February 2012
1 post
Vanish Large Area Cleaner
With Miss Scotchington Pie living with us, our carpets and rugs do tend to get a bit mucky, so imagine my delight when I saw this product advertised on the telly, cheaper and less bother than getting a chap round with a proper carpet cleaner.
You sprinkle it on, brush it in, wait for 20 minutes, I gave it a bit longer, and then vacuum it off, and it’s supposed to take the dirt of with it,...
January 2012
4 posts
Netflix again...
I’ve been using Netflix again on the Apple TV, results have been getting worse, we tried to watch the pilot of Twin Peaks a couple of nights ago, and it cut out several times, sometimes a couple of times with 10 minutes, but sometimes it would go 45 minutes without a glitch. In some ways, this isn’t too bad, but it’s difficult to relax and get absorbed if you know a random...
Kindle for a year
I’ve owned my Kindle for a year now, here is what I think…
Really glad I got the 3G one, use that capability all the time, WiFi is not widespread enough.
Over the air delivery is awesome, I’ve used it all over the UK, in Honolulu airport, it works every time, don’t consider getting an eReader without it.
Range of books is only OK, but improving, and there are less and...
Netflix in UK
Setup Netflix on my Apple TV, very easy, but if you get a spinning wheel, just pull the power lead, restart it, and it’ll work then, no problem.
So far it’s been great, good range of TV and films, more reliable than any streaming service I’ve tried, and I don’t have to have my Mac and home sharing enabled.
I’m actually really surprised it works on the Apple TV...
Crappy companies blame the economy?
I’m reading a lot about companies, even in the run up to christmas, struggling, blaming the economy for “tough” trading conditions (Clinton Cards Chief Exec), and other high street retailers going bust or shutting down a large number of stores.
It strikes me that CEOs and boards are blaming the economy, which is beyond their control, for their own poor performance.
John Lewis...
November 2011
4 posts
Another successful film watch on Apple TV
This time, no problems at all, I think me the ATV may start a uneasy friendship, it’s actually doing the job as advertised. I think the switching from HD to SD is the cause of this unexpected reliability.
The Apple TV is starting to impress, especially combined with the iPad, where, since iOS 5,I can mirror BBC iPlayer onto my big telly. It’s always worked for YouTube of course, but...
Man watches film on Apple TV!
For the first time ever, after owning the Apple TV for nearly a year, I managed to watch a film (streamed!) start to finish with no problems. Maybe it’s the OS updates, maybe I was just lucky, but it DID happen!
One problem did occur in the setup though, after changed the Apple ID, I had to pull the power on it and restart for the ‘Movies’ menu to appear, but other than that,...
In Time movie
It was Ok.
Steve Jobs Biography
Just finished reading this book, and although I enjoyed it, the author was out of his depth technically, which sometimes annoyed, maybe a little lazy.
Some other reviews have not been so generous, but a lot of that bad feeling about this book I think stems from its honesty. To some people, Steve Jobs is beyond criticism.
For me, the book was much more “Steve Jobs : the human...
October 2011
3 posts
iOS 5 on iPad
Quick summary of the stuff I’ve used…
Safari - Tabs like a desktop browser, not bothered either way really. A boatload faster, you know the checkerboard pattern that comes up when the page hasn’t quite rendered, I haven’t seen that again since iOS 5, and I’ve tried.
iCloud - In some ways, it’s about bloody time, using DropBox to move across songs I’ve...
BlackBerry
As, I believe, the only Mac developer who doesn’t use an iPhone, I’m in the position of not receiving mobile email at the moment, or actually, the last few days. It’s not the end of the world, but I do a lot of customer service on the go, as any Londoner will tell you, you spend most of the day on the train. Or waiting for a train.
The BlackBerry service is actually generally,...
Drive
Saw Drive on Sunday, awesome, great film. If you like good films, you’ll like this. However, if you plan to see it, but haven’t seen the trailer, don’t watch it. The trailer is basically the entire film distilled into a few minutes, I’m glad I didn’t see it before the film, it would have ruined some of it.
