It’s the Doctor Who series finale tonight!

Today marks the end of the seventh series of Doctor Who, and promises to reveal not only who Clara Oswald really is, but also the Doctor’s name (spoiler: the latter most likely isn’t actually revealed). Whether or not the question of all questions (Doctor Who?!) is answered, it promises to be a brilliant episode, one that will change the show forever. I certainly hope it does, because most of Series 7 has been quite disappointing. The first half was ok, but with only five episodes not much could be developed. The second half has been a bit longer, but apart from The Bells of Saint John and a couple of others, the writing hasn’t been at its best. Without the mystery of Clara, it might be the worst series in the recent years. I’m hoping that next year we’ll have a full thirteen episode run with no long breaks, a great story arc and two part episodes. One part episodes are good, but especially for finales they don’t allow writers to develop the story much.

So, make sure you’re watching BBC One tonight at 7pm! There’s going to be a clip from the 50th anniversary special featuring both the tenth and eleventh Doctors posted online straightaway afterwards, so head to the Doctor Who website once the episode is over.

Watch the TV trailer now!

Oh, and yes I’ve changed the theme of my blog. Thought it could do with a bit of a new look.

iPhone tips and tricks

Sorry for not posting for a while. Here’s a video with some really useful iPhone tips/tricks. I especially recommend the longer number passcode tip, because it still provides a just number keyboard yet it more secure.

Windows Blue leaked

I can’t wait for the beta to be released.

Great Expectations: the lost potential from concept to reality

There are many concepts in the technology world, with a few coming to light. Google Glass and Xbox Kinect are just two groundbreaking products that have made it out of the lab and into the real world. But what about the lost potential?

Above is the first video of Google Glass – then called “Project Glass” – showing how it will integrate into our lives, by showing us all the information we need, when we need it. The person in the video is reminded of calendar events, told the weather when looking outside, notified that the subway is closed and is even navigated around a book shop. There’s even no apparent connection problems – Glass is always connected.

But in reality? It’s nowhere near as powerful.

Joshua Topolsky from The Verge took a look at pretty much the final version of Glass, and though it may be useful to record a video with just your glasses, and know the time simply be looking in the top right, it isn’t that useful in everyday life. Gone is the full vision overlay, and it turns out that the only built in apps are New York Times, Evernote, Gmail, and Path (at least at launch). Useful occasionally, but not all the time. There’s no Calendar, Weather, and (at launch) there will be no cellular version (Wi-Fi only) and you have to wake glass up before using it. I understand that more third-party apps will come, but it isn’t good that Google won’t be integrating simple first-party apps such as Calendar.

Yes, it was just a concept in that video. A preview of how Glass might end up. But the real Glass won’t be that useful in everyday life, and no amount of third-party apps can give you cellular data or a full, useful vision overlay.

So that’s Google Glass, with quite a lot of lost potential, at least in my opinion. Another example of this – but less so – is Xbox Kinect, previously known as Project Natal (I prefer the original name):

Xbox Kinect – the final product – is nowhere near as accurate or as powerful as that. It will likely be improved significantly in the upcoming Xbox update (Xbox 8? Xbox 720? New Xbox?), but it will probably never be quite as good as in the demo video. 4 years after that video was put online, can anyone walk into their living room, and just start talking, with the Xbox instantly knowing who they are? No.

So… many features have been lost in the transition between concept and reality. It hasn’t just happened with these products; everything from the Pebble, which requires terrible phone setup to, in some extent, Windows 8 and Windows RT, which are overall ok but lack amazing hardware and, in the case of the latter, lack apps and compatibility. It’s impossible to incorporate everything in the final product, so I just wish that companies would stop raising our hopes with amazing concept videos only to have our dreams shattered when the final product comes to market.

Vegan for lent: never again

I mentioned previously, in my first post about being vegan for lent, that I could actually live like this. The substitutes are fine and, in some cases, better, and I’ve discovered some great foods that I’d love to have beyond lent, such as vegetarian/vegan sausage rolls.

But would I stay vegan? No.

