i.am.ghislaine

Hello. Happy 2010!

Well, I finally got my Windows 7 in the mail a few months back and so far I am glad that I stuck with Windows. At least I am glad that I didn’t pay like twice the price just to get a Mac. I have also read some pretty bad customer support for some of the issues the iMacs have been having so I am definitely glad that I didn’t get an Apple product (although I still love my iPhone very much, but that is another topic).

I mostly use my home computer for surfing the internet and uploading pictures from my DSLR. I haven’t really installed any software yet but everything seems to be running pretty smoothly so far. I suppose that since this is a new computer after all, things will generally run faster. My good old tower PC is still mega noisy and takes forever to boot up Vista. BTW, any good recommendations for a good picture navigating software? I am using the Windows Gallery in Windows 7 and I have to admit that it is somewhat crummy. I think the Windows Gallery in Windows Vista was somewhat better.

I also need a good photo editing software. I am used to Photoshop, but I am not sure I want to pay for a pro version. Hey, I just realized that there is an online Photoshop (www.photoshop.com). Maybe I should just use that instead. Amazing how so many web apps can do so many fancy things now! Oh, I also really like Picnik (www.picnik.com) for online photo editing. Nowadays, you probably don’t even need software on your computer if you have a web browser. There are so many amazing web applications out there like Google Docs, etc. Why would anyone pay for MS Word or Excel? One of these days I would also like to try Sketchup (sketchup.google.com) although it looks like it does not support Windows 7 at the moment.

So for the new year, here are a few things I would like to accomplish in terms of techie things:

• create a new WordPress theme
• revamp my existing website (www.gizzypooh.com)
• actually add some content to my other website (www.ghislaine.ca) – I actually purchased this domain a while ago and thought it would be neat to “promote” myself a bit
• improve my photography skills, by either reading up more about technique or just practicing a lot more by taking lots and lots and lots of pictures
• if time permits, build a mobile app (either native for iPhone or just web-based)

Quite honestly, I think I am being optimistic here since this year is going to be a busy one. Why do you ask? Well, there is a baby #2 on the way… Oh yah, we are expecting our second child in May. It is another boy! Yup, I am living in a male dominated household. It is going to be an interesting year indeed.