I see this trend a lot, I’ve seen a few trailers...
August 2011
1 post
The Apple TV again....
I watched the first two episodes of “The Killing” on the ATV, both episodes cut out while viewing. I serve using an iMac and it’s routed through an Airport Extreme, I couldnt be more compatible if I tried, and it still doesn’t work right.
Apple admits its hobby and not a decent revenue stream in its own right. I use a Mac and an iPad, and I recommend them to anyone who...
July 2011
1 post
A few days with an iPad
Been using an iPad for a few days, as a laptop replacement, here are my thoughts so far…
Extremely fast, makes my 3ghz iMac with 12gb RAM seem sluggish, web browsing is way, way faster.
Onscreen keyboard is actually ok, I wouldn’t use it for an essay, but it’s better than I thought it would be, I can almost touch type on it, maybe with a bit more practice, I will be.
The...
June 2011
1 post
May 2011
3 posts
Kindle books outsell real ones on Amazon
Amazon has just announced that they sell more Kindle eBooks than they do regular paper books. I think this is a pretty amazing success for Amazon, I don’t think anyone would have predicted that this would happen so quickly, I just hope it leads to a broader range of books on the Kindle.
Even more importantly though, it lowers the barrier the entry for authors, if, for example, I wanted to...
Kindle Oddity
I generally like my Kindle, but it’s a little odd…
One of the things you can do with a Kindle is go a position in a book, much like a page number. I wanted to do this quite recently, so I went to tap the number in using the keyboard, then realized, it doesn’t have a row of numbers, at all…
There is plenty of room for a row of numbers, in fact, there is a large gap where...
New Blackberry
Still very impressed by the 9780, it’s like my old one with the crap bits taken out. The battery lasts forever, I could happily go away for a long weekend, forget the charger, and not worry about it, I couldn’t say that for any other phone I’ve owned, the iPhone was OK, but it’s not in this league.
RIM needs to make a better theme for the device though, all the icons look...
April 2011
4 posts
Got the App Store working!
Seems that when you access it on a new Mac, you need to validate your billing details, if the error message has actually SAID this, then it would have been a trivial problem.
New iMac
So, far, a terrible experience. I like to consider myself pretty good with computers, so I can fix stuff, but what if I was a newbie….
Migration, failed on many occasions, shouldn’t have used the Network option, but my old Mac has Firewire 400, the new one 800, and I don’t have the adaptor. Note to Apple: Maybe stick one in the box?
Since migration failed, I’ll get my App...
RIM Playbook
It’s marketed as the ‘first professional-grade tablet’ (whatever that means), yet it’s called the *Play*Book. Is it just me who thinks they really didn’t think through the name?
New Blackberry
Go myself a new Blackberry, it’s the 9780, a huge, huge, improvement on my old 5120 (?, not sure, I’ve recycled it, so I can’t check. Marketing tip: If a customer can’t figure out what kind of phone they have, you are doing it wrong.)
But it leads me to one of the reasons RIM is getting it’s ass kicked in the market. The phone is awesome, much better for me than...
March 2011
4 posts
A web browser for everything?
I can’t use Safari for everything, it’s just too slow on my lesser computers.
I can’t use Chrome for everything, iTunes Connect doesn’t work on it. Just goes to show, even using the same web engine doesn’t guarantee compatibility!
Both of the above are crap at viewing XML.
I’m currently using Firefox 4, maybe that’ll work for everything, we’ll...
Airport Extreme
More on my continued love affair with the Apple Airport Extreme…
It still rocks, haven’t need to reset it EVER, with my previous Netgear, resetting it was as much part of my day as using the toilet.
Just as a test, I whacked an old iPod shuffle into the USB port. It popped up on the Finder side bar almost right away, and I could save files to it without any hassle at all.
I now use...
