A Question of Balance

I think this will be short. I've finished my first book of the year, started on the second , both by Stuart Maconie incidentally and started making inroads into the TV backlog on BBC iPlayer on my phone. How do I do this?

Basically book on way to work, means I feel I've done something worthwhile and learnt
ed something and made an effort, then coming home I watch stuff on the TV (well my Samsung Note 2). Having said that I do need to fit the TED talks in there somehow as there are a few that I really want to check out, but I will find time somewhere. There are 24 hours in a day after all.

Only one song give the title of the post. From the Moody Blues album A Question of Balance.

Sleeping With The TV On

I don't if I need to be worried, or I don't know if I should be just happy. I'm actually watching more TV on my phone thanks to the fact that BBC iPlayer allows downloads on my Samsung Galaxy Note2. This week I've watched various music related progammes, and the first episode of the new series on BBC3 called "Uncle", which I found excellent. I've downloaded a few duds, but iPlayer allows me to catch up on the way to and from work.

My problem is that I feel I'm watching less TED talks and reading fewer books. I haven't  read a book so far this year.

Handsome Dick Manitoba

I suppose the simple solution is just to pick a book and start reading it, but it is just another thing I can do while I travel. I can also watch other channels' downloads as well but BBC2, 3, and 4 provide enough excellent quality programmes to keep me going. I can also load films onto the phone and it does have a couple of eReaders so I can actually read book on the phone if I so wish.

The title is taken from a Dictators song (lead singer Handsome Dick Manitoba!) so I have to include that don't I.

Mr Cave's A Window Cleaner Now!

Woke up this morning (sounds like a blues song , doesn't it), and the pavements outside were white and the skies were grey. This week is going to be busy again with trips to London and a concert at The Sage to fit in, but it's only by doing things that life is interesting.

This afternoon 6Music played an excellent Nick Cave song that I hadn't heard before that seemed appropriate for the apparent inclement weather which we may soon be getting.

This weather , short days and lack of sunshine doesn't make for the greatest of inspiration.

Also I seem to be downloading a lot of TV to my Samsung Note via BBC iPlayer , which is fine but this eats into the time I should be reading or maybe watching TED talks , although it does leave more time to do things when I am at home.

Anyway still lots to do, but wanted to share this great Nick Cave song , and hope you are ready for the week ahead.

First Post Of 2014

Well I suppose I have to do this. I can't not post on New Year's Day can I. I've seen some great friends today, and it's funny how sometimes people worry about how the appear or sound, and they're my friends they are always wonderful to me. I love all contact with my friends and people I love.

Two niggles Google's controlling idiocy means I can't access my accounts via my Blu-Ray player as it's an "unknown device" but there is now no option to allow device to access my accounts. Then my Samsung Note has given me a 700 Mb Software Upgrade. My first  desktop had a 10 Mb hard disk (thanks for that Chris Brough, at the time that was an immense amount of storage, now it would just about hold an MP3 of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" or Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird") , but it was the first device I had at home that didn't need a floppy disk or cassette to start it. How times change. My phone is installing the update as I type.

So it's almost two in the morning and it's probably the best idea to see this update out , I need to because I have Wallace and Gromit in "A Matter of  Loaf And Death" on my BBC iPlayer, amongst other things.

So have a brilliant day and may your 2014 absolutely wonderful.

Keep Taking The Tablets

I'm surprised at the number of advertisements for tablets and the horribly named "phablets". Tablets are gret for looking at things generally, but not that brilliant for keyboard based creativity. I have an iPad and mainly use it for watching downloaded programs on BBC iPlayer and TED.

I actually bought it because a friend showed me Garageband on it, and I've manged to create two pieces of music on it and actually put one on commercial sale just to see if I could do it, so it's brilliant for apps that are customed towards it's strengths, the Artrage app is another good piece of software that is great on the iPad.

I also have a Samsung Note 2 phone which allows me internet and other access as well as having a screen that allows me to watch downloaded programs.

So it just strikes me as overkill the amouth that these devices are being pushed at us, maybe it's the run up to Christmas, but I now just see another tablet. Is it my attention deficit disorder and I want something else to stimulate me? I'm also worried about young children who have these and then ten minutes later are bored. Which is why I thought the Raspberry Pi was such a brilliant concent as it would get kids (and adults) into actually doing things rather that passively expecting to be entertained.

