For my birthday, I got a surprise gift – an iPad mini! It’s really cute.

Will be using it mostly to watch stuff on as a second screen, and perhaps to take with me on those rare occasions that I leave the house. I usually take my laptop, but it hardly ever comes out and is pretty heavy.

I also read a lot of stuff on my phone, which probably isn’t great for my eyes, so the bigger screen may help with some of that stuff too.

I did install NetNewsWire on it, which means I need a way to sync between my laptop and iPad. I chose FeedBin, as a nice, indie-web-ish service. I won’t be blogging from the iPad though, I think I will just add a star to the articles I want to blog about, and do that from the laptop when the time is right.

I also got a bunch of Amazon vouchers, so I invested those in a Pencil. Interested to see if the smaller form factor of the Mini means it’ll be useful as a digital notebook.