blog.imric.co

iPad

2011-03-26T18:34:00.001Z

So, I've finally taken the plunge and purchased an internet tablet. Surprisingly it's ended up being the first generation iPad.

I'd been waiting for the iPad2 announcement from Apple and the Motorola Xoom to arrive on market before making a decision on what tablet to buy. I was really expecting the Xoom wifi to hit the market at around the £400 mark, undercutting the iPad. I was wrong, Motorola went and priced themselves out of the market at a whopping £500. Then the big bombshell hit, as Apple announced the iPad 2 and in doing so they also announced that they were cutting £100 from the price of the iPad. Suddenly the iPad was well below the price I was willing to pay and very desirable.

I had a couple of things to overcome before coughing up the money for the pad. Firstly is the fact that I've invested in the Google and Android way of doing things. I've spent a bit of cash on Android apps and most of my online life is spent using Google services. I have blogger, gmail, picasa, docs, reader etc. as my "web apps". Then I have things purchased on Android that I'd loathe purchasing again on iOS. Doing some research calmed my nerves and I decided that things would be pretty compatible.
The other thing putting me off was iTunes. Now to say I'm not a fan would be an understatement. iTunes for me has traditionally caused me problems on my PCs over the years. Before I eventually vowed to never install it again. So after some thinking and speaking to Kie and Gro, I decided that iTunes shouldn't cause me so much anguish.

So with these niggles overcome, I decided that it made sense to have an iOS device in order to have some knowledge of that platform.

So in my hands right now is my first generation iPad wifi 16GB. I must admit that it's a cracking piece of kit. It's very portable and easy to use, thus far totally replacing my laptop. I've even written this blog post using the pad.

Sky+ HD

2011-02-01T20:48:00.000Z

After hearing that Formula 1 would be broadcast in HD this season I decided to bite the bullet and get Sky+ HD. I must point out that the experience of ordering and having Sky+ HD installed was excellent. I ordered on the Friday and I was watching HD content on Tuesday morning. On a slightly unhappy note, I think that the extra £10 per month is an outrage and has been the main reason I've not upgraded to HD before now. The things I do for F1! :)

Of all the content I've watched on the Sky box since I've had it installed, football seems to be the most improved. I've personally always found footie to be hard to watch on TV up until now. Never really having a clue who was kicking the ball at one time. HD is totally different, you can read the names on the shirt, see facial expressions from distance and even tell what pattern and texture the football shirts consist of. I really can't wait to see this kind of stuff in motorsport and Formula 1 in particular. I'm really anticipating some amazing content, I think crashes will look spectacular.

Other than the much improved picture from the Sky+ HD box, the actual "plus" features of the box are great too. Recording individual programs, entire series, pausing live TV and accessing the "anytime" content makes TV viewing much more enjoyable. It's something that I never really ever wanted too much, but already I've series linked quite a few shows. My problems has always been that I find it inconvenient to watch TV at specified times. Watching it when I want has allowed me to do what I want and not worry about missing an episode of my favorite program.

With my 40" LED TV, Sky+ HD, amp and speakers at the ready, I really can't wait to experience F1 in HD when they arrive in Bahrain in March!!

a little bit of posting

2011-01-26T18:16:00.000Z

I've been asked by a couple of my friends (namely kie and gro) to join them in the post-a-day/post-a-week challenge, which is going on over on Wordpress throughout 2011. The idea of the challenge is to get people into the habit of posting to their blogs more often. So with a little consideration and although being a user of Blogger, I've decided to take up the challenge for the remainder of 2011.

In order to be creative enough to write something weekly, I've started taking notes down as and when in the Catch app on my HTC Desire. The post-a-week challenge makes mention of the dailypost blog to give inspiration, so I've subscribed to dailypost using Google Reader. Hopefully the combination of Catch and dailypost will help me to create some interesting reads. Although, it'll probably be the boring drivel I talk about as usual. ;)

So wish me luck (gl me) and I'll post again within a week!

Terrible Roads

2011-01-17T18:43:00.002Z

I'm beginning to get a little frustrated with the state of the roads in Coventry on my daily commute to work. There seems to be new pot holes springing up on a weekly basis with no reparations done at all. Many of the roads are in such a state that they need to be totally resurfaced.

All too common

The thing is, the comparatively poor town that I live in has great roads to drive on. With what pot holes there are being filled quite quickly. So my commute is half filled with nice smooth driving and the other half with a bumpy ride while having to avoid obstacles.

In all honesty the roads in Coventry are easily as bad as the roads I've seen on my travels in eastern Europe. Perhaps worse.

To get around this I've been try to change my route to work. However nearly every route I try is either comparable or worse than the route I already take. I did manage to change the route a little in the end, sticking to an A road which adds a couple of miles onto my journey.