Anyway that's enough and I'm sure a lot of you will have tablet's on you Christmas shopping list for either yourself or your loved ones. And I'm sure you will find a use for yours. Below is a video featuring  my first published piece from Garageband.

200

This is my 200th blog post this year, so I can still obviously use a keyborad. At some point I want to try and dictate a post into my phone on some microphone and put it up unedited to see if it makes sense. I've still got around sixty days left this year so possibly expect to finish on 240 or 250 posts.

I was hoping to do the Pickering to Whitby steam train run , but just checked the timetable and the winter one kicked in this week, which means no midweek trains. C'est la vie.

Either Facebook or Google have stopped allowing the use of Youtube or embedded images when I post a link to Facebook, which is annoying. I didn't want an image of me for each post, I wanted something relevant to the actual post. I will research into why this is happening.

Anyway, the holiday is continuing with much relaxation, watching The Wire, Game Of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire. I now have lots of technology at my disposal so I can download stuff off BBC's iPlayer so I caught up with the excellent Orphan Black on my iPad as well as a program on The Who's Quadrophenia.

Orphan Black

As I type this I'm listening to the J Geils Band using my Samsung Note phone as a music player, though just switched it to the wonderful Penguin Eggs by Nic Jones, an album that should be in everyone's collection.

The thing is where I am in Ampleforth I don't have a mobile signal, so that means another form of total relaxation. It's sometimes nice to just cut yourself off, although I'm obviously posting this, and keeping abreast of the times using the BBC site and posting on Instagram as well so people can see what I'm finding interesting. Well I'm going to put an image on here and a John Cooper Clarke song that I loved from the first moment I heard it, with some great lines and a soft porn soundtrack, take a listen. Everyone have a wonderful day everyone.

Blue Sky Day and Data Usage

Today started grey and rainy but things took a major turn for the better and by the time I left work it was actually very hot . I don't know if feeling good in myself affects the weather or it's the other way round , but a very difficult day  was dealt with and things just improved and got better throughout the day. So this is one of those blog posts which actually about nothing , there will probably be no tags unless it's about the terrible phone signal I had on my journey from Darlington to Newcastle, quite often dropping out making things unusable. It was a Cross-Country Train and some people hve said that they scramble the mobile signal so you have to use their extortionate and flakey wifi , though I'm sure that is just some kind of urban legend.

On thing though is that a signal along a main railway line should be reasonably strong , although ironically it does disappear as you approach London's Kings Cross station. These days Mobile Phone companies are heavy on the data sell , but if are going to use data you need a signal. My first desk top PC had a hard drive capacity of 10 Mb , that would store a pop song these days. My phone , a Samsung Note 2 has 48 Gb of memory and you will use 20Mb of data browsing Facebook for 15 minutes. You're gobbling and you don't realise it.

Anywa I am home now and probably have about a thousand time more processing power than what they used to  put a man on the moon. We live in privileged times and it's only going to get better. The music is appropriate and Nazareth cover of a Yardbirds song. Ended up rambling on and managing to fit one or two tags in.

Forgot Your Book .. Try TED

This is just a short post about what happened to me yesterday . Nothing special , but I usually take a book to read on the way to work , currently Simon Winder's Germania. Anyway yesterday I forgot it. I have a smartphone , a Samsung Note 2 , on which I have two E-Readers (Aldiko and Kindle) , internet access with 4G Speed if I'm in rage of a signal and the TED (Technology Education and Design not the Seth MacFarlane film , though I do love Seth MacFarlane's stuff)  app. This enabled me to download a few talks when I was waiting for the train in Newcastle , which served me for the journeys to and from work.

There's thousands of tals all of which are both useful and entertaing. The first was to save time when using technology , then there was one about tracking down the Kraken (giant Squid) . I've included them for your own extertainment but it's now time for me to get off to work.

Let's Get Tattooed - Excentric In Shrewsbury

Excentric - Shrewsbury 

Last time I was in Shrewsbury one of the places that made the biggest impression on me was Excentric , which is a Tattoo studio as well as supplier of excellent and exotic stuff. This time a couple of Gremlin's from the second movie caught my eye , placed upon one of my favourite glass tables that I've seen. Theyr on the right hand side of the pic just above the open sign.

As well as tattoos , which I don't fancy by the way though Val had some excellent ones, the place has loads of steampunk , biker , cult film and weed related paraphenalia.

