Latest Blog Posts
15 August 2008 iPhone 3G: It's the little things...
In my last post about my new shiny gadget, I pretty much pointed out reasons why you wouldn’t want to buy an iPhone 3G. I’ve now had it for just over a month and I’m still loving it. But why?
It’s so easy to take the iPhone for granted. Tasks like browsing the web, sending and receiving emails, writing text messages, taking photos and (this next one is shocking, I know) actually making phone calls are all relatively painless and can be done without having to trawl through various menu options on a tiny keypad or remember shortcut keys. But here are a few small features which have made me realise how much I appreciate all the little things the iPhone does. (Disclaimer: These features may also be available in other handsets but my old Nokia N73 didn’t have them.)
Corrective predictive text
Predictive text on most phones is pretty good. But if you accidentally press the wrong key, your phone is never going to be able to spell that word properly. Thankfully, the iPhone also guesses what you were trying to spell. This is especially useful given that there’s no tactile feedback when pressing the keys, so it’s quite easy to hit the wrong one by mistake.
It’s not perfect by any means but it definitely saves me time when sending text messages.
One number, many contacts, no problem
Back in the old days when mobile phone address books just stored a single phone number against contacts, I used to have separate entries for e.g. ‘Jack’ (mobile), ‘Jill’ (mobile) and then ‘Jack and Jill’ (home). Then when mobiles started to allow multiple details to be stored against each person, I split them out so that Jack and Jill’s home number would be stored against each of their individual entries, meaning I had ‘Jack’ (mobile), ‘Jack’ (home), ‘Jill’ (mobile) and ‘Jill’ (home).
Of course, if someone called me from Jack and Jill’s home number, the phone wouldn’t know which contact it was so it would simply display the number which is completely unhelpful. What does the iPhone do in this situation? It tells me that Jack Spratt or Jill Hill is calling!
Furthermore, if they have the same surname, it just tells me Jack or Jill Hill is calling:
It starts to cheat a bit after that though:
This is such a simple enhancement but it impressed me when I first saw it.
Integration with my Garmin nüvi 610T sat-nav
My Garmin has built-in Bluetooth for hands-free calling. With my N73 hooked up, I had to manually dial the numbers I wanted to call from the sat-nav. Hardly hands-free calling. But with my iPhone, the Garmin can access my entire address book and recently dialled numbers, making it much easier to make calls.
Headphone-related niceties
Using the supplied headphones, you can pause and skip tracks. So if you want to listen to the real world around you or skip an awful album track, you don’t need to dig your iPhone out of your pocket.
If you’ve got music playing and you remove the headphones from the iPhone, your music is automatically paused. This is good because it means you don’t have to wake your iPod and stop it manually, and you don’t risk annoying others around you like you would if your music continued to play through the speakers. On a related note, if you do choose to play the music through the speakers, you’ll see that the iPhone has different volume levels for headphones and speakers. This is such an obvious feature but not all devices do this.
I’m sure there are lots more features I’ve forgotten about too. Whenever I come across one in future, I’ll try to remember to make a note (on my iPhone, natch).
If you’ve got an iPhone, which thoughtful features do you think makes it stand out from other handsets? Or are there any features that are annoying the hell out of you?
It’s so easy to take the iPhone for granted. Tasks like browsing the web, sending and receiving emails, writing text messages, taking photos and (this next one is shocking, I know) actually making phone calls are all relatively painless and can be done without having to trawl through various menu options on a tiny keypad or remember shortcut keys. But here are a few small features which have made me realise how much I appreciate all the little things the iPhone does. (Disclaimer: These features may also be available in other handsets but my old Nokia N73 didn’t have them.)
Corrective predictive text
Predictive text on most phones is pretty good. But if you accidentally press the wrong key, your phone is never going to be able to spell that word properly. Thankfully, the iPhone also guesses what you were trying to spell. This is especially useful given that there’s no tactile feedback when pressing the keys, so it’s quite easy to hit the wrong one by mistake.
It’s not perfect by any means but it definitely saves me time when sending text messages.
One number, many contacts, no problem
Back in the old days when mobile phone address books just stored a single phone number against contacts, I used to have separate entries for e.g. ‘Jack’ (mobile), ‘Jill’ (mobile) and then ‘Jack and Jill’ (home). Then when mobiles started to allow multiple details to be stored against each person, I split them out so that Jack and Jill’s home number would be stored against each of their individual entries, meaning I had ‘Jack’ (mobile), ‘Jack’ (home), ‘Jill’ (mobile) and ‘Jill’ (home).
Of course, if someone called me from Jack and Jill’s home number, the phone wouldn’t know which contact it was so it would simply display the number which is completely unhelpful. What does the iPhone do in this situation? It tells me that Jack Spratt or Jill Hill is calling!
Furthermore, if they have the same surname, it just tells me Jack or Jill Hill is calling:
It starts to cheat a bit after that though:
This is such a simple enhancement but it impressed me when I first saw it.
Integration with my Garmin nüvi 610T sat-nav
My Garmin has built-in Bluetooth for hands-free calling. With my N73 hooked up, I had to manually dial the numbers I wanted to call from the sat-nav. Hardly hands-free calling. But with my iPhone, the Garmin can access my entire address book and recently dialled numbers, making it much easier to make calls.
Headphone-related niceties
Using the supplied headphones, you can pause and skip tracks. So if you want to listen to the real world around you or skip an awful album track, you don’t need to dig your iPhone out of your pocket.
If you’ve got music playing and you remove the headphones from the iPhone, your music is automatically paused. This is good because it means you don’t have to wake your iPod and stop it manually, and you don’t risk annoying others around you like you would if your music continued to play through the speakers. On a related note, if you do choose to play the music through the speakers, you’ll see that the iPhone has different volume levels for headphones and speakers. This is such an obvious feature but not all devices do this.
I’m sure there are lots more features I’ve forgotten about too. Whenever I come across one in future, I’ll try to remember to make a note (on my iPhone, natch).
If you’ve got an iPhone, which thoughtful features do you think makes it stand out from other handsets? Or are there any features that are annoying the hell out of you?
21 July 2008 iPhone 3G: One Week Later
When the iPhone 3G was announced on 9th June, I was immediately convinced that I was going to get one. Then I realised it still had a crap camera, no MMS and would probably cost me an arm and a leg. And then I changed my mind again just last week and ended up queuing outside an O2 store in Sheffield on Friday, eagerly awaiting their 08:02 opening and the launch of the iPhone 3G in the UK. (Queuing was actually pointless as the store quickly ran out of its stock of just ten iPhones, but I was luckily given a tip-off at lunch time and managed to get one from another store.)
Anyway, I’ve now been using the phone for just over a week, so I thought I’d post some of my early and honest observations. I’m likely to go on a bit, so don’t read this on your iPhone because your battery will be dead by the time you’ve finished... ;-)
First impressions
It’s slick, easy to use, has a really smooth user interface, has some great features and, perhaps most importantly, it’s shiny! However, it does lack some features that many other phones have. And I’m not talking about a one billion megapixel camera (because the camera produces really good, sharp pictures), voice calling (who uses that?) or MMS (because I can live with using email instead); I’m talking about different profiles (e.g. silent, sleeping, work, meeting), the ability to delete individual text messages, display how many characters are remaining when sending an SMS to someone and other little things like that – but the innovative features definitely outweigh all these minor annoyances and these are all things that may still (hopefully) be added in future software upgrades.
