I was in a meeting during the Apple event this week. I caught up on the event a few hours later as I headed home on a busy train. As I read the news I felt really positive. Which is a rather nice change from how Mac events normally make me feel!
The new Mac mini looks like an amazing bit of kit. I’m pretty sure i don’t need one but gosh i really want one. The new mini reverses some of the negative trends Apple hardware has been following. It has ample ports, upgradable memory and is equipable with a wide range of processors.
About the only thing which is less than steller is the price. It gets expensive real fast with a base 6 core model costing £1069 and the i7 version at £1249. That said, i got 7 years of use from my last Mac mini and i’m sure the resell values will continue to be steller.
The new MacBook Air is a little confusing to me. I think it’s going to come down to performance numbers. In spirit it appears to be a 13.3” version of the the 12” MacBook. The upgrade to thunderbolt 3 and a second port is welcome, but the pricing and performance questions are alarming.
I suspect this will quickly become the “default” MacBook and i’ll start seeing them everywhere.
Both of the new machine would make for great personal Macs. Perhaps something to look into more in the future when i have a better idea of things. I am mostly enjoying the single Mac lifesyle.
The new iPads look amazing, but the prices are just to high for me to consider at the moment. I will wait and see, perhaps the next version of the basic iPad will be a better fit for me.
Overall a really positive event from Apple. It’s great to see life breathed into the Mac range. I hope the positive feels continue to last!
HomePod: it's got complicated. =================== posted: 26 August 2018 featured image:I really want to like the HomePod. I appreciate the care and attention which goes into this sort of product.
However, oh man, it’s hard to like the HomePod sometimes. I’m only a week in and it’s a very mixed picture.
Let’s start on a low and end on a high. The main issue with the HomePod isn’t the hardware. It’s the software..
To win me over it needed to do three things. Act as a speaker for my Mac, sound good at usable volumes and be reliable.
So far is failing at all three.
Speaker for my Mac – this is a partial success. The HomePod doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack so it only really works for apps which support AirPlay. After trying with every setting I could find I could not get system sounds (alerts etc) to come out via the HomePod.
Sound good at usable volumes – I live in w flat in a shared block and I have sensitive hearing. Both of those factors limit how much noise I can make. The HomePod’s 360 sound trick doesn’t work at low volumes. For most of the my test music I couldn’t hear the lyrics over the bass and there’s no way for me to tweak it.
Reliability – it’s not worked properly with anything. My iPhone can’t connect to it half the time and even when it does who know what will play where. Connections hang and weirdness happens. At one stage it was playing a track from Apple Music and my local library at the same time. What a mess ;(
So… basically it’s not fit for purpose with what I originally wanted it for. However….
It’s not all doom and gloom. Modern life is goodish! When the HomePod is on song, it is incredible.
In a larger room and with the volume up it sounds extremely good. So much so I have started setting aside time to simply listen to music as an activity in and of itself.
I can’t do it much (the neighbours have kids) but when I can it may even become one if my favourite things to do.
So a few days in the picture is really mixed. It’s not going to work for what I wanted. But perhaps it may still have a role to play as something new.
I’m giving myself a few more days to decide on if I try and turn it or not.
Homepod First Impressions =================== posted: 19 August 2018 featured image:I’ve only had the homepod on my desk a few hours, however in that short time it has made quite an impression. Here’s a quick post to capture why i brought one, how it handled setup and how the first experiements have worked out.
I’ve kinda wanted one for a while, but i didn’t need one. In the office i had my iMac which has great speakers, and i don’t have much use for a voice assistant in my life.
However, i recently sold my iMac in favour of a MacBook + 4K display combo and the display i picked doesnt have any speakers… so i needed some speakers.
The homepod can act as speakers for my Mac as well as being good for podcasts and the like. So it seemed worth a go. It’s expensive, but i figured if it dont get along with it i could always return or resell it.
I got mine from argos. I debated the colour for a while (i went with white, but it was a close run thing!) and then ordered it online for instore collection. I was impressed they had them in stock locally; especially as my local argos is inside a sainsburies.
I didnt buy it from the local apple reseller as while the staff are nice enough they don’t offer a very competitive returns policy and i had no way to see if they had them in stock. I couldn’t easily travel to both so i went with the more established seller.
I paid the retail price of £319, which is a bit steep… its got a lot to live up too.
The very first impression i had was “wow, this thing is heavy”. It’s heavy enough i needed help getting it out of the box safely.
The packaging was easy to open and as i pulled the homepod out a little guide fell out telling me to wave my phone near the homepod to set it up.
The homepage is going in my office, so i plugged it in, and waved my phone in its direction…
… Nothing happened. So i waved it some more, and then it worked! A screen came up, telling me to install an update to my phone…
… Update installed, i tried again and it worked. Taking me through the setup process. My speech can be a bit diffifult, so it took a few times for it to understand me.
I was really impressed with the setup process. It had a clunky start but once everything was lined up it was very smooth.
I brought the homepod as a speaker first and foremost. It happens to have Siri (which is kinda handy) but in my life its taking the place of a mini speaker or some PC speakers. With this in mind, the first thing i did was connect it to my Mac and play a youtube video.
I was really impressed with the sound quality. Its loud and clear and it handles tone well. It sounds much better than my iMac did for music.
It is somewhat directional, espcially at lower volumes. It has to be pretty loud before it can really “fill a room” with audio. I’m going to experiment a bit with placement incase this is because i have it on the corner of my desk.
I have used siri a little. To ask for different tracks and the like. It’s very cool and It has mostly worked. I asked siri what was on my calender and it directed me to my phone… so i guess there are some gaps.
I also used Siri to turn my lights up and down, very cool but perhaps not super useful!
So far i am impressed with the homepod. The setup was pretty seamless and it sounds great. I am looking forward to living with it for a bit to see how i feel in a few weeks time.
Why i've fallen out with my Nintendo Switch. =================== posted: 25 February 2018 featured image:After almost a month with no use i lent my Nintendo Switch too my boyfreind yesterday. He’s wanted one for a while and i wasnt going to be using it much so i figured why not. He would enjoy it more. Perhaps in the future i’ll have it back when theres something i want to play on it.
The thing is, after 4 months of love, i’ve really fallen out with the Swtich. I’m angry with Nintendo, i’m angry with myself and its simply stopped being fun.
It all comes down to a single, terrible and ridiculous user interaction. I brought a driving game on the e-shop [“Gear Drive Unlimited”](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gear-Club-Unlimited-Nintendo-Switch/dp/B076BT28CK) and the game was terrible.
When it was working, the game physics was pants and confusing, but most of the time it simply didn’t work. Stuttering, and pausing and then crashing. I might get 2-3 races before it crashed or froze.
I downloaded every update and even contacted the developer (who told me to speak to the publisher). I couldn’t get it to work, so i contacted Nintento for a refund (who told me all e-sales where final, i’d waived all rights when i brought it) and the publisher (who told me i should contact the developer)…
In short, i wasted almost £45 on something which i couldn’t use.
This sense of disapointment and anger has just kept with me. Being out of pocket is bad enough, but the sheer disinterest in everyone involved when i asked for help and the legalease response from Nintendo reminded me that this is a busisness not a freind.
So, there we go. It’s a great console and i’m sure sometime in the future i’ll have fun with it again. But for now its just too annoying so i have lent it to someone else to enjoy.
I guess, i am wrtiting this up as a bit of a warning. Nintendo are more than happy to publish a broken game and take money for it. Before you buy anything read every review you can and then hope like hell it works. After you have paid your money, your on your own.
iPhone X First Impressions. =================== posted: 11 December 2017 featured image:When the iPhone X (aka, iPhone 10) was announced a few months ago I wasn’t all that interested it was rather expensive.
Then my phone contact expired and my carrier offered me one for £15 a month more than a IPhone 8. That seems much more reasonable. After all, it’s the computer I use most in my life.
I had the phone a few days before I had time to swap my SIM across. In that time I mostly used it for watching Netflix!
The screen is stellar. Literally, stellar. When showing black the screen is as dark as the night. The extra size is nice but the black levels are more immediately impressive.
I was a bit skeptical of loosing the home button but that’s worked fine. It took about a day to adjust but since then its been fine.
I like the glass case. It feels tactile and grippy. I haven’t smashed an iPhone yet, so hopefully this one will be okay… it’s a bit of a worry.
The final hardware which impressed me was the camera. My iPhone 6S was the small model. This is my first phone with the dual lens camera and physical zoom. This is by far the best camera I’ve ever owned.
Software is a little less impressive but not bad.
Face ID seems okay. I type my password more than I used too and it’s a bit annoying sometimes. It’s only been a few days so perhaps that will improve.
iOS11 In general is good. It feels very smooth and I like the new design language. Big easy to read headers is perfect for me.
There’s also some nice small details. I like the new password manager, it works for apps and websites, plus its easy to find in settings.
The iPhone X feels worth the £15 per month it’s costing and so far it’s been a welcome change.
Face ID is a bit of an open story. I’ll have to see how it goes over the next few weeks before I reach a conclusion
Overall I really like this phone and It feels like a good bet for the next year or two.
Velopark Stratford Mountain Biking Review =================== posted: 27 August 2017 featured image:This weekend a couple of freinds and me made a return to the Velopark mountain bike trails at the Olympic park. We went about a month ago and loved it so we decided to go back.
After that i wrote a short review on my other site, but now i have been twice and explored a bit more i wanted to give a more detailed review. Hopefully this will be helpful to other riders who are looking to go for the first time.
The velopark is in stratford which is about 10 miles from where i live. The first time we went by train and took our own bikes, but this weekend the trains where cancelled for improvement works so we drove and hired bikes for the day.
Once you get there you go to the reception area and pay the £5 fee to ride. We also paid £12 to rent equipment (but more on that later).
Once we where paid up and disclaimers where signed we went to the equipment hire stall and picked up out rental bikes.
The staff ran through a quick setup with us and then left us too it. Just as we left we made sure to put the car registration numbers into the terminal so we didnt get charged for parking!
After we got our kit we ventured out to the trails themselves.
We followed the path down and under a bridge and then the path stops and the trails begin.
All the trails are man made little ribbons of gravel. They vary between blue (easy), red (intermediate) and black (advanced).
The blue trails are the simplest and fastest. We normally warm up on the blue trail which leads off too the left from the bridge and takes us around the back of the velopark. Its got a few berms and jumps but is very mellow.
Most of the trails flow well at the velopark, but from time to time they take sudden turns due to the space limits.
The gravel surfaces don’t offer much grip. It’s easy to wash out into a corner if you push too hard. When the speeds get higher the bike is pretty much always sliding around under you. It certainly keeps things interesting!
The red routes are more complex than the blue roots. Tougher climbs, sharper corners and bigger jumps.
Much like the blue trails they flow very well for a while then tend to include sudden turns with big rocks on the outside. Compared to a more natural riding spot the sudden turns are annoying as they break the flow, but given the space they had they are good enough.
The red routes start to also incorporate the super bumper concrete slab based “technical” parts. In many ways these sections resemble a really badly laid path.
The red routes are certainly fun. Once you know the route they take you can start to pick up lots of speed.
If your looking for something more demanding, then there are a few black parts.
The black parts take the paving slab based technical parts of the red trails and make them more extreme.
I have mountain biked lots in the past so i have ridden most of the black trails. Generally speaking taking them at speed and carefully picking a line is enough to clear them without much issue.
I enjoy the black parts, they keep it interesting, but they dont really add a huge amount to the bike park. Getting into the black stuff often involves sudden sharp bends so it’s often more fun to just ride the red parts quicker.
The one black part i really enjoyed is the long black decent. It runs beside the road from the top. Getting into the black part is a horrible sharp rocky climb, but once into that section it flows really well.
Today we hired bikes instead of using our own. It was good to compare how the bikes faired.
The hire bikes are Whyte 605 models in bright green. They are fun and competent if not spectacular. They roll well and are setup to cover distances.
Like most XC focused bikes they have long stems and bring the rider forward over the front wheel. It’s not too extreme, but it does make the bikes harder to handle over jumps. The bikes don’t have the “planted” secure feeling of my Marin with its longer fork and more relaxed geometry.
You can ride everything on the rental bikes. I made it down every black trail i tried on them, however it’s pushing the bikes hard and things like the fork become overwhelmed. The black trails are possible, but you need to pick lines very carefully.
The rental bikes make sense for the park. They cover most of what people will do.
The rental bikes are also really cheap. At £12 for the day they do a good enough job to be a viable option if getting my own bike to the park is going to be difficult.
All in i had a really fun morning. We spent about 3 hours at the park mostly lapping the red trails with the odd run on the blue.
For the £5 entry fee the park is great value. It gives a great taster for mountain biking while still being affordable and easy to get too.
I am looking forward to going back in a few weeks time. I will probably take my own bike, but i wont be too upset if i cant.
WWDC 2017 Wishlist. =================== posted: 4 June 2017 featured image:It’s the night before WWDC so it’s time to make a little wishlist. Who knows what Apple will announce, but here are a few of the things i would love to see.
I’m not in the Market for a MacBook right now, but it would still be good to see refreshed MacBooks with Intel’s Latest Kaby Lake CPU’s. In recent years Apple has been slow updating the Mac line so two updates in 6 months would be a strong return to form.
I would be super interested in an ARM MacBook or a Mac mini update (in any way!), however both are unlikely. Here’s hoping!
I really like my work iPad. So much i brought one of my own! Like with the Macs i’m not in the market myself but seeing updates is good. I am curious how apple sells the 10.5” size. Will it replace or augment the 9.7 and 12 inch models? Will be interesting to find out.
h3 Other stuff.
Updates to watchOS and tvOS would be nice but i dont have many specific wishes. For watchOS the ability to sync podcasts and audiobooks would be nice, but i suspect we’re a hardware generation or two before Apple makes that happen. If only because the sync is so slow it makes for a terrible user experience.
tvOS isn’t of any interest to me. I don’t need another box in my lounge for a TV i hardly watch.
I hope WWDC has some suprises. It’s been quiet on the rumors so hopefully theres something entirely unexpected on the way. I look forward to finding out.
Things to bear in mind when someone sketchnotes your talk. =================== posted: 15 May 2017 featured image:Things to bear in mind when someone sketchnotes your talk.
If your a public speaker ensure your presentation has a license if you wish for the content to remain open in dirivative works like sketchnotes. Otherwise someone may make a sketchnote of your talk and then lock it into copyright or even start selling it.
I do quite a lot of public speaking and i don’t charge a fee. I do presentations for free and share my work in the belief that it benefits others. I operate on the basis of sharing being a good thing. I never expected to need to legally protect my content, but oddly i do have to protect it with a license in order to keep it free.
Protecting my content is not about locking it in copyright. Quite the opposite. It’s about ensuring no one else locks it in copyright.
In a nutshell this is part of the problem with sketchnoters. Unless you are explcit about the rules (aka the license) of your presentation, they can do pretty much what they like with the content. Depending on your views on sharing, this may be very much against what you wish.
The vast majority of sketchnoters attending a free event would not attempt to create a derivative work (eg, capture your content) then lock it in copyright and agressively defend it. However, some will and for me that ended in a freindship collapsing.
It was my fault, i assumed that someone else understood the rules i was sharing my content under. I didn’t have an explicit license in place.
These days my talks are presented under the Creative Commons Atribution and Share Alike license. This means if you share the content you have to give credit, and if you create a derivative you have to share it under the same license. This ensure the content remains free and avaliable.
If someone does not wish to follow the license, they can refrain from creating sketchnotes. That is their choice.
Licensing isn’t fun, however it’s better to be clear upfront so that everyone knows where they stand. I lost a valued freindship over this stuff and hopefully by warning others to check that won’t happen to someone else.
The way i approach this is that all of my presentations mention the license and if someone offers to sketchnote i will ask them about what then intend to do with it before giving them permission.
It’s sort of ironic. There’s more effort require to protect content in the interest of keeping it free, than there is to allow it to be locked into copyright by others.
Experimenting with Blender on the iMac. =================== posted: 27 April 2017 featured image:It’s been about 10 years since i last did any experimentation with 3D graphics and rendering. At the time i was using a shared PC and demo software. I got good at building my scene as i had to rebuild it every time because the save feature was disabled!
A few weeks ago i decided to start playing around again to see how the modern tools and tech compare. I have my very lovely 5k iMac so i wanted to see what it could do.
Blender is an open source 3D modelling, animation and rendering tool. It’s been used to make a range of 3D movies and also in adverts etc.
It’s free to use so it felt like somewhere useful to start. I don’t have any specific goals in mind, but i figure if i learn how to use it i will start to find uses for it.
At the very least its a distraction and a useful way to spend my time in the evening.
My interest is more technical than artistic. I am interested in how the technology works, especially around the use of “ray casting”.
Raycasting is the process of simulating light inside the computer. Unlike older rendering methods (rasterisation, like in games) it’s attempting to replicate the physics of the real world and can in turn give much better almost photorealistic results.
At this stage my experiments are just the basics. Getting some models, rendering them, playing with some animation and understanding the tools a bit better.
The rest of this post is a summery of what i have learnt so far.
The rendering system used within blender is called Cycles. One of the first things i have learnt about is that there are three types of rendering cycles can perform. It can either:
1. Render on the CPU – this is the simplest, just use the CPU to do all the maths needed to simulate each light beam.
2. Render using OpenGL – treat the scene like a game and render it using rasterisation. This gives more a more cartoon and game like feel and is really quick. All the previews are rendered this way.
3. Render using OpenCL (aka GPU Compute) – this uses the GPU in a different way. It uses the programmable shader inside the GPU to do ray tracing. The shaders are not very quick, but there are thousands of them, so they can accomplish lots of throughput when the problem is right.
On my iMac, i have been using OpenGL rendering when making preview videos etc, and then using CPU rendering when i want to have the high quality rendered output.
My iMac does support OpenCL rendering, but its really slow. By all accounts this is due to terrible drivers. I may install Linux on my iMac and see if that works better.
With the raycasting options the main quality setting is the “sample” rate. In effect this is how many beams of light to use when simulating the scene.
There no “perfect” value. It’s always a trade off between quality and performance.
For example, my first experiments involved rendering some wallpapers for my iMac featuring Vincent one of the free blender assets. As this render is zoomed in close and Vincent has lots of detailed textures, it took around 600 to 1000 samples to look good. Below that the image is fuzzy / noisy.
However, for my animation experiments the sampling can be much much lower and it still looks good. My first rendering used 24 samples and was okay but a bit fuzzy. I have experiment around and 50 samples looks much better. At 100 samples I couldn’t really tell the difference anymore.
My animation is only 100 frames long. However, the difference in performance between 50 and 100 frames is astounding. The first frame at 50 samples took 11 minutes to render, and at 100 frames to 32 minutes.
With that in mind i am now re-rendering the scene at a sample rate of 50. It will look much better, and hopefully not to too long to render. To help speed things up i am also experimenting with parralism.
I have two Macs in my flat and they are connected together with a Thunderbolt 3 cable. Both Macs have modern quad core i7 processors.
Given i have the extra mac i have started experimenting with splitting up the rendering so it can be completed quicker.
I know Blender has a proper tool for this, but for now i am keeping it simple. I render the first 50 frames on my iMac, and the second 50 frames on my Mac mini.
I am going to explore these options further. I am sure as i experiment more with the tools i will need more render performance so being able to make the most of my hardware is essential.
It’s been fun to explore blender and cycles. I have a few future projects in mind but mostly i am just enjoying the new technology and learning. I have time in the evening and its fun to use to too play with new technology rather than just consume media.
iPad 5th Generation First Impressions =================== posted: 18 April 2017 featured image:I’ve had my new iPad a few weeks and its been really interesting to play with it. Unlike my other iPad or the macs in my life, this iPad is a purely personal device. It’s something for me to use when I want to escape my day job and freelance commitments and just be a technical muggle.
To this end what I need is pretty simple. Something for lots of web reading, some social media and instant messaging. The occasional bit of writing and a game from time to time.
It’s too soon for me to review this thing, so here’s my first impressions.
The 5th generation iPad is a unapologetically mid range device. Low to mid range devices are one of the most interesting places for the design. The budget forces compromises and difficult decisions. I think on the whole the iPad gets these compromises right.
The iPad is not fast. It’s not slow either, but too me (a 12” iPad Pro user!) there are noticeable delays. It’s just not as snappy as the pro model. I see the difference most when loading applications and when scrolling pages with adverts / animations. It’s not a big stutter, but its certainly not as butterly smooth.
However, this doesn’t really seem to matter that much. I brought the cheapest model I could get and I don’t intend to keep it all that long. It’s well under half the price of the iPad Pro 12” but it has 80% plus of the performance. That’s a bit of a bargain!
The one concern I have with performance is service life. I’m hoping to get at least 2 years of use out of this iPad and i am not 100% convinced the performance will be good enough after an iOS update or two.
Another places where the iPad is “mid range” is in the display. Unlike the iPhone, iPad Air 2 and iPad Pro there is a noticeable gap between the “glass” and the screen. In other words, they are not laminated.
Much like with the performance, the difference is noticeable, but its not really a huge issue. In day to day use the gap does not bother more. It has an upside too, if i break the glass a replacement is much easier.
One area which is already annoying me is the reflectivity. I am using the iPad in exactly the same places as my iPad Pro and the difference in reflectivity is noticeable.
So much so, for the iPad i am running it at almost full brightness whereas the iPad Pro is running at barely half brightness. The lack of the anti-reflective coating is a day to day annoyance.
The size and weight is fine. It feels positively tiny and portable compared to my iPad Pro. Unlike this pro, this iPad can be used on the sofa or while standing.
A nice bonus the smart case i brought when i borrowed an iPad Air fits great. That’s a small thing, but it did help save me £40 which is not a trivial amount of money.
h4. Other.
Touch ID and Apple Pay support are really nice additions. They help round the iPad out and just make it that little bit more useful and flexible. I’m glad Apple added them.
The iPad version is iOS is a pretty well known quantity now. It’s still got some rough spots (multitasking!) but in general its fine. I can be productive with it when needed (like writing this post) but mostly i am using it to just surf the web etc. For those tasks it’s excellent and the app support is second to none. There is normally an iPad version of any app i look for.
As this is a personal iPad i am sometimes using it for gaming. I have been impressed with the quality of games on the iPad. I have been playing hitman go and really enjoying it. The graphics are very pretty and the simplified gameplay really works for me.
This iPad cost me £339, which is a huge saving over the £540 my last 9.7” iPad cost me. The 32gb storage space is not idea but for the money its fine. At least its better than the 16gb Apple used to offer on the entry level iPad.
Compared to the iPad Pro the new iPad is great value. It’s damn near half the cost once the smart case is considered. This might be the best value Apple device i have brought in years.
My first impression on the new iPad is really positive. It’s a capable little device sold for a very fair price. It’s “good enough” and it suits the needs for my personal computing wonderfully.
Unlike the iPad Pro, this iPad isn’t trying to be a Super Computer. It’s a good device and that’s all it needs to be.
The iPad Boring =================== posted: 12 April 2017 featured image:
A few weeks ago Apple announced the iPad Boring via a press release. It was not a big announcement for Apple. Much like the iPhone SE the “iPad 5th gen” was a mid market device designed to fill a gap in the market. A design from 2013 stuffed with internals from 2016. To those waiting for iPad Pros it was a very disappointing update.
However, to me it was pretty darn interesting. I had been looking for a “home computer” for a while and i didn’t know it was iPad shaped.
I am fortunate enough to be surrounded by amazing hardware. I have an iMac, a MacBook and (via the BBC) an iPad Pro. Thats almost £4,000s worth of hardware and i am grateful for it. My devices support my work and that keeps me fed and housed etc. All good things.
However, theres a snag. All of those devices serve double or even triple duty. None of them are really “mine”. They belong to my employer, or my company, but not really to “me”.
This is not the first time i have found myself in this position. For ages, i used to have a MacBook Pro for work and an iMac or a MacBook Air at home. I started this way back in 2011. At the time i even had this handy definition of a home computer:
For me, my home computer is the computer which i am unable to work on. It doesn’t have my software tools installed at all. My home computer is what i use once i get home to check on twitter, Facebook etc. […] I also use my ‘home’ computer for non work projects, such as study or researching lego parts.
Since getting ill my work life and my home life have merged. I certainly don’t need another Mac in my life. But i have been wanting something all of my own.
Enter the iPad Boring.
I want my personal computing to be effortless. Something i don’t have to think about or maintain. Something “good enough” is fine. The fact i cant load all my software tools onto the iPad Boring is a good thing! It does run my speech software, so the important stuff is covered.
Secondly, the iPad Boring is cheap. At £339 its a third of the cost of even an entry level MacBook and almost a quarter the cost of a Mac i’d actually want to own. If i get two years use of it then donate it to relative i’d be pretty happy.
I think thats everything. Long live the iPad Boring!
My setup (2017) =================== posted: 25 March 2017 featured image:Here’s a quick overview of my setup in early 2017. Hopefully this will remain stable till 2018/2019.
Two devices are always with me. My iPhone and my Apple Watch.
My iPhone 6S is probably my favourite phone yet. It took a while to get the right case to stop RSI but since then it’s been amazing. It’s almost two years old and it’s still fast and capable.
I use my phone for everything from writing to social media and reading RSS feeds.
Working alongside my iPhone is my 38mm Apple Watch Sport. My watch is extremely helpful. Being autistic i really benefit from tools to help me to stay organised and communicate. The Watch is literally my voice, wallet and organiser. It’s a great device.
I don’t normally carry both an iPad and a MacBook but sometimes I do.
My 12.9” iPad Pro is supplied by my employer. It’s what I use for sorting out email, accessing the VPN and the like. It’s a great device for typing when combined with the studio near canvas and the magic keyboard. I’m new to the iPad but so far I am super impressed. I’m glad I tried something different.
If my iPad isn’t in my bag then my 2015 12” retina MacBook probably is. I love it’s portability, performance and flexibility. I spend a ton of time working from the cafe and for coding, photo editing and slide making I prefer to use the MacBook.
At home I have my iMac, my server and my iPod.
My 2014 5K iMac is a beast. It’s by far the fastest Mac I have ever owned. The screen is gorgeous and and it’s the most productive and comfortable place for me to work. This is where I spent most of my time for BBC and freelance work. It’s also handy for a bit of gaming etc.
None of my devices have decent storage. So I have a 2011 Mac Mini Server as a NAS. It has a copy of everything and also runs my development servers and the like.
My final home device is my iPod. It’s what I use in the evening and is loaded with lots of audiobooks and the like.
In total I have 7 devices in my life. They each serve a different purpose and they are all useful.
If I had to reduce device count I’d drop devices in the order iPod, Mac Mini, MacBook, iPad, Watch, iMac, iPhone.
The iPad is a work device so I don’t really count it. The Mac mini was also cheaper than a boring hard drive of the same size so I also don’t really count it as a day to day device. It simply sits around making sure all my data is safe.
If it wasn’t a work device I probably wouldn’t own a MacBook and an iPad. I may sell the MacBook on in the future if I don’t use it enough.
As i mentioned at the start, i am hoping that this year my tech setup will be very stable. I am extremely lucky to be able to have a nice selection of devices for all the things i need to do.
The massive iPad and the little MacBook. =================== posted: 14 February 2017 featured image:At the end of 2016 i wrote about my setup. The very short version is that i wasn’t very impressed with the new MacBook Pro’s and had decided to stick with my iMac and older MacBook Pro setup.
This is broadly still the case, however it has been tweaked a little.
The first change is that i swapped from a MacBook Pro to a MacBook. My partner is taking my 13” MacBook Pro to university with him. It makes more sense for him to have it than for me to have it and barely use it. I brought myself a little 12” MacBook to use in the mean time.
I will write about the MacBook again in the future, but in brief It’s brilliant as a satellite device, but unworkable as a primary computer. I do push its limits often, but because i brought it with a 60% discount i am happier to live within those limits and go to the iMac when needed.
The second change is that i swapped from a borrowed 9.7” iPad Air to a work issued 12.9” iPad Pro.
It didn’t make sense for the BBC to buy me another Mac. I wouldn’t use it as i already have better Macs at home, however, i needed a way to get onto the BBC VPN and an iPad does the job nicely.
We went with the bigger iPad as a bit of an experiment. A friend of the team has one and i wondered if i could follow his approach.
Perhaps ironically, the iPad is now bigger than my MacBook.
With those two swaps made I don’t expect to see any other hardware changes now till 2018 when i may retire the iMac in favour of a MacBook Pro and 5K display. We will have to see what happens.
I am excited to be able to have both the MacBook and the iPad Pro. They overlap in interesting ways an i look forward to exploring them more in the future.
Games i played in 2016 =================== posted: 8 December 2016 featured image:I’m not really much of a gamer, i tend to play a single game intensely for a while then not play anything for months. Gaming is something which takes a lot of focus and energy so after a long work week i’m more likely to pick up the the TV remote than an xbox controller.
When i do game, i tend to do it with freinds or play puzzle & driving games. Here’s a quick run through the games i played in 2016.
Forza horizon is an open world driving game. You drive around a large map and take part in different events and races. The maps are huge with the drive between races often being 10-20km. There are other activities too, like looking for special boards and hunting down lost cars.
I like this style of game because its a mix of sometimes i can repetitive thing (the circut racing) and exploring a large world. It’s really satisfying to explore something like a large forest and eventually find an old overgrown shed with a ferrari in it.
Forza horizon does not try to be a simulation, the driving benifits from practice but its not accurate or very realistic. It’s challenging enough to be interesting but not challenging enough to be too difficult. I tend to come in the top 3 of most races i enter on the first go.
Forza 6 is the similation version of the horizon game. It aims to be as realistic as possible and on the harder settings is very very difficult to play. You play through a series of “Chapters” each defining the type of car. Starting with releltively slow street cars and ending with forumla one cars and other motorsport toys.
I really enjoy the challenge of understanding how to drive fast. It requires a super delicate touch and lots of practice. The game is also vast, with every race having 6 different groups of similar cars avaliable. Completing all of chapter one took me months.
I don’t think either game is definitively more fun; it really depends on my mood. Adverture and exploring versus repetition and refinement.
Dirt Rally is the most recent edition of the classic Colin Mcrea Rally series i played as kid. After going a bit odd for a while (becoming more of a driving variety show game) the series refocused on just the stage based rally driving dialing up the realism in the process.
It’s like an off road version of Forza and that is really appealing. In many ways it sits between Forza 6 and Forza horizons. Runnig through stages and touring the world (with some stunning landscapes!) but while also still working towards a specific goal etc.
It’s really fun and very challenging to delicately slide a mini around an icy corner hald way up a mountain!
Unlike the other two games which have a “instant reply” system allowing you to retry a corner after a crash Dirt Rally is a single run everytime. If you make a mistake you have to live with it or restart the whole stage.
For the long stages it can be hard to keep the focus to be quick, smooth and not end up over wrapped around a tree.
Gears of war is a shooting game. I dont enjoy the single player mode much. I find it repetitive, loud and annoying. However, i love playing the miltiplayer mode with my freinds.
Five of us can get together to build and defend a base from wave after wave of enermy attackers. It gets steadily harder as waves go one and you complete the mode when you hit wave 50.
I don’t tend to do well in intense firefights so i have taken to playing as a sniper (where i can pick off enimies from a distance) or as an engineer (where i fight very little and spend my time bulding traps and keeping sentry guns etc maintained).
Surviving on the higher waves requires intense team work and specilisation. As a sniper, my role is to pick off the big monster before they get close enough to kill a a member of my group.
Unlike all the other games which i have played on the Xbox, the final game i have been playing this year is for the Mac. It’s the Lego Star Wars game where you get to play through the story of The Force Awakens. It’s well designed, pretty and simple to play.
What games did you play in 2016? Did you play any of the games above? Feel free to leave a comment to let me know.
2016 MacBook Pro Thoughts =================== posted: 2 November 2016 featured image:
Last week Apple had an event to introduce new MacBook Pros to the world. Its had the most negative response i’ve seen from a Mac announcement in a while. With everyone else writing their thoughts and as someone who’s in the market for a new laptop here are my thoughts.
Let’s start with the positives. The new MacBooks are amazing feats of engineering. They are smaller, lighter, more powerful (sometimes) and they have can drive dual 4k or 5k displays (woohoo!).
On the higher end models the Touch Bar seems a pretty amazing bit of technology too. It adds a new input method which i cant wait to play with.
These MacBooks are amazing computers and apple needs to be recognised for producing something which is both high quality and sticking to a bold visions.
That bold vision is where it gets complicated. The Apple MacBooks embrace three trends and not all of those trends benefit the user much today.
Lets dig into that.
The lightness and size is impressive and as portable computers being lighter and smaller is useful. However, there is a cost. To achieve the 25% reduction in volume Apple have also compromised the performance. These MacBooks are not as fast as they could be, they don’t have the Memory they could have had and they don’t have the battery life they could have had.
The port situation is better than on the MacBook but it shares many of the same issues. The thunderbolt 3 ports are amazingly flexible, but loosing the magnetic charging cable and having no other ports to use is a big compromise Apple didn’t need to make. In day to day life with a MacBook Pro today i will need half a dozen adaptors.
Finally, the touch bar is neat, but its adding a huge amount to the price. The entry level has gone up hugely in the UK. In the past a new entry level MacBook worth having was around £999-1099, now with the combined effect of Brexit and the new technology an entry level MacBook Pro worth having is £1750. Thats a HUGE increase and it wipes out all of the gains from the other decisions.
In simple terms it’s not worth me updating my MacBook Pro this year unless there is a compelling business reason to do so. To upgrade like for like with my Current MacBook would be a £1250 investment assuming i get £750 from the sale of my current MacBook. Thats a whole lot of money for very little real world benefit. In three years the MacBook Pros have only got 15% faster and the battery life has not improved much either.
Back in March i decided to stop waiting for the MacBook Pro of my dreams and just go for an iMac 5k. I’m really glad i did. The iMac is a brilliant fit for my needs and by making the decision then i saved over £1000 compared to making the same decision today.
All in, while the new MacBook Pro are feats of engineering, today they don’t make much sense and i cannot see me buying one or recommending them to people.
Notes on the CVAA =================== posted: 11 October 2016 featured image:Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a workshop run by Jon Moltz on the CVAA (21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act). This is relevant to my team at BBC as we are taking on more projects for launch in the USA.
This is a quick summery of my notes. Mostly written for myself but published here in case they are useful to other.
The CVAA is a law passed in 2010 which aims to ensure that online video had the same or better accessibility than broadcast video.
It’s managed by the FCC and gets lots of updates and notes. Some of it is ‘normative’ (a rule) and some is ‘non normative’ (not a rule).
The updates come out often and are issued as PDFs.
The law is split into two parts.
Title 1 deal with phone and phone like real time communication applications.
Title 2 deals with online video.
Title 1 effects things like help systems if they include two way communication (like text chat inside an app, or on a web page). For those sort of apps there are requirements around reporting but we didn’t discuss it much because our apps don’t do that.
Title 2 effects video and video players. All video plays must be ‘accessible’ and the act mentions blindness and hearing impairments.
Additionally, if content is tied to a broadcast (e.g. Is a TV show on catch up, or pre-roll) then it must have Captions and probably should have audio description (I’m not 100% sure)
The CVAA requires that users are able to customise the way captions are displayed.
My take away is that the CVAA at a high level is not that difficult. We do almost all of it already for other reasons and have work in progress on the rest.
However CVAA is not the only law relevant to us. There is the Americans With Disabilities Act which is broader and also applies. However we didn’t dig into that so much.
I think that covers the bulk of it. These are just my notes etc so they may be way wrong! Hopefully it’s helpful to share them.
Apple Display & displayOS =================== posted: 7 October 2016 featured image:When the rumours of a new 5K external display started a few months ago no one blinked an eye when the rumours included a GPU. Little did we know so much more than a GPU was involved. Today, Apple announced the new Apple Display line and in one fell swoop changed what we expect from our desktop computers.
There are two takes to be had on the Apple Display. One take is that it is iOS scaled up to be the most capable firmware ever conceived for a monitor, the other take is that it is macOS scaled down to work with ARM.
Lets start with what Apple Display does the same as any other external monitor. You can plug Macs into it via USB-C and use it to expand the size of your screen. Much like the cinema display before it, when used this way all the ports become available to the Mac and the Apple Display becomes an amazing docking solution.
The place where the Apple Display gets really interesting is when it is being used stand alone. Apple have breathed some of their experience with the Apple TV and iPad into the displays firmware and have created a whole new place to get stuff done.
The underlying system – displayOS – is iOS reimagined for the big screen keyboard and mouse environment. It is following in the footsteps of the iPad and comes preloaded with Safari, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Garageband, iMovie and Photos. Thats a whole lot of utility in a small package. Embedded inside the Apple Display are the guts of an iPad Pro to keep everything running smoothly.
For a long time people have speculated that the Mac will move to ARM, but i don’t think anyone predicted that iOS would get its own desktop vision.
With Apple Display and displayOS Apple is planting another flag in its vision for the future. Only time will tell if it pays off.
This is a spoof, Apple have not announced such a thing…. though i wish they did!
Going from Apple Watch to Apple Watch Series 1. =================== posted: 25 September 2016 featured image:
TLDR:
I don’t feel like i wasted my money, but at the same time the upgrade from the original Apple Watch to an Apple Watch Series 1 is not a must have because watchOS 3 is so good.
The whole story
I’ve only been using the Apple Watch since June. In that time it has had a very positive effect on my life. As an autistic person it has enhanced my autonomy and extended my ability to be independent. That’s very powerful, long term, that also saves me a small fortune in support costs.
With that in mind, it seemed worthwhile to try one of the newer watch on launch. After all, my current watch was only going to fall in value and buy buying early in the cycle i’d get the longest service life from my next watch. To make it all a little easier, my boyfriend wanted my current watch so i had a good buyer lined up.
I’m not a swimmer or runner, so i went with the Series 1 to get the speedier internals without paying for thing’s i didn’t need. The upgrade cost me £90, or about ~£4 a month assuming an 24 month cycle.
Overall i am very happy with my decision. The series 1 is smoother in operation than the original watch. For example, there are less dropped frames during animations and the interface is more responsive. The delay between tapping a complication and seeing something happen on my original watch was noticeable, on the Series 1 it feels immediate.
For the apps on my watch today, the original Apple Watch would have done just fine. So based on my usage today i wouldn’t recommend everyone with an original apple watch go rushing out for the upgrade. However, if its a cheapish upgrade for you, i do think its worth doing for the future proofing.
Apple Watch Series One. =================== posted: 11 September 2016 featured image:
On Friday i pre-ordered the Series 1 Apple Watch to replace my original watch. The cost to upgrade wasn’t too bad (£90) and the watch will last 18-24 months so it seems a good investment. I use the watch everyday so i may as well have the faster model considering the cost.
I think Apple are being super smart in how they are managing the Watch range. There are no duds in the range and both watches should comfortably last untill the next major release cycle.
It all comes down to usage, the Series 2 model offers something useful to runners / cyclists / swimmers, and the Series 1 work for everyone else.
I’m excited to see how the platform develops over the next two years and into the future.
Apple Event Wishlist. =================== posted: 7 September 2016 featured image:In a few hours time Apple will take to the stage in Calfornia to announce new things. Like in years gone by, here’s my wishlist for the event. Its not a prediction, just the things i’d like to see.
Please can we get with the updated Macs now? The Mac Pro hasn’t been touched in three years and that is embarrassing. Even a single slide saying “oh and we’ve got updated Macs too” would be enough. New Mac Pros and an updated Mac mini would be great. It’s well overdue.
New MacBook Pros and a 5K external displays would also be nice to see. I’m probably skipping this generation (as i have the iMac) but who knows. I wont be buying on launch but i am going to follow them with interest.
It’s time for Apple to update thier wearable and release watchOS 3. New hardware to make GPS etc better is a big win to new users, watchOS 3 is a big performance win to original watch owners. This is a product i might buy if its a compelling update. Otherwise i may just stick with my current watch and skip this cycle.
I am really keen to see which third party watchOS 3 apps are going to come out on launch day. Hopefully i will be installing some later today to find out!
I want to see it, but i dont want one. An iPhone announcement is a sure fire thing it seems. My only wish here is that the adaptor for lighting to 3.5mm audio is in the box!
Please have something cool as a one more thing. It could be Macs, it could be ARM Macs (!) it could be updated Apple TV or even Apple VR. I just really want there to be something unexpected and interesting.
The show starts in a few hours, so till then i will just have to wait and see!
Computers are Fast: Computers are Slow =================== posted: 3 September 2016 featured image:Computer are weird and performance is hard to understand.
Earlier this evening i was playing around with the first billion digits of pi, i was looking for patterns in it (eg upwards counting strings like 123456789 and how often the occur). It took my mid spec 3 year old laptop about 10 seconds to run the command each time using standard unix tools.
The speed as which my laptop can juggle a billion digit problem is amazing. At a human scale, in a few seconds my laptop is doing what would take me lifetimes.
I sometimes take on video projects, i did one a few weeks ago which involved encoding a bunch of high bitrate files down to lower bitrate files in order to move into iTunes for streaming to an Apple TV / loading onto iPads etc.
This shows how slow computers are compared to our needs. My top spec iMac — one of the fastest Macs ever sold — can barely convert the video much faster than real time. I was running the encoding job overnight in order to get it done in a reasonable amount of time.
I was not doing a task that was very high end, the video files being juggled where only 1080p and not 4K. They are only marginally larger than the video files an iPhone could record.
Here’s what i think is going on.
For the first task i have an idea of the complexity, i could if i wanted conduct the billion digits of pi task myself. I’d never complete it, but i can grok the complexity of the work being done at a human scale.
For the video encoding i can’t understand the complexity as i dont know what it’s doing. Because i don’t know what it’s doing being “lots of stuff” and the task seems trivial (make a video play on the Apple TV etc) it feels slow. I’m not left in awe at what it is doing, i am just annoyed its not faster.
I don’t really have a conclusion to this, just documenting some of my throughts about performance. I think this covers more than computing too, i get the same effect between F1 and WRC. World rally looks faster, perhaps because i can relate to it better.
iMac 5K Review =================== posted: 1 September 2016 featured image:The iMac 5K is the best computer I have ever used, I have never been more productive. It will probably be replaced when Apple offer a 27” Retina external display and new MacBook Pro but i am not in a rush.
I didn’t want to buy an iMac, but a few months with a Mac mini highlighted to me that a desktop in my life was a very good thing.
Rather than wait for new MacBooks and retina external displays (to approximate a desktop) I decided to just go for the real things and got the iMac. I was very excited.
The iMac is my daily workhorse Mac and gets used for everything. I have accounts setup for my freelance work and my day job, plus it gets called on for some video editing and video encoding. It’s gets a bit of usage for gaming too.
What I don’t use it for is storage or file serving. I have a Mac mini server to handle all of that keeping the iMacs SSD as a clear workspace.
The reason for this iMac is the display. It’s a fantastic display and worth the price alone. It’s not my first retina display but it is the largest and blimey it makes a huge difference to usability and comfort.
As a developer I mostly work with text. The displays sharpness reduces reading strain and the displays size gives me a large surface to work on. I love it.
The iMac has kept up with everything I needed, tho not always everything I wanted.
For my work tasks it’s never missed a beat and always had computing and graphics performance to spare. However when pushing the limits gaming the iMac can become overwhelmed.
The iMac has 3.7 tflops of rendering capability which is over twice as much as a current generation console like the Xbox One. However at native resolution is has almost 7x as many pixels to fill….
On older games the iMac is fine, the games I play most like Lego The Movie or Lego Marvels play fine. As does games like F1 2013.
However on more modern titles like Forza Apex to run it at native resolution requires a big step back in quality settings. This isn’t really a huge issues but it would have been nice for Apple to be providing higher quality graphics on such a high end Mac.
I don’t like that Apple made the iMac thinner. The old one was plenty thin enough and the lack of easy upgrades and repairs bothers me. However I do appreciate that they made it so much lighter.
I frequently move my iMac between two rooms, using it in the office for work and in my bedroom for play and and the lack of mass makes that much easier. I am almost tempted to buy a second power cable to make it even easier still.
Beyond the lack of easy access to the internals the other design decision which annoys me is the difficult to access ports along the back. They don’t have to be tucked out the way that much. At least one easy to find USB port would be nice.
The iMacs is the best computer i have ever owned. I don’t care that much for the form factor and would prefer better access to the insides but these are not killer blows. The iMac is a tool i use for my job and in that capacity is is the best tool i have found for what i need. Gaming performance could be better but its hardly a slouch once the resolution is taken back to a more sensible level.
The iMac treads the space between consumer and pro very well. A Mac Pro wouldn’t be able to power a display of this quality and no Mac Pro offers the same single threaded performance. A MacBook probably could offer the performance i need, but having the extra performance on tap is really useful when encoding a large video job or doing a big data analysis project.
While i really love the iMac i know it is a stopgap solution. I will be surprised if i keep it another year as hopefully by then Apple will have released a external retina display and a MacBook Pro which can offer the same performance in a more portable package.
Things I use my Apple Watch for. =================== posted: 4 July 2016 featured image:
I have had my Apple Watch a little over two weeks. I’m really impressed with it. I’m using pre-release software so i can’t review the watch yet, but once the final version is released i will probably do a more in depth review.
For now, here is a general overview of how i am using the watch.
Here are the top things I use my watch for daily or more.
