The Ballad of Reading Goal

Back at the start of 2010 I set myself some reading goals as a new year's resolution. At the end, the very end, of 2010 the results of the goals were that I'd read 2012 chapters.

I should have planned that better, I was reading chapters 2010-12 around midnight on New Year's eve so could have arranged for the total to be equal to the value of the year (well, it would have appealed to me even if nobody else).

The chapters came from 134 different books (99 if you count The Bible as one book instead of many) of which I finished 104. In my worst month, July, I only managed only 23% of what I should have read whilst in the busiest, December, I managed 230% which creates a pleasing sort of symmetry.

The original driver for the targets was the aim to read more of The Bible because, being a Christian, I ought to read more of it. I'll keep that chapter a day Bible target going into 2011, at that rate I'll have read the whole thing by sometime in 2013, but I'm going to drop the others. It was fun for a year but it did mean that sometimes I was actually giving up on books (or avoiding starting them) because the chapters were too long. I suppose that ought to teach me something about how to set targets.

	Bible	Work	Fun	Serious
Target, chapters per day	1	0.5	4	0.5
Target, total to date	365	182.5	1460	182.5
Actual, total to date	366	186	1460	183
Progress	100%	102%	100%	100%
Number of different books	36	24	59	15

And thanks to Mo for the title suggestion...

The forgotten iPhone sales news

The web is all a flutter with news that Android phone shipments have grown by 886% in the last year.

That isn't entirely surprising given that Android is a relatively new technology, the first Android phone only arrived on the market in September 2008 so its still a very young market.  There are lots of interesting statistics from the Nielson report, including very high brand loyalty figures for Android (71% of people who own an Android phone intend to buy Android again) and iPhone (89% of iPhone owners intend to stick with iPhone), especially compared to the 42% figure for Blackberry users.

There's one statistic that hasn't been widely picked up though; Apple failed to grow iPhone sales as fast the rest of the smartphone market.

The overall smartphone market grew by 63.3% from Q2 2009 to Q2 2010.

Apple's iPhone shipments grew at "only" 61.4%.

To be fair, as you can see from the BBC's table (reproduced below) Apple had the second highest growth in the year at 61.4%, nicely out stripping the established players Symbian and RIM at around 41%.  However, for the first time in quite a while, what must be decades in Internet years, Apple failed to keep up with the market average increase and actually lost market share.  There's no way that Android's growth in shipments or market share can continue at that rate for long but, if Apple want to continue to drive the agenda for smartphones, they'll have to find some way to compete at the lower end of the smartphone market that Android has taken ownership of.

Worldwide smartphone market
OS	Q2 2010 shipments	% share	Q2 2009 shipments	% share	Growth
Symbian	27,129,340	43.5	19,178,910	50.3	41.5
RIM	11,248,830	18.0	7,975,950	20.9	41
Android	10,689,290	17.1	1,084,240	2.8	885.9
Apple	8,411,910	13.5	5,211,560	13.7	61.4
Microsoft	3,083,060	4.9	3,431,380	9.0	-10.2
Others	1,851,830	3.0	1,244,620	3.3	48.8
Total	62,414,260	100	38,126,660	100	63.3

Musashi's Coming Home

Moosh has spent the last day and a half charming the staff at the vets, he'll be coming home today.

A few people had commented recently that he was looking a little less chunky than usual. We thought he might have lost a little weight but didn't think much of it and anyway he was due for the usual once yearly booster jabs and check up within a few weeks.

Turns out he'd lost more weight than we realised. Enough to indicate there might be something seriously wrong.

Thursday morning saw me outside the vet's at 08:15 on the dot, alternatively looking at the time and ringing the doorbell. Two minutes later I was walking to work and Moosh was being prepared for a series of tests to work out what was wrong. We're still waiting for confirmation of the cause from a biopsy taken by the vet but the expectation is that the problem is treatable.

Moosh has just taught me the difference between being aware of something and really knowing it.