App problems after first sync
Putting aside all the initial problems of getting my phone line activated with O2 and then activating the handset through iTunes, I was pretty happy with my new phone’s capabilities after playing with the App Store and downloading a few free applications. (If you’re interested: iPint, Alarm Free, Banner Free, BubbleWrap, TapTap Revenge, Facebook, Shazam and Midomi.) The problems came when I synced my iPhone with iTunes for the first time.
I don’t know whether the problem occurred because I had originally activated my iPhone on a different computer, but after syncing with my main desktop PC none of the apps I’d downloaded to my iPhone would work. Each time I clicked one of the icons, it opened the app for a second or two and then immediately closed it down again. After removing them from the iPhone and re-syncing, everything worked fine though.
Contact syncing issues
Given that my old Nokia N73 made a complete mess of my Outlook contacts when I tried to synchroise them, I decided to enter all my contacts into my iPhone manually with the intention of syncing them with either Outlook or my Google Contacts later. Last night, I decided to sync them back to a folder in Outlook (since my Google Contacts are a real mess due to all the times Gmail added people to my contacts just because I’d emailed them a couple of times). Oddly, not all of my contacts were transferred to Outlook. They were literally nowhere to be seen. I deselected the folder in iTunes, removed all my contacts and tried again. This time, iTunes managed to copy all my original contacts from Outlook to my iPhone – despite still not being able to see them all in Outlook!
After much confusion and experimentation with various configurations, I somehow managed to wipe all my contacts from my iPhone apart from the few that I could see in Outlook. So I then tried to sync with Google Contacts just to see what that would do. This was a complete waste of time because it synced all my Google Contacts, including the new “Suggested Contacts” groups which seems to include everyone I’ve ever emailed!
In the end, I decided to export a spreadsheet from Outlook based on my old N73 contacts, clean them up a bit and import them back into Outlook before syncing again. So far, everything looks good but this should have been so much easier! Things weren’t helped by the fact that iTunes has no contacts manager of its own which allows me to select which contacts to import (like it does for tunes and podcasts).
Something else I’ve noticed is that my contacts list can be pretty slow loading at times, although it does seem quicker when accessed through the Phone icon rather than the Contacts icon.
Visual Voicemail setup problems
Since I was porting my old mobile number across to O2, I waited until this had been done before I tried to setup my visual voicemail. After following the on-screen instructions, entering my chosen password and failing to save my greeting several times (the last step in the process would just keep reloading the page) I decided to phone O2 Customer Services. They suggested dialing 1750 to switch on Visual Voicemail (which I’d already done), switching it off and on again by dialing 1760 and then 1750 (which I’d already done) and even suggested a full software restore (which I had done before trying to setup it up for the first time). After being passed through two iPhone specialists, they decided I had a faulty handset and would need to return it. However, before I managed to hang up they suggested that I could dial 901 just to prove to myself that my voicemail was up and running. And guess what. Dialing 901 asked me to choose a password and record a greeting, after which my Visual Voicemail worked fine!
Actually, one further problem was that when I accessed my voicemail and selected a message, my screen was going black. After a few quick tests, it seemed this was due to my screen protector interfering with the proximity sensor. As a quick solution, I got my hole-punch and made three holes in the protector to line up with the light and proximity sensors which means everything now works fine! (And it doesn’t look as bad as it sounds either because you can’t see the holes for the case.)
3G and battery life
When the original iPhone was announced, many UK and European users were puzzled why the handset didn’t have 3G. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last year, Steve Jobs basically said that they didn’t include 3G because the chipsets were too big and would drain the iPhone’s battery too quickly. I seem to remember people all over the world complaining about this, demanding that Apple should let its users make that decision for themselves. This time around, Apple added 3G and many users are choosing to switch it off to gain more battery life.
My last phone had 3G, and moving from a 3G device to a non-3G device would obviously be a step backwards for me, so I had no intention of buying the original iPhone whatsoever. Of course, the irony is that now I’ve got an iPhone 3G, I’m using it with 3G switched off most of the time in order to save battery life! Generally speaking, I don’t even notice the speed difference though. The websites I use a lot while I’m on the move – like Google Reader, Facebook and FF To Go – have all been optimized to make them fast to download on mobile devices (including the many first generation iPhones without 3G).
The main problem with the iPhone is that it’s such a great mobile device that you want to play with it all the time, and that obviously means the battery isn’t going to last very long!
If I discover anything else about the iPhone which I fancy sharing, I’ll be sure to make a short post about it straight away, instead of making one massive post like this each month, which is what I seem to have been doing recently...
[Image courtesy of Apple.]
Anyway, I’ve now been using the phone for just over a week, so I thought I’d post some of my early and honest observations. I’m likely to go on a bit, so don’t read this on your iPhone because your battery will be dead by the time you’ve finished... ;-)First impressions
It’s slick, easy to use, has a really smooth user interface, has some great features and, perhaps most importantly, it’s shiny! However, it does lack some features that many other phones have. And I’m not talking about a one billion megapixel camera (because the camera produces really good, sharp pictures), voice calling (who uses that?) or MMS (because I can live with using email instead); I’m talking about different profiles (e.g. silent, sleeping, work, meeting), the ability to delete individual text messages, display how many characters are remaining when sending an SMS to someone and other little things like that – but the innovative features definitely outweigh all these minor annoyances and these are all things that may still (hopefully) be added in future software upgrades.
App problems after first sync
Putting aside all the initial problems of getting my phone line activated with O2 and then activating the handset through iTunes, I was pretty happy with my new phone’s capabilities after playing with the App Store and downloading a few free applications. (If you’re interested: iPint, Alarm Free, Banner Free, BubbleWrap, TapTap Revenge, Facebook, Shazam and Midomi.) The problems came when I synced my iPhone with iTunes for the first time.
I don’t know whether the problem occurred because I had originally activated my iPhone on a different computer, but after syncing with my main desktop PC none of the apps I’d downloaded to my iPhone would work. Each time I clicked one of the icons, it opened the app for a second or two and then immediately closed it down again. After removing them from the iPhone and re-syncing, everything worked fine though.
Contact syncing issues
Given that my old Nokia N73 made a complete mess of my Outlook contacts when I tried to synchroise them, I decided to enter all my contacts into my iPhone manually with the intention of syncing them with either Outlook or my Google Contacts later. Last night, I decided to sync them back to a folder in Outlook (since my Google Contacts are a real mess due to all the times Gmail added people to my contacts just because I’d emailed them a couple of times). Oddly, not all of my contacts were transferred to Outlook. They were literally nowhere to be seen. I deselected the folder in iTunes, removed all my contacts and tried again. This time, iTunes managed to copy all my original contacts from Outlook to my iPhone – despite still not being able to see them all in Outlook!
After much confusion and experimentation with various configurations, I somehow managed to wipe all my contacts from my iPhone apart from the few that I could see in Outlook. So I then tried to sync with Google Contacts just to see what that would do. This was a complete waste of time because it synced all my Google Contacts, including the new “Suggested Contacts” groups which seems to include everyone I’ve ever emailed!
In the end, I decided to export a spreadsheet from Outlook based on my old N73 contacts, clean them up a bit and import them back into Outlook before syncing again. So far, everything looks good but this should have been so much easier! Things weren’t helped by the fact that iTunes has no contacts manager of its own which allows me to select which contacts to import (like it does for tunes and podcasts).
