I’ve been listening to the latest 4th Doctor story from Big Finish. Not bad on the whole, not the best, and I don’t think it’s as good as some of the Hornet’s Nest stories. Even so, it’s always good to listen to some Doctor Who, especially with Tom Baker in it, so it doesn’t matter too much.
Month: March 2012
App revisit: Spoke
This wasn’t one of the Strange Agency’s better ideas although the actual idea is a good one. I guess in any business you have ups and downs and the Strange Agency usually have brilliant ideas. Sadly, this wasn’t a great one. It works, but the implementation just wasn’t right.
I played with it again recently and whilst you can make a rhythm track with this it isn’t easy to get things to sound just as you’d want. I doubt that they’ll do much to update this app now, but even so, a good attempt.
Back to Notation
When Notion first came out it was a bargain at just $1 but I never really got around to playing with it. So I’ve started to get used to it now, and it’s a very powerful and yet simple to use to notation application.
The sounds aren’t too bad either although I’m not sure about paying for all the in-app purchase sounds as yet.
Suzanne Ciani – Lixiviation
I listened to this album for the first time yesterday. It’s a really interesting mix of her commercial and decidedly non-commercial work, although I’ve preferred listening to the non-commercial stuff most.
As an introduction to her music it’s quite interesting and will probably encourage me to listen to more.
The new Shada
I ordered the CD audio book version of the new Shada. It arrived. Given that the first version, the one with Paul McGann comes on just 2 CDs I was a little taken aback by this version. It’s over 11 hours long and comes on 10 CDs!
Well I guess it wasn’t kidding about it being an unabridged version.
Yep, that’s the Donut
It is beautiful to look at and amazing to play with, if a little difficult to get your head around. Still well worth it in my book.
Isle of Tune is wonderful
Of all the music games I’ve played, and I’ve tried to play as many as possible, I think that Isle of Tune is the most successful. But why? What makes it so good? I think the ability to be able to make simple tunes in such a playful way goes a long way toward making this one of the best apps that crosses over from game play to music creation.
I’m really pleased that it’s come to the iPhone too.
App revisit: Slice
I’ve mentioned before that I think that pretty much all the Strange Agency’s apps and this isn’t any different. Slice isn’t their finest, that’s for sure. Many of their later apps are far more interesting, but slice is still good, still fun to play with and still an interesting design.
New toy, new danger
I’ve always liked the idea of a PDA type watch. So much so that I actually bought one of the old Fossil PDA Palm OS watches years ago. It was something that I almost instantly regretted as wearing it was more like having a small brick on my arm.
So after that somewhat failed experiment I decided that I wouldn’t try wrist based devices anymore. That was until I saw this one, which is very small. I thought I’d take a picture of it to compare against one of the newer iPod Nanos. As you can see it is tiny.
It’s a Sony Ericsson Live View, which is supposed to connect to your Android phone/device and be able to communicate with it to show texts, twitter etc as it happens on the phone without having to constantly check your phone. Interesting idea, and as I was able to get hold of one very cheaply I thought I’d give it a go.
So far I’ve only just got it out of the box, but hopefully I’ll have it up and running soon and I’ll post some results.
App revisit: iSequence
Another app that seems to continue to work well on my 3G is iSequence. I remember when this app first came out. It was something of a revelation, and it’s still a very good sequencer for putting together tracks.
Anyway, it’s a keeper for my 3G music device and still works very well for setting up tunes either in their own right or for taking into something else to work on.
I am Ashley Elsdon 