Editing my book, Apple watch review

Posted by on December 12th, 2019  •  0 Comments

I had some great students this quarter. A bunch of them recognized the power of what I was teaching and really ran with it, creating stellar websites. Especially considering that I only saw them 3 days a week for 11 weeks.

After a 3 year delay I finally buckled down and did a huge rewrite on my textbook…or at least the first 150 pages. It was probably 5 full days of work, and I did the editing  on the weekends and evenings after work. The biggest thing was that I learned how to do an automatic Table of Contents. This allowed me to break the book into numbered chapters that matched the lessons I grade in my classes.

All of this work is unpaid overtime of course. I plan to sell the book on Amazon, and my first task (after some time off) is to study some Lynda classes online on how the self publishing industry functions. I’m writing in Adobe Indesign, but many people write books in Microsoft Word. Many years ago McGraw Hill asked to publish my book, but they wanted me to extract all the text out of Indesign and send it to them in Word, double spaced.

I declined their offer. It’s classroom ready, I give the 214 page PDF to my students every quarter, why would I tear it apart? I get that I need an editor…but at the time I would have had to take a summer off to publish it their way…and that wasn’t happening.

As usual all the overtime made me want a reward. We work hard, we get a big paycheck right? Or at least that’s how it worked in the printing industry. Not so much in the book writing business. Not that I’m complaining. I know what I signed up for. If I write it well, I’m confident it will sell.

The only downside of writing is that I stopped painting. I guess there’s only room for one creative outlet at a time in my strange little brain. I’ll be painting in a few day though. It’s going to be awesome.

Now on to that reward

I’ve been saving money and splurged on the Apple Watch Series 5 with cellular. I’m not sure it’s really ready for primetime, but it’s a fun toy.

Cool things the watch does with  iPhone off:

  • While skiing up the Muir Snowfield. I called Sue from 8000 feet on Mt Rainier, with the watch only, Dick Tracy style
  • I worked out on the stairmaster and listened to my songs on bluetooth headphones, while it counted my heartbeats and calories burned
  • I can add and edit tasks using the native Apple Reminders app, which syncs on iCloud.com, my macbook, my phone and the watch…amazing!
  • It has an Electocardiogram function. My ER nurse kids found this fascinating
  • I can get 36 hours of life out of it, easy, if I turn off cellular. Watch cellular is only needed if I don’t want to carry the phone.
  • It has gps, altimeter and compass
  • A vibrating alarm that actually works!
  • Really fun watch faces with infinitely variable ‘complications’ you can add. Like the time, plus buttons for music, reminders, exercise sessons (stair stepper), texting, calling, etc.
  • The Activity app, closing my rings. Seriously, this is amazing! Look it up on youtube. It tracks your exercise and shows you trends, who knew this could be so cool?

Cons:

  • The battery life
  • The screen is too small to do anything serious, like composing a long email. But I say that about my iPhone too

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