Something else I’ve noticed is that my contacts list can be pretty slow loading at times, although it does seem quicker when accessed through the Phone icon rather than the Contacts icon.
Visual Voicemail setup problems
Since I was porting my old mobile number across to O2, I waited until this had been done before I tried to setup my visual voicemail. After following the on-screen instructions, entering my chosen password and failing to save my greeting several times (the last step in the process would just keep reloading the page) I decided to phone O2 Customer Services. They suggested dialing 1750 to switch on Visual Voicemail (which I’d already done), switching it off and on again by dialing 1760 and then 1750 (which I’d already done) and even suggested a full software restore (which I had done before trying to setup it up for the first time). After being passed through two iPhone specialists, they decided I had a faulty handset and would need to return it. However, before I managed to hang up they suggested that I could dial 901 just to prove to myself that my voicemail was up and running. And guess what. Dialing 901 asked me to choose a password and record a greeting, after which my Visual Voicemail worked fine!
Actually, one further problem was that when I accessed my voicemail and selected a message, my screen was going black. After a few quick tests, it seemed this was due to my screen protector interfering with the proximity sensor. As a quick solution, I got my hole-punch and made three holes in the protector to line up with the light and proximity sensors which means everything now works fine! (And it doesn’t look as bad as it sounds either because you can’t see the holes for the case.)
3G and battery life
When the original iPhone was announced, many UK and European users were puzzled why the handset didn’t have 3G. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last year, Steve Jobs basically said that they didn’t include 3G because the chipsets were too big and would drain the iPhone’s battery too quickly. I seem to remember people all over the world complaining about this, demanding that Apple should let its users make that decision for themselves. This time around, Apple added 3G and many users are choosing to switch it off to gain more battery life.
My last phone had 3G, and moving from a 3G device to a non-3G device would obviously be a step backwards for me, so I had no intention of buying the original iPhone whatsoever. Of course, the irony is that now I’ve got an iPhone 3G, I’m using it with 3G switched off most of the time in order to save battery life! Generally speaking, I don’t even notice the speed difference though. The websites I use a lot while I’m on the move – like Google Reader, Facebook and FF To Go – have all been optimized to make them fast to download on mobile devices (including the many first generation iPhones without 3G).
The main problem with the iPhone is that it’s such a great mobile device that you want to play with it all the time, and that obviously means the battery isn’t going to last very long!
If I discover anything else about the iPhone which I fancy sharing, I’ll be sure to make a short post about it straight away, instead of making one massive post like this each month, which is what I seem to have been doing recently...
[Image courtesy of Apple.]
14 January 2008 Mor Brane Traineing?
For Christmas, Suzy got More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima: How Old is Your Brain for her Nintendo DS. I’ve been playing it a little bit to see whether I’ve managed to maintain my “brain age” of 20, which is the best score you can get and what I achieved on the last version. (I’m currently scoring the same as my real age, so that’s pretty good given that my brain’s probably a bit out of practice.)
Anyway, one of the new games to help train your brain is Word Blend. Several words are played simultaneously through the speaker and you then have to write on the screen what you heard, testing your hearing and spelling abilities. After several failed attempts to write down one of the words I heard the other day, I finally gave up. And what did it say the answer was?
TOMATOE
How can I ever trust Dr Kawashima again?!
Anyway, one of the new games to help train your brain is Word Blend. Several words are played simultaneously through the speaker and you then have to write on the screen what you heard, testing your hearing and spelling abilities. After several failed attempts to write down one of the words I heard the other day, I finally gave up. And what did it say the answer was?
TOMATOE
How can I ever trust Dr Kawashima again?!
06 September 2007 iPod touch is phat. iPod nano is fat.
I have to say that the iPod touch is one shiny new sexy gadget I’m going to have to try my hardest to resist. I got my 8GB second generation iPod nano less than a year ago and I’m really happy with it, so I can’t really justify spending £199 on another 8GB player. (I guess I’ll just have to spend £269 on the 16GB version instead...)
But that’s not what I wanted to rant about. This is what I wanted to rant about: iPod touch’s fat little brother...
My iPod nano looks slim and sexy, but the screen is tiny and it can’t play video. Apple understandably had to do something about that, so they made this one a bit wider and shorter. And now it looks like the little fatty of the family!
So, with a bit of photoshopping, I given that fat little iPod nano a quick tummy tuck by moving the Click Wheel. People don’t need to see the Click Wheel in order to use it, so why not make the device smaller by moving it to the back? (There might need to be an option to flip the functionality of the Click Wheel though, as it should probably work the opposite way around with it being on the back, but some people inevitably wouldn’t be able to get the hang of it.)
Now doesn’t that look better? I’m no electronics expert, so I don’t know how difficult this would have been to put in to production, but Apple have proved in the past that virtually anything is possible when it comes to them cramming advanced technology into slick designs. I realise there are probably some issues with the physical size of batteries and memory chips, but they could probably have worked around that by making it a bit deeper.
What do you think? Would you buy a fatso iPod nano? Would you buy one of these? Would you like to buy me a 16GB iPod touch?
[Original images from Apple.]
But that’s not what I wanted to rant about. This is what I wanted to rant about: iPod touch’s fat little brother...
So, with a bit of photoshopping, I given that fat little iPod nano a quick tummy tuck by moving the Click Wheel. People don’t need to see the Click Wheel in order to use it, so why not make the device smaller by moving it to the back? (There might need to be an option to flip the functionality of the Click Wheel though, as it should probably work the opposite way around with it being on the back, but some people inevitably wouldn’t be able to get the hang of it.)
This design would be a neat first step towards the interface in Apple’s patent for Back-Side Interface for Hand-Held Devices – brought to our attention by Unwired View earlier this year – which consists of an active touchpanel covering the entire reverse side of the iPod that can be used to control the device.
What do you think? Would you buy a fatso iPod nano? Would you buy one of these? Would you like to buy me a 16GB iPod touch?
[Original images from Apple.]
03 August 2007 Time Machines to be Available in 2008
No, the TARDIS isn’t going into mass production just yet. I’m talking about the other time machine.
The DeLorean
Soon we’ll all be driving around at 88 MPH pretending we’re the Doc!
Gizmodo is reporting that the DeLorean Motor Company in Houston, Texas is going to start rolling new DeLoreans off the production line in 2008.
The company currently charges $42,500 (around £21,000) for what they call a “remanufactured” DeLorean, so I expect they’re going to be charging quite a bit more for a completely new one – especially since they’ll only be producing around 20 each year.
I just hope they’ll make a Back To The Future special edition with a flux capacitor, Mr Fusion and flying capabilities that’s within my price range!
Soon we’ll all be driving around at 88 MPH pretending we’re the Doc!
Gizmodo is reporting that the DeLorean Motor Company in Houston, Texas is going to start rolling new DeLoreans off the production line in 2008.
The company currently charges $42,500 (around £21,000) for what they call a “remanufactured” DeLorean, so I expect they’re going to be charging quite a bit more for a completely new one – especially since they’ll only be producing around 20 each year.
I just hope they’ll make a Back To The Future special edition with a flux capacitor, Mr Fusion and flying capabilities that’s within my price range!
24 July 2007 Status Update
Things have been a bit slack on this blog recently. To be honest, I’d almost forgotten I even had a blog until I read this status update on Facebook around a week ago:
For those who haven’t been reading my status updates on Facebook, here’s a summary of what I’ve been doing since my last post:Christian is thinking that people should be updating their blogs rather than concentrating on Facebook.
