Author: iandick

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Last week was busy but I’ve a few days off work so plenty to catch up on.

A year with Apple Watch

Time flies and it’s been a year since I picked up an Apple Watch. There’s been quite a bit of negativity around the Apple Watch in recent months – is it really justified?

For me it’s been a mostly positive experience. The Apple Watch as a notification hub has worked well and stops me reaching for iPhone/iPad just to see what the latest ping sound meant. Quick replies to messages is also a real plus. At a glance I also get info on weather and activity which has pretty much replaced the Fitbit for me. Being able to set timers and reminders easily has been useful and Nightstand since Watch OS 2 has been perfect. Finally, having Apple Pay available on the Watch is more convenient than pulling out the phone but there’s been couple of odd times where using the Watch has been made difficult due to weird scanners, especially with boarding passes…looking at you British Airways.

Whats inescapable is that app’s are generally poor. They are slow or of little value on the small screen. With the news that Watch apps must be native by June 1st I can only assume that big changes to the OS and faster hardware is on it’s way. Siri has also been a miss on the Watch as it’s just too slow to be of practical use. I also think Apple have missed a trick with watch face customisations. There’s a quite a choice but you should be able to do more with complications and why do watch hands obscure some of the complications? It’s a digital watch and should act as such.

The negatives are all fixable which is why I still believe in the Watch platform. It’s been convenient to use, battery concerns proved unfounded and I miss it when it’s not on my wrist. While not essential I’ll be sticking with it for now. Time will tell if future upgrades will keep the platform alive.

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A taxing week for everyone.

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A bit late this week but it’s worth the wait. Some goodies below – enjoy.

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Happy Easter! Been doing these backpocket posts for a year now…time flies.

The West Wing Weekly

The West Wing is one of my favourite TV series. First broadcast in 1999 it was smart, funny, heart warming, fast, deep and different to everything else around at the time. It appealed to the politics geek in me and showed a US president that was totally different to Bush who was in power during much of the programs run.

Despite my love I’ve never watched the whole run again…until now.

west_wing

The West Wing Weekly is a podcast from NPR that will break down each episode starting at episode one. The first episode of the podcast launched today and is hosted by Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Airway. Malina played Will Bailey on the last four series of The West Wing so should be able to offer great insight into those episodes.

So each week I’m going to watch one episode of The West Wing and then catch up on the podcast. I can’t wait! The podcast can be easily found and subscribed too in Overcast by searching for West Wing Weekly or even in iTunes via this link. Anyone else jumping in?

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Busy busy at the moment. looking forward to some time off at Easter.

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Kilchurn Castle

A couple of weeks ago I set off early to visit Kilchurn Castle. The plan was to get some good photo’s as the sun rose and as it was a clear night it should be worth setting the alarm for.

Kilchurn Castle

The drive up was fine but due to the freezing temperatures and the quiet roads there was a few slippy moments on the way. By the time I parked up it was minus 7. Brrrrr. The scenery and location was amazing and I setup the camera waiting for the sun to rise properly. There were only a couple of others around on the other bank of the loch and it was eerily quiet.

Loch Awe

Well it was eerily quiet until i fired up the drone. I’d read that the drone didn’t like the cold and that turned out to be true. Battery life took a bit of a hit and I also got warnings about the temperature and also one of the motors. I carried on though and it was fine and I got some not bad shots.

However my lack of touch friendly gloves meant I flew without wearing any and my hands were frozen. Even the next day my fingertips were still numb. Idiot. I also missed out on many shots that I had wanted to take, partly cause I rushed and partly due to the batteries dropping quicker than usual. Next time I head out I’ll do a bit more planning upfront. It wasn’t just the drone…I missed a few great images with my camera that when I looked back through the photo’s I’d taken were obvious. Experience I guess but I was ticked off at making the effort to get there and miss some pic’s.

If you are looking for a fantastic old castle to visit that was built in the 1400’s then give Kilchurn a go. I plan to visit again sometime in the future and maybe try and get those shots I missed a fortnight ago but I’ve a lot of other places to visit before I return to Kilchurn. Onwards.