And then Launch Center Pro for iPad arrived

This has been a long time coming in my view. Launch Center Pro as a very handy app and well worth having if you’re trying to automate things on your iOS device. Now that it’s available for the iPad that represents a big step forward for automation and workflow.

Also it’s 40% off for launch (no pun intended), so it’s £2.99 right now.

If this then apparently not that (or when things go wrong)

Something I have relied on for a while now is IFTTT (if this then that). Today, it fell over. Here’s what they had to say about their issues:

Last night at approximately 10:00pm PST much of the work IFTTT does in the background stopped due to an issue with one of our backend services. Our monitoring systems would have alerted us to the problem immediately, but those unfortunately failed as well and we weