Now that 2009 has come to a close and 2010 has begun, I can safely say that it’s a year that has been very challenging and although I am not the least bit sad to see 2009 go, it certainly was not without some really incredible experiences for me that I would like to highlight before wipe the slate clean and start fresh with 2010.

This list was especially difficult to narrow down since 2009 was the year I kicked my blogging into high gear. I had started Ryan’s Incredible World in 2007 didn’t actually start blogging until 2008 and I would maybe make no more than five entries a month. So picking my highlights of 2008 was relatively easy since there wasn’t so many blog entries to go through to pick out the defining moments.

I had joined a couple of 30-Day blogging challenges which requires 30 blog entries in 30 days and it essentially got me into the habit of making almost daily blog entries. Now it’s pretty safe to say that each month sees about 25 new blog entries. The constant blogging has actually helped bring a bigger audience to my blog, so if your first time reading any of my writing has been in 2009, then no doubt something I wrote in 2009 caught your eye and is why you’re here reading this entry now. I am grateful for the many folks who’ve read my blog and left me comments, it’s been a pleasure to hear your feedback throughout the year. In any case, I looked through every post of 2009 to select what I feel were the 10 Most Incredible Things about 2009 that happened for me. You’ll note I combined a few complimentary things to narrow it down to 10.

I do hope you enjoy my reflection on 2009 and continue to join me on my quest to find the most incredible things of 2010. Without further ado, in no particular order.

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Earlier this month, my good friend Vito Grandolfo, said that he was going to upgrade his iPhone 3G to an iPhone 3GS phone and wanted to know if I would be interested in his iPhone 3G. I was definitely interested and I asked Vito if he was interested in my older Blu-Ray player, a Samsung BD-P1600. And he was interested so we decided to do a swap. A older Blu-Ray player for an older iPhone.

Vito got his new phone on Christmas Eve and we arranged a time to the technology exchange on the day after Christmas as Vito was flying out to another assignment for his job the very next morning. I helped Vito set up the Blu-Ray player on his TV and gave him a couple of the freebie Blu-Ray discs I had gotten by mail order rebate with the purchase of the player and we made sure it all worked.

Because I’m a T-Mobile customer and not an AT&T customer it was going to take a little bit of time to get the new iPhone ready for use. I already knew I wasn’t going to be able to use the 3G network as AT&T’s 3G network operates on a different frequency than T-Mobile’s 3G network and they’re not compatible. But what I was looking forward to was the integrated GPS as the older original generation iPhone I was using was only ever able to approximate my location using triangulation between cell phone towers and was not always the most accurate, especially when trying to use Google Maps for directions or having the phone identify the direction I was traveling on highways for one of the traffic monitoring applications. Additionally the iPhone Vito gave me was double the capacity of the small 4 GB iPhone I was currently using at the time. So plenty of room to expand.

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My good friend Dan Baggett introduced me to a new iPhone/iPod Application called “Words With Friends” by NewToy, Inc. which is a game very much like Scrabble. It’s a crossword game using tiles except I’m sure to legally not infringe upon Scrabble’s copyright, all the spots for Double and Triple letter scores and Double and Triple word scores are in different spots than a traditional Scrabble board. Also the board doesn’t seem to have as many squares as a regular Scrabble board. I’ve not been a big enthusiast of Scrabble so I don’t know if the number of tiles and point values on the tiles are the same or not.

The game can only be a two player game and allows for two ways to play, it can be played on one iPhone or iPod Touch through “Pass and Play” mode or it can be remotely played with someone on another device in what is described as “asynchronous” online game play or “correspondence” play where the players play the game at their convenience, they do not have to be playing the game at the same time in order to play. There are several options on how to play with someone remotely, you can create a game to play with someone on your contact list (I’m not sure how this one works but I would imagine it sends that person an invitation to download the application.) Next, you can search for specific players by user name, which has been how I’ve played with my friends, you just enter their chosen user name and it establishes a game with that person. Lastly, you can also start a game with a random person as well by allowing the application to find you an opponent.

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Milton Bradley’s (though now made by Hasbro) classic board game “Battleship” makes it’s way to Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. Battleship was a game my brother and used to play as kids. I enjoyed the game but after having played the Electronic Battleship at a friend’s house I wanted one of those. In the electronic version the positions of the ships had to be programmed in and then when the game was played, you’d enter the grid location you wanted to strike and then pressed a fire button which would play a sound effect of a missile firing and if you actually hit something then you would hea and explosion and see a panel light up with a little red light to indicate a hit.

Many years later when hand held electronics were becoming quite popular, I bought several of the games including, Yahtzee, Connect Four, Battleship, Mastermind, and several game show games. It was handy in the bring with you and play on trips or have handy. Ultimately, the one I ended up carrying around the most was the Yahtzee game, but Battleship was probably my second favorite of the bunch. It could be played as a one player game or a two player game, but also had the fun of the sound effects of the missile launch and the hit which could be turned off if you wanted to play it in a quiet place. But they ended up being bulky to carry around as single application games. So they tend to sit in a box not being played.