Tony is happy with the new TV he bought, which is like this but the 32” version.
Tony is loving playing Raving Rabbids on the Wii.
Tony is liking Black Rebel Motorcycle Club after going to their gig at the Leadmill.
Tony is dry after getting soaked while watching the athletics Grand Prix at Don Valley.
Tony is slightly better at golf after playing in the SDL Open 2007.
Tony is watching quite a bit of Big Brother.
Tony is enjoying the BBC series of Jekyll.
Tony is going to watch Arctic Monkeys, Little Man Tate, The Kooks, Editors, Ash, The Pigeon Detectives and Kaiser Chiefs between now and the end of the year.
Tony is referring to himself in the third person all the time because of Facebook!!!
14 May 2007 We Wii? Oui!
Ah yes... I forgot to tell you all that I’m now the proud owner of a stupidly named Nintendo Wii.
A few weeks ago, this article dropped into Google Reader confirming that Guitar Hero III would be available for the Wii later this year. The mention of downloadable tracks and online play immediately sold the console to me! I’d already decided a while back that I needed a new gadget but, like many others, I didn’t fancy spending £425 on a PS3, so the Wii was now the obvious choice. In fact, I actually had some change left over after I sensibly sold my Xbox and PSP since I’d not played on either for months. (I’d also heard a rumour that Sony was going to drop the list price for PSPs soon so decided to get rid of mine sooner rather than later while it was still worth more than a tenner...)
However, little did I know how difficult it was to actually find a Wii to buy! Luckily for me, I know people. And we all know that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. So when an Argos store in Hull got two delivered, one of them had my name on it!
What’s so good about the Wii?
I guess the controller’s the obvious thing to mention. Waving your arms around not only makes games more interesting, but it helps to keep you fit and seems to amuse anyone who might be watching you through your lounge window too. Wii Sports and Wii Play are both ideal games for learning how to use the remote in different ways. The graphics might not be breathtaking but who really cares? It’s backwards compatible with the Nintendo GameCube (not that it matters to me) and you can also buy points to download old NES, SNES, N64, Sega Mega Drive and PC games for it. If that’s not enough, you can also browse the Internet (the Opera-powered Internet Channel software is free at the moment) and the Google Reader team have even launched an interface especially for the Wii!
And there’s more... If any of your friends have a Wii, you can add their Wii number to your contacts and watch their Mii mingle with yours. Since Christian managed to find a Wii, we’ve now got Mr and Mrs Briddon wandering around our TV screen in the Mii Parade.
Seriously, geeks have never had so much fun!
[Image from Wii.Nintendo.com.]
A few weeks ago, this article dropped into Google Reader confirming that Guitar Hero III would be available for the Wii later this year. The mention of downloadable tracks and online play immediately sold the console to me! I’d already decided a while back that I needed a new gadget but, like many others, I didn’t fancy spending £425 on a PS3, so the Wii was now the obvious choice. In fact, I actually had some change left over after I sensibly sold my Xbox and PSP since I’d not played on either for months. (I’d also heard a rumour that Sony was going to drop the list price for PSPs soon so decided to get rid of mine sooner rather than later while it was still worth more than a tenner...)
However, little did I know how difficult it was to actually find a Wii to buy! Luckily for me, I know people. And we all know that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. So when an Argos store in Hull got two delivered, one of them had my name on it!
What’s so good about the Wii?
I guess the controller’s the obvious thing to mention. Waving your arms around not only makes games more interesting, but it helps to keep you fit and seems to amuse anyone who might be watching you through your lounge window too. Wii Sports and Wii Play are both ideal games for learning how to use the remote in different ways. The graphics might not be breathtaking but who really cares? It’s backwards compatible with the Nintendo GameCube (not that it matters to me) and you can also buy points to download old NES, SNES, N64, Sega Mega Drive and PC games for it. If that’s not enough, you can also browse the Internet (the Opera-powered Internet Channel software is free at the moment) and the Google Reader team have even launched an interface especially for the Wii!And there’s more... If any of your friends have a Wii, you can add their Wii number to your contacts and watch their Mii mingle with yours. Since Christian managed to find a Wii, we’ve now got Mr and Mrs Briddon wandering around our TV screen in the Mii Parade.
Seriously, geeks have never had so much fun!
[Image from Wii.Nintendo.com.]
12 April 2007 Humax PVR-9200T
It’s taken well over a year, but last week we finally made up our minds and purchased a Humax PVR-9200T.
Goodbye E180 VHS tapes; Hello 160GB HDD!
Coco Riley got his back in December 2005 when it was reasonably new technology and apparently the best PVR available in the UK. I figured I’d sit back and wait for a better, cheaper model to come along – but 15 months passed and I was still left waiting!
Luckily, a couple of weeks ago, I got a tip-off from the elusive blog commenter known as “S Crayon” telling me to buy it from Hughes Direct’s Which? associated website – www.which.hughesdirect.co.uk – where you can get several pounds off their already-reasonable prices. He’d just bought one from there after consulting the Digital Spy forums. When I bought it on Sunday, it cost me £170.99 plus £6 P&P. Today it’s going for £163.90! And whilst I was a little worried because I hadn’t received an order confirmation email, it arrived today, just as promised.
If you buy one and think the front panel is scratched, it probably isn’t. When I took the thing out of its box at work today, Lister asked whether it was a reconditioned model because the front panel didn’t appear to be covered in any protective film and seemed to have quite a few tiny scratches on it. Having ordered a new one, I was a bit disappointed and started to search for Hughes Direct’s customer services phone number. And then I spotted this description next to the product:
I’ve only used it for a couple of hours tonight but I’m very happy with it. Not only does it give me loads features than my old Freeview box and VCR put together, but the picture quality and signal also seems to be much, much better. With our old Philips Freeview box, half our channels would cease to work at around 8PM every night and we never found out why (presumably some interference from some electrical equipment somewhere) but we’ve not had any problems at all with this box tonight!
“S Crayon” also tells me that there’s a software update due for it very soon that will add Series Link functionality like Sky+ and a stored EPG instead of loading it every time you switch the box on. This thing just gets better and betterer!
If you’re looking for more comments and opinions, read these posts by Coco Riley:My only grumble? I should have bought one 15 months ago!
Goodbye E180 VHS tapes; Hello 160GB HDD!
Coco Riley got his back in December 2005 when it was reasonably new technology and apparently the best PVR available in the UK. I figured I’d sit back and wait for a better, cheaper model to come along – but 15 months passed and I was still left waiting!
Luckily, a couple of weeks ago, I got a tip-off from the elusive blog commenter known as “S Crayon” telling me to buy it from Hughes Direct’s Which? associated website – www.which.hughesdirect.co.uk – where you can get several pounds off their already-reasonable prices. He’d just bought one from there after consulting the Digital Spy forums. When I bought it on Sunday, it cost me £170.99 plus £6 P&P. Today it’s going for £163.90! And whilst I was a little worried because I hadn’t received an order confirmation email, it arrived today, just as promised.
