So 2011 then…as the saying goes ‘time flies’ and all that and it couldn’t have been more appropriate for this year. This year consisted of nothing but work dominating my life. Being at the same defence company I have been situated at for the past 6yrs+ now has seen me lose that ‘killer determination’ I once had. I have settled down there now to the point where my confidence is slowly waning on a daily basis and an ‘I can’t be arsed’ attitude is beginning to emerge.

August 2011 marked an important event in which I was chosen to work on a special project, which would be very good for my future. At the time of writing, the project is in full flow. Sadly it leaves me horribly tired by the week’s end. Enough about that anyway.

On the technology front it has been an incredible year:

• After dominating the Mobile market for many years, Apple are now feeling the heat of competition from the likes of HTC, and mainly electronics giant Samsung. So what better way to stall your competitors than suing their rear ends off. 2011 was the year in which every mobile company just sued everyone else – what a time to be a lawyer!
• Social Networking became gained even more popularity in 2011 and what better way to show off the brilliance of Twitter than by starting a RIOT. After the shooting of a seemingly innocent man in London, various folk took it as an excuse to set buildings on fire and raid shops….and then post photos on twitter of them with their ‘loot’ – clever that. It is also clever that Twitter was the main communications tool being used by the rioters to organise themselves. Twitter came in for the heaviest criticism as generations clashed as to its role, perpetuation and culpability.

The social network was pinned for inciting the riots though the Police used it against the rioters and convicted a great deal of them, therefore restoring some faith and the unstoppable momentum of social media services meant responsibility slowly became the key message.

• Sony were just as heavily criticised for the hacking of their PlayStation Network, which went unnoticed for several days before they released a statement admitting that data from over 100m+ users was compromised. Restoration to the service took well over a month, however Sony’s reputation had taken a colossal hit and apologies were simply not enough. For the following months, hackers continued to cause havoc with the stability of the network.
• Without a doubt the largest story of 2011 ws the passing of legendary Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Plagued by health problems in the past few years, Seve had stepped down as CEO at the start of 2011 taking a long medical leave. He later resigned as CEO in August 2011 sparking rumours about his health. Tim Cook was to become the new CEO of Apple as a result.

Job’s passing had a profound impact on the tech world, and I have an unpublished article (too long!) to show exactly why. Suffice to say he had a hand in all the technology you utilise today. Music, Film, Personal Computers, Mobile Phones and of course Tablets.

I confess that prior to the release of the first iPhone in 2007 I was never an Apple fan – that one device changed the world. What really made me sit up and take notice was Steve quoting Alan Kay, a legend in the computing world and someone who I worshipped as a teenager. I recognised the quote immediately.

“People who are really serious about software, should make their own hardware”

End of November Snow Blankets UK. Source: NASA

Two Tablet models:

Tablet 1:

• 10″ LED Backlit IPS Panel Widescreen feat a touch display and a resolution of 1024 x 768
• 3GS style Oleophobic coating to be present on the screen
• Wifi N ONLY wireless connectivity
• Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR Tech
• Assisted GPS (same as iPhone 3G/3Gs)
• 16, 32GB storage ability
• Dual Cortex A9 Tegra 2 SoC
• 2x USB ports
• Twin speakers and a Microphone
• 3.5″ Headphone connector
• Accelerometer
• Runs Mobile OSX (the same OS that is present on the iPhone’s and iPod Touch)

Tablet 2: All of the above with the following additions.

• 10″ OLED Widescreen display featuring the same details as Tablet 1.
• Built in iSight web camera
• Wifi N & 3G wireless connectivity
• 64, and 128GB storage capacities

Compare my guesstimate specs with Apple’s iPad specs and you’ll see I wasn’t too far off! Ideally I was expecting a 10″ touchscreen housed in a smooth aluminium body that presently encases present day Macbook Pro’s and Macbook Air’s. I had expected Mobile OSX to power the device, why not? The appstore despite being criticised heavily in every area has been a monumental success for Apple. It may be flawed in many ways having a system where you cannot effectively trial apps before purchase but at the same time it has been hugely successful thanks to a superb SDK that developers have access to.

