So with no further ado: my new blog. (And there is already a post with content there!)

I will definitely buy an iPad. At the moment, I'm leaning toward the 64 GB wifi only model, but that may change. Which model to choose is in fact completely orthogonal to my motivations to buy one.

First, I want to experience the revolution that's going on. I believe this is a revolution, and as it has been said before, the revolution may have actually started in 2007, when the iPhone was introduced. The paradigm shift we're seeing consists of the machine and the OS fading away, and the spotlight focusing on what we actually want to do. We don't talk about files and documents anymore, we talk about watching a movie, reading a book, or browsing the web. Installing an application is as simple as buying a book or a song. In fact, we may not even think about installing applications, but simply adding activities to the device.

Second, I believe that the iPad will be a very useful device (for me). For instance, I've been trying to review papers paperlessly for about a year, and the iPad would definitely improve the reading experience. If someone develops a good PDF reader for the iPad that allows annotations, I'll be the first in line to buy it.

Along similar lines, I've been looking for an ebook reader for a while, and it may also fill this spot. I'll probably restart my Courrier International subscription, this time in electronic form only.

Then there are the many other small tasks, like skimming email or headlines while drinking the morning coffee, using the iPad to display pictures when one doesn't use it, giving it to the kids in the car to watch a movie for a long trip ... For these we already use our laptops, but they're big and clumsy (yes, even a 13" macbook is too big for the back seat of a car or for the breakfast table). I'm actually impatient to see what changes the iPad bring here.

My last motivation is that I see this iPad being used for a long time. It will probably become obsolete in one year, when one with the camera and faster processor comes out. In two years it will be an antiquity when they make it 1080p. But I still see myself and the kids reading books and comics on it, plugging it to the stereo when friends come over, and taking it to watch movies on the go. It may even end its life as a glorified picture frame, displaying our most beautiful or intriguing photos.

I may not be the first in line when the iPad comes out, but as you can see, I'll definitely not be the last one.

(*) When I started writing this, the French Apple site (and many other European sites) were not even mentioning the iPad. So I was wondering how fast we would get European iPads ...

Participer à ce défi était passionnant et m'a beaucoup appris. La première leçon, finalement évidente, est que 50 000 mots, c'est vraiment beaucoup. Pour avoir un peu de marge (je savais qu'il y aurait quelques jours pendant lesquels je ne pourrais pas écrire), je m'astreignais à 2000 mots par jour. Je sais maintenant que sortir ces 2000 mots, bruts de fonderie, sans prendre le temps de réfléchir, me prend environ 1h30. Je ne sais pas si c'est peu ou beaucoup, mais j'étais particulièrement fier de pouvoir trouver ce temps presque chaque jour.

La deuxième grande leçon est que la légende comme quoi une histoire s'écrit toute seule ... n'est finalement pas une légende. J'avais une idée de ce que je voulais raconter, mais une grande partie est venue en écrivant, pas en planifiant. C'est impressionnant d'être à la fois acteur et spectateur de son écriture.

La troisième leçon, c'est que à la fin du mois de novembre, bien que l'histoire n'était pas terminée (j'ai quand même rédigé un synopsis des derniers chapitres), je n'ai pas réussi à continuer à écrire. C'était trop, trop vite, et je me suis senti « burned out ». L'envie commence à revenir, mais je veux prendre mon temps. Parce qu'un premier brouillon n'est vraiment qu'un premier brouillon, et tout reste à faire. Je sais qu'il y a plusieurs endroits qui manquent de cohérence, je voudrais donner plus de profondeur au monde que je décris, plus de réalisme aussi.

Je garde toujours l'espoir d'arriver au bout, et d'avoir quelque chose que je pourrai faire lire ... mais ce n'est certainement pas pour demain. Quoi qu'il en soit, c'était une expérience passionnante, que je recommande vivement. Et que je renouvellerai peut-être l'année prochaine.

Oui, je sais, c'est complètement délirant. Je n'ai d'ailleurs aucune idée de ce dont je vais parler. La seule chose dont je suis sûr, c'est que je vais écrire en français, pour changer.

Pourquoi est-ce que j'en parle sur ce blog ? Parce que le 3 ème conseil que l'on nous donne est (je paraphrase): « Dites à tous le monde que vous écrivez un roman en novembre. Cela sera profitable durant la semaine deux, quand la seule raison vous empêchant d'abandonner est la peur d'avoir l'air ridicule devant tous les gens à qui vous avez fièrement annoncé votre roman. » D'où ce billet.

(Pour les curieux, le premier conseil est « C'est normal de n'avoir aucune idée de ce que l'on fait et de ce que l'on va écrire », et le deuxième est « Le but est d'écrire. Pas de relire, pas de polir, tout cela aura lieu en décembre ou plus tard. Le but est d'avoir un brouillon imparfait à la fin du mois. »)

Si vous voulez me souhaiter bonne chance, ou me dire que je suis fou, ou vous moquer de moi, n'hésitez surtout pas à m'envoyer moi un mail. J'essayerai de vous tenir au courant de mon (éventuel) progrès par ce blog.

To summarize, I'd say that the experience was a success. I should point out that I did not have to deal with any work emergency, I don't know how well it would have gone.

Win: Simplenote, on which I took all my notes for this post. It's a very simple note application for the iPhone which syncs with the web, where the notes are also available. I've used it so much that it now lives in my iPhone dock.

Win: Gmail in Mobile Safari. I recently migrated my mail to Gmail and I found the mobile interface to work well. Most of the functionality was available, I only missed the ability to add filters. It may be simpler to write mail using the Mail app, but I find reading to be more convenient in mobile Gmail.

Fail: using Gmail with two accounts. Christelle also wanted to read her mail, and I could find no way to be signed in with two accounts at the same time, or to make Autofill remember two sets of username/password.

Win: 1Password Pro and copy/paste using the bookmarklet. I'm a huge 1Password fan, and their iPhone app is very nice. I used it to go around the two accounts Gmail problem above. (Hint: as the page reloads when coming back from 1Password, wait until you fetched the password to enter your user name.)

Win: reading feeds with NetNewsWire. Synchronization with their Newsgator service worked fairly well, and when I came back I did not have thousands of unread items.

Fail: subscribing to feeds with NetNewsWire. I don't know if it's possible, I had to go to the Newsgator web site to subscribe to feeds. Now that they migrated to Google Reader (and that NNW syncs with it) it may be simpler, but I've yet to try it.

Half fail: adding pages to Instapaper from NetNewsWire. Instapaper rocks, but I had to open the page in Mobile Safari to access the bookmarklet to "Read Later". Not a major annoyance, but when the network is slow, loading a page twice (once in NNW and once in Safari) is not fun.

Fail: keeping my podcasts up to date. Why is it so easy to buy apps and have them sync with iTunes, but not being able to update my subscribed podcasts? (I should say that I had a big enough back log to keep me busy and I did not run out of things to listen to.)

Win: Trailguru. It's fun to run with Trailguru running (no pun intended), to get nice map of where I went.

Win: Twitterrific. It just works.

Win: the App Store, to get the apps I read about. It works too well (for my bank account).

Fail: reading the mouseover text of xkcd in Mobile Safari.

Win: this site. Loads of thanks to @frama_c who pointed it out.

These are the most notable things that happened during this month. I'll gladly do it again ... when I go back to Belle Isle in November.

To finish, I'll quote @frama_c again, the day the iPhone 3.0.1 update came out. You remember, the update that fixed the SMS exploit against the iPhone...

What a bummer to be without a computer when a CRITICAL UPDATE appears for the only device still linking you to civilization.