More on the Kindle
Had the Kindle for a while now, a few thoughts…
The are massive gaps in the book library, I’m finding about 50% of the books I want to read are not available. For example, I wanted to read ‘Touching the void’, not available. ‘Catcher in the rye’, not available (no really). I’d understand if these were niche, marginal interest books, but they are not.
...
Xcode 4
It’s uninstalling right now, I know I should have researched this first, but dropping support for 10.5 (can be done manually I know), and dropping PPC (can’t find a workaround for this). So I just can’t use it.
I know PPC is pretty old, I’ve not had one for years, but I know plenty of G5s still in use, personally I think it’s a little premature.
Dropping 10.5...
February 2011
4 posts
Kindle revisited
So far, still liking it, a quality device that makes reading very easy, no waiting for books to come through the post for me any more!
It’s not perfect, the eBook range is limited, with some surprising omissions, Catcher in the Rye, for example, isn’t available on Kindle, a classic that i’ve never got round to reading, and still can’t on my Kindle.
The device itself...
Apple TV, yet another bug....
In the middle of Mad Men, my Apple TV decided it lost it’s network connection and promptly stopped the show.
It went back to the home screen, network seemed fine, everything worked, so I went back to Mad Men, it couldn’t remember where I was, so just went from the beginning.
Maybe my wireless network DID go down, but I doubt it, it’s on an Airport Extreme, which has been...
Apple TV revisited
So I decided to keep the Apple TV, despite a really poor first impression, so what do I think about it now….
The Good
It’s silent, this is nice.
It’s small, but the remote is dark ages IR, rather than bluetooth, so I can’t put it away in my TV unit, it’s got to stay out.
The iTunes catalogue, this is pretty much the only reason anyone would buy one, but it’s...
Black Swan
Just plain boring, not nearly as good as it thinks it is. The director did this film much better years ago with ‘Requiem for a dream’, a similar premise, but a *lot* better.
January 2011
8 posts
A tale of Amazon and Apple - Shite and Great, but...
So I bought two products in the last two days, an Apple TV and a Kindle.
I got the 3G Kindle, and true to Amazon’s claims, it worked out the box,very easy to setup, I was reading a book within a few minutes of opening the box. Even the new WebKit browser isn’t bad, I wouldn’t make a habit of it, but it’d do the job in a tight spot.
The clarity of the screen is...
Amazing Terminal app, check it out. →
Aperture is a bargain
Aperture is bloody cheap on the App Store, £45, and worth every penny. Honestly, I prefer LightRoom, but it’s over £200 more expensive, so I’ll learn to like Aperture.
This is a great deal for consumers, but I’m a little worried that such a good application is sold for so little. Will this mean other non-Apple ‘pro’ apps will need to sell for less?
I feel the...
The Kings Speech
From the worst film I’ve ever seem (SATC 2), to a great one. The Kings Speech is brilliant, if you haven’t already seen it, get it seen.
SATC 2
Saw Sex and the City 2 over the weekend, I was curious to see if it was as bad the reviews made out. Long story short, yes, it is, in fact, it’s worse.
I’m not going to rant about it, but it’s truly atrocious, the worst film I’ve ever seen, I’m serious.
It’s about four self important characters whose idea of nightmare situation is having to fly back from a...
Receipt Validation
Daring Fireball says this of apps that don’t validate App Store receipts and thus can be ‘bootlegged’
Apple should test for this in the review process, and reject paid apps that are susceptible to this simple technique.
Why? If a developer wants his or her app to be easily run on multiple machines, why shouldn’t they be allowed to?
It’s not the place of Apple...
Use Screen Sharing
If you like VNC, like me, then use the built-in ‘Screen Sharing’ feature on OSX, it’s way, way faster then my old client ‘Chicken of the VNC’. It also seems to work much better, ‘hover events’ like going to the bottom of the screen to bring up the dock work great, it never really did with ‘Chicken’.