Mobile OSX in my eyes was the perfect foundation for a tablet. I have to admit that I am not a fan of previous tablets, I have hated their swivel screens, which screams ‘BREAK ME’, and I have disliked the fact that these things ran a fully blown OS, Windows for the most part. In my eyes a portable hand held device shouldn’t have the complexity of a full OS, instead it should be instantly accessible and easy to use without too much underlying complexity. Mobile OSX as seen on the iPhone and iPod Touch was just perfect, so perfect that even my technophobe parents can use my phone with ease, whilst previous phones have just baffled them.

I wanted a flat panel that my parents could pick up, tap on icons and bring up films, and photos without indulging in complex, puzzling OS features that they don’t need e.g window min/max/close icons that adorn our application titlebars. Given that they can pick up my iPhone 3G and browse my camera roll easily scares the hell out of me – but they can do it, and they’re confident when using the OS…if only Apple could stick that onto a 10″ screen I thought…

It was obvious that Apple were going to demonstrate gaming on the slate pad, and whilst I am not a fan of iPhone gaming (due to poor battery life) I do appreciate what the gaming developers have done. For this reason I was under the impression that the device would be powered by the Tegra 2 SoC (system on a chip). Instead they’ve opted for an in-house 1GHz A4 SoC. I have previously touted 2010 as the year for mobile devices, and mobile apps thanks to processors such as the Tegra 2 arriving so I would love to see the A4 benchmarked against the competition as it would be the perfect chip for future software and intensive video demands. Sadly it would also cost Apple millions just to get the chip from nVidia, so there was a strong chance that this wasn’t going to happen anyway.

Do I want the iPad? There is no doubt that it’ll be an awesome device for my parents as they have easy access to all my iTunes content. First impressions on the device are good, but lets see how badly the UK gets ripped off on pricing, as no prices for the UK have been stated just yet. Besides…I think five computers in this house is more than enough.

The A9 dual core Tegra 2 SoC

Some 8hrs after joining, Twitter is down...

About twelve hours ago, Microsoft founder Bill Gates joined Twitter. I am somewhat happy to say that I was amongst his first 1000 followers!

An hour after following him I went over to check his profile and he had 23,000 followers, expanding to 55,000 just half an hour later! Word of Mr.Gates arrival spread like wildfire thanks to the twitter trends, and as I type this the following day having just woken up – Twitter has been down for a full hour! Has the worlds most popular and richest man brought Twitter to it’s knee’s just by joining?

I have a feeling Mr.Gates will amass the largest follower count we have yet to see on the service and it’s great to see him online. “Hello World” indeed.
Bring on the Faaaaaail Whaaaaaaaale!

Update from Twitter: We are experiencing an outage due to an extremely high number of whales.  Our on-call team is working on a fix.
Update: (5:18a): We are recovering from this incident. A sudden failure coupled with problems in switching to a backup system produced a high number of errors for around 90 minutes. This made the site largely inaccessible. No data was lost or compromised during this outage.

Yes this blog has been ignored for far too long now in favour of Twitter but I don’t plan on leaving it in the dust just yet. I have some ideas for 2010 that could bring this place back to to life!

Today I took the time to do something I had been dreading for some time. Upgrading this blog from WordPress 2.6 to the latest 2.8.5 version was always going to be a major pain in the you know what. The upgrade went moderately well and only my sidebar took the most damage. At the moment I can’t get WP Quotes to read from the quotes engine properly and I have only just managed to get FlickrRSS working properly. Anyway, enough of that! Back to Forza Motorsports 3!

Awww. Do you want to see a grown man cry? Well, if that be the case, take one to watch Marley & Me. In my case, it was my friend Ayesha taking me to see this film, which I knew I would regret.

The film, loosely based on the book stars Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson as Jennifer and John Grogan – an everyday couple who are on the verge of starting a family. With Jennifer following her ‘life’s rulebook’ to a tee. Her next step in life is to have a child, much to the horror of John who feels that he just isn’t ready for such a step. To ween her off the idea he decides to get her a dog – but not any old dog, oh no. They purchase a lovable puppy and name him Marley. It quickly becomes obvious that this dog is a potential nightmare in the making, as he is hyperactive, eats anything and pretty much drives everyone mad.

