Trend Adoption

Here are some trends I’ve adopted; some early, some late and some predictions for what’s next. Some entries are just added for nostalgia.

Pending

• 2023? Driver-less cars available to buy
• 2017? Tesla electric car - unlikely to be early on this one
• 2017? Personal wellness tracking - e.g. contact lens glucose sensors
• 2015? Occulus Rift - gaming with ‘presence’ - 3rd gen should be good
• 2015? Android / iOS watches and wearables - already available - not compelling
• 2015? 4k Monitor / TV? Already available - not enough content
• 2015? Robotic vacuum cleaner - not convinced so far
• 2014? Own my own 3d printer - not quite there yet, not enough use cases yet
• 2014? External USB DAC and / or Heaphone amplifier - e.g. Audioquest Dragonfly 1.2 - expensive audiophile bs?
• 2014? Nest Learning Thermostat

Adopted

• 2014 Mechanical keyboards
• 2014 In-car DAB radio
• 2014 First hire purchase / ‘leased’ car
• 2014 BMW Connected Drive - online car
• 2013 YouTube channels overtake recorded TV viewing
• 2013 Windows 8 - yuk
• 2013 Standing desk
• 2013 Remote house temperature, humidity monitoring
• 2013 Li-Ion power tool - Makita Impact Driver - 3Ah Li-Ion
• 2013 Google Nexus 7 (2013)
• 2013 Casual making
• 2013 Amazon Prime - stopped going to high street shops
• 2013 23andme
• 2013 16Gb USB memory stick
• 2012? Rapman - helped build 3d printer
• 2012 Winter tyres in UK
• 2012 Uploading Photospheres to Google Maps
• 2012 Switched to SSDs from HDDs for OS drive
• 2012 Raspberry Pi
• 2012 Online security camera
• 2012 Oculus Rift - demo
• 2012 Google LG Nexus 4
• 2012 Fitness tracking with Fitbit - returned
• 2012 BT Infinity 2 FTTC 76/19 Mbit/s
• 2011 Spotify Premium account
• 2011 Lasercutting and Shopbot CNC at Fablab
• 2011 Dyson DC35 - Li-Ion vacuum cleaner
• 2011 BT Infinity 1 FTTC 37/9 Mbit/s
• 2011 Arduino
• 2010 iPad - day of release
• 2010 Home workshop - build don’t buy
• 2010 Grew some fruit and veg
• 2010 Dubstep - Nero Essential Mix
• 2010 Casual gaming overtakes PC gaming
• 2009 X10 home automation
• 2009 Switched browser to Google Chrome
• 2009 Personal policy of paperless office
• 2009 42 inch plasma TV and BluRay player
• 2008 Ocado - online grocery shopping replaces supermarkets
• 2008 Nokia E51
• 2008 Grime - DJ Q Essential Mix
• 2008 Getting Things Done
• 2008 Collaborative sharing within teams using Dropbox
• 2007 Twitter account
• 2007 Nokia N800 - day of release
• 2007 MythTV
• 2007 My first cordless power tool(!) - Makita 8391 1.3Ah Ni-Cd
• 2006 Second Life account
• 2006 LinkedIn account
• 2006 Facebook account
• 2006 2Gb USB memory stick
• 2005 Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary Hedgehog replaces Debian
• 2005 Running
• 2005 Netflix account - DVD subscription
• 2005 Heart rate monitoring - Polar S625x
• 2005 Genealogy mapping
• 2005 Digital SLR - Canon Digital Rebel XT
• 2004? Skype account
• 2004 Switched browser to Firefox
• 2004 Registered grahamdavies.net
• 2004 Linode Virtual Private Server
• 2004 DVR - stopped watching live TV and adverts
• 2004 Bread making - via bread machine
• 2003 iPod 3rd generation
• 2003 Registered grahamdavies.org
• 2003 Pentax Optio 550 digital camera, came with 16Mb SD card
• 2003 1000Mbps Ethernet at ucla.edu
• 2002 Switched from OS 9 to OSX 10.2 Jaguar on Power Mac G5
• 2002 Abandonned cassette tapes
• 2001 Palm Pilot m505 - 16-bit colour screen
• 2001 Linux server in a cupboard - old DEC AlphServera 21164 EV5? running RedHat Linux
• 2001 Home broadband via Telewest cable 0.5 Mbit/s
• 2000 Switched from RedHat to Debian 2.2
• 2000 Ripped entire CD collection to mp3
• 2000 Quake III - proper online deathmatches
• 2000 Dreamcast - late adopter of console gaming
• 1999 Wrote PhD thesis in LaTeX - document processing
• 1999 Switched from Emacs to Vim
• 1999 Sony Discman with mp3
• 1999 Personal blog site with ‘status’ posts
• 1999 Nokia 3210
• 1998 Switched to using Google
• 1998 Lego Mindstorms - holiday plant watering gadget
• 1998 100Mbps Ethernet connection to Internet at ed.ac.uk
• 1997 Redhat Linux 4.1
• 1996 NetMeeting - Video conferencing
• 1996 Traveler - virtual worlds with voice chat - forerunner to Second Life
• 1996 ICQ
• 1995 First digital camera - Casio QV-10?? - via my Dad
• 1995 Drum & Bass - Goldie, Timeless
• 1994 Webcrawler - Internet search engine
• 1994 TripHop - Portishead, Dummy
• 1994 Trance - Paul Oakenfold, Essential Mix Vol I, Goa Mix
• 1994 Switched Browser to Netscape Navigator
• 1994 Started listening to The Essential Mix
• 1993 Mosaic Browser - can clearly remember the day of release. First access to www
• 1993 Doom multi-player over null cable
• 1992 email account @bris.ac.uk to Dad on CompuServe
• 1992 ntalk - live chat over console - forerunner to IRC / Messenger
• 1992 Telnet / Gopher
• 1992 Built first desktop PC - 486DX2, running DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1
• 1992 Aluminium frame Marin Rocky Ridge mountain bike
• 1991 email to fax
• 1991 Ultimate Frisbee and Frisbee Golf (Bristol Suspension Bridge)
• 1991 Sennheiser HiFi headphones - never brave enough to wear in the street
• 1991 Read The Selfish Gene
• 198x? Etch-a-Sketch - forerunner to iPad (cough!)
• 1989? Tetris on PC - colour
• 1989 Learned to touch type
• 1989 Amiga memory upgrade 0.5 MegaBytes - c. 80 quid
• 1988 Commodore Amiga
• 1987 Wizball - co-operative 2 player Commodore 64 game
• 1987 Toshiba T1200 - 2x 3.5inch floppies - via my Dad
• 1987 Heavy Metal - Def Leppard, Hysteria (First CD)
• 1987 First mountain bike - Ridgeback - 4 years after they introduced to UK and around the time of the Muddyfox Courier
• 1987 My first CD player
• 1986 Psion Organiser II - via my Dad
• 1985 Sony Walkman portable cassette player with voice recorder (TPS-L2?)- shiny metal in a blue plastic sleave
• 1985? Science Fair 160 in One Electronic Project Kit
• 1983? Fisher price tape recorder - my version ghetto blaster for the actual kids
• 1983 Commodore 64
• 1983 Apple II - via my school
• 1982 Tomy Tricky Traps - forerunner to hand-held gaming (cough)
• 1980? Speak & Spell, Speak & Math - “Word problem, Level 1!”, “Number Stumper, Level 2!”, “That’s incorrect!”