Blog – Page 43 – Ian Dick

Beinn Narnain

After the last walk on Ben Vorlich yesterdays stroll up Beinn Narnain was in complete contrast. Narnain is also (just) a munro and is situated on the banks of Loch Long, just across from Arrochar. The biggest difference was the weather – it was an almost perfect day! The next biggest difference – we followed the path!

Heading out from the car park it was a fairly straightforward path towards the Cobbler on the left and Narnain to the right. This was our only rain of the day on the hill and it quickly passed. We left the path a bit early (or missed an earlier path) so we had a bit of a slog for about 40 mins. After that though it was path for most of the way. There was also quite a bit more scrambling than before and it was a little slippy underfoot at some points. However once we got to the top the views were stunning. Picture above is where I had lunch and here’s me at the trig point on top of Narnain.

With lot’s of breaks it took just under three hours to get to the top which was pretty good going. The route down was pretty good with a clear path and some scrambling over rocks but nothing too taxing. One option was to do The Cobbler as well but we decided to keep that for another day. Something I should have done was put on some sun cream. I burn easily and with the better weather I’ve got a red nose and neck today. Nothing too bad but easily preventable.

I again used RunKeeper to track the route and this time it didn’t work flawlessly. The iPhone/RunKeeper lost GPS signal or at least couldn’t get an accurate signal and it thought we had walked 16 miles near the top of Narnain. When I loaded the total walk up to the RunKeeper site it was showing we had walked over 20 miles. Damn. However you can now edit the route by moving waypoints. Five minutes later and with the route corrected RunKeeper updated the walk calculating the correct distance. Fantastic. This was also the first time with the newly updated RunKeeper which now lets you switch the screen off while using it. The battery life is now much improved. By the time I go to the top of Ben Narnain I still had 1/3 battery life left. I plugged in my battery pack and it only took a quarter of the charge to fully charge the iPhone. I now expect to be able to track for at least 10 hours which is really good and much longer than I initially expected.

So that’s my second Munro done. Full Flickr set is available here. I wonder where we’ll end up in June?

Tuesday Linkage

Some site’s and tools that have been helpful over last few days:

How to setup Google Mail properly on your iPhone – great guide and ensures folders are aligned properly.
Brusheezy – Free Photoshop brushes. Also work with tools like Pixelmator.
5 Tips For Making Great iPhone Photos – Handy guide on how to get the best out of the iPhone’s limited hardware. From the same author, here is his iPhone photo gallery.
Philips Carousel – An amazing advert for Philip’s new not so amazing TV. To really appreciate it watch it full screen.
Presto – Really interesting Linux O/S that can boot in just over 10 seconds. Will install on work PC as it could be really handy when travelling.
TripIt – I travel with work 2-3 times a month and it always involves e-mails, prints etc. I’ve known of TripIt but never used it until now. I simply forward my travel e-mails onto the service and my itinerary is built for me. I can get an RSS of the details, an iCal calendar that I can subscribe to and there’s a free iPhone app that allows me to get all my travel details on the move. There’s a social network aspect that I haven’t taken advantage of yet but I’m impressed so far.

iPhone App Update

I’ve got an addiction. I’m taking the first step’s in curing the addiction by confessing publicly. It’s all apple’s fault. First they make a great device in the iPhone, then they make it trivially easy to download app’s to it. Yes, that’s right – I’m addicted to iPhone app’s.

I think what’s key is that the range of app’s plus the power available in the iPhone make for a really good mobile platform. Some task’s are easier to do on the move – tracking weight, car costs, photo’s, twittering – the list goes on. Many tasks that I used to manage via spreadsheet on a desktop machine are now managed by a small app on the iPhone. One issue with some app’s is how to get the data out of them at a later date. Some allow for exporting or backup via e-mail but that is few and far between.

