This and that

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 ~ 8 Comments

Summer holidays make it easy to keep on top of RSS feeds, and easier to spot some ace new blogs. Check out this one, I think it could be quite good.

My father-in-law is back in Scotland for the month, so we’re off to see him tonight and I’m really REALLY hoping he wants us to bring in a fish supper for dinner. I’ve not had fish and chips for ages and currently have a real craving for them.

XNeat Windows Manager is yet another application capable of doing some nice UI effects in Windows. Best of all, and the reason it wins out over many other similar applications for me, is that with it installed you can MIDDLE-CLICK TO CLOSE APPLICATIONS STRAIGHT FROM THE TASKBAR. Sounds simple I know but it’s a habit I use all the time in Firefox to close a tab, and it’s been bugging me for YEARS that I couldn’t do this in Windows until I stumble across XNeat.

A quick thanks to Daisy for nominating me for a Post of the Week award, I didn’t win but was quite surprised to see my name in the shortlist. Who knows, it might inspire me to indulge my creative side a little more often (there was a similar post later on last week too).

Since I bought my iPhone I’ve changed the way I think about how I work when I’m at home, and find myself leaning towards my MacBook more often than my PC, it’s just so much nicer to use. The only downside is the small screen and limited hard drive (my music collection is larger than my MacBook’s hard drive). So I’m looking to the Belkin Flip (DVI version) as a solution.

Physio tomorrow, we’ll see if the eccentric loading exercises I’ve been doing (and for a change I’ve been pretty good at remembering to do them!) have had an impact. They FEEL like they have, fingers crossed.

Quick iPhone Thoughts

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 ~ 8 Comments

Whilst it isn’t as full featured as, say, the HTC Touch Diamond, I can’t think of anything that I’m really missing.

Text messages appearing as a conversation thread is so much better than the traditional display method (one text per screen).

Intuitive? Very. Although there are a few funny things, for example, you CAN set the keyboard shift button to turn into a CAPS LOCK style key, but it’s disable in the Settings by default.

Tip: To switch between keyboard modes (to add a ? for example), press and hold your finger on the 123 mode toggle button, keep your finger on the screen and slide to the ? and then let go. The keyboard inserts the ? and automatically flips you back to the ABC mode. Smart!

The screens is stunning, I’ve encoded Blade Runner to MP4 and… WOW.

Surfing the web and want to dial a number on a webpage? Click it. Simple.

Apps - 10 million were downloaded over the weekend. Impressive numbers. Some aren’t so good, but some, like Vicinity are awesome. It uses the built-in GPS to figure out your current location, then polls Yahoo Local directories to get you lists of taxis, restaurants and so on.

In short, I’m glad I waited a year to get my hands on this phone. The list of niggles is small and, quite honestly (and yeah yeah, call me a fanboy) it’s the best phone I’ve ever used.

Caveat: my last phone, a Samsung D800, was a crock of shit, but still. The iPhone is a helluva piece of kit. It, honestly, just works.