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If there’s one thing I could say about my childhood, it’s that I was a Game Show junkie. I loved to watch hours of game shows. I loved the thought of people competing for cash and prizes on the various television shows. I loved nearly all of them from the more luck based ones like “Let’s Make A Deal”, “High Rollers”, and “Card Sharks” to the ones where you actually had to know something, like “Jeopardy!”, “$25,000 Pyramid”, “Super Password.” In high school, I even tried out for a teen tournament version of Jeopardy! Unfortunately, I didn’t make it on.

I also used to get all the home game versions of all my favorite shows, and then eventually bought them as computer games when those started to surface, and then when digital handheld versions became popular, I bought those too. Now the latest incarnations are applications for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. These are probably my favorite versions as I have my iPhone with me all the time and there’s no mess or clean up like the old home game versions. Not to mention, no bulky boxes to store the games when they’re not in use.

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I recently decided to try the Sirius XM iPhone application with their free seven day trial, and I quite liked being able to use my iPhone as an additional Sirius radio in addition to the Stiletto 100 I already use for Sirius. So naturally when the free trial expired, I decided to give Sirius a call to add on the Premium Internet access which is required to take advantage of the iPhone application.

I didn’t really want to pay more money, so I asked the customer service agent if she could just cancel the added on Best of XM package I had added on. I mainly got to hear Oprah Radio from the XM lineup of channels, but I’ll be honest, I didn’t like the channel very much. I wasn’t listening to any of the programs and none of the other XM stations that were added were of any interest to me, so it was kind of silly to be paying $4.04 a month extra for worthless stations. As the premium Internet add on is only $2.99 a month, it essentially means it should be no problem “downgrading” my account. Since it was all prepaid I wasn’t expecting a refund on the extra already paid.

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I know this review is a bit late and I still need to get to my reviews of the “Kristina” shows from Carnegie Hall, but I’m trying to fit in the time when I can. So apologies to my readers anxiously anticipating my reviews.

I wasn’t expecting my chance to see Kylie Minogue in person to be such a last minute affair, but I had been hoping my new Blackjack Training program I am I developing would not only be released long before this concert, but it would also help brining in the funds to purchase much better seats for the show. But as the concert has come and past and the project is still not yet ready to launch, I ended up scrambling last minute to make sure I had the night of October 4th off work, and purchased some tickets. I decided I wasn’t that fussed about having great seats, as I felt it was just more important to be there. So I bought a couple of the cheapest tickets available so my good friend Rod Reynolds and I could see the Australian pop diva bring her first ever United States tour. I didn’t know it at the time I bought the tickets but they were second row seats……second row from the back.

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Having hit a little bit of music boredom with the more limited selections on my iPod Touch, I decided to bring out the iPod Classic which is loaded with over 11,000 audio files. I let it play on random and one of the things that came up was “Hooked On Classics – Part 1 and 2″ from the original “Hooked On Classics” album by Louis Clark and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

I ended up taking the iPod off random and played the full album. It’s been a very long time since I last listened to it. I don’t remember when exactly I added the Hooked On Classics albums to my iPod as the last crash of my iTunes wiped out the date added for every track I added prior to December 10, 2008. In any case, I was happy I had it on my iPod to enjoy without having to dig out the CD.

I remember having worn out two cassettes of this album back in the early 1980’s. I loved it. To me it was all the good parts of classical music without so much of the really boring stuff. And I suppose a disco-esque drum track didn’t hurt either for helping keep those classics going at an upbeat pace. I remember Hooked On Classics being very popular when it was originally released in Canada. It was released on the K-Tel label which I always had some collections of popular music from them. Probably my favorite of which was “Raiders Of The Pop Charts” which capitalized on the Indiana Jones theme which was current at the time.

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Ryan’s Incredible World has gained what is called a “Favicon.” A favicon is the icon image that appears on browser tabs and/or appears next to the search bar when you visit a site.

In the case of Ryan’s Incredible World, after figuring out what the little image is called in a Google search, I set out to design one for my site. It seems several of the sites that make them easily can convert them from several different graphic types, so it was just a matter of picking something. The first attempt I made I just used a photo of me to try out the process, but felt I would need to delete the background around my head if I was going to use that and since I’m due to take a few more updated skinnier pictures of me thanks to the weight loss I’ve enjoyed on Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure I didn’t feel like using a photo for my favicon.

I decided to add the stylized “R” from the font of the main title of the page. I had attempted several different looks, including doing a “RIW” however in such a tiny icon, the font the text is in, was making it look like “ROW” So I figured an “R” would just look better, plus I think it ties in better with my site (please leave a comment below if you like it or have suggestions on what you think I should use).

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Amazon Kindle Owners can now take Ryan’s Incredible World with them to read on their Kindle devices. Amazon recently approved the publishing of this blog in a format compliant with their Kindle devices. All that’s needed is an Amazon Kindle and a monthly subscription. Amazon currently has my blog priced at a monthly subscription price of 99 cents, a great bargain to cover the wireless delivery of every new blog entry as they become available. Click here to sign up for Ryan’s Incredible World, the Kindle Edition.

Unfortunately, at this time, the Kindle version only works on Kindle devices, the Kindle applications for iPhone and iPod Touch do not yet work with blog subscriptions. If you’re interested in purchasing an Amazon Kindle, they’ve recently had a price reduction to $299.00 for the regular size model and $489.00 for the DX (larger sized) model. Click here to visit Amazon’s Kindle Store. (more…)

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