The blog moves home · 101 days ago by Michael Dales
After sitting on our trusty Mac Mini at home for the last few years, and my G3 PowerMac for the years before that, my blog is on the move again, and (assuming my redirects have worked properly) you now find it here on another server, no longer hosted at home.
As fun as it is to try and run everything at home, I had other servers to hand better suited to the task of hosting the blog, and I couldn’t face reinstalling MySQL on my Mac Mini (as some of you may have noted, the blog was complaining about some things MySQL for a little while now when you tried to comment etc.). When I started hosting this blog I knew very little about running web sites, and now I suspect I know more than I want to :)
Anyway, a new server deserves a new name, so I’ve found the shorter, but not less difficult to remember, http://mynameismwd.org/. At least it should save wear and tear on your poor keyboard. Although the old blog will redirect you here if you stumble across it, I fear you’ll need to manually update your RSS feed readers.
Old media versus new · 103 days ago by Michael Dales
The FT iPad app versus the paper edition:
The FT iPad app is quite nice – it does a good job of capturing the feel of the paper, is up to date, and pleasant to read. It makes a good example of what you can do with the iPad as a way to structure your new media better than were it just a website on a tablet.
On the downside, you can’t share it over the breakfast table, and it doesn’t offer, or at least that I could find, all the content from the paper or website (no FT funnies section for instance, otherwise called the Fast Lane :), so the iPad won’t be replacing the paper version just yet of the FT Weekend, but it does fill in for the week day edition.
Update: My colleague Garry, who wrote an excellent summary of the iPad’s accessibility features, asked about whether they work with the FT app, which I’d not tried. Indeed they do – you can tap on headlines to hear them read, and when you double tap through to an article you can swipe the page to have the full story read out to you. Clearly there’s some areas where the iPad version shines over the paper version.
The alternative gym and its technology · 103 days ago by Michael Dales
This morning we got up bright and early to go visit the new gym just opened five minutes away from us, the Orchard Park Skate Park:
To avoid embarrassment we got there early, as it’s been a while since I skated much, and definitely a long time since I visited a skatepark :) Still, despite my baby steps, it was a fun way to start the day, and I can recommend a visit if you’re that way inclined. It’s not a vast park, but it has lots of bits to attack – a good sized bowl, a mini ramp etc.; though I imagine it might get a bit hectic if busy. Incompetents like me probably want to find it when it’s quiet :)
One of the fun discoveries was the embedded tech. There’s a black plastic rain/sun shelter for people to escape the weather when not skating/playing football/netball and whatever else you can do in that neck of the woods. To our surprise, built into the shelter was a bluetooth speaker unit that will let you play songs from your phone/mp3 player/laptop etc., or just listen to local radio stations:
The quality of the speaker wasn’t great, but it’s a great addition to area – kids are carrying their music on their phones these days, so why not let them play it when they’re out having fun? Amusingly it kicks your device after 7 minutes to let someone else have a go – I can imagine a fun scramble at that point to be the next person to pair with the shelter :)
Orchard Park seemed to be hard hit when the bottom fell out the building market, being left kinda half finished, but it’s great to see that they’ve put some real effort into making things the local kids to do, and not just a slap dash effort – clearly someone’s put thought and care into it all.
Fake chicken, real eggs · 111 days ago by Michael Dales
Liverpool One Rainbow · 111 days ago by Michael Dales
Some fun Election maths · 119 days ago by Michael Dales
Some fun facts about how voting went last night, powered by those smart peeps over at Timetric. Here you can see total votes for the top three parties:
They seem somewhat evenly spaced there, follows roughly what the pre-election polls were saying for how voters would go. Now let’s look at how many seats that equates to:
Hmmm. Something seemed to get lost in translation there. So, how many votes is that per seat for each of the parties?
Interesting that it’s those parties that have been in power recently that seem to have an easier job of it – coincidence I’m sure. I don’t think I’m trying to make much of a political statement here – I have to confess that none of the parties really impressed me. I just think the numbers are interesting, and you can see why the Lib Dems want to change how voting works and conversely you see very clearly why the other parties don’t.
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Old media relying on the new · 131 days ago by Michael Dales
It’s quite common now when reading a newspaper you’ll be instructed to head over to the website to get more details, or more info. The iPad makes this quite easy to fit in with your read:
Much more convenient than a desktop/laptop, and easier to read than the iPhone. But it does really beg the question at what point do you wonder why am I reading the paper version if it’s just a bunch of references to online material?
I’m certainly convinced there are two modes to dead tree media: there’s your daily info that you consume to keep up to date, and there’re items you’ll make “quality” time to consume. I’m told that most readers of the Economist, for instance, will book a slot in their weekend to read it. It becomes an event in their week, almost a hobby I guess. Even at the trashier end, like with MCN here, I consume it as an activity, not in passing – it’s a nice way to rest for half an hour or so on the weekend.
If we go along with those two strata, then I think the second one can get away with this model of “read the paper, and link to web for details” model, but the former can’t. The iPad (and whatever devices will follow) are a great way to take in information, but if I’m just trying to catch up on the day’s events I don’t want to be hoping back and forth between media. On the other hand, if I’ve already set aside time to read a paper thing, as I do with MCN and Monocle (reading both of those probably puts me in a very limited demographic somewhere :), I don’t mind the occasional reach out of my iPad (or in this case, my companies iPad) to get some content that the paper edition either couldn’t fit in, or in the case of something like video, couldn’t carry.
I certainly don’t think print media is dead, far from it. Paper is a great way to deliver and consume certain content. But I do think there’s coming a time where the idea that if you have to deliver daily information then printing millions of bits of paper that will be thrown away as soon as they’re read as the prefered way to do it will become somewhat of an anachronism.
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Looking after dinner · 145 days ago by Michael Dales
Ulysses in the Sun · 146 days ago by Michael Dales
Hipstamatic · 147 days ago by Michael Dales
The camera in the iPhone 3G has never really impressed me – it’s results are never as good as my previous phone and look kinda blurry, so I typically tend not to use it other than to snap in the moment reminders or such. However, today I got an app for the iPhone that let me see the iPhone’s camera in a new light – Hipstamatic.
Hipstamatic attempts to recreate the style of analog instamatic cameras of yesteryear, with a variety of different lens, film, and flash filters. The results are surprisingly atmospheric, and suddenly the iPhone offers create chance to do something creative with its camera.
The app comes with a bunch of standard filters, but you can buy more in the app if you get tired of the standard ones. Well worth a look if you like taking pictures and have an iPhone.