I last blogged about my app’s in January but since then there have been many many new app’s, some of really good quality that are worth mentioning. The problem I have is that the App Store and iTunes aren’t the best for finding app’s amongst the thousands. Easy to see top 25’s but I’m sure there are gem’s hidden away in the App Store just waiting to be found. Anyway, new app’s since January are (links open in iTunes):

Analytics – £3.49 – I use Google Analytics to track all my websites. This app allows we to pick any of the sites I track and see over 40 different reports on site traffic, visitors etc. I prefer this to the actual analytics website.
Deliveries – £1.79 – I order a lot of, mmm, stuff online. This app allows me to track deliveries of said stuff. Again, easier to see status via this app than it is visiting each individual website or courier company to check on progress. Looks great too.
Tumblr – Free – Good app that let’s me update my Tumblr site.
Convertbot – £1.19 – Unit converter with a great interface. Replaced the free Units app – it’s that good.
Skype – Free – It’s Skype on the iPhone. Not much else to say – installed as a just in case app rather than an essential for me.
Dictionary.com – Free – Many dictionaries on the iPhone cost around $20. This is free, lot’s of content and a thesaurus as well. Very useful and I use it quite often.
Night Stand – £0.59 – Gorgeous clock for the iPhone. Was never really sold on it but once I picked up a MovieWedge I know find it really useful when travelling. No need to depend on hotel having a good clock and it’s great to have it so large as my eyesight without glasses is really poor.

Flickit

Tiger Woods

Runkeeper Pro – £5.99 – Use the app to track and later analyse my hill walks. Super reliable so far and new features added frequently.
Camerabag – £1.79 – Allows you to apply some nice post processing to photo’s. Recommended in this article in taking better iPhone pictures. Tried it a few times now and can work really well.
Pano – £1.79 – Allows you to stich together iPhone pictures into a panoramic of up to 16 images. I’ve found it a bit hit and miss when trying it. Interface is lovely though, overlaying current view over previous image allowing you to line up the photo better.
Flickit – Free – Let’s you upload images to Flickr. Supports tag’s, sets and geocoding of images. Best interface of any of the Flickr uploaders makes it really easy to use, and quick too. Highly recommended.
Audioboo – Free – Let’s you easily create audio podcasts/blog on the move. Has some potential but can’t see me using it that much.
GB Locate – £0.59 – Displays current OS grid position and latitude/longitude using iPhone GPS. Been very handy on the hill walks to confirm exactly where we are with the map.
iOSMaps – Free – Using GPS, the app will return the OS map for your current location. It downloads the map from a server so you need a good connection, hence can’t be replied upon for hill walking. I’ve found it to be a bit crash happy.
Google Earth – Free – It’s Google Earth. On the iPhone. Technically impressive but not often used.
Wikipanion – Free – Nice app for accessing Wikipedia articles – quicker than firing up Safari and searching.
Road Trip – £2.99 – For tracking car expenses. Always mean to do this but would forget how much I filled up by, what the mileage was etc. Being able to track on the iPhone is much easier as it’s easily done at the garage.
ITN News – Free – The best UK news app. Video reports and it’s quick too. Surprised by how good this is. More suprised that the BBC haven’t released their own app.
TED – Free – Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference app. While it replicates the podcast schedule the advantage of the app is that you can search for any published content and also bookmark favourites which I’ve done. Pretty fast to use too.
Qype Radar – Free – Search for local restaurants, markets etc. Difference is that there are reviews on each result so you can usually sort the good from the bad. Handy for frequent travellers.
Yelp – Free – Much the same as Qype – maybe slightly less UK content though?
WordJong – £1.79 – Cross MahJong with Scrabble and you get this great game. Every day presents a new game board and some of the challenges are really tough. Played this almost daily since I bought it and it’s still very enjoyable.
Frenzic – £1.79 – Fast based action/puzzle game that’s ideally suited to the touch interface on the iPhone. Played lot’s at first – now just an occasional blast.

Zen Bound

WordJong

Tap Tap Revenge 2 – Free – New version, better graphics, same Rock Bandesque gameplay. Nice but doesn’t draw me back.
Zen Bound – £2.99 – One of the most original games I’ve played on any platform. Concept is simple – wrap a rope around a 3D object. But the presentation polish, the graphics and the sound (wear headphones for this one) makes for a great experience.
Contraption – £2.99 – Build a machine to move a ball and complete a goal. Simple concept, complex puzzles but I got bored with it.
iDracula – £0.59 – Arcade shooter. Great graphics, can quite quite intensive but I got bored with it.
Lets Golf – £3.49 – Think Hot Shots Golf for the PSP and you’ve got this game. 4 courses, great cutesy arcade graphics but an accurat control method make for a challenging game. Recommended.
Flight Control – £0.59 – Surely everyone has this by now? Land planes by drawing their flight path. Simple concept, great fun to play and highly addictive. If you buy one game, get this!
Glyder – £0.59 – Fly around levels collecting orbs. Graphically superb but not much of a hook. Take this engine and make Pilotwings! That game would rock on the iPhone.
Who Has The Biggest Brain – £0.59 – Shakeel pointed this one out to me and it’s great. Think Brain Training on the DS and that explains the game. Uses Facebook Connect so you can see how your friends are performing. Cheap and a lot of fun – nice way to fill 10 minutes.
Scrabble – £5.99 – Fairly steep and only just out in the UK (been out for months in the US) but I love it. Can play against AI, another iPhone or two player sharing the one device. Only criticism I have is the dictionary – the AI comes up with some incredible words especially at the highest difficulty.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour – £5.99 – 7 courses and great use of the touch interface. The graphics are very good and it’s a challenging game. Only just out last week but already a favourite.
iFighter Lite – Free – Currently a one level demo game but the proper release is coming soon. If you’ve played 1942 before and it enjoyed it then this is for you. Best tilt control yet I think, probably due to the calibration in the game. There is some slow down when playing which will hopefully be addressed in the paid release.

