Hello 2016. Work begins for many tomorrow, or Tuesday for those in Scotland (mostly), and I’m looking forward to it. The breaks been long and health has been a bit poor again but the last few days have been much better. No resolutions but some goals and changes that I plan to make – all good 🙂 Anyway, on with the first link dump of the year.
A couple of months back I bought a Sphero BB-8. When I saw the video of it I just couldn’t resist…despite it being £130. Ouch.
When I got it the first thing that struck me was it was much smaller than I had thought – the size of a small orange…or a large tangerine. Like most things nowadays I had to do a firmware update on first use which took a couple of minutes (unlike most games which need a download or two to get working….Forza 6 and it’s 60 GB download on Boxing Day is the worst yet) but once that was done I was good to go.
The app allows you to steer BB-8 and it was much more controllable than I thought it would be. It was easy to steer around but also easy to steer into walls 🙂 When you do collide with something BB-8 would glow red, spin a bit and make a groaning droid noise. What’s a shame is that the video makes it look like the noise comes from BB-8 itself but they are all generated from the iOS app. You can get BB-8 to do pre-programmed paths – in a circle, square, spin, panic and run etc. The app is also voice activated so you can say “BB-8” and the app will then listen to your voice commands like “Go Explore”, “Go To Sleep” or “It’s a Trap” which is my favourite.
There is a message mode which lets you see holograms but this are displayed on the phone and you can record your own but this is a bit weak. You can also send BB-8 on patrol and he will merrily wander around your home or office while you work away. Neat. This is all done over bluetooth and the range is pretty impressive. Battery life is around an hour for three hours of charging which is also pretty good as you tend to get a bit bored with it before the battery ever runs down.
While there have been frequent app and firmware updates to add features I’m sure that for Star Wars Episode VIII we’ll see a new version which will have better hardware and maybe feature things like in built sound and a camera. Something to make it more feature rich than the current version.
Then I saw this tweet a couple of days ago:
If you just got a Sphero BB-8, roll over to the App store and grab the Tickle app – you can program him! So cool… https://t.co/VDSybIHvVe
Tickle is an app for iOS that allows you to easily build programs for a variety of smart devices. To program BB-8 you select a template, connect to it from Tickle and then you can drag and drop a variety of commands to give you a lot more control over BB-8 than the official Sphero app.
You can set the colour of BB-8 to almost anything, set it on a variety of paths and loops but also detect events. So if BB-8 collides you can make it shake, change colour, reverse – whatever you want. You can also detect events from the iOS device so depending on how it is tilted or if it’s shaken you can make BB-8 do different things. This is a great extension of what the BB-8 device can do and it’s opened up another avenue that I hadn’t considered.
Digging deeper I found this post on medium – Sphero BB8 robot toy — The Missing Manual. Really useful advice for any current or prospective BB-8 owner with links to a couple of Javascript libraries that allow you to hack BB-8 even more.
Overall I like the Sphero BB-8 but it’s hard to recommend at the price given what it can do although with the Tickle app it’s clear there’s a lot more to this droid than meets the eye and I’m pleased I picked one up.
Has there been a more anticipated movie than Star Wars: The Force Awakens? Maybe and that was called Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and we all know how well that went. I saw The Force Awakens last Thursday and I loved it! It was on it’s own a great film but it also ticked a lot of boxes for the Star Wars fans. I’ve got a couple of things that I want to say about it though…and that means there are spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen the film yet.
As I’ve said already, the film for me worked really well. I was a bit concerned that there would be too much of the old characters and not enough of the new but that fear was blown away with the first 20-30 minutes. Focussing on Rey, Finn, Poe and Kylo Ren and not giving too much back story got the film off to a great start. John Boyega was excellent throughout but the star of the film was Daisy Ridley. She carried large parts of the film and was totally believable throughout in stark comparison with many of the actors used in the prequels. I also loved that she stood out as the Jedi hero of the film and the trailers hadn’t given everything away.
I’m guessing we’ll find out more about Rey’s heritage in the next films…but is it to obvious that she’s Luke daughter? Hopefully not another brother/sister with Kylo Ren. I said Rey was the star but I’m forgetting BB-8. What a great droid and it stole almost every scene it was in. So long R2 – it was good knowing you.