Playback with PS3
Just been trying Playback from Yazsoft, it’s very good, and they are pretty much giving it away at £11 (around $18?).
I had a small amount of unreliability at first, but it seems fine now, I was also fiddling with ‘Rivet’ (seems a bit slow at generating thumbnails) at the time, so that may have been the problem, also, restarting my PS3 solved it, I never had to restart...
December 2010
2 posts
More Airport Extreme
I came home a few days ago to see the orange blinking light on my Airport Extreme box, that was too good to last I thought, expecting some grief getting it going again.
As I woke up my laptop, it became apparent the Wifi was still working, “odd” I thought, then the Airport Utility booted all by itself to inform me an update was available and I should install it, which I did. Once I...
Airport Extreme
Just got myself an Airport Extreme Wifi box, to replace my increasingly unreliable Linksys one.
The setup was amazing, with most routers etc…, you are stuck trying to find a web page and finding what the default password is, and the Linksys one barely worked anyway. The Airport Extreme is a different class, it’s setup using the ‘Airport Utility’, and it took me a few...
November 2010
1 post
Relais Bourgondisch Cruyce Hotel (Bruges)
Just got back from a weekend in Bruges (Belgium). Bruges is lovely and I’d definitely go back.
We stayed at the Relais Bourgondisch Cruyce hotel, it’s the hotel used in the film ‘In Bruges’, which is the main reason we chose that hotel (that and TripAdvisor rates it highly)
First off, the hotel is in an awesome location, one of the best in Bruges, and the staff are...
September 2010
4 posts
fuckyeahstreetlights →
Hurts
Really good album, some people compare them to the Pet Shop Boys, but don’t let that put you off, the similarity is quite superficial. Give it go, there isn’t really a bad song on the album.
Sony NEX 5 : a few comments
So I sold my Lumix GF-1, just didn’t like it, great camera, but using manual focus lenses was a bit of a chore.
I bought an NEX-5 as a replacement, I’ve not had it long, so I can’t comment on it’s long term use, but here is what I think so far…
The UI is actually pretty good, people criticize it’s screen based interface, but I leave it in aperture priority all...
Brandon Flowers : Flamingo
Not sure why this album isn’t getting better reviews, it’s pretty damn good, a lot of songs remind me of Dire Straits and Fleetwood Mac, and that can only be a good thing.
Got it from Amazon MP3 for £3.99, crazy price.
August 2010
2 posts
Apple Magic Trackpad
So I bought an Apple Magic Trackpad. I prefer a trackpad to a mouse in many circumstances, on my laptop, my fingers don’t have to go far to the trackpad from the keyboard, on my desktop, I wanted the same experience.
My impression so far…
The Good
It’s great, got used to it almost right away, and prefer it to my mouse. It looks great, and it’s wireless, which is also...
The blinking red light
I’m a Blackberry user, used to be an iPhone guy, but the red light got me.
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/08/04/red-light
The short article above questions it as a killer feature, but it totally is, think about it this way…
If you had two personal assistants, and had to make one of them redundant, would you get rid of the one who told you the moment a message came it, and...
July 2010
1 post
Postbox - It's pretty awesome
I’ve been using Postbox (http://www.postbox-inc.com/) for the past couple of months, and I have to say, it’s pretty damn good.
We use Google Mail for The Escapers, which is great, very reliable and all that, but **** it’s so SLOW. It’s not a Gmail thing really, it’s most websites, the web ain’t ready for complex apps like email yet, or at least, they will...
June 2010
2 posts
Quick Restaurant Review : Perrottas at The Gallery
First thing, this place is in Cairns, Australia, so you either need to live in Queensland, or put a lot of faith in my reviews and go there specially.
Perrottas at The Gallery is a place I stumbled upon in Cairns, amongst the ‘Hungry Jacks’ (Burger King to most of the world), and McDonalds. It’s situated outside an art gallery, outdoors, but in Cairns this is fine, as it’s...