There is one downside to this addiction. It cost’s money! So far my spend on the App Store is £156 since July 08. That’s a lot of money, far more than I expected. A few purchases early doors were regrettable as better app’s have been released or free alternatives have turned up but overall I’m really pleased with the app’s I’ve got. For another list of iPhone app’s have a look at Gordon’s latest updates – that’s where I found the Flickit app. Any good app’s that you use that I haven’t got?

Edge Covers

Back in March Edge celebrated their 200th issue. Something I kicked off earlier this year but didn’t get finished in time was to scan in all the Edge magazine covers. I love the covers and they were always distinctive when compared to the competition. Doing the scanning has taken longer than I thought but it’s now finally done. All 202 issues can now be found in my Edge Magazine Covers set on Flickr. I intend to keep it up to date (well, every six months or so) so it should provide a good resource of all the covers. My scanner doesn’t like the colour Orange very much though so a few of the covers look more pink than they should be. One day I’ll colour correct them but today’s not that day. A great way to view them is via the slideshow. Brings back a lot of memories and highlights how gaming has moved on in a relatively short time-scale. Where will we be in 15 years time? I’ll be 50!!!

Out of all the covers I have a few favourites. What’s common is that the one’s I like are the simple ones. Little text, no titles – the image speaks for itself.

Enjoy the covers. I know I do!

Plinky

Yet another site that I signed up to on day one…and promptly found no use for. It’s premise was to give you topics to blog about and I never used it once. However it was only today that I removed myself from the service and it’s weekly e-mails. In celebration, here’s my answers to this weeks suggested topics.

Recommend a place to get a good cheap bite to eat.
Cleveden Deli – they are very cheap and make a mean roll and sausage with brown sauce of course.

How did you get here? (this stage of life that is)
Not quite sure but I must have been a right nasty bastard in a previous life to earn this one.

What’s the most useless thing in your house right now?
Box of condoms.

You have the opportunity to talk 5 minutes worth of sense into a wayward celebrity. Who do you choose?
So many to choose from but it would have to be Kerry Katona. I’d tell her that carrying on just isn’t worth it and that she’d become loved if she ended it all now. Look what it did for Jade!

What’s the most on fire you’ve ever been?
I don’t do fire. However, this performance in Halo was pretty good.

Killionaire from Ian D on Vimeo.

OH NO, IT’S A RUMBLE! Quick, put together your ideal gang of street toughs!
Oh for fuck’s sake. Get a grip. Anyway, I’d have Edward Woodward but only if The Equalizer music was playing in the background, George Peppard aka Hannibal and Roy Keane. Sorted.

What’s the least fun you’ve ever had at a place specifically tailored for fun?
Plinky’s web site. Boring.

FixMyStreet

I remember visiting FixMyStreet ages ago and leaving unimpressed. To be fair it was recently launched at the time but there was no local content, nobody reporting issues and it looked liked nobody was listening. However a tweet from Mike Butcher made me revisit the site today and I’ve changed my opinion.

When you visit the site you enter your postcode and you quickly see the local problems that have been reported. You can also report a new problem from this page. Once reported the site then forwards on the problem to the relevant council. There’s no guarantee that problems are fixed but the volume of recent reports tells me this is a really good route for getting issues addressed by your local council. You can also see stats for your council to see if they are responding to issues – here’s Glasgow’s for example.

The really nice feature though is the RSS feeds. Click on Local Alerts and enter your postcode to view an RSS feed of your local issues. This is nice and handy. Even better – post this into Google Maps and generate a map similar to the one above. Looks like someone has reported a car left in the car park outside my work.