The film also heavily focuses on the couple as they raise a family, with John obtaining ever more promising positions at work granting them a valuable opportunity to move homes to a better area. As their family blossoms Marley never changes and remains a constant (see troublemaker) in their family.  With Marley pretty much destroying everything he touches, he remains an integral part of their lives and is essentially their ‘first child’. The film never gets too cute and funny and maintains a serious edge mid-way through the film with the ending being enough to bring grown men and women to tears. Don’t watch this film with make-up on ladies.

Oh dear lord where to begin.

My advice to people who have yet to see it – go and do a good PEE before watching this film. Drinking alcohol beforehand is a no-no, or you’re screwed otherwise. Transformers 2 is so damn long that you’ll end up going to take a leak at least TWICE.

I might as well say this now. If you are a teenager who never saw the original cartoons, on which this film is based then you will love Transformers 2 as you have nothing to base the characters on. I know that my five little neices loved it, despite not knowing a single thing about a Transformer. Those who grew up around the 80′s cartoons will either fall into the ‘It wasn’t bad, but fark me it is too long’ or ‘MEH’ catogories. I fall into the former. Ayesha was so bored that she began playing with her new iPhone 3GS during the Agent Simmon’s “come to my basement” scenes.

Shia LaBeouf fumbles, stumbles and blabbers his way through this sequel, with Megan Fox providing the much needed eye candy. Add in a pointless university roommate who was such a waste of space that I wonder why he was even in the cast, and Agent Simmons returning for the quick fire gags played by John Turturro. Soldiers Tyrese Gibson and Josh Duhamel also reprise their roles as Sergeant Epps and Major Lennox.

Director Micheal Bay piles on the explosions, more explosions, yet bigger explosions, rock explosions, building explosions, cars being blown into the air; then exploding, and even more explosions….oh and robot fights in this sequel, which introduces us to so many characters and transformers that I spent half the film only recognising good and bad transformers by the colours of their eyes. It was a complete mess.

This time round the story makes little sense, and features more plotholes than The Mummy Returns. The characters are equally annoying and the action is repetitive and predictable. There is so much happening at various points in the film that you could pop out for food, return and yet miss very little. The film just never wants to end. Actually sod it; I’m ending this here before I really begin ranting.

Pixar return with the very mismatched family of prehistoric furballed mammals.

Manny the Mammoth and his female (what else?) mate Ellie are about to discover the joys of parenthood as Ellie has one in the ‘oven’ as it were. Sid the Sloth has felt somewhat left out by this and decides to try and adopt a family of his own, instead of finding a female mate. Sid the Saber-toothed Tiger has become somewhat old and tired of his lifestyle and wishes he was a hunter again, away from his ‘family’ and out in the wild.

Sid being as stupid and clumsy as he is manages to come across three unhatched dinosaur eggs, which eventually hatch to reveal T-Rexes who immediately assume Sid is their mother. Of course the real mother eventually finds them and isn’t too pleased. Hilarity then ensues as the real mother takes her newborn infants as well as Sid and runs off to her ‘world’. It turns out that there is an entire lost world beneath the ice, which no one really knew about – until now. The ‘family’ go off in search of Sid and bump into the heroic but crazy weasel Buck, voiced by Simon Pegg. Buck spends his time hunting the big bad of the lost world – a giant, evil carnivore by the name of….Rudy.

Of course there is another attraction to the Ice Age trilogy, and that is Scrat – The Sabertooth Squrrel. Scrat is a bumbling, comical furry creature whose antics would remind most older folk of Wiley Coyote, from the classic 50′s cartoon Road Runner. Scrat happens to be one of the key reasons why people of all ages love the Ice Age trilogy. His mannerisms and failings are hilarious to watch as he goes after that elusive acorn. Hell he even has a 7 minute short film on iTunes that is quite funny. In all the previous Ice Age films, Scrat pretty much appears at random moments when the film’s main plotline gets a bit long in the tooth as it were. It is as if he is introduced just to wake up the audience just as they are tiring of a particularly boring segment of the film.

