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Everyone who has followed asisaid for sometime knows that I make a habit of blogging the 12 days of Christmas each year. That's one of my peculiar holiday traditions, perhaps. But why should I have all the fun? What's one of your more off the wall traditions for the season?
While the decorations come down all around, I was relieved today to find that the seminary still had its decorations — including a very impressive tree made of books in the library — up. I do wonder why people are often in such a rush. Wouldn't it be nice to have the beauty of twinkling lights for more of January?
Remember: we are still three days away from Epiphany (January 6), so the season isn't over yet!
Right on cue, the January Apple Rumor Season has begun on the first quasi-back-to-work day after Christmas and New Year's. Today, various sources have been reporting rumors of an impending Apple media event. The interesting twist to the rumor is that it will focus not on new iPads, but on the iBooks bookstore.
What might Apple be up to with iBooks that is worthy of its own event? Given that the Kindle store is often cheaper, has a larger selection, and, unlike iBooks, (ironically) allows me to read books on my Mac in addition to my iPad, I've always found iBooks to be a non-starter. Maybe that will change?
Don't forget, if you made a resolution to read more literature and you want a good place to start, how about reading Twelfth Night? That is one of Shakespeare's most delightful comedies — not to mention one that follows the events of the evening of the twelfth night of Christmas.
Well, here we are in 2012. 2011 was an interesting year for me with lots of interesting twists and turns. Have a happy start to the new year!
I checked out this year's PNC Christmas Price Index. I haven't run into references to the CPI in a few years, so I decided it was high time to look it up and see what the “true price of Christmas” was for 2011. Apparently Christmas inflation was not as bad this year as some recent years.
Merry Christmas, indeed!
On the fifth day of Christmas, my Verizon PR contact sent to me a Galaxy Nexus to review. We will have a complete review of the latest Nexus phone on OFB in the next few weeks. So far, I like the changes that have been made in Android 4.0. It feels more coherent than either Android 2.3 or Android 3.x.
I finally upgraded to iCloud. I hated to give up a few features being retired with MobileMe, but decided the Photo Stream and other new, iCloud-based features were too nice sounding to pass up. I'm trying to use this brief Christmas break to get all of my ducks in a row and part of that has involved me getting my photo library in better shape.
This marks the second time I have moved to a new Apple online service. I signed up for .Mac in 2004, the service that became MobileMe in 2008. So far, I think iCloud is closer to ideal than the other two, but I'd love to see some further improvements and maybe a way for other web apps to tie into iCloud. I wish iCloud had a full Dropbox like service as part of it, for example.
Today, it actually snowed for the first time this year (at least with any accumulation). We did not receive that much snow, and it melted quickly, but I was happy to see at least a bit of the white stuff out there. The last few years, St. Louis has had a white Christmas and I was becoming quite spoiled by the timing of the snow.
At least a few times a year, it is nice if there is enough snow to really be snowed in…
…my e-mail gave to me, a bunch of papers to grade. Yes, I'm trudging through the next round of grading right now. Having turned in my students' grades back on December 12, now I am working through papers for the professor I am a teaching assistant for at Covenant. The papers are interesting for the most part, and when they are well done, they are often quite encouraging to read. Others, well, there are others.
Thankfully, I made good progress tonight and am set to have them done with plenty of time to spare.