Chestwigs

All the staff are really nice and incidentally everyon had the same phone as me a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, although we couldnt get a decent signal or connect to wifi If you are it Shrewsbury it really is worth checking out and while the tattoos were not as exotic as my mate Shev's (of the Doll at The Black Bull and the Star Spangled Chestwigs) with his left leg washing line it's a great place and if you want a tattoo I cant recommend them highly enough.


So that was the highlight of the day , rounded off by dinner at The Armoury by the river , again a recommended place to eat and drink if a little pricey. I'll leave you with some classic 'wigs

Hook-a-Gate and iPad Annoyances

Well finally got to Hook-a-Gate yesterday and although there’s little phone signal (E at best certainly no 4G) the cottage does actually have free Wi-Fi.  However as usual the iPad refuses to acknowledge that the signal exists, so I can only access the internet through the iPad by tethering to my Samsung Note 2 with the weak mobile signal although I suppose I could tether to the wifi with the phone then tether to the phone but that might just tie it in knots.

Hook-a-Gate is a small village in Shropshire with a couple of pubs, one of which, The New Inn , is incredibly busy but welcoming and does superb food. While there is obviously money in the village the prices in the pub are extremely reasonable.

The Old Coach House where we are staying comes complete with cat who has an enormous sense of entitlement and seems to think it owns the place. You can check the details here.

Oh yes and the laptop has a Java update that insists on getting you to install the Ask Toolbar and McAfee PC Slow Down Software. I recently spent an hour decluttering  someone’s PC after telling them it was OK to install the Java update forgetting to tell them to uncheck the Ask and McAfee installs. There was another piece of software on there , apparently recommended by RBS which effectively wouldn’t let you uninstall it because it was “protecting” the PC. Most of this is the equivalent of fitting four Denver boots to your car and throwing away the keys to make sure it doesn’t get stolen and you don’t have a crash.

Anyway time to have something to ea.

Oh we're also currentlly watching The Wire with it's excellent opening Tom Waits penned credits song , "Way Down In The Hole".

Living In The Past

It's funny how we have a hankering for old things and things to remain as they were / are, when a lot of the time the new stuff is actually far better than the old stuff. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note phone , but I want an emulator on on it so I can play the games I enjoyed on my Amstrad CPC computer. I downloaded an emulator but it just crashes my phone . C'est la vie.

I bought an alarm clock that emulates Tetris , and believe me you dont snooze with it , that alarm has to be switched OFF.

A lot of the music I have on my players id the stuff of my teenage years such as Hawkwind and Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull. Having said that I am a hige fan of convenience. and use both the ridiculous 48 GB capacity , plus Deezer and Youtube to allow me to play what I want when I want.

There have been recent things about returns to cassette tape even . Cassette was brilliant in its time , but was fragile , didnt last , and I would never dream of using a cassette again except to extract so rare music or something. The good part is that you have to do it in real time , which is a lot more personal that knocking together a Spotify or Grooveshark playlist , but those platforms  enable you to share music and Grooveshark does let you upload stuff that it doesnt have. Any way heres some old Bok Demo's from the mid 70s.

Picture This

A short post this , but a number of people have mentioned that they enjoyed seeing my Instagram posts. I ditched both Instagram and Twitter because of the disposability of the posts on there , but have slowly come round to the thought that as long as you dont OD on the stuff then its OK to use , so I've decided to resurrect my Instagram feed.

My Twitter one is here.  My instgram name will be mikeydred96 so it may be here

So I'm just hoping I don't swamp peaople with pictures , but will try and post interesting things. Also the Samsung Note 2 has a decent camera and processor so should be interesting to see what I can do , maybe I'll limit myself to black and white , but we shall see.

I chose the Blondie video , because it's a great song and I nicked the title for this post . Oh and on May 4th Blondied are on the bill at the "Fake Festival" at Percy Park Rugby Club . Details here

There's video and music samples of them on the link above so you can try before you buy so to speak

Not Maintaining Standards

Despite the fact I'm impressed with my iPad, Apple continue to flabbergast me with their continual ignorance of standards . Was recently at my mate Mark Tovey's had he showed an excellent Android Media player that I could install on my Samsung Note called BS Player. This works like a dream allowing you to play media from you network drives after connecting to wifi. Would love if it would connect over 4G , but lets not complain. It allows to set a home directory and then has fast negotiation of you network drive to play whatever media you want , video or music.