Dairy products are just too common, and no matter how good substitutes are there will never be a perfect replacement for cheese, for example. Seeing my family putting grated cheese on their broccoli soup makes me extremely jealous. What was I thinking when I decided to go vegan? And though oat milk – my preferred substitute for milk – is ok, I’m sure I’ll never want to taste it again after Sunday 31 March. And my coconut milk-based alternative for chocolate milkshake is nice, it won’t be something I’ll especially miss. Dairy products are just too good to be replaced, and in many situations there just aren’t replacements – I miss white chocolate!

So, I fully understand how vegans can live, unlike before lent. The substitutes are there. But I don’t understand how they can cope with the rest of the world there, enjoying chocolate and other delights. It’s just too difficult. And nothing (except for the bees) dies when you’re a vegetarian.

And that’s my post for today. Or this week. Hopefully not the only one for this month. I’ll leave you with a video… but if you like eating meat, don’t be surprised if you have second thoughts after watching it.

Click here to watch the video.

Fourth series of Sherlock confirmed

Fourth series of Sherlock confirmed

Learn to code today

And a longer version:

 

More information about the Windows ‘Blue’ wave of updates

Vegan for lent: day 1

As you may or may not know, for this year I’ve decided to go vegan. I was previously pescetarian (a vegetarian who eats fish), and while this is quite a major change for me it’s not as much a change as if someone who eats meat did the same thing.

When thinking about going vegan, it seemed pretty difficult. No milk. No eggs. No cheese. No honey. No cake! The list seems endless. It would seem easier to write what I could eat. But after a lot of ingredient reading in the shops (thanks mum!), some food was found that I could eat.

And so it began. Surprisingly, it was a lot easier (once the food was there) then I thought. Breakfast was pretty much the same – I can have most of my favourite cereals, and while I couldn’t have the hot cross buns that everyone else had (the stripes aren’t vegan) normal buns with raisins in were fine. The only major change in breakfast was the lack of real milk – soya milk was in my coffee. It tasted a little… different but it was OK.

Likewise, lunch wasn’t much of a change. Instead of tuna/egg mayo or cheese there was some jam. The biscuits were vegan. And, unsurprisingly, the banana and the water were both vegan.

We’re yet to have tea/dinner, the main meal of the day, so I can’t comment on how my new diet will affect it. I suspect it will be quite a big change, especially for dessert – yoghurt, no, cake, no, pancakes, no… fruit, anyone?

4 years ago I never thought I could be vegetarian full time, and that turned out to be completely incorrect. I don’t think I could stay vegan full time, and I don’t think my opinion will change of that. I will, at least eventually, miss milk, milk/white chocolate, cake and nice desserts, and if I did go full time vegan then I think mum would go crazy from reading the labels. Becoming vegetarian… well, pescetarian didn’t affect my life that much, but I think being vegan will.

Once it is Easter, I don’t plan on going back to being pescetarian. As part of a slow transition, I’ll become vegetarian (don’t eat fish or meat or gelatine etc. but do have dairy products) which I look forward to, but it won’t be immediate. There’s a lot of fish to be eaten in the house, and in some restaurants the main nice thing to eat is fish.

If nothing else other than a pain, at least this diet will be a lot healthier. Some berries instead of a slice of cake is a better choice. But the main point of this temporary change is to see exactly how vegans manage their everyday lives and whether it really is possible (of course it is, but it didn’t seem like that before). At the moment, I think I can understand how they do it; I’ll just have to see if I still feel that way in 6 weeks.

(Almost) 50,000 views!

I’m posting this now because I’ll probably forget to post when I do reach this milestone. At the time of writing, the current view count is:

49,065

It may seem quite a bit off 5k, but basing on current daily views it should be roughly just 10 days left. Hopefully.

It’s down to you, the readers, that All of Time and Tech (the at-least-fourth name for the originally called Alex’s Blog website) has got this far. So thank you.

I haven’t been posting that much recently, but I’ll try to post some more soon. I’ll be going Vegan for lent this year, so that should enable some interesting content to be made, and other exciting non-personal stuff will be launching soon. Doctor Who is returning in 59 days for its next 8 episode series. Sherlock series 3 is about to start filming. Merlin… well, Merlin’s gone. But at least there’s some good news.

So, thank you, and keep on reading!