Calendar – i store my routines in the calender and they show on my watch face. To make them more visual and memorable i use emoji of keywords (eg, a bath at bathtime etc)
Heartbeat logging – It’s been useful to have a quantitive measure of how stressed i am in certain situations. It’s helping me to plan days which stress me out less.
Apple Pay – Paying for things at the cafe without needing my phone is neat.
Bank Balance – I use a dedicated account for my spendable money each months. Being able to see that balance has been very useful. Helps me to keep within my budget.
Music playback – listening to music on the watch rather than my phone means my phone battery last longer.
Activity tracking – i didn’t expect to use this much, however it’s proved to be really useful.
Triage Notifications – I route important notifications to my watch, i often silence my phone and rely on the watch to interupt me if needed.
And thing I find useful most days days:
Two Factor Authentication – many things i sign into send me a code via a text message before allowing me. Seeing these codes on my watch saves me finding and fussing with my phone.
Email (!) – being able to quickly check subjects etc of emails is useful. I have VIP emals set up to notify me too.
And the things I use a few times a week.
Timers – useful when baking with my freind.
Workout tracking – I time my walks and keep track of them that way. Its satisfying to see the data about how much i walk each week
Proloquo4Text (speech app) – the watch app just shows text, but its handy, i’ve used it to order food in the cafe a few times.
Remote controls for audio – means i can leave my phone in my bag when listening to podcasts.
Reply to messages – being able to OK something or send a thank you from my watch in two quick taps is handy.
I think the Apple Watch is a great bit of kit. I am excited to see how it evolves over the next few years. I’m also working on my own apps which will hopefully make my day to day life a little simpler.
WWDC 2016 =================== posted: 13 June 2016 featured image:Tomorrow is the start of Apples worldwide developer conference. Traditionally the event starts with a keynote speech full of announcements.
Here is my Wishlist!
First and foremost, the time is ripe for new MacBook Pros. They have been rumoured for a while. At a minimum I’d be looking for updated internals (skylake, thunderbolt 3) but really a hardware design refresh is also due.
The rumoured designs with the OLED touchscreen above the keyboard sounds great to me.
USB-C only would be a bug bare, but if there are 4 of them as rumoured that won’t be too much of an issue.
I’m going to be sticking with my iMac for now, but I would love to see a 4K or 5k external display from Apple. This would mean that in 12-18 months when I might be looking for one I can get a bargain in the refurb store.
I don’t think we will see the return of the quad core Mac mini. So please could we have something innovative on size. Perhaps a core m powered Mac Stick or even something Apple TV sized.
I’d even be curious for an ARM Mac Mini for use as a home server. Perhaps running a variety of iOS.
New software is cool and renaming Mac OS X to macOS would be neat but I care far more about hardware. Almost the entire Mac range is looking dated so it’s time for a refresh. Here’s hoping.
By this time tomorrow we should know what Apple has planned.
My Mac Setup Process. =================== posted: 5 June 2016 featured image:
Okay, this blog post is mostly for “future me”, hopefully its useful to others but i wanted to document this mostly for myself!
For contect, i am an autsitic developer / writer / public speaker, who is currently unable to speak. My Mac is everyting from my typewriter to my voice.
Here’s how i configure everything!
The first thing i do on a new Mac during setup is enable iCloud. I use almost all of the iCloud services apart from “Back to my Mac”. I’ve never needed remote access so i dont enable it.
I enable iCloud first as it takes a while to download my iCloud Drive (30gb or so). It also has all my passwords for everything else!
iCloud keychain sit in input fields, this is one of the reasons i hate clever “reveal the password” buttons inside text input boxes… they should not overlay, i own the text input, not the designer…. leave it alone, i need that space!
The next thing i do is enable speech output in the Speech & Dictation settings screen. I use the default shortcut of alt + esc. As i cannot speak, my Mac is my voice much of the time, and this is how i use it. I write what i want to say in a text editor, then i highlight it and hit alt + esc to get it too read it aloud.
I also use this system for reading long documents etc! Its marvolous.
Next I go into Accsessbility settings and zoom. I enable “use scroll gesture with modfier keys to zoom” which allows me to zoom in and out using the track pad. I then set alt + cmd as the “modfier keys”…. in other words, if i hold those keeys and swipe up and down my screen zooms in and out.
I do this both to help me see things better, but also to reduce the visual clutter within my view. I read very slowly, so random extra stuff in the user interface steals my focus. If i zoom in on what i am doing, all the other distractions are removed!
Next, i grab the following apps from the app store:
I install dev tools as and when i need them. Within a few days that means i will need Coda etc, but i can afford to hang back and wait. Not every Mac in my life will be used for coding and i cant be bothered to do the serial key dance every time.
Exciting iMac. =================== posted: 25 March 2016 featured image:Last night i ordered myself a 27” Retina iMac complete with the fancy 4.0ghz i7 CPU, lots of RAM and large SSD. I’m extremely excited, so in thie post i am going to explain why i have brought it and why i am so excited.
This year has been really weird for computers. Barely three months ago at the start of the year i brought a little (and cheap) Mac mini to act as a sort of “cloud” of my own.
I wanted to use it as an xcode server and for managing my media etc, but i never expected to be using it often. When i got my Cinema Display back from my olf flat it amazed me by working. That was nice, it meant i had a nice screen for using with the Mac mini.
As i was using it more, i stuck an SSD in it. Felt like a sensible step. My plan was to wait till 2017 for the release of retina Cinema Displays and Macs to Drive them.
Well, that plan was poop. I changed my mind.
I love retina displays, not only because they look amazing, but because they allow me to screen zoom without getting pixelated text. This makes using a computer much easyier.
I changed my mind as i’m waiting for a product which may never come, when a product which is on sale right now will suit my needs perfectly. Plus my business would be very correct to buy it for me to support my freelance work.
I saw the iMac on the refurb store in just the configeration i wanted as my “dream computer” The price was high, but not anywhere near as high as it would have been “new” and certainly less than the cost of a Retina Displayer + new Mac mini for much much more performance.
I am excited for a few reasons. The biggest reason is the display. I love retina displays and i have longed for one at a desktop size for a very long time indeed. I stopped using large displays as retina trumped screen space, but with that i lost productivity. The days coding on the Cinema Display reminded me how awesome a large display was, and how terrible standard resolution now looks to me.
I’m also excited because this is the first “big thing” i have brought myself since i got ill almost 2 years ago. I have been so scared of spending money as my finances went crazy paying for care i have very careful with my spending.
However, i sold my home to pay for care, getting a small amount back to top up my business account for a new Mac isnt a bad way to spend it. Unlike a holiday etc, the iMac will hold its value extremely well and provide daily enjoyment and pleasure.
Finally, its simply nice to have nice things. My cinema display is being given to a friend on long term loan so it will still get used and make someone happy.
The Mac mini someone was extremely kind to buy for me earlier in the year when my finances were dire will have a new life too. I’m 100% decided yet, but its either being donated to the autism charity which runs the local hub, or im going to sell it and use the money to donate to a number of charities which i think do good work.
The key thing is, i changed my mind and thats okay. I am really excited about the new iMac and i cannot wait for it to arrive.
2015 12-inch retina MacBook Review =================== posted: 23 March 2016 featured image:
I wrote a first impressions article about this little MacBook a few days after it arrived. Now I have had longer to play with it and make some decisions this review goes into a bit more depth.
The one paragraph summery is that the MacBook definitely cannot replace my end of life employer provided work Mac and it’s not quite compelling enough to replace my personal 13-inch retina MacBook Pro.
This is a wonderful Mac for writing. In the time I had it I used it on many desks, sofas, in the back of taxis etc. The small size, lightness and great keyboard add up to awesome portability.
The screen is gorgeous. I tended to use the 1152 × 720 or a 1024 resolution more often than the 1280 × 800 resolution it ships with. 1152 gives the best sharpness and 1024 was more comfortable when I was tired and wanted the entire UI to be a bit bigger.
It’s competent for general computing but not amazing. It’s not the quickest for things like photos.app or mail.app but it works and it’s smooth enough.
It runs the accessibility features I use (voiceover, zoom etc) smoothly and without much stuttering. The retina screen makes screen zoom much more useful.
If my job didn’t include any development work or debugging I could see it being a good choice. However my job does requires more power.
It will run my development tools and I can certainly do coding on it. However once pushed it gets laggy Several times I found myself waiting for autocomplete in coda to catch up. Additionally well before it gets laggy battery life dwindles. When coding I would often see the battery life drop to 2-3 hours.
This isn’t the end of the world. As Macs retain value so well and the MacBook can be found on the refurb store it could work for a 12-18 months or so and then sell for 75% of the retail price.
However as a work supplied computer on a 3 year lease it’s just not got the longevity it’s going to need.
One port is limiting. For example it’s currently impossible to easily connect this to my Cinema Display and power it at the same time.
It’s also frustrating to need so many adaptors. In the future when USB-C is more established it makes sense. But for today a single USB-C port is not enough.
I am glad I tested one before I committed to one long term. It is an amazing piece of hardware and has lots to love. However it’s not going to last long enough to make it a worthwhile investment.
I am excited to see where it goes. While it’s a bad for for my work, it might work out better for my personal commuting burnt may take another generation or two before the hardware can match up to the promise.
2015 MacBook First Impressions. =================== posted: 19 March 2016 featured image:I’m trying out a 12” MacBook to see if it can replace my dying work Mac. After using it for 3 days i am ready to share some first impressions.
The MacBook is not like other Macs. The engineering approach and the design is borrowed heavily from the iPad line.
If an iPad and a MacBook Air had a baby, it would be the 12” MacBook. This is both good and bad.
On the good side:
And on the bad side:
Over the course of the last three days i have used the Macbook on 2 different desks, on the sofa, in bed and in the back of a taxi.
It worked well in all places. It worked really well in the back of a taxi. It fits on my lap with space to get a comfy typing position.
When on my lap, the low weight is also a problem. It will bounce of my lap when i am typing fast. I have to keep a little finger out to hold it in place!
I have used it for writing, coding, chatting, light photo editing and for generating speech.
It’s worked, but for tasks like coding and light image editing it’s is a bit slow. I would be skeptical of how long this laptop would last as a coding machine. For work it needs to last 3 years, I think that might be a bit ambitous. It may just work as a personal machine, but it’s hard to tell.
It’s not as capable as i am use too, so i have to think about how i am using it and make sure i close tabs etc.
Even with careful managing of resources it still feels a little bit laggy in places.
I can’t write about the MacBook without addressing the question about it’s place in “the future of computing”.
Apple tends to set trends, the MacBook Air started the last wave of ultraportables and it possible the MacBook will start a new wave of “ultra ultra portables”.
That makes it interesting. The real achievement is not in the performance but in the power used. It does with 6 watts of power what took 15 watts a few years ago and 45 watts 4 years ago.
I think one day we will see an ARM Mac (the iPad Pro is very close!) but i dont think thats going to happen too soon. The MacBook is impressive, for its size, but from my first impressions you do have to be a light user to live within its limits.
I think apple is on to a winner with the basic concept for the MacBook. For some users this Mac would be an all day capable machine, like the Air, it might be another generation or two before thats true for most users.
I am impressed with the MacBook but i think i can already rule it out as a work laptop. I can’t see it is lasting three years even for the lightest of coding tasks. A Retina MacBook Pro + iPod Touch is a better combination. Proper laptop when i need it and a super portable device for when i am on the move.
For personal use i can consider an upgrade earler in the cycle. To changes from my current MacBook would cost me about £150-200 and that’s not a huge price to pay for a laptop which may better fit my personal computing needs.
This is only a first impression, so i will see how it works out over the coming week before i make a decision.
Letting go as an accessibility specialist. =================== posted: 19 March 2016 featured image:I really love what i do. My job is to basically float around the BBC and help teams to make things more accessible. Just this week i helped the media player team make our video player better for keyboard only users, and more friendly to older users.
However, the hardest part of the job, the bit which drives me away and challeges my resolve is learning to let go.
The role of my team is to recommend and support, we dont take product decisions. Therefore, from our perspective we see teams “get it wrong” and can feel ignored.
When this happens, we all feel for the users as we know that something could be better.
Learning to accept that our role comes to an end and teams stand and fall by thier choices is extremely hard.
I find it even harder when it comes to decisions which will exclude autistic people. It lands so close to home that i have a really hard time keeping my passion and emotions out of the discussion.
Thats about all for this post really. I think its someting everyone goes through. Often change is achieved by looking at the wider context and not obsessing over individual battles.
I have to focus on the good we do and trust that given time things will come together and improve. Bad decisions will be reviewed and excluded users will be included once the mistake it understood.
At a time when so much in my life is a struggle (speech, housing, travel) it just adds an extra layer of complexity and means that i need to police my actions extra strongly in order to ensure i build bridges and work constructively with others.
Why I traded my iPad for an iPod Touch =================== posted: 12 March 2016 featured image:
Today I traded my iPad Mini 2 (16gb) for a current generation iPod Touch (32gb) at one of the technology trade in stores in town.
A few months ago I would have seen this as a crazy move. After all, in theory the iPad is much more capable and more like a ‘proper computer’. I saw the iPod touch is as a cheap gateway device to give to kids etc.
However for my use case, the swap was a strong upgrade. Here’s why.
A computer is only as useful as it’s software and without a doubt the iPod Touch has a much better, broader and more robust software library than the iPad.
The iPad ecosystem is not bad but it’s just not as active. Big iPad releases are rare. From memory I can’t name any iPad only software!
I don’t find the iPad that much more capable. I can do most of the same things.
For example Coda for iOS makes web development a surprisingly fun, fluid and enjoyable experience on the iPod Touch.
In my day to day usage there was nothing I could do only on the iPad. There was stuff which was easier in theory but in practice it was harder due to the ergonomics.
It’s really awkward to type on the iPad mini on anything other than a desk.
I’ve never had a compelling reason to learn the iPad keyboard. I’ve always got too annoyed with it and given up.
I use the iPod touch like my phone. I can curl up somewhere comfortable and type with my thumbs.
The iPod touch has the same basic keyboard as I have been using daily since 2008 on my phones.
In practice, if I want to write or code it’s a choice of keyboards. Big touch typing keyboard (Mac) or speedy thumbs (iPod / iPhone).
The touch typing with full fingers on the iPad mini just doesn’t work for me.
The internals in the iPad Mini 2 struggle to run iOS 9 smoothly. Even with all the graphic turned down its not responsive to inputs.
However the iPod Touch is really impressively fast and smooth. It has the graphics might to power through the iOS 9 visual effects and it’s never missed an input.
I find it much easier to get stuff done on the iPod. I can flow around switching between apps (eg coda to safari and back) and it feels smooth.
The iPad feels like a laggy mess.
Finally, the iPod Touch has twice the storage for the same cost. The trade cost me nothing. I got an almost new iPod touch for my 2+ year old iPad.
The iPod touch is a really incredible little device and I am extremely glad I tried one. I’ve had one for work for a while and it’s been great.
Perhaps in a few years time the iPad will become compelling again. But at the price point I’m working at, i think I got a fantastic deal today and am very happy with the swap.
My Setup. =================== posted: 12 March 2016 featured image:
If I could have anything, my ideal Mac setup would be an ultraportable MacBook, a Mac Mini and a retina class external display I could share between the two.
In some ways this is already possible. If i brought a current generation Mac Mini and a current generation MacBook they would drive one of the 4k panels on the market.
However, they wouldn’t be able to run the display at 60hz, and the Mac Mini would cost over £950 and still be slower than my current Mac.
I’d prefer to use an Apple display if i can (i really like my cinema display and a 4k model at 24” would be amazing!) but i might be willing to flex on that part.
Mainstream Macs capable of 4k 60hz support wont hit the market till 2017 when intel ships CPU’s which are capable.
Till then, I am really happy with my current setup. A portable MacBook1 for writing, light coding, presentations and working on the move and a solid desktop with the wonderful cinema display as a server and workstation.
[1] The exact MacBook i use might change, as i could do with something that fits on my lap. Will see what happens.
iPod Touch Mini Review. =================== posted: 25 February 2016 featured image:I was given an iPod touch via work about a month ago. I needed a mobile device for work and an iPod touch seemed ideal. It can access my email, be used for shooting an editing video and also for writing, slack etc.
Finally, it can also run the speech generation software i use when i cannot speak and it can be used for testing sites and app in Voiceover.
I’m really impressed with this little iPod. The biggest thing to impress me has been the usability for writing and its performance.
The iPod touch is the same physical size as an iPhone 5 which means i find it very very easy to type on. Ive been using screens this size for almost 5 years.
I am still faster with a physical keyboard, but curled up on the sofa on the iPod touch or my phone is much more comfortable.
I like to try and keep emails etc short, so i find doing the first filter of my emails on the iPod touch works well. I also am getting into the habit of writing more notes. Some of the notes will go on to become blog posts.
The iPod touch is really fast, in CPU terms is faster than many Macs i have owned. Its about 60% faster than my first 2010 MacBook Air.
Thats insane levels of performance considering the size and cost of the iPod. Especially considering it is running a much nicer higher resolution screen.
The iPod touch can juggle spreadsheets that my old MacBook Air struggled with. It’s hard to know if thats purely a hardware things, or if part of the smooth performance is due to software. Either way its might impressive and gives a great user experience.
The iPod touch is a lovely device to hold and use, i like the rounded edges. When holding it you just want to touch it and feel it. Or at least i do anyway.
The only negative thing i have seen is battery life. The iPod touch seems to need charging far more often than my iPhone does. I guess this is due to a smaller battery but i am not sure. I charge it overnight, and it normally needs a top up charge doing the day.
Beyond the normal uses, the iPod touch also helps my confidence. I cannot speak much at the moment, so having two different methods of generating speech always available to me is great for my confidence.
I would recommend it as an awesome device. Its much cheaper than an iPhone, and for £23 a month you can pair it with a Three 4G hotspot and get 20gb of data too.
Overall i am amazed at how productive i can be on such a small device.
Apple Musing: Macs and the FBI! =================== posted: 20 February 2016 featured image:
Here are some random tech musings on a variety of topics which interest me.
I’ve had the Mac mini a few weeks and I am still happy with it. It’s really nice to know theres a safe copy of all my content somewhere I control.
It was also useful in creating copies of my media. I have my broken Cinema Display back home now so going to look to get that fixed and setup.
Now I’m not using my MacBook Pro for all my storage I don’t need the Huge SSD. Seems a waste to have it say doing nothing.
I really want to try a new MacBook out to see how it works for me. There’s a new one coming soon hopefully so I may see about getting one or an older one on refurb.
I’m using an iPod touch as a speech and work device and I am impressed. It’s a keyboard / speech app I know so I am way way faster than on Windows or android and the speech generation is really good.
It’s faster than the my first 11” MacBook Air which is really impressive. Great screen too and 1/10th the price!
Really glad I decided to give it a go! The confidence of having a backup voice in my pocket is huge and it takes the pressure off my iPhone battery.
The Apple vrs FBI stuff is fascinating. I’ve really enjoyed the coverage on ars technica, can’t wait for it to be discussed on ATP
My MacBook is Disposable. =================== posted: 22 January 2016 featured image:The value of my MacBook is low compared to the value of the data on it. Replacing my MacBook would cost about £1000, but i cannot replace my photos, media collection, work and other files at any cost. Finally, if i lost my business records, it could cost me everything.
This is a really important point when i think about how i manage my data. I need to manage my data in such a way that if my laptop was lost, stolen or damaged i would not loose my important files.
I have done this in the past using a backup service called Backblaze to backup my laptop. I have also kept a local time machine copy. This was okay, but it limited my storage space to 500gb. What i could fit on my MacBook.
I have outgrown that space now, so i had to think about what to do.
I could sell my MacBook and upgrade to a model with more space. The cost to get a new model with 1tb of storage was £1799. That’s a £1000 upgrade to get an extra 500gb of space. No way, too small for too much money.
External USB storage was an option, but i’m not keen. It ends up being a pain to backup and manage.
Finally, i could just go to third party services. Using iCloud or Dropbox etc as my main storage. I did consider this, long and hard but i just dont feel ready to trust all my data to other people. It’s worth too much to me.
My solution has been to sort out my own server. I have brought a little Mac Mini server and stuck a large 2tb drive in it. It meets my storage needs for now and i can add extra storage in the future if required. It’s cost less than 30% of the “upgrade” cost on a new MacBook, plus its doing far more than just being storage.
As it has a fast processor and lots of storage space, i have been using it to create optimised versions of my media for my other devices. This means i can use the space i have more effectively.
I am migrating and consolidating all my data there, then setting it up to have a healthy offsite backup and a local backup too.
Turning back to my MacBook. Once this is complete, i will format my laptop entirely and treat it like an iOS device. From a data perspective it will be disposable.
Using imgix: easy responsive images. =================== posted: 21 January 2016 featured image:A few months ago I built a little website to house my autism related content. It was built while I was off work recovering from my operation and the focus was on the content not the website.
To build the site i used Twitter bootstrap for the front end and the wonderful Perch CMS for the backend.
The site has done well. It’s certainly done well enough to warrant a proper custom design in the future.
However for now I am just looking to make little improvements as and when I have the time.
The main flaw with the site is that it is slow. I never setup anything to handle responsive images so the site was serving ~1mb of images on the index pages. This was only getting worse as every new content item added an image to the page.
It was starting to be a problem, so this seemed like a great place to start.
Imgix is a hosted image processing service and CDN. You show it where your ‘master images’ are stored and it produces variations of those images and hosts them for you.
They charge for master images and bandwidth. There’s no costs to have thousands of variations ready for use. The minimum charge is $10 a month.
This sounded ideal for a responsive image solution to me. I heard them advertised on ATP.fm and saw them on Daring Fireball and thought it would be worth a go.
I was looking at their site too see how I would go about hacking up a responsive image solution and then saw they had already done it for me. Awesome
I had it up and running in 30 minutes.
Here’s why I like it:
Another reason I like it is that all the image transforms are done on Mac Pros. As a Mac geek, that makes me smile.
Perch only resizes files at upload. This means that if I change the sizes I need for my website I have to reupload all the images. Imgix is much simpler.
Installation was easy. I downloaded the latest library and put it on my server. Then I added it to the global head.
I then swapped around my img tags to set the data-src to be the path.
This didn’t work quite as I expected. Perch always returns the root path, yet my source folder is the end of the path. So I added a couple lines of JS to fix the paths before the library calls them. A bit ugly. But it works.
In all I changed about 15 lines of code within the side.
The largest page I had was 1.2mb on all device.. It’s now ~340kb on my phone and about ~600kb on my retina MacBook Pro.
On my home wifi, the page load time is around 500ms and on the 3G network in my flat it’s about 800ms. Before imgix the pages took upwards of 2 seconds to load on wifi and anything up to 5 on 3G.
The major downside is that some images no longer load for users without JavaScript. This is not ideal. So I will probably add a link to the original image into each page.
The images I have optimised are all decoration images with empty alt attribute so I am comfortable with them being added by progressive enhancement.
My next planned improvement is a new homepage. Which will be quite image heavy so this work is a good foundation.
During the my development I did spot an interesting bug in the library. I found a work around, and also emailed the support. They got back to me quickly with a helpful response and were very polite. Always a good sign.
I have other projects in mind which are very image based. So having something flexible is a great start. There plenty of headroom for growth within my account. I’m able to think a little more creatively knowing that images of ‘the right size’ will be easy to generate as required.
Imgix is not for everyone. I could achieve something ‘close enough’ with some time. But having a nice well maintained solution is a better use of my time.
A new Mac Mini =================== posted: 17 January 2016 featured image:
It’s been a little over 16 months since i sold my very high spec 2012 Mac Mini. I sold it because it didn’t do the job i needed it to do very well considering the cost. At half the cost, i would have been over the moon, but as it was the money was better spent on a MacBook.
A couple of days ago, a rather amazing series of events led to me having a new Mac Mini, direct cost to me, zero. Someone was extremely kind and gifted me the Mac Mini.
Whenever i buy new hardware i give it a bit of a hard run before i trust it. So ive spent lots of time with it over the last few days and have got it setup. Its such an impressive little machine.
The Mac mini is a great bit of kit. They pack am impresive amount of CPU grunt into a small space. The 2014 models are disapointing as they cannot be upgraded and the price for a strong configuration is huge. However the older models are really flexable.
The Mac mini i have is a slightly stripped mid spec server model from 2011. It’s got the 2ghz Quad Core i7 CPU and connectors for two hard drives. It didn’t come with the original drives, instead it has one slot free and an older 250gb drive in the other slot. I suspect they took the drives out for security.
Performance wise, it is the 2nd fasted computer i have ever owned. It’s about mid way between my MacBook and my old Mac Mini with a geekbeench score of about 9000. It’s faster than any 2014 Mac Mini at a fraction of the cost. In use, it feel much slower as it does not have an SSD, but once it gets going it goes really well.
The only change I have made is to spend some money to buy a larger hard drive. All the things i want to do with it require lots of storage. A 2TB drive (the largest i have every had in a computer!) cost me £70.
It has 4gb of RAM installed, which is plenty for the uses i have in mind at the moment. If needed, it might get a RAM upgrade in the future as an 8gb kit is only £25-30. Im going to hold off till i see a need.
The Mac Mini is both powerful and always on. That lends itself to a number of useful functions. Here are some of the projects and plans i have in mind:
1. Media Server – my main media library (including all my iTunes purchases!) will live on the Mac Mini. I haven’t had my library in one place for a long time due to space limits on my Mac. I have no backups of some of my iTunes purchases (!) so will redownload them and store them safetly on the Mini. The Mini is also plugged into the TV, so i can use it for watching back my high quality bluray files.
2. iOS Sync – with the extra storage space, i can afford to keep mutiple different file sizes around. So i plan to use the Mac Mini to create and host a iOS optimised copy of all my media. This means i can make better use of the storage space on my iPhone etc. These files wil also be the ones i load onto my MacBook.
3. Photos.app – i plan to also host an instance of photos.app where it will download and store the originals for all of my Photos. I also plan to merge all my libraries into a single photo library going back to 2003.
4. Time Machine – it will be the time machine target for my MacBook. Ensurng my work files are always being backed up!
5. Hue Server – i also plan to use it to host my various Phillips Hue smart light control scripts. For example, using an amazon dash button by the front door as a master lightswitch and using a dash button in my bed as an emergency nightlight. (see: hub.com/JamieKnight/dash-hue and http://github.com/JamieKnight/xbox-node-hue)
6. Satelite TV Recording – i have a satelite tuner and plan to set it up on the Mac Mini to recored major TV Shows like Dr Who or Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
7. iOS App Development – in the future, when i have been able to add some more RAM and an SSD, i’d also like to use the Mac Mini for iOS development. The CPU grunt will make building apps way quicker! In the mean time, i might use it as a build server.
I am really excited to see how this Mac Mini works out. It’s been a while since i had a new computer to play with. I am now looking forward to the new hard drive arriving so i can enjoy a bit of hardware assembly as well.
Apple Mac Wishlist 2016 =================== posted: 10 January 2016 featured image:
Here’s my Wishlist for what I hope Apple does in 2016.
My Cinema Display stopped working late last year and I am missing it. It was useful because it could be driven by any other Mac. So I could easily use it for either home or work.
With Thunderbolt 3 available and apple already using 5k and 4K retina panels in the iMac I really hope that 2016 sees a new stand alone display.
If a new stand alone display won’t happen then perhaps with the new connectors it will be possible for the iMacs to support Target Display Mode again.
When used this way, the iMac screen acts as a display for other Macs. Very helpful.
For either option, a HDMI connector and the ability to support 1080p would also be very useful indeed.
A new display is great, but no current Mac could power it.
I like the MacBook Air. It’s not as portable as the new MacBook but it is way cheaper and faster.
The MacBook Air is the middle for performance too with a 15w processor versus the 4.5-6w processor in the MacBook and 28w processor in the MacBook Pro.
However as it stands the air is a very hard machine to live with. The screen is considerably sub par compared to other options and that rules it out for me.
A 2015 MacBook Air is already faster than my 2013 MacBook Pro so I wouldn’t loose any performance moving down the range.
An air with a retina screen and large 778gb-1tb SSD would do me great for another few years.
Talking of SSDs, Apple needs to finish the transition. I have recently been considering a retina iMac (4K) and when I tried it in the store the performance felt terrible.
After prodding a little further I saw the poor performance was because the base model still has a spinning drive.
This is an area Apple really needs to address. Fusion drives across the board is the only sensible position going forward.
Talking of across the board. The Mac Mini is due a reboot. The Mac Mini has been following the inners of the MacBook since the Intel transition.
With that in mind it’s possible Apple could do something really interesting with the Mac Mini based on the hardware in the MacBook.
Small, Fanless and with an SSD a new smaller Mac Mini could be a really handy computer. The latest skyline chips Supoort 4K resolution too, so there’s no reason a MacBook derived Mac Mini couldn’t use a new 4K external display. It could all be the size of the Apple TV.
Alternatively, if Apple ported OX S to Arm, the new Mac Mini could be the same hardware as the Apple TV. That would be interesting.
So that’s my Wishlist for Macs in 2016. It will be interesting to see if any of it comes true.
Goals for 2016 =================== posted: 25 December 2015 featured image:Going into 2016 I am feeling pretty positive. I’m working on living independently and doing more in work, but I wanted to also think about some goals outside of work and autism stuff.
So here they are, my 3 goals for 2016!
We moved to opposite ends of the country last January and we have both struggled with housing so we have spent very little time together.
In 2016 were hoping to spend time together once or twice every month. Which will be awesome :)
With all the health issues on 2015 I rode my mountain bike only 3 times and covered only 75 miles on my city bike.
Cycling is one of my favourite things. In 2016 I want to ride more on both bikes. Hopefully as my confidence grows this will happen!
My mountain bike was recently serviced so she’s in tip top condition waiting for the next adventure.
In 2015 I read 4 new books. All Terry Pratchet audiobooks. In 2016 I want to read at least 12 books. I don’t know what books yet, but I am sure more discworld books will be part of it.
So that’s my personal life goals for 2016. Alongside this I want to travel more and do well in work etc.
2015 in review. =================== posted: 17 December 2015 featured image:2015 was the most extreme year I have had for a while.
The first 8 months of 2015 were dominated by intense physical pain. I had gallstones and gluten issues which resulted in childbirth equivalent levels of pain 5 nights a week.
I slept in a bathtub of hot water or simply stayed awake all the time. The hot water helped ease the pain. In the worst week I got 11 hours of sleep across 6 nights.
In January my boyfriend moved out and stopped caring for me. It was the right decision. My illness had made my Supoort requirement simply too much for him while he studied. He got a 1st in his degree partly because we took a very difficult but essential step.
From January to March an attempt to live alone left me experiencing rolling panic attacks despite the amazing efforts of my friends.
I then flew to the USA to attend CSUN and gave the talk of my life to two packed rooms in what many have told me was the most talked about talk of the entire conference.
While at CSUN I arrange for a friend to move in with me to provide support.
From March to August I developed techniques for managing the autism and making the most of the support I had in place.
In August I finally had an operation to fix the pain.
The operation was a success. But I lost skills. I’ve not been able to speak since. I have been non verbal for 3 months now.
I then had to move out of and then sell my home.
I couldn’t live there as it was to far away from my friends for supoort and the friend living with me got busy so a return after my operation wasn’t feasible.
I wish him the best. He got busy because the show he was able to run at the Edinburgh fringe (which was by all accounts, a highlight of the fridge) did so well it’s now led to other shows. He was able to run the show in part because he lived with me rent free. We both gained from the situation while it worked.
In 2015 I have helped 2 other autistic people secure jobs in the industry. Helped another autistic friend go from homeless sleeping in his car to his own home and a well paying tech job.
I gave 6 large presentations to a total audience of around 3000 people. I also gave a talk online as a part of a summit on inclusive design.
I had my second magazine article published. It was a joy to walk into a WH Smiths and walk out with something I had written! I have another article due to be published soon.
In work, I helped develop the BBC champions network into a small but active community. Growing from 25 to over 55. I worked extensively with the news team, iPlayer team and many other teams. I did inductions, introduced people to each other. Ran workshops and training.
I answered around 100 technical accessibility questions via email.
I also spoke at 2 internal BBC diversity events and contributed too two rounds of autism awareness training. I helped to get more disabled staff at the BBC so we spoke better reflect the wonderful diversity of our audience.
I developed a prototype for an innovative tool for improving subtitle quality and worked with R&D to analyse the data we have.
I designed, built, wrote and launched an autism reviews and techniques website with a blog. It has had over 6000 page views and around 1000 users and has led to life changing improvements for at least 3 people (they emailed me).
I moved across london to live independently. In the process arranging my own day to day Supoort by hiring a “babysitter”.
2016 is a mighty challenge. I am exhausted. 3 months of attempting to live alone had been a huge challenge but I am learning and making some progress.
2015 was a heck of a year.
Introducing SpacedOutAndSmiling.com =================== posted: 13 September 2015 featured image:Today I am soft launching my new website at SpacedOutAndSmiling.com
In a nutshell it’s a mix of two things:
It’s a blog to document my move into independent living and it’s a resource site for sharing a library of reviews, tips and tricks all focused on making day to day life easier and more fun.
My hope is that it can be useful to other people making the same journey and act as a resource for parents, carers and professionals helping us along the way.
The name came from a friend who was describing me after a recent visit to the zoo.
We took a buggy, effectively a large pushchair. It was an experiment too see what would happen if we changed the way we did things a bit, too just accept the spaced out side of the autism rather than to fight it.
It was a HUGE success. Rather than seeing one thing, then getting so spaced out I spent the rest of the day barely able to walk and talk I instead was able to last the entire day.
I was still spaced out but we were prepared. Rather than becoming anxious, upset, feeling guilty and then using all my energy fighting the derp all day I spent the day looking at the animals and interacting with my friends. We all had more fun.
The buggy provided a little sensory pod. It meant I could take breaks without slowing everyone down and generally meant I didn’t have to battle with the crowds while trying to stay with a group.
One of the friends who went with me (the chap who did most the pushing actually ;)) described me at the end of the day as ‘spaced out and smiling’ and i liked the term.
I didn’t need the buggy. But dammit I was happier using it. It made the experience so much better for me. We took it knowing it might get used, it was already agreed. I didn’t have to deal with the rush of guilt associated with being spaced out. We had already designed the day to be as hassle free as possible.
I think in the autism world there is a tendency towards ‘normal’ and ‘highest functioning’.
While long term I agree this is a good thing (living skills are hugely important) I also believe that if I’m safe with friends and something ‘lower functioning’ works than dammit why not. Functional labels are not always helpful.
This pattern has repeated itself. From carrying lion, to choosing the foods I eat and the tableware I use, I have found that small changes can make something that was possible, easy and something that was easy enjoyable.
Ultimately, that is the whole point of the new site. I want to share the experiences I have and encourage people to explore what it means to be ‘autistically’ happy.
So that’s the wishy washy human story bit. Here’s the technical side.
For the new site I wanted something easy to maintain and extend. I first tried using Wordpress as the go to blogging platform but the interface just annoyed me. Way to complicated!
I then tried building a site on squarespace. That worked a bit better but the theme felt limiting.
Ultimately, I built my own thing. I used bootstrap to build the front end and used a system called perch too manage the content. The whole thing is then hosted on UKWSD.com.
2013 Kona Dr Dew Review =================== posted: 16 August 2015 featured image:
After almost 2 years without a city bike I am back in the saddle with a new Kona. For those keeping track, this is my 3rd bike in London. The first two (another Kona and Specialised) were both stolen, so this time i am being extremely careful. After all the specialised was stolen from outside my office whilst it was triple locked!
Anyway, the Kona is their replacement and 50 miles in I thought now would be a good time to do a little review.
The Kona Dr Dew is a mid to high end hybrid ‘urban commuter’ bike. It’s designed for efficient movement around the city but with more comfort and control that a traditional racing bike. It has a more comfortable mountain bike style riding position and disk brakes. But with road like wheels and running gear.
I use it mostly for leisure, in London I ride around nearby parks, but i have taken it further afield down to somerset for a 25 mile ride along the Taunton and Bridgewater canal a few weeks ago.
I have two other uses in mind. The first is that I would like to one day try a commute. The route from home to work is simple enough, it’s mostly just following a canal. The issue is the busy roads on both ends. Neither are very encouraging.
The second future use is perhaps more realistic. Sponsered cycling. I originally purchased the bike to do the RideLondon 100 mile bikeride with a friend in aid of the National Autistic Society. We missed out this year due to my health. But i hope that if i train hard perhaps i can enter next year or a similar event.
The Dr Dew is the top spec city bike that Kona sells. The retail price is around £900 but I picked mine up for less than half that amount. The bike has a good all around spec but the highlights for me are defintely the brakes, tyres and gearing.
The Kona has a set of Avid Elixir 3 hydraulic disk brakes which are about mid range. They are designed for mountain bikes rather than city bikes which means they have much more power than typical cable pull disk brakes found on commuting bikes.
Other bikes i looked at even at £300 more had generic hydraulic disk brakes or cheap Shimano units. While the Shimano brakes are good, they dont have the same feel on the low end as the Avid models.
I really like the confidence these brakes provide. When they were new, they took a little bit of time to fettle into shape, but now they are running absolutely smoothly. When out at the park, I have the confidence to let speed build knowing that if needed i can bring the bike to a stop rapidly.
When combined with the tyres, the braking is predictable and precise. This leads to extremely enjoyable, highly controllable brake drifts when desired. At the far corner of a local park is a long sweeping downhill follow by a 90 degree bend which is massivly satisfying to drift around on the brakes.
As well as being fun when wanted, the brakes are reliable and good at more mundane stopping duties to when riding to and from the park.
The Contenential CityRide 32mm tyres are also very impressive. They combine a high profile centre (for high speed, low resisitance cruising) with a very gripping side tread for more grab in the rain or when the tyre is pushed.
My previous Kona also had Contenental tyres. They were much less sporty, with a 37mm width and no high profile ridge, i much prefer the new rubber.
The performance is not entirely free. The trade off is comfort. The 37mm CountryRides on my last Kona where much happier with light off road riding and bumpy lanes. The CityRides on the Dr Dew are best for surfaced paths. Riding along the gravel tow path of the canal was much rougher than it was on my old Kona.
For the majority of my riding this tradeoff is fine. I can deal with reduced comfort in return for the increase in efficiency. I don’t run the CityRide tyres that hard at around 45 PSI, but for my next long canal ride, i made drop the pressures slightly to see if that helps with the comfort.
The gearing is powered by a Sram Via Centro unit. The Centro is a hybrid bike specific gearset based on mountain bike technology. It has 2 × 10 setup using a wide ratio 10 speed rear cassette.
In general, I have found the gearing to be excellent. Shifts are smooth and predictable and the mech is very quiet and refined. I have made them crunch a few times, but mostly that was due to user error and trying to put power through the drivetrain while shifting at very low speeds.
Being a city based rider, i dont intend to throw much mud into my general riding, but the small amounts of mud, dirt and dust already thrown at the Centro seems to have been shrugged off without issue. When i got back from the last canal ride i also pulled a few large sticks out of the cassette which i had not noticed while riding.
The other finishing kit on the Kona is all very good. While i dont have any plans for upgrades at the moment. I do have a good feel for where future upgrades could be well placed.
With the background and kit discussed, how does she ride? In the 50 miles we have shared so far she has ridden very well indeed. On smooth surfaces the kona dew can gain and shed speed easily and smoothly. Even when the going gets a little rougher, the kona remains smooth.
When the going gets really rough (muddy tracks!) her harsh ride does start to jar. But as mentioned above, this may be resolved with some tyre pressure tweaks. This is a very small part of my riding so generally is not of concern.
As I alluded too earlier, within the next few years I hope to get good mileage out of the Kona. At first around the local parks, but hopefully with some sponsored cycle rides and perhaps a bit of commuting too.
The few changes i am considering making are more for comfort than for need. The first would be to swap the handle bar for a slightly more flexable Carbon Fibre model. This would help to reduce the harshness of the ride while also reducing the weight a little.
The second change is more functional. I am very tempted to invest in a bottle holder so that i can drink while i ride without needing to reach into my bag and upset the lion who dwells there. Carbon fibre bottle holders are cheap these days, so I may splash out on somehthing swish with some of the money I was given for my birthday.
I am really impressed with the Kona Dr Dew. It has a good build, fine ride and manages to stay pretty light. I expect it to last me for a very long time, and i look forward to many more miles to come.
Building friendship online for autistic teenagers. =================== posted: 31 July 2015 featured image:I saw a twitter discussion today which asked:
“What’s the best way to help #autistic teens develop good friendships?” (Source: @reachoutASC)
I had a think and here is my response.
Find online forums relating to special interests then spend some time supporting the individual to write an introduction and contribute.
Online forums are also known as discussion boards. When I was a teenager I joined one called Boagworld forum about my big obsession (web design and development) and it worked really well for me.
I think a forum works well because:
Safety online is never perfect. But with a few techniques it can be manageable.
For younger teenagers, they should not be online unsupervised. This is even more important for those who are naive or vulnerable.
For older and more able users, support is required.
I would suggest looking for a profession forum relating to a special interest. These can often be found in Magazines.
I would then suggest the young person is supported to write an introductory post to introduce themselves.
In my opinion, for a professional forum disclosing autism is a sensible thing to do. In my experience (10+ years) professional forums are very likely to welcome a knowledgable new member regardless of the autism. By knowing from the start, you create an environment where you can explain needs and hopefully also raise some awareness along the way.
It’s also sensible to follow the transitional ‘cyber’ safety rules:
It won’t always be smooth sailing. I use to get upset on the forum often. But that was part of the learning process. It had huge value.
I met most of my friends online via forums. My friends also provide a great deal of support for me, so the web was instrumental in my life and my journey to independence.
A friend i met online 10 years ago is currently living with me providing support. So while the return may not be immediate it can be huge.
Finally, interaction on the forums led to me attending events. When i attended events, everyone knew me and that made it much easier. People could focus on my skills not my needs.
Attending events became invitations to speak at events. Via a whirlwind of awesome involving Apple, Channel 4 and the BBC that led to my current career.
I didn’t interact with my ‘age peers’. I still don’t. I interact with my actual peers, my age is unimportant.
If you want to try this, let me know and I would be happy to help identify forums and the like.
Using defaults to manage anxiety =================== posted: 29 July 2015 featured image:A few weeks ago I gave a talk at Digital Croydon called ‘The Developer Mindset’. The talk details some of the engineering principles I have adopted for my day to day life as part of managing the transition towards independence.
The talk discuses a few things such as spoons and avoiding burnout. But I have written about that before. So for this post, I want to focus on a different topic. This post is all about ‘defaults’.
I have a timetable and I like to follow it. I don’t follow it perfectly unless I am specifically quite anxious and seeking structure.
My timetable provides me with a default. I can choose to follow the default or go with something else.
Knowing the default is there gives me the structure I need to reduce the anxiety. While also giving me some flexibility.
For example, I can choose to avoid a shower in the morning because I had a shower the night before.
Or I can choose to go for something different for dinner knowing that the default is in the freezer waiting for me.
It’s a simple concept but I have found it to be very useful.
To put a development spin on it; effectively I have just decided on some sensible defaults for my ‘life’ API.
The default covers me for when I don’t know what to do or don’t have the energy or interest to make a comfortable decision.
In the past, departing from my timetable gave me a sense of falling into chaos and with it a surge in anxiety.
These days, I choose to treat my timetable as a defaults mechanism. It’s there when I need it or want it. But it’s just the default, if I think I can do better I am free to do so.
Derp, food, clothing, travel and support. =================== posted: 3 May 2015 featured image:Last month I wrote about my timetable and sensory diet. This post is a bit of an update about some of the things we have learnt.
The key take away is that I am much much happier and less anxious. Here are some of the changes we have made.
Derp is what we call the rather spaced out unfocused headspace I get into when i am overloaded or tired. Forms of Derp vary. It varies in intensity and mood.
There is being a little derpy (a bit spaced out, less speech, clumsy) and very derpy (no speech, extremely spaced out, probably hiding under something or in bed with lion)
Then there is happy derp (very bouncy, very excitable, sometimes very loud!) and bad derp (very anxious, crushing chest feeling, can turn into a panic attack).
My friends sometime refer to my happy derp as being a bit like a 5 year old because my sense of danger is a bit poop. happy derp is fine but often results in lots of small injuries (burns!) and getting a bit run over.
Since we adopted the timetable we have seen an increase in the derp. I think this is because I am muuuch less anxious. Previously my anxiety scale was from 0 – 10. But via the timetable i now have a new anxiety level of -5 :)
I am really happy to swap much less daily variation and more derp for being less anxious and much happier.
My friends are also saying they welcome the change. Because while I am more derpy. It is generally happy derp. Before I got very deep derp more often and it was bad derp. Light happy derp is much nicer for everyone :)
Derp isn’t new. What’s new is i am trying my best to not feel so bad about it. I do struggle with feeling guilty when I get derpy. But for now I am trying to put that aside while I look to find ways to get stable.
I have a base daily diet which is the same every day. For breakfast I eat (gluten free) cereal. For lunch bits of chicken on sticks and a banana and for dinner potato waffles and salad.
I eat that every day. I then add other things I like as and when. I get support to make sure I can always have those three meals. For example, if I not able, someone else makes sure that lunch is in the fridge for me.