This is all well and good but it would be handy if I could easily report an issue when I’m out and about. iPhone users now can thanks to a free app. It lets you snap a photo, add a description and it works out your position using the iPhone. Quick and easy way of recording a problem. I’m really quite impressed with how the site has matured over the years into a useful resource. Well worth checking out especially if you can’t find an obvious route into your local council.

Inkjet Blues

I love my inkjet. It’s a Canon 5300 and it’s been a great buy. Good photo’s, fast and can print to cd’s as well. In just under two years it hasn’t failed me once. There is however one problem.

It’s an inkjet.

Which means there comes a time when you really need to print something and you run out of ink. Grrrrrrrrr. No problem though. Pop down to PC World and pick up the cartridge required. Except it costs quite a bit of money to replace the cartridges. The best price I could find for genuine cartridges was £51 (to replace all the cartridges). Ouch. A new Canon printer that offers better print quality, a couple of new features and a slightly sleeker design could be had for £80. What a waste though. However I was really tempted to order the new printer rather than pay through the nose for the ink cartridges. It was then I decided to do something different, for me anyway.

I’ve ordered a set of third party cartridges that have picked up great reviews online for only £16. According to the reviews which I always take with a pinch of salt as there is no way of verifying them, the quality of output is indistinguishable from the genuine ink that Canon supplies at over three times the price. They should arrive this week and I’m hopefully they will be ok. It’s the worst aspect of inkjets – the price of ink is a damned disgrace. Anyway, I’ll be sure to pass on results of the printing this week and also the supplier of the ink – good or bad!

Tweetie for Mac

Tweetie for the iPhone has been my favourite Twitter client since it launched. Fast, clean and full of great functionality. I’ve never quite managed to find as good a client on the Mac though. Twitterific was the first good Mac client but it felt slow and lacking in features especially compared to TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop. However both of those clients were Adobe Air based clients and always felt a wee bit sluggish, memory intensive and to be honest over featured for what I need. Thank goodness for Tweetie for Mac which launched today.

It’s a client written specifically for the Mac and it shows. Great design, fast and clean with a great deal of functionality for a v1.0 release. Things I like? Images open not in a browser but in their own pop-up within Tweetie. Conversations are viewed in an iChat style like the image above. Search is quick and trends are easily available via the search bar. You can also create a new window to hold an individual search – keeps the screen clean and free of clutter but means you can see more if you really want to. Much prefer this over TweetDeck’s way of working which can feel really clumsy but there’s no doubting it’s power for major Twitter users.

Shortcomings are really again only for power users. No easy way to group other Twitter users together apart form creating another Twitter account and using it to follow certain users. It’s a solution but not an elegant one. I’m sure future versions will offer some grouping support. I’ve set-up cmd+T as a new tweet shortcut so I can easily post from any app without finding Tweetie. I’ve also added a bookmarklet to Firefox which will create a new Twitter post via Tweetie of the current site your browsing. I used this bookmarklet instead of the one mentioned on the official site as it also posted the site title. One thing that did trip me up – cmd+return saves and send tweet and not return. Be nice if that was documented somewhere.

Even after just a night of use I’m delighted with Tweetie so far. Good looking, quick and low on resource requirements. It costs $19.95 ($14.95 until May 4th) or is free with ad support. The ad’s are very unobtrusive although once my credit card is back in action I’ll be making a purchase. It’s app’s like this that remind me why I switched to Mac.

Busy Busy Busy

I’ve had quite a bit on over the past few weeks. So much so that I’m taking a week off work starting this Friday. It will be good to take a break from the day to day’s at work and focus elsewhere. Lot’s of bit’s and piece’s around the house to take care off. I also want to put in some quality time on Cocoa and iPhone development. I’ve a simple app that I hope to build over the week I’m off. More on that later.

This weekend has been mostly cleaning up around the house and also on the computers. Freed up around 40GB on the iMac in 10 minutes – just been lazy recently keeping my disks tidy. Also got Delicious Library 2 syncing well between desktop and laptop via Dropbox. I moved the Delicious Library file from /Library/Application Support/Delicious Library 2/ to my Dropbox, creating an alias in the original directory to the file in my Dropbox folder. Works a treat. Just make sure the alias is the same name as the original file. I also updated my library with my latest purchases and also published the library on iand.net rather than on MobileMe. You can see the library here.