Ice Age 3 introduces a love interest for our furry friend and chaos ensues. Overall, Ice Age 3 still manages to raise laughs a plenty.

<–hurhur

Ok, admit it. How many of you lot have begun ignoring your blogs in favour of Twitter? Since returning to the fast growing service in February 2009 I am pretty much guilty of this as I have indeed ignored this blog, something I never thought I would do.

I suppose it is a multitude of things though. Yes Twitter is to blame, but aside from that I have been focusing on my working life pretty much 100% since the year began. I had enough distractions towards the end of 2008 and wanted to start the year fresh – and have done. So, work goes incredibly well. Too well infact and I am almost struggling to cope with some of the things now bestowed onto me.

I think Mr.Wud stated what I’ve had on my mind for a while now. I have noticed that a lot of bloggers since moving to Twitter have just let their blogs slowly gather dust, as it were. Blogging takes some thought, time and planning in some cases before one publishes a post. Twittering is limited to 140 characters a ‘tweet’ (message) so you can jibber-jabber about anything without a care in the world.

Does that mean my blog is pretty much stagnant i.e dead? Well no. I’ve put a lot of work into it, but time is precious, and after coming home from a long day at work I pretty much crash out on the bed/sofa. Twittering on the move is simple and quick, blogging isn’t so and that is my problem right there. I will continue to add reviews, and thoughts that cannot be twittered though but I predict things will be rather quiet for the most part.

Anyway, I’m pretty much looking forward to this summer. I had plans to visit Australia, NSW this April-May as I understand the weather isn’t hot at this time of the year. Heat=baad, Cold/Rain = Good. However as usual, those plans have gone tits up thanks to my parents who don’t want to go.

This summer see’s the arrival of the third iteration of Apple’s iPhone (the plodphone). I am excited as hell, even more-so with the new OS 3.0 that will be launched alongside it. My current Jailbroken iPhone is such a strong part of my everyday life that it’s hard as hell to live without it. I just can’t wait for the next version.

Windows 7 Release Candidate (Build 7100) was leaked onto the interwebs just a week ago and my, it is good enough to ship retail in it’s current state. I’ve presently got it sitting on my Samsung NC10 netbook and it quite literally flies in comparison to XP SP3, that was on there. I await soundcard drivers for my Auzentech Meridian er soundcard so I can install the RC release on my main desktop rig though. Oh, and we can now uninstall that heap of gobshite known as Internets Explorer!! How cool is that?

I had written a ‘short’ story over the past few months based on the Fallout universe and my adventures since discovering the game late during December 2008. However it has ballooned to such a size that I’ve no idea how to get it onto the blog! It was about my adventures in the game basically with a nice bit of fiction about my lone quest to get to Rivet City, and then to find ‘Dad’. Most people who know me know that I can pretty much sprout A4 paragraphs in minutes, so trust me – it is large!

Hmm, I gotta get out more!

On a spanking Sunday morning at 08:55 I am currently listening to what could be the most relaxing track ever – Stir It Up, from Bob Marley & The Wailers Legend album. I had forgotten how sublime this album was.

Blood Test Woes

Recent life updates would most notably be visiting my doctor for the first time in 18 years to have my first ever Blood Test. I have a severe aversion to needles and even threatened my dentist at the age of 15 so suffice to say that I was shitting bricks. I am no stranger to knives or being stabbed but if you come at me with a needle, I’ll run a bloody mile whilst screaming like Carlton from Fresh Prince. The whole process went by really fast even though the doc was doing the procedure in my left arm, my right arm was clenched ready to let rip. My mother was there to keep an eye on me though! Sad yes, required? Hell yes.

Carphone Warehouse iPhone Woes

What else? A week after its release I am still trying to get a flamin iPhone. I seem to be blessed with living amongst retards in my home town. They seem to exist everywhere right now. I have only been with Carphone Warehouse for 13 months now and I never knew how crap an experience it was to get any sort of information from one of their employees in a store.

I played a blinder on Friday though. I had visited various CPW stores in my town over the week and came to the conclusion that they were only selling iPhones to new customers and not those wanting to upgrade to one. Sounds silly but bear with me here. For days I had been told that they wouldn’t be getting stocks for weeks now and they had computer problems. I can understand that…to an extent, just don’t play me for a fool here.