If you buy one and think the front panel is scratched, it probably isn’t. When I took the thing out of its box at work today, Lister asked whether it was a reconditioned model because the front panel didn’t appear to be covered in any protective film and seemed to have quite a few tiny scratches on it. Having ordered a new one, I was a bit disappointed and started to search for Hughes Direct’s customer services phone number. And then I spotted this description next to the product:
I’ve no idea what “to preve” means but managed to work out they were trying to tell me something. I guess they’ve had a lot of customers complain about the front panel being scratched, only to find that it does have a very inconspicuous “protective film to preve” after all!Freeview Twin Digital 160gb HDD recorder. The front has protective film to preve
I’ve only used it for a couple of hours tonight but I’m very happy with it. Not only does it give me loads features than my old Freeview box and VCR put together, but the picture quality and signal also seems to be much, much better. With our old Philips Freeview box, half our channels would cease to work at around 8PM every night and we never found out why (presumably some interference from some electrical equipment somewhere) but we’ve not had any problems at all with this box tonight!
“S Crayon” also tells me that there’s a software update due for it very soon that will add Series Link functionality like Sky+ and a stored EPG instead of loading it every time you switch the box on. This thing just gets better and betterer!
If you’re looking for more comments and opinions, read these posts by Coco Riley:My only grumble? I should have bought one 15 months ago!
06 February 2007 Screwed by Digital Rights Management
Seriously. WTF is going on with the music industry these days? A few years ago I decided to ‘go straight’ and stop copying CDs from my mates and give up downloading music ‘for free’ from the Internet completely. I decided that if I wanted a CD, I would buy it. And I’ve been doing that successfully for quite a few years now. But then the digital age forced itself upon us...
Last year, I bought myself an 8GB iPod nano and ripped all my CDs to it – all of which were originals and legally mine. I actually don’t know whether ripping CDs like that is legal or not, and nor do I care, but it’s not immoral and that’s what counts (your honour).
For one of my Christmas presents, I got an iTunes Music Voucher to buy some tracks that are only available through iTunes. I purchased and downloaded them without any problems but was slightly peeved that I had to “authorise” my computer to play them. I figured that I could probably live with that though and burnt a copy to CD just in case I should ever wish to play the songs I’ve purchased on another player.
And that was my first experience of Digital Rights Management. It wasn’t too bad. I’d heard so many people moaning about it but really didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. It seemed fair enough to me. Until tonight...
When I got my new phone in December, part of my contract gives me £5 worth of free downloads each month. The great thing about the 3 Music Store is that when you purchase and download tracks to your mobile, you can also download them to your PC at no extra cost. That’s good because I don’t want to listen to music on my mobile; I have an iPod for that purpose. The problem? The tracks you download to your PC are DRM-protected WMA files. From the 3 Music Store FAQ:
Anyway, here’s where the music industry, the record companies, Microsoft, 3 and DRM all get together and screw me over. The first time I tried to burn the CD, it failed. I was trying to use some old blank CDs and figured I was trying to burn too fast. So I tried again at a slower speed. Still no luck. So I tried again in my other CD drive. That didn’t work either. Having finally found some better quality CDs, I thought I’d give it one more try with an old disc in the 2nd drive on the slowest speed possible. Surely that would work, right? Nope! Because I’m only allowed to try and burn the tracks to a CD three times!!!
What sort of craziness is that? Even though I legally purchased and downloaded that music, and was only trying to listen to it on my preferred music device, I am now only able to listen to it either through the crappy, tinny stereo speakers on my mobile phone or through my PC speakers. I honestly feel like I’ve been put into a virtual prison for a crime that I didn’t commit!
Tell me, is it really worth trying to play fair by supporting musicians through purchasing their music in this digital age when the record companies are punishing the innocent like this?
Last year, I bought myself an 8GB iPod nano and ripped all my CDs to it – all of which were originals and legally mine. I actually don’t know whether ripping CDs like that is legal or not, and nor do I care, but it’s not immoral and that’s what counts (your honour).
For one of my Christmas presents, I got an iTunes Music Voucher to buy some tracks that are only available through iTunes. I purchased and downloaded them without any problems but was slightly peeved that I had to “authorise” my computer to play them. I figured that I could probably live with that though and burnt a copy to CD just in case I should ever wish to play the songs I’ve purchased on another player.
And that was my first experience of Digital Rights Management. It wasn’t too bad. I’d heard so many people moaning about it but really didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. It seemed fair enough to me. Until tonight...
When I got my new phone in December, part of my contract gives me £5 worth of free downloads each month. The great thing about the 3 Music Store is that when you purchase and download tracks to your mobile, you can also download them to your PC at no extra cost. That’s good because I don’t want to listen to music on my mobile; I have an iPod for that purpose. The problem? The tracks you download to your PC are DRM-protected WMA files. From the 3 Music Store FAQ:
Just to confirm: even though I have just spent ninety-nine British pence sterling on one three-minute long music track (ignore the fact that it was actually free) they’re trying to tell me that I can’t play it on the device of my choice? No problem. I’ll just burn it to a CD and rip it into an unencrypted format so I can play it on my iPod. (Again, I don’t know whether that’s legal but it’s definitely not immoral... is it?)Is the service compatible with iPod?
No. However, you can transfer your 3MusicPlayer tracks to any mp3 player which supports WMA format. Some third party applications exist for converting WMAs to mp3s but these are not supported or endorsed by 3.
Anyway, here’s where the music industry, the record companies, Microsoft, 3 and DRM all get together and screw me over. The first time I tried to burn the CD, it failed. I was trying to use some old blank CDs and figured I was trying to burn too fast. So I tried again at a slower speed. Still no luck. So I tried again in my other CD drive. That didn’t work either. Having finally found some better quality CDs, I thought I’d give it one more try with an old disc in the 2nd drive on the slowest speed possible. Surely that would work, right? Nope! Because I’m only allowed to try and burn the tracks to a CD three times!!!
What sort of craziness is that? Even though I legally purchased and downloaded that music, and was only trying to listen to it on my preferred music device, I am now only able to listen to it either through the crappy, tinny stereo speakers on my mobile phone or through my PC speakers. I honestly feel like I’ve been put into a virtual prison for a crime that I didn’t commit!
Tell me, is it really worth trying to play fair by supporting musicians through purchasing their music in this digital age when the record companies are punishing the innocent like this?
Labels: gadgets, ipod, microsoft, mobile, music, personal, rant
18 December 2006 New Gadget: Nokia N73
Finally. After around three years of having a crappy old Nokia 6100, I’ve gone and got myself a new phone! And since Orange wouldn’t give me any sort of deal on a handset upgrade, unless I cancelled my contract and started a new one – which would mean me losing my number – I’ve decided to move to the 3 network.
The Nokia N73 is one of their new 3 X-Series handsets, giving me unlimited access to Windows Live Messenger, unlimited Skype to Skype calls, unlimited data transfer, web surfing and mobile mail. Of course, when they say unlimited, they actually mean that it’s limited to fair use, which means some quite reasonable limits are in place. It can also do loads of other fancy shit, like download files from your PC using Orb and let you watch your home TV using a Slingbox.
The phone’s got Yahoo! Go stuff installed all over the place because they’ve got some kind of deal going with 3. Don’t worry though... that doesn’t mean I have to be unfaithful to my Google! I’ve already bookmarked the mobile versions of Google, Gmail and Google Reader. And I’ve also installed the Gmail and Google Maps mobile applications from mobile.google.com rather than mobile.google.co.uk, which only seems to offer Google search if you visit it from your device. I’m just missing Google Talk now. (Anyone know whether or when that is likely to be available?)