I thought the iPad is wifi based , but I can only do the sameby installing an Air Play server on my PC and have another Apply lump of bloatware slowing my system down. My big gripe with Apple is that device are not self contained. You need iTunes on your PC that you have to sync with your iPhone or iPad or both often ending up in horrendous autorisation knots. The softare on the device should do the job independently . Yes you can sync between machines but that should not be mandatory.

Oh yes and the iPhone 5 has a different connector to prior iPhones , when other manufacturers are moving towards a standard USB connector. So god forbid that you leave your charger at hone.

So I wont be using my iPad as a streaming player anytime soon , like I can do with my phone.

Who Will Be First?

Six years ago I walked into my present place of work (at the time Orange)  and picked up a company newspaper .The front page of the article stated that that they had a target of 30% market penetration with mobile phone ownership. The actual market penetratation at the time was something like 130% !! These figures may be coloured by the mists of time and so don't take them as gospel because they are based on my sieve like memory. However when you see suits on a train with a laptop , tablet and 3 phones trying to commandeer a table you can see the 130% market penetration in action.

Anyway, since that time companies have grown and evolved , and the things we have in our hands that we use to talk to each other bear no resemblance at all to Alexander Graham Bell's invention. In the late 80's a mobile phone required a briefcase sized battery pack and looked like you average military walkie talkie. Then battery technology came on leaps and bounds allowing creation of one piece phones that would actually fit in your hand. Sitting in the background at the the time you had the internet thing and you had the WAP protocol whence enabled very basic web access from the cutting edge phones. I always thought it looked rubbish but that's the only way progress is made. At the time it was groundbreaking , you could be in the middle of nowhere (assuming a signal) and find out the lasted horse racing results or football scores. A bit like Teletext and Ceefax on your phone.

Phones then got expanded keyboards , bigger screens , and eventually touch screen technology was integrated into the model. All the time capabilities are being enhances and phones can do more. I remember one of my Nokias had "Snake" on it , my Samsung Note 2 allows me to watch films , play "Broken Sword" , perform Office functions , connect to email , have a fully functioned web browser, and install new software if it takes my fancy. Of course this is all dependant on have a signal, but if my superfast 4G EE signal isnt available , I can connect to WiFi in Starbucks , Wetherspoons or wherever. So really it's not a phone is it?

It's a hand held computer, 20 years ago I was working on mainframes with less processing power that the device I have in my hand. It's three months since EE brought us into the 4G age in the UK , and the combined performance of device and signal means you can watch cath up TV whenever and wherever you want. My Samsung Note 2 is probably more powerful that the Star Trek communicators and tricorders. Combine with GPS if we had transporter beams we would be on a par with Star Trek. Even ten years ago you could not imagine being where we are now with these devices. EE is not , and never has been a phone company , it is about communications and connections , making the world more accessible and bringing people closer together.

Which brings me to the point of this post , we are not using mobile phones anymore , they are communication devices and hand held computers. However phone is a one syllable recognisable label. Mobil Phone is three but still recognisable. I am just wondering how long it will before someone instigates a new all encompassing name for these devices. If Steve Jobs were alive I would have said Apple , finally ditching the iPhone series with:

   "The iCom - It's not your phone , It's Your Life"

My First Kindle Disappointment with TV Cream and Roobarb and Custard

.. and in fact my first e-book disappointment. E-readers are great for having dip-in non linear books such as reference books , encyclopedias , Fortean Times series etc. I've not spent a great amount of money on e-books , but 99p for "TV Cream Toys: Presents You Pestered Your Parents for" , and excellent reference cum picture book off those things you had to have as a kid seemed ideal. I have the hardback edition and it is and excellent book The website is a brilliant and well worth a visit.

The e-book , well I am gery disappointed. I have it on my Samsung Note and all the items have a tiny unresizeable ratings graphic and only one or two have pictures , which are also tiny and not resizeable on my phone. So even at a pound the ebook is not worth the investment , if they add some decebt sized pictures then I may change my mind but at the moment it's a no!

So I added the titles from Roobarb and Custard which is very TV Cream....

Funny How

Funny how it's easier to moan , complain and find fault than be positive. I'm suffering from a very painful right arm , trapped nerve or pulled muscle or something and then I find my iPad is almost full!! 16 Gb taken up by games , copies of the Times and iBooks. Garageband takes up a fair chunk as well , but I still like the damned think , especially as I think I have finally got my Alesis IO Dock work. The sound of crunching metal guitars in Garagemand was music to my ears so now I can start using the iPad for the reason that I bought the damned thing , the create sounds!!