Me: I’d like to sign upto CPW for an iPhone and an 18month contract please if I may.
Salesman: Sure, if I can take your details, proof of address then I can <checks computer> yes get an iphone delivered to you on Monday. What colour would you like sir?
Me: Oh you have them in stock? In that case could I upgrade my other current contract to an iPhone, and then let my girlfriend know that you have stock?
Salesman: Er, let me just check if we can get you an iphone sir. Hmm, our allocation system isn’t quite working and won’t let me set you up with one.
Me: I can see the reflection of your screen in that cabinet behind you mate, I see either a figure of 400 or 500 on the screen.
Salesman: …but the system isn’t really working and I can’t order one for you.
Me: But you could when I wanted to sign up as a new customer?
Salesman: Sir if you could call the CPW Customer Helpline here they could possibly upgrade you…
Me: Right, cheers.

You could repeat the above about 4 times as I had repeatedly visited various CPW stores around my town. I had read of other CPW customers being in the same situation so I had an idea. Why not ring up their Helpline and say I wanted to ‘leave’. I am out of contract so why not? Mobile phone companies would do anything to keep a customer. To cut a long story short I phoned up and requested a PAC code (a code used to port your phone number to a new network), and they asked why I was leaving. I fed them the story and they right away asked what iPhone I wanted and what colour. So I now have 2 months free on a £35 month contract and an iPhone coming on Monday. Sweet!

WordPress 2.5 = A Whole Lot of Headache

Can I even give myself in to liking WordPress 2.5? I can’t stand the damn thing and no matter how much I use it, I just can’t get with the stupid admin screen! It is a mess! I am not the only person with these views it seems. WordPress development is progressing at such a rate that plugin/theme authors can barely keep up – this isn’t good. I’m still trying to sort out compatibility issues with Internet Exporer 5/6/7 and now WP2.6 is out!

Thieves/Expenses/CatCams

That thieving tart PR has stolen the theme I was going to move this blog to. This current K2 theme doesn’t feel as robust as it used to any more although I guess WordPress 2.5 is mostly to blame here. So theat tart who is too lazy to find a good theme for himself has stoled the one I was going to mod! Thieving Apple fanboy scum!

What else? Oh I have just spent £1200 on a bloody prayer ceremony at my house. This lasted over two days and really cheesed me off. I hate things like this and I’m not even flipping religious in the first place. It was mainly for the parents though so I can’t complain. Actually I can because I’m about to buy them a 42″ HDTV for a £1000 ffs.

What else? Oh Mr.Lee has his own CatCam! Ever wondered what your kitty cat gets up to when it leaves your house? Well Mr.Lee’s owner stuck a camera on his collar and the results are great!

Apple’s App Store arrives

Worra load of crock. Apple’s big iPhone launch as well as Firmware 2.0 launch has kinda backfired on them. Firmware 2.0 is an utter buggy pile of poo right now, with features such has widely reported high battery usage, repeated apps crashing, phones/touch’s automatically freezing etc. One list (here) just highlights even more stuff.

Luckily the App Store, accessible via iTunes and a small application on your device is rather good. I wish I could say the same for the quality of apps there because they are all rubbish aside from a few. Installer.app via Jailbreak has way better third party applications so far.

Twinkle: The Twitter client from Installer.app makes its way to the store with a bang. This is basically a location aware chat client that lets you leave twitters (140 character messages) to others in your area. It is a great idea that works so well.

Spinner Prologue: A maze game that makes use of the accelerometer present on the iPhone/Touch. Frantic, fun and you end up waving your device around like a llama.

Remote: Apple came up with this free masterpiece. It turns your device into a wifi remote allowing you to fully control iTunes on your computer, or even AppleTV. Doesn’t sound all that – until you try it that is. Eats up battery power though!

ZinTin: Now this is another location aware app. It allows you to exchange photos, share information with other users in your area. Every user has their own ‘wallspace’, which can contain your own photos as well as images from other users. A great idea that is strangely addictive.

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