Finally, at the moment I don’t cook the waffles (someone else does!) that bit will change in the future. The focus right now is still finding stability.
This has been a key driver of my reduced anxiety :)
I really really like knowing exactly what I am eating.
I preselect my clothing for a week at a time. This means I don’t make any clothing decisions day to day. Everyday has preselected underwear and a t-shirt. Jeans are a special case as I only wear a single pair (I don’t go out if they are in the wash)
This has also helped reduce my anxiety. It’s one less decision. I know what I am wearing and i know where it is. Once I get out of the shower I know what to do. Much happier.
I have learnt something important. There a difference between what’s possible and what is comfortable. I had become very very good at managing my discomfort because I believed that was the correct thing to do.
I need to credit this lesson to my line manager at the BBC. I didn’t accept it at first but he turned out to be dead right.
These days I am trying a period of just making changes to avoid discomfort.
So far its working out great. Often considerably extending the amount of things I can do.
For example, with travel I am getting more support. On Friday i traveled to a friends. It’s a long trip all the way across london and I have always hated it. However these days it’s gone from ‘hard and uncomfortable’ to ‘stressful / really horrible / borderline dangerous’.
So we have redesigned the way I do the trip.
It’s now a single train. I get a taxi to the station at one end. (£4, only £1.50 more than the bus!) and my friend picks me up at the other.
That’s how i traveled this weekend and it’s been great. This weekend I did lots of things and I think i was able to do so many things because I was less stressed traveling.
Another thing, unlike normally when I head home from this friends house. I feel far less anxious about going home.
A large part of my increase in happyness is due to much more support in my life.
I use to get as much support as was possible to be provided by the people around me (who did a damn good job!)
I now get about as much support as I need.
Mostly it’s simple things. We very carefully limit the amount of time I spend alone at home. I don’t feel safe in my home and I don’t like being there. We’re working on fixing that, but for now we just minimise exposure.
As I mentioned before, a friend lives with me now to be around in the evenings. Other friends also visit.
The final step is we’re now getting extra help from paid support people. We have just started meeting with someone who will hopefully be able to provide another option in the future.
This is very exciting for me. Because with the paid support I don’t have to endure the anxiety / panic attacks because everyone is busy. It takes the pressure of my friends and generally makes everyone happier
Finding the money is a challenge. But I think it is money well spent.
On first meeting the support lady we’re currently talking too I was in very deep derp due to a really rough day. They didn’t run away. So hopefully they will stick around so we can build trust.
I am meeting the support person again tonight for a few hours. I am quiet nervous but also a little bit excited.
One day this approach may mean I can do some of the things I have wanted to do but not been able to get enough support to arrange. It’s a different type of freedom.
This post is getting long so I’m going to hit publish so it does not get trapped in the drafts folder!
My Experiences with a Timetable and Sensory Diet. =================== posted: 11 April 2015 featured image:Over the last few months I have been focusing a lot of time and effort on improving my independent living skills. At the moment I am very well supported day to day, so I am using the stable time to try and establish better skills for when I next need to live alone.
A few months ago before I was able to get more suitable support I was in crisis. It was very clear that living alone placed more demands on me than I could manage. Once I was overwhelmed the anxiety and panic attacks took over.
My new support arrangement (A friend living with me, handling most day to day jobs) has brought back the stability but it wont last forever.
I see this whole experience as a great opportunity to learn and improve. I know I struggle in certain areas, so I have been working with an Occupational Therapist to develop strategies.
The first strategy we put in place was a timetable. I had tried timetables before but they had always failed. This time, we developed a timetable which was more forgiving and less demanding.
My previous timetables went to minute by minute precision. This eased my anxiety, but proved almost impossible to follow.
My current timetable deals with blocks of the day. Morning, and Afternoon. Activities are placed on the timetable and the timetable is also used to coordinate my support. For example, my timetable lists medical appointments and who will be supporting me for those appointments.
The timetable I am using only runs from Monday to Friday. The weekend is too variable. I also want to leave weekends to be very flexible. This means no essential chores cannot be left to the weekend. The weekend is a time when I have no demands. Two clear days.
My timetable is currently very sparse. The only “required” action each day is a shower before noon. From the perspective of my timetable, my work hours are optional. Another feature of my timetable is a defined “break” at 4pm. (±1 hour) That break is normally taken as a nap, it gives me a chance to recharge spoons in the middle of my woken period.
A sensory diet is a way of managing my spoons throughout the day. Each task is given a rating from Double Red (very draining) to Green (refreshing). Then there are some rules around how tasks are ordered.
The main rule is that double red and red tasks can only be followed by green tasks.
This imposes some constraints on my flexibility. However, it also massively reduces the anxiety. So whereas I use to be very flexible, the anxiety would be crippling and lead to panic attacks. I now am less flexible, but also less anxious.
An example of a red activity would be a shower. They started double red, but by redesigning my shower space (I have only the bottles I intend to use, lined up in the correct order, I make all the decisions BEFORE I enter the shower) we have reduced it to a Red.
At the moment my shower is only due “sometime” in the morning. I aim to have it early, but in reality I often just don’t have enough spoons. After a shower I have very low spoons so I take a break to recover spoons before I continue.
I mentioned before that previous timetables had failed because they were too complex or ambitious. This timetable is working because it’s not ambitious. Its been running for about 5 weeks now and it of the “required” steps I am only just consistently starting to get 5 out of 5 each week.
I am positive though, while many people can and do take a shower every morning without any issue, I can’t do that yet. I am building up to it. Over the next few months and years I will slowly increase the complexity of my timetable.
For example, from next week I am planning to add a “breakfast” task as a required step. To make that possible, I also need to introduce a “shopping” task. As it currently stands, the evening mean I get via my support arrangement is the only meal I eat most days.
It’s going to be a few months before I get consistent with those things. Once I am consistent with those things I can then slowly introduce smaller time limits and generally work towards having a sustainable morning routine.
My timetable assumes nothing. The reality is once overloaded I have very little ability to do things. It can surprise people, because most people see me doing things I am good at, they don’t see the challenges I have with other aspects of my life.
Starting from nothing and building up makes the timetable sustainable and something which is sustainable is more important than something which is complex but brittle.
I have secure support from now until September. I am using that time to establish the timetable and get support to follow it. Once the timetable is established I should be able to function without so much support. One day, I may even get into enough routines that I wont need the timetable or support at all.
The timetable and sensory diet approach has worked well for me. While it may seem overly simple, the structure it introduces has been really useful. The OT i am working with works with many people on the autism spectrum so I trust her judgement. A great deal of the work we have been doing is just pragmatic changes and developing routines.
When I first lived alone back in January I didn’t expect for it to be so difficult. So its been a bit of a bitter pill to swallow. To a certain extent I thought I had the autism beat… i was very wrong.
I use to reject many of the autism things as just being silly, or overkill for my needs. But it turns out some are extremely effective. After only 6 months, I would not be without my ear defenders and after 5 weeks I can see the value in the timetable approach.
It has been a difficult few months, but I am laying the ground work for a more sustainable and happier future so its been worth it. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment. Comments are not published immediately, so if you ask i question i can reply via email.
Spoons in brief =================== posted: 30 March 2015 featured image:Today’s post in my autism awareness week series is probably the easiest. It’s about the spoons metaphor.
First read the original piece by Christine Miserandino.
That covers most of it. The much shorter version is that spoons are a unit of energy. I start most days with 10 spoons and doing things uses spoons. A shower, 2 spoons, commuting 4-6 spoons etc etc.
When I run out of spoons, I tend to get very spaced out. Beyond that, if the pressure continues, it tends to cause a panic attack.
I actively manage my spoons throughout the day. Knowing which activities drain spoons gives me a tool for ensuring I never push to far.
Autism and my senses. =================== posted: 29 March 2015 featured image:
Today is my second post for world autism awareness week. Today I’m going to cover some of the sensory side of autism and how it feels to be on the spectrum.
I have used a cake based analogy to explain autism for a few years.
The basic idea is that the features of autism make a layered cake. Each layer builds on the last.
The base is made of sensory perception. If the sensory environment isn’t right nothing else is possible till the sensory environment is made right.
The middle layer is communication skills and the top layer is social skills. The very top (the cherries) represent relationships.
This post is about the bottom layer. Sensory stuff.
Perceiving and processing sensory input keeps our brains busy. For the majority of people, the filtering is so effective then can choose freely what sensory input they perceive.
For example, most people won’t be distracted by ticking clocks, they can ignore background noise and focus on what they want. It happens without effort or planning. Listening to someone speaking is natural, there’s not perception of the background noise.
I can’t. I perceive everything and have to actively filter stuff out. This takes a huge amount of energy and focus. Many auties have the same thing.
The additional load due too filtering can make some environments completely unsustainable.
To reduce the load I use technology. For my sound perception I use ear defenders and noise cancelling headphones. For my vision I use sunglasses. When the detail of everything is overloading. I often take my glasses off entirely to reduce the levels of input. Effectively. If I can’t see the distracting small details (number plates, signs, the number of stripes on a shirt) I don’t have to filter them.
This filtering effects all my senses. Sound is the most obvious day to day, but it also effects my internal and external senses. Hunger, temperature and pain are extremely inconsistent for me.
If ever someone on the spectrum is having a bad day. First look at the environment. Noise, movement, light, and smells all require filtering.
Be aware of the environment and accept that people on the spectrum don’t have a choice about what we perceive. So we must furnish ourselves with the tools to manage it.
For me, that means I will often refuse to remove my ear defenders. Others find the feeling of an exposed head difficult and need a hood or hat in order to filter that sense.
Demanding that someone on the spectrum removes something they are using to filter the sensory environment. Is exactly akin to demanding someone with no legs to stop using a wheelchair.
Sensory stuff has a fun side. Sensory experimentation and seeking can be a huge source of joy and happyness.
The giant lion toy in the photos alongside this post is Mr Dennis Straction (Mr D. Straction). He’s a very large sensory toy. Covering textures, sounds and motion.
I think he does for me what smoking and alcohol does for others. He is awesome. The sensory input he provides can totally take me out of a situation and help me to relax and regain control.
So I hope that gives some context and explains a bit about the sensory side of autism. If you have any questions or comments. Feel free to leave a comment below or get in touch via email.
Autism and my identity =================== posted: 28 March 2015 featured image:I’m going to try and write a post a day about autism for world autism awareness week. This post is the first. Today I’m going to write about the concept of my autistic identity.
I really only started to understand I was autistic when I was a teenager. I remember the final diagnoses. I remember sitting infront of this lady and calmly explaining that because of how much I had read about autism I was ‘un diagnosable’. That any attempts would be invalid. I believed I was beyond help. Due to die soon and generally of no value.
At the time I was living in a homeless shelter. The discussion around my autism had been ongoing for a few years but in that moment it really mattered. That’s the day that would decide if I got support, or would be left to the streets when I turned 18.
I had only been part of the discussion about my autism for a few years. Becoming aware of the condition and what it meant when I was about 15. However, unknown to me, the discussion itself started when I was 9.
These days, I identify openly as someone who is autistic. I have a diagnoses and I accept that I see the world through a different lens to most people.
When I was 16/17 I was not coping. I could pretend to be normal but the cracks were showing and my peer relationships were failing. I just could not keep up.
In hindsight I am really happy I saw it coming. When my life collapsed I had nothing and very few relationships in my life. I in effect had to start again. As I rebuilt i was open about the autism and built a life and lifestyle that was autism friendly. Suitable for me.
That was almost 8 years ago now. The last 8 years have been an amazing ride but ultimately it’s all been made possible because I am open about being on the spectrum.
Lion, my big fluffy plushie companion, is not a secret. I don’t fear needing ear defenders and I have learnt to ask for help. In the BBC I have found an employer who respects me for who I am and works to build on my strengths.
Autism is part of me. It provides a handy framework of tools which enables me to understand the world and seek out appropriate support. I don’t let if confine me, but I do let it help me understand my own limits. I built a friendship group who knew I was autie from the start. That’s been key. Most people in my life knew I was autistic from day 1. No need to pretend otherwise.
World autism week is about raising awareness so that more autistic people can be themselves. From awareness we can create acceptance.
Acceptance that I have a giant lion, or wear ear defenders is what enables me to focus my effort on my work. Ultimately, my work gives me purpose and from that purpose i derive my happiness. I am autistically happy and it is awesome
Cognitive Accessibility 101 - Part 2: How it effects me & the tools I use =================== posted: 11 March 2015 featured image:This article is based on the content of my 2015 CSUN session of the same title. It’s a very light summery of the core content. I have split the talk up into a number of posts. Part 1, What is Cognitive Accessibility is a good place to start but this article should make sense on it own. For all posts, look in the CSUN15 category .
Much like the first post in this mini series, I need to start this article with a disclaimer. This post is about the tooling I use to access the web. I am one chap with autism, and even then I am very unusual in that I have experience of assistive technology via my job. This post is entirely anecdote, none of this is science.
In my day to day use of computers and the web, there are a few challenges i face. Over the years i have developed a hodge podge toolkit to help me get the most from the web. My main challenges are, extremely slow reading, visual overload and complexity
Oddly, its not that I read words slowly. If I just need to read and speak words I can do that very quickly. Understanding words is what takes time.
Theres a test out there, where you have to read a “color” name (eg, red, blue) but then say the color in which it is written. Most peolpe find this a challenge, I find it really really easy.
However, the comprehension of language, and words, is something I find difficult.
The tool I use to help is VoiceOver, I understand content better if I hear it and VoiceOver vocalises written content. It can also provide a nice summery of web pages and other long complex documents in a surprisingly handy format. I would encorage even sighted users to have a play with the VoiceOver Rotor sometime. It’s great.
Voiceover takes away the slow bit for me, but it also linearises content. It often knows where to start while I am still struggling to comprehend what I am looking at.
Visual overload comes from needing to filter out the content I want from everything else on my screen. I filter content consciously, and that is both slow and draining. For example, when I am reading a news story, there are dozens of other distractions on my screen. The clock, toolbars and menus etc. They all add to the load. This visual overload makes it hard for me to focus and track the content I want to read.
The tool I use too compensate is the inbuilt screen magnifier in OS X. It allows me to smoothly zoom into an area of interest and in turn remove the visual overload from my screen. One of the reason I value high resolution displays (what Apple call “Retina”) is that they allow me to zoom in, without the text becoming pixelated.
Complexity comes in many forms, but one of my biggest challnges is in figuring out what is possible to do (affordances) and what I want to do (decisions).
Complex layouts, loud, or distracting adverts and hidden functionality all pose unique challenges. For content heavy websites, I often use the reader view built into safari, or as above, zoom into the central column of content.
Sometimes I just get stuck. In these situations I need to ask for help. For example, I was recently delayed about 10 days in booking a hospital appointment for a pressing health issue because the web service I had to use was simply to complex. I didn’t even get past the login screen alone. I had to wait for suitable help to be available and then also remember to ask for it.
As detailed above, online I face challnges with my reading speed, managing visual load and dealing with complexity. To aid me in these tasks I use a screen reader and screen zoom (even though I have vision) and I use tools and services to simplify web pages. Finally, sometimes it’s simply too complicated and i ask for help.
These tools work well for me, but I am very much an outlier. For the general population who face cognitive challenges online, the outcome is that they leave the site and go somewhere simpler. For example, I buy Apple products from the Amazon rather than the Apple store simply because the Apple checkout page was too confusing.
For more information on what I think cognitive accessibility is, checkout part 1 in this series called What is cognitive accessibility.
Cognitive Accessibility 101 - Part 1: What is Cognitive Accessibility =================== posted: 10 March 2015 featured image:This article is based on the content of my 2015 CSUN session of the same title. It’s a very light summery of the core content. I have split the talk up into a number of posts so that I can get it out quicker. See Part 2 to learn more about the personal challenges i face and the tools I use .
Before I get into the meat of this article, I must start with a disclaimer. The thoughts and points presented in this article are not science. They’re the musings of a single autistic guy who wrote a talk one afternoon. The talk is based on my experience of using the web, but that’s all it is. Anecdote.
Cognitive accessibility is the area where usability bumps into disability. Well, that’s one way of looking at it. In my opinion, cognitive accessibility is just the edge of usability.
I consider cognitive ability to be a bell curve. With most people falling in the same area, but at one time or another I think everyone will experience the world from a perspective somewhere towards the edge of that curve.
For me, its because I am autistic. For others, its because they are tired, or in a rush, or an older user. For many, they happen to be drunk.*
With this in mind, I propose that cognitive accessibility at the end of the day is really just usability at the extremes. We will all experience it.
At a basic level, I think there are three stages in the cognitive process when it comes to doing things. Frankly, for me, these stages apply to pretty much everything (hugging the lion, cooking pasta, making a bed) but I think they work well when considered in context of the web.
At a high level the three stages are:
Once a decision has been reach, a plan is needed to make it happen, then eventually something has to be done.
In my opinion, all cognitive processes fit into these three areas. For each of the areas I have a few keywords for what I like too consider.
The keywords for receiving are perception and affordances.
Perception refers to the input from our senses. For example, what we see, hear and feel. Perception also includes other forms of input, such as information from memory.
Affordance is a term nicked from The Design of Everyday Things. An affordance is a “thing” you have understood you can do. Be it a switch, a button, a menu etc , etc. For example, a TV remote, is an array of affordances, while the Google homepage, indicates that you can type.
I would also argue an affordance is also something which you can do with a website. For example, pay council tax, or read information about lions.
Processing information refers to manipulating information in order to reach a decision. The keywords for processing are Filtering and Deciding.
Filtering refers to knowing what input to ignore. For me, that means ignoring all the adverts and promotions. But we all filter information all day. We filter out background noise, we filter out the exact titles of the books on the bookcase , etc. We filter all day every day. We also filter affordances when we look at a UI. We use filtering to limit out options so we can reach a decision of what to do.
Deciding refers to coming to a decision on the action I want to take. I may be deciding between 5 things or 10 things. I have probably filtered out lots of options I don’t need.
Actioning refers to making things happen and the planning required to do. The keywords for me are Planning and Doing.
Planning is pretty straight forward. It’s making an ordered list of steps. For those with a cognitive disability like me (or someone like my friend, who is drunk right now!) The posh term for planning is “executive functioning”. We make plans explicitly, but we also follow plans which are learnt. Eg, how to use a set of traffic lights to cross the road.
Doing is the final keyword. Doing is about, well, making stuff happen. It could be clicking a link, it could be pulling some pasta off the hob, it could be, well pretty much anything. Ultimately, we do something based on our decisions.
These steps can be summed up into a simple little diagram included below. This is the structure I use to define cognitive accessibility. All of the functional issues I have in my life fit into one of the 3 areas and 6 keywords. When analysing designs (aka, using websites ;)) I step through these stages dozens of times and these are the areas where I provide feedback when asked about how I consider a site from a “cognitive accessibility” perspective.
In a nutshell, I think the cognitive accessibility areas are:
Receiving, Processing, Actioning;
And the keywords are:
Perceiving, Affordances; Filtering, Deciding; Planning, Doing;
For more details of how this effects me as someone with autism and the tools I use to manage the challenges, checkout part 2
Tonight is a big challenge for me. I’m in the USA and I am spending the night alone.
I’m staying in a really lovely place, it’s a smart little apartment in Santa Clara It’s lovely. It’s on a secure development with 3 gates between me and the outside worlds. It’s lovely.
However, for whatever reason this scenario has kick my anxiety senses into high gear.
Here’s how I am dealing with it:
I’ve setup base in the bathroom. It’s furthest from all the sensory inputs I don’t enjoy (air conditioning noise, bright windows, excessive mess) it also adds an extra locked door. One of the plushies i trust is also standing gaurd. Mostly because it helps me feel safer. I know it’s a toy but it works so im not discounting it.
The bathroom has no windows and has a low light level. So I have control over the lights. Cool, quite, controlled and secure. Perfect.
Within the bathroom. I have moved all my favourite low input entertainment in with me. Top gear magazines, podcasts, audiobooks etc.
I have also hopped into a warm bath. I rerun it every four or five hours once it goes cold. The baths help ease my tummy cramps (warm water is still more effective than drugs).
I also like the way a deep bath feels. It provides resistance to my movement and I really like how it feels to lie deep in the bath. Completely covered in water feels great. Relaxing and calming. Nothing feels like it’s disconnected. I know where my elbows are without looking.
I’m keeping in continuous contact with my two friends currently in the U.S. Neither is all that far away, but staying in contact keeps me calm. They are both doing cool things (one is touring a wine place, the other is currently cooking pasta for dinner).
I have a big visual timetable on the wall here. When I started struggling I first retreated to the bedroom and cleared my timetable. I have re planned today’s activity into tomorrow and that means I know that I have time to manage the anxiety and not be late for work projects.
From a place where I am feeling safer and calmer I am now planning my sleep. In about about an hours time (when my phone runs out of battery) I am going to watch some DR who in the lounge if I can. Then after that I will either start making some lego things or do some others focus activity (like coloring or coding) untill I feel sleepy. Once sleepy it’s time to figure out what feels best for sleeping.
So if you ever wondered how I deal with anxiety. Theres a rough outline of my day to day methods.
Reality of care. =================== posted: 25 February 2015 featured image:Its been a rough month here. But ouf it has come something of a revalation for me.
Care and support for people with disabilities, needs to be independent from freinds and family.
Heres why.
I’ve been in receipt of support from my friends and my partner for years. The support was really good. My partner covered the day to day stuff, and my other friends helped with the more specialist things (for example, a friend of mine who is a legal type, helps me manage my post!).
The day to day support recently stopped, it was strained anyway. To support me, my partner sacraficed his social life. It was never going to work long term, with no social life and huge practical demands form me (and my poor health) the support relationship collapsed. Its a testiment to his love for me and values that he lasted so long. Were still very much partners but he is now free to move on.
The relationship collapsed because it mixed care and friendship in a way which was too much. It started to become guilt driven and forced.
I believe, that the care has to come from a third part. Because, if a third party supports someone with a disability is also frees thier friends and family to have decent lives of thier own. Right now, decent third party support would enable at least 5 people to have more freedom and less guilt in thier lives.
My friend will still be helping, the thid party support should (and hopefully will) take the baseline load. The day to day stuff.
Soemhing i have learnt this last month is that “independence” is not about laundry and cooking.
Independence is about giving all people (disabled or not) autonomy of thier lives. A footing to succseed, While practical independence is important, independence via third parties is not a lesser thing.
If i live in supported living, but that enables me to earn enough to pay for my own support and in turn have high quality relationships with my friends then that is also independence. It has value.
What more, if this setup makes me happiers. Then its fine.
Independent and autonomy is choice over what works. The last time i lived in supported living it worked for me.
I think part of the issue with social care in the UK is is so underfunded or strained the idea of preference is ignored. Unless you absolutely “need” the services won’t help. Its crisis care or nothing.
Quality of life, preferences, hell being happy is just not important.
From my perspecitve, services go for what is cheapest. Not what is best. So for me, while my friend could help, then will force them too. When it breaks down, they will then deal with it via crisis management. the services have no interest in establishing something sustainable.
i have a right to be happy. If having a job will give me an income suitable to pay for support that keeps me happy its fine.
Its not lazyness, thats important. Its about value. If my value to the world is in making cool apps, building great things at the BBC and inventing stuff, then it would be a waste for me to instead spend half my resouces simply making sure i eat and have clothing to wear.
I would rather be a mostly verbal working person, than a non verbal person who just about manages to maintain “independence”. Using medication to control the panic attacks. I think thats the choice infront of me.
This is the journey i am going on. I have an income from my job, and i choose to spend it on enough support that i can cope. The bases may be autism, but i feel as though i have a choice.
For me that choice is to get support from third parties and to seek a different type of independence. Its really challenged my perception of my own worth and value. But i think its an important topic. So let me know what you think in the comments.
Days 1 & 2 in San Fransisco: Sensory Stuff =================== posted: 23 February 2015 featured image:I flew too San Fransisco three days ago, so today is the start of my second full day in the USA. The flight was quite difficult, but we landed in once piece. So far so good.
Over the last few days, I have been really sensitive to sensory stuff. I’m having lots of fun (exploring the city a little, visiting a friend) buts it’s been rather overwhelming at times.
So, in no specific order, here are some of my observations.
So far in the USA I can almost constantly smell cleaning products. The rental car smells so strong I felt sick until we had run the air conditioning a bit. We guessed it’s because the car had been cleaned and then sat for a while. Its hard to know for sure, but the smell was very noticeable. Luckily, over time the smell is dropping.
Another strong smelling place has been the corridors leading to the apartment we are staying in. It smells similar to how hospitals in the UK smell. The lift smells less strong, but the smell is different. Whereas the corridors smell of “fake freshness” the lift smells a little minty.
Out and about I have also noticed smell more. Shops (like wall-greens etc) all smell of the same “fake freshness” smell and the place where we ate dinner yesterday smelled of cooking. I don’t mind the cooking smell, but even somehow that smell seemed a bit forced or fake.
Finally, there are a few smells I like. I REALLY like the clever electric buses as when they pass you can smell the electric motors. Reminds me of scalextrix cars.
San Francisco also seems to be very loud. The trams are really loud, but the general background level seems high. In shops the music seems much higher and in the street cars seem louder. We did wonder if its because the cars are bigger.
Even sat in the apartment, there is the noise of traffic outside. A huge 6 lane “expressway” is a few hundred meters away and the sound from it is very noticeable. For this trip, my ear defenders have been essential
Perhaps its because i’m in san Francisco, but the cars all seems to have extremely bright headlights. We wondered if its because the cars a more modern or simply more cars have higher powered headlights. Looking out of the windscreen while driving at night is very difficult.
Driving around San Fransisco there are adverts everywhere, they can be extremely bright or visually “loud”. I’m amazed residents do not crash. Its quite remarkable. We went into a Safeway to do a shop, and the packaging seemed to use my stronger colours. In one aisle of the supermarket a wall of “stuff” filled my entire vision and felt endless. I have been taking my glasses off lots to try and reduce the overload. It makes British supermarkets seem minimal and visually restrained.
Finally, in San Fransisco there are loads of really amazing bridges and flyovers. They are really cool. What I find interesting is that the flyovers are rarely square. They swoop, and curve. Going up them in the car at 50mph feels like a roller-coaster.
So, a few days in these are my first impressions. Hopefully, over the next few days I will get use to the sights, smells and sounds.
As I jet off to CSUN... =================== posted: 21 February 2015 featured image:It’s 4:49am and I can’t sleep. So here’s a short post about my life right now. Consider it almost a snapshot.
This post is indulgently for me, but hey a problem shared is apparently a problem halved so if a few hundred people read it i should be okay… Right?
H3. The next two weeks.
In a few hours time I take my first jet flight. I’m flying to the United States with my shiny new passport in hand. Leaving the UK for the first time.
I’m not traveling alone. My best friend is coming along as support. A slightly surreal combination of factors means that he can support me with this trip.
The reason for all the travel is that I am attending the CSUN conference. A massive disabilities conference held in Sand Diego in 7 days time. I’m on stage for 3 talks covering the gamete from autism to accessibility in the work place.
CSUN is so exciting. It’s a huge challenge but also a huge opportunity. My manager Gareth has done a wonderful job to enable us to get this far. This is really pushing my boundaries in an extraordinary and wonderful way.
I really can’t wait. I’m so excited, but also so curious. I can’t wait to experience how it feels to be in another culture and I can’t think of a better group of people to go have that experience with.
H3. Beyond the next two weeks.
If you follow me on Twitter you will be aware that this is all happening against a backdrop of huge disruption in my life.
A month ago, I lost most of my day to day support when my partner relocated back to Somerset. While hard, I have no doubt that was the right decision. For him and for me.
My response (to attempt going it alone) was not the right response and has failed catastrophically.
The situation, right now, is that when I get back from the states I have no ‘home’ to return too.
I own a building but I don’t have the skills or security to live there. I’m sure I will detail why in the future but effectively I’m homeless once I return.
What we have is a plan. In a nutshell, the plan is to organise a return to supported living in the short term, then working from there, manage a smoother transition back into independence.
I hope, no, I NEED for this to happen by the time I get back. But it’s not in my hands. I’m waiting for the local social services team to figure what’s possible.
H3. Day to day.
I am anxious about the future. I am still physically unwell (suspected celiacs) but I am positive.
2015 has been a challenge. But the next two weeks will dictate the rest of the year.
I need to seize the day. Set the tone. Make the most of these few weeks of awesome and use that to spur me on. Make shit happen. Make it good.
I am supported by the most amazing people. I have trust that ultimately, things will work out.
So here we go!
Ear Defenders. =================== posted: 19 January 2015 featured image:I put off buying ear defenders for years and years. I aways considered them ‘too autistic’ for me. To embarrassing. I would just endure loudness or use my hands.
A friend, seeing my slightly insane position brought me a set and they are bloody brilliant.
To say ear defenders have changed my ability to interact with the world would be underselling the change.
Here’s 3 examples:
These are just a couple of examples. My ear defenders have helped with the big things and the little things. Even when riding the tube into the office they have left me feeling more relaxed and alert.
A few times I have slept with them on in my favourite chair. A nice little sensory bubble.
While at first I was rather embarrassed with them, as far as i can tell no one gives a damn. I think people assume they are headphones or simply don’t notice.
If your on the autism spectrum, even if it feels a little much I would encourage you to give them a go!
Game Reviews: Forza 5, COD: Advanced Warfare, Monument Valley =================== posted: 15 November 2014 featured image:
I have played more games in the last year or so than in the previous 5. I’m not entirely sure why, but it has had one nice side effect. I have opinions about games again!
Here is a collection of mini reviews covering the games i have played recently which i enjoyed.
I’ve never really been a Forza person, the last big driving game i completed (well, 89%) was Grand Turismo 2! I like to play them from time to time, but i have not had the time to get deep into them in recent years.
Happily, this has changed a little. In an effort to reduce anxiety, i have started to spend more time at the weekend setting myself gaming tasks. With forza on the side, i figured it would be worth a go.
Overall, i like it. It goes without saying its very pretty, but it’s also lots of fun. I’m working my way through the various leagues, but its also very enjoyable hammering around the Top Gear track in a rented Arial Atom or F1 car.
For me, the balence of enjoyment is to have a more stable car (eg, traction control and ABS on) but faster opponents. I found the full simulation mode just a little too frustrating. Perhaps as i get use to the mechanics of the game i will disable the aids further, but for now i am happy.
If i had one complaint, its the number of unskipable cut scenes. When starting and ending a race, precious time is lost waiting the same damn animations to be run over and over again. This gets boring and annoying. At the end of the race, i want all the scoring out of the way quickly so i can go to the next event.
I would much prefer the game to start loading the next level immediately in the background.
I tend to play COD games WAAAY after release. I think modern warfare had been out for at least 3 years before i tried it. This was normally because i didnt like the idea of spending £40 on a game so i waited till they could be picked up second hand for £10 or so.
For COD: AW, its a little different. Like Forza, it appeared in my home over the weekend as my partner brought it. However, i have been able to spend a few evenings playing it while he was at work. Score.
I’m enjoying it. I’m about half way through (i think) and its been fun. For AW there are a whole array of new toys and tricks. I don’t have a great twitch response (i always die fast in human multiplayer!) but i do like exploring the toys. My favourite is the threat grenade. When deployed, all the enemies on screen turn red which makes them MUCH easier to see. This has transformed the game for me. From something i would move through slowly, to something far faster paced.
Like all COD games the scenarios and acting is way to farfetched and overblown, but it is what it is. It’s probably my favourite shooter out there.
Monument valley is a puzzle game on iOS. I have been playing it on the iPad and have found it to be extremely enjoyable. You guide a mute princess around various reality bending 3D puzzles. Its all EXTREMELY pretty and well designed. Even the typography is beautiful.
I really like this game, interacting with the puzzles makes very pretty noises. The tone and feel matched my slighly spaced out surreal mood when i was playing it as well, so that worked out nicely.
It came to my attention as there has been some backlash when they introduced an option to buy the sequel as an in-app purchase. For an extra £1.59 or so I think its a bit of a bargain. I proceeded through the first 5 levels very quickly, so I am going to leave it a short while before I go back to it to get the most out of what is offered.
All three games are very enjoyable. Much like the Lego Marvel game (the last game I completed) they have a unique character to them. COD is pretty mindless it its own way, but the addition of interesting toys adds a new dimension. Forza 5 is all about delicate balence and gentle inputs into the controller. Monument Valley…. it just asks you to reconsider what is physically possible! All in a great bunch of games for whiling away the winter evenings.
RIP John, in H1. =================== posted: 4 November 2014 featured image:John Richard’s was one of the student support folk who lived in room H1 at Richard Huish College. To be honest, I don’t know what the name of his job was. I don’t know all that much about him. But I do know one thing. He changed the lives of thousands of people. He changed my life. Recently he died. This is a post to remember him with.
My interaction with John was a simple one. A few times a week I would visit him and get a meal voucher to the college canteen. For my AS levels and most of my A Levels I was basically homeless, living in a hotel room. Meal vouchers were the insurance. They were my option when I didn’t have anything else. John would always remind me to bring them back if I didn’t use them. We would chat a little. On a couple of occasions college got to much and I use to hide behind the chairs in the corner of H1. John and his colleges kept me safe. Reminded me everything was okay.
John worked at hush for years. Over that time he helped thousands of students. Often the students who had no one else, or who were so close to the line that college was as much where the ate as where they studied.
He was a top man. He is missed. Goodbye John. You champ.
Apple Event Wishlist (16/10/2014) =================== posted: 16 October 2014 featured image:A bit last minute (the event starts in 20 mins), but here’s my wishlist for todays Apple event.
I don’t care about the iPads much. I enjoy my iPad mini (i use it for traveling) but its not a device i am keen to upgrade. It works well.
However, there are few things i would like to see. The main one is better pricing for the higher storage models. I am looking to buy my parents an iPad for Christmas this year. However, even a 32gb iPad is a little small to last the 3-4 years needed. So a drop in pricing would be great.
I would REALLY love for Apple to include mini displayport so i can use the iPad on my cinema display, but that is just wishful thinking.
I’m not in the market for a Retina iMac but i the retina rollout is an interesting thing. Retina on the desktop is something I would love to try.. If they developed a retina iMac thats cool, if it supports Target Display that would be even better. Perhaps it could be achieved with a pair of Thunderbolt ports, who knows.
I love the Mac Mini platform, and if they brought something out it would have to consider it. I did just by a Macbook and sell my Mac Mini, but thats more to do with the price of the old Mac Mini than its form or functionality. (£1000 of Mac mini was overkill!)
If Apple brought out something with the same specs as the MacBook Air and an SSD, for less than £350 I would be super tempted. I even wrote an imaginary review for such a beast.
An Apple TV update would be nice. I have a Apple TV 2 which does not do 1080p, but the current Apple TV is WAY to long in the tooth to be a worthwhile update. If it worked as a basic games console, that would also rock.
If the Mac Mini above came with an equivalent to Frontrow, then i would be extremely happy.
So thats it, my wish list for this evenings event.
iPhone 6 was too large for my hands. =================== posted: 20 September 2014 featured image:Since 2008 I have changed my phone roughly once every 2 years. My logic has been it’s the computer I use most and the depreciation is not too terrible at 2 years old. £200 or so to upgrade is not to bad.
So this year, I reserved a 4.7” iPhone 6 and collected it yesterday morning.
I was a little hesitant from the start. 4.7” is mighty large as I have small hands. The current 4” iPhone 5 was already borderline unworkable. However, Apple has a 14 day return policy, so I figured it would be worth a go. I should probably have listened to my inner voice a bit more, would have saved disappointing my poor partner who was quite excited about having my iPhone 5 from me.
It’s been about 24 hours, and it’s already boxed up to be returned. It’s too big, and the upgrade cost too high to justify the compromises. Maybe next year they will bring out something which fits my hands.
For those wondering, my hand is a little over 10cm wide including the bottom base knuckle of my thumb.
Finally, if anyone has a 5S who wants a iPhone 6, email me or send me a tweet on twitter. I would be happy to do you a deal.
"How to contribute to Open Source" sessions. An idea. =================== posted: 19 September 2014 featured image:
One problem with breaking into the web development industry, is that, you hit a chicken and egg situation when it comes to Experience. You need experience to land a role, but you cannot get much experience without a role. This situation is magnified if you happen to have a disability. If that disability effects social or communication skills, then frankly, its pretty much a brick wall.
Here, is my modest proposal to try and break down the barrier.
I’m thinking of running some events, a bunch of people, in a room with computers. At the start of the event I will show everyone how to do branching and Pull Requests in Github and then help people to make their first contribution to open source.
My idea is that open source is a skeleton key to experience. Do some good work, and it leads to stuff. Do something not so great and generally the feedback with be swift. Ultimately, it is fertile ground but that first step, the first inch, the first pull request. Well. That. Is. Killer.
For the first event, I would like to focus one specific group, people on the autism spectrum. This is because thats the group I know and the group I can empathise with best. But if it works, then I would like to open the doors wide. If you want to run it for a different group, then please copy the idea.
If you like this idea or if you’re an open source project and you want to take part, please email me or tweet at me. I will see what response this gets and from there; figure out what sort of space I need in order to make it happen.
iOS Apps, Autism and Anxiety. =================== posted: 15 September 2014 featured image:Many people on the autism spectrum suffer from Anxiety. The feeling that things are wrong, out of place or that something bad could happen. Often the anxiety can be brought on by feeling out of control, or not knowing how to deal with a specific situation.
I get anxious often, and in order to better deal with specific situations have taken to adapting mainstream iOS apps to fit my needs. In this post, i’m going to write about two adaptions which reduce my anxiety around way finding and location.
Here’s the scenario, your in the office on a Friday afternoon and the team is heading out for drinks with a colleague who is leaving. You like the person who is leaving and would like to join in with wishing them on their way, however the pub which has been chosen is not known to you.
For me, this situation would trigger intense anxiety, fears about getting lost, or not managing the situation well. If I am having a bad day, I may also manage to get all the way to assuming that if I do go, and I don’t cope I would be fired or something. Normally I slam the brakes on before then though. (see, worry chains)!
In this scenario I have two approaches which have worked well. The first, is to “make it someone else’s problem”. I am fortunate enough to have very understanding colleagues who are often willing to help me find my way home (or travel back to a known station with me). I also have a partner who is willing to come into the city to pick me up should I feel overwhelmed.
However, both of these solutions are not true independence. I would prefer an independent solution, and this is where an iOS app comes into play.
MayMyRide is a workout and bike ride tracker. Its normal use case is tracking the route taken for a bike ride, it provides stats (distance speed, climb etc) and a map. For this scenario I don’t care (as much) about the stats, but I do care about the map.
I use MapMyRide as a digital equivalent to a ball of string. I map the walk to the venue as a new route, then simply follow the route map back staying on the blue line.
The application works well enough, I’m still experimenting with the best method, but the simplest is to simply use the map and street names. However, I’m going to try other methods such as setting the route as an activity to see if it will then give me something easier to use.
This has worked well, I have used it twice when before I would have felt unable to go for after work drinks. Its simple, reliable and it is discreet.
The iPhone has a feature called find my iPhone. It allows you to find lost iPhones, it also allows you to find lost people should they have an iPhone in their pocket.
My partner can log in to “find my iPhone,” select my iPhone and find me if he needs too. I don’t think we have used it in anger yet, but knowing that he can locate me without issue should I get completely lost is very reassuring. If I get horribly confused, or spaced out on the tube, I just need to surface and give him a call. Very reassuring.
These little applications, used in this way, provide me with reassurance and in turn, that reassurance gives me the confidence to go do things that I would otherwise find to cause unbearable anxiety.
Are you on the autism spectrum or do you use apps in unexpected ways? If so let me know in the comments.
Late 2013 13" Retina MacBook Pro First Impressions =================== posted: 14 September 2014 featured image:
My last MacBook was an 2012 11” MacBook Air purchased in early 2013. It was purchased after I tried the first generation 13” retina MacBook Pro. I returned the MacBook Pro it as it was deeply flawed
I sold the MacBook Air a few months ago. A friend needed a Mac in a hurry and I was not using it to heavily. I hoped I could just use the Mac mini instead. That didn’t work out so well. So it was time to survey the landscape again.
After looking around online, I found a beauty of a machine. A late 2013 13” retina MacBook Pro, with 8GB of RAM and a huge 512GB SSD and Iris Pro graphics for a little less than 35% off something of a bargain.
Apple MacBook Pro hardware has been pretty consistent for the last few years. The main body is milled from a lump of aluminium, with ports down either side. The trackpad and keyboard are integrated into the shell, and there is a microphone and web camera integrated into the screen bezel.
The main advantage of the Air when it comes to ports relates to screen connectivity. This 13” Pro includes 2 thunderbolt ports and a HDMI port. This greatly simplifies media playback. The dual thunderbolt ports also allows for running a screen and an ethernet adaptor at the same time.
Beyond the ports mentioned, there are a couple of USB3 ports, an audio port and an SD card reader. The integrated reader is a nice advantage over the Air. It very handy for writing images to SD cards intended for the Raspberry Pi.
The overall feel of the pro is very positive. It feel sturdy refined and well built. It makes most other laptops feel a bit crap.
Internally, this model is the mid spec version, with a 2.6ghz i5 Dual Core processor and 8GB of RAM. The big selling points for this specific model is the large SSD and the retina screen.
Back in early 2013 I commented
“Given the cost of the rMBP this is disappointing, I would happily spend a little more for a larger drive but a £550 premium for a 512gb drive is way to much.”
That premium has now come down to less than £220 over the base model once the upgrade CPU is taken into account. Much more reasonable. The large SSD is what attracted me to this particular model when I saw it come up for sale. At 512gb the SSD is large enough to house my entire media library. Granted, it has less room for growth than on the Mac Mini, but it fits and that is a great starting point.
With this macbook, I don’t need an external drive or a separate mac for media duties. The Mac can handle the lot.
Much has been written about the retina screen before. It really is simply gorgeous and a pleasure to work on. The IPS display does not strain my eyes and the extra screen space is much appreciated. On a couple of occasions I have used the retina scaling to run the screen at 1680 × 1400. This gives me a little extra space when its needed. (in this case, having a webpage and my Voiceover Audit notes side by side).
This MacBook, while a big improvement over my last laptop still has flaws. In using it pretty much daily for the last two weeks a few issues have cropped up once or twice. The main functional complaint is heat; and the main philosophical debate is the sealed nature of the MacBook.
When pushed this MacBook gets very warm. Everyday computing is generally fine. Bit sitting it on my lap on a warm day is uncomfortable. The cooling fins to the side must be kept completely clear, so placing it on soft surfaces invites overheating. The MacBook has never cut out completely, but I can certainly hear the fans going. Once moved to a hard surface the issue is vastly reduced.
My main non functional complaint is that this macbook is a completely sealed unit. The only upgradable part is the SSD and they are not readily available. Everything else (including the RAM and battery) is soldered down to the logic board.
I can see how this acts to enable the form factor. However, it does make me worry about the lack of future upgrades and the effect that has on the lifespan of the product.
Unlike my first attempt with a retina MacBook I am really satisfied and impressed with this one. The quality is good, the price more reasonable and the retina screen brilliant. I hope it will serve me for many years to come.
Accessing Xbox controller events in Node.JS on a Raspberry Pi =================== posted: 14 September 2014 featured image:For a recent side project I needed access to events from an Xbox controller plugged into a Raspberry Pi via node.js.
For Mac I had been using the brilliant node-xbox-controller module. It had worked well, but after many hours of fighting I could not get it to work on the debain based Raspbian operating system. In the end I narrowed the problem down to something not working in the hidapi layer or below.
In order to receive the events I instead used a userspace driver called xboxdrv coupled with the node-joystick module.
This results in raw joystick events being passed into node.js. Each event has a value, a type (number or axis) and a number.
From there, I mapped each button from the raw events, into handy names using a nested structure:
var type = {
button: {
0: { 1: "a:press", 0: "a:up" },
1: { 1: "b:press", 0: "b:up" },
2: { 1: "x:press", 0: "x:up" },
3: { 1: "y:press", 0: "y:up" },
5: { 1: "rb:press", 0: "rb:up" },
4: { 1: "lb:press", 0: "lb:up" },
8: { 1: "xbox:press", 0: "xbox:up" },
6: { 1: "back:press", 0: "back:up" },
7: { 1: "start:press", 0: "start:up" }
},
axis: {
7: { 32767: "ddown:press", '-32767': "dup:press" },
6: { 32767: "dright:press", '-32767': "dleft:press" }
}
}
The map is accessed as a big flat array:
var eventIsMapped = function(event){
if (!event.init
&& type[event.type]
&& type[event.type][event.number]
&& type[event.type][event.number][event.value]
) {
return type[event.type][event.number][event.value];
} else {
return false;
}
}
This can then be used to drive further code from a single interface.
joystick.on('button', function(event) {
var action = eventIsMapped(event)
console.log(actions[action]());
});
And there we go! From there I have a separate map to go from controller buttons to actions on the hue lights. The code in use can be found on my github account
Media 2014: Back to a MacBook =================== posted: 8 September 2014 featured image:
Shortly after we moved house in December I wrote about my new media setup.
It was an experiment; effectively we were betting that a Mac Mini would:
Here’s how it turned out:
7 Months later I am selling the Mac Mini to fund a retina MacBook Pro.
Here’s why.