To be fair to Yahoo!, I was pleased to see that the phone’s capable of talking to Flickr directly, meaning I can upload the photos that I take with its 3.2 megapixel camera straight to my Flickr account!
Who knows, maybe you’ll see me moblogging (or even movlogging) in 2007!
The Nokia N73 is one of their new 3 X-Series handsets, giving me unlimited access to Windows Live Messenger, unlimited Skype to Skype calls, unlimited data transfer, web surfing and mobile mail. Of course, when they say unlimited, they actually mean that it’s limited to fair use, which means some quite reasonable limits are in place. It can also do loads of other fancy shit, like download files from your PC using Orb and let you watch your home TV using a Slingbox.The phone’s got Yahoo! Go stuff installed all over the place because they’ve got some kind of deal going with 3. Don’t worry though... that doesn’t mean I have to be unfaithful to my Google! I’ve already bookmarked the mobile versions of Google, Gmail and Google Reader. And I’ve also installed the Gmail and Google Maps mobile applications from mobile.google.com rather than mobile.google.co.uk, which only seems to offer Google search if you visit it from your device. I’m just missing Google Talk now. (Anyone know whether or when that is likely to be available?)
To be fair to Yahoo!, I was pleased to see that the phone’s capable of talking to Flickr directly, meaning I can upload the photos that I take with its 3.2 megapixel camera straight to my Flickr account!
Who knows, maybe you’ll see me moblogging (or even movlogging) in 2007!
07 April 2006 Part Time Blogger
As always, Chris is right. I'm a part time blogger! Admittedly, there are a few things that have grabbed my attention over the past couple of weeks that I probably should have blogged about, so I'm going to cover them all now to try and keep him (and you) happy.
1. Chris has already blogged about the stupid (or maybe clever) woman who was in front of me in HMV yesterday lunch time, so there's no need for me to cover that again. What he says is all true so just go and read it on his blog. What he doesn't mention (presumably because I never told him) is why I was in HMV in the first place...
2. I went to HMV to buy a copy of the St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion) single by 80s rock legend John Parr which is being sold in aid of the Help A Hallam Child charity. He agreed to re-release the single after Hallam FM's Big John contacted him and persuaded him to do so. (At least that's what they'll have you believe.) Anyway, in order to make sure that as much money as possible goes to the charity and not to Columbia Pictures (who own the rights to the original recording that featured on the soundtrack to the St. Elmo's Fire film back in 1985), he re-recorded the track from scratch, promising to make it sound as close to the original as possible. And he did a pretty good job. (Even he struggles to tell the difference, apparently!)
3. At this point it's probably worth noting that despite what some people think, Help A Hallam Child doesn't raise money for the poor kids who can't afford to go to a proper university and have to put up with the nearby special needs uni; it's a real charity that helps children who are sick or live in situations of abuse, neglect or deprivation.
4. If you're ever near Torquay in Devon and want some good fish and chips, visit Hanburys Licensed Fish Restaurant & Seafood Takeaway. They are (or once were) one of the top three fish and chip shops in the UK! We ate in their characterful restaurant but I assume you still get the same high-quality food from their takeaway next door.
5. We've finally got a new bathroom (with a proper door so that you've no need to be paranoid about someone peeping through the gap at you).
6. And finally, if you're after a couple of funky gadgets, check out this grass chair and these crazy keyboards. [Via Boing Boing and Chris Chris.]
1. Chris has already blogged about the stupid (or maybe clever) woman who was in front of me in HMV yesterday lunch time, so there's no need for me to cover that again. What he says is all true so just go and read it on his blog. What he doesn't mention (presumably because I never told him) is why I was in HMV in the first place...
2. I went to HMV to buy a copy of the St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion) single by 80s rock legend John Parr which is being sold in aid of the Help A Hallam Child charity. He agreed to re-release the single after Hallam FM's Big John contacted him and persuaded him to do so. (At least that's what they'll have you believe.) Anyway, in order to make sure that as much money as possible goes to the charity and not to Columbia Pictures (who own the rights to the original recording that featured on the soundtrack to the St. Elmo's Fire film back in 1985), he re-recorded the track from scratch, promising to make it sound as close to the original as possible. And he did a pretty good job. (Even he struggles to tell the difference, apparently!)
3. At this point it's probably worth noting that despite what some people think, Help A Hallam Child doesn't raise money for the poor kids who can't afford to go to a proper university and have to put up with the nearby special needs uni; it's a real charity that helps children who are sick or live in situations of abuse, neglect or deprivation.
4. If you're ever near Torquay in Devon and want some good fish and chips, visit Hanburys Licensed Fish Restaurant & Seafood Takeaway. They are (or once were) one of the top three fish and chip shops in the UK! We ate in their characterful restaurant but I assume you still get the same high-quality food from their takeaway next door.
5. We've finally got a new bathroom (with a proper door so that you've no need to be paranoid about someone peeping through the gap at you).
6. And finally, if you're after a couple of funky gadgets, check out this grass chair and these crazy keyboards. [Via Boing Boing and Chris Chris.]
Labels: food, gadgets, links, music, personal, photos, rant, restaurants
23 March 2006 Urinal Consoles
I've had an idea going around the back of my mind for a few years now. I didn't really think it would work, so I've never really pursued it. (Well, that and the fact that I'm too lazy to pursue it...) The idea would be to put a small ball-bearing game in the bottom of a urinal instead of a standard drainage hole. The aim would be to chase the ball around the puzzle using just pee-power. (And you're all sat there wondering why I've not bothered to pursue the idea... I know!)
It's a (perhaps not-so) well-known fact that men can't help but aim at anything that's happened to find its way into a urinal; be it a cigarette butt, a pineapple cube, a pint glass, some drunken student... whatever – we simply cannot help to aim our hose at it and give it a good blast of wee-wee. I've been caught out by some “clever” marketing technique that exploited this idea in the past. A drinks company had placed targets advertising their drink in the urinals, the only problem being that when you actually hit the centre of the target, you got serious splash-back. Thanks for that you clever marketing folk. Well done.
Anyway, there's always someone who takes the simplest of ideas and pushes them to the limit. These On Target urinals designed by Marcel Neundörfer have a pressure-sensitive display screen embedded in them. Not only does this provide entertainment whilst taking a leak, but it also saves on cleaning bills (apparently) as your aim is improved by the game (apparently).
Genius. I want one! But where will it all stop? Hungry Hippos in the bottom of the toilets...?!?
[Via Boing Boing]
It's a (perhaps not-so) well-known fact that men can't help but aim at anything that's happened to find its way into a urinal; be it a cigarette butt, a pineapple cube, a pint glass, some drunken student... whatever – we simply cannot help to aim our hose at it and give it a good blast of wee-wee. I've been caught out by some “clever” marketing technique that exploited this idea in the past. A drinks company had placed targets advertising their drink in the urinals, the only problem being that when you actually hit the centre of the target, you got serious splash-back. Thanks for that you clever marketing folk. Well done.
Anyway, there's always someone who takes the simplest of ideas and pushes them to the limit. These On Target urinals designed by Marcel Neundörfer have a pressure-sensitive display screen embedded in them. Not only does this provide entertainment whilst taking a leak, but it also saves on cleaning bills (apparently) as your aim is improved by the game (apparently).
Genius. I want one! But where will it all stop? Hungry Hippos in the bottom of the toilets...?!?
[Via Boing Boing]
Update: 23 March 2006 (22:31)
And if you're interested in urinal-game-related things, you might also be interested in this You're In Control (Urine Control) project from 2002.
[Also via Boing Boing]
12 January 2006 Video Killed The Radio Star
A long time ago, I used to record Radio 1's UK Top 40 on a Sunday evening using my radio cassette recorder. I could then take the songs everywhere with me on my portable stereo system. (It wasn't made by Sony, so it technically wasn't a Walkman.) Imagine being able to take a full ninety minutes worth of music with you wherever you went! The fact that the UK Top 40 went on for three hours meant you had to edit out Bruno Brookes and cleverly select which songs you wanted to record in advance. Of course, you could always carry more cassettes if you wanted to really go wild... but those days are long gone. You can now store more than 500 times that amount of music on a device that's not much bigger than an old audio cassette. Amazing!
But just carrying music around with you is so 1980s. We want to be taking music videos, full-length feature films and TV series everywhere we go – just like they used to do in the future! Well kids, we're living in the future now...
The other night, I finally learnt how to convert movies and DVDs to a format which would play on both my PSP and Suzy's iPod without purchasing any software. Forget about buying Sony's Image Converter 2 (£13.90) and Apple's Quicktime Pro (£19.99) to convert your movies into a format that your PSP or iPod will recognise. You don't even need to spend money on UMDs that you can only play on your PSP when you've already got the DVD. All you need is DVD Shrink and PSP Video 9. (Yes, despite the name, you can also use this to create videos for your fifth generation iPod Video too.)
DVB Shrink enables you to “backup” your DVDs to your computer (or another DVD), removing any unwanted menus or special features along the way; you can then use PSP Video 9 to convert the movie to a number of formats, depending on what encoding or quality you require. For more instructions on getting your videos onto your PSP, read Getting Started with PSP Video 9. If you're converting your movies for use on your iPod, make sure transcode them using a compatible profile. I used the following:
Once you've transcoded the movie, you should be able to just open iTunes, add the file to your library and update your iPod.
Cheap and easy.
But just carrying music around with you is so 1980s. We want to be taking music videos, full-length feature films and TV series everywhere we go – just like they used to do in the future! Well kids, we're living in the future now...
The other night, I finally learnt how to convert movies and DVDs to a format which would play on both my PSP and Suzy's iPod without purchasing any software. Forget about buying Sony's Image Converter 2 (£13.90) and Apple's Quicktime Pro (£19.99) to convert your movies into a format that your PSP or iPod will recognise. You don't even need to spend money on UMDs that you can only play on your PSP when you've already got the DVD. All you need is DVD Shrink and PSP Video 9. (Yes, despite the name, you can also use this to create videos for your fifth generation iPod Video too.)
DVB Shrink enables you to “backup” your DVDs to your computer (or another DVD), removing any unwanted menus or special features along the way; you can then use PSP Video 9 to convert the movie to a number of formats, depending on what encoding or quality you require. For more instructions on getting your videos onto your PSP, read Getting Started with PSP Video 9. If you're converting your movies for use on your iPod, make sure transcode them using a compatible profile. I used the following:
SP/320x240/29.97fps/768kbps Stereo/128kbpsOnce you've transcoded the movie, you should be able to just open iTunes, add the file to your library and update your iPod.
Cheap and easy.
On a related note, Google recently added PSP support to Google Video. However, if you're getting “Unsupported Data” error messages or having problems viewing the video after you've downloaded it to your PSP, you might want to check that you're:(I've only tried to download a couple of movies from Google Video, so let me know if I'm wrong about any of the above points.)
running firmware 2.00 or above – it seems the PSP downloads on Google Video are in AVC format, which apparently isn't supported in earlier versions
naming the file correctly – i.e.
MAQ10001.MP4– where theMAQ#####.MP4naming convention is used for AVC format movies (and SP format movies useMV4#####.MP4)copying the movie to the right folder - i.e.
E:\MP_ROOT\100ANV01for AVC format (andE:\MP_ROOT\100MNV01for SP format) whereE:\is the drive letter of your PSP
03 January 2006 My 2005
I don't really make New Year's resolutions, mainly because I'm totally incapable of keeping them. Previous years have seen me try to stop biting my nails (several times) and give up kebabs (which is actually impossible). This year, however, I'm going to try and do a couple of things: chew my food more thoroughly and post to my blog more frequently. Only time will tell whether I'll keep to either of them, but since it's the third day of the year already, it must be time I posted something to my blog. (Especially since the extra food chewing hasn't been going too well over the last couple of days...)
Anyway, it seems fitting that my first post of 2006 should review what happened to me in 2005 – i.e. all the things I probably should have posted about at the time but couldn't usually be bothered.
Warning: anyone with a low boredom threshold should probably stop reading now as I've just read the post before publishing it and I have definitely rambled on a bit too much...
Happy New Year!
Anyway, it seems fitting that my first post of 2006 should review what happened to me in 2005 – i.e. all the things I probably should have posted about at the time but couldn't usually be bothered.
Warning: anyone with a low boredom threshold should probably stop reading now as I've just read the post before publishing it and I have definitely rambled on a bit too much...
If you've read all the way to here, you deserve a medal! Please accept my most sincere apologies. When I started writing this post, I only intended it to be a brief look back at 2005 but then I got blogorrhea and I couldn't just hit the delete button after spending so much time on it...January 2005
I've been researching my Ruscoe family tree for around five years, but over the last year or so I've started to take it more seriously and decided to visit Shropshire Archives in January 2005 to help fill in some blanks. Whilst we were in the area, I took the opportunity to have a look at where my ancestors would have lived back in the 1800s. If you've got the Ruscoe surname in your family tree, you might want to look at my photos from the trip, my Ruscoe Family Genealogy website and the Ruscoe Family Genealogy Google Group.
February 2005
I received a letter from a popular men's magazine threatening legal action against me unless I removed photos of two TV celebrities. The images showed how the celebrities looked before and after they were photoshopped for the magazine. I received them by email and made them into Flash movies so that you could hover over each to see the differences. Needless to say, the magazine's legal team didn't like this, so I kindly agreed to remove them. I now get hundreds of disappointed visitors looking for the photos on my website each month.
I also made a gingerbread house for my sister's birthday and Suzy helped me to build a snowman.
March 2005
We managed to get some tickets to go and see The Games being filmed in Sheffield for Channel 4 and watched a few celebrities compete in Olympic style sporting events. The line up included Craig Charles (comedian/actor/presenter), Princess Tamara Czartoryski-Borbon (model), Danny Foster (former member of Hear'Say), Kirsty Gallacher (presenter), Mel Giedroyc (comedienne), Chesney Hawkes (singer), Lisa Maffia (singer), Jonathon Morris (actor), Philip Olivier (actor), Kevin Simm (member of Liberty X) and Anna Walker (presenter). There's not much else to say about this really. Chris posted an equally brief description at the time.
April 2005
We went to see Richard Herring at the Lescar. I'm not really a fan of his but I thought he was very, very funny. Chris Hill covered it at the time, so there's no need for me to say any more.
May 2005
During the first Bank Holiday weekend, I built myself a brick barbecue in our back garden. It's something I'd had planned ever since we moved into our house and, even though we only got to use it three or four times, it was worth the five trips to Wickes, sore arms, aching shoulders and the sunburnt neck!
I also finally updated my website (again) to use XHTML & CSS, moved my three-year-old weblog to use Blogger and was kindly given a Flickr Pro account, which I really should be making more use of. (Maybe that should be another new year's resolution...)