I'm guessing that Coventry council prefer to spend my road tax on the hundreds of speed cameras than on maintaining the roads. A strategy of making roads undriveable to reduce speed I think! Perhaps they'll fix the roads when they realise that they're getting no income from the cameras :)

My Tech Hopes for 2011

2011-01-01T13:09:00.000Z

Happy new year everyone. With the new year I've been thinking about what tech I'd like to see in the coming months. Here are the top three on my wish list.

Android Tablets
I'm hoping that early this year we see Android become a lot more friendlier to the tablet form factor. There are a few stumbling blocks at the moment, the biggest for me so far has been the price of these tablets.

Samsung Galaxy Tab

For example I loved the look of the Samsung Galaxy Tab and I really wanted one, but with the cost so high I just couldn't warrant buying one. The Android OS is not really ready for the larger form factor yet, I think this is why manufacturers have kept the android tablets quite small so far. Finally the apps, which are not yet ready to cover the larger screens of tablets, both in terms of screen resolution and of functionality.

So the future? From what I hear Google are working to make the next version of Android (Honeycomb), tablet friendly. What I hope to see from this is a better GUI and have the Market distinguish between phone apps and tablet apps, so that people aren't installing stuff that looks terrible on the larger screen.

I'd like to see manufacturers remove the "phone" part from these tablets. I don't want a huge phone, I want a device to browse the internet via wireless and have the option to buy a 3G version. I'd like to see more tablets with the same screen size as the iPad, I think that Apple got the size of the iPad just right.

I hope they make the price point right, in my opinion it needs to be in the region of netbooks and in competition with the iPad prices. I think most people will accept paying in the region of £300 - £400 for a tablet.

Android Market

The New Android Market

I think all Android users know that their Market is lacking vs Apple's App Store. Although nice improvements have been made in the last month or so. They've overhauled the Market app with a new GUI and introduced long descriptions for apps, related apps and more pictures of each app. The problem that we have is that all of this is only avalaible on the device. There is no way for us to browse and choose an app to install from our PCs.

I'm really hoping that Google push hard to introduce an Android Market that is accessible via the web browser. They've been talking about it since the last Google IO conference but it's yet to make an appearance.

With a browser accessible Android Market I hope to be able to find apps much easier. When I look at an apps details, see higher resolution pictures and You Tube videos. Then have the ability to push the app to my phone via the data connection like how Chrome to phone works.
I think with a better Android Market it will get more developers on board with Android. After all developers want you to install / buy their apps. Making it easier to find and view apps before installing / purchasing is in everyone's best interests.

Internet TV
I'd like to see more TV channels and movie rentals start to move over to the internet platform, delivering on demand content over broadband. I think that the three main options that will be available to people are Apple TV, Google TV and Boxee. Not sure which will end up being best of the three devices, but so long as you're getting the content from a website / service provider it shouldn't matter which device you choose.

Boxee Box

I already have Boxee and its really great to use, although a bit limited right now. Streaming content from the BBC iPlayer and Channel 4 on demand directly to the TV is really nice. You can track what content you've already watched and subscribe to channels to be updated when new content is available. What Boxee is missing at the moment is the likes of LoveFilm in order to rent or buy films and play them instantly over the internet.

The other alternative for internet TV is games consoles. The Xbox 360 already has an on demand movie rental service and access to Sky Player. The Playstation 3 has the BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD and LoveFilm. Could consoles be the gateway to internet TV?

Black Ops... disappointing

2010-12-09T19:31:00.002Z

Call of Duty: Black Ops, a disappointment. One game I've actually been quite looking forward to playing was Black Ops. The predecessor; Modern Warfare 2, was an awesome experience from start to finish. Single player, multiplayer and co-op play where hugely polished. I guess this was a big ask for another developer to follow up and create another game on the same level.

The Bad

In general Black Ops has been a very buggy and poor experience. The single player story doesn't make any sense from start to finish, it's incoherent and actually discouraged me from playing the game.

Once you're in the game it doesn't really get any better. With the friendly AI randomly running off where they hell they like and without the enemy AI even firing a shot at them. Then you follow them thinking its safe to do so and get shot square in the head by an enemy standing next to (and ignoring) the friendlies.

I played the game to the end hoping upon hope that it would get better and the story would finally make sense. It didn't.

The Zombies mode is fun, but after a couple of hours play gets a bit boring. It doesn't help that there are only 2 maps to play. Lets face it though, if one wants to play a zombie game then I recommend playing Left 4 Dead.

The Good

Black Ops has a great little feature where you can break out of the chair and jump on a UNIX terminal. Here you can unlock goodies, the best of which being Dead Ops Arcade. A fun arcade top down style zombie shooter with powerups etc. Great fun and can be played with up to four co-op players.

