Alex Kidman

You know that whole idea of a work/life balance? Right at the moment, mine’s so tilted it’s essentially a work/work balance with the life hanging onto an edge somewhere by the very tips of its fingers. In fact, I think I just heard it scream as it inevitably let go.

Inbetween running a household and running after three kids and supporting an overworked prac student (who happens to be the woman I love), I’m also writing. A lot.

From what could be called my regular assignments, there’s a MacTheMag blog entry:

MacTheBlog: A support issue: “It was at this point that I remembered the only other person I know of that readily identifies himself as a Genius. That would be Wile. E. Coyote, and I’m well aware of the success rate of his plans.”

At Geekspeak, musings on the use of a 1TB broadband plan:

Geekspeak: What can you do with 1TB of data? “What 1TB does buy you is a fair amount of security…”

At CNET.com.au, even more iPhone 4 cases have been tested:

30 best and worst iPhone 4 cases: “It’s raining iPhone cases around here, so we’ve added more to our original story, bumping up the case count from 25 to 30. More choice is good, right?”

And that’s not getting on to the other big writing task for the week as I take up a guest editor role at Gizmodo Australia. In just two days, I’ve written the following stories:

Breakfast Wrap: Best Of The Weekend
Vodafone/Three Pump Up Contract Data Caps
Telstra Unveils Ultimate Wireless USB
Get Your Kicks (On Your Wave) On Route 66
The Best Free WiFi Is Fast Free WiFi
Breakfast Wrap: Best Of Monday Night
Internode Fetches IPTV For Early Adopters
Even Apple’s Making The iPod Refresh Obvious Now
Confirmed: Xbox Live Price Increase Isn’t Coming Nov 1
Is This The Ugliest iPad Stand Ever?
Nice Power Brick. But Will It Fly?

And it’s still only Tuesday. The week is still young, even if I’m not.

A busy week here wraps up with Apple’s launch in Australia of the iPhone 4. I covered the queues overnight in Sydney for MacTheMag, and video blogged it as a result. It’s the first time I’ve bothered with a midnight opening, and the first time I’ve ever been pushed out of a venue by security. Apparently Optus didn’t want media coverage. Who knew?

MacTheBlog: iPhone 4 Arrival Events: “Alex Kidman and MJCP spent the evening flitting between the three telcos (and the hardy souls lined up outside the Apple Store despite the fact it wouldn’t be open until 8am) to check it out the launch of iPhone 4 in Australia.”

Keeping with an Apple theme, I also covered Ravon’s rather nice iPod Mini HiFi for CNET.com.au:

Ravon Fidelio Mini Hi-Fi: “This is an iPod Hi-Fi that eschews frills in favour of superior performance. It’s a striking pity it’s not shielded for iPhone use.”

At PC Authority, the last Vintage Tech for a while deals with a computer called Colleen:

Vintage Tech: Looking back at the Atari 400: “Like we said, this was back in the 1970s. Don’t throw your shoes at us.”

And finally, at Hydrapinion, I didn’t write (but did contribute) to Adam Turner’s guide to writing product roundups. It’s so good, frankly, that I’d link to it even if it didn’t contain some of my writing work:

Hydrapinion: The Golden Rules of writing tech “Round-Ups”: “Reviewing a dozen of anything at the same time is generally a nightmare. Tech journos might get to play with cool toys, but mostly the life of a product reviewer is far less glamorous than it might seem. Testing one product can be tricky enough, but testing a bunch of them can drive you mad – especially when you’re dealing with bleeding edge technology.”

Well, that didn’t take long. The first of what I suspect might just be a few iPhone 4 articles I’ll pen over the coming weeks, live now for your perusal at PC Authority. It should be noted that I might just annoy 70 million people with this one:

iPhone 4: The top 5 reasons to buy (or not to buy): “We reveal the key reason Australians should be excited about the iPhone 4. And it’s not video calling…”