It's also a good ereader as well though I have installed The Kindle app on the iPad and on my Samsung Note 2 phone so I could purchase  "Life of Pi" and "1227 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off" for 20p each , a bargain even if they are e-books.

But there I go again finding positives in almost all life around me, which I suppose is the optimist in me . They say a pessimist is never disappointed , and have known loats of people who are only happy when they are miserable but I am definitely not in that group. I always believ that you can find good in all situations and take positives even if it is just to learn a lesson from something.

I watched "The Road" recently , and yes it's depressing and you can see all the bad things coming , but it has a remarkably upbeat ending and I would recommend it to anyone , and last night I watch a remarkbly enjoyable Iranian Football film called "Offside" which again I would definitely recommend.

So Funny How this post turned out , I started off feeling a bit under teh weather and now I feel musch better. Shoulder still hurts , but c'est la vie !!

The First Post

...of 2013 and hoping it will be as enjoyable a year as 2012. Seen some great gigs , including several nights at The Stand in Newcastle , as well as Lord Rochester's inaugural gig at The Schooner in Gateshead , that rarity , a Half Man Half Biscuit gig in Newcastle.

I finally got an iPad and have generally been impressed with it , though the app that sold it me was Garageband. I've also got a 4G Samsung Note 2 courtesy of EE and am impressed with that as well having watched the excellent Cockneys vs Zombies on it as well as a few episodes of Hebburn and getting my first taste of In-Betweeners via 4OD. Incidentally Hebburn features Steffen Peddie as Big Keith , and I met him at The Stand where he had the crowd in stitches laughing , he halso has a Monday night residency so is well worth checking out.

Was also impressed with Sky's "Young Doctors Notebook"  featuring John Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe . Black comedy of the highest order featuring sex and drugs and blood and tabs , if you missed it get hold of a copy one way or another. Harry Potter it is not.

As I say hope 2013 has as much to offer as 2012

4G No Ubiquity ... Yet

Just a short post on EE 4G. It is excellent to be able to stream TV on applications such as iPlayer , but you do need to have a constant signal. Cable provides and uninterupted flow , and did anaolgue TV and now Freeview through the airwaves.

BBCs iPlayer on the iPad allows you to downlaod episodes to watch when you are not connected , but the Android version I have on my Samsung Note 2 doesnt sem to have that option. This means that when you leave the 4G area in Newcastle on the way south your program stops , not a great customer experience caused by the face that you cant download when in the 4G signal range.

When 4G is ubiquitous streaming will be find , but even free media apps should provide the option of downloading when in a good signal area.

4G or Not 4G?

Well I eventually went for it. Basically 4G provides with faster downloads and uploads and will cause you to use a lot more data than you did under 3G. When you are in a 4G area you soon become used to fast response times which under 3G could take an age especially media rich web pages.


Youtube under 3G was always good , so I dont notice musch difference under 4G , but BBC iPlayer was virtually unusable on 3G , but on 4G becomes a very good media delivery channel.

I was going to do a series of posts of my experience with 4G  and this is the first . EE have given (well sold) me a a LTE enabled Samsung Note 2 , and it's an impressive device. I used my original Note to watch Cockneys vs Zombies , I see the new device with 4G being used to watch a lot more.

Today I am going down to London so I will see how it fares , when I get down there I am going to tether it with my iPad to see if that's a viable opyion. I have a monthly data allowance of 10 Gb , I have a feeling i this brave new data world that may not be enough.

To paraphrase Robert Shaw in Spielberg's Jaws :

    "We're gonna need a bigger data allowance"

Dreaming of an Orange Christmas?

This year once again Orange are tempting me with their excellent Christmas box promotion. If your spend £49.99 plus a £10 airtime tope up , not only do you get a decent phone you get a pair of WeSC Headphones worth £100 free. These look like the ones you get. Also here's a thought you can use them to listen to music on your phone , if , like me, you are not a fan of in ear headphones.

Last year I was tempted and resisted , and this year will probably resist again , especially as I'm taking delivery of an LTE Samsung Note II so I can use 4G when I'm in London or Newcastle.

But it really is an excellent promotion , tempting you to buy even if you dont need the product, and if you do need a new phone or headphones or both well you're well in. So as well as having a white Christmas you could have an Orange Christmas as well!