The 3 Ws

First off, can I say a slightly belated Happy New Year to both my readers! Yay, we've survived the Mayan end of the world, although rumour has it that the previously undeciphered inscription at the bottom of the calendar tablet actually says "Continued on next rock..."

Now, administrative matters. I'm sad to say that my old faithful 17" Macbook Pro is up for sale. It was never really the right machine for me, and has spent most of the last few months being used as an iTunes server. Which is not really the best use for a power laptop. Anyhow that'll soone be off to a good home, and I've cleared the rubbish off my desk for the 27" iMac that will replace it. This is the machine I should have got in the first place. It'll serve me for writing, programming, flight simming too, and it'll run Windows through BootCamp, which means I can give the creaky old centrino laptop the boot too (or use it for playing with Linux or sommat) Yay! Space is being cleared, long-forgotten walls are starting to appear and so on!

But I'm happy to say I'll still be see in cafés across Oxon and Berks with my beloved Macbook Air, which I have to say really is the ultimate blend between power and portability (if it only had a 27" screen...!)

So, finally to the point of this post. The 3Ws. I'm changing the emphasis of this blog a bit. This is in line with the 2013 challenge I set myself on Goodreads (see the full thread here). It's a three part challenge:

• (W)Reading (it worked for the "3 Rs", so I'm claiming this!)
• Writing
• Watching

Reading: In 2012 I managed to read 70 books, so for 2013, I've challenged myself to read a round 100. That's effectively two a week on average. Now, I didn't join Goodreads until April, so that's when the counter started, which means if I keep going as I am now, I have a good chance of winning that challenge.

The first few books coming through the system are:

• Billy Christmas (Mark Pritchard - a thesping mate of mine)
• Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
• Excession (Iain M. banks)
• Old Man's War (John Scalzi)
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (JK Rowling)

Writing: Obviously the most important thing is to get Hunted out of the door. But I'm also planning Hunting at the moment, and it would be good to get that an the (currently unnamed) third part of the trilogy finished before the end of the year. If I'm exceptionally good, I'd like to get the first draft of Starstruck written too.

Watching: The Cineworld Unlimited Card had a lot to answer for in 2012. 70-odd movies in fact (I listed them all in the Goodreads thread above). So this year's challenge is to watch at least 50, and to review them too. Aren't you lucky! [sarcasm mode off]

So what films do we have to look forward to in 2013? Well I've already seen the first movie, Quartet, which will be the subject of my next post, but we have coming up:

• Les Misérables
• Wreck-It Ralph
• Hitchcock
• A Good Day to Die Hard
• Broken City (DeeDee, did they make your book into a film already???!)
• Identity Thief
• The Croods
• Fast & Furious 6
• Despicable Me 2

And that barely takes us to June!

And I'll keep you up to date with all the thesping, writing and other stuff too. Promise (or is that a threat...)!

Toodle pip!