi-Fi router, that trusty
old Linksys model and my other devices tend to be the ones that get
scorned.
But I resolve that this New Year will be different.
With the advent of some new developments on the home front, like
kindergarten for my daughter, I may have a little more time to devote to
some nerdier and neglected pursuits. With that in mind, here's my
personal list of geeky New Year's resolutions for 2013:
The
Windows 8 plunge Because of some international travel and a fairly recent major
Windows 7 system purchase, I've yet to take the Windows 8
plunge. Pathetic, I realize. Yes, I know I could easily upgrade my
existing system for relatively cheap, and I'm typically an early adopter
with these sorts of things, but so far I've been too freaked to try the
upgrade while out of the country without sufficient backups or other
support. I also justify my waiting with the promise of a possible
hardware upgrade in the next month or two. I'm eagerly waiting to see
how Microsoft's Surface Pro performs, and I'm also pondering Lenovo's Yoga, as I look for possible ways to dive into Windows 8 headfirst, even if I will be a bit late to get my feet wet.
Go-go Google+ As Google's social network has added cool features and Facebook has
grown increasingly creepy and annoying, I've been ever more tempted to
move more of my life onto Google's platform, but it's ever so hard to
neglect the massive user base on Facebook or the zeitgeist-in-action
that is Twitter. But now's
the time to give it my best shot. I'm not pulling up stakes on the other
major social networks just yet. In fact, I'd also like to spend more
time on Reddit, and I continue to pull for App.net, but Google+ to me is
clearly the most powerful and versatile platform out there, especially
for an
Android user such as myself. Please help hold me to my promise by finding my Google+ page and Circling me.
Giving gaming another chance At some point in 2003 I found myself
neglecting friends and work commitments to spend afternoons playing
hours of Halo with a buddy's 11-year-old son after school. This episode
came just five years after spending most of a whole spring break in
college playing Quake with four friends in separate rooms in an
otherwise empty dorm somewhere in Oregon (that was in '98). In other
words, I tend to have problems gaming in moderation, so I quit cold
turkey in 2004 and have seldom touched a controller since. But last year
I added a few apps to my Nexus 7
and have managed to keep my Hill Climb Racing, Temple Running, and
Fruit Ninja-ing under control. With the promise of more next-generation
consoles joining the Wii U
in 2013, this will be the year that I get reacquainted with that old
flame and make another attempt at a healthy relationship. Check back
here next year to see if I still have my job (or any remaining friends).
Better Bluetooth My first job in tech journalism went poof with the
dot-com crash of 2000 and I fled into the arms of mainstream radio for
almost a decade. As such, I still love radio and podcasts just as much
as tech, and there's almost always something in my ear as I go through
my day. This tends to lead to lots of cords, carrying devices around,
and a collection of Bluetooth earpieces
that might be good for one situation, but few others. This year I'll be
on the lookout for the perfect wireless listening solution that makes
it easy to listen seamlessly between home, outside, in the car, at the
gym, and everywhere.
Those are the big projects. I'm also hoping
to be a better device owner, spending some time actually organizing my
apps and home screens and taking advantage of the time that I put into
rooting them. I'd also like to actually 3D print something useful and get my hands on some Google Glass or something similar, if only briefly.
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