June 2005
I travelled more in this month that I'd travelled in my entire life. First of all, we went camping in Malham, North Yorkshire for Andy's birthday (like we did the previous year). Then we went on holiday to Florence for a week, also visiting Pisa whilst we were in the area. About a week later I then made a business trip to Montréal, Canada. (You can read a bit more about these escapades in my Around the World in 25 Days post.)
July 2005
Chris and Dawn tied the knot and I had another birthday, which was when I played Singstar for the first time. (Sadly, this was when we also introduced Chris Riley to the game and he now takes it quite seriously...)
August 2005
A surprising number of rather large spiders made an appearance in this month. I've not seen many of them since then, so I can only presume that they've been beamed back up to the Planet of the Rather Large House Spiders by their mothership.
September 2005
Suzy and I visited Combe Martin Wildlife and Dinosaur Park in Devon with Lil and Chris (see my photos) and I got to feed a lemur for the first – and probably last – time!
Google released their Gmail button for Google Toolbar, which enabled me to figure out how to add custom search buttons to the toolbar. They then released Google Blog Search which would later result in my website traffic increasing considerably as people found my blog posts much more quickly than they would through the normal Google search.
October 2005
October was an exciting month (for a geek). First of all, I wrote a script to check for Google Subdomains and found a few that people hadn't seen before. One of these was purchase.google.com which might have inspired the folks over at WebmasterBrain.com to dig a bit deeper, resulting in them discovering the Google Purchases (AKA Google Wallet / Google Payments) sign-up pages. Incidentally, almost three months on and this new service from Google still hasn't been released yet.
I decided to run the script again after reading a comment by Wouter Schut and discovered the Google Base subdomain. What happened in the days following my post about this discovery was remarkable. Within 24 hours, Google-watchers all over the world were discussing a new service that they didn't even fully understand. As screenshots started to appear on the Internet, people were speculating what the new service would be capable of, which caused eBay's stock to reportedly drop by as much five percent at points during the day! The Guardian and The New York Times – amongst many others – referenced my website and I was ever interviewed by Business Week magazine! Incidentally, the title I chose for my post – All your base are belong to Google – was used all over the Internet, with some people even posting it to their blogs without even knowing why they were doing it!
November 2005
I finally went to see The League of Gentlemen live in Llandudno (as I'd mentioned earlier in the year) and the show was absolutely excellent, completely exceeding my expectations. It was well written, well performed and well worth the wait. My only real gripe was that it wasn't long enough; the two 45-minute acts just went far too quickly! For any League fans didn't get to see it, I'd definitely recommend buying it as soon as the show is released on DVD.
I also held my school reunion and bought myself a PSP. I actually posted an update around that time, so you can read more about all that if you like.
December 2005
T'was the week before Christmas and my sister gave birth to a baby girl, making me Uncle Tony and ending the year perfectly.
The End.
Happy New Year!
Labels: gadgets, genealogy, google, personal, photos, psp, ruscoe.net, theatre, travel, tv
28 November 2005 TalkMan: Talking Global with PSP
Whilst my PSP is absolutely brilliant, I can't help thinking that it must still have loads more to offer than just games, movies and music...
Imagine if I could take my PSP on holiday with me, speak English into it and have it instantly translate what I said into another language and speak it back to me. Well, if I want to translate what I say into Chinese, Korean or Japanese, this review suggests that's not such a crazy idea after all. TalkMan was recently released in Japan and does exactly that. It's bundled with a USB microphone that screws into the top of your PSP and uses speech recognition software to try and find a match for what you've said in its huge list of common phrases. You can even play games to help you with your language learning and pronunciation.
It's not quite a Babel fish, but it's one step closer I guess.
(What else could that USB microphone be used for though? I'm thinking that SingStar for the PSP would certainly keep my fellow tram passengers entertained on the way into work...)
[Via Waxy]
Imagine if I could take my PSP on holiday with me, speak English into it and have it instantly translate what I said into another language and speak it back to me. Well, if I want to translate what I say into Chinese, Korean or Japanese, this review suggests that's not such a crazy idea after all. TalkMan was recently released in Japan and does exactly that. It's bundled with a USB microphone that screws into the top of your PSP and uses speech recognition software to try and find a match for what you've said in its huge list of common phrases. You can even play games to help you with your language learning and pronunciation.
It's not quite a Babel fish, but it's one step closer I guess.
(What else could that USB microphone be used for though? I'm thinking that SingStar for the PSP would certainly keep my fellow tram passengers entertained on the way into work...)
[Via Waxy]
Labels: gadgets, links, personal, psp, translation
09 November 2005 This is not a post about Google
My last post was sooooo popular that I can sense the Internet's eyes have been watching me closely, anticipating my next move. Naturally, I feel like I should be following it up with something that will get the whole web talking again, but that's simply not going to happen. Things have been unusually quiet on the Google front, so if you're after some breaking news about “The Mighty G” I'm afraid you'll have to look somewhere else as this is going to be one of those boring posts about what I've been up to recently – and I'm sorry about that because I hate posts like this too. Anyway...
A couple of weekends ago I went to the school reunion that I'd been organising since January. Only twelve people turned up, so it wasn't a great turn out, but it was pretty much what I expected really. It was good to see the people who'd made the effort though. I did learn one very important lesson from the experience: not everyone uses the Internet as much as I do. (Some people don't even have a computer, never mind an email address – can you even believe that!?) Maybe I'll organise another reunion in five or ten years and use the good old Royal Mail to deliver my invites rather that rely on email.
In other news, I finally dusted off my credit card and purchased myself a Sony PSP. What a pain in the arse it was to get hold of one those! I should've listened to what people were saying back in May and either purchased an import or pre-ordered a UK version. After um-ing and ah-ing for a couple of days, I decided to order one from Play because their website said they were “In Stock”. However, after clicking the “Place Order” button and waiting for them to release my order, they suddenly decided that they were “Awaiting Stock” instead. Three weeks later, I was still PSP-less so I phoned my local Virgin Megastore – just on the off chance that they might have some – only to discover that they were expecting a delivery later that week. A couple of days later, they gave me a call and I had one in the palm of my hand... quite literally! My advice? Buy! Buy! Buy!
A couple of weekends ago I went to the school reunion that I'd been organising since January. Only twelve people turned up, so it wasn't a great turn out, but it was pretty much what I expected really. It was good to see the people who'd made the effort though. I did learn one very important lesson from the experience: not everyone uses the Internet as much as I do. (Some people don't even have a computer, never mind an email address – can you even believe that!?) Maybe I'll organise another reunion in five or ten years and use the good old Royal Mail to deliver my invites rather that rely on email.
In other news, I finally dusted off my credit card and purchased myself a Sony PSP. What a pain in the arse it was to get hold of one those! I should've listened to what people were saying back in May and either purchased an import or pre-ordered a UK version. After um-ing and ah-ing for a couple of days, I decided to order one from Play because their website said they were “In Stock”. However, after clicking the “Place Order” button and waiting for them to release my order, they suddenly decided that they were “Awaiting Stock” instead. Three weeks later, I was still PSP-less so I phoned my local Virgin Megastore – just on the off chance that they might have some – only to discover that they were expecting a delivery later that week. A couple of days later, they gave me a call and I had one in the palm of my hand... quite literally! My advice? Buy! Buy! Buy!