Going home.

Anyone who's actually read my blog (and I know there are a few of you - well, at least two) will know I've been out in Africa for the last couple of years. The project I've been working on is nearing its end and I'm facing the prospect of going back to London. Oh, I'm looking forward to it no doubt about that. It's time. But I'm starting to realise that returning to what I call home is likely to be as big a change as moving out to Kenya was just over two years ago.

I rented out my London flat while I've been here, and it's not going to be available until late next year. I also won't have any work lined up. Initially I'll be moving back in with my mother until I get things sorted out ...and my girlfriend split up with me a couple of weeks ago.

So, to recap: Single, homeless, jobless, and living with my mum.

Anybody want to date me?

*update* The iPad cometh

No!

No, no, no!

I don't have an iPad now.

But I do have an iPhone.

Well, come on. It was only a matter of time wasn't it? In the iPad post I said that I was "SOOO the kind of person who should have one".

I wasn't wrong. I now have an iPhone. Just like the other 90% of the British public (well that's what it feels like at least) ...and like that other 90% (or that's what it feels like, etc.) I don't really understand how I've managed to make it into my 45th year without owning one. Nice one Apple! I mean, really nice! Wow!

Seriously, this thing's made from stolen alien technology isn't it? There's no way us humans could create something quite so cool.

But... the iPad... I still don't quite get.

Yet my prophecy of an apathetic iPad uptake - akin to the Mac Cube and the Apple Newton - seems to have been completely inaccurate. So... give me time. ;)

No. I'm not getting an iPad. Seriously!

Even though there are some pretty cool YouTube videos of people painting with them.

I was at college with Boba Fett.

Last week, via the wonders of Facebook, I discovered that I went to college with Boba Fett.

I was contacted by a guy I knew at foundation art college. A fellow Essex boy, (the college was in Hornchurch just next to my home town of Romford), he was the year above me and we both eventually went on to do an Animation Degree course at Farnham in Surrey. After Farnham I lost touch with him.

So, after re-connecting on Facebook last week we had a bit of a catch-up and I asked why his profile pic showed him getting dressed up as Boba Fett (it looked like an old pic to be fair, as he seemed quite a bit younger in it than his more recent photos). I remember him being a massive Star Wars fan, but was he such a fan that he was one of those guys that had made or bought a complete set of replica armour?

No.

It turns out that around the time they were making the Star Wars Special Editions (mid-nineties?) he was working as a creature animator at ILM. It was known among his workmates that he was a huge Boba Fett fan, so when it came time to shoot footage of Fett to go into the infamous re-instated Jabba scene in the Special Edition of Episode IV it was my old mate Mark from Essex who got to play the coolest Star Wars character of all. In an actual Star Wars film.
Okay, it's one of the Special Editions - and it's arguably one of the nastiest added-on bits of Star Wars ever - but for a few on-screen seconds he was Boba Fett.

Lucky bastard.

The iPad Cometh.

Hmmm... not sure about this one. But then I said that when Apple first announced the iPod (actually I said "WTF??!!! All this build up and it's just a pocket music player?? That's crap!!).

I'm certainly not an Apple Kitten, ...but I do have a regard for Apple products, their design ethic and the company's business resurgence in recent years.
I used the original Macintosh computers at college when they were introduced in ...1984 was it? ...and I thought they were great. People forget that was the first time we really had GUIs and mice/pointers/icons, drag&drop, etc, and it was revolutionary. Because I work in animation, design and video editing I've used Macs on and off through my career, but I've used PCs just as much if not more. I've had just as much joy and trouble from each type over the years.

I own an iPod (although I only finally got one five years after they were introduced) and since last year I own a Macbook Pro, which I happily run Windows on when I need too and I don't see why I'll ever buy another PC because of that. Sure Macs are bang-for-buck more expensive, but I see it like buying a car - a Ford and a Merc will both get you from A-B but the Merc is more expensive because it's more comfortable, looks sexier and maybe runs a little smoother. If I can afford it, I'd rather have the Merc.

I don't own an iPhone, although most people I know seem to have one now and I'm SOOO the kind of person who should have one. If I was in the UK I probably would, but being in Kenya.... nah, no point. The networks aren't good enough yet and carrying hundreds of quids worth of shiny tech kit round in your pocket here is not a great idea.

But the iPad? I just don't see what it's for. It's too underpowered and under-featured to seriously replace a laptop, it's too big to be a convenient handheld computer or PDA (which the iPhone seems to do pretty well anyway). As a portable device it doesn't look like it'll stand up well to being carried around, bumped, dropped, knocked, etc, as tends to happen to portable things. As an E-reader.... well I'm one of those Luddites who are skeptical about e-readers ever really replacing books, newspapers or magazines, whatever the publishing industry thinks. I think paper's here to stay. I take loads of notes during the average day in my job and I'm surrounded by computers and digital equipment, but I still use a paper notepad and a ballpoint pen. I couldn't happily take an E-reader out for a lounge on an inflatable in the swimming pool like I can a magazine. As one journalist said in an iPad review yesterday "If you drop your copy of the Daily Mirror in a puddle you can easily buy a replacement from any number of nearby outlets for 45p".

I do understand the choice of name though, despite all the internet's allusions to feminine hygiene products over the past few hours! C'mon, after the iPod and Star Trek:TNG's PADD, they could only call it the iPad really, couldn't they? Levar Burton (appropriately) commented on the name on his Twitter feed yesterday.

I'll be interested to see where this device goes but despite the iName I suspect it will be more along the lines of Apple TV, the Cube, or indeed the Newton rather than the iPod or iPhone.

Maybe they should have called it the iSaac?