Dropbox has been working so well for me. So much so that I won’t be renewing MobileMe this year unless it goes through a serious upgrade which I just can’t see. Dropbox is a far superior file syncing tool – and quicker. I use Busysync to keep calendars in sync. I can sync contacts via Google for free. That leaves…and e-mail address that I don’t really use? I’ve turned off push on the iPhone to save on battery life and my calendar and contacts don’t change enough to justify over the air updating. I just don’t need it. If you are interested in Dropbox this is my referral link which gets me extra disk space if you sign up.

Anyway, back on topic. One of the reasons I’ve been busy is I’ve been helping set-up a website for a friend. So if your in need of a personal trainer in the Glasgow area I highly recommend Tangerine13. I’ve spent a few years working with Caroline but she’s moving on to pursue life as a full time personal trainer so hopefully Tangerine13 will work out for her. Eagle eyed readers (i.e. those that can be arsed to visit the site) will notice a small link at the bottom of Tangerine13 to pixlcode.com. That was the name I was going to use if/when I release iPhone app’s. Long way off but thought it was worthwhile linking to it in case the web site design goes anywhere. Not something I intend to pursue but you never know.

One other thing form the weekend that really pissed me off. Some dirty swine was trying to rip off my credit card. Again. Just over two years since my bank account was emptied, this time Egg were onto it straight away. No money lost, card stopped. Attempt to use my card was in London – trying to buy some Cellnet pre-pay card. I just don’t understand where they get the details from. I do use the card a lot online but make sure it’s always a secure purchase. Then again, there’s nothing to stop a site passing on card details. Or some back room staff doing the dirty I guess. Bloody annoying and it’s put me on edge again about my finances.

Anyway. iPhone app. I’ve a few idea’s for app’s actually. The problem is so do lot’s of other people. Already two of my idea’s, which 4 weeks ago were original and didn’t exist in the app store now do. Time moves fast unlike me at the moment. Too busy. Or busy doing the wrong things. So for my first app, screen’s have been mocked up. Usage has been thought through. Functionality has been locked down to a minimum. Keeping things simple. Just need to start coding. Should be fun. If I find the time.

Pirate Bay

Only one real story in tech today – Pirate Bay founders have been found guilty in their court case, jailed for a year each and ordered to pay around £1 million each. Ouch. It’s a headline grabbing verdict but only the first decision in what will will probably be a long and drawn out trial.

For me it’s a symbolic victory over The Pirate Bay four rather than anything meaningful. The site won’t shut down unlike Oink which was shut down and the owner and some members charged in the UK. As of yet no one has done any jail time following the Oink arrests although some of the uploaders did receive a community service sentence and had to pay back court fee’s. The site admin of Oink has still to be tried.

The biggest thing for the music and film industry bodies will be the hope that this will dissuade joe public from using torrent sites as it has ‘been proven’ to be illegal and you can be prosecuted. From what I can read today however the win does not mean the closing of the site or indeed will ever lead to the site being shut down. Pirate Bay have always been pretty open about what the do and also confident that their site cannot, and will not be shut down. Indeed, the charges that were finally proven were those of assisting in making copyright content available. Originally they were being tried of assisting copyright infringement. Very different and lesser charges.

But what does assisting in making copyright content available actually mean? Where does the assistance stop? Are ISP’s assisting by providing bandwidth to those that upload and download torrents? Is Google assisting by providing torrent’s in it’s index? If so that means every search engine provider is – that’s some very big names. The Pirate Bay is a search engine with results returned of links to files held elsewhere. Is there a difference especially when I can find the same torrents on Google as I can on Pirate Bay?

One impact will be not immediately, but over the next few months, we’ll see a shrinking of torrent sites. Some of the smaller sites will be shut down with ease. The ruling will have repercussions for those that aren’t set up as well as Pirate Bay or the other well known sites. I also think there will be an increase in usage at the Bay. Being THE headline on BBC News will bring the site to the attention of a lot more people. People that will be curious. Curious to see what’s there. Curious enough to visit the site. Curious enough to click on a torrent link for the first time.

One final thought. Would we be using iPlayer, Hulu, Skype, Spotify and many other services if Kazza or bittorrent sites hadn’t been so popular over the last few years? Most of these are in response or based on file sharing technology. One other final thought. Would we be seeing broadband speeds of 50-100Mb now if it wasn’t for torrenting? Would we need those speeds? Last final thought. Thank goodness for newsgroups. For now.