This image was the close runner-up but I decided I liked the close-up better plus it meant that the background was just that stripey rug without the solid brown of the table:

Brand spanking new blog header for Mama Kate. Using the word spanking will increase my blog traffic for the day.

Having decided, then, to soldier on with both blogs (some may say foolhardy, some may say they don’t really care either way), I started to think about why (apart from the obvious having-a-baby-and-moving-house-on-the-same-damn-day thing) I have been updating my blogs less, and reading others’ blogs less for that matter, I realised that it all came down to one pesky, delicious, delightful, occasionally frustrating (*flash video arghhh*) device – my iPad. (I am starting to get the point, you’ll be glad to know.)

Their marketing photos make me drool. It's a weakness.

Now let me first say that I do LOVE my iPad.  It was an enormously generous gift and I use it daily, without fail.  I also have to say that when it was first released, I was skeptical. To me, it was just a large iPhone, which I already have. No, rather, it was a large iPod touch (so not even as good as an iPhone which you can at least make calls on). I scoffed at the lack of Flash video support and thought that using an iPad would be continually frustrating.  I was largely wrong.  I love using it to read and update Twitter, browse Facebook, read my emails and check my Tumblr dashboard for the latest pictures of robots and cool treehouses and the like.  As a breastfeeding mama, its compact size (compared to a laptop) and its generous screen (compared to an iPhone) has made it possible for me to stay online and keep myself occupied during those long, lonely, boring hours in the middle of the night watching films and playing Solitaire, Angry Birds and Scrabble.

Warning: prolonged game play may cause Angry Bird Flu* (*not my joke)

BUT (and that’s a fairly sizeable but) the iPad is no friend to a blogger.  Whilst the iPad is a great device to be an observer of the internet, it’s not so great at helping you be a participant.  There are two main causes of this: the touch-screen keypad and the lack of flash support.  The first undoubtedly makes typing a post a slower, more laborious process.  More mistakes are made and are slower to correct than with a proper keyboard.  The lack of scrolling also makes using the blog-writing interface more difficult. Sure, I could invest in an iPad keyboard but I don’t really want to spend £50 to make my iPad less portable when I have a perfectly good laptop that does the job so much better.  But the real problem is the old Flash chestnut.

It will help you make a link. And that's about it.

Most blog platforms use some kind of flash for their visual editors which allow bloggers to type in a WYSIWYG environment (please don’t judge any lack of correct jargon-use, I skipped Blogger School). So when using the iPad, you only have the HMTL editor to write blog posts. So that blog post that was already slower and harder to type? Just got even harder because now nearly all the formatting code has to be written out long-hand.  Photos are harder to manipulate. I have spent WAY too many minutes looking for a decent iPad app to use for updating my blogs but I have come to the conclusion that Apple don’t really care about blogs (hence my stroppy title) because apart from Squarespace, who have just released their new sparkly iPad app, no blogging platform seems to have found an acceptable solution.  Even WordPress, who I adore as a general rule, have a twitchy, buggy app that is barely usable.  It made me think again about Squarespace but that monthly fee for two blogs is just really not feasible (I can’t really justify the expense due to my previously mentioned lack of readership).

So despite my love for the shiny Apple gadget, it will never replace my laptop.  Whether I am editing photos and uploading them to Flickr or Facebook, commenting on a blog post or writing a blog post myself, I need my laptop more than ever since getting to sit at the iMac or PC in our study is a real challenge with Evelina taking so much of my time.  I am determined to become more of a participant and less of a lurker in 2011 so that I keep both my dear blogs alive (hopefully posting on both at least once a week) and well, using all the lovely technology that we are lucky enough (crazy enough? geeky enough??) to have in the house.

The rules are: 1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you the award; 2. Share 7 things about yourself; 3. Pass the award to 15 blogs you enjoy and let them know they’ve been given the award (I say, pay it forward if you want to / if you haven’t recently had a similar award!!):

7 things about me:

1. I can fit my fist in my mouth. It’s not pretty (and it’s not like I have small hand either) but my English Lit teacher thought this was remarkable.
2. I learnt Latin up to A’ Level standard and loved it (but I think I have forgotten it all now which is a shame).
3. I hate coffee ice cream and coffee chocolates (I quite like drinking coffee though).
4. I started to write a novel and then after two Creative Writing courses with Open University realised I don’t really have what it takes to be a writer (including the inclination to write on a daily basis).
5. I don’t miss wine nearly as much as I thought I would (although I am looking forward to that first full glass, post-delivery).
6. I love baseball ever since we saw a game in New York in 2006. I suppose I support the NY Mets although they have had a shocking year. I also follow the LA Angels as we saw them play the Dodgers in 2007 at their stadium in Anaheim and I see what the Boston Redsox are up to also (which is probably a sacrilege as a Mets fan akin to following United AND Liverpool) since all my US family are in the Boston area.
7. I would love to own a chocolate labrador (but appreciate that we have enough on our plate at the moment).

So now to dish out the award…. I am going to keep this down to my sew make believe girls because they are all lovely ladies with a lot of good things to say:

• A Typical Atypical
• But it can’t be from Dolly Clackett. She gave me an Easter egg!
• Driftwood Dreaming
• Mad Yankee
• Munchkin Mail
• Never let the truth get in the way of a good story
• Second Hand Shopper
• The Writer Side of Life
• Wonderland Boutique
• Zoe’s Craft

So things might be a little slow round here for a while as I start my new mum blog where I can blog about all the baby stuff to my heart’s content in a new incredibly pretty home, mamakate.co.uk.  I will continue to blog here about my various non-baby related interests as and when I get inspired.

WordPress have just released a new theme called Titan and I really love it (hence why things look a little different around here).  I just have one gripe – too many new themes do not have custom headers which is usually why I discount them from the start.  Titan is no different but it does allow you to have categories in the menu which is pretty groovy, and also links to your RSS and Twitter account up top.  There is a sidebar plus a left, central and right footer for widget – awesome!

Since  I was getting a little bored of my header anyway I thought I would try this blog on for size for a bit.  I may well change my mind soon.

My new five horizons:

Create:  craft / baking / making / design
Geek:  web / curios / memes / miscellany
Journal:  personal / life / thoughts / travel
Screen:  teevee / movies / games
Words:  books / magazines / graphic novels / study / writing

Ok, let’s do this thing.

• I tried out Squarespace for my blog (but ultimately came back to WordPress)
• I visited Tenerife with my brother
• And I posted about some books I read.

WordPress.com has just released a new feature which will allow you receive email notifications of my new blog posts.   Just click on the button in my sidebar over there on the right. This may be of interest for those of you who do not use a feed reader to keep up with the blogs you read (although if you do read a few blogs and you aren’t using a reader, I suggest you check out Google Reader pronto!).

Happy subscribing!