The Mac Mini had to run an odd hodgepodge of software to do its many tasks. None of that software turned out to be reliable or easy to use:
EyeTV – when used daily the interface got annoying. It was hard to record a series of TV shows and the remote control support was poor. I never got volume control working and slowly we stopped using it.
Sky Go – sky go is too limited for the money. We have gone back to a regular sky subscription. If Sky Go had been more reliable, then perhaps we would have kept the Mac Mini around longer. The inconsistent nature of which shows arrived on Sky go and the inability to watch entire F1 races in HD on demand was just to frustrating. Also when driven with a mouse and keyboard the website bordered on unusable.
Handbrake etc – this part did work well. I cooked up some scripts to get everything going and it ate through my library in a few days. However, it didn’t get used for long.
iTunes Library – I have had an always on media server for the last 7 months and used it less than 10 times. Most of my media consumption is via iPlayer, Amazon instant video or iCloud. My own media collection rarely gets a look in.
Backup – 3 months after buying the Mac Mini I sold my MacBook. So I didn’t need to back anything up. My Partner just uses Dropbox as his data is quite small.
I’m going to be sad to see the Mac mini go, it’s a great piece of hardware, it’s just a poor fit for my current use case given the software available.
Apple Event Wishlist (9/9/2014) =================== posted: 7 September 2014 featured image:
I always enjoy speculating on what Apple have hidden up their sleeves. With an event early next week, its time to get speculating.
So here goes, my wish for the 9th.
The iPhone 6 is pretty much an open secret by now I have avoided watching any of the videos, but there are videos floating around off a fully assembled and booting iPhone 6 with a 4.7 inch new screen.
This is likely to be my next phone, so hopefully it’s going to be something pretty special.
It’s been rumoured to high heaven so it feel likes something wearable from Apple is coming along. I’m not sure if I want one (I’ve never been good with watches), but it will be fun to see what they have invented.
Hopefully it will come with an App store. Perhaps there is something neat I could do with Swift.
Even if they don’t upgrade the hardware, it’s about time for the Apple TV to get a shiny app store of its own. Perhaps it will come in October, but as this is an iOS focused event now seems the time.
A bit of a long-shot, but as I purchased a new MacBook this week it would be about time for Apple to update the range in time for the holiday buying season.
A ‘Core M’ based Retina MacBook could be interesting. Something with less performance than the Pro but a cheaper entry price.
I think this would also place pressure on the Air. As it stands, the Air is very hard to recommend due to the low res TN panel.
If Apple were to update the Airs with a new screen (non retina) and introduce a mid-spec retina MacBook that would be very interesting.
Apple are hyping the event heavily, they have built a giant 3 story structure and gone to a historic venue. Perhaps they are going to introduce something completely new and unexpected.
I think its possible Apple could introduce any of the following:
It should be a fun one, roll on Tuesday.
2014 Italian Grand Prix =================== posted: 7 September 2014 featured image:
I really enjoyed the Italian Grand Prix at Monza this weekend. It was great to see Lewis win, due too errors by Nico. It was also fun to see other battles through the field. Lots of wheel to wheel racing is exciting.
While Lewis did a great job, I think Bottas drove better. Bottas had an alarming start behind Hamilton but his recovery drive impressed as he didn’t have the pace advantage of the Mercedes to see him thought.
The season as a whole has been interesting. The new regulations have unseated Red Bull’s dominance which was getting boring.
The reliability issues have kept the season alive. It’s enjoyable to see the cars sliding around. It makes the skill of the drivers more visible.
Going into Singapore I am looking forward to seeing how the championship battle proceeds.
This website is unofficial and is not associated in any way with the Formula One group of companies. F1, FORMULA ONE, FORMULA 1, FIA FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, GRAND PRIX and related marks are trade marks of Formula One Licensing B.V.
How to enable all controls on Safari and Chrome under Mavricks. =================== posted: 7 September 2014 featured image:By default, OS X does not reveal all on screen controls to the keyboard. This means that without changing setting the tab key wont select links on webapges. Tha tab key will only select buttons and forms etc.
To enable all controls:
Then:
These instructions work for both Mavricks, and OS X Yosemite.
2014 Mac Mini Review (1.4ghz, £339) =================== posted: 6 September 2014 featured image:I’ve been a fan of the Mac Mini for a number of years. It’s my favourite Mac. After almost 2 years without an update, I was starting to worry that Apple were planning to drop it from the range
However, last week Apple awoke from its low end slumber with an all new Mac Mini and remarkably, a lower price as well.
I can talk about the economics later. For now, let’s look at the hardware itself.
Starting from the outside, the new Mac Mini is a round black aluminium puck, 2.2” tall with a diameter of 6.6”. It’s a small Mac Pro by appearence.
The ports out back are mostly the same as the last generation. Like the Mac Pro, cooling is handled via a large central fan.
Going inside; The entry level model offers a 1.4ghz Dual Core i5 processor with HD 5600 graphics…. If that sounds familier, it’s because the Mac Mini shares it’s processor with the entry level MacBook Air and IMac.
The CPU is comparable to last years entry level 2.6ghz i5. The 1.4ghx clock speed is a little of a misnomer as this haswel based part can boost to 2.6ghz when needed.
The new CPU Is interesting in a number of ways. First, it has mich improved graphics, offering over twice the performance of outgoing the HD4000.
If also has good single threaded performance. With a geekbench score of 2467 its in the top 25% of all macs for single threaded performance.
This CPU also sips power. Apple states that the new Mac mini can run without a fan for most operation as it draws an iPad esque 2.5w of power while idle. When it really gets going, the Mac mini can draw up to 25w.
The CPU is interesting. But not that fast. The responsiveness if the system is mostly down to the new storage system called ‘Storage Bay’
At its simplest, Storage bay is a slot in the back of the Mac mini where any 2.5” SATA drive can be inserted.
The base Mac Mini has the slot empty, but for £59 the Mac mini can be outfitted with a 1tb hard disk drive.
Storage Bay provides large file storage. The main operating system, boot files and most user files are stored on the integrated 32gb of flash storage for a fast responsive system.
This combo of an SSD core with large capacity HDD backend is impressive. It can be configured as either a fusion drive, or as two separate drives for manual file management.
Last years Mac Mini shipped with a dreadfully slow 5400rpm hard disk. The new Mac mini positively flies in comparison with read and write speed 5 times faster at 500mb/s apiece.
This added performance manages to come with a price reduction
At £339 Apple have returned the Mac Mini to the original price when it was launched in 2004. The Mac mini is price competitive with iPads while offering 4-10x the performance.
For £339 you get the guts of a £700 laptop, with the ability too easily add RAM and storage capacity.
Going up the range, a higher performing i5 models starts at £499 and the top spec model costs £649 with quad core i7 CPU and 128GB of flash storage.
The new Mac mini is a return to form for Apple. Getting it out for less than £339 is a small wonder and we must assume Apple is dropping it’s normal margins to get there.
When considering a Mac, the question now is entirely about form factor. Performance at the entry level is now roughly equal whether your looking to a laptop, an ultrabook or a desktop.
If you don’t need portability or extreme performance and your already have a suitable display and mouse then the new Mac mini offers great value.
This article is a spoof review for a product i hope Apple would introduce… I wrote it as i was bored… and its fun to speculate!
Definition of Done for Accessibility Tasks. =================== posted: 1 September 2014 featured image:If you have ever worked on an agile team, you have probably come across the term “Definition of Done”.
The DoD as it is known, is the checklist which standardises the requirements before work is considered finished. You can read more about the definition of done on scrumalliance.org)
I’m currently building a small virtual team which will focus on accessibility related tasks. The tasks are pretty wide ranging. For example, conducting design reviews, resolving bugs, or helping to prototype a complex UI widget. That sort of thing.
Part of building this team has been to build the process; and today I have been thinking about what makes a great DoD for accessibility tasks.
This is my prototype DoD so far:
I think all good DoD’s should start with a “peer review”. That is, a code review or for the task to have been paired on. The purpose of a peer review or pairing is to introduce a second set of eyes to the code. This helps to reduce future bugs, and also allows for knowledge transfer.
The BBC Accessibility team has a recommended test matrix. In an ideal; world, we would suggest that all tickets are tested in the entire matrix. However, as the team is operating on these tickets is doing so on a voluntary bases i’m not convinced testing everything is going to be productive.
The aim of the testing is to provide confidence; knowing how much confidence is require is a complex topic… So my ideal accessibly DoD includes testing, but I am not sure how much yet. If you have a suggestion, or a model for this, please let me know in the comments.
This will not apply to all types of tickets, but I think for many tickets documentation is a requirement. In short, if no documentation is being produced, I think there needs to be a good reason as to why.
Like testing, documentation is a bit of a slippery slope. You can easily do too little or too much. At this stage I am thinking that each ticket type should have the following documentation requirements before it is considered “done”:
One of the outcomes required for the process is to enhance the understanding of the type and quantity of accessibility tasks coming through the team. So an explicit step in the DoD to check that labels and component attributes have been correctly set is a cheap investment to aid future statistical analysis.
Thats some of my thinking so far; It’s early days the proposal above is very rough. What would you suggest? Do you have an a11y element in your DoD? Let me know in the comments, or via twitter (@jamieknight) and email
A physical controller for Hue smart lights =================== posted: 25 August 2014 featured image:
TL:DR I’m using an Xbox controller to control my smart light. Code is on GitHub.
I received a set of Phillips Hue smart lights for my birthday. I really like them. I have been working on a proper review; but this post is about my first hue hack. Physical controls.
App controlled lighting is awesome. When I want it, I have complete control of my lighting. But I don’t always want complete control. Often I want something simple and more importantly something fast.
For those situations I wanted a physical controller. Something where I can turn on a preset or an individual lamp easily.
I wanted something physical for ease of use. I want to use this thing to check for monsters at midnight when unlocking my phone is too fiddly and slow.
Hue has a product for this (the Hue Tap) but its pricey and I wanted too build something more expressive.
I picked the Xbox controller for 3 reasons:
When I press a button on the controller, it trigger an event in a node.js app.
The node apps then sends the preprogrammed command to the hue bridge which in turn controls the lights. Source code can be found at: https://github.com/JamieKnight/xbox-node-hue
The control scheme is has 4 areas. Presets, Individual controls and group light switch.
The dpad maps to presets:
The coloured buttons and shoulder pads are used to control individual lights.
And finally, group light switch.
I’m using the presents most, but the Individual light control comes in handy when I want to just light my bed or desk etc.
I have a few ideas too extend and enhance the system.
If you have any question feel free to email me, or leave a comment. If you spot a bug please open an issue in GitHub.
The Future of the Mac Mini =================== posted: 30 July 2014 featured image:
I like the Mac Mini, its small, fast and quiet. Just what I want for under the telly.
It could be smaller though. It could also be faster, but I don’t think its likely to get both smaller and faster.
The Mac Mini uses laptop chips; the same chips as the retina MacBook Pro for the one I have. However, those chips are not the most power sipping, running 44w or so.
If Apple updates the Mac mini today to the equivalent haswell chip it would get ~16% faster and the graphics power would double perhaps triple.
This would be nice. If it stayed upgradable1 that would be perfect. I already game on my Mac mini, and better graphics would be nice.
What if Apple swapped to using the processors from the MacBook Air? At 15w these chips run much cooler and sip power. The Mac Mini could get far smaller.
I don’t think it could get quite as small as the current Apple TV. But Pehaps it could get much thinner or change shape into a small round puck.
This would be a totally integrated device. Like the inside of the MacBook Air, everything soldered down except maybe the storage.
If it cost £339-399 with the same guts as the 11” MacBook Air, that would be compelling.
I have been drafting this post for a while. Since i started Apple accidentally released a reference to a Mid 2014 Mac Mini on the tech support website. So hopefully something is coming soon.
I like the Mac Mini and I hope it has a long and exciting future, hopefully the next step of its evolution will be with us soon.
1 My 2012 2.6ghz Mac Mini has two drives (256gb SSD, 1tb HDD) and 16gb of RAM. Both were easy to install, and could be further expanded in the future.
Getting started building a software project =================== posted: 28 July 2014 featured image:I started writing this to help out an organisation I was informally advising. Just a bit of input really. I figure, by posting it publicly its open for comments and updates. It also means I can find it when I want to refer to it in the future.
So, lets assume, your an organisation and your writing a funding bid. What options are there for getting software built?
For the purpose of this article, lets assume there is no off the shelf software you can use. So you need to building something from scratch?
What are the options?
In my opinion, when building software there are two decisions you have to make early:
1: Where are the team coming from? What structure will they operate within?
2: What methodology will the operate under?
Those two decisions are intensely interrelated. But before we dive in, a disclaimer:
This article is incomplete and probably biased. It’s just the options I am aware of, its intended as a handy starting off point, not a full guide.
In my mind there are three option for gaining the efforts of a group of developers:
1: hire
2: outsource
3: partners
If you need developers in an ongoing fashion, and you require complete control. Hire some. Either as staff (e.g., PAYE etc) or by doing fixed length contracts (contractors). You could even split the work up, and farm it out to individual freelancers in units as small as an hour or two.
Normally, alongside a developers you will need to also hire a designer, and sometime a project manager of some description.
Outsourcing means having another business handle a business operation on behalf of your organisation. For example, many places outsource HR, or security.
One method for having custom software written is to go to a software development company, be the client and simply pay them.
You do give up control, but you are also buying yourself a degree of insurance again you own bad decisions. The outsourcing company, will probably have hired people (see option 1) which they are reselling as functional teams.
The normal method would be to go to an agency. Different agencies will take projects in different fashions. Many will ask for a Request For Proposal (RFP).
Sometime, you could build a ragtag team with developers who are being “lent” towards you aim. For example, if your organisation is group of charities and businesses perhaps those group members could give up a small amount of developer time.
Often, when partnering occurs, the management process remains within the organisation. (who will often hire a project manager, or a single lead developer).
So those are the three options I am aware of for business structure. Next, what about methodology?
Methodology is about how the software is developed. There are 2 prevailing methodologies in the software development world:
1: Problem Upfront, Solution Upfront (Waterfall).
2: Problem Upfront, Solution on the Fly (Agile)
Waterfall is the transitional software development practice. My experiences of it are more limited (i practiced waterfall development when I ran + Lion, I have never experienced it in a large project).
From my experiences, waterfall means that all the planning is done upfront. Both the definition of the problem and the definition of the solution.
With a waterfall project, a big spec is written (normally by someone non technical) which is bided on by agencies or given to an internal team to “build”. Its not uncommon for designs to be commissioned and completed before the development team have even been hired.
Agile takes a number of forms and I am not an expert. I have 3 years of agile experience within the BBC, but that is all, so my viewpoint here is limited.
The basic principle of Agile (see disclaimer above ;)) is that you define the problems upfront (often with “User Stories”) and then tackle each small element of the story piece by piece. Building something in layers. Using the output of one story to influence the development of the next story etc etc.
In the agile world, there are different methods (scrum, kanban etc), but they all boil down to similar tenets. Such as, estimation, thin slices, and defining the solution to the problem as closely to the problem entering development as possible.
Scrum teams work in sprints, often of 2 weeks or so. At the end of every sprint the aim is for value to be delivered to the user. So for example, an early sprint’s goal may be “Have a user system with avatars and secure signup”. Within that sprint a series of users stories (e.g. problems) may be developed. For example, the stories in a sprint about a user system may include “As a user I would like to be able to sign up” “as a user I would like to be able to sign up” etc etc.
The planning of the detail of those tickets (the definition of the solution) is done before the sprint starts, but not too far ahead.
I have probably murdered the definition of agile enough for now, but I believe thats the core of it. If you know better, please leave me a comment :D
So those two decisions, the WHO and the HOW can be combined to give you development options. I have enumerated a few below:
Who: hire a team How: Agile
Who: oursourcing How: Waterfall
Who: Partnering How: Agile
And so on.
With all that said, what are my thoughts? How should you build a software project.? I’m afraid the answer is I don’t know. So instead of trying to make something up, here are my experiences with the combinations I have experience off:
This is how + Lion operated. I worked with a client to develop a spec and help them define their solution, or they came to me with a project to be built. I managed the build, building some parts myself, and subcontracting other parts as required.
When I was working in the BBC Radio & Music team, we built the first version of iPlayer radio. I worked on an agile team named eno, as a front-end developer.
This was my first introduction to agile and it was impressive. The team operated with a very good technical project manager (an ex dev) who helped to organise sprints and provide updates to the wider business. The TPM also arranged releases and did work keeping the ticket management board up to date.
When I was working in platform engineering, business as usual support was provided by a team called the eagles. The eagles was the combined support of a number of scrum teams, each team contributed one team member per sprint to join the eagles team which operated using the Kanban model.
For BAU work, where tickets come in, are of differing sizes, but generally are smaller tasks, kanban worked well. I fondly remember the thrill of delivering tickets every couple of days. It’s enjoyable to see some work release a mere hour or so after its completion (in a scrum teams, releases were normally made once per sprint).
However, for project work (getting a new software build of the ground) kanban was more complicated. My experiences of kanban in this environment are less positive. While in theory planning could itself be a ticket (e.g., a ticket called “plan the user system”) it was way to easy for tickets to end up being co-dependent. This could mean that while there were 40 or more tickets on the backlog at any one time. Only perhaps 3 could be worked on.
My opinion is that it is better to start projects with scrum, but maintain projects with kanban.
I hope this article it useful. It’s not exhaustiveI’m and I’m sure its wrong in many places, but hopefully it gives a feel for the options which are out there.
Speech =================== posted: 25 July 2014 featured image:From time to time I stop speaking, find speaking hard or generally ‘go very quiet’. This can be for a short periods or for a long while (days to months).
I am away on holiday with a group of friends at the moment. We had a day on the beach / playing frisbee in the sea and walking around a beach town. I got very tired and spaced out and stopped talking about lunchtime.
2 of the group sign ‘enough’ to get by. The other 2 are learning. We have established our own signs for things which relate to our group.
When really needed I have an app on my phone which can speak for me. Though I use it quite rarely.
Its easy to feel left out of conversations and others have to make an effort to include me. While I’m told this is not a problem it does require effort and when time is pressing there is no time for me to contribute. (Which is also a feature!)
I feel intensely calm and collected. My thoughts are less wordy and more precise and I feel very relaxed.
Having a lower expected contribution too things results in less anxiety. It has also meant less arguments / area for confusion. When I can only express small amounts, I only express important things and even then I leave much unsaid.
Unlike unrestrained speech (where I tend to be totally transparent / have trouble hiding my agenda) with no speech I feel more in control. I can hold thoughts easier without them escaping. This also results in thoughts being better formed before I express them.
If I do speak and words just come out I feel conflicted. On the one hand its good that they are near the surface, on the other hand when they come out I confuse people and get worried I cannot keep them coming out. They also tend to come out in fits and starts.
Words do happen, but mostly when I am alone or when with individuals in quiet places.
Speech will probably return pretty quickly. It normally does, I have a few days more off work so if by Sunday speech is not working I have some exercises to get it going again.
On a more general note, speech is an odd one for me. Sometimes I loose it and it’s very frustrating. Other times it goes away and it’s not a problem.
I wish life allowed the second scenario more often. But in reality, I need speech even if I don’t always like it.
Another way of looking at it, is that while on holiday I also managed a break from speech and communication anxiety.
So, that’s about it really. Am posting this from the car on the way to the motor muesum but will be around later to answer any questions.
PS: if you would like more context, or are curious about the late lion chap
I hang around with, read more here: on autism
Just some quick first reactions:
Swift – new modern programming language. Looks pretty sweet, looking forward too some more under the hood information and deep dives. Really unexpected!
iCloud Drive – Was not expecting an open file system. Synced with Macs is a happy bonus. Effortless backup too.
Spotlight – Alfred just got sherlocked :( it’s like Siri without the voice bit.
HomeKit – very excited about this, i have been contemplating a Phillips hue purchase for a while and this may just push me over the edge. Hoping API is open so other devices can be integrated.
Photos – iCloud camera roll is now up to 5gb for free, with extra storage sold as a monthly extra. iCloud already offered 5gb, but It now looks a reasonable cost to upgrade capacity.
No hardware announcement – Mac Mini is very long in the tooth was hoping for something. No mention of ARM powered Macs.
No Apple TV App Store – it really needs one.
No OS 11 it’s been almost 15 years since OSX first debuted. When will OS 11 come along, what changes will it bring?
Thoughts on "My Advice to Young Designers and Developers" =================== posted: 20 March 2014 featured image:Andy Budd recently wrote about the advice he has for young designers and developers.
As a young(ish) developer, I took pretty much the path Andy describes; I wanted to share my thoughts on how its turned out for me.
When I finished college, I did university part time as I built up my own business (+ Lion). About half way through my degree, I jumped ship and took a job at the BBC where I have been kept busy, working on iPlayer and whatnot.
Roll on 2.5 years; I am a senior developer and I just purchased a little flat in London.
It’s been one hell of a ride. As I read Andy’s piece many things rang true. This peice is a response, with a reflection of the positives and negatives, based on my experiences. Hopefully, other young web folk will find it helpful.
“By comparison, the majority of people I know who went straight into a career ended up hating what they did for a living”
Yep.
Well I am getting there. The web does not excite me like it use to. I look at other developers around my age and I feel out of date. I work in a big organisation with big organisation technology adoption. Most recently, I have felt something is missing from my life, the excitement.
I feel somewhat old and tired. Many of my friends comment that over the last few years I have seemingly gone quiet. I am less bold, and I make less things. Settling down has got boring already.
I also feel massively disconnected with my peers. My boyfriend is a university student, sometimes he feels like a complete alien. I am not into music, I am not into much “youth culture”. I don’t find BBC Three funny.
I wonder if I sold my youth. Granted (as I will get to later) I was in a different position to most, but essentially I am doing now what I did when I was 19. That feels pretty bad sometimes. I didn’t explore the world, or learn to scuba dive.
I feel like I missed out on some stuff. Stuff I cannot describe. I cannot say I am that excited and enthusiastic about spending the next 40+ years doing what I do now.
But with all that said, there are some major advantages too.
The biggest positive, is that I have financial stability. I live well within my means and always have. I saved my earnings and I brought an affordable flat I can live in for half my current income.
Andy mentions settling down:
“More importantly, travelling is a lot of fun. It’s also something that gets harder to do as you progress in your careers, buy houses, raise families and settle down.”
He is right about family, but I think that conflates the issue a little. Having a family happens to people even when they don’t go into early employment. So while I see his point, I think its a little weak when it comes to the family argument.
I don’t agree regarding buying a house. My flat is an asset, if I dont want to live it in, I can just rent it out. I already make back some of my costs by renting out the spare bedroom.
I have settled down, but I also have security and that security gives me options. I just need to be brave and take them.
Professionally I also feel I have grown a great deal since I joined the BBC. I am doing essentially the same thing as when I was 13 (making websites) but I am now doing it a completely different way. I have managed teams, built at insane scale and learnt so many lessons about how to build things that dont fall over and are flexable.
I feel like I have made the most of what I have been given. If the web bubble bursts tomorrow, I have set myself up for a secure future. (though writing that out feels like I’m being a right arse!)
On balance I think there is alot of truth in what Andy is saying. I am on the path too hating my job, and his article is one of the things which has really made that apparent to me.
But I have options and a secure base to operate from. I can fix it and I have invested in my future.
My advice to young people basically falls down to “how secure are you”.
If like I was, your facing homelessness without a safety net, then I think profiting from your skills now is not a bad choice. In my opinion, the web is a bubble, and if you can make enough to give yourself a secure future then that is entirely what you should do. This means doing the work, earning well, but living like a hermit. Make the most of it.
If you have security, for example supportive parents then there is less risk. As Andy suggests, traveling looks mighty fine. I have seen people combine traveling with working to great effect.
One place where I do agree entirely with Andy is about appreciating money. If you’re a young web folk and you spend all your earnings on beer and cars, then I do feel you’re missing the point.
Thats about it for my thoughts. I would like to thank Andy for his post, I don’t fully agree with him, but I think he is touching on an important topic.
Technology has enabled a certain age group to jump the entry level jobs. That has social and personal consequences and discussing them is only a good thing.
Device Convergence Please. =================== posted: 23 February 2014 featured image:
I think the recent talk of iOS and OS X convergence is interesting. I think is also misses the point a bit. I don’t want a single converged OS, but I do want converged devices.
I find the idea of a single device which can run iOS and OS X appealing. A device which I can carry with me, then dock to use for basic computing taks such as word processing and perhaps software development.
This is not a new idea, Motorola did this with the Atrix. However, the Atrix did not offer me iOS and OS X… it only offered Andriod and Ubuntu which don’t appeal to me.
I think, my ideal combination would offer the following.
If I had OS X and iOS on a single device; I would want a single storage pool for both systems. I would expect iTunes on OSX and iOS to share the same files / database.
While I want the same databases (eg, photo library, iTunes library) I don’t want a file system. I want to keep file management outside of the UI.
I would like OS X to offer the complete UNIX enviroment and to be able to run my regular apps*. I want to be able to dock my iPhone, do some work in Coda 2, then undock it to watch a movie on the train.
iOS and OS X are both best of breed. Even when on a single device they have to remain themselves. I want both, not a horrible mixture. Keeping OS X just when docked is fine by me.
Media Center 2014. =================== posted: 15 February 2014 featured image:
I recently moved house and as part of the move we decided to take a reset on our TV and media setup. This posts documents where we are going with the system and some of the things which we have come across along the way.
In a nutshell we needed 5 things out of our new media setup:
HD Satellite TV with record & export: We don’t get great DTT TV reception here, and we have multiple satellite outlets in the wall. So satellite seems the way to go, with the ability to record, pause and export shows as an essential.
iTunes Library playback & streaming: Between us both we have about 750gb of media in our iTunes libraries. The new system will have to be able to serve these libraries (to iPads etc) and allow playback on the main TV in the lounge. As an added complexity, much of our content is DRMed so we need to use Apple software to play it back. (bah)
Bluray playback: I have a growing bluray collection. I have exported the main films, but occasionally I like being able to watch the extras included on the disks. So the ability to playback blurays is important, it does not have to be easy though.
Flexible F1 & Football: The F1 was pretty boring last year, but if it gets interesting again we want to be able to watch it. My partner also likes the football so the ability to watch it, without a long commitment is important to us.
Oh yeah, Backups: The last part of the puzzle is a sensible backup system. Right now, only my most important data is backed up via dropbox. My media library has been living on a couple of different drives, but its been practically homeless.
So thats what we need. Here’s my approach so far.
I already had a USB Satellite TV tuner (an eyeTV Sat), and a USB bluray drive. I also have a 2008 500gb Time Capsule. We’re also running on 35mb/sec Fibre broadband with no usage cap.
I did look at what combination of boxes I would need to get everything I wanted. There were a few YouView boxes which could do most of our needs, but they were pretty pricey (£200-300) and didn’t solve the iTunes problem.
I did research using a Raspberry Pi as an XMBC frontend with an iTunes server for the Apple TV…. but that looked like a very complex setup and by the time i brought a large enough external drive and made a suitable case it would be another £150-200 on top of the YouView box.
So, in the end, we went with another Mac Mini; a really fast one.
I found a fast i7 Quad Core model going for a good price on gumtree as an unwanted present. It already has a 1Tb drive and 16Gb of RAM in it, so our immediate needs are met. Nicely, there is an easy upgrade path to fit a 2nd drive too, so when the time comes, we can fill it with another 1-2tb of storage.
I decided waiting for the next gen Mac Mini would not be worth it. I don’t need a big screen, so an iMac was also out of the running.
On the software side, each need has a slightly different software solution.
Satellite TV: The eyeTV software works really well, I can get all the HD channels and I can pause and record TV. A nice feature is being able to edit and export recordings into iOS friendly formats directly into iTunes.
ITunes & iTunes Remote: iTunes holds all the media and it can stream it to the Apple TV and the iPad , etc. We can also use the iOS devices as a remote control for the TV.
MakeMKV, Handbrake, VLC: MakeMKV can stream blurays to VLC for playback, or extract them for conversion with handbrake. Works for DVD’s too.
F1 and Football: we are looking at getting sports via a monthly Go ticket. Its not cheap, but it is cheaper than the satellite package for the same content and its a one month subscription so if the F1 gets boring we can cancel it.
Backups: The Mac mini pretends to be a time capsule for the MacBooks in the flat. It then in turn does a Time Machine backup of the media to the time capsule. The Time Capsule is a little small, so the media backup is selective. I don’t bother backing up what I have on iCloud as I can always redownload it. This provides enough coverage for our needs and results in a 3x backup of my most important files (on dropbox, on the mac mini and on the time capsule)
The system has been pretty impressive so far, the Mac Mini is very capable and has happily chewed through 50+ DVDs and a stack of blurays. Watching a Bluray is a little fiddly, but it works.
The iPad / iPhone remote app is rather brilliant. Being able to select what to watch on the sofa and then have it playback on the TV is really awesome. We have also used the iTunes home sharing quite extensively. We have an Apple TV somewhere in our moving boxes, and when i get some free time i’m planning on setting it up on the TV to give us TV on one channel, and Media / iTunes on the other.
Performance is mostly flawless, when pushing it hard by simultaneously converting videos with handbrake, exporting TV shows into iTunes and extracting a DVD its not buttery smooth but it does work. When running full tilt its not super quiet, but it is quiet enough.
I’m really happy with how the latest stab at a media centre has worked out. It has all the capability I care about, wrapped in a energy efficient and reasonably simple package. I would prefer for the software side to be more elegant, but the combination of the Apple TV and Mac mini covers all the bases without much pain.
I also plan on building on the setup with a bunch of side projects. I’m just starting to explore some basic home automation (lighting control, energy and temperature monitoring) with a view to possibly building myself a Panic inspired dashboard.
Ultimately, I think the new media centre has made my new lounge a better place to be. Its got some flaws, but it’s a marked improvement on the clunky locked down hard to read Skybox and the homeless iTunes libraries of the past.
Mac Pro (2013) vrs a stack of Mac Minis (2012) =================== posted: 15 January 2014 featured image:
After being previewed at WWDC I was pretty excited to see what the all new Mac Pro could do. In many ways I was impressed, in a few ways I was a little disappointed.
You see, the new Mac Pro makes a big bet on GPU compute being the future. With two powerful workstation GPUs and only a single CPU socket the Mac Pro is not the CPU monster it use to be.
So this got me thinking, how many Mac Minis would you need to equal or improve on a Mac Pro for CPU performance? What would it cost?
It turns out, it would only take a pair 2012 Quad Core Mac Minis to provide more CPU performance than the entry level Mac Pro.
It would cost about £1360 and would save you around £1139. Two Mac Minis would offer a 1.63x performance improvement over what the Mac Pro offers measured on CPU grunt alone.
At the high end the improvement is more impressive.
The 12 core top spec Mac Pro (with just the upgraded CPU) turns in a Geekbench score of 32912 and costs £5699. For £5430 or so you could purchase 8 Mac Minis for a combined Geekbench score of 94880, a 2.8x performance improvement. If you wanted to match the CPU performance you could net a saving of around £3662 by only purchasing three Mac Minis and still come out on top for CPU performance.
Thats a serious saving and performance improvement if scaling out suits your needs.
Of course, the two approaches are not comparable for day to day use. The Mac Pro gives you a single workstation which is pretty simple to use, while the Mac Minis would give you two or more machines you would have to coordinate introducing complexity. But for some problems the performance benefit and price benefit would be substantial.
For example, if you had a constant stream of videos (say a stack of blu-rays) and wanted to convert them all into formats suitable for the iPad and iPhone then the divide and conquer approach would probably be faster and cheaper. While the time for a single blu-ray conversion would be slower, the fact two or more conversions can happen in parallel would mean the total throughput would be greater.
I think the new Mac Pro is a very cool, capable little box, I do wish they had gone further with the CPU options but it should be fun to see how the bet on GPU computer works out. Perhaps they will offer a configuration with a single GPU and a pair of CPUs, who knows.
This article is a little tongue in cheek, but it does highlight the advantage of scaling out rather than up. Mac Minis are not a cheap way to buy CPU grunt, i’m sure with some effort getting the the right machines it could be even cheaper.
iPhone Swap. =================== posted: 4 October 2013 featured image:
I brought myself an iPhone 5 last year when my iPhone 4 started to show it’s age, I reviewed it, and it’s been my phone ever since. A few months back the sleep wake button stopped working which became highly frustrating.
Last week I popped into an Apple store and spoke to a member of staff who after seeing a demo of the issue, set up an appointment for the replacement. This evening (at a time of my choosing!) I popped into the store and one of the “geniuses” picked up the case, saw the notes and simply swapped the phone out for a brand new one there and then.
I have spent much time dealing will Apple support over the years and so far, I have more positive experiences than negative. They are far from perfect, but on this occasion, it was incredibly smooth and straight forward. In, out no hassle. done.
Considering myself very lucky to have a 2nd chance with a pristine iPhone, I invested in a nice little case, it looks like a game boy, which made me smile.
Making grep an order of magnitude (or more) faster. =================== posted: 30 September 2013 featured image:
Update: The final code can now be found as part of my WikiLinks project at on my GitHub account
Grep is an amazing tool for searching through files. In a recent project I needed to Grep through a 45gb dataset as quickly as possible. While working on the project I developed a couple of strategies for making Grep tasks an order of magnitude faster.
For this project I needed to analyse a 45gb text file looking for URLs pointing to a specific domain. The desired output was a file(s) containing one matched URL per line for further analysis.
After exploring a few options the simplest method seemed to be to apply a regular expression to the input file. After working out my regular expressions against a small 250mb test file I was happy with the output.
When I applied the regular expression to the full dataset the data was being processed at around 1.8mb/s. Some quick maths (wolfram alpha rocks!) estimated a runtime of ~7 hours.
If this was a one time job, then I would have left it there. But partly for curiosity and partly for purpose I decided to have a go at optimising the task.
I’m not a regex expert (far far from it!) but I decided to go with a simple match in order to extract the URLs from the text file.
The regex I settled on produces reasonably clean output while being very straightforward:
'[^(|=[&;*/ ]*example\.co\.uk[^| ]*'
In simple terms, the domain is matched and the match is extended untill it finds a prohibited character such as | or =.
Wrapping this into a simple bash script gave me a run time of 590 seconds clock time (589.8 User time) for my 2gb test file.
With a baseline known and the problem described, lets dive into how I made it fast.
Part of why grep is so amazing is that it can perform some searches in less than linear time. That is, you can sometimes double the input and won’t run for twice as long. This is due to some magic called the Boyer Moore algorithm.
Even so, giving grep less input to process can result in huge performance improvements.
To give Grep less input with our dataset we have two options, preprocessing our input file, or reducing input on the fly.
For this script I went with reducing input on the fly, by simply chaining grep’s together in a pipeline.
grep "url.co.uk" file | grep -o '[^(|=[&;*/ ]*url\.co\.uk[^| ]*'
The first grep search, is a fast binary search, looking for just lines which include the domain we are looking for.
The second grep in the chain runs our previous regex over the much smaller filtered input.
For the dataset I am processing this technique proved to increase performance by 3.5-4x. The runtime for the test dataset dropped from 590 to 148 seconds!
With my input vastly reduced and the performance already quadrupled I started looking at other methods to eek out more performance. Parallel looked like a good bet.
Grep is single threaded, which means by itself it is unable to exploit multi-core processes. However, the strictly single threaded nature of grep means it is trivial to run multiple grep commands in parallel.
For my script, this meant two things. First I needed to split my input, secondly I needed a way of running grep commands in parallel.
Splitting the input is easy (using the unix split utility). I used split to generate 4 files each of roughly 25% of the input file (11gb each). For my 2gb test file I created four ~512mb files.
Next I needed an easy way to dispatch grep commands in parallel. I googled around and found GNU parallels.
GNU Parallels makes it insanely easy to split tasks.
ls perftest/*.lump | parallel "grep "url" {}"
The first commands matches the 4 files (named chunks for the big data and lumps for my test files) then parallel passes each file to a grep command.
The performance improvement was less impressive than reducing input. In the small test run time fell from 590 to 324 seconds. A ~1.8x improvement.
For my final script I combined both reducing input and parallelism.
For the small scale test this resulted in a total performance improvement of ~6.5x, dropping from 590 to 91 seconds.
Applied to the larger dataset (11gb, ~25% of full dataset) the performance improvement increased to ~11.5x dropping from 1535 to just 133 seconds.
Achieving an order of magnitude improvement in performance is no mean feat, but by providing simple building blocks the unix environment makes it easy
When applied to my full dataset, the run time fell from an estimated 7 Hours to around 10 minutes in total; a 42x improvement in performance.
The solution is embarrassing parallel, my workstation has 4 cores, but and 8 core or 16 core box increase the performance further.
The unix way of combining simple best in breed tools allows for a deeply expressive environment for processing data.
Don't disable pinch to zoom =================== posted: 13 September 2013 featured image:
… As all the other options are nowhere near as usable:
1) iOS native zoom (eg zooming the whole screen) does not understand text structure. You cannot zoom into blocks of text automatically. The inability to zoom into text blocks renders the iOS screen zoom an almost unusable experience on the web.
2) One size does not fit all. Not everyone can read 12px text. Rotating the phone to act as a zoom is easy, fast and effective.
Rarely things are absolute, I’m sure there are sensible edge cases, but keeping zoom enabled is a sensible default.
In the BBC mobile accessibility guidelines disabling platform accessibility features (such as pinch to zoom) is prohibited, we think this is a sensible starting position. If you disagree, please contact us, if you have tested this please share your results.
And that’s about it.
September 2013 "shorts" =================== posted: 7 September 2013 featured image:Stuff thats too long to tweet, too short to blog.
This month i have mostly been playing the 2011 Formula 1 game. This version is a few years old, but apart from a few changes to driver names its pretty much current. Available online for less than a tenner.
F1 2011 is a unique racing game, it aims for authenticity with the dynamics of an actual F1 car. With all the driver aids disabled the cars are twichy, powerful and precise. Unlike most driving games you cannot plough into a corner and slide the car with a jab of the handbrake. For example, the front wheels will lock under heavy braking and without traction control the car will spin the moment you apply to much power. Sometimes you need to wring the cars neck, other times you need to be gentle and wait for the car to be ready.
I enjoy the difficulty, turning off all the driver aids makes coming 3rd feel like an achievement. The instant replay system which allows you to rewind if you crash stops the game from becoming to frustrating. Hard, but not impossible.
Keeping with a motorsport theme, i brought myself a superdry jacket about a year ago, and all in, i am a big fan! The jacket is comfy and warm with a brightly colored green intenoir. The fleece fabric works well with my sensitivity and the labels and not intrusive!
The multitude of zips is somewhat confusing, but thats about the only downside.
Damn, solicitors don’t provide much feedback. Still waiting, but aiming for a move at the end of September!
I’m contemplating going part time at the BBC to give myself some time and space to scratch the accsessbility and freelance itch. Will see what the future holds… if your interested in talking to me about this… get in touch!
Documentation Driven Development in BBC Frameworks. =================== posted: 28 August 2013 featured image:Every development team have their own process, there is a mix of formal processes (such as BDD) and more adhoc processes which have grown organically.
The process followed often depends on what the team is building and how the build (or product) is managed. These factors and many other effect which development workflows will work and which will not.
In the BBC Frameworks GELs team we follow a process we call Document Driven Development. I joined the team a few months ago, here are my thoughts on DDD so far.
DDD as a process is pretty simple. You write the documentation first.
To many developers, this is a little crazy, for most projects the end user documentation deals with the user interface and explaining the user interface is not something the developers are required to do.
For these situations, the UI is often abstracted into user stories and acceptance criteria. Behaviour is defined to varying degrees, sometimes very clearly (cucumber and BDD) and sometimes not at all (hand wavy product owners!). For a product with a UI this makes sense.
However, in the GEL’s we mostly build APIs and shared tools. Our end users are other developers, we aim to make their lives easier.
By writing the docs first, we start the process with our end users (other developers) in mind.
At first, straw man proposals are put forward and discussed. Out of the discussion comes an agreed API and a collection of terms. Next we create the end user documentation, detailing the API, all the possible parameter values and corner cases (including errors).
Once the documentation is agreed within the team, we push it out to other teams for comment. We also use the documentation to think about what acceptance and unit tests are required.
From here on, we follow a more typical TDD approach. We work iteratively, writing tests first then implementations.
Things do change during development, so small API changes can be quickly picked up and iterated on as they happen, starting with updating the documentation.
I have personally found the approach to be very useful, writing the docs upfront keeps our end users needs in mind, but we have the flexibility to evolve our solution as we develop.
Having a document to refer to can help explain more of the context. By forcing the full length prose explanation complex and confusing options quickly become apparent. If i cannot explain what i am proposing to build in a few sentences, then thats a strong hint that something is wrong.
All in this approach is not that different to BDD, just for our end users, user stories don’t really provide the right format for feature description and ideation.
Using DDD we end up higher quality, coherent and consistent, documentation. The documentation quality reduces our support workload and allows us to focus on delivering value to other developers around the business.
Autism: Homeless to homeowner in 6 years. =================== posted: 13 July 2013 featured image:6 Years ago, this week, i stopped being “homeless”.
I moved into supported living and back into education. I completed my A levels , while running my company ,+ Lion, along side my studies.
4 years ago I moved out of supported living. Spent my time studying alongside my work with + Lion.
2 years ago, I took my first job (at the BBC) and moved to London. I wrapped up and sold my company, I risked everything and spent every penny I had on the promise of my dream job.
Yesterday morning, I agreed to purchase my first home*. Homeless, to home owner in 6 years.
There are too many people to thank. Starting with Alun Rowe who belived in me years ago and supported me through the rough patch. Paul Boag for giving me confidence, Ian Pouncey and Henny swan for giving me esteem. Finally all the friends who have, over the years, helped me to explore the world on my own terms.
6 Years ago, i said to myself. “Do i have autism?”. Thinking about it, i was terrified. But as an identity and as a framework for understanding myself it has allowed me to embrace my strengths and cover my weaknesses. Way back then, i wrote about my goals for 2007.
I want this year to be happier, I want this year to be the year when i start to feel comfortable as jamie, Autism and all. This year i will look who i am, and i will learn the skills to be alone for my life. I hope to be able to get the help to understand those things i do not understand. and i hope to be able to make more progress in my chosen field
It took longer than a year, it will take a lifetime to truely understand myself. I’m so excited.
I’m probably not going to write a proper review of the iPad mini as there are plenty of reviews out there already. Instead I’m going to share some of my notes from day to day usage.
Charging the iPad 3 is really slow. It has a massive battery to power the retina screen and that battery take 9 or more hours to charge. I could only charge it over night, a 10 minute “top up“ charge would be pointless.
However the iPad mini charges like a phone, if its low on power (sub 20%) then a 10 minute top up will make a noticeable difference to charge.
The iPad mini also charges from low power USB sockets like the one on my MacBook Air, so thats one less
charger i need to pack when i travel.
VoiceOver on the iPad mini feels a little laggy compared to the iPhone 5. It feels about the same as the iPad 3. I find the text on the web rotor to be a little small but it works. It’s taken me a while to get the ‘turning’ motion right. The smaller screen seems more sensitive to finger placement.
I have recently started expeirmenting with using voiceover with a bluetooth keyboard on the iPad. This has been pretty interesting. It works but its clunky and sometimes very slow.
As my newest toy I have carried the iPad into work with me every day. In work I mostly use it for checking email, paying media and running the panic status board application.
To be entirely honest, I still mostly use my iPhone while in work. The iPad duplicates what I have been using my iPhone for. If I had to choose between them the iPhone would be an easy winner.
My biggest issue in work is that I don’t have a decent iPad mini stand yet, I’m going to make one from lego. That will make having it as a dashboard more appealing.
(Update: I have now got a fetching pink Apple Smart Cover. Will see how well it functions in work over the next week or so!).
(Update 2: The smart case works very well as a dashboard, three weeks later and i am still using it as such.)
I feel comfortable tossing the iPad mini into my rucksach as its much cheaper and lighter than the iPad 3. It sits nicely between the Lion’s paws where it is protected ‘enough’.
Untill now i have carried a MacBook Air or an iPad. With the iPad mini i can carry both without my bag getting to heavy.
My last two iPads had 64gb of storage. However I wasted the storage most of the time. I filled them up with content I never used. For this iPad I went for the base 16gb model.
It has been somewhat limiting but I am getting use to living within the budget I have. Primarily, the big space eater has been video. I have trimmed back my collection to a couple of favourite movies and tv shows.
My media collection consists of 1080p and 720p videos. On the iPad mini these files are very wasteful. I’m experimenting with difference quality down converts to squeeze more vidoes into the space i have out of the space availabilble. I have found the iPhone preset in handbrake is a nice balence between file size and quality.
This does annoy me slightly. I would vastly prefer to only have one version of each video file, but it seems the only way to work around the space limitation. I will see how it feels after a few weeks.
Perhaps in the future it may get fast enough to use QuickSync to convert vidoes on the fly when syncing them to the iPad.
I never really gamed on the iPad 3. It was big and heavy and the interface always felt like a stretch. However, I have more than a dozen games on the iPad mini and they all perform superbly.
My favourite so far has been lego Star Wars chronicals. I have also enoyed some of the interactive story books and film tie ins such as Iron Man 3 and Toy Story.
I’m still in two minds about the non retina screen. Sometimes I miss the clarity, for example when reading small text I can’t resize. However more often than not I don’t really notice any pixelation anyway.
