Going mobile
Thanks to the ever-wonderful Stephen Fry for the heads-up on this one.
If, like me, you’ve ever browsed The Wolfs Howl on a mobile device like an iPhone or an Android phone, then you’ll be pleased to know that I have recently installed a great little plug-in called WPTouch. This small addition to the WordPress installation makes a big difference when you browse the site with a mobile, as it acts like a mini-App and presents the site in an easier to read, easier to navigate fashion that if you’d simply looked at in your mobile browser.
If you do read the site from a mobile device, let me know what you think of the change.
Lazing on a sunny afternoon
Ah, there’s nothing like it – the lazy life! It’s Saturday, so there’s no work, the sun is out and I’ve got no particular place to be.
I was actually up quite early this morning, and when I looked out of the window and saw glorious sunshine at 7am, I knew we were in for a good day.
First order of the day was breakfast. Freshly showered and dressed, I then sat down to a perfectly cooked bacon sandwich (they’re always so much nicer when they’re cooked by someone else). Having devoured this fine repast, it was a quick trip into town for some bike cleaning sundries.
Yes, it has taken six months but the Bandit is now back on the road. And I thought that, as she’s been a bit neglected recently, the least I could do was to give her a bit of a clean.
Of course, a freshly cleaned bike just cries out to be ridden so it was on with the gear and off for a quick spin. Despite not having ridden for six months, it’s amazing how it all comes flooding back within about the first six feet. You don’t forget any of it – the observational skills, the ability to read the road, the way you know what the guy in front is about to do even before he does; it comes flooding back.
And bike riding is just one of life’s great pleasures. You don’t need to be screaming along at 100+ to enjoy the unique experience that is a motorbike ride; pootling along at 30 can be tons of fun too.
50 miles of bliss later, and it was time to return home for lunch. A quick trip to the local carvery to satisfy the hunger pangs and now here I am, sat in the back garden in the sunshine, pint in hand and some tunes on the iPod. At this moment, I can’t think of a single thing I’d rather be doing.
Long may it continue.
Gadgety goodness
Anyone that’s read this blog for a while will know that I’m a fan of Apple computers; I use an iMac on a daily basis and I love the simplicity and the ease of use of the OS X operating system.
I’ve sat and watched numerous keynote addresses by Steve Jobs, demonstrating the latest software and hardware advances and I’ve drooled over them just like anyone else, and wished I had the wherewithal to rush out and buy them.
I’ve wanted an iPhone since they were released, but it costs a fortune and the phone functionality isn’t terribly impressive, from what I’ve read. Couple that with a low-spec camera and a bunch of included stuff that I would never use and I’ve steered clear.
Likewise, I’ve never owned an iPod. Again, high price for what you get. Couldn’t really justify it.
And then last week, I got given a second generation iPod Touch as an early birthday present (despite my protestations that – even at the Amazon price – it was way too expensive) and I’m totally hooked. In much the same way as when I first I tried using OS X I didn’t want to go back to Windows, I now wonder how I ever lived without this amazing little gadget.
Firstly, it’s a great little unit from a tactile point of view. It’s lovely to hold, and to use. It fits perfectly in the palm of your hand, and the much-talked-about multitouch screen is so smooth and responsive. Joyous.
Then there’s the fact that it syncs so seamlessly with my iMac. My current devices – a Nokia 6500 Slide and a Palm Tunsgten E – don’t, so they’ve become more and more sidelined over time. I used to put all my stuff on the Palm when I was still using Windows, because it was easy. With OS X, it only sort of works so I gave up.
With the Touch, it syncs with iCal, with iTunes, with Address Book, with Safari and so on and makes it all so much simpler. The addition of To Do from Appigo has given me a great task manager – which also syncs with iCal – and suddenly my Touch is indispensable. Just today, I’ve lost count of the number of tasks I’ve added and which – when I complete this post – are all completed.
And the Touch has become so useful so quickly because it is so easy to use. As the old Apple saying goes “it just works”. When the technology is so easy to use, it gets used a lot.
I can use it for email, for surfing the web, there’s a WordPress app so I can update this blog, I can track stocks, the weather, activity on Facebook and so much more. I can even – amazingly enough – listen to music on it.
