My Favorite iPhone Apps

So seeing as how I have had my iPhone for a little over a year now, I figured I would note my top 5 favorite iPhone apps. These are the apps I use on a more than regular basis and of course, being the cheap bastard I am, are all free apps. So let's begin:

Living in the Pacific Northwest and a frequent user of public transportation I like to know before I leave the house or office as to whether I will be standing in the rain. The Weather Channel app is far superior than the weather app that comes with the iPhone, not to mention much more accurate. I have 3 favorites about this app, first I can check the weather by the hour or up to 10 days. Like I mentioned earlier, it is surprising accurate. This comes in handy when preparing for my day. In the PNW you can have sun in the morning and a down pour of rain by 5pm. Another great feature is the Alerts. It will let you know when the county/state have posted severe weather alerts. Probably the coolest feature would be the video. Press the video tab and each day you can watch a weather report. No more waiting for the news each night.

I probably do about 75% of my Facebooking from my iPhone. Being a transplant to the Seattle area, this is the best way for me to stay in touch with old friends. With the exception of Facebook apps, you can pretty much do anything on the iPhone you could do on the webpage. You can update your status, respond to others, view photos and even take a photo with your iPhone and instantly upload it. Way cool!

TwitterFon is a fairly new app for me. When I first started tweeting they didn't have a mobile option and I quickly fell away. Now with the iPhone app I can tweet anytime, even when I'm on the bus. I like that it shows me the new tweets in a different color so I don't have try and figure it out. Another cool feature is that you can enable a Facebook app that will update your status with your tweet. The nice thing about that is it can discern from a regular tweet and a reply to a tweet so that replies aren't posted. Now if they can only build in push alerts so I know in realtime when a new tweet has been posted.

The METRO Bus Tracker is actually a web app, but I mention it because it is very useful to me. I know there are other apps in the store that can do this but they cost money and the benefits, for me at least, do not justify the expense. The web app was designed by local developer Sofiane Hassaine. It taps into METRO's GPS tracking and gives you realtime data as to it's arrival time. You see, I spend almost 4 hours a day riding the METRO buses to and from work and this web app lets me search by intersection to find the times when the buses are going to arrive. This is handy because depending when that bus will arrive I may choose to ride a different bus. Thanks Sofiane!!

The Pandora Radio app is by for my most used app aside from email. With only 8gb on my iPhone I quickly begin to get tired of listening to the same music and constantly loading new stuff. This app saved me from all that and is now my exclusive music player. I have pretty broad tastes in music and at times I am in the mood for a specific genre. This feeds my music craving anytime and I can change genre at my whim. Pandora is a product of the Genome Music Project so it organically molds to the style of music you prefer to listen to. You can create multiple genre stations and you can even move music types into other stations. It even sounds good over the EDGE network, it could use a little more low end but good none the less. The biggest downfall to the app is that unlike the ipod portion of the phone, it stops playing when you exit the app. This means I need to stop listening momentarily to check email or do another function on the phone. I look forward to the update that fixes this.

Well, that's it. My favorite and most useful (free) apps for the iPhone. What are yours??

I can't remember & Hypothyroidism

So I had an ear ache and decided I should go see a doctor about it. You see, I have hearing problems and ear aches are really painful. Anyway, that's not the story, while there I figured I would ask about my memory issues. For as long as I can remember, no pun intended, I have had difficulties with my long term memory. Any memory further back than say 5 years is similar to recalling a dream. In fact I have mistaken dreams for memories and vice versa. Go even further than that and they start to disappear entirely with the exception of the really significant memories. For example, when my parents split, my first sexual encounter, etc.

I never really cared that much because I'm not one for dwelling on the past. That is until my memories of my kids started to fade. I can't seem to recall when my daughter started to walk or what my son's first word was.

I have a family history of Alzheimer's, but that eats away at the short term memory and I was experiencing a loss of my long term memory. So I figured I would seek some medical advice.

The doctor ran a plethora of test. Thank god they are able to stick you once for blood and draw multiples. I hate needles and they drew 6 tubes of blood. When I got the results back everything was looking normal. Like I said, although I am a fat guy I am fairly healthy. However, it turns out I have high levels of TSH, meaning my thyroid gland is not functioning correctly, more commonly known as hypothyroidism. This is a common excuse that a lot of fat people like to use as an excuse as to why they are fat. Frankly I stayed away from using that excuse because I always felt I'm a lazy bastard that just needs to play a little less XBOX and go for a walk more often and I still feel that way.

But I have to admit, it does explain a lot. Like why I am the only one in my entire family that is overweight. Why I can't sleep or the constant fatigue and of course the impaired memory. All symptoms of hypothyroidism. Again, things I always figured were a result of me being a lazy ass.

I've been given medicine to try and fix it but we won't know if it works for another 3 months and at that time we may need to up my dose or lower it. It looks like I may be on this med for the rest of my life.

Frankly, I'm not convinced it will work and so I will just keep on my diet and the exercise I have been avoiding of late. :)