The multiplayer is really good, especially with a group of good friends and a beer. They've taken it straight out of MW2 and tweaked it a bit. They've changed the way you gain new weapons, making you buy weapons and gadgets rather than getting them as you level up. This gives you a bit more freedom to what you get. You can then gain extra cash through contracts with objectives to attain. Overall an enjoyable experience.

The problem for me is, I get bored too easy with the small maps and once my friends go off the boil playing it... which they have now.

So back to Bad Company 2 for me! Vietnam DLC arriving at the end of the month :D

Acer Revo 3610

2010-09-15T20:20:00.003+01:00

I've been thinking about getting a small low power PC to run as a home server for a while. At the weekend I decided to bite the bullet and spend £200 on an Acer Revo 3610. It has an Intel Atom 330 processor, 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard disk. Consuming 65 watts of power, it's exactly what I've been looking for. The cost of the device seems to have been kept down by the fact it is pre-installed with Linpus linux.

So the Revo arrived on Monday. It's a small box that comes with an upright stand or it can be attached to the back of a monitor. There are six USB ports, an eSATA port, a SD card reader, on board wifi, ethernet and video out is covered by VGA and HDMI. The Linpus linux pre-installed on the box was a total waste of space, I gave it about 10 minutes before I had to remove it and install Ubuntu. It really begs the question as to why they decided on this distro over Ubuntu. Ubuntu is clearly much, much better.

Anyhow, Ubuntu is now loaded and running very nicely. I've attached the box to my TV via the HDMI socket and have sound and video working perfectly. I'm running the box as a home server, so right now it hosts an FTP server and a Ventrilo server. For the future I'm planning on setting up a ZNC IRC bouncer and perhaps a web server.

The other thing I'd been planning to use the box for, was as a media centre. After some researching on Monday I found Boxee. Boxee is a media centre that streams online content and internet radio. It is also able to view pictures and play music and videos that are already on the hard disk. The user interface is visually appealing and it's easy to navigate. There seems to be tons of TV shows and movies to watch, as well as stand alone applications such as iPlayer and YouTube.

I had Boxee fully setup Tuesday night, connected to the TV and streaming well. The next issue for me was controlling the interface. My wireless mouse cuts out from the other side of the room and I really don't want to be using a keyboard to control it. Today I did some searching and soon found that on the Android Market, there is a Boxee remote control app, sorted. The app does what it says on the tin and navigates flawlessly over wifi.

DTM 2010 Brands Hatch

2010-09-08T20:31:00.005+01:00

Gro & Kie reviewing photos on iPad

Made my first ever trip to Brands Hatch last weekend to watch the DTM. I'd been planning to go for weeks and I was to meet Gro there as he was going as well. On Firday we both asked Kie to join us for a day out to all meet up for once rather than just sitting in IRC. After a bit of deliberation and a few "I didn't know you were going" stories, Kie eventually caved in and decided to join us. So I managed to grab a ride down to Kent with Kie, getting up at silly'o'clock™ (5:30am) in the process. We met Gro and his mate Nick there at 8:30am. Gro and Nick had set off at 2am to get down to Brands, the silly northerners.

It was a great day out in all fairness, even better than what I had hoped for. The DTM touring cars are mean beasts to say the very least, kicking out a roaring 470bhp from their fire spitting V8's. The sound of them coming down paddock hill corner on the first lap of the race was absolutely immense. They are not too far off F1 for noise in my opinion. Nearly 100 laps of the Brands Hatch Indy circuit was quite something. It's a great track to spectate at, as you can see a lot of track from most areas. Overall it was a good race, with Paul Di Resta winning and managing to pull out 0.5 sec per lap lead from the start. Coulthard managed to jump start which put him pretty much last after he served his drive through penalty. I thought he had a really competitive pace and was much better than the 12th position he ended the race in. Got to see a bit of carnage too as Susie Stoddart went into the back of Ekström on the second lap, putting them both out of the race. I managed to get a few pictures of the crash too!

Carnage!

I took some good photos while I was there, over 800 snaps in total. A fair chunk were a little out of focus, but there are some gems in there. I've just started sorting all of the good ones and cropping them down, gonna take ages though. I'm uploading all of the good photos to Picasa in a public gallery. Then I want to get a couple of the photos developed as canvases or framed so that I can put them up in my study. I'll be ace at it :)

Samsung Galaxy Tab

2010-09-02T19:08:00.006+01:00

I've been looking forward to the release of the Samsung Galaxy Tab for a while now. Today was the official announcement day and what can I say? Very nice looking hardware, a high resolution 7" screen, the Android 2.2 Froyo OS (which will be updated to Gingerbread), internet enabled with HSDPA and 16GB of flash storage which is expandable by MircoSD. All good stuff, until I discovered the price... £679.99.