Something I didn’t like about The Force Awakens is that it really did stick to the Star Wars formula and you could argue this was a bit of a remake of the original Star Wars. Surely the big bad have learned by now that a death star isn’t the way to go as the rebels will fly a few ships towards it and bomb a known weakness. This was pretty lame as was the zero explanation as to how Poe escaped the crashed Tie Fighter and also the planning for the final attack which looks like it took 5 minutes to make up before everyone was sent off on their mission.
One last grumble…anyone else think that Snoke looked like Gollum?
Looking at positives again I thought the film brought back the spectacle that the prequels had lost. No sure if it was the mix of real sets and CGI but the film looked far more believable and brought back a sense of size and scale that the prequels never had. I also loved that Han Solo was killed…the setup meant it was a fairly obvious step to take but there were still audible nooooo’s in the cinema and not from the kids either.
Thankfully there was little of C-3PO and R2 and Carrie Fisher had little to do which I think is a blessing as the acting wasn’t the best.
So where does the Force Awakens stack up compared to the other Star Wars movies? For me the order is as follows:
V > VII > VI > IV > III > II > I
Role on episode VIII which is a couple of years away. In the meantime here are some great Force Awakens links to enjoy.
Been a hectic couple of weeks but I stop work for the year this Tuesday…can’t wait for a break. Some good reads this week but no Star Wars spoilers or trailers – only 4 days until I see it.
I watched Spectre a few weeks ago and while it looked amazing and clearly had a load of money thrown at it the story was half baked, the action scenes felt incomplete and the script was poop. So an average Bond film then.
It got me thinking as to which Bond films I liked the most. What was my favourite Bond film? Who was my favourite Bond? There’s 24 films to choose from so I grouped the films by actor and ranked them accordingly. That generated the following:
Sean Connery
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
You Only Live Twice
Dr No
Thunderball
Diamonds Are Forever
George Lazenby
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Roger Moore
Live and Let Die
The Spy Who Loved Me
The Man with the Golden Gun
Moonraker
Octopussy
For Your Eyes Only
A View to A Kill
Timothy Dalton
Licence to Kill
The Living Daylights
Pierce Brosnan
Goldeneye
The World is Not Enough
Tomorrow Never Dies
Die Another Day
Daniel Craig
Casino Royale
Skyfall
Spectre
Quantum of Solace
That made it a bit easier to list my favourite Bond films as follows:
Favourite Bond Films
Casino Royale
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Skyfall
Live and Let Die
Goldeneye
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
You Only Live Twice
The Spy Who Loved Me
Spectre
Dr No
Thunderball
Licence to Kill
The Man with the Golden Gun
The World is Not Enough
Quantum of Solace
The Living Daylights
Moonraker
Diamonds Are Forever
Tomorrow Never Dies
Octopussy
Die Another Day
For Your Eyes Only
A View to A Kill
So who’s my favourite Bond?
Sean Connery
Daniel Craig
Pierce Brosnan
Roger Moore
Timothy Dalton
George Lazenby
Poor George – great film, shit Bond. If Daniel Craig does sign up for one more hopefully we see more of the criminally wasted Christoph Waltz who ended up being one of the weaker parts of Spectre. If you have seen Spectre, I loved this post that tries to explain it’s ending.
With only a couple of work weeks left of the year I’m looking forward to revisiting some of the old classics again over Christmas. Can’t beat some Little Nellie.
Samantha Bielefeld is Victor Johnson: The Story – Inside baseball but this story has brewed over the last month in the Mac community. Basically a con man has posed as a woman, made up a rape allegation, discredited many in the community and also launched a paid for blog. Horrible.
Blogs by Women – If you want a fresh non male tech perspective then you could do worse than follow some of these recommendations or import the handily provided OPML.
Apple Pencil Review – If you can’t already tell, I really want an Apple Pencil. However I don’t want an iPad Pro so will wait to see if a future iPad Air 3 update will support the Pencil. Fingers crossed!
Another timelapse, this time of the sun rising over the River Clyde.
I took this from Govan Graving Docks on a cold Saturday morning and apart from some interest in my car (nothing sinister thankfully) it was a good morning for taking pictures.