When i am writing on the iPad (either on my desk or in bed) the screen appears sharp and clear. It’s a noticable better screen than the one in the 11” MacBook Air.
Using most CMS systems on the iPad mini is a fiddly frustrating pain in the arse. Neither textpattern nor perch seem all that usable for editing content. I have worked around it a little by increasing the font side in my textpattern admin theme but reality it’s just a sticky plaster.
My current workflow is to write in byword and then copy into textpattern once editing is complete. I really should put some time and effort into the Dropbox based text publisher I was working on.
I have written quite a lot on the iPad, I have found a few comfortable positions so far. For example, on a desk slightly raised and sat with bent legs on my bed. I can also type pretty will with just my thumbs without resting the iPad on anything.
It’s not as good as the keyboard on the MacBook Air, but it’s better than the iPhone and full size iPad.
I’m writing this article using a bluetooth keyboard and it works well enough.
The discussion of value on the iPad mini is difficult. The base mini I have cost me £269. That’s not cheap. However, I paid almost double that for my last two iPads (64gb wifi).
The iPad costs more upfront than a comparable android tablet like the Nexus 7. However iPads seem to hold thier value pretty well. I assume when I come too sell this iPad on, I will get back around half of my investment. Whereas the resale value of android devices seems to be pennies on the pound.
Beside the cash value there is also the ecosystem factor.
This is my third iPad, I’m invested in the ecosystem in terms of DRM’d content, iPad only apps and tooling like iTunes. For me Android does not offer a compelling reason to ditch my current investment.
I have returned more Apple products than I have kept over the last 12 months, much to the amusement of my partner. However, I think the iPad mini is a keeper. It’s not perfect but it’s (relatively) cheap and useful.
The true test will be long term usage. If i am still using it in 3 months time, then its winner.
Retina MBP, low res and loving it. =================== posted: 31 May 2013 featured image:
I often struggle with reading onscreen text. For a few years now I have relied heavily on OS X inbuilt screen zooming and making everything bigger using HiDPI so that I can read comfortably.
Recently my work machine was replaced with a 15“ retina MacBook Pro, I may write a review for it as a whole in the future, but today I want to talk about my experiences using the retina screen as a tool to enhance my reading ability.
An upside of the retina screen is that it does not need to be run at the native resolution to look awesome. You can run the screen down at 1024 × 960 and it still looks about as sharp as a non retina display. Effectively, you can zoom the entire screen, without suffering from terrible text.
I have been using the rMBP in this mode for a few days, switching to other modes as required.
When you switch OS X to use a resolution of 1024 or less it pops up a warning that OS X may not work so well. However, so far it’s working fine.
I have not had any issues with my normal software * , some software occasionally places a button off screen, for example, the iTunes preferences screen will sometimes place the save button below the screen fold.
When this happens I have been using VoiceOver to find and click the button. Annoying, but not a total killer.
Working at this low workspace size, has other upsides. Part of why I like using such a low resoltion is that it keeps all the various crap and distractions out of the way. For me, every line of text represents some sort of cognative load, so removing it and pushing focus to what I to want reduces my eye stress and makes me feel more effcient.
This distraction free enviroment is what appeals to be about working solely in the terminal and Vim. However, I have not found a command line only workflow which works for me yet.
If you want to give this a try and dont have a retina screen to hand. I have some good news. With a modern Mac with HiDPI support you can use this technique on any machine as long as the display is 1920 × 1200 or greater. If you enter the following terminal command:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver DisplayResolutionEnabled -bool YES;
Then restart, you should see HiDPI settings appear in the display preferences screen. (more info in The Cocoa Manifest article)
Whats more, those HiDPI scalings are factors of 2, so everything will be lovely and sharp.
I was excited about the retina MacBook Pro. Its replacing my need for an external display and giving new options to reduce my etestrain.
The following works: Coda 2, Virtual box, Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Cornerstone
iPad mini - First Impressions =================== posted: 11 May 2013 featured image:
I started my new job this weekend and i picked up an iPad mini as a little present to myself.
This article contains my first impressions after a few hours of use. I’m curious with how it compares to the iPad 3 and the iPhone 5.
I’m a big fan of the iPad mini’s design. Its simple and elegant, thin and light. In use it feels lighter than the iPhone 5.
The light weight means it’s more comfortable to hold over long periods. Unlike the iPad 3, I can easilly sit holding the iPad mini in one hand.
It works really well for reading in bed!
At launched much was written about the iPad minis lack of a retina screen. And it’s true. The non retina display is kinda jarring.
However after an hour or so I have adapted. I’m sure (like with my 11” Air) I’m going to be keen to upgrade when the retina model lands but this screen works fine.
With my glasses on and the iPad on my lap, I cannot make out any pixels. When reading the web i’m using tap to zoom to bring the font size up then hold it further from my face. This has proved to be comfortable to read.
I vastly prefer the typing experience on the iPad mini. The full iPad is a little to large for me to type on with my thumbs. This mini works much better, I found myself instantly picking up the layout. I have not tested it back to back but right now I feel quicker typing on the mini than the full size iPad
One things which has got me thrown is the ratio of the keyboard to status bar, on the iPad mini the status bar feels really skinny. I have gotten use to it now, but at first it felt really inelegant.
Performance is my biggest disappointed so far. The iPad mini feels slow and clunky compared to an iPhone 5.
Routine operation on the iPad mini has a slight lag, it’s not huge but it is noticeable. This has manifest most in safari mobile. Even on a fast connection the iPad mini shows a noticable rendering delay.
On complex pages I can see tiles being rendered as I scroll and its easy to over scroll and need to wait for the page to catch up. It’s much like scrolling on the iPhone 3G.
This does surprise me, the same CPU in the iPad 3 and iPhone 4S seems capable but here it seems easy to overload. Further to this I frequently see web pages reloading after I swap apps. On my iPhone I have becomes accustomed to being able to leave tabs open. But on the iPad mini tabs seems to be reloaded every time I switch apps.
Performance commentary aside, I’m pretty impressed with this little box of tricks.
I brought the base model with a view to a quick upgrade next year. At less than half the cost of my last iPad its a relative bargain. Arguably, it’s a less capable device, but overal i prefer the smaller form factor and lower price.
Obstensively the iPad mini is using “old tech”, however it is very usable. I feel the iPad mini provides good value when you take into account the content and app ecosystem.
So in short. The design is elegant, the screen is workable, the performance acceptable, but it’s price is perfect.
The Clifford Engine. =================== posted: 14 April 2013 featured image:I havn’t mentioned it here yet, but i have just got a new job at the BBC. I’m moving to the frameworks team to stretch my enginnering skills and explore how other parts of the business operate. This post is not about that move though, it’s about the technical test they asked me to complete. The Clifford Engine.
As part of the interview process i was asked to solve a problem in a language of my choice. The problem is known as a clifford engine. In short, the task is too build an interpreter for a very basic stack language called “Clifford Code”.
I really enjoyed the test. I don’t often get to write algorithm based stuff so it was nice to have a problem outside of my normal domain. It was complex enough to be fun, but easy enough to build in one sitting.
I felt that the code might be useful to others, perhaps people who are exploring how to use prototypes, or jasmine tests and have put the code up on github.
I have also reused the problem to test my knowledge of rust and put an implementation of the clifford engine in rust on github too.
The clifford engine test was alot of fun and seems to be quite effective as a hiring tool. I feel the following characterstics make it good:
I enjoyed the clifford engine test. I think its a great example of a small but non trivial interview task.
Concepts and DOM bashing. =================== posted: 10 April 2013 featured image:Recently I have come to realise there are two fundemental ways to build Javascript applications. DOM Bashing and concepting.
DOM bashing is the simplest method to build a JS application. Effectively, you just keep bashing at the DOM to get the page to look how you want. You show stuff, hide stuff, copy stuff, get data over AJAX and you store all the state in the DOM.
Immagine a simple app which is a list of items. If your DOM bashing you push stuff around the page to get the look you want. You don’t model the data, you just worry about the pixels on the screen. You click add, a box appears, you close it goes away again. Simple.
Concepting is another approach, rather than starting with the DOM, you start by modeling your concepts into objects. So you may have the concept of an item, and an item may include the concept of a tag etc. You write code which manipulates concepts and at some point updates the DOM to reflect the state of your current object graph. The state is in the JS, the DOM is just a view. You may have a render method which draws the current data structure to the users screen.
I’m sure both of these approachs have thier proper names. As i have learnt more about Javascript i have found myself dealing with concepts more often. Especially as applications get bigger and more complex.
On Autism (Lion) =================== posted: 2 April 2013 featured image:Autism* is a whole bunch of things to a whole bunch of people. It’s Autism Awareness month so I figured I better write something. So I sat down, wrote a title, and started to think. What do I, Jamie, think about “Autism”.
I figure I can write about tons of things. Independence, sensory issues, communication issue, meltdowns, obssessions.. But, this is not new. This is just me repeating what you can read elsewhere. What do I, jamie, think about Autism.
I think of Lion.
Lion is plush toy about 4 feet long, very worn, with a “distinctive” smell and a tangled mane. He never** leaves the side of a 23 year old web developer at the BBC, called, erm, Me.
I have had Lion for years, but i have not always carried him. It would be social suicide for a teenager to carry a giant lion around. By the time i was 12 / 13 Lion stayed in my bed. After some seriously complicated stuff left me somewhat homeless when i was 16/17 i sat down and decided, dammit. I wanted Lion by my side because it simply made me feel “better”.
So, i’m 23 and i have a trait common with a 5 year old. Should i not be ashamed? Embarrassed? Should i not hide the Lion? I dont think so.
I dont feel the social pressure too, i dont feel social pressure most of the time, yes, but regarding the Lion i feel no social pressure at all. Many people have explained to me how i am misreading the world in this regard. I’m sure they are right. However, i like the way the Lion smells.
I should probably feel ashamed perhaps? Feel like i am not “manly” enough, or that i should show i am strong. I don’t feel a need. I can run and jump and do tae kwon do (badly). I’m not brittle, I would say I am robust. However, I like the way the Lion is consistant.
Surely I should hide Lion, keep him a secret? Feel exposed, afraid and a freak. Nope. I don’t really keep track of such things. Yes, i feel afraid of being targeted as vunerable somtimes. Yes, i sometimes do worry about if Lion will be misunderstood by people around me. However, most people respond well to Lion. Lion is really simple.
Lion is part of me, my “autism”, my connection with the world. Lion represents the deepest parts of how i work. Autism Awareness month can talk about how Lion taps into all sorts of autism related things. But ultimately, he is just my Lion.
(*) I ‘have aspergers’ which is on the autism spectrum.
(**) I know of 4 occurences since I was ~17 where Lion was away from me.
I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t stop for lunch or take breaks. I get my own high from hours and hours of focused sharp effort. Wether that time is spent coding, explaining or building Lego gearboxes
I tend to think I’m right and get intensely frustrated by half measures. I believe people should be bold, do or do not. You know the rest. I strongely feel that if your going to own something and make something happen that means you commit as strongly to those things you don’t want as much as the things you do. The hard decisions, the difficult no is infinitely more productive than a half hearted diplomatic maybe.
I see a mostly black and white world. I feel better with the lion in my rucksack, so I carry the lion. Everyone knows the lion, I’m carrying the lion therefore no hiding the fact. Im different i know that. celebrate it, embrace it and make it a feature. Grey is wooly undefined and without structure. Grey is hard.
I am very specific. I am straight up. Autistic.
Appy government =================== posted: 13 March 2013 featured image:The digital cabinet office are doing some great work. In their recent post regarding platform apps and the web they make some great points about why the web is awesome and detail their approach to talking with stakeholders.
Overall I don’t disagree with the post at all. I am tremendously happy to see the government talking about open standards.
However apps have the mindshare for a reason. Perhaps we can identify some ways in which the web can learn from native apps. The big one for me is discoverability
So many people head straight to an App Store when they want to do something on thier mobile device. I have seen this myself with users.
It’s frustrating that on the dominant platforms web apps and native apps dont get the same distribution channels. It would rock for both app types to be ‘installable’ from the same store.
Moreover I really want to see some numbers around this. How does the App Store effect influence installation frequency and user stickiness? I think this is a largely unanswered question.
Untill that question is answered, I feel there is a case for apps in App Stores. Even if it’s just a wrapper, it may help people to find what they want.
Are we optimising the wrong end. =================== posted: 6 March 2013 featured image:I was reading about the google data compression proxy this morning when a specific line got me thinking:
“[the proxy] also optimises the perceptual quality of each image based on device screen resolution and pixel density of your device” (Data Compression Proxy)
So, why are we doing this on websites at the server end? After all a proxy has more information about the device, is easier to configure per user and moves the complexity to a single place
Moving this complexity downstream also removes the need for every site to implement their own approach to responsive images etc.
On a practical side, this is pretty interesting to me. I have always felt a little uncomfortable about providing retina images when i cannot reliably detect bandwidth and context.
I’m not sure how much i like the idea. But i do think its worth discussing.
Hello Heidi! =================== posted: 2 March 2013 featured image:
Down in somerset seeing family this week, here is a name badge i made with my 4 year old niece!
Chrome Pixel. =================== posted: 27 February 2013 featured image:Everyone should want a Chromebook Pixel I certainly do. But almost no one should buy one
David Pierce – The Verge
The Chrome Pixel is Google’s first crack at a laptop to sell to the public. It’s expensive, unconventional and uncompromising..
There are two ways of looking at the Pixel. In one light it’s an over specced over engineered £1050 web browser, in another light it’s a carefully built focused and distilled vision of what the web can be.
Starting with the hardware the Pixel is all about the web. It has a ‘retina’ quality screen with a tall 3:2 aspect ratio. The retina quality screen is easy to explain. Text content, most of the Internet, renders superbly at retina resolutions. Text that sharp is a absolute pleasure to read and manipulate. The retina iPad gives us a taste of how awesome the web is on retina.
Continuing the screen theme, the 3:2 aspect ratio is pretty unique. Personally I want to try one. More space for reading, less scrolling less neck ache. What’s not to like.
The spec on the inside is good stuff, nothing to write home about… So i wont. The form factor itself is very MacBook Pro like. Minimal right down to the lack of port labels. It’s reasonably light as well.
So the hardware is pretty interesting all by itself. If the pixel was a hardware product alone I would be tempted. The rest of the package is in the software, aka Chrome.
Chromebooks are well named. The OS consists of a browser and a window manager and that. Is. It. If you can’t do it in a browser you can’t do it on the chrome pixel.
That’s a very bold vision right there. Perhaps a little early for many but maybe just maybe enough for some. Looking at my usage needs there would be painful edge cases such as iPhoto style photo management and spotify etc.
Underneath those rough edges though there is a fundamentally good vision. Why not have apps built from HTML and CSS? Ultimately, performance is not the bottle neck with most modern computers. With the careful use of compiled native code (aka, native client) a hybrid userspace is very possible.
Finally, the Chrome Pixel is a product which has been built with a clear vision. It is focused, and uncompromising. It’s not for everyone, but i think that is part of what makes it interesting and great.
I think the Chrome Pixel is ahead of its time. Its a fascinating first stab at a laptop from Google and it puts HP and others to shame. I am hoping that i get to play with one soon (either through work or by visit a PC world, its that good).
All in, I agree with David from the Verge. I really want one but it’s to expensive for me to indulge.
Opera adopts webkit. =================== posted: 13 February 2013 featured image:Opera and WebKit: a personal perspective – bruce lawson
Webkit gained a metric truckload of smart contributors today. Overall, i think thats a good thing. I will miss Presto, but i think this move is good for the web.
A webkit monoculture is scary but has its upsides. I think its time to get worried when the Mozilla has to take a similar path in order to stay relevant.
Focus on :focus =================== posted: 11 February 2013 featured image:Understanding some of the finer quirks of how :focus works is important to build keyboard accessible stuff. Here are some quick notes on what focus is, how it works and how to force it on elements programatically.
I like the sitepoint definition of focus:
This pseudo-class matches any element that has keyboard input focus. Keyboard input focus describes any element that’s ready to receive user input. It can apply to a form control, for instance, or to a link if the user navigates using the keyboard.
This definition is pretty complete, the one thing i would add is that :focus these days can come from more than a keyboard user. Phone trackpoints, Assistive Tech and some game controllers also make use of the focus mechanism.
The :focus pseudo selector can only be used on elements which can receive focus and their children.
Lets say you have:
<ul>
<li>
<a href="http://google.com">
<span>Visit Google</span>
</a>
</li>
</ul>
If keyboard focus is on the anchor only the :focus rules on the children of the anchor are applied. In the case above thats the nested span.
The :hover pseudo selector works the opposite way, applying the :hover rules to the parents of the element which is being hovered. In the case above, if you hovered on the anchor it would also trigger the :hover styles applied to the li.
In some situations you may wish to force focus on a specific element programatically. For example, we use JS to push focus to the drop-down elements on the iPlayer Radio navigation when your using the keyboard.
Forcing focusing on a normally focusable elements is straight forward. Simply use the .focus() method of the DOM node.
For elements which do not receive focus natively you need to first make the element focusable. You do this by setting the tab-index property to -1.
For more discussion of how and when to force focus take a look at the discussion on stack overflow
I think that should be enough to demystify focus a little. If you have any corrections, contradictions or extra information please feel free to let me know in the comments.
Staying Positive. =================== posted: 10 February 2013 featured image:I’m a very black and white thinker. Normally I am either feeling good or bad, obsessed or depressed. This is apparently an autism thing but the reason is not really important.
Being black and white introduces a whole ton of issues, the longer I have been employed the longer it has bothered me. The excited optimistic feelings have mostly gone away to be replaced by the expectation of arguments and certain frustration. I have good days and bad days.
The problem is this becomes self fulfilling. The more down on something I am the more likely it is to go wrong. What’s more I can see how it flows through the whole team. If the people above me believe something is flawed or if I present something as flawed to my peers the whole situation gets worse. Someone has to be positive and excited.
I can see entirely why people become down and unoptimistic, but I think for me it seems far more powerful. Whereas many people ‘care less’ or ‘let it go’ I attempt to stop caring and only frustrate myself further.
So, to the point. Accepting which things I cannot change is something I just have to learn to do. To decide how much I care about the battles. I have opinions and beliefs, the trick is in how and when to express them.
As a black and white thinker that makes me want to rebel. To simply say no and if that results in me being fired so be it. The line of thought is that by making a stand I don’t have to deal with grey and I can always say I felt as though I was being honest to what I think.
I’m not sure though. Yes. I could make a stupid stand, get angry and leave. Hell if I really wanted I could fuck up my career big time and let the anger and frustration flow out in one big mess. However that is pointless. Nothing would change.
When I reflect on why I am frustrated and angry it’s because I don’t feel all that positive. By feeling down every time something happens I get worse. Positivity becomes a lost cause.
So, before I do something two stupid I’m going to make a very specific aim to be altogether far more positive. To look at things with optimism and to give it a bash. I won’t be perfect (or even good!) but perhaps I will learn something.
I’m still learning these things. I’m still figuring this stuff out, hopefully writing about it will help others or help me to chart my progress.
Own the fucking product =================== posted: 7 February 2013 featured image:Cut the crap. Seriously, just cut the shit which is buggy or unused. Focus on making the core experience great. Good is a low target.
‘Good is better than perfect’ but ‘great’ is better still. Aim for great, don’t aim for ‘good’. For some reasons many product owners seems to loose focus and instead waste resources (time, money, words) on stuff which has failed. It’s not a ‘bet’ if you unwilling to decide what failure looks like.
I believe, simply put, that for a great project you require focus. To provide focus you have to work to remove the crap. Decide what matters most and decide a number which represents appropriate effort for a given feature. If 1% of people use it and it takes 10% of resources then your not being a product owner, your pretending.
Make decisions, revise decisions test and learn. Own the fucking product.
Paranorman Review =================== posted: 2 February 2013 featured image:
Paranorman is a fun twist on a classic format. It superbly manages to mix comedy and horror… arghhh! I can’t do it!
Right, this is my first ever film review. I could write all the normal fluffly bullshit or i can cut to the chase. Go see Paranorman if you can, it’s a good film and well woth the price of admission. Here’s why.
The story centres on the life of Norman, an 11 year old somewhere in America. He has the ability see ghosts and he is exhiled by his community. Over the course of the film he wins the trust of the community and solves a 300 year old curse.
On the way he unleashes zombies, makes friends and learns it’s okay to be different. I wont go into to much more detail as i dont want to spoil the film. But it ultimately boils down to Norman learning to value his difference and then convincing a fellow oddity that they dont have to respond with a wrong when they have been wronged.
The characters are pretty good, my favorite character is the zombies. They are central to the plot of the film, Norman has to forgive and help them in order to help everyone.
By understanding the zombies norman has to figure out his own issues.
Apart from Norman and the zombies, the other characters are pretty robust. It’s nice to see a bully be revealed as a cowered who comes through in the end. If a little clichéd.
Paranorman has an unique animation style. It seems to be a mix between stop motion and CGI. The overal affect is pleasing, Towards the end of the film the visual effects kick into a higher gear for the grand fanalie. The animation becomes more fluid and the effects take over.
The film is respectful of the tools used to make it, the matt paintings are clearly chalk artwork but they fit the feel of the film well.
From my personal tech perspective the film was very impressive. All the effects were believable and well delivered. 3D was used to help tell the story rather than bludeon the audience with gawdy shocks and suprises.
I saw all the Halloween films this year (eventully). Each film had its own qualities and will appeal to different audiences.
The most kid freindly film is Hotel Translavania, as it has few scary parts a very simple storyline and easily understood characters. Paranorman has a few to many scary parts to work with younger audiences. I saw many parents removing bawling kids form the thetre during some of the more intense scenes. Frankenweenie is a little complex and has to many slow parts for kids.
Paranorman has he most advanced look of the three films. Frankenweenie is brave in being black and white but i am not convinced it works that well. It’s a good talking point but i don’t see it enhancing the telling of the story. Hotel transalvania looks like most other animated films. It’s somewhere between pixar and shrek quality not really as convincing or fluid as either.
Paranormal is out of season now, so its often being put on for the cheap kids showing. Thats not a bad thing in and of itself, it was an enjoyable mornings entertainment and was incredibly cheap. If you find yourself bored of a saturday morning the early morning shows certainly give you something to do.
I paid £1.75 to see Paranorman and that was a bargain. As films go it’s firmly in the top half but has it’s moments where it genuinely sets the standard. If you can catch on the big screen i would encorage you to do so.
Coding & Lego =================== posted: 30 January 2013 featured image:I’m tremendosly crap at video games. I just don’t have the patience. I enjoy some games (Portal, driving games) but even then i only play them for an hour or so. This leaves me with long evenings to fill. However, filling this time is bloody hard.
Its a pretty common aspergers thing, we tend to come a little unstuck when we are given large amounts of “unstructured time”. While i am fully aware i need down time i have a dearth of activities which actully provide me with down time. I don’t find consuming media to be all that relaxing and as mentioned most games leave me bored.
One activity which does provide me some relief is coding. Getting engrossed in the code and the problem is quite theraputic. In this regard coding is alot like lego. With lego its easy to loose yourself for hours engineering away. Finding a more elegant solution, fixing bugs and exploring limits. I know, building lego gearboxs is a very specific form of “relaxing” but sometimes it works for me.
Coding and lego are the same toy. They serve a purpose but they dont fill the entire gap. I need to be in the right mood for both, after writing code in work all day i often find by the evening i have become a zombie. Not wanting to code, not wanting to lego not knowing what to do. I tend to then wonder the flat tidying, obbsessing over things.
So thats how i am now. I felt restless and bored so this is my attempt to write about it.
Using PubSub with Javascript. =================== posted: 29 January 2013 featured image:Inspired by BBC responsive news i have spent a lot of time over the last few months investigating and then buiding around EventEmitter. EventEmitter is a lightweight PubSub library with a node.js ancestry.
I have never developed using custom events before, so it’s been a tight learning curve. I guess many people are in this position so hopefully sharing these notes with give you a head start.
I have found event naming to be really difficult. In an ideal world an event name is self describing, for example, “carousel:load:tab” seems pretty clear. However, on deeper inspection its not quite as clear as it could be. Its not clear if its a request (eg, please show a tab) or a command (here is a tab and some data, display it).
I went with a “carousel:load” prefix for requests which gave us “carousel:load:tab” and “carousle:load:next” etc. On command side i went with a “carousel:display” prefix.
This seems to work well, though it’s a little nugget of infomation you need to know in order to understand our architecture. For the next iteration i suspect i may take a more declarative style. Something more like “carousel:display:request” i guess. Not sure.
The events (or messages in PubSub parlence) have consisted of a name and a payload of data. Following on form the last example, “carousel:load:tab” carries a payload object with two properties. The tab name and the tab url.
At first i tried to keep events to a minimuim, with each module only have one or two events associated. This led to many event having massive payloads which contained everything i knew about the object to support all of the use cases. This led to some complex event handlers which did way too much.
I have now adopted a model with a few more events but with less data per event. So for example, “carousel:display:start” got split into “carousel:display:uncached” and “carousel:display:cached”. The event names are more explcit which on balence i feel is a good thing…. Its not perfect though.
Naming events this way does reveals some of the inner workings of the carousel. In this case, it expliciting indicates a difference between cached displays and uncachced displays. The alternative was to have a property on a more generic event. I figuired explcit naming would be easier to understand for developers in the future.
Roughly speaking most features split into two modules. A Core module (with the business logic) and a UI module which deals with the DOM. The modules then commuincate using events.
Heres an example of the event stream which results form clicking the “next tab” button on a carousel.
1. The UI Module converts DOM click events to a pubsub events called “carousel:load:next”. It does very little logic at this level.
2. The Core module listens for the “carousel:load:next” event. The core then figures out the correct response, in this case loading some data and firing a “carousel:display” event with the data attached.
3. The UI module listens for “carousel:display” event and then updates the page accordingly.
Having the Core in the middle decouples the business logic form the UI. You can swap the UI out to whatever makes sense at the time. You can also reuse the core across platforms. I also store state in the core. The core knows the current tab and everything else defers to it for actions requiring that information.
So thats about it for now, i am still working this stuff out but i am also having alot of fun. If you have never tried pubsub based JS development i would encorage you to give it a go.
13" Retina MacBook Pro Review =================== posted: 27 January 2013 featured image:
A few weeks ago i started testing the 13” retina MacBook Pro. My goal was to see if the rMBP was a viable replacement for my aging iMac and MacBook Air combo.
Can i consolidate to the rMBP? Does the screen justify the high price? Will i miss the 11” form factor? Is it ready for primetime?
While i was self employed i had a dedicated Mac for work. It mostly lived under lock and key to keep client data secure. At home i had a Mac Mini for media and the Air for studying and personal stuff. When i left self employment i sold the Mini and my work Mac to fund an iMac.
Since getting Sky TV i have been using my media machine less and less. I don’t do much client work either so the iMac is really getting to be overkill for my needs. The iMac also carried a maintence overhead. Ensuring that it remains backed up and up to date.
So, i wanted to know if i could combine the iMac and the Air into one MacBook. The rMBP performed well here, it’s plenty fast enough to handle all my media and development needs and the screen is frankly beautiful.
However, the rMBP has a big flaw. Storage. Even after slimming my media library down to only my favourites it was still way to large to fit on the 128gb drive the rMBP comes with. Given the cost of the rMBP this is disappointing, i would happily spend a little more for a larger drive but a £550 premuim for a 512gb drive is way to much.
So, my conclusion is that right now i could not consolidate to the rMBP for a resonable cost. Damn.
Much has been written about the retina screen in the rMBP. It is very impressive. Taken on its own it’s a marvel, easilly the best screen i have ever used. For some users the screen will justify the premuim. If i did more freelance work then i could justify the screen but for my personal needs it’s not so clear cut.
Apart from the financial cost the retina screen currently carries a performance and form factor cost. The general UI performance is noticeably degraded. The most noticable issue is scrolling complex pages. Even using the webkit nightly build scrolling is choppy on most pages and almost non functional once you page zoom.
The form factor costs relates to choice. A retina screen is only avaliable on the 13” and 15” models. Drat.
After two years using an 11” MacBook air i am very fond of the small portable form factor. While the 13” pro is only a little larger (a couple of CM in each direction) the added weight is really noticable. I cannot easily manipulate the rMBP when moving it around. Compared to the 13” pro it replaces it is a wonder, but compared to my 11” Air it’s a slab of a machine.
The rMBP feels a little ahead of its time, the enginnering is superb and its easy to see the potential. However, on the current generation of chips the performance is lagging behind the promise. For me, it does not provide a clear enough win to justify the price premuim over sticking with my iMac and Air setup.
Looking forward i am very optimisitic. Time will resolve all of my complaints going forward. The price of the screen and storage will drop and hopefully Apple will see it fit to add an 11” Stablemate.
Javascript Cryptography Considered Harmful =================== posted: 27 January 2013 featured image:Javascript Cryptography Considered Harmful
“Just as all programs evolve towards a point where they can read email, and all languages contain a poorly-specified and buggy implementation of Lisp, most crypto code is at heart an inferior version of PGP”
A great summery of why The JS environment sucks for crypto. Also contains some witty truisms about programming.
Retina MacBook Pro First Impressions =================== posted: 16 January 2013 featured image:
I’ve been testing the 13“ Retina MacBook Pro (rMBP) for a few days now. Here are some first inpressions compared to my 11” MacBook Air (MBA, or “Airâ€).
Compared to the Air it feels huge. This is no suprise, the Air is tiny, but I have found myself using it on the desk more. Unlike the Air, i cannot manipulate it easily with one hand. It’s a small change but reminds me of the extra mass every time I interact with it.
Will see if its something I get use to. Overall I like the form factor a lot. It runs very cool and quiet and the HDMI port is very useful.
The display looks great, but like other retina displays you get use to it quickly. I was worried that I would be effected by the ‘ghosting’ issues but it all seems clear so far.
The screen looks good, but its just one element of the package. I would almost be tempted a cheaper non retina model.
I noticed the text rendering the most, web pages appear ultra sharp and detailed. Retina screens do spoil all the other screens around you. If I do return the rMBP its going to be hard to go back to the screen on the 11” Air!
I use my iMac in HiDPI mode which doubles the physical size of everything on the screen. My eyes are a bit dogey so HiDPI allows me to sit a comfortable distance from the iMac for reading.
I was worried text on the rMBP would be to small for comfortable use. So far things seem okay. I make heavy use of screen zoom for small text (eg chat windows) and while browsing. A side benifit of the retina display is that it still looks great when zoomed in 200%!
VoiceOver runs really well on the rMBP. Interactions are more fluid (eg less delays between text selection and speech etc) and it has been 100% stable. The VO experience on the Air really sucks in comparison.
I have 128gb of storage in the rMBP. Getting more storage gets expensive quickly! To jump to 256gb of storage is £150, going to 512gb is £400 more on top again. Ouch!
I have far more than 512gb of data across the Air and the iMac. How’s i should proceed seems a little unclear. I need to find a balance between storage space, cost and simplicity. I have a few ideas, going to have a play this week.
In Safari the rMBP won’t scroll some pages smoothly, however this has been fixed in the WebKit daily builds. I have the WebKit daily build installed and all is well. Hopefully the performance tweaks with get into safari soon. I do notice some occasional stutter especially when zoomed. This is starting to become annoying.
Trying the 13" Retina MacBook Pro =================== posted: 13 January 2013 featured image:
I have a love hate affair with my current home setup. You may have noticed a trend this last year. I have been trying out different Macs to find the perfect combination. Yeah, its a little sad but for a techie its both interesting and “worth it“! Since i stopped being self employed i have been struggling to find the “perfect“ setup.
Right now, i have an 11“ Air for my personal stuff and presenting, and a 27” iMac for occasional freelance work and media stuff. They are a good combination. However, i have ended up with my digital life scattered all over the place. The iMac has two different OSX installations* hosting 3 different user accounts. In trying to create separation i have created a mess.
The 11” Air is showing its age**. I wondered if its time to go back to having a single machine for everything.
For years, i had a little white 13” Macbook i used for everything, it was fast enough.
My needs peaked in 2008-2011 when i was studying, running + Lion and using a Mac Mini as a TV system. I constantly had 3 different Macs on the go. My media server, my personal / studying machine, and my work machine.
When i became employed, i sold my work machine and condensed the work machine and media server into an iMac. I’m now wondering if its time to fold all of my computing into a MacBook again. Completing the circle!
I suspect i have a lot of “optimisations” i’m simply not going to need. For 2-3 hours coding a prototype i really don’t NEED a 27“ Display. For knocking out a blog post on a train or notes at a conference a smaller laptop is nice but the different between the 11” Air and 13” rMBP is slight.
Even with my media, since getting Sky TV the Apple TV is used rarely. I don’t buy many blu-rays or DVD to convert so performance there is nice, but not essential.
The Air and iMac combo is nice, i could spend a small fortune upgrading either of them. However, instead i am trying to consolidate. Hopefully this MacBook can do it all***. I have two weeks to find out.
(*) A snow leopard install which is a preserve of my old “freelance work account”, all my old client data / project files. A new “Mountain Lion“ install for media serving and general browsing and stuff.
(**) I stupidly brought the model with 2GB ram, not 4GB, safari now runs a like a dog :(
(***) This is my third attempt, the last two attempts (a 2012 MacBook Air and a 2012 Mac Mini) both ended with returns.
A few days ago i started work on a new side project, a tiny site publisher inspired by Textpattern, Jekyll and Second Crack.
The basic premise is simple, i wanted an easy way of publishing blog posts and longed for something “simple”. There are loads of static site generators and CMS’s out there, so you may wonder why i choose to create yet another one. Well, boredem and curiosity i guess!
Cub consists of 3 parts, a tag engine (lifted from Textpattern), a file parser (borrowed heavily from second crack, at least for now) and a renderer (i wrote that bit).
Like Textpattern, Cub tries to keep the code simple. It’s precedural and fast. It renders content out to HTML as quickly as possible and then caches it to save the effort in the future. Uncached pages render in 20-50ms and cached pages render around the 11ms mark.
Cub is not truly static, each page is generate at request allowing for the intergration of dynamic content such as comments and twitter feeds.
The tag parser and the structure (section, page, form) is from Textpatten (hence Cub is GPL) but the implmentation behind most of the tags is bespoke. The
So far the main challenge has been working with flat files, specficially retreving data sorted by ‘posted’ date. As far as i can see there are two methods.
The first method uses the file names themselves, prefixing the file name with the posted date so content/hello-world.md would become content/2012-10-08-hello-world.md. This then allows you to easily output files in posted date order.
The second method is a little more complex, but alot more flexable. Inside each file there is a piece of meta data containing the date the content was posted (eg “posted: 08-10-2012”), when rendering this information is used to sort the posts.
The second method has a big drawback, it requires the reading and processing of every file in a given section to render the index page. This is less than ideal.
In practice the performance cost seems to be minimal, in a quick benchmark comparing method two to method one the difference was less than 10% (over 128 content files). The flexibilty comes from the meta data format, method two could potentially sort by any peice of metadata so thats the way i have gone for now.
Right now, cub is an experimental project. Its been very enjoyable hacking on something simple and lightweight. I intend to keep pushing on it too see where it goes.
Cub is up on github, feel free to take a look at github.com/jamieknight/cub.
Be yourself =================== posted: 5 November 2012 featured image:Something which I got into a discussion about today is the marketability of generalist developers versus deep specialists. Here are some quicks thoughts and observations:
Being associated with a specific thing makes it easier to raise your profile. For example, being know as the JS guy or the accessibility guy helps people to remember you. Rightly or wrongly generalists seem to fall under the radar a little.
At the BBC I work in a large department but on a small focused team. Having a small team is nice, it helps avoid to much communication overhead and it’s easier to organise.
However for a small team to be effective we have found that having at least 1 team member with a broad skill set is very valuable. In my team we have a software engineer with deep backend knowledge and two front end devs with deep front end knowledge. We also have a generalist who has a broad understanding of both.
The generalist works well to bind the team together, working across many tickets and getting many things rolling. As a team we are exploring how best to operate and how best to share knowledge effectively. Pairing, code reviews and ‘show and tell sessions’ seem effective so far. We’re trying to avoid getting too process driven but its early days.
Back to the point having a generalist in a small team helps with flexibility and prevents silos.
If your working only with deep knowledge specialists and someone becomes unavailable at short notice it can be difficult to continue forward momentum. When I was self employed this burnt me hard a number of times. Generalists provide some mitigation, worse case they can dive in with some degree of confidence.
So in short generalists rock but it can be hard to get known for anything.
Finally, there are a wide range of generalists, in my view it runs right through the stack with designer / front end, front end / PHP and PHP / java & database etc.
So back to the point, is there an optimal employment strategy? Do you really have to specialise to make the most of your career? At this stage I don’t think so, at least not for the first few years. It’s best to be yourself and see where that takes you first.
2012 Mac Mini First Impressions and 2010 iMac comparison =================== posted: 4 November 2012 featured image:
I purchased the Mac mini about a week ago to see if it could replace my 2010 iMac. On paper it’s a close run thing for my mostly media use. Will i return the Mac mini or it is time to return to Apple’s vision of minimal computing?
The 2012 Mac mini was released a few weeks ago as an incremental improvement over it’s predecessor. Its got a much faster CPU but paired with a moderate drop in graphics capability. The model i am testing is the quad core i7 version with a 1TB hard drive.
My home Mac is mostly used too manage and serve my 1tb media library to my Apple TV and iPad. In the last year or so my home Mac has also served a second purpose, enabling freelance iOS and web development.
My home Mac is rarely used for development. However, the ability for freelance use provides assurance. If my day job goes wrong i have a viable backup plan.
As part of investigating the use of the Mac mini i have tried a few different places to put the mini. At first i had it nestled under the TV using the TV as a monitor, now it is back on a desk connected to an old 19” screen.
So for my needs, does the Mac mini work well? Lets find out.
The Mac mini was very capable for my media use. The picture quality issues which effected my 2010 mini have been resolved. If my needs were only media playback / serving then i would consider the Mac mini adequate. However being placed under the TV made managing media awkward. Sat in front of the TV is a bad place to use a keyboard and mouse!
After i moved the mini to the desk and connected it to a normal display it faired better. I watched my way through Avatar and Played portal 2 and it performed well. It was not perfect, the sluggish 5400rpm hard drive made playback stutter from time to time if there way anything else going on. The Mac also ran out of RAM a number of times during my testing, this would be easy enough to fix (£50 for 16gb of RAM is cheap!) but 4gb is very little memory on a £610 system.
Sat on my the desk plugged into the monitor works, i have a old monitor i can use for this purpose and a suitable keyboard. However, compared to using the iMac the same way the difference is clear, the integrated speakers, and that gorgeous 27” screen make a huge difference. Selling the iMac and buying the mini nets me a little profit, but not a whole lot, around £200 all in (£150 by the time i have fixed the RAM).
With a screen plugged in the Mini works well as a media server, i would even consider using it long term plugged into the TV if media was my sole use case.
However, as a pure media centre it has some frustrating limitations. Like last years model the Mac mini no longer has a DVD drive. For some this would be a deal breaker. For me this is annoying but manageable. The real frustration is the lack of bluray compatibility in OSX, even with my external blurry drive its not possible to play back blu-ray disks on the mini. In order to playback rented blu-rays i have to boot into Windows. This is not really viable and disappointing on such an expensive desktop.
However on the hardware side the Mac mini does have something going for it. Unlike most other Apple hardware the Mac mini is quite upgradable. It’s somewhat straight forward to add up to 16gb of RAM and a second hard drive.
If i money was no object, a Mac mini with 16gb of RAM, a fast SSD and 1TB or more of storage would make a great and capable media centre. The i7 CPU was able to transcode the bluray rips to Apple TV files 67% faster than my iMac. Whats more the Mac Mini does it consuming a fraction of the power. Paired with a great display the Mac mini is a very capable machine.
Back with what i have on media alone the mini handles itself well. But looking at the bigger picture it starts to struggle with the iMac on value.
As i mentioned in the introduction, the Mac mini will only work for me if it could serve dual purpose. Alongside daily use a media centre it had to work as a for software development.
For my setup (old screen) development on the Mac mini is not too great. While the system is capable you really feel the RAM and sluggish hard drive slowing you down. If i spent a little more and fitted a small SSD or more RAM the machine could be capable. However at that point it costs as much as i would make selling the iMac for a vastly inferior screen. While the Mini wakes up faster, the iMac is faster in use once the drive has spun up.
If i had my old cinema display available (its currently in use in my day job) then the comparison would be far stronger. For the price of the iMac i could have a SSD equipped mini with double the RAM. If you have a screen your happy with then the Mac mini coupled with a faster drive makes for a good development platform.
I have discussed how the mini works for software development and media duties above, but thats not the whole story. There are a range of other smaller factors which hold the mini back as i have it configured.
The first annoyance is graphics, the integrated HD4000 graphics may be fine on a laptop but for a desktop it feels a little anaemic. This would be my only Mac upgrade for a good few years and the graphics already feel slow and outdated. It can play portal 2 (the game i play most) but it won’t play more modern games smoothly. While not something to worry about to much its hard to completely dismiss as irrelevant.
The second annoyance is around HiDPI support, HiDPI doubles the size of everything on the screen in both directions. For my vision this works amazingly well, it’s far more comfortable. The Mac mini supports HiDPI but it provides an unworkably small desktop on any display i can plug into it. The only way to get around this would be to purchase a high quality 2560 × 1440 display alongside the mini.
Finally a bug prevent the mini from being able to wake up for network access when using a wireless network. This is problem for my use, currently the iMac spends 90% of it’s time asleep (consuming 1.4w of power) then wakes up automatically when it is called to serve files. The Mac mini as it stands cannot do this, thus it would be burning through 11w of power all the time. Even though the mini is far more energy efficient in normal use the lack of support for wireless wake on LAN is a deal breaker, it would be using ~8x the power most of the time.
While not a deal breaker like the lack of wake on LAN i found the cables on the mini frustrating. Unless you are using wireless accessories the cables for the Mac mini are quite unsightly. The power cable for the iMac is a design feature, on the Mini its an eyesore. It’s not that important on the scheme of things, but minor annoyances add up!
The Mac mini is a very impressive piece of kit. It’s expensive, but it is one of the best small form factor computers around. For my use case however my current iMac provides much better value. If it had a display i liked available then the comparison would be far closer.
In order to keep the iMac i had to pull out of selling it quite late (apologies to the buyer, again), however I’m planning on returning the Mac mini. It’s a shame as i really like the idea of minimal computing. I find the idea of a Macbook Air & Mac Mini combo alluring as a power efficient small duo. As it stands, the Mac mini does not fill my needs, perhaps it will in the future.
Geektool Uptime Desktop =================== posted: 4 November 2012 featured image:One thing i miss from my windows days were true active wallpapers. While they waste CPU resources they could be very pretty. A while ago i started playing with GeekTool. GeekTool enables you to display various live elements on you desktop.
Using GeekTool i combined the uptime command and a minimal wallpaper to create a mini dashboard showing the load averages for my Mac.
Mac Mini: Apple's Upgradable Desktop. =================== posted: 30 October 2012 featured image:
As expected Apple refreshed the Mac mini last week. Apart from a modest performance improvement the mini was left unchanged. While bigger changes would have been more interesting, the refresh was better than nothing.
I have recently been looking at options for my next Mac, for my needs i value CPU grunt and low power consumption. The latest Mac mini delivers on both, my next priority is storage and upgradability.
This got me thinking, the Mac mini is actully suprisingly upgradable. Getting at the RAM is trvial and getting to both internal hard drive slots is pretty straight forward.
This is in stark contrast to the iMac. Upgrading the hard drive in the iMac is a challenge, you have to remove the motherboard and do clever things with tempreture sensors.
A 2012 Mac Mini offers the performance of 2010 Mac Pro in a fraction of the space at a fraction of the cost. It’s easier to upgrade than an iMac and uses less power than pretty much everything on the market.
My iMac currently relies on external storage for all my media, the ability to pop two drives in the mini means i wont have to rely on external drives anymore. What’s more easy upgradability means it’s simple to add storage in the future as prices drop. The new mini also uses a third less power and have twice the GPU grunt for converting blu-rays.
I moved away from the Mac mini platform about a year ago in favour of an iMac. It may be time to start considering a return.
Getting started with JS unit testing. =================== posted: 24 October 2012 featured image:We all know we should be unit testing where possible, but it’s something many of us put off. Well, if you have 10 minutes free, do yourself a favours and check out Ben Nadels article on unit testing with requireJS and Jasmine. Unit testing and TDD has many great qualities other article talk about (see wikipedia) at great length but the attraction for me was really simple. I dont have to click about in the browser when testing carousels!
Just from a few days experimenting the value is really clear, i am looking forward to exploring jasmine more over the next few weeks.
iPhone 5 First Impressions. =================== posted: 19 October 2012 featured image:After waiting out the preorders to check in on the nano sim situation I finally picked up a new iPhone today.
This is my third iPhone, my last was an iPhone 4 (my review of the iPhone 4) generally each phone lasts 24-30 months. This time around I purchased the phone outright, I figure it’s more flexible and over 2 years it works out about the same cost.
So background out of the way, lets get on with some first impressions.
The most obvious difference between the iPhone 5 and previous generations is the design. The iPhone 5 has a larger taller screen, weighs noticeably less and is no longer glass backed.