I really cannot believe that they are entering the market with such a huge asking price. They may yet prove me wrong, but I can only see this product being a total flop at that price. It's more expensive than the already overpriced (and market leader) iPad. I was honestly expecting the Tab to retail at around the £200 to £300 mark, at which my pre-order would already be in.

I believe that the problem is that they've tried to make it a phone / video phone as well as an internet tablet. The idea of using it as a phone is ridiculous, who the hell is going to walk around with a slab against their faces? And lets face it, video calling has never taken off. Two things they should have given a second thought to, in order to take on the church of Apple.

I guess I will just have to wait for a reasonably priced tablet PC to arrive. Perhaps HTC have something up their sleeves?

No more water leak.. I hope

2010-08-28T16:16:00.002+01:00

I went out yesterday and bought some clear silicone to plug the hole in the boot of my five. It seems to have done the trick, we had a rain shower earlier today and the boot has remained water free. I've since put the dried carpet back in and I'm glad to say, the boot is back to normal. Still thinking of giving it more of a test with a bucket of water, so lets hope it passes with flying colours. :)

Sadly, not such good news on the tyre front. I had the tyre examined yesterday and there is a nail through the tyre in a place that can't be patched up. After speaking to the guys at the tyre fitters they say I won't need to replace both of the front tyres, as the other one is pretty new. So for a replacement Michelin Pilot Exalto PE2 it's going to cost £160. Got the tyre ordered for fitting on Wednesday.

Car problems

2010-08-26T20:35:00.005+01:00

Having a couple of issues with the MX-5 at the moment, tyre and boot.

We've had heavy rain this week and found my boot to be flooded with water. I've seen a few splashes of water in there a few times before, but I've thought nothing of it up to now as that's all they were, splashes. What I've come across this week is a good soaking of the carpet the boot.

This morning I found where the water was coming from. It's coming from the joints where the centre brake light cluster is attached to the top of the boot. There are some plastic grommets that hold the light cluster to the car and these don't appear to be water tight, especially on the drivers side. I've spoken to a few people and they've all suggested that I seal the hole with silicone sealant. I wanted to get it done tonight, but as it's still wet outside I've not been able to do it. It's best to apply the sealant to a dry surface.

In the mean time I've taken the soaking carpet out of the boot. I really do mean soaking, it was dripping wet as I took it out and a large puddle of water was left in the boot area. So I've dried out the boot with a towel and let the water run out of the carpet. I've now got the carpet sitting in my airing cupboard with the heater on to dry.

The other problem I've got is that I've found out that I have a slow puncture in the front drivers side tyre. I filled it with air two or three weeks ago after I noticed it was low. Checked the tire again today and it's gone down from 29psi to 21psi... A trip out to get the puncture repaired is in order after work tomorrow. That'll be a boring hour sitting and waiting for them to repair it. Gutted.

Hope these are both quick and easy to get fixed, I don't want to spend another £250 replacing tyres. God only knows how much it would be to fix the leak if the silicone doesn't do the job too.

Wish me luck :)

It has been a while...

2010-08-25T20:03:00.004+01:00

I haven't updated this blog since I signed up to blogger. After looking over the site a little more I've changed things around. First off I've re-directed the blog to my imric.co domain. Then I've updated the page template and used my own photo as the background.

The current photo is from Silverstone two weeks ago. I was there with the MX-5 Owners Club and the photo is of all the owners cars. Had a good day out with my nephew Harry. It was his first motorsport event and he really enjoyed it, especially seeing loads of supercars!

We were supposed to be able to go out on track with the other owners MX-5s, but the event organisers stopped us. Harry didn't meet the age requirements for going out on track. It's really stupid as doing 40mph around a track with single file traffic isn't exactly dangerous. Put a bit of a downer on a really good day out.

HTC Desire

2010-03-29T15:36:00.005+01:00

My current phone (HTC Touch Diamond2) is really starting to annoy me. A couple of weeks ago it decided that it doesn't want to play the loudspeaker while plugged into the power. Major issue when I was about to go on a trip in my car using the GPS software! In the end I had to run it on battery power and "just" made it to my destination. The other issue I've had is that it randomly will not play my ring tone when someone calls. It's not every time, just every now and again. I updated the ROM last week and it didn't solve either issue.

So I've just gone and pre-ordered myself a HTC Desire Android 2.1 phone from handtec. Due for release on April 7th, I'm very much looking forwards to getting my hands on it. The reviews that I've read so far have been very good. I'm really surprised that the price is under £400, especially when the phone is basically the same as the Nexus One that is retailing for over £500. Bargain!

New weblog

2010-03-29T15:02:00.001+01:00

I'm just testing out blogger as a blogging service. Tempted to put out my musings about various things here. We'll see.