Remember when you were a kid and you always played with your brand-new toys more because they were so shiny? I’m the same way with gadgets now. When I put a new Linux on my computers, I spent several days tweaking them to get used to the settings and make sure they were just right. The same thing happened when I switched distros on my laptop. And the same thing’s happening with my new shiny phone toy and me right now.
I’ve hardly gotten anything else done over the past two days. Since acquiring my new piece of shiny, I’ve been adjusting my home screens into themed settings, acquiring the perfect apps for my setup with the mindset that my phone is essentially a computer I can hold in my hand, thinking of things I may need on the go, setting up Irssi Connectbot so I can access my chat client on the go, and finally finding a good Delicious app so bookmarking things can happen. If there’s a way to scrobble Pandora and Slacker plays to Last.fm on Android, my immediate desires will be complete.
Irssi Connectbot is an interesting one, though. It takes some time to get used to, in particular because of the quirks that come with using a virtual keyboard. The other person I know who uses the app has a hardware keyboard, which makes life much easier. The keyboard doesn’t cover half the screen when typing in landscape (not the way the screen was meant to be viewed, but I think it looks better, even if the keyboard covers the status bar while typing). This means I have to type, go back, check to make sure I’m typing decently, and repeat, or deal with the tiny keyboard in portrait mode. Still, I can access chat from anywhere, and I can access the same chat instance from anywhere without logging out and back in again or switching to mobile mode or anything like that. And more importantly, I can access my computer from anywhere. And that rules.
But the honeymoon period must end soon, and I have to resume my normal life tomorrow. Everyday life won’t live itself.