The new screen is very pretty, after a couple of hours use it feels comfortable and going back to the iPhone 4 feels crampt. If your coming from a 3GS or older the new screen is worth the upgrade alone. From the iPhone 4 / 4S the upgrade is nice but not as noticeable.
The screen space is nice when browsing the web a little space means slightly larger type when i zoom in. The apps I use have all been updated to take advantage of the new screen size. I’m prety lax at keeping my Apps up to date, so some apps (like reeder) have a actually been completed redesigned since I last downloaded them. A nice suprise.
The rest of the phone feels nice in my hand, I’m a little worried about scratching but so far so good.
The iPhone 5 feels quick and is yet to skip a beat with anything I have tried. Technically it’s faster than my first intel Mac and it feels it.
So my first impressions are good, it’s fast, sturdy and has a great screen.
2012 Mac Mini Wish List. =================== posted: 16 October 2012 featured image:
I had a Mac Mini as a media sever up untill about year ago. My first mini lasted well over 5 years and is still used by my dad. When I no longer had a decent display to plug it into at home (long story!) I got an iMac.
Even though the iMac is a great machine, I do miss the low power and small size of the mini. With a Mac mini refresh being rumoured, here is my wish list:
If Apple are staying with Intel processors across the board then updating to the latest generation ‘Ivy Bridge’ seems like an obvious move. Ivy bridge pairs a 10-20% performance increase on the CPU side with a 40% improvement in graphics. The HD4000 graphics are not the most powerful but they are powerful enough to play modern games at low and meduim settings.
The Mac mini has space inside for two hard drives, for the two non server models these slots are left unused. Moving to “flash storage” by default would provide the system with an impressive performance boost for not a huge cost.
Though less likley, if the Mac mini were to be entirely SSD based for storage it could get much much smaller. I would not be that suprised to see a Mac Mini built around Macbook Air class hardware.
Last year Apple removed the CD/DVD drive from the mini. For those using it as a HTPC this was rather frustrating. While I would love to see an upgrade to a bluray drive, simply restoring the DVD drive would be great.
However, i think Apple is pretty unlikely to do this. The recent trend for new Apple hardware has been to drop optical drives. For a laptop there is a clear case for removing the drive, but for a desktop i think the case is less clear cut.
A complete redesign could be interesting, possibly smaller. I don’t think intel chips go low power enough to fit in a tiny fanless enclosure like a Apple TV but it would be neat if they did.
The A6 chip in the iPhone 5 is about as powerful as the first generation Intel Mac mini only with much better graphics. Infact it’s almost as fast as my 2010 1.4ghz MacBook Air. While I think it’s very unlikey an A6 / ARM based Mac mini would be very interesting.
I highly doubt Apple would ever do it, but replacing the Mac mini range entirely with a mid range tower would be a popular move in some circles.
However, doing so would eat Into iMac and Mac pro sales, and move Apple towards the low profit commodity PC space.
So that’s my wish list for the Mac mini.
September Shorts: Lego, dConstruct & iPhone 5 =================== posted: 13 September 2012 featured image:Lego is amazing stuff, i am fortunate enough to have quite a collection which i have been building since i was little. Recently i rather indulged myself (as a birthday / promotion present) with a 2500 piece monster model.
The Imperial shuttle took me about 13 hours to build and now sits on the lounge bookcase. It completely dwarfs my next biggest model a 1999 Millennium Falcon. It does not really serve much of a purpose, but it looks amazing and inspires a wow factor. I’m not normally one for decoration, but the shuttle is an exception.
A few days ago i attended dConstruct for the first time (Thanks to the BBC!). It was a long but enjoyable day. I generally prefer practical topics and found some of the talks a little far out to be that practical. However the talks were all interesting and thought provoking which is sometimes just what you need.
When i moved to London i picked somewhere very close to the BBC so that i would not need a commute on the tube.
15 Months later and my confidence on the tube is much improved, so much so that the quality of life balence is starting to shift.
At first, for best quality of life, it made sense to pay the high price of living close to work and not needing to go on the tube. However, this is starting to look less clear cut. The cost saving and housing quailty improvment of moving futher out is starting to appeal.
My current “commute” is a 20-25 min walk. By changing that to about an hour on the the tube we get into something of a sweet spot regarding housing cost and time spent on a train. The train is not nice, however living in a small flat next to the tube trains also has its downsides.
Of course, the equation is very different for me once i take into account the autism related issues. If i get into work unable to talk, or worse unable to get home then the increase in housing quality is pretty meaningless.
I suppose, i wont know how this plays out unless i give it a go. Not something for now, but watch this space.
I was looking to upgrade my phone this year. My first iPhone was a 3G, and i upgraded it after about 2 years. With the new iPhone 5 announced it’s getting towards upgrade time again. My 3G went to my dad and he has expressed an interest in having the 4 from when im ready to part ways.
The iPhone 5 looks good, when you compare it to the iPhone 4 (two versions back) the performance improvement is around 4x. My iPhone is far from slow but it is not as quick as it use to be.
I’m not in a mad rush to upgrade, i’m going to see how the pricing works out with the phone networks providing fast LTE service. I would be more interested if it weren’t for the nano sim. The new sim format means i wont be able to easily switch my current o2 plan to the new handset. Perhaps if o2 bring out a nano sim i will be more interested.
Will see what happens, pre-orders go live tommorrow morning and i think i will pass for now. I will see what price it is on contract and off contract and figure out which works out best in the long run.
August "Shorts" =================== posted: 20 August 2012 featured image:Stuff thats too long to tweet, too short to blog.
I started reading engadget in 2006, when some of thier top talent left to start thier own thing i was midly interested to say the least. The Verge grew out of that project. It’s one of my favourite websites, it mixes tech commentary and original long form journalism to create something awesome and interesting. Well worth a read.
After using the Sky Go service since the start of the year we finally caved and got Sky TV at home. A month in and we are both enjoying it, Sky+ is flexable and easy enough to use.
We got the monthly ticket so we could try the Formula 1, after half the season were enjoying the coverage so felt it was time to get the full package. Alongside the F1 (in HD!) we also get a ton of other channels and better reception.
I had been buying shows like Mythbusters off iTunes. While iTunes has its pro (no ads) its also pretty limited for avalibility and quite expensive. Im happy to see first runs on Sky and then buy the episodes i like.
Overall, the sky TV package costs about as much as the sky monthly ticket did yet we get so much more. At £35 a month its not cheap, but sharing the cost between two lessens the blow. Politics aside, Sky TV seems a pretty solid offering.
I wrote about the issues with my MacBook Air recently. To recap, i brought a 2012 model to replace my aging 2010 model. However, it doesn’t work with many projectors making it pretty useless for my needs. So after returning it i swicthed back to my 2010 model.
They say “distance makes the heart grow fonder”, i think there is some truth in that. I am quite connected to this little computer and was suprised by how much i missed it. One thing which has really become apparent is that this “old” core 2 duo runs MUCH cooler than the more modern intel chips, a real feature with the current hot weather.
2012 MacBook Air VGA Bugs. =================== posted: 13 August 2012 featured image:The problem with MacBook Air and VGA
I just returned my 2 months old MacBook Air due to this bug, luckily my “old” Mac was still avaliable for use but not everyone will be so lucky.
To give Apple retail some credit, they listened as i explained the bug and looked at the forum threads. After taking the machine for testing and a dicussion with the “leadership team” they refunded the purchase even though it was 2 months old and well outside of thier return policy.
Hoping my experience will be useful to someone!
Thoughts on Accessible CSS. =================== posted: 22 July 2012 featured image:I caught Stuart Robson’s post about accessible CSS on twitter today. if you have not read it yet go read it now, i will wait.
Read it? interesting right?
The basic idea is we could reduce the amount of code required in some situations by allowing CSS to include ARIA attributes. This would remove the duplicated code from the HTML and instead move it into a single place in the CSS.
This is an interesting idea and i dont think the answer is completely clear cut. However, after mulling it over lunch i think i would come down on the “lets not” side of the dicussion.
I have two reasons, document semantics and code clarity.
So in no patricular order:
HTML contains the structure and content of a document. I would consider ARIA roles part of the structure. They specifically tie elements to a structural meaning.
Having this structural content added via CSS means browsers would have to parse & process both the CSS & HTML before it had a semantically complete document. With external CSS this means two documents need downloading and processing before the full DOM can be built. This will slow down page rendering for very minimal benefit.
This also makes important accessibility APIs fragile, if for some reasons static assets are not loaded then the page looses some structure. At the BBC we serve static assets and HTML from separate systems. It’s very possible for pages to be served missing static assets.
Stuart makes a good point about developers not adding all the myriad of CSS prefixs when they use experimental features.
He postulates adding more properties to be missed is a problem. From this point i can see how the argument that having a single CSS property beats dozens of attributes evolves.
However, i’m not sure this is positive. It hides the true nature of the propery (semantic meaning) behind the styling and selection mechnism (CSS selectors). This is confusing!
For me this decreases the clarity of the code in hand. It introduces an extra layer for a developer to understand. Further to this, the mechnism is unique and thus has to be understood as an exception. Adding exceptions and breaking a well understood (simple-ish) model in order to make something quicker or easier feels somewhat self defeating. Its something else to forget about and maintain etc.
I’m not looking forward to answering the question about which is better between adding attributes in HTML or CSS dozens of times.
I think keeping exceptions to a minimuim results in a more understandable, consistant and learnable technology.
What do you think? These are my reactions after mulling it for a bit. I can see it would be useful, but i dont think that justifies the complexity and clarity costs.
Raspbain Official Release. =================== posted: 21 July 2012 featured image:Just a quick one today, in case you did not already know the Raspbain OS has been adopted by the foundation as its official distribution for the raspberry pi.
Raspbian is the first Raspberry Pi optimised release. A loyal user recompiled all of the debain source tree to Pi optimised packages to make it. A phonomonal peice of work! The result is a 10-40% speedup!
I had been using the hexxeh raspbian images so decided to give the new release a whirl.
Getting up and running was quick and easy. On first firing up raspbian there is a quick setup wizzard that allows you to resize the parition and set overscan and the like. Very useful!
I wanted to try out the latest release of Chrome on the Pi. Mostly through curiosity. I could not get the instructions in hexxeh’s post to work so ended up just copying them from the linked text file line by line. This seemed to do the job! Chrome while slow now is a great start. Hopefully it will speed up a little as time goes on but its a step in the right direction.
It was good to see the new radio beta working well in chrome on the Pi. Nice to see the optimisation work taking effect!
Thats about it so far, i’m going to have a stab at compiling / installing XMBC and seeing how far i get with that.
Responsive Contrast =================== posted: 10 July 2012 featured image:
Something which came up in work today was a discussion about contrast standards and responsive web design.
Do we need to consider different standards regarding contrast once we start thinking about users beyond the desktop?
The WCAG guidelines provide guidence on contrast. At the BBC we aim for AAA compliance but will take AA when AAA is not possible for some reason. However, when considering responsive design (sepecifically mobile) i am increasingly thinking that going for the higher contrast standard is a good thing.
Typically mobiles and tablets tend to have quite shiny screens. This is great for making colors pop but introduces issues around glare and brightness. A shiny screen such as the iPhone uses a powerful backlight in order to reduce reflections and glare. Even then sometimes (direct sunlight, brightness turned down) the screen can be hard to read.
Try turning the brightness on your phone or tablet way down and then using it in different places and at different times. While the low brightness works great in the dark evening, the following morning walking outside it renders the device unusable.
Using higher contrast helps to reduce this issue and keep the site more usable more of the time.
(Photo from: AnandTech iPhone 4 review)
The iPad is not enough =================== posted: 23 June 2012 featured image:A couple of weeks ago I sold my much loved MacBook Air to my partner for their university studies. Before replacing it I wanted to try using the iPad as my only personal computer.
What this meant was I would try to use just the iPad for things I normally do across a combination of devices (iPad, MacBook, iMac).
The short story is I found that while just using the iPad is possible, it’s quite limited in places and right now and its not an option to replace my Mac.
I wrote a while back about owning 4 devices, this is a trend which I have seen growing larger. People seem to own more devices these days, specifically I see many people in my social circle having both laptops and tablets.
With the MacBook moving on to a new home I took the opportunity to reduce the number of devices. The iPad seemed the Device to consolidate with, it has most of the tools I need and it was my most up to date device.
With this in mind, the MacBook went on its way.
The iPad allows me to do most of what I need to do. It has great tools for writing, reading and working on my website. It is possible to do the vast majority of the things I need to do on the iPad. If I was (for some reason) restricted to a single device it would be a very hard choice between the iPad or a MacBook. In reality I don’t have to make that decision and have kept with ‘both’.
You see, while the iPad does 75% of what I need to do it only really works well for activities which are very focused. Right now, writing this little article it’s pretty good, I’m sat on the sofa tapping away in byword. I am focused on this one activity and nothing else is going on.
That’s the real crux of the matter for me, once other things start going on and I need to multitask the iPad becomes quite frustrating. For example, I normally have MSN open in the background on my laptop, I can leave both the chat windows and my writing on the screen and seamlessly switch between the activities. On the iPad this is not possible, I need to swap my whole computing focus between the two competing apps. Switching from byword to MSN when a notification comes through is quite slow, staring at the IM window for 3-5 seconds before the message appears is quite frustrating it breaks my flow.
I can certainly see the argument for focused appliance computing where the one thing you have now is the only thing in focus. I can see this working great for some (my parents for sure) but for my normal method of working its not a very productive workflow.
The reality for me is that sitting with only IM open is not how I use my time, switching between apps at speed is not fast enough and this leads to frustration.
I don’t like the idea of owning (and looking after!) so many devices. The sale of the MacBook Air was not expected. However after trying the iPad out as my personal computer I have resigned myself to needing something more traditional. I have replaced my older air with a newer model but I do feel somewhat frustrated for what could have been.
I suppose the real limitation right now is in software more than hardware, I could get a case for the iPad which copies the laptop form factor. This would resolve some of the physical discomfort of using the iPad for long periods. However this would not solve the lack of a smooth workflow. While switching between apps on the iPad is fast, it’s not fast enough. Perhaps in future updates true multitasking will enable the sort of responsiveness I am accustomed too.
As much as I like Apple, the limitations are imposed due to the software. Other companies such as Microsoft have taken a different approach. While much of their bluster has serious problems, the idea of using an OS with proper multitasking is appealing.
I am excited about what future options may be out there. Whether the future comes from Apple or Microsoft I’m not sure, but it does feel like where we are now is not the destination.
Perhaps in a few years time I will be looking again at the technology landscape and will then be able to go to a single device.
My favourite Mac Apps. =================== posted: 17 June 2012 featured image:The high quality of apps avaliable for the Mac is one of the reasons why i enjoy using the platform. Here is a quick round up of some of my favourites.
Reeder is an RSS feed reader for iOS and Mac. Its very simple, subtle and a pleasure to use. Reeder pays attention to the small details while providing a consistant experience across my iPad, Phone and Macs. I can sit at pretty much any device i own and open reader picking up exactly where i left off.
Byword is a super minimal iOS and Mac word processor with markdown support. Much like reeder it has a simple interface which keeps distraction to a complete minimum. Apart from editing text in its simple UI it also support markdown making exporting that text and formatting into HTML etc super easy and fast.
Taskpaper has been on every mac i have ever owned. It provides a simple but document structure which can be used for purposes such as note taking and making lists.
The UI focuses on making things easy to understand, completed items are crossed out with a click but still visible for future reference. Finally, by using normal txt files and nothing fancy file can be used anywhere and on pretty much any platform.
These three apps are where i spend a massive amount of my day. They have a few things in common:
These three application enable me to do my work and interact with the outside world.
What are you favourite applications and why? Are they any you could not live without or do you just do everything in a browser window?
Goodbye Macbook, Hello iPad. =================== posted: 15 June 2012 featured image:I have written about the MacBook Air a number of times in the last 18 months. I first tried an Air in December 2010, but ended up returning it due to performance anxiety. I felt it was two expensive for its ‘limited’ specs.
However, due to increasing demands it became apparent i needed something for studying so i purchased an Air for uni. It also gave me digital separation between work and home.
Yesterday i sold my MacBook Air to my partner so he could use it for studying. I’m sad to see it ‘go’ but its not going far and it’s for a good cause.
Instead of going out and replacing it with a shiny new MacBook Air i decided to have a little experiment. Is it possible for me to live without a laptop? Can the iPad meet my personal computing needs.
I should note, i will still have access to an iMac at home. I share one with my partner, it acts as a media server and my freelance workstation. However, i don’t use it for personal stuff (writing, browsing etc).
You could ask what has stopped me from doing this in the past? Well a few things. As i wrote recently i found a few activities on iPad frustrating or just impossible.
I found instant messages slow and clunky. This is still the case but its getting better as time goes by. Using IM+ i can get the job done but its hardly the best experience possible. I hope to experiment with apps a bit here and to find a better solution.
Some activites seemed impossible. For example managing my finances with “Xero“http://xero.com. It requires me to download a bank statement from my bank and then upload it to Xero. Without a file system i thought this was not possible.
It turns out a third party iPad browser called iCadMobile does the job perfectly. So that problem is solved. Another blocker bits the dust.
I must admit, after 2 years i still hate the term Cloud however service like dropbox are very useful. I am using Dropbox to simulate a basic file system. It provides a place for my documents to live and it syncs between my phone and the iMac.
Its very much early days, rather shamefully i have actually already failed a little. I forgot to bring my keyboard home with me from work this evening so i have instead written this post on another machine. I suppose changing habits will take time, i am excited, and a little nervous, to see where this experiment leads.
Have you swapped out your laptop for an iPad? Do you have any software tips. Feel free to ping me via twitter, i would love to know your thoughts.
Browsing a sharper web =================== posted: 8 June 2012 featured image:
My eyesight is a litte ‘wonky’, this effects me in two ways. I am sometimes light sensitive, and i struggle with reading from computer screens.
To combat this for the last few years i have been using the screen zooming feature built into OSX. Apart from making other developers feel quesy when pair programming at my machine its been trouble free.
When you use screen zoom you have to accept a few limitations. For a start normally when you screen zoom everything gets pixelated. This is something i have mostly just learnt to live with.
For most of my interactions with the computer i can also increase font sizes to cope. Recently however i have been using a couple of new techniques which have really helped with my online activities.
When OSX Lion was announced i was quite excited about desktop Safari inheriting iOS style tap to zoom. I only have Lion installed on my little 11” MacBook Air. At first performance in safari was very poor. I ended up moving to chrome to try and compensate.
However, with succsessive updates; OSX Lion performance has improved. This has made tap to zoom and pinch to zoom far more usable.
Tap to zoom combines two things which i like in a zoom function. Accuracy and text sharpness.
The lack of accuracy is a big issue with whole page zooming. Resizing the whole page makes page navigation difficult and needing to zoom in and out on every page is slow and fiddly. Before now, simply loading the page then screen zooming has been alot more productive.
Text sharpness is a place where tap to zoom really wins over screen zooming. As safari redraws the content the text is pixel sharp and clear. If you compare the two the quality difference is astounding.
I have written about HiDPI mode before, this mode is useful on very large screens but does not work on my MacBook screen.
Effectively HiDPI is like Retina mode for iPhones and iPads except the screen does not have the doubled pixel count. The practical upshot is everything on the screen doubles in size but stays pin sharp.
Its pretty effective but far from perfect. In the Mountain Lion developer preview its pretty impressive but many apps still do not support it (I’m looking at you Chrome!).
I hope sharing this info helps someone, if you have any suggestions or questions feel free to get in touch via twitter
iOS6 wish list =================== posted: 7 June 2012 featured image:
As WWDC rolls around the rumours are starting to fly. One rumour which sounds pretty sure is that iOS6 will be announced. Apple have released new versions of their mobile OS yearly since its inception. Most of the obvious stuff (notifications, multitasking) has been done so we are now getting into the finer details.
This is my wish list for iOS6, it’s all the little services and functionality which I feel would make the platform stronger.
I use safari on my phone and my iPad. I use chrome on my laptop and on the shared desktop. Having to remember which device I read something on if I want to find it later is an exercise in frustration. I would go far as to say it’s a driver for me to consolidate devices but right now that’s not an option for me.
If I could sync all my history data between all my browsers that would solve the problem and allow me to pick up where I left off. If this was Safari exclusive it would tempt me back to using Safari on the desktop.
Windows Phone 7 has a very neat UI feature with active tiles. They are a little like icons but they provide snapshots of information. They are great for ‘at a glance’ information. Extending this to iOS would be pretty useful.
This is possible, the calendar applications icon displays the current date but it seems to be a special feature. Bringing the lightest touch of information to these icons can be really powerful. For example the current temperature on the weather app.
However as spring board currently stands I worry this may just make the space to busy and heavy. Tiles are much larger on windows phone and cramming to much information into a tiny icon may just become unusable.
Imagine being able to have apps which run on your home network. For example, a mini iTunes server, home automation or security etc. Its a longshot but would be pretty cool!
SImilar to above being able to use the Apple TV to playback files from a NAS or USB hard drive would be very useful. Including functionality for iTunes to also be able to manage a library attached to an Apple TV would be even better!
So thats my wish list for iOS6. I’m sure most wont happens but its always exciting to have a stab at predicting such things. We will have to wait and see what Apple announces on Monday.
Performance, Browsing & Media on the Raspberry Pi. =================== posted: 3 June 2012 featured image:The little raspberry pi is an impressive little box of tricks. I have had it for about a week now experimenting and playing.
One of first things i did once i got the box booting consistently was to install chromuim and do some surfing. Naturally i started out by checking my own webistes (jkg3.com and pluslion.com). Things looked pretty good and performance while not exactly snappy was usable.
I then pointed it at the pages i have been working on in work and all was pretty smooth. These pages are all pretty light. Performance was not fantastic but it was workable. While the Pi is not a fast web browser its quite usable. Its not as fast as a modern laptop, but for the cost the performance is pretty incredible.
The Pi does struggle with heavier pages, keeping with a BBC theme, the new homepage was far from smooth and the new responsive channel pages took minutes to load. I don’t use facebook so did not check how it performed, however as facebook has always been pretty static i would guess it’s performance there to be acceptable.
Lets take a quick step back, this device costs sub £20*. As far as i am aware that sets a whole new low price point for an acceptable web experience. It also challenges us web developers to think about performance without only considering it through a prism of ‘mobile’ and small screens.
Finally, the Pi is in very early stages. The software is pretty immature. There is work underway to port a faster OS (rasbian) and with it more up to date and better performing JS engines. Once this work is stable i will give it a test drive.
After experimenting with browser performance i thought i would give media playback a go. After a bit of reading i got omxplayer working. The video playback is offloaded to the GPU so the performance is very good with 1080p trailers playing back perfectly.
I’m going to try a higher bluray quality file and see how the Pi handles it.
In order to give the Pi a bit of a heftier media workout i have installed the openelex based XMBC client. First impressions are pretty good, Media playback and the UI are smooth and steady. It’s happily loading media over the network form the iMac.
It’s making me reconsider my media setup, currently we have an Apple TV connected to itunes running on an iMac. The Pi could feasibly act as both server and UI without to many compromises. If your in the markets for a little home server (for meda etc) the Pi seems like a great starting point.
The XMBC interface is pretty snappy, its not as fast as i have seen it on more powerful hardware but it is usable. I have installed a lighter Apple TV theme which performs better than the stock theme.
There are loads of rough edges but these will be worked out with time i am sure. I am hoping to investigate some different remotes too. Right now sharing the keyboard between two machines is proving to be a hassle.
My next steps will be to look at what options the Pi presents for building a small media system, where it also acts as the backup drive for other machines on the network.
Its early days for the Pi, it has lots of optimisation left but the signs are good that the Pi can be a viable home machine for users with small needs. Web browsing is a little slow but workable and should improve considerably as time goes on. Media playback is solid and with time i expect will become as smooth as any commercially available setup box is.
*well, eventully will cost sub £20, i am ignoring the cost of a keyboard and mouse for now. Cheating i know ;)
Raspberry Pi =================== posted: 1 June 2012 featured image:I was born at the very end of the 80s and was fortunate enough to grow up around computers and electronics. My dad’s an electrical engineer, i grew up with electronics around the house, often across the kitchen table.
This spawned a lifelong interest in technology and electronics. However, i was a little late for the computer revolution of the 80s. Things got really interesting for me in the late 90s when i started browsing the web and built my first websites. 12 years later and i now make websites for a living reaching millions of people working for the BBC.
Over the years computers have got very powerful. Having multiple cores, Gigs of RAM and a Terabytes or more of storage is commonplace. You can buy a
basic bare bones kit and build you own PC for less than £100; premade PCs are avaliable for a litte more. While this is great something has been lost. Even at a few hundred pounds PCs are too expensive to do anything too risky with. Easpcially for younger people playing with the family computer.
The Raspberry Pi seeks to change this, a basic computer. For less than £20.
The RPi is a well thought out little credit card sized PC. It’s built around the sort of gubins you find inside a TV setup box. It’s fast enough to do basic computing and media while also being very cheap and extendable. By using SD cards for storing the OS you can easily switch it between multiple configurations and if it all goes wrong you can simply blank the SD card and start again. I got mine a few days ago
and thought it would be good to write about my first impressions and experiences a few days in.
The Pi comes in a small unassuming box mostly filled with foam. The board itself is tiny (weighing 40g or so!). Inside the box is a quick start guide and a bunch of legal disclaimers. The board itsels is wrapped in a protective bag. You will need to beg borrow or steal a screen, keyboard and SD card to get started.
As i explained in the intro the hardware is very simple on purpose. I think the board looks pretty neat in the raw with all the tracing and hardware components visible. In total it has 5 Ports. On the left, 2 USB ports and an Ethernet port. On the front a headphone port and a RCA port and on the right the MicroUSB power port and SD card slot. Finally, at the back is the HDMI port for connecting a display. The board also contains a number of general purpose input and output headers and a ribbon connector.
Exact specs for the GPU are not really known. It’s not that important. We do know it has 14 or so cores each clocked at around 250mhz and
offer roughly double the performance of the iPhone 4S graphics. It’s more than capable of handling 1080p high def video content and low end games.
This is where the real fun started for me. It took me over 3 hours to get from the box to a desktop! It started off pretty well, i followed the quick start guide using a mac app (raspwrite) to produce an SD card containing the Fedora 14 OS. This is the OS which was intended to be the recommended OS for the pi.
However it has come out a little half baked. After booting the device and following the setup instructions i was never able to log in. Apparently this is a known bug but it took me a long time to find this out. I ended up repeating the SD card copying step a number times on something which was a bug. Not a great start… was fun though.
Eventully i downloaded the debian sqeeze image the foundation is now recommending. It booted quickly and has been pretty good. I fired up the graphical desktop (startx after loggin in) and set up the chromuim browser. I have also installed OMXplayer for HD video playback and explored the web from the command line using lynx. I quite enjoyed figuring out how to navigate to the bbc radio product and download the latest “Digital Human” podcast. Playing it back on one terminal while browing the web and writing this review on two others!
So far i have spent about 5 or 6 hours in the company of the Pi, in this little time i have greatly enjoyed getting back to something simpler. Writing this little review in nano has been fun. I have also learnt alot more about using linux from the command line and i understand more about how a computer boots.
I dont know if the Pi will take of, but i hope it does. Right now its not really suitble for the feint hearted. But give it a bit of time (and better support etc) and i dont see why this cannot do for modern computing what the BBC micro did for computing in the 80s.
Now i just need to figure out how to post this to my blog….
HTML Responsive Images Suggestion. =================== posted: 22 May 2012 featured image:Update: Thanks to bruce lawson for linking me to a wonderful little article discussing why we cannot have a block image tag!
I have been thinking about responsive images recently after loosely following various dicussions around the web. While i was thinking about it i had an idea for a very simple (probably too simple) syntax which allows for describing variations of an image asset.
The suggested markup is still an image tag, however it is now a container tag and it can contain <vary> elements. The <vary> element defines the structure of the variations. I have not thought about how these variations are requested from the server yet (different URLs? Naming conventions? headers? dunno!). Effectively the suggested tag just informs the browser of which variations are avaliable and then the browser picks the best fit. For example, it could go for the closest to the size it needs, or to the smallest etc.
In order to seperate content and presentation, the new image tag only describes the content (and the variations which are avalible), and CSS would still define its rendered size.
So for example:
<img src="lion.png" alt="a photo of lion"> <vary on="size" options="244px, 500px, 800px, 1000px" /> </img>
This tells the browser there is an image, source is lion.png. There are 4 sizes avaliable (244, 500, 800, 1000 pixels in width).
This could work stand alone (eg, pixel double screen use it to find the best quality for the display in use) or combined with CSS can be used for responsiveness.
For example, if the css was simply:
img { width: 100%; }
Then the browser would request the closest image size at page load and then as the image changes size it would request other images if required to keep quality constant etc.
The vary tag could also be used to describe other variations (sensors) such as bandwidth, connection type or content. For example:
<img src="lion.png"alt="a photo of lion"> <vary on="size" options="244px, 500px, 800px, 1000px" /> <vary on="connection-speed" options="100kbs, 150kbs" /> </img>
Here, each variation of size also has a highly compressed versions suitible for connections of less than 100kb/s and a less compressed version for faster connections.
I am not entirely sure “on” is the best name for the attribute, target or group may be better but i liked on as it read like a sentence which makes remembering the syntax easy. “Vary on size, options 250, 300, 450” is just the sort of thing i think as i am coding.
I hope this suggestion is of some use, i am sure i have missed some obvious stuff but thought thinking simple might generate some interesting discussion.
4 Devices, 3 Connections. =================== posted: 21 May 2012 featured image:
There are two personal tech trends which i find interesting. The number of devices i own and the number of internet connections to support them.
A quick chat to friends and family confirmed my suspicions. Owning multiple computers and devices is becoming normal. My partner and myself both own 4 computing devices of different types. We each own a laptop, a smartphone , and an iPad. We also share a desktop.
Each machine has its own purpose. For example we use our laptops mostly for writing and chatting online. Our smartphones for on the move browsing and listening, tablets for consumptions (films, books, watching F1) and finally the desktop for heavy tasks such as gaming and software development.
I’m not sure if combining all of these devices into one magical device would work all that well. One thing i have considered recently is to sell on my smartphone in the name of simplicity. I dont need to be able to tweet from a lift and check email on the move.
It is possible the tablet and laptop may converge. While i am happy enough tapping away on the iPad the lack of a pointing device makes writing an exercise in frustration for me. Untill i find text input more paletable the iPad wont be replacing my laptop. However, as thats all i now use my laptop for i wont be replacing it for the forseeable future. I’m genuinely hoping to get 5 years usage out of my current laptop!
Perhaps, once it’s time for an update the iPad will have usurped it and it will never be replaced. Wow, that’s a moment for pause. This could possibly be my last ever personal laptop….
It’s not looking all that great for the desktop either. It’s used for three main purposes (Gaming, media serving and development). Our gaming behavoiur is moving away from the desktop at a pace, i can see a future where media is served from the cloud which leaves only development. The reality is, these days i dont do much of that at home anyway.
Interestingly, the only device which i dont see being replaced in the future is the iPad. Ironic considering when i brought it i was pretty convinced i had no need for such a thing.
So in summery right now i am a 4 device guy and i see many others moving that way. However, people seem to be upgrading devices less often.
Alongside having four devices, i have 3 net connections each with different providers. Though, i didn’t engineer the diferent providers situation on purpose.
I have a landline broadband connection, a data plan for my phone and a seperate 3G dongle. All the plans are of a resonably similar price. The broadband connection is shared and costs me less than £10 a month. The 3G dongle is even less (about £5) and finally my phone data plan sits in the middle (£8 a month).
Again, these three connections provide different things. The broadband connection is my high bandwidth fast connection at home. Used for most net traffic, downloads, streaming and the like. My phone connection is always with me and offers convenience and finally the 3G modem is cheap enough it’s worth keeping as a backup and for connecting my laptop on the go.
Personally i see all of these connections being combined into one device capable of providing and sharing a fast connection at home and on the move. That device may just be my next iPad…. If i need to download anything truly massive (such as iTunes purchases) then i can use the free connection in the local shopping centre, or in work. Though, that said, with the connections being as cheap as they are. There is no immdiate rush to be rid of them.
I suppose, where i am now may just be the limit of what i think i can handle when it comes to devices and connections. 4 devices seems pretty absurd and i expect at least one will never be replaced. 3 connections is pretty mad but then with the low cost and high convienece it’s no bad thing.
In my personal future, not far out (3 years perhaps) i think i will own less devices and pay for less connections. If i had to guess i think the iPad would take over and with it a single mobile data plan for use at home and on the move.
iPad (3rd Gen): First Impressions. =================== posted: 18 March 2012 featured image:
So, Apple released a new iPad. Unsurprisingly its faster than the last version and has better specs in keys areas. I own the original iPad which is starting to get long in the tooth. I picked up an iPad 3 to give it a whirl and see how it compares to my 1st gen model. These are my first reviews after a few hours with the device at home.
The one line review would be: Great screen. doesn’t feel slow. It’s thinner, lighter and has a better case.
The Packaging is simple to open and robust, the first start process takes you through a few screens before landing you on the home screen.
It took me a few minutes to get a few of my favourite apps installed. From opening the box to reading my RSS feed in reader was around 6 minutes.
I tend towards using the iPad for media consumption. A mix of reading, web browsing and watching media streamed from the iMac. The new screen makes a big difference to all of these activities. Text is pin sharp and easier to read.
The increase in resolution makes a noticeable difference to the 720p video files i stream from the iMac. Colours are better and the whole picture is sharper.
The extra resolution in safari makes text and some screen graphics super sharp. However, images and other page furniture can appear blurry if its using an image. The blurry edge to text rendered as an image is very noticeable and distracting.
I skipped the iPad 2 as it offered little more than my original iPad. Skipping a generation has made the differences more pronounced. The screen improvement alone is worth the upgrade. Combined with the thinner and lighter form factor the new iPad is very compelling.
A few hours in and the new iPad is making a good case for itself. It improves on my first generation iPad in almost every area. If you own a 1st gen iPad then it looks to be a worthy upgrade.
Image Credit: The image for the header is from Simon Page’s great wallpaper collection Do yourself a favour go get one!
Exploring HiDPI in Mountain Lion =================== posted: 1 March 2012 featured image:As a heavy user of Mac OSX screen zooming, i thought it was time to take a good look at what the Mountain Lion Beta offers in the shape of improved HiDPI support. I wondered if HiDPI could provide an answer to my vision issues.
HiDPI (High Dots Per Inch) is the Mac implimentation of the double resolution technology used on the iPhone 4 and shortly the iPad. However, as we dont have the super high resolution screens for our Macs yet, the net result is a doubling in the size of everything in the Mac UI. This means that for every 1 pixel at normal resolutions HiDPI uses four. Even though all the graphics have doubled in side most things stay pin sharp. (more on that later.) This massively aids readability and visibility for poeple like myself with poor image processing.
In past versions of OSX doubling the screen DPI broke the UI quite badly. I last tried HiDPI when Snow Leopard came out, and most things were visually broken. In the screen shot below of Coda the task bar is completey screwed. Still usable, but only just!
This is to be expected, HiDPI is not a released. It’s hidden away in the developer tools for a reason. So last time i went back to my normal screen zooming technique. With the release of Lion and Mountain lion many site reported that HiDPI was more robust so i felt it was time to give it another go.
27” iMac, thinks it’s a MacBook.
I have installed the Mountain Lion beta on my 11” MacBook Air. Its my personal machine and not used for work, so its a safe place to experiment. The inbuilt screen on the 11” MacBook Air is not compatible with HiDPI mode. Its too small, after the pixel doubling the resolution drops below the minuim resolution OSX requires. In order to use HiDPI i hooked the Air up to my work machine, a 27” iMac.
Even on the high resolution (2560 × 1440) 27” panel the workspace once HiDPI is enabled is only 1280 × 720. For context thats a little smaller than the resolution of the 13” MacBook Pro. However, its more than enough room for my day to day computing.
My little 11” MacBook Air is no powerhouse and running the large moniter at double resolution is a but much for it. Scrolling smoothly in safari is not possible. Scrolling in Chrome was smooth, however chrome was not being pixel doubled so the point it mute. Of course, the effect on battery life is not so important for this test. I’m using the iMacs display so its easy enough to just plug the MacBook in.
Overall i am very impressed with HiDPI. It really has lived up to my expectations. The only app i have noticed which dont support HiDPI is iTunes. Even then, iTunes still works, its toolbar is just a little pixelated. Another issues is web page graphics. Text which once appeared sharp is not blurry and sometimes unreadable. Luckily, this is mostly adverts.
With the few hours i have been using HiDPI it has won me over. I dont plan to continue using screen zooming on my MacBook when i am at home. Screen zooming web pages often makes them fuzzy and browser zooming often breaks pages. HiDPI does not have this problem. Text is rendered pin sharp and reading is much easier.
2010 Mac Mini Review =================== posted: 10 February 2012 featured image:I know, its a bit weird, writing a review for something you have just sold… i agree it’s a bit daft but i thought it would be good to share my experiences with the Mac Mini for those who are interested.
I only owned my 2010 Mac Mini for about 6 months in the end. It was a replacement for an aging 1.66ghz Mac Mini i purchased in 2006. Over the 6 months the 2010 mac mini had been used a number of ways, as a normal desktop hooked up to a few different displays (a 24” Cinema Display, and a cheap Samsung Display) and as a media centre under the TV.
This review will try to both review how the Mac Mini performs as a desktop computer, and how it works as a media centre.
The Mac Mini is a very well designed little box. Inside its basically a unibody MacBook but without a screen or keyboard. This leaves you with a small, rounded aluminuim block with the port on the back and a DVD drive upfront.
The unibody construction is extremely sturdy, during my time with the Mini i dropped a few things on and it was completely unscathed. I do wonder why exactly a desktop needs such sturdy construction in the first place however it does add to the fit and finish of the product.
The ports are on the back of the computer, the highlights are a HDMI port, an SD Card Reader and a Mini Displayport. This means the Mini is capable of running two screens.
This is something i took advantage of, at one stage i had the Mac Mini plugged into a display on the desk, with a long HDMI lead connecting it to the TV on the other side of the room. This meant that we could use it as a desktop, and use it for playing back media.
Sadly, managing this arrangement is a little fiddly so we rarely used it. However, for occasional use it works well.
I was not that impressed with the HDMI port, no matter what screen i connected it too there were issues. On my Samung TV (a 40” 2009 model) the picture was terrible. Even after spending hours messing with TV setting i never got it to look right. The same was true of a 24” Samsung moniter i tried with the system.
However, connected to the 24” LED Cinema Display there were no such issues, so your experiences may be better.
As a small footprint desktop computer the Mac Mini performs very well. Handling all the day to day compuing needs easily. Its not a powerhouse but it was good enough for basic gaming and media needs.
The Mac Mini was also used for web design and development work. With 8gb of RAM installed it performed very well with fireworks and coda.
The Mac Mini also acted as a media server for the house sharing a large (multi-terabyte) iTunes library.
As a midrange desktop the 2010 Mac Mini performs well and will cover the needs of most. The small size, super low energy usage and near silent operation all add up to make for a well balenced and impressive package.
Alongside its role as a desktop, the Mac Mini was also purchased to work as a media centre. For a short while it sat under the TV connected via HDMI.
This is where the Mac Mini really underperformed, however the issue was only partially the hardware. While the HDMI port problems were annoying the real show stopper was the software. Much of our media is from iTunes, so that left us with Frontrow for playback. Frontrow has become extremely buggy and never ran smoothly on the Mac Mini. With OSX Lion Apple has dropped frontrow entirely.
Boxess & plex had many issues playing back iTunes protected media so they were not options.
I would recommend the Mac Mini to a friend, though with a couple of caveats. For desktop use its a wonderful machine, however it really does pay to pair it with a high quality moniter and Apple keybaord.
As a media centre, its only really an opiton if you are using something else (like an Apple TV) to connect to the TV or if your library does not contain any iTunes content.
I only briefly owned the 2010 Mac Mini, the frustrations with the screen setup and frontrow issues quickly made me annoyed and frustrated. After a short while it was replaced with an Apple TV and then a few months later it was sold to raise funds for an iMac.
Media Mac Mini Revisited (or why i sold the Mini for an iMac) =================== posted: 20 December 2011 featured image:I have written about the MacBook Air a few times before but I have not written about my total setup for a while. I have been running a Mac Mini under the TV as a media centre for a number of years.
However, with the recent move this had to change a little. I needed a computer to do my freelance work on. While I have the Air it’s important for me that I keep it for only personal stuff, not work. For me being unable to work on the Air is a feature. This left the Mac Mini under the TV for my work.
I moved the Mac Mini out from under the TV and hooked it up to a cheap 24” screen and decided to work from there. I put an Apple TV under the TV as a replacement. The Apple TV does a much better job than the FrontRow application, with the added bonus of having easy access to YouTube and Vimeo.
While this setup was fast enough it had a few limitations and frustrations; mostly with the cheap screen I had purchased. While the screen was very nice I never found a way to get it set up right. The colours were always wrong and the reflective bezel (reflecting the screen inside the inset) was extremely distracting.
Looking at my options I could see two choices, sell the screen on and replace it with a better quality screen, or swap to an iMac. I had decided against another laptop early as even a 17” screen would be to small and still require an external display.
The iMac was an appealing choice, the Mini caries a price premium for its size. Under the TV the small size was important, but on the desk its no longer an advantage. A quick look at 2nd hand 27” iMac prices meant that the cost to replace the Mac Mini and Screen with a 27” iMac was around £200. This compared well with purchasing a decent 24” screen, but was much less than buying an equivelent screen to what the iMac offers.
So I found a new home for the Mac Mini (thanks Gumtree!) and screen (thanks Jack!) and purchased a 2nd hand 2010 model 27” iMac. The iMac is a much more capable machine as both a media centre and a work station.
Another advantage to the iMac, is that the it can be used as a screen for my MacBook Air and my work issued MacBook Pro. This has proved useful a number of times already; it allows me to have both portability and power with my home setup. It also means when I am working from home, I can still enjoy a large display.
I am a long time fan of the Mac Mini, but I no longer consider it worth the time investment as a media centre under the TV. FrontRow has been neglected by Apple (indeed, removed from OSX Lion entirely) and the experience is poor. Frontrow is buggy and does not work smoothly with my large media library. Using it as a computer plugged into the TV is difficult and not condutive to productive work. For my TV experience, the maintenance free and power sipping Apple TV wins outright.
I did consider other options such as Boxee and Plex. These systems feel overly complex and they wont playback my iTunes protected media properly, which is a deal breaker.
The final use for the Mac Mini was as a TV recorder. In the end we used this rarely but the new iMac is capable of taking over this role. What’s more the iMac can do a much better job of decoding HD content and exporting shows for later.
The Mini did have a number of advantages over the iMac. The biggest being power consumption. The Mini when idle draws around 10w of power. The iMac when idle (with the screen off) uses around 30w. This is annoying but it’s the cost of higher performance. Both the Mac Mini and the iMac spend most of their time sleeping (where they both use around 2w) so its not too bad in reality.
As an aside, when playing back media thought the Apple TV I have observed the iMac waking, transfering the video file then returning to sleep. Whereas the Mac Mini was required to run the entire time when plugged directly into the TV.
As a media server the iMac is great, we use it to stream our iTunes library to a number of devices (AppleTV, iPad). Its also a great workstation. The iMac (quad core, with 8gb of RAM) is much faster than the Mac Mini for iPhone Development with compiling being 3-4 time faster. Whats more, when compiling the system does not get bogged down. Its far smoother handling large complex files in Fireworks and juggling multiple applications.
Finally, the iMac is somewhat expandable. It supports four times as much RAM as is currently installed and it even has a spare SSD bay which can be filled later.
Effectively, for the same cost as buying a nice screen I have doubled my computing power, got a gorgeous display for use with other machines and future proofed my setup for years to come. Bargain!
Living with the MacBook Air, 8 months on. =================== posted: 18 September 2011 featured image:I purchased my 11” MacBook Air back in January after a period of consideration. I brought it primarily too be my personal machine. For my university work and for my personal computing needs such as managing my photos, chatting online and using social media. I thought after 8 months of hard use i would report in on how the Air is to live with day to day.
When i first wrote about the MacBook Air one of my first take away points was that the Air is an extremely fast machine. While its CPU (a 1.4ghz Core 2 Duo) is not to quick the SSD makes it snappy for most tasks i use it for. This too largely still holds true, except that over time i have gotten use to the speed of the SSD and now everything else feels slow.
Over time i have gotten use to the speed and this has taken the edge of off the amazement. I am now use to the speed and expect it from every machine i use.
When i brought the Air i was torn between the 64gb SSD + 4gb RAM model, or the 128gb SSD + 2gb RAM model. My worry was based around how much space i use for storing my personal photo collection. With the macbook being a mostly sealed system i wanted to ensure that i did not run out of space.
In the end, i went for the larger SSD at the expense of the RAM. The model with the higher RAM was not available and this should have been a hint to me that more RAM going forward would be worth the expense.
My worries about space have so far proved unfounded, in the 8months since i purchased the Air i have only used 41gb of disk space. However, the Air is low on RAM and will get into difficulty when running multiple heavy applications (iPhoto + iTunes + Safari with 15 tabs etc). As the RAM is soldered to the logic board it cannot be upgraded, the SSD can.
