Category Archives: General posts

Hello again

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It’s been a while – exams and schoolwork have taken their toll, and it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted on this blog. So, instead of doing lots of posts about small topics, I’d do a round up post of various different things.

Windows 8.1

The next versions of Microsoft’s main operating systems – Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 – are coming very soon, with so many changes that I can’t cover them here. Check out the Windows Team blog, The Verge etc. for more information. The public preview is shipping one week today (June 26), and will be available, free via the Windows Store, to all existing 8/RT users. The final version, shipping later this year, will also be free to the same customers.

Doctor Who

Matt Smith is leaving this Christmas! John Hurt is playing an as-yet-unknown (spoiler: it’s likely the ninth) incarnation of the Doctor! And series 8, with the 12th Doctor and Clara, is rumoured to start in the Autumn of next year with only 12 episodes. What’s wrong with the good old 13 episode series that started in April and ended in June, with no long breaks? The random scheduling is getting annoying.

Other

iOS 7 looks reasonable, except for the icons. Luther returns soon. Sherlock may or may not be broadcast later this year or next year.

Life

“Exams are over! Life begins…” (Pramface, series one episode one). Not quite. They’re technically over until November, but there’s lots of coursework and many internal ‘important’ exams to be done very soon. Plus, there are essays to be written and normal homework to be completed. It’ll only be over when school finishes for the summer… and the homework set for the holidays is out of the way. It could be worse. On the plus side, my GCSE ICT course has been completed a year early (AS time now), and a lawyer seems a potential career path. If you’re interested, my current A level selection is as follows:

  • ICT
  • History
  • English language OR Business Studies (both are good)
  • English literature

So, that’s the post. I hope that there will be more content on this blog regularly, but I’ll have to see. Thanks for reading!

A potential future for my blog

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WordPress.com has become a great place for me to host my blog over the past few years, but it’s time for something all-new, less cluttered and focused on blogging.

WP.com really is brilliant, with new features being added all of the time, but some of the restrictions are just crazy, such as only embedding YouTube videos. Why can’t I embed anything? Sure, I could use WordPress, but it’s too complicated and expensive for a personal blog.

Introducing Ghost. Currently a kickstarter project, I think it’s the future of blogging. I haven’t backed it, it won’t be coming any time soon and I’m not sure how suitable it is (I don’t want to host a blog myself, and I don’t want to have to pay to do so), but it’s something interesting that I may eventually move to. I’ll just have to see.

Take a look at
http://tryghost.org/

It’s the Doctor Who series finale tonight!

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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.

Great Expectations: the lost potential from concept to reality

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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

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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.