When you get a cat there is an awareness that they don't live for ever. That, all things being normal, the cat will die before you do, but it isn't something that goes beyond awareness until that day looms. It loomed this week but then, fortunately, loomed off again into the distance.

By the end of today we should be a two cat household again (though I still haven't heard from the vet).

Moosh will be on a special diet and his treatable illness will result in him getting more treats than usual.  Our shopping list for tonight already has fish, prawns, chicken and expensive cat food on it and there's a pheasant already defrosting in the kitchen (hidden in the oven so Penny doesn't try and get it before its cooked).

New Year's Resolution

Yes, I know its a bit late but I've been busy, and I was reminded of it by an article I stumbled across on Setting a Reading Goal.

I don't usually make New Year's resolutions because experience tells me I'm bad at keeping them and they don't make any difference to what happens in the year. This year is a little different in that I did make a few resolutions, most of them are private. One resolution, however, might as well be public as it might encourage me to stick to it. I resolved to read more.

During 4 weeks last year (our holiday in Costa Rica and the Christmas break) I read more books than I could remember reading in the whole of the rest of the year. I didn't want 2010 to pass with such a poor reading record.

Being a Christian the first thing to do was to resolve to read more of the Bible. I've never read the whole thing so that's part of the resolution; 1 chapter a day and keep a checklist of the chapters I've read. At that rate I should have covered the whole Bible (all 1189 chapters or so) in about 3 and a quarter years (Thursday, 4 April 2013 to be precise).

Having set a chapter target for the Bible I though I might as well do the same for other types, and so I ended up with 3 more categories; work, serious and fun.

So, am I sticking to it? Almost. The results so far (stats courtesy of Google spreadsheets and forms):

	Bible	Work	Fun	Serious
Target, chapters per day	1	0.5	4	0.5
Target, total to date	49	24.5	196	24.5
Actual, total to date	32	32	307	25
Actual, chapters per day	0.65	0.65	6.27	0.51
Progress	65%	131%	157%	102%
Required year rate	1.05	0.48	3.65	0.5
30 day catch up rate	1.57	0.25	0.3	0.48
Number of different books	4	7	8	4

The iPad - Does it have to change the world?

Yesterday Apple launched the iPad. The frenzy of speculation over the specifications is over but the hyperbole isn't.

"Can the Apple iPad iBook Store take on Amazon?" asks T3. "Apple’s iPad Tablet Could Slay eBooks and Netbooks" shouts Digital Trends. Nicholas Carr in The New Republic goes even further; "The PC Officially Died Today" he tells us.

Calm down people.

Why does the iPad have to take on Amazon, kill the netbook or in any other way fundamentally change the world?

The reality is that yesterday Apple launched a large, flat, iPod touch with optional 3G data connection.

Whether you personally love it or hate it Apple will sell millions of them and make plenty of money. In a year or so they'll launch iPad version 2 into a market crowded with with tablet devices and e-readers all jostling for their own particular niche. But to claim that this changes the world really is misunderstanding how innovation in technology works.

Oh, and if you think the Apple iPad triggers a little sense of deja vu, you might want to take a look at the "oh, so nearly made it" Crunchpad.

Mini Stonehenge discovered ... in St Ives

The recent news about the discovery of a mini stonehenge a few miles away from the site of the large version reminded of another mini stonehenge we found on holiday in St Ives.

We rented a little cottage a few steps away from Porthmeor Beach and would stroll along the sea front most evenings watching the sunset. As we wandered past the beach late in the evening we'd find it had been taken over by teenagers who were usually having barbeques, drinking and generally appearing to make a nuisance of themslves in the way teenagers do.

One night a small group appeared quieter and more conspiratorial than the usual bunch and, wandering past the same spot the following morning, we discovered the reason why.

The remarkable thing was that this little work of art was still there, complete and undisturbed days later when we left to come home.

The beach henge had appeared on a patch of beach opposite Tate St Ives which, coincidentally, had a free opening night on the very eve of the stones mysterious appearance. The gallery contained no better work of art.