So far, I haven’t found anything I don’t like about it – even the much-maligned standard issue headphones seem pretty good to me. All-in-all, if you’re in the market for a PDA or an MP3 player – or both- I’d recommend you take a look at the Touch.
Brief Notes
Once more, a little round-up of stuff that really needs to be commented on:
1. Apparently, 40% of all Twitter traffic is babble. As Stephen Fry has eloquently stated, that’s the point; Twitter isn’t supposed to be great debate or interesting chat, or even adverts for companies – it’s supposed to be a way to tell the world what’s happening in your life at this moment. Of course, that’s also the reason lots of people think it’s a complete and utter waste of time.
What bothers me about the report is that someone has gone to the trouble to analyse Twitter’s traffic in the first place. What, exactly, was the point of that?
2. It was the Eastbourne Airbourne show last weekend. Surprisingly (well, for the Council anyway – not for anyone with any common sense) now that it’s free again, the event was packed.
What I saw of it was pretty good, but the overall impression seemed to be of an event that doesn’t know where it’s going, isn’t as big as it used to be and isn’t amazingly well run. There seemed to be lots of commercial opportunities going begging, for instance.
Given that the show loses upwards of £70,000 each year – and over £360,000 last year when they tried to charge for it – someone really needs to take it by the scruff of the neck and kick it back into shape.
Either that or get rid of it for good. After all, the only connection Eastbourne has with planes is that it was bombed in the war…..
3. The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has been released from prison today, on compassionate grounds – he apparently has cancer. I imagine that a number of the victim’s families may feel that, actually, he should die in prison and you can shove your compassion up your arse.
4. Given all the furore over recent times about MPs expenses, you’d think that they would have learned their lesson and would keep their heads down about pay, etc, for a little while. But you’d be wrong.
Senior Tory Sir Patrick Cormack has said that, in return for scrapping MP allowances (second home sponging, spending sprees at John Lewis, that sort of thing), MPs pay should be doubled. Given that your bog standard MP earns nearly £65,000 I must admit to being utterly lost for words. How can he think that it is even remotely acceptable to reward fraud and corruption in that way?
5. Apparently, researchers in Canada have concluded that an attack by zombies would wipe out civilisation really, really quickly. It doesn’t seem to have put them off that zombies don’t actually exist.
They’ve tried to defend their work by saying that it “could help scientists model the spread of unfamiliar diseases through human populations”. The problem with that is that they based all of their assumptions on movies and books and, I hate to tell you this guys, that stuff is all made up. So, any conclusions reached based on made-up ‘facts’ are also made-up and therefore not worth the paper they’re written on.
And the professor who adds a ‘?’ to his name so he won’t get mistaken for the lead singer from The Cure? He’s a complete dick.
6. Finally, as a bit of a geek it always warms my heart when real geeks start to sound off about how the pretend universe depicted in popular science fiction movies wouldn’t really work. The latest one is an attack on the Star Wars universe. It may or may not be intended to be a joke – it’s often hard to tell with geeks – but, if they are serious, could I just point that (as with zombies) it doesn’t really exist, it’s just made-up to entertain people. You really should go outside more!
Brief notes
Some that slipped through the net yesterday:
1. New Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, seems to be picking up where his predecessor left off, at least as far as expenses are concerned. It has just been announced that he’ll be charging around £20,000 of “refurbishments” to his grace-and-favour flat to the British taxpayer. Mr Bercow, though, is “happy that this information is in the public domain, that the public know how this money has been spent”.
Would the public be quite so happy about it, I wonder? The £20,000 includes over £6,000 for a new sofa, £3,600 on planters for the terrace and over £1,000 to redecorate one room. Given that former Speaker Michael Martin spent nearly £725,000 of taxpayers money on the flat between 2000 and 2008, some might say that enough is enough and if Mr Bercow wants to redecorate he should do so from his own pocket (he is, after all, paid over £140,000 a year).
2. Lloyds / HBOS have announced losses of £4 billion, in the same week that both Barclays and HSBC announced profits of £3 billion. Lloyds / HBOS, of course, is the only one of the three to have been bailed out with taxpayer’s money, so it looks like we got value for money doesn’t it?
Wolfs Helpers