I am an OSX & iOS developer so i had early access to the OSX Lion beta. The Air was only non production machine i could install it on so i installed it a few months before lion was eventually released. On the whole Lion is extremely smooth on the Air but there are a few limitations which cause me much frustration. For example, broken screen zooming (requiring a restart to resolve) and patchy WiFi issues. I understood what i was letting myself in for when i installed the Lion beta, but in hindsight it would have been better if i had not. As my personal machine, i want a machine that works, installing and fiddling with beta software is too close to work for me.
Although my uses have changed since i purchased the machine, one thing which has held the machine in good stead is its portability. Originally i was expecting to use the machine for 2 years more of university, in the end i took and early exit from university and took a job. However, the Air comes into work with me everyday. I use it at lunchtime and for managing my social life. Its become the computer i take most places. So much so, that i am writing this on a train back from a training event! Which leads on to my final point.
While i do love the iPad, the Air, for me is simply better as the one item i carry with me all the time. The iPad mostly stays at home and is used to consume media / web browsing. However, when mobile i vastly prefer having a proper keyboard and mouse and using the touch screen interface for writing is a miserable experience!
The Air is so far my favorite computer i have ever owned, its very portable, fast enough to be useful, and after 8 months of use continues to impress me daily.
Thoughts on the MacBook Air & why i have a non work computer. =================== posted: 28 June 2011 featured image:I grew up in the 90s and computers have been part of my life since a young age. We had a family computer since when i was in primary school and i used it for homework and researching things (such as lego instructions!). Since then i have always had a computer for work use but a few months back i brought myself a MacBook Air to be my “non-work” computer. This article looks a little at how the MacBook Air is for day to day use and looks a little at why i could never go back to having only a work computer.
Before going into to much detail, i thought i should answer the question about how i define what is a home computer. For me, my home computer is the computer which i am unable to work on. I don’t have my software tools to to work installed at all. My home computer is what i use once i get home to check on twitter, facebook etc. I use it to manage my media collections such as photos and music. I also use my ‘home’ computer for non work projects, such as study or researching lego parts.
As i would be using the computer for studying i knew i wanted a Mac. All of my study notes have been produced using Pages.app and the Macs include the Voiceover screen reader which i am very comfortable using. I did consider and research Windows 7 based options, but i was unable to find anything compelling back in January (however, now i would take a close look at Samsung Series 9!). For my home computer i wanted to keep hassle to a minimum so, for me at least, Mac was the way.
Once i had decided i was going to have a Mac, i had to make the choice between a desktop or a notebook. I went for a notebook as i would need to be able to take it into university with me. Once i had decided on a notebook this led me to the MacBook range. It was a close run thing between the entry level white MacBook, or the MacBook Air.
In the end i went for the Air, while the standard MacBook was more powerful it was really overkill for my needs. My main use for the machine is a little bit of photo editing and writing. I valued portability over pretty much everything else (as i would be carrying it around at uni and for years to come) and the tiny little air suited the bill. Another aspect which was important to me was that i could use the MacBook Air comfortably without a desk. The small size and low weight of the Air means that its more comfortable to use when lounging on the sofa. No desk required!
I cannot talk about the Air without talking about the cost! As i went for the larger 128gb system it was not cheap coming in at over £1000. However, as with my original MacBook (now on its 6th year and 3rd owner and still going strong!) i expect to keep this machine for at least 3-5 years if not longer, so i do not mind making a large investment now. I find Macs do retain their value well so even if i do sell it before hand i will recoup the majority of the investment. The only part of the spec which is a bit stingy is the minimal RAM allocation. The 4GB RAM option was unavailable when i purchased mine, so i am stuck at 2gb forever now. The internal SSD can at least be replaced in the future if i so wish, with 480gb models coming down in price.
As with any trade off, there are both pros and cons to using the MacBook Air as a home computer. For me there are two big cons, and two bigs pluses. Lets get the bad news out of the way.
The Air is VERY light on ports, the two i miss most are the SD card slot, and an ethernet port. These two ports would make my life easier! The second con is that the hard drive space is limited. While i am still only just hitting the 69gb used mark, i do expect to hit the storage limit in a couple of years time.
The first big plus however is performance. As it has an SSD on board at a similar price point to the non SSD equipped 13” MacBook it feels far more responsive. For most of the things i use the MacBook Air for, this responsiveness is more important than pure grunt. Going from the Air back to my work MacBook Pro feels like quite a slow down!
The second big plus is again the portability! As the Air is so light and small, throwing it in my bag when i’m traveling or taking it into the office with me is easy.
I have explained why i choose the Air for my home computer, but you may still be asking why have one in the first place? Surely the MacBook Pro i have for work can serve my needs while also keeping my backup routine simple?
While the MacBook Pro is a very capable machine, it is, foremost my work machine. As i am self employed it has become increasingly important to me to separate between home and work to prevent myself undue stress and worry. Its way to easy to go to check my email, or to edit some photos and end up doing client work or worrying about a long to do list.
The Air however, is a separate system entirely. I cannot work from it (though i can stay in touch with clients, an important balance!). This means that when i leave the MacBook Pro in the office i have no ability to work even if i feel i should. This helps to reduce my stress levels enormously and has helped me to relax.
Another benefit to having the Air is that it means that i am not so worried about its condition or its data. I consider the data on the Air somewhat expendable (i have multiple backups) and while i would be upset if the Air was damaged it would not have any wider financial implications. I feel happier leaving my essential work equipment in the office, rather than carting it around the country with me!
Although i am talking about the separation of home and work computing there is one interesting side benefit of having the Air. I have a greater understanding for the computing environment of the majority. I know most people don’t have Airs; but the setup and use i have for the air, mimics how most people use their computers. This mindset i have found to be a big change from the mindset when using work computers. It has provided me with some insight into how most peoples use computers.
So with all that said, what do you all think? Should i have gone for something different? Do you separate you work and home computing? Let me know what you think in the comments!.
iPhone 4 Review =================== posted: 1 January 2011 featured image:6 months ago Apple released the 4th iteration of the iPhone. Apple’s industry changing iconic handsets latest incarnation brought with it a redesign of the hardware and a new name and update to its software. Having purchased the iPhone 3G 30 months ago it was time for me to upgrade my handset, my 3G had served me well, however it limitations were becoming frustrating. The opportunity came up to upgrade to the iphone 4 for a good price so i took it, this review is based on 4 days of use. I will be comparing the latest iPhone to my 3G and i hope this comparison is useful for people looking to upgrade.
The iPhone 4 represents the first major facelift of the Apple’s phone platform since it was launched in 2007. The 3G tweaked the designs of the original iPhone, then the 3GS the following year only made minor changes and performance improvements. For the iPhone 4 Apple changed the look and the feel of the iPhone completely. While it retains much of its original size, the new phone is a few mm thinner, the way its built has been completely changed. The iPhone 4 has a steel band around the outside, with all the other components secured internally to it. This band also acts as the antennae for the radios inside the phone.
Apart form the new shape, the two other main changes are the screen and the processor. The new screen (named the retina display) has twice the resolution of the older iPhones. This means that where there use to be a single pixel, there are now 4 pixels with the associated increase in image quality. The new screen is stunning, from the look of the icons through the to rendering of text. The new clarity greatly improves the visual experience of using the phone. Compared to the 3G the new screen makes a huge difference in day to day use. I feel less eyestrain when reading in bed and photos looks much sharper than before.
Another huge change in the iPhone 4 is a new generation of processors. The iPhone 4 shares the same A4 CPU as the iPad. This quicker CPU matched with a huge increase in system memory has had an astonishing effect on performance. Switching applications, moving around the phone and manipulating web pages is seamless. This added grunt also contributes towards the smooth experience when running multiple applications. Compared to the 3G this performance increase has made the largest difference day to day. Where as the 3G had started feeling slow (waiting for form elements to focus, items to load, the phone to unlock etc) the iPhone feels instantaneous. I intend for the iPhone to last as long as my last phone so future proofing is important to me, i expect the iphone 4 to last this period admirably.
Other changes to the hardware from the 3G include a much improved camera, a digital compass and quicker GPS. These hardware changes have had no effect for me so far, but its nice to see progress in these areas.
With the iPhone 4 comes a new name for the iPhone OS. Now renamed iOS its the 4th version of the iphone software. The biggest most noticeable change in iOS 4 on the iPhone 4 is the introduction of multitasking. I have used multitasking before on my iPad, but it was new to have it on my phone. The way it works is that applications join a bar along the bottom of the phone screen pulled up with a double tap of the homepage. This tray then shows a list of all your recent applications. Aside from the bar apps also retain their states, such as you can open one app, switch to another, then switch back to the first app to see it finish what it was doing. Im using the wonderful reeder application and im very happy with how i can load Reeder, switch to my email, then switch back to see my new feeds reading for my perusal.
So how does the multitasking effect the day to day usage of the phone and how does this compare to the 3G? In the first case it makes the phone feel more fluid, compared to the 3G its a welcome change. The multi tasking is very useful for applications dealing with communication, for example, IRC and text messaging. The ability to hold a conversation while dipping in and out of IRC is very useful.
The 3G’s in then out approach was fast, but not as quick as the switching on the iPhone 4, this small difference is appreciated but the saving of app states is a more readily useful feature. While the speed helps to keep the experience seamless, being able to pick up where you left of makes the experience a single action. A subtle but important difference.
So, after all those changes what is the iPhone 4 like to live with? In short, more of the same, only faster, and with more polish. While others have had problems with reception i have seen a marked improvement in call quality with the iPhone 4 in my lo-signal flat. Day to day the phone is much quicker to use and feels more solid in my hand. It a pleasure to use the phone and in my opinion Apple have kept ther lead in the smartphone game.
Macbook Air Day 2: First Impressions & Benchmarks =================== posted: 13 December 2010 featured image:(note, this post was suppose to go online yesterday, but i did not have an internet connection so its going up a day behind schedule!)
Yesterday i posted the first in this series of posts about the Macbook Air, this post today is the first of the follow up posts. Today i’m going to talk about my first impressions of the Macbook Air (2010) and look at a few early benchmarks.
So, lets get started! Im going to look at what i love about the Air.
Unsurprisingly, the first major things about the air which has impressed me is its size and weight. It really is tiny and very light. Its a good comparison to the weight of the iPad, its light enough to pop into your travel bag without thinking. Next week i will be using it in uni for the day, so i will get a better idea of its portability then, but so far its very impressive. I have recently been carrying the iPad around with me, and i can swap the Air into its place easily. I will comment on its portability some more a little later in the week after a few days at uni and a train trip, but first impressions are good.
The next thing which is striking about the Air is its speed. While word processing, web surfing, emailing etc the Air has kept up easily. Applications load very quickly and the machine feel responsive. To see how the machine performs under some load, i will be testing it while it recording HDTV (on of the things i need it for) later in the week, but so far i have been very impressed with the performance.
Other areas which have impressed include the quite and cool running (its never even got remotely warm!), the battery life (i got 4.5 hours from the first charge!) and the sharp screen. The familiar macbook keyboard is as good as it always is and the multitouch trackpad does its thing very well.
However, all is not perfect with the Macbook Air, during my testing yesterday and after playing with the machine a bit i have found a few areas of weakness.
Hardware wise, the areas of weakness result from the compromises made to get the macbook so small, the machine is missing Gigabit Ethernet and a IR sensor. Part of how i would like to use this machine is as a media centre / server when its not in use. The requirement for an external IR system or to use a wifi remote and the lack of a hardwire port make the macbook less effective for this. Though, its not a killer loss, the inbuilt wifi is very fast for file transferring and streaming video.
In general use the only time i felt the macbook was overwhelmed was when reading a large (230mb) PDF. The PDF loaded very quickly, but scrolling was choppy. A quick look in activity monitored revealed that the machine was out of RAM. The paltry 2gb or RAM for a machine of this cost is disappointing.
The very limited hard drive space has led to a bit of space paranoia! Deleting install DMGs, managing media carefully is very important when you only have 45gb of storage space to play with. I have so far been living out of my dropbox, but if this machine is to work as a media center it will be relying on networked storage and external disks.
Talking of performance, i have run the first benchmark on the machine. I started with the simplest to run a benchmark called geek bench. Geekbench only measures the performance of the CPU and ram and it came out with a modest score of 1898. This is not very impressive (my current 13” MBP score 3,700 or so) however it does not look at hard drive speed or graphics performance.
Compared to the Mac Mini this will be replacing its around 300 points slower, compared to the new Mac Mini (2010) which is the other contender to replace the Mac Mini is a large performance drop with the 2010 mac mini putting in a score 45% higher than the Macbook Air.
As a final note, light weight is not always an advantage! One of the issues with the light weight is that when on my meta desk the laptop bounces up and down as i type!
Today i will be running the Macbook Air as a media center, and benchmarking its video converting, and TV recording powers.
Macbook Air (2010) =================== posted: 11 December 2010 featured image:Purchasing a Mac (or any computer) is never an easy decision. Comparing models and identifying needs is part of the process for most people. This is a the first post in a series about the 2010 MacBook Air, rather than simply review the unit and give my impressions. Im going to share my thoughts over the first week. If the Macbook Air has not impressed me after the first week then it will be returned.
When walking into the Apple store today purchasing a new computer was on my mind, though i was mostly looking at the Mac Mini. I have run a Mac Mini as a home media server now for many years, however the recent upgrade of TV (now with integrated HD freeview) has led to a huge reduction is how much we were using the Mac Mini to watch live TV. As i’m rather obsessed with power usage, so this reduction has been greatly received. Around the house there are 3 main devices which get regular use.
In the house there are 3 MacBooks of various ages; my work machine, jimmy’s (my flat mates) personal computer, and an older white MacBook which i use as my home machine (trying to separate work computing and home computing). There are also a couple of iPhones and an iPad.
The Mac Mini was the central hub, we collated our media libraries there, used it as a backup location for time machine and then had it for Live TV (using an elgato stick and their excellent software).
The future for the Mac Mini was to either replace it with something capable of recording live HDTV, or to to put the White Macbook in its place. The driving force behind reducing the number of computers in the house is 3 things, power usage, maintenance (i don’t want to have to backup and look after so many machines!), and simplicity. With both the Mac Mini and the White Macbook spending 60%-90% of thier time idle they were simply not required. The white Macbook was to be taking over the media and TV recording duties of the mac mini and all was well.
So, i found myself in the Apple Store, getting the screen adaptor to plug the mac mini in the TV and pricing up a new Mac Mini when i got speaking to the Apple store staff.
To replace the Mac Mini was going to cost around £550, for a machine which would spend so much time idle this seems a little steep. While discussing the old mac mini with the Apple store staff, they suggested that the new Macbook Air (the 11 inch) would be faster.
So with this in mind i picked one up (an 11inch base model Macbook Air) and will spend the next week testing the system to see if it fulfils my needs. I will be blogging about the process here, with my thoughts as the week goes on.
The genius in the apple store confirmed, that i have 14 days to return the product for any reason, and it not being fast enough (while they contented it would be) would be a valid reason to return the MBA for a refund.
So, in summery my requirements of the machine are as follows:
I hope that this post is of interest to others, if the MacBook air proves to have the power i require, then the sale of the White MacBook and the Mac Mini will more than cover the cost of the Air.
If you have any questions about the macbook air, or would like to ask me to run a specific benchmark, then let me know in the comments.
13" MacBook Pro (2010) First Impressions =================== posted: 10 April 2010 featured image:
So i am writing this on my new MacBook Pro, this is not my first Mac but it is the first time i have owned a MacBook Pro, having used MacBooks for the last 3 years or so.
My last MacBook was the 2.4ghz Unibody model from 2008, while i loved this machine very much, i missed the firewire port. With the new batch of 2010 models coming out and a decent offer on my macbook, i took advantage of education pricing and upgraded for a few hundred pounds.
When comparing the machines, there were a few area which really drew me to the MacBook Pro to make the investment:
While my old MacBook had a decent battery life (up to about 4 hours) i was starting to come up against the edge more frequently. I have been away from power for longer periods at university. I think the longer battery life of this machine will hold me in good stead for the next two years of study and work. I am looking forward to the next barcamp when i wont have to worry about loosing power right before my presentation!
The other big hardware difference would be the new IO options. As i mentioned in the introduction my misgivings about the lack of firewire port on my old Macbook turned out to be true. While i have been working around the limitations, a few things i have been wanting to do have not been possible for example, i often work from home where i have a iMac, the ability to pop the MacBook Pro into target disk mode and use it to boot the imac means i can take advantage of the great iMac screen. The SD card slot i have played with and generally i like it, am looking forward to playing with booting from it in the future.
Not all of the changes are hardware based, this is also the first time i have been running snow leopard on my work machine. I have been using it on the home machines for a while, but as my work machine was running fine i held off upgrading. The migration was quick and i have found a few bits very interesting:
So thats about all, overall i found the migration went smooth and quickly (even if a dodgy router was mucking me around), the machine feels quick and responsive. The screen has blown me away and overall i am very very happy with my purchase.
note: This article was originally published on my tumblr blog. The original can be found at my old tumble account
Usability; some resources from the indie world of mac development. =================== posted: 30 January 2010 featured image:For this weeks post, i thought it would be good to share some of my favorite sites for design inspiration and input. I try to avoid always looking at websites when i am thinking about design. I have found a rich vein of sites focused around mac software and software usability which are always interesting to read.
UI & us is a blog about user interfaces, user experience and usability. Its written by Keith Lang who is a UI designer probably best known for his comic application skitch (which use to be distribute with all new macs). This site is a great resource for Keith’‘’‘’‘’‘s often in depth and though provoking thoughts on UI trends and specific UI issues.
A great example of one of Kieth’‘’‘’‘’‘s experiments and one of my favorite article is Rethinking the Inspector in this post he explores a new way of interacting with inspector palettes and shows a video demonstration of his ideas. A very thought provoking and interesting article.
This great little blog provides great in depth views around mac software design. The UI roundups are great for keeping a finger on the pulse of where Mac OSX is heading. I also love the styling and design of the blog itself. Its visual simplicity is elegant, the use of textures make the design echo mac software and a high quality printed book feel.
Although i have not been following this blog for long, i have found many great links and interesting discussion pieces on the site.
Ignore the code is the personal blog of user interface design Lukas Mathis, Much like the other links this site is a great resource for in-depth articles on UI trends and analysis. Full of interesting articles and the occasional video or link this is a feed worth following!
The post Flatland from a few months ago discusses how user interfaces can cater for both the new user and the experience user. I find this article fascinating and it has influenced some of the systems i have designed since reading it. One of the 10 articles i feel all designers should read.
The links above are only a small insight into the multitude of great resources out there for mac software developers. If you have any other blogs, journals or resources you think deserve to be in this list then please let me know about them in the comments!
2008 2.4ghz Unibody MacBook Review =================== posted: 15 January 2010 featured image:I first moved to the Apple Macintosh platform back in 2007, from those early days the MacBook was my trusty work machine and this new machine has continued this trend. 14 months after i switched from my original MacBook its still going strong.
When this machine was released it was the first of the new wave of unibody designs. This means that the case of the laptop is milled from a single block of aluminum. This leaves a light, rigid product with a classy finnish.
Having owned the previous plastic model i found the new finnish to be much more resilient to small scratches and denting. The older models would be covered in small hairline scratches after a few months which although not effecting the performance of the laptop would be mighty annoying after investing so much. I am happy to report that even after 14 months of use there are no scratches visible on the lid or the base of the machine.
One of the advantages of the all metal construction is strength, as i found out after owning the machine for about 3 months after the machine was dented. Although the machine dented it was fine, i feel that the older MacBooks were more brittle so i have been very impressed with the new case.
With the new models there also came a couple of smaller changes, with the biggest (and most impressive) being the new all glass fronted screen. Taking a few design cues from the Aluminum iMac the screen is surrounded by a black border. Having had a shiny reflective screen on my original MacBook i am use to the reflections, however the new screens are more reflective. I would argue this is not a huge issues but something it will catch you out! Luckily those times when reflections are an issue you can normally move the screen or increase the brightness to compensate.
The final, change was the inclusion of a backlit keyboard option. If like me you work a lot in the evenings then this optional extra is a god send. A gentle glow from the back of the keys works wonderfully to reduce the eye strain of typing away! Its one of my favorite changes and to me is worthy of the upgrade cost alone!
However, as with anything all is not perfect with this machine, my only functional gripe about the machine has to be the lack of ports. In between this and the last model apple dropped the firewire port. Although the firewire port may not be that important to everyone it seems silly to exclude the people who use it, on a machine this expensive it seems a huge missing piece rendering the machine far less useful.
On the other hand, Apple are well known for introducing the new and removing the old, they were the first to drive adoption of the USB port and they were the first to stop supporting floppy disks. Apple argued that most consumer users (the target audience for the MacBook) never used the firewire port, and that their 15†models retained the port for the pro users who required it. Although this may work for many, for myself the size of the 13†model was the main draw. When i was choosing my machine the screen size was the deciding factor. Apple reversed the decision a few months later when they bumped all the unibody MacBooks up to be Pros. Very frustrating for people who had invested in this generation of machine.
Ultimately this MacBook has, and continues to serve me well as my work machine. Coupled with the fantastic Cinema Display in the office it makes my ultimate work set up. Its portable, powerful and reliable, while also being able to be mated with the larger display in the office.
Project52 (better late than never) =================== posted: 12 January 2010 featured image:This post is the first in a series which are being spawned by a little project called project52! Project52 is a website which was dreamed up by anton to get more people writing! Its a simple concept, write one blog post, per week in 2010!
This post is a little late (and to be perfectly honest is only getting written as i am bed ridden with the flu) but to start of i thought i would post about why i am going to subject you dear readers to 52 posts this year!
Like many web designers i seem to be forever redesigning and developing my own site, its gone through no less than 6 versions in about 3 years! however in all that time i have only really made about 10 decent posts! Opps!
So in many ways i’m hoping project52 will get me witting more. I’m hoping that if i write more then hopefully the quality of what i write should also improve!
So thats about it for this first post, late how it is, however i am now (as in, in about 2 minutes time after posting this) going to get onto my next post which is about the tools i use to do what i do!
Stick around for more posts soon, and if you really must comment feel free to do so below!
Standards.Next - Cognitive Accessibility: =================== posted: 20 September 2009 featured image:Wow, some days are hard to sum up in words, images, or, well anything which you can put on the internet. This makes writing a blog post on the train home from an awesome event a little more difficult! I will start at the beginning and see where that leads.
A few months back the wonderful @iheni (henny swan) contacted me wondering if i would be interested in doing something for the next Standards.Next . For those who do not know, standards next is a semi formal un-confrence which is focused around the future of the internet. Or maybe it is, its mostly a gaggle of geeks geeking up for an afternoon of interestingness! Of course, its also followed by going to the pub….. or at least it is chronologically followed with a trip to the pub, a great example of how chronological order many not always be the order of incentives!
Anyway, i digress, so in responding to henny with a resounding yes i was set to go and speak at this event, the topic gave me time to ponder. What on earth is cognitive accessibility. (what you cannot see is that i need to use the spell check to to spell it!), cognitive accessibility is (i think) making websites easier to use by thinking about the thinking of the perspective user. Its a win win way of looking at accessibility, the ultimate aim is to make things easier to use for people who may have a cognitive issues, however the result is that it is easier to use for everyone.
I spoke after the interesting antonia hyde quickly running through some slides to give a quick base on what autism is (i think, maybe) and then did a Q&A with Henny around the use of screen reader by visual users and adaptions you can make to get your experience of the web better for you. The Lion was very nice and did some slides for me which i have uploaded as a PDF!
It was fascinating to learn about how active the area of research around usability is being taken, Watching how it works in the real life for others from David and Antonias perspective was fascinating. There trundle though their experiences really opened my eyes to how users process and interpret what the browser is showing them, was very interesting to see site like ebay and amazon taken apart to find the interaction friction.
David’s talk was more based in the running side of using iterative design and user testing to influence decisions, it was very interesting to hear how he approaches the conflict between what us web developers and designers think and what the user is thinking. His explanation on how they worked with the shure trust was very enlightening. He also wins top hounders for dedication having traveled from berlin just to present!
The final talk of the day was from Ian Pouncy, he recounted some great advice and considerations based on his work with yahoo and ensuring that as many people as possible can be empowered thoughthe use of the web.
With the days talks and discussion over it was time to head to the pub, it was amazing to discuss the intricacies of the user’s experience with so many people and to share a few photos and drinks. I would love to thank everyone who gave me feedback on my presentation, the feedback has been wonderful and as i sit here on the train home i am beside myself that it went down so well!
I would also like to thank henny and bruce for the opportunity to speak at such an awesome small event! In thanking them i must also thank Opera who supported the event!
So with all that said, well typed, i am going to go back to the train, and steal one of lions smarties!
A helping paw for Dogs Trust =================== posted: 8 August 2009 featured image:Sometimes someone asks you something and your only answer is to say yes, a recent project i was involved with was one of this times.
I had met the talented Alex McGibbon at the recent bamboojuice conference after chatting online. While we were enjoying the fascinating talk by Dom Hodge i was showing him MicroSimple, a tiny content editing system i have been developing. He was rather taken with the system and agreed to help with the alpha testing.
For those not in the know, MicroSimple is a tiny little system i have been developing to help my clients edit their websites. With the simple aim of creating something clients would feel comfortable using; while at the same time building something developers could use to efficiently create small and simple websites without the complication & development cost involved with larger systems like wordpress, joomla or textpattern.
Rolling on a few weeks and Alex contacted me to tell me about the waggywalks.org.uk project he was doing for DogsTrust, one of the largest charities in the UK. He was looking for a system to allow the non-techie members of the DogsTrust team to edit and maintain the site. Microsimple seemed to be the perfect fit and so it was chosen.
I felt privileged and proud to be able to help such a good cause; MicroSimple has gone down well with the users and Alex. With both DogsTrust and Alex writing about how they found the system easy to use. You can read their thoughts over at Alex’s blog and the DogsTrust blog
So i would like to congratulate Alex on such a successful project, With 1000 subscribers already the waggywalks site has been a huge success for him and for MicroSimple.
Building My Mac Media Centre =================== posted: 10 April 2009 featured image:Inspired by a brief chat with Ryan on twitter this afternoon I thought I would take some time out to talk about my little Mac Mini Media Center. In this article I will take a look at the set up I have, give some hints & tips on things I have learned and talk a little about how this simple shiny device has changed the way I consume media.
The parts of my set up were mostly chosen for value, or because I could source them at a reasonable cost. All in I think I spent around the £600 mark to build this system over the course of about a year, with some of the deals around you could probably do it for less if you wanted to.
The two core elements of my set up are the Mac Mini itself and the screen it is attached too. This set up is aimed at a living room / lounge so I choose a 3�? Samsung LCD TV (a LE32A436T to be specific) as this TV was well priced and had all the ports I thought I needed. It is hooked up over VGA to the Mac Mini.
The Mac Mini is a late 2006 1.66ghz model, which originally had 512mb of RAM, I upgraded this to 1gb not long after purchasing the machine on eBay. The machine is on the GMA graphics platform, but I have found it to perform well for media tasks. Taking into account my screen is only 720p I am yet to meet anything the mini cannot play. It can multitask very well, often showing live TV, while ripping DVDs or transcoding TV shows for my iPhone. The mini will rip DVDs to the iPhone format at a comfortable 23-28 frames per second which is fast enough for my needs.
Much of the use the Mac Mini gets is for Live TV viewing, I use the fantastic Eye TV 3 software combined with their DTT stick picking up on Freeview Digital TV. The eye tv software also acts as a Full PVR allowing me to time shift, record, play and export shows for my iPhone and iTunes library. The software also provides me with a ton of other functionality but I will detail that further in a future post.
To round off my set up I have some additional storage and some better quality speakers. The storage needs of the system are handled by a Lacia Disk Mini I brought from a good friend Alun Rowe. It provides 250gb of storage attached via firewire. Although the Disk Mini is designed to sit under the mac mini, I found this raised the mini to high in the space I had available. To solve this issue I have placed the disk behind the unit the mini is on and used a longer Firewire cable to connect the two. This drive contains my 230gb iTunes library and is set to spin down when not used for 3 minutes or more. I find the drive generally quite though sometimes you can hear it vibrating away, a simple slip of old inner tube under the feet stopped the vibrations.
The system is rounded of with a set of JBL Creature Mushroom speakers, again brought from Alun. These speakers provide great sound and connect up to the mac mini through a 3.5mm Audio Jack.
The cables for each element are tucked away behind the unit where possible and I have tried to keep the front of the machine as clean as possible. This helps to avoid things getting in the way of the IR port for the mac mini remote.
Building this set up bit by bit has meant that at time the set up has been less than ideal, however it also means that I have had to connect things together in rather creative ways, sometimes with little success.
The Eye TV stick I already owned and was being used on my MacBook before I started this media system. The media system came about for a couple of reasons; first my old CRT TV died on me and I was needing to review the equipment I had and later, after I had picked a mac mini, to separate work life from home life and to enable recordings when my MacBook was unavailable.
The first item I brought was the TV, it was on offer on Amazon and it had the ports I thought I would need. The first tip is if you can, pick a TV with a VGA connection. Although I am aware that DVI and HDMI offer better quality picture, after a few attempts I have never managed to get any DVI to HDMI cables to work. They always seem to have the screen out of alignment or issues with the colours or in some cases banding and fuzziness.
Shortly after getting the TV I decided to get a mini to pair with it and my second tip comes regarding the choices of Mac mini, it is two fold; Don’t worry to much about spec even the slowest duo Mac Mini (eg mine) is more than fast enough to run this set up and fit at least 1gb of RAM or purchase a mac with it already when the machine has only 512mb of RAM, it would have problems running Eye TV to show and record at the same time. Upgrading the RAM solved this issue completely.
As I had purchased the mini and the TV without thinking that much about how they connected I was left using the Mac Mini’s inbuilt speaker. The speaker within the mini is not very good at all for watching TV and was a real issue. I tried a number of solutions to try and resolve the problem.
Attempt 1: Optical to TV.
My first attempt to get the sound on the mac mini to the TV, was to try and connect the Optical Audio on the mac to the Optical Audio on the TV. I purchased the required Tos Link cable and mini adaptors and plugged everything in, after much fiddling, growling and the occasional rawr from the lion I discovered that it was not possible to use the TOS Link port on the TV for input even though that is what the port is labelled as. The Tos Link on my TV is for taking sound from the screen out to audio equipment and not for getting sound out through the inbuilt speakers. So my Tip is Figure out how you are going to manage sound when you are setting up you machine, and make sure the labels on the TV mean what you think they do only by searching on the product number did I find out the connection was misnamed.
Attempt 2: 3.5mm jack to Stereo RCA.
The second attempt at persuading the sound to leave via the TV speakers was through the use of an 3.5mm audo jack to RCA left and right stereo cable. As my TV has the required ports I tried out this cable and found that like with the Tos Link the TV was not able to have sound from sound inputs while displaying video through the PC connection.
Attempt 3: HDMI
My final attempt was to use a 3.5mm Jack & DVI -> HDMI cable which cost me almost £30! This cable did not work very well at all. Possibly because HDMI is expecting Digital sound but is being supplied an analogue input, either way this cable failed with both picture quality and sound quality. I ended up returning the cable in the end and getting a refund. During this time I experimented with a number of DVI to HDMI cables and found one of them worked very well, I tried about 6 cables in total costing between £5 – £29.99. This is why I ended up sticking with VGA.
In the end I purchased a set of JBL mushroom shaped speakers to run the sound through. These speakers sound great and look great so I was happy with the solution, while it stings that I was not able to set the sound up with the TV speakers I am very happy with the end result. The JBLs sound much better than the inbuilt speakers.
To say the mac mini completely changed my life would be an overstatement, thought to say it has changed my TV viewing habits entirely would be and understatement. It’s somewhere in the middle. The mac mini has mostly automated my TV viewing, I have set up playlists for eyeTV to record programs as their air and I have the system export a fresh batch of this content to the iPhone each and every day. I now consume TV in particular on my terms and have been freed from the schedulers.
With the change in TV viewing there is also a change in viewing other shows I have in my library. I have ripped almost all my most loved DVDs and TV shows to the mini, which means I have them on demand. This can be very useful when I just wish to be “entertained�?. I have a series of iTunes smarty playlists set up to show me a variety of shows I like in a pleasing order. This enables me to sit back and not need to worry about whats coming up next. I quite enjoy the variety and unpredictability this adds to the viewing experience occasionally viewing shows I have forgotten I had. Overall the media centre has fulfilled its goals and has greatly enhanced my relationship with media and its consumption.
So, that’s basically everything up till now, if you have any suggestions for where I have gone wrong or wish to add to some hints then feel free to leave a comment.
The Humble Product Listing =================== posted: 4 April 2009 featured image:This blog post is just a congealment of my thoughts on product listing pages. These pages are the ones you often find on online stores where a number of products are available and they do what they say on the tin, they provide a list of products.
I was playing around with layouts for a client who sells beauty products a few days ago and this got me thinking about how i could optimize the list for their products.
The clients store is built on top of my own store system (called txp store) which i built with a couple of templates controlling how products are displayed. The general thought behind the pages was based on how many items i had to display, with one layout showing 5 or 6 products per page, and the other showing more than 20!
This is a factor which all the online stores i have built so far have had to deal with; the balance between the space given to each product and keeping the listing pages short and easy to use.
With making the best use of the space in mind i started to think about how i could optimize the layout. The layouts all consisted of broadly the same information, product name, price and description for example. If i was going to effectively display a larger number of products per page i needed to figure out the order of importance for this information.
This order of importance was dependent on the products in question and i came up with the following rough rules.
Images: For some products (eg; jewelry) , the most important piece of information was the image of the product, as this was vital to the selection process. For pages listing these products the image (or images) were everything, with the user making the choice on which products to investigate based on how the product looked. For products like this designs which give the products large images and plenty of space seemed like the ideal solution. Was pretty obvious really..
Description: For other products it seemed that the description was king. For example a store selling mountain bike parts. On this type of store the user is looking for a certain part to fit a certain requirement so the description (containing a specification summery) was vital. Price was still a factor but it was a secondary factor served on finding the correct product. A hint that the description is most important is when the client starts giving products huge titles containing a summery of the products spec.
Price: Some online stores are set up around being the cheapest for certain products. For this type of store price is everything, sometimes even to the exclusion of the actual product! Users are encouraged to browse and find something for the fantastic price they are being offered. A good example of this is online DVD sellers who have £5 sections which they promote heavily via email.
So what do you think? are these thoughts completely off or are they just something which is obvious? please let me know in the comments.
How do you coda? =================== posted: 22 November 2008 featured image:I recently upgraded to a one of those shiny new ‘unibody’ MacBooks. But for the first time since i have been building websites i did not install dreamweaver.
Dreamweaver is Adobe’s tool for professional web developers to develop sites with. The tool is aimed around the What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get model and all of the advanced features for database integration allows you to build a dynamic site very quickly. However, i never use it this way.
I hand write and craft all of my markup and backend systems myself. This results in far higher quality than the markup dreamweaver spits out as an estimation of what you want. So i was not using dreamweaver the way it was intended to be used.
Dreamweaver is also a very expensive piece of software. With the upgrade cycle looming i made the choice to look around for another option.
Quite a while ago now i downloaded Coda from Panic Software, after a quick play around i didn’t like it, it had some strange behaviors which made it easier for me to stick with what i knew. However with the recent upgrade to version 1.6 Coda is something i can actually start using on a day to day bases. So with the explanation of how i got here, lets get on with a bit of a review.
Apart from looking good coda offers some very apparent advantages over its competitors. The first of these is the flexibility of all the tools being a single click away.
Having all of the tools i need so close at hand has made developing XHTML & CSS templates much much quicker. Within coda you can split the screen up so that instant previews are available right below your markup. This has been incredibly useful and has led to a more agile development approach and more XHTML prototyping within my workflow.
Coda excels in other areas too, for example the ability to use an SVN repository from right within the app is far more powerful and flexible then what dreamweaver offers in it basic check in and out support. Having these more advanced tools right at my finger tips has helped me to use them on more projects. Smaller projects which may have once been completed without SVN (maybe due to time issues or just lack of clear benefit) are now being implemented into SVN as its trivial to do so.
These are only a few of the points which have made Coda good to use. I have not commented much on the code editing itself as this is about the same as any other tool. However Coda does have some quirks.
I would love to say Coda has no downsides or issues, however this is not something i could say without my nose taking a turn for the lengthy. Although the majority of my complaints are small issues, they negatively impact the user experience in mighty ways.
The first issue which still irritates me everyday is the block-editing system. By block editing i am referring to selecting and acting on a block of code in one move. Coda gets most of this right (I can select areas and drag them, i can replace entire blocks of code via copy and paste for example) however it falls over itself with the simple tab command.
Every code editor i have ever used has the tab key to format your code, with a simple tab you can move whole blocks into their desired place to make reading your code easier. For some reason coda ignores all this, and upon the pressing of tab it replace the selection with a tab. It refuses to move the code across the page!
The software provides a work around in the form of its block-edit system, however this system is clunky and fiddly. I would much appreciate it if they could just add an option to the preferences to
give me back my tabbing!
Update: Recently while surfing around on the internet i found the following Coda Extension: Tabster it fixs the tabbing issue hooray!
Coda also shows its young ages often with issues such as memory leakage and the occasional piece of odd behavior. This has been improved in the last few versions but it still has some way to go.
Coda is a fantastic piece of software for how it fits into my workflow. Although it has the occasional slip up it has made my work more efficient and enjoyable. Well done to those guys at Panic!
Upgrading Macbook Hard Drive. =================== posted: 24 May 2008 featured image:I love my MacBook, it has served me very well for the last year or so and apart from maxing out its RAM at 2gb i have not done any major upgrades. Well not until recently.
The MacBook is my main machine not only for work, but for media, communication and education. At the same time, it is my phone, my TV, my notebook and of course the device i use to make my shopping lists! Over the last year i have been steadily filling up its hard drive and with the recent addition of becoming my media center the storage needs have surged. so it was time to upgrade the drive.
The MacBook uses a standard 2.5�? Laptop hard drive, so sourcing a new drive was not difficult, in the end i went for a 320gb Western Digital Scorpio as this combined a performance and a storage upgrade. On top of that it is also advertised as quiet (though in practice i can’t hear my old one either).
As my current internal drive is of a decent size (120gb) and it still had 2 years of warranty left, i also purchased a SATA to USB case for laptop drives. This would enable me to use my old internal drive as an external portable drive in the future, and it would make doing the upgrade easier. Cloning my current drive to the new one, then installing the new one into my machine.
So, a couple days after ordering the new drive and case they arrived and i was ready to start. I decided too take a two step approach to performing the upgrade to minimize the risk of loosing data. I had decided to take a time machine backup, and leave it disconnected till i knew that my new system was running smoothly.
The first step was to place the new drive into the 2.5�? portable case and attach it via USB. As this was a brand new unformatted drive i had to use the leopard instal DVD version of Disk Utility to initialize it. In the end i went for a single large (300gb) partition which i named Macintosh HD to preserve the paths for things like my web development testing environment.
After doing this i downloaded and installed the excellent SuperDuper and used it to clone my existing internal drive to the new drive in the external case.
After a couple of hours i booted of the new drive to ensure that everything was working. After passing a few simple tests (starting a few apps, checking permissions) i felt the new drive was good and was ready to move onto installing the new drive into the MacBooks internal bay.
So with the booting drive safely inside the external case it was time to transition it into the internal bay. Before starting this i took a look inside the user guide (available at: http://www.apple.com/support/manuals/macbook/ ) which was helpful, but said nothing about how to swap the drive holder across. So after a quick bit of searching i found the following video:
I purchased myself the Torx 8 screwdriver at a local Halfords store and in about 3 minutes i had my new drive installed.
A useful tip which i found no where had mentioned, is that when you first go to boot your mac with the new drive installed it doesn’t do anything, the first time you have to start up while pressing the ALT key and selecting the correct drive to boot.
So with the new 320gb drive installed, i have plenty of room for my media collection, my college notes and my work files. Job done!
Accessibility on the fly =================== posted: 13 April 2008 featured image:I use a screen reader. I do, really, and i must admit, 99% of web sites drive me to spare. Even though i don’t like to admit it, even my own does. Time to explain.
The problem is with branding, and introductions, welcomes, about me and links etc etc. This sits above the main content on most pages.
Now, speaking for myself (and only myself of course) I have that content there for a number of reasons. Design wise it is useful, and SEO / keywords wise it is useful. However after the first landing on the site it is no longer important.
When i am using my screen reader I have to listen though the introductory content which i do not want to do. I can hear you all shouting now saying that i could do a “Skip to content link” I could break logic (for the content) and reorder the content or i could do one of many other methods to sort the issue.
The thing which gets me with almost all of the methods (except maybe the ones in the comments you will correct me with) have the major disadvantage as for when i do want the content its not where I want it. If i was to be going to the site for the first time, i would want to hear the introductory content only on my first page landing?
So with this in mind i was thinking about how i could manipulate sever side technologies, semantic markup and CSS to give me the content i want. After thinking for a while for a decent name, all i could come up with is Accessibility on-the-fly.
So in the terms of my first usage case (Introductory content on this very site) i need a system which would know if this is your first visit to the site; as such reorder the page content accordingly. To this end i would create a system whereby the standard page design would not have the introductory content then, if a new visitor arrives on any page they will be greeted with the introductory content.
The bit i would be doing different is to still have the introductory content, but placing it lower in the source order.
The idea behind this is to improve the accessibility of the page. No longer should i need to listen to the introduction, or a click a skip to content link.
As is my standard practice, I have only been cooking this up for a few hours. I would be interested in your responses or usage cases? Do you think you could do accessibility on-the-fly
Microformat tools =================== posted: 27 December 2007 featured image:The hCard microformat is a fantastic way of making the contact information on a page transition into other formats without needing to write tools to do it yourself, or support multiple download formats.
One of the key parts of this is for tools which will do that transformation. In this article I am going to talk about what some of the tools out there are, and talk a little about some of my own projects in this field.
A good example is converting your information to the vCard format (used by many phones, email and address book applications) or to a specific proprietary format like the one used by gmail.
In my opinion, if I am putting data or information onto the internet it is for one big main reason, for it to be used. Whether this is talking about the web development industry here, or a map on a clients site, the information or data I am adding to the web in my eyes is there for people to use.
If i think about the typical small company site I may be tasked with building, often one of the key aims of the site is to provide contact details. The web is an effective means of giving away such information and part of its power comes from the ability to search for it. Without using semantic methods (Be it RDF or Microformats) this process of finding the data is pretty dumb.
For a computer is is remarkably difficult to tell the difference between a registration number and a phone number apart. It can be done to some degree of accuracy (with additional information) but it is not a simple process.
It would be much easier (and more powerful) if the data is marked up in a way to specify more about what it is. This is basically all the hCard class names are doing.
This is not an exhaustive list of the services out there to manipulate with hCard data, but these are services which I recommend or I have played a part in building.
X2V – (conversion from hCard to vCard) this project developed by brian suda will transparently convert any hCard page into a download of a vCard. As far as I know this was the first tool for such a thing and the one which is most up to date with the specification.
hCard to Gmail – This is a service which I wrote a few months ago which emulates the service which Brian offers except this services instead provide conversion to the proprietary .csv gmail format.
hCard search engine – over at Technorati they have developed the hCard search engine. This is a good example of how the technology can be used manipulate the web in new ways.
I hope that in this article I have explained some of the reasons why I have a passion for micrformats and other semantic technologies. It is my opinion that the biggest thing any web developer could do now to start improving the web would be to start using technologies like hCards
After all, the hCard format and the microformats principles are a bit like the chicken and the egg. We need people to be using them, before the tools are developed, which in turn encourages more people to use them!
IE6 as a disability =================== posted: 16 December 2007 featured image:Accessibility, the process of making you site accessible to all, site statistics are not the defining factor, but doing things the right way. Well, we are lucky that in most cases accessibility and web standards go hand in hand but what about when they don’t?
Is there a disability which million of people worldwide have which wont benefit from liberal application of web standards? I think there is Its called Internet Explorer 6 .
In a nutshell a disability is when something or someone are lacking an ability. I know that is a gross over simplification, but stay with me a second, if we apply this idea to IE6 then maybe fixing its bugs wont seem so painful.
IE6’s bugs are notorious. Ask any decent web developer what they think of IE6s handling of anything from padding on floats to jogging text and you may end up comforting a man who has reached his end. Recently (as you may have noticed) I updated this site with a new design. One of the things which I started out with was to markup and style the site using firefox as my benchmark. I had several reason for doing this (not least the excellent firebug ) and I know I am not alone in doing this. I then launched the site without even looking at it in IE6.
Then I got a comment from someone “Take a look in IE6� so I pointed my newly installed IE4OSX at the site and began to bug fix. While doing this I was thinking about how much effort this was taking, I was growling about how much work I needed to put in because IE couldn’t do something properly.
This made me think of how much effort I can cause people when I cannot do something properly .
Thinking about this while moving about padding and margins I started to feel less hate for IE6 and more an understanding for its bugs.
Don’t get me wrong, IE6 is a very bad piece of code, and other web browsers which support web standards are certainly the future. But I found it interesting to think of IE6 as disability rather than simply a tool.
