Super-Zero

During a recent gaming day I got into a heated debate about why my phone (HTC Desire) was better than my friends iPhone…Well it wasn’t much of a debate to be honest – he stated outright that the Desire was the better smartphone, however he admitted that one of the reasons he would still be holding onto his iPhone 3GS for ta while yet was an app called instapaper, which he used frequently on a daily basis.

Upon further discussion he explained to me that Instapaper allowed you to save a webpage quickly and easily for offline (or later online) viewing. This all works in conjunction with an Instapaper account – all your saved pages are synchronized to it allowing you to read your webpages offline on your phone while on the move, or online on your PC or Laptop. So it took me a while but I have finally found the answer for Android based phones.

InstaFetch Lite & PRO.

Although not officially developed by Instapaper, InstaFetch syncs with your Instapaper account and allows you quick and easy access to any pages you had saved already (handy when you upgrade or reset your phone) as well as a context menu item for the android browser that allows you to quickly and easily save your currently active website. A brilliant application for those of us that don’t want to listen in class, meetings or just can’t be bothered with squinting at small text while on the move.

The Lite version is free and comes with standard features including text size changes, auto-sync, notifications and the ability to create an Instapaper account quickly from within the App. The PRO version builds on this solid foundation by adding full-screen reading (without the top android bar), Night-mode (white text, black background) and other features such as folders for cataloging cool pages you come across.

One slight issue I have with the free version is that once you have read an article it is automatically deleted, but the PRO subscription is $5 for a year, which the developer has said will probably be free in a years time. $5 really isn’t that much and would buy that developer a well earned coffee, pint or other beverage of choice.

So there you have it. InstaFetch Lite and PRO! Making life on the move that little bit easier and on Android too!

NOTE TO SELF: Fix the post’s not liking right aligned pictures and text-wrapping.

So exam revision finally tried to start today. I have been snowed under with coursework for the past 2 weeks and as a reward to myself I took yesterday off to chill for one last time before the 4-week slog to the end of my exams. I have 1 1/2 weeks to revise 3 subjects, those being Solid State Devices (Microelectronics to the rest of the world), Computer Communications (Networking models + protocols) and Computer Architecture and Organisation (How processors work). This works out as about 3 days per subject. Which isn’t great considering this is course content from 22hours of classes per subject.

So, I have decided to really try and use the next 4 weeks to change my lifestyle – mainly my waking up time. Generally I tend to go to sleep late and wake early (as can be seen from the time of this blog post). But I am really going to try and invert this a bit. What I would ideally strive to do is change my waking time to about 6.30and my sleeping time to about 12. This would allow me to wake up, have breakfast and get all my affairs set in order before leaving for university or work, or just having some extra time before that days activity. This is especially useful with summer approaching as it stops me sleeping until midday.

I also plan to try and use some of this extra time to blog more. It’s sad looking down this website and thinking that I just paid £127 for a domain that was so barely used over the last two years. As I was (pretty much) forced to renew I am really determined to use the space. The extra time will let me think of some interesting things to talk about, and hopefully over the summer I will blog in the morning rather than late at night. Variety is the spice of life so I plan to try and use it.

I have decided to follow some pretty handy advice I found here and hope it works out. Some determination is required but I think that I will be able to do it. I really am trying to change my life a bit, and I feel that now, before my final year hits, is the time to do it. Attitudes, lifestyles and habits need changing and its time I got off my ass and sorted it.