Today in the third of the series of Regular Reader interviews we hear from Jonathan Buckland
1. As this blog covers a lot of Mac related products what was your first Apple product that you bought?
My first product was a 4th generation iPod which has now been upgraded to a fantastic 80GB iPod Photo.
Even more exciting is that I am a recent switcher to the Mac OS X universe after spending too many years under Windows. I purchased my new Intel MacBook about 8 months ago and have never looked back.
When I got my MacBook box home I was like a kid opening a box of chocolates for the first time. I carefully opened each packet and was dizzy with excitement.
I remember opening a Dell laptop box, with hardly a thought.
It’s not just the fact that the MacBook looks great and works incredibly well, it’s the enthusiastic community around the Apple and how they help each other. People like Chris Marshall, help to make the community what it is today.
2. On a similar theme, but moving forward what will be the next Apple product that you buy?
I am planning to get a new iMac for my web development business. On the geek side of my life I would love to buy an AppleTV and iPhone.
3. Do you have an all time favourite Apple product or Mac application?
I am a QuickSilver addict and hardly use the Dock. It’s such an amazing customizable application which keeps my Dock and Desktop clean.
I use Adium and iChat quite a lot to talk to friends and colleagues. The latest purchase has been iLife and iWork ’08 which I am immensely impressed with. I also use Colloquy for IRC when I need to chat on rubyonrails and Shrook as my RSS reader.
I also create tutorial screen cast videos using iShowU and ProfCast.
On the fun side I play World of Warcraft, but lately I seem to have less time for that.
Most of my other applications are for my development business, building solutions in Ruby on Rails for customers. I use TextMate, CSSEdit and Coda. I also develop applications in Cocoa using XCode tools.
Oh and I have Twitterific to send tweets to my friends.
4. The blog also covers other subjects, so do you have any specific interests or hobbies that keep you busy?
I spend most of my waking life either doing geeky stuff or having fun with my kids. I have also wanted to start my own Podcast promoting the fun of developing software.
I am also having lots of fun with my new Canon HV10 Camcorder which was obviously needed to video the kids on holiday.
5. What would be your all time favourite technology gadget?
This has to be my iPod. I use it to listen to all my Podcasts, music and videos on the move. I do miss my Sinclair Spectrum though.
6. How do you pay the bills, or if you are studying what are your future plans to pay the bills?
I am a software development consultant and spend my work days developing web and desktop solutions for clients. I have also started a web desgin/development business recently which is a very exciting venture for me.
You can find out more about what I do at jonathanbuckland.com or my blog funcoder.com.
7. What three words or phrases would your friends use to describe you?
Geeky
Approachable
Loyal
(I promise I did ask)
8. Anything else you want to share with us?
I am looking forward to the future and hoping to take a trip to MacWorld soon.
About These Interviews
A significant attraction for me in blogging is the ‘community’ that it creates. I am never going to be ‘up there’ with the young bloggers – I am not going to be that attractive to your average teenage blog reader, I actually don’t want to be as I find a lot of the stuff that interests them remarkably shallow and insipid, and I am perfectly happy with the slightly more mature (mentally and/or physically) reader that I attract.
I have ‘met’ some great people through the blog, some I communicate with daily, others much less frequently, but collectively they add to the enjoyment and satisfaction I get from blogging.
This series of interviews is a way of you getting to know each other better, and hopefully attract more of you to participate in the blog. I know there are a lot more of you out there that read the site regularly but don’t comment. That is your right of course, but trust me there are a really great bunch of readers around that I am sure you would get on with.
If you want to be included in this series please just email me either with your answers to these 8 questions or with any questions you may have.
And finally, thanks to all the readers who have participated in this series, and thanks to all of you for reading. I will do a long post at the end of the series with all the interviews so you can catch up easily on any that you miss, or get a great overview of some of the common answers, and some of the wildly different answers!