So with these thoughts running around my head I thought I would do a couple of things. First of all I have adjusted my attitude towards bug fixing for IE6. I still will not use anything proprietary but I am a lot more happy to sit and play with values in the CSS for a couple of hours to get basic display in IE6 working.
I would urge you that next time you find yourself getting frustrated with IE6 to wonder if your frustration is the same as that of the user of the humble screen reader.
So what do you think? Would you consider IE6 as a disability? Do you think I am wrong to say that a “tool“ is disabled? Let me know in the comments!
Welcome to V5. =================== posted: 11 December 2007 featured image:Its up, your even looking at it. May I introduces jkg3.com v5. Secured By Lions
If you have been following this site for a while you will know that there is a pattern to the design refreshes and updates. Typically there will be a new design update (like this one) every year or so, and there will be refreshes or slights changes every 3-6 months. In this article I am going to talk about what I feel are the important choices I have made in this design and highlight some areas which I think requires some explanation.
The design of this site has been evolving for quite a while, anyone who is unfortunate enough to be on my MSN buddy list will have been berated with various designs and asked what they hate. For this design I took what worked from the previous designs and mixed them up with some goals.
I will talk about the goals in more detail later. But for now I will sum up what the design had to do. It had to: Be easy to read, Reflect my personality and be distinctive. So how does this relate to the “cloud� Look?
The cloud part is representative of me or my world. As most people know I have autism, and I often find that “my world� is different to most peoples. This world tends to be away from the world and in this design it is represented by the big cloud which contains all the content.
If you think about going from the top to the bottom. First you have the large sectional links, these are outside of the cloud and provides links to organise it for the visitor. Below this is the introduction to the site and myself. This parts acts as the link between the outside and the inside, and it of course is guarded by Lion.
At the very bottom are a few of the things which are important to me. I will let you deicide what they mean.
One of the goals of this side was readability, to me this also relates to ease of use. Part of this was how to identify links to other places of the site and how to communicate this to the user.
When thinking about this, I thought of two things, and how or why they work together. Before you can use a link I have to identify it as one to you. To do this I am using text colour and feedback. Inside the content area of the site (my world) all links are in one colour. The aim is that this colour become associated with links by the user and they know what to expect. This is a good start but something is missing. The user needs some form feedback to confirm that this is a link . My method for this is to change the colour of the text and the colour of the texts background. More specifically the text colour changes back to the default, but the background changes giving the feedback for the user to be able to confirm it is a link. People have commented that this helps the ease of use, and in turn the readability.
I have a problem with my writing, I find it hard to keep things short! So if I want this content to be useful to people it has to be readable. There are a couple of factors which I have taken into consideration when designing for readability.
In this design I have a consistent structure. This is important because while reading an article I don’t want to distract the reader away from the content. The text sites in its column and the column has a clear space between it and the rest of the content. I am also using a lot of space between the lines, this helps to stop the text from merging and brings some definition to each line of text.
I like to think of myself as a pretty distinctive person, for this site I wanted to do something which reflected this distinctiveness and was original.
The inspiration for the design came form a number of places, examples include some of the excellent Skype Branding , Vector illustrations on deviantart and even my own attempts to recreate them . Mixing this inspiration with the things I have learnt from the many design experiments I have created my new site and (hopefully) achieved some of my goals.
So with all that said, what do you think of this version? Do you find the link text easy to use, what are your thoughts on the design?
Meet the new Cat: Leopard =================== posted: 31 October 2007 featured image:In case you didn’t know, apple released a new operating system for their Mac computers recently. Its called leopard and its quite good!
Of course, as a perfectly reasonable human being I decided I would wait a few weeks. Naturally less than 16 hours after leopard hit the web store I hit the buy button.
A few days later, a shiny box, filled with shiny disks arrived. As my whole life pretty much lives on my macbook it was very important this upgrade went well. So I hatched (then double checked online) a plan.
I am paranoid. So one backup, on one drive was not enough. Luckily I have two external drives so I could put a backup on each. I had a drive which was bigger than my boot drive, and a drive which was smaller. So it seemed like a good Idea to put a clone on the large drive and put a 2nd backup of all the important stuff on the other drive.
For the complete backup, it seemed wise to go for a complete clone solution. With this in mind I went and downloaded myself a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner . This fantastic little application makes an exact copy of you drive in a couple of hours. As an extra boost this copy is also bootable.
With my clone made, it was time to think about the safest route for the rest of my data. With the other drive I thought it would be a good idea to use the iBackup app to grab all my settings and data apart from my music and movies. So with both a bootable backup, and spare copy of the important stuff, it was time to give the upgrade a go.
(i)Backup in hand, it was the time to press the magic button and unleash the leopard. So, I stepped through the menus, Making sure to select “erase and install� and the next thing I knew it was verifying the disk and getting ready to go. At this point I got a phone call from alun rowe over at pentangle . This was two things. 1, well timed and 2, interesting.
So while leopard was installing, I was talking on the phone. Almost an hour later alun got home, and I had a new OS. I selected my options and the install was done.
After doing this I created a new account and the machine let me in for the first time. I was up and running. I didn’t have to make this account, but I though it was possibly a good idea to do this just in case the account migration process went wrong.
So, with leopard up and running it was time to import my user account. To do this I plugged in the external drive with my clone on. I then went to the utilities folder and started the Migration Assistant. I then selected my user to important and the migration was done.
So, the total time for this upgrade was just short of 2 hours. I had a couple of problems with migrating my data (you have to select the internel volumes option on Migration Assistant) and an it took me longer than expected to set up my modem. However, as my HSDPA modem is not that common I do not see this as an issue.
Overall the upgrade has been great, some of the new features are well worth the time and cost to upgrade. There are tons of clever new things but thats another post another day!
100th boagworld. =================== posted: 21 October 2007 featured image:Take 40 or so web designers, developers and the like. Introduce a reasonable amount of alcohol (in the preferred form of beer) and add some recording equipment and you are set to make a boagworld podcast.
With the plan to “make it like we are chatting in a pub� the boagworld podcast went rather literal for the 100th show. The 100th show party / recording was actually held in a pub so, in a strange sort of way, boagworld had reached its goal!
As my first web design event this seemed like a good one. I could go up to stay with a friend, it fell on a school holiday and it was going to be with a small friendly group of people. This was perfect for my first web event!We arrived at the event at 5pm. We met up with Yaniv who was the first person there all the way from Belgium! We had a quick drink (Pepsi of course) and a chat about web related stuff. About an hour later Paul his wife, and Marcus arrived.
The mingling started I introduced Lion to everyone and we all started discussing everything from web design to meta physics! At 7pm (or so) the recording started.
The first section was the news section. Normally this section is about the current news, but as we are recording the podcast a week ahead of time that meant that this was not possible. So instead we did a run down of the top 4 new stories since the boagworld podcast began in August 2005. I suggested a few and was recorded even submitting my views on one of them.
After this section we move onto Marcus’s bit… He talked about contracts.. well, actually, he talked about clients from hell (though contracts were certainly mentioned!) Marcus and Paul told the boagworlders about their worst client and the audience shared their anecdotes. After about an 25 minutes of talking we had a quick break and the chat continued unrecorded.
The third and final section was the “ask an expert� section. The questions ranged hugely. I am interested to how many actually make it into the final show… To me the most interesting question came at the end. It was also the most useful one to me (which may because I asked it :) ) It was talking about how to get into the web design industry and how the industry feels about qualifications. This was Very interesting as both Yahoo and BBC were represented and gave interesting points of view. I wont give away the podcasts and but the final debate proved to be very very informative and enlightening.
After the recording finished, us boagworlders gathered around for yet more chatting. I was lucky enough to speak with Ryan from www.havocinspried.co.uk and Paul from www.homeofmuppets.com we had a very interesting conversation about development methods and how to take site criticisms. We swapped contact details and I am sure that we are bound to get up to something interesting in the future.
At the very end of the event, I walked towards the tube with Tom Morris. We talked about semantic web stuff, microformats and various ideas about the future of the web. We also discussed more about careers in the web world and how we think we could fit into them. I enjoyed this conversation and I look forward to the next time I can meet such a knowledgeable chap!
Overall from the event I took away something which no reading can give you. I took away an impression of the community of the web design world. Its like no other. So, I would like to thank both Paul and Marcus, Chris and the rest of the organisers for a great mini event. You made my first web event something special and have made me hugely look forward to the next event I go to.. Again in a couple hundred episodes time perhaps? When you know please give me a call, I would love to attend.
The Art Of Yojimbo =================== posted: 6 September 2007 featured image:Sometimes, when floating about on the world wide web, you come across those little article that make you think a bit differently about something you do or how you manage something. A few weeks ago I came across such an article over at boagworld.com . It’s all about managing you ideas.
I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of ideas. During the day when walking into town, or to a meeting. During the evening when watching a Film or TV show. Sometimes these ideas are something that I need to act on now, other times these ideas are the sort of thing I want to hold onto, and other times still I have to communicate this idea for them to have any use.
I had historically tired to archive these ideas and thoughts inside my head. Inside Notebooks (in an untidy scrawl no one could read – lion) and sometimes inside notes on my laptop computer. I did this in such a way that I hadn’t really noticed that I was doing it. Anyone who knows me personally will know that I am the type of guy who always has a useless fact for any occasion and I am sure they would agree, I did use to store some strange stuff. But, I didn’t realise this was what I was doing. At least not until reading Paul’s article.
Paul’s article made it clear to me I had to find another way. In his article he talks about a piece of software for the Mac called yojimbo. Yojimbo is basically a database plugged into a pretty interface. It allows you to record notes, ideas, password and the like while tagging them for later sort ability at the same time.
To me, the key to this applications usefulness is the ability to tag, label and sort these items. This introduced the reviewing element into my “Idea Flow�. This sorting fettling, thinking about and sometimes deleting of notes has given me the power to make use of my ideas in a far more constructive way. I have been able to act when I needed to, and I have been able to develop ideas when they required it. With a new school year looming next week I have found a way to make the art of yojimbo work for me. Could you?
Tags, Tags, Tags =================== posted: 27 August 2007 featured image:In this short article I am going to take a walk though the world of tags. This article is first and foremost for my friends, In the nicest possible way I am fed up of being asked what the tags on jkg3 and flickr do. This article should explain.
At the basic level, a tag, is a lot like a keyword. It’s a word or phrase which helps to sum up the content to which it has been attached. This is most the obvious explanation of a tag and what most people will think of. People are use to using keywords in google for searching and this metaphor transfers quite well. By adding a tag to something (be it a photo, blog post or video) you are indicating that the tag is connected in some way to that item. You are also creating a connection between that item and others like it.
The connection between items which share a tag is something most people don’t even know they are creating. When you apply a tag you are linking that media or content to others which share that tag. These connections can simultaneously be local and global. These connections can lead to a new way of navigating the web.
Microformats… Microformats… Microformats. That doesn’t mean a whole lot to most. To be honest I don’t think it should. So, I hear you asking how does this “Microformatsâ€? this relate to tags. Well, “Microformatsâ€? provide a means of creating a standard tag standard.
This standard, coupled with the links I described earlier create a whole new way of browsing the web. For example, starting from this page using extensions like operator or tails you can use the tags I attach to articles to find out more. A good example is “streetwars07� if you use operator (a firefox extension) and then look under tagspace you will find a link to flickr which will show you all the photos from the drag racing day. This was not a link I created myself. All I did was place the “tag� out there an encorage others on the day to do the same.
So, with all that said, I hope you all have a better understanding of what I means by tags, and why I think they are so important.
The plight of the google bot =================== posted: 1 August 2007 featured image:I index websites, that’s what I do. Its sometimes boring sometimes fun but most of the time it is hard work. In this short article I am going to tell you about what I do day in day out. Also, I am going to tell you how you can make my life easier.
Oh, By the way, I am the google bot.
I don’t Look at the website as such, I look at the code. I have too because I am a bot, I don’t really have the ability to look at the page. So the code is all I get. This is where the first frustration lies, a lot of people don’t know how to code properly.
What I Need from the code is really quite simple. Its as simple as a meaningful tag here, or an extra attribute there. Really nothing difficult.
A good example is the DTD or the Document Type Declaration for its proper name.
The DTD is the complicated looking bit at the top of the page. It tells me the rules on which the page was based, and pretty much how I should interpret them. This is very important, but sadly many pages don’t have one. Due to the lack of the DTD I don’t know the rules of the page. This complicates my indexing and makes the content harder for me to understand.
By adding this attribute you enable me to have a starting point on adding your page to the index.
Now I know the rules which I am playing to, I can put them into action. For example the rules tell me that what I find inside a h1 tag, is the most important heading on the page. This is greatly useful for indexing the content on the page and determining how this page should rank for various keywords. The whole of the page is evaluated this way. But it is far more accurate when people use the right tags. So be semantic guys!
Often while indexing a web page I will come across an img tag. This tag, unsurprisingly, displays an image. My Issue is I cannot see these images because I am reading the code. Therefore my best bet is to read the alt tag, to see what the image is about. Unless an alt attribute is defined or the filename is descriptive I cannot get anything from this type of content. Not good.
These are the basic methods and best practise which will enable me to index you page well. There are many other methods which will help me index your page.
Well, That’s my manager deploying me, I need to go. Off to spider another page. Maybe yours, I hope I have a productive time.
Disclamier – This is written from the perspective of the google bot, is not aproved by google or in anyway adsociated with them. All methods mentioned are considerd best practise… they are frome experience!
Specilism o-ramma =================== posted: 29 June 2007 featured image:Recently when talking with Alun and some friends online the same comment has come back time and time again. “Jamie, You need to specialise” here is why.
Encase you don’t know (but i am sure you do!) a website is made up of several layers. Structure, styles and behaviour are just a few. Many web developers have a strong understanding of the technologies for each layer so they can bring a web site from conception though to final completion.
This works well when you are a lone developer. but when you start looking into working for studios and in teams you find that it works far better if you have specialists and a pipeline.
This method enables site of higher quality to be produced, because each element is made by an expert. The pipeline then provides the structure to do this quickly.
However, this poses a problem for people like myself because we have to chose an area to become a specialist in. I have interests in both the design side, and the development / code side
But i have to pick one. I need a wheel-o-specilism…
Have you had to make this choice recently? What did you do? Let me know by leaving me a comment!
The branding and heading article =================== posted: 16 June 2007 featured image:Recently i found myself on the wonderful forum which is boag world. This, in itself is not a new thing, i have been there before. What was new though was that i was posting. I was wondering around in the critique section, when i gave some critique which raised a question which i have now seen a few time. Should the logo and tag line be represented with heading elements?
Something which i see a lot, is people who are using the img tag to include their logo at the top or( increasingly) the bottom of the page. This image is (though not always) accompanied with an alt tag that reads something like “our logo”. This image is also often linked to the home page.
I am sure the logic is that the image is content and that it should therefore be represented in the structure of the page, after all you would like your logo to be a prominent part of how you web page is assessed for search engines and by other bots and spiders.
The code for something like this would often look a bit like the following:
<div id="header" > <a href="path to index"><img src="path/to/image" alt="our logo" /></a> </div>
After reading transcending CSS (a great read) i realized that the logo and tagline, are content of a page like any other. On the scale of things they are also quite important content, after all that is why you chose the words in your logo and you tagline so carefully. So surely they should represent the most important headings on you page?
With this in mind, i was thinking about how to best markup my page header… avoiding presentational code. This is what i ended up with:
<div id="branding" > <h1><a href="path to index">jkg3.com</a></h1> <h2>Somthing Different</h2> </div>
So, simply put, i have named the containing div “branding” as this describes the content. i have not used header because header is describing its position on the page (at the head) and the branding may not always be at the top of the page. I have not called it logo because it also contains my tagline.
Then i have used a <h1> element. My logic behind this is: When i was deciding on the name and the domain for my website (which in this case is the same thing) i thought about what the name means. I knew this was a very important part of the branding for my website and thus an important heading for the page. therefore i have made it a <h1> element.
A little about the anchor tag. Somthing i have often heard from other web developers, and clients is that they like the fall back navigation a clickable logo provides. By using an anchor element, set to display as a block, i have enable this to still happen, even though my logo image is set externally in the CSS.
For the tagline i am using the <h2> element. This is because when choosing a tagline i was aware that it was an important part of the branding; although, not as important as the logo. Using the <h2> element signifies this importance and should help spiders and bots to parse he page meaningfully.
So now we have the semantic XHMTL, what about the styling?
The styling to make this show your logo is relatively simple. Using Phark Image replacement, i have moved my text inside the div element -5000px to the left and then made my logo the background.
I have then set the contained anchor ( <a> ) element to block level so that it fill the space above the logo and enables the required clickiable link.
The CSS looks somthing like this:
#branding {
/* your logo or heading width here */
width: 200px;
/* your logo or heading hight here */
height:40px;
/* just to ake the exmaple clearer */
border: #CCCCCC solid 1px;
/* again for making the example cleaere */
background:#F6F6F6;
/* !importsnt this move the text out of the way to allow the branging / logo to show though */
text-indent:-50000px;
}
#branding a {
/*this sets the a element to a block, and enables the clickable region over the logo. */
display:block;
/*this helps to make the a block sit inside the h2 block.. this is not a requirement, but it helps with bug fixing */
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
}
#branding h1, h2 {
/*this helps to make the a block sit inside the <h2> block.. this is not a requirement, but it helps with bug fixing */
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
}
The comments explain what each rule is doing.
I am going to quickly sum up the advantages to using this method:
So here is another method for marking up branding on a webpage… what do you think? Leave a comment with how you feel!
Sunday Street Wars Photo Preview =================== posted: 11 June 2007 featured image:Yesterday, i attended sunday street wars at the smeatharpe raceway near taunton in somerset. on the day myself and Mike the other photographer took well in the excess of 5,500 photos and we are resonably sure we got at least one photo of every car in atendence.
We are going to be uploading all these photos as soon as we can, but due to the bulk, this may take a few days. So here is a photo preview.
All the photo will be avalible in full from the website, if you require higher resolution or professional prints please contact me, my details are on the flickr account and at the bottom of this page.
The preview photos are avalible at: this set on flickr.com
[UPDATE] the whole photo collection can now be viewed at this flickr.com photoset
SAEsational =================== posted: 4 June 2007 featured image:As i mentioned a few weeks ago, i have recently been looking at the options to further my study and eduction and wow, have i found a great place.
SAE Institute is a collection of studio / universitys based around the UK which teach new media. I saw thier advert in the mac format magazine and i phoned a few weeks ago to ask about the requirements for studying a course with them.
A long conversation later with matt – the course coordinator – he was going to go speak to mog (the head lecturer) and ask what he thinks.
After a call with mog, and the swapping of some e-mails, we had decided that i would come and see them in London.
So, a few days ago, i traveled to london, met up with alun for some lunch and together we went to meet with the people at SAE.
We first met up with Matt, who showed us around the building. In short the facilities there are incredible. Studio after studio and room after room filled with Macs of all shapes and sizes. Really amazing.
After this we met up with Mog and we talked about the course, the support options and their work ethic. This meeting went fantastic and upon leaving i had decided that that was the university for me.
The next battle is to try and arrange the funding. Should be interesting. But thats another Post another Day.
So with Alun disappearing of to a pub standards meet, i got back onto the coach and traveled back to Taunton.
As a brief side note. On the journey back i read Mark Boulton’s fantastic series of articles about designing with grid on my phone. Mark, great job with the articles, and great job with making it all work on my phone. Impressive!
So with that all said and done, the future looks a little more interesting. Lets see what happens.
Power Mac G4 =================== posted: 23 April 2007 featured image:I love apple macs. and now (at long last) i own one. Introducing My Power Mac G4.
Macs have a reputation of being expensive, although this is not always the case. after i found myself laptopless i needed to find a computer to work on. This presented a problem, as i only had around £100 and i had to find a machine powerfull enough to run macromedia / adobe fireworks 8 for my design work. Also as i had no facility to play back DVDs i would require a machine which could plays DVD’s.
So with this in mind i started looking around both online and in local computer shops. Not suprisingly i did not find much. the cheapest desktop machine i coud purchase secound hand was around £75. but this machine was 4 years old and did not have a DVD drive. It was a 350mhz compaq.
After a little more thinking and investagating i found a company offering an OS less AMD based machine for £179.The specification wasn’t to bad, but it was clear due to the low buget componants that this machine would need serios upgrading in the short term. Also, i would have to pay for a copy of Windows, as fireworks does not nativly run under ubuntu. So i was left thinking and saving.
Then whilst talking with a freind (you know who you are) they mentioned that the local collage was selling off thier macs in the art and design center after an upgrade. So i rushed over to the collage and i spoke with the tech support staff and they told me to come back later that week to collect a mac.
So later that week, i traveled back to the collage with a freind giving me a lift and i paid £90 for my Power Mac G4.
With 512mb of RAM. OS X 10.3.2 (i updated to 10.3.9) a 40GB drive and a 400mhz G4 this machine was resonably quick and very caplbe of running fireworks and dreamweaver. In the next couple of days i installed a DVD drive, and i had my sub £100 DVD playing, design machine!
Ubuntu VS. HP omnibook =================== posted: 16 April 2007 featured image:Recently a friend came to me with a problem, they had a HP omnibook XE3 that was running windows XP pro, but could not seem to connect to networks. After a little bit of looking around it seemed that this has been caused by a reinstall without the appropriate drivers. Seemed simple to fix so I downloaded the drivers and I tried to install them. From here on in the problem deepened.
The driver installer installed the driver happily, but when you placed in the wireless adaptor the new hardware wizard was unable to find the “file specified� to install the driver. After a bit of digging about online, I found an answer to the problem. The HP omnibook has some custom hardware, which is not included in the standard Windows XP install disk that had been used to restore the laptop a while before I got involved.
I looked online to see if I could find an original HP install disk, but no luck, so I started thinking outside of the box.
This laptop was only needed for checking e-mail, and a little bit of web browsing. This was a job fro ubuntu.
After popping into a local computer shop I walked away with the shiny install disks for ubuntu 5.10 “breezy badger�. However, I already knew that this version would not natively support the belkin wireless adaptor so I sought to upgrade.
After borrowing a friends Internet connection I downloaded the ISO for ubuntu 6.06 dapper drake (which I knew supported the adaptor) and I then burnt it to a disk. But sadly this did not go right. In hindsight I think I know why, I was using Very cheap disks which kept having errors when burnt to.
So the next step is to find some better quality disks, and to burn the ISO successfully. Then hopefully we will have a functioning, all but virus proof email and internet machine.
Watch this space….
Little Steps =================== posted: 5 April 2007 featured image:The bad news came in late last week; due to funding I would not be able to return to oxford in the near future. Dammit.
Well as they say, when one door close’s another opens, so I have been doing a little research into Courses and training in the web development industry.
Since I have been with pentangle I have learnt a lot. By working with the company and Alun I have seen the inside workings of an ethical web development company. I have the skills now to deliver the high quality sites and I have the knowledge to go on and develop more.
Interestingly, the web industry is not qualification led. It is portfolio led, and in recent months and years i have been amassing quite a large and strong portfolio.
With the recent sites like merritts lotus and only organic I have been building a very technically, and visually strong portfolio. It seemed like the time was right to formalise this.
This far ahead nothing is guaranteed but the signs predominantly seem good. I am hoping to start a Course in September with Sae UK which will give me the official qualification, and form there I can continue on and add to my degree study with the Open University.
So that the plan, lets see what happens.
Web Access (ability) =================== posted: 11 March 2007 featured image:In recent weeks i have been away from an internet connection where i am staying. This has forced me to use publicly available WiFi and to research solutions for a wire free connection in my room.
Naturally the first option i looked at was the conventional phone line options, this was quickly vetoed by the people who own the building. damn it.
Looking into my finances i relised i could afford a maximum of around £25 for the internet connection per month. So i went looking for some more options.
When thinking about my options, i identified some possibilities and methods. The first on my list was the option of using the 3G network with my mobile phone for an internet connection.
Looking around the various providers i found that t-mobile offered the best option with its web ‘n’ walk system. This offered laptop G3 modem though a new phone with a 3GB monthly data cap for £12.50, however a phone plan had to be purchased to work with this method and the cheapest plan was £20 bringing the total cost to £32.50.
The cost of £32.50 could be met, however, the 12 contract was not at all appealing. Next Method..
Across the road from where i am living, there is a company named Alpha trophies. and they have a Wifi network. I could connect to this network in my room but after speaking to them i was not able to come to an agreement over the use of their network So i Had to loo for another method.
After a walk around town leaning with my PSP and leaning against buildings, i found several hot spots in the town, including the one i am using now in a cafe, although this hot spots are free, they are only free after you have brought a drink, which turns out expesive over the course of a month.
However, there is a collection of hot spots called “the cloud” which allows unlimited accsess to all for £11.99 a month. So this is a Method i am currently using.
Look for an update soon, and a review of “The Cloud”
Earlier today i got confomation that i was going to be able to install a wireless router where i am staying for web accsess. So the issue is soon to be solved. Great.
A slight Change =================== posted: 1 March 2007 featured image:sorry about the late update, I have had a bit of an emergency move due to the place i was living kicking me out at very short notice. I am still without an internet connection at where i am staying now, but i do have access to a free wifi hotspot reasonably near by.
I don’t know how long i am going to be in staying like this for, hopefully not to long.
I will be writing in here more after i have got the logistics of my new life sorted out, stuggling with the change, i hate the change.
normal service should resume in about 3 days to a week time. with an article on the state of UK free internet access.
Right, i need to go, and get this project finished.
Blank out there for a sec =================== posted: 18 February 2007 featured image:Whilst redesigning the site i came across what seem to be a common problem with the textpattern CMS The blank page returned by a search with no results. So i tried to find a fix.
With a little bit of searching around, and a quick trip to the amazing textbook website i quickly found a plug-in which claimed to fix my little blank page problem.
The plug-ins name is rss_if_search_results and is another one of the great wilshireone.com plugins.
At first, this plug in seemed perfect for what i needed, It promised to alow me to display a useful message when no search results were returned, however, for some reason i was unable to get this to work.
After a little more experimenting i found the chh_if_data plug in and this post describing its use. The implementation of this plug in was not quite as obvious as the other plug in, so i feel the need to share the code ( love )
After installing the plug-in, go to you default page, and place the following code into the place you wish the search results or message to be displayed.
<txp:if_search> <txp:chh_if_data> <p>Here’s an article list containing your search inquiry</p> <txp:article /> <txp:else /> <p>No articles found</p> </txp:chh_if_data> </txp:if_search>
A nice touch when using the above form with the message displayed when results are found would be to edit the form named search_results to:
<p><txp:search_result_title ></p>
With this method in place, the blank screen when there is no search results is resolved.
Microformats, though the backdoor. =================== posted: 17 February 2007 featured image:I was reading the why micoformats site when i discovered that the hCard implementation at yahoo was done quietly by a developer. This is interesting, as i would consider from what i have heard (which is by no means authoritative) that yahoo is very forward thinking.
Talking about this in the microformats chat room, and asking about how the politics is where people work i realized how many people do things which i would consider wrong because they are forced to by the company they are working for.
An example from the room, was about doing presentations about standards and microformats. For this presentation they were using Microsoft power point, purely because they were as Microsoft reseller. I found that this is called “eating your own dog food”. Eating your own dog food refers to using your own software for means of testing and for have the same user experience as the client. it also shows confidence in the software or service.
In this situation, i would feel morally confused about the requirement to use power point, when S5 (the simple standards-based slideshow) was more suitable for the situation, and the person who i was talking to i think agreed. The reason why i would use S5 in this situation is that, S5 is a great example of breaking the mold of how people perceive the internet and hopefully this would make the talk more memorable, nothing like starting a presentation with demolishing old concepts.
As a talk on microformats which i believe was going to be made publicly avaliabe, the advantage of using S5 is also a technical one. Easy online implementation, no extra work or data replication.
These things got me thinking. How much pressure would it take to introduce microfromats to a large organization? How should new ideas and concepts be introduced to the cooperate environment.
In defense of eating their own dog food, i can see how this helps development, and i am not questioning how this effects the development of a product, but surely, when doing a presentation about a subject, using that subject as the means for you presentation would be really advocating its use.
Site redesign =================== posted: 15 February 2007 featured image:As many of you know, i have been meaning to redesign my website for many months, well, after the first redesign very quickly got on my nerves for both technical, and visual reason i decided i would have another go.
The though behind this design was that i needed to make something clean and readable. Another large aim of the site, was to have a template which was flexible enough to incorporate many different design layouts.
There are a few sections which will be having more work on them shortly, and there are also some ideas on the way for some really “unique” touches.
As always, for the backend of this site i am using textpattern which a few choice extensions (more on those in the future) and for the front end i have my own XHTML / CSS template. For a few of the more visual effects ( like this one I am using the tried and tested slimbox
I have also produced a cleaner implementation of the hCard microformat on this version of the site. It is sat there down in the footer. I will be expanding the use of microformats on this site further i also have some plans for different way of displaying the ones allredy in use.
So, that a little about the new design. I look forward to the comments and feedback, and when you do find somthing which is broken (because you are) please e-mail me before anyone else notices. i wouldent want my site in a mess no would i (actully dont answer that)
Laptop Doctor =================== posted: 10 February 2007 featured image:Doctor: hello lappy, whats the problem
Lappy: i dont know Doctor
Doctor: well what are the symptoms
Lappy: i find it diffcult to load in the morning, keep ejecting when i am sure i shouldent, and i am having great difficulty playing Dawn of War Dark Crusade and generally feel quite sluggish.
Doctor: is this a recent thing? or has it happend before
Lappy: the Dawn of War problem is doc, I use to be able to play it fine, no problems at all. Do i need a new processor doc, please dont say
Doctor: i dont think that would be possible, what have you tried allredy?
Lappy: i have tried reinstalling Dawn of War, i have defragged, run every antiviris and anti spyware scan. increased virtual memory. I tried that after i kept getting blue screen of death with memory errors
Doctor: hmm, i cant think of anything else you could, are you thinking of getting a secound opinion
Lappy: yes i am
Do you think you could help Lappy with his problems? if so please write it in on a pstcard to…... or, just leave a comment on drop me an e-mail
A little bit of complication =================== posted: 5 February 2007 featured image:Sometimes on my adventure around the internet i encounter things which remind me how “mindless” computers are. Often it is a CMS generated page that has nowhere to go next in a resonable place and annoying things like that.
I have found in the last h months i have seen less and less of this, but this evening while i was looking up how to set up my VPS server, i saw this beaty of an ad manaagment page.
This has been caused by an admanagement system which does not know enough metadata (data about data) about the advert it has been tasked with placing. This is not that uncommon, but it took my attension today as i have been thinking about this sort of thing recently.
The advert placement, and choice has severely damaged the accsessibility of the page. both visually and in the code.
The colors of the adverts, and the animation on the page make it very hard to read the pages content. And this is just the start of the issues with the advert placement. In Technical issues this advert in the middle of the page is not “contant” and thus is presentation and should not belong in the main content area. or should not be included into the structure of the document
I think it shows on the screenshot that the adverts are all form the same series in the campaigners campaign.
I have been experimenting with Microformats on both the publishing and parseing side and they have started to open my eyes to the way complicated data can be simplified with an agreed way of adding metadata.
I have been developing an advertisement rotation system recently, and this has highlighted the fact i need data about who the advert is for and what series of adverts it is from.
What can we do?
Thinking about the problem i can think of two items of data which organise the adverts better. this meta data is very simple.
the first, the clients name, the secound the series from whaich the adverts has been taken.
This would make the managment sytem aware of the cleints and client “seiries” on the page. so if a client has two adverts on the page, then they are two different adverts, not three identical adverts from a campain.
What other Benifits are there
other benifits include the ability to mesure the number of advert shows a client has had, and provide a more detailed break down of which type, and from which campaign.
how this could be implimeented is likley to be the subject of another post,
hCard to Gmail Converter =================== posted: 3 February 2007 featured image:This is my secound attempt at a hCard to gmail converter and the first using hKit this bookmark passes the Page URL to
www.jkg3.com/x2gmail/convert.php?url=[url here]
You can call this directly and it will produce the CSV download file.
To use this bookmarklet, just drag this to you bookmark folders.
have fun.
To Bristol and Back =================== posted: 2 February 2007 featured image:a few weeks ago, i had the pleasure of going to Bristol with my freinds sue and her charge. yesterday we returned.
Last time we went, myself and her charge went onto the SS great briston which is Brunels great steamship. This time i went on again with her new charge. he didnt seem very intrested, but this time i took the time to read all the history of the ship and to get a good look at all the displays. some of them are very intresting.
Here is one of the many photos i took while we were in bristol. (click for larger view)
see my flickr acount for more photos.
Last time after we went abord the SS Great Britain we took a ferry around the harbour and into the center of Bristol.
As we propelled our way up the harbour, the sun was setting. There was a man on the boat who was deaf, and i enjpyed signing with him for a few minites. Its very rare i get a chance to use my sign language.
When we got back into the town we walked back toward where the car was parked and we looked into an archutechture shop, and we had a look around thier gallery.
from there we walked back to the car and then traveled home.
however, this time, we went further into the center of bristol and we went and ate at the pizza hut. in centeral bristol.
from there we walked back though all the different bulding and traveld back to taunton from there.
My thanks to Sue for a nice day out and an escape from this hell hole where i live. Thanks Sue
hCard to Gmail. =================== posted: 25 January 2007 featured image:hCard, as you may well know is a way of adding semantic value to information about people on webpage’s. This is great, but for it to be really useful there needs a service which takes advantage of this and formats the data in a usable way.
There have been a few hCard to vCard sevices which are great, enabling you to get those bleeding edge hCard into contact applications like outlook, Mac address book, and even many phones, but what about internet clients?
How to get hCard to gmail
I am a prolific gmail user, being online it means that i can store things in one place and access it on my travels. However, gmail does not currently work with vCards, so if I wish to add a contact I have no way to do it automatically using the hCard data.
Well, I didn’t but I do now. I have been developing a conversion service just like the hCard to vCard but from hCard to the .CSV file gmail needs. This converter is only in the early stages yet, but should be online and open for use by the general public soon.
Also in development is a bookmarklet that will allow you to extract any hCard to you gmail contacts. Currently the system has some limitations but I am hoping to sort these out before it goes live… all I need now is the XSLT extension on my host to be sorted.
My converter is based on the awesome code of x2v written by Brian Suda, and Thomas Bruederli’s wonderfully useful vCard to CSV which is released under GNU GPL and was immensely useful when writing my hCard to vCard, Thanks Guys.
As soon as I get a service with XSLT up and running I will be placing the converter service online and I will be releasing all the code back out under the open source GNU GPL.
Untill i release my code i relise there is no service to convert hCard to the gmail CSV if that is what you are trying to do then i recommend this method.
Get the hCard converted from the page with the following bookmarklet (just drag it to the favorites bar, or add to favorites)
Then upload that vCard to the service at:
http://labs.brotherli.ch/vcfconvert/
Then import that file to gmail contacts.
If you have found this article useful, or want to contact me regarding the hCard to CSV converter then please comment or e-mail me.
JKG3 now on technorati =================== posted: 25 January 2007 featured image:I have used technorati for a while when nthis site was at its old adress, now i have configured technorati to point here instead. here is a link to my profile.
technorati is a ping based service which whatchs the world of blogs and image and video ect, and provide conections. take a look at any of the tags on this page (there at the top of the article…see them…good) to see where it will take you.
In Thame At Last =================== posted: 21 January 2007 featured image:well, somtime my hair brain schemes work. today is a good example!
early this morning i left wiviliscombe with sue and poly in the #bmw tourer, and headed for brisol. At 10:32am the exchange was made, and i swapped to alun in the exige.
So, thats it I am in Thame Again At Last
I dont have many plans for this week, but i will be doing things. tommrow at 1pm i have scedualed a meeting with the head of sixth form at my school, and both alun, sona aand hopefully rau are going to be coming.
I am also planning on seeing martin this weekend, i have phoned thier house phone to see if they are there, and i may walk around and knock on the door a little bit later.
I am really glad to be back in Thame, and i am looking forward to a great week.
Time to get moving =================== posted: 18 January 2007 featured image:At last, some good news. It looks like i will be returning to thame for a few days on Sunday. YAHOOOOO
me dances a little, then dicides he should sit down and clam down again
Earlier this morning my advocate gave me the idea of “going on holiday to school”, which basiclly means i will be marking myself as “on holiday” so i am able to go and stay with a freind in Thame I am for the first trip going to spend a week in Thame, hopfully i will be able to go into school for a few days and see freinds. I am also hoping to be able to see the people at the Chinnor Resorce Base, and find out the infomation i need.
I have been waiting for this for months, i have not seen my best freind Martin for 4 and a half months. I am really looking forward to seeing him in a few days time.
I need to thank Alun, and of course Sonja. Without you toos support this would not ba happaning. I also need to than my Advocate (you know who you are) for the wonderful idea.
Year 2006. What Happens Next =================== posted: 13 January 2007 featured image:2006 Was a very mixed year for me. In the bad we have the whole lack of somwhere to live, in the good we have the succsess of my job, and getting to the root of who i am.
As of Aprill 2006 I have not had anywhere stable to live, This has been hard. I have moved severeal time right across the contry and away from my freinds, work, and school. At the same time i started researching autism and what it actully means to be autistic. Again this was a large suprise, but i am glad i did it as i now have a far greater understanding of the why, and the who of myself.
Although i moved away from the office in Aprill, i have still done some work with pentangle. Up untill around september i was helping in the office and the office move. Thoughout this time and still now i am amazed at just how much Alun Rowe has done for me. for most people they never meet somone as nice or as caring. Thank you Alun. To this end, alun has kept me supplied with things to do, from exploring blogs, and advanced CSS, to learning the ins and outs of a Content Management System.
I am looking forward to what happens in 2007, I hope to be returning to my school and getting some more help to understand myself, and improve my social skills. I am also looking forward to continuing with my AS leveles, and then hopfully my A2s.
As an unexpected “event” at the start of this year i got back into contact with my parents through my sister. This was unexpected but defninitly noy unwelcome.
Even though there are problmes still now, i am looking forward to the rest of 2007. I am allredy enjoying the benifits of being able to be myself, and the benifits of being able to chose to have my best freind around me.
I thank everyone who made 2006 bearable. Let hope 2007 will be the year things really start going.
Decleration of verbal bankrumpsy =================== posted: 9 January 2007 featured image:So this is verbal banckrupsy. I hope i am clear.
All words are gone, to not return untill the time is near.
2
This is a decleration of verbal bankrupsy.
No words left to say, but hear.
From many to few in hours,
No new way forward
3
So this is verbal banckrupsy. I hope i am clear.
All words are gone, to not return untill the time is near.
5
This is a declaration of verbal bankrupsy.
No words left to say, but hear.
Inwards outward no problems showing
only inside they fear
7
So this is verbal banckrupsy. I hope i am clear.
All words are gone, to not return untill the time is near.
11
This is a declaration of verbal bankrupsy.
No words left to say, but hear,
Hear the tones, see the shapes.
but meaning is not here.
13
So this is verbal banckrupsy. I hope i am clear.
All words are gone, to not return untill the time is near.
.17
This is a declaration of verbal bankrupsy.
No words left to say, but hear,
inside the still and standard
understanding may appear.
19
So this is verbal banckrupsy. I hope i am clear.
All words are gone, to not return untill the time is near.
23
This is a declaration of verbal bankrupsy.
No words left to say, but hear,
I hope in time you come to see.
What i have been telling for a year
29
So this is verbal banckrupsy. I hope i am clear.
All words are gone, to not return untill the time is near.
31
I have had a busy couple of days, i have been developing things for this site, speaking with family (first time in several years) and have been reserching for another website and possibly a book. On top of this i have also spent a lot of time since the New Year fixing a mamber of staff computer (complete USB failure + no backup) and thinking about death.
On news years eve i am told, a freind of mine at school died suddenly from a colapsed lung. she was 16/17. I will write a post in memory of her soon.
Also i have been thinking alot about device intergration and standards, how the evolution of standards and formats can drive the sub-evolution of device interegration.
Thats is all for now, i will be be writing some more articles soon.
Happy New Year! =================== posted: 1 January 2007 featured image:Another year gone, another coming, I have many goals for this year they are far and ranging between technical goals to emotional goals.
This will be the year That i hopefully go back to my school to finnish my AS levels and A2’s. I Hope to go back to Lord Williams and the Chinnor Unit, I want this to happen so much, to be back with my freinds to be back with what i know. This is my main goal for the year.
I also want to be more useful to pentangle, and to help the web standards comunity. I believe i have somthing to give to the comunity and i want 2007 to be the year when this happens. I want to expand the work of other, and help develop the web of the world.
I want this year to be happier, I want this year to be the year when i start to feel comfortable as jamie, Autism and all. This year i will look who i am, and i will learn the skills to be alone for my life. I hope to be able to get the help to understand those things i do not understand. and i hope to be able to make more progress in my chosen feilds.
i hope that a happy new year is had by all, over the next few day i will be making my predictions and my rule and patterns for the year.
A visit from a freind, leaving one behind. =================== posted: 28 December 2006 featured image:For the last couple of days i have been staying with Sue, however today was my last day there. I was awake VERY late last night (more specifically this morning) I was sorting out Sues Vaio for her. Its an amazing machine, I REALLY like the vaio zone which is a media center system. I like it so much so that I am using a vaio launcher clone and I have downloaded a media center piece of software – still figuring it out – look for more posts coming soon.
but on with todays post,
Although, there were some issues (stupid register keys hiding in a protected state) but I go the anti-virus running, and made it find all of her media.
I am glad, that I spent the days with her and poly, i am really looking forward to going back soon.
Now, for the other big news today is that Alun came and visited me. He arrived at Sues just before 12 noon, and we spoke for a some time while i was packing my stuff.
From there Alun came back to the hell hole (future post on this place) and we were looking to go to Haynes motor museum, so after a quick trip back to Sue (i forgot my super bowl and hoddie – d’oh) we headed towards the motorway being guided by the TomTom.
The TomTom, was an interesting experience, it was easy to see how it gt confused, but it was interesting to note how it used its data to make the wrong decisions. when we eventually got to the motorway, we headed towards spark ford.
After lots of traffic and Alun rapidly running out of time, we decided we would stop for a bite to eat and then head back, he has said he will visit me again and we will go to the museum. Yay
I had a nice day with Alun, Its surprising how much fun and how many interesting convocations you could have in a car! I am looking forward to when he come again.
So, to sum it up, i had a great Xmas, and am looking forward to seeing these people again soon. So Alun, Sue, poly and penny thanks for a great few days.
As a final note, I have been moving some stuff on my “microformats quick start guides� website.
No back to the grim reality of trenchard park gardens.
Tags, Tags, Tags =================== posted: 24 December 2006 featured image:Okay, what is a tag? a tag is, a way of marking up the content of a blog post or page to enable services like technorati to spider them and sort them. You might ask why this is different to a normal search engine. Here is why:
A normal search engine only “spiders” your site for new content every few weeks at most. With blogs and other regularly updated content this means there couple be 10 or more posts on the site before a traditional search engine would spider them, this mean that the search engines index would be come old very quickly. So how was this solved?This was solved with a system known as “pinging”, pings have been used online for a while to check connection (for an example, on windows to go start > run > type cmd into the box, then when the command window opens type something like “ping google.com” this will then ping google) these pings are slightly different (they contain different types of data in something called XML-RPC and this ping alerts the search engine or ping service to your update.
Now we know how pinging works i can start to explain about tags. The tags proper name is a rel-tag microformat this is a microformat which is used so show the relationship of content to other content.
Rel-tags can also be used to show the relationship on links (for example, I can link to my own website and rel-tag it with “me” to show that the relationship my relationship to that link is that it is me!) In this way, when I add a tag link my journal i use the rel=“tag” attribute which tells services when they I ping them what sort of information i have on my site.
To get tag onto this site was quite an effort, but i will save that for another post another day!
The awesome FireBug =================== posted: 23 December 2006 featured image:Somtime, a very simple bit of awesome software comes along and it blows evrything away like a nukclear warhead in a kite factory.
The last time i had this experience was when i moved form using notepad, to dreamweaver, all of a sudden i had tag completion, and syntax checking, i was very impressed.
This time has now come again though, withing 30 secounds of installing the firebug extension I was on the phone to alun with the good news,
Firebug has way to many feauture to try to descripe.. thier website describe them better than i ever could, but i will give you an overview of my favorites.
Box model Diagram: i have below included part of a screen shot from my website:
This is usefull because it will be able to show colapsing margins and other CSS nasties live while you are looking at the page, this works nicely with my next favorite feature:
Quick and Easy Live CSS editing This is somthing that the firefox developmetn toolbar has doen for a while, but this implementation adds a few further useful layer with the ability to add, (and change) rule, by simply selecting the element you want to change. From here it will show you the cascade of styles.
Showing Where Element Rules Are From this si the first tiem i have seen an inspector which allows you to visully see the cascade of the rules. Also, as rules are overridden they are crossed out, meaning that you can see what rule are still affecting, and which are not, extremely useful when you need to to know where that annoying rule is hiding. This also help sort out and specificality bugs in you code very quickly rather then trying to figure it out in base 10.
I have only highlighted here, my favorite few feature, I havent even mentioned some of the one which i have only didcoverd in the last few hours. So if you are a devloping kind of person (or a very nosey person ;P) then go and download firebug, you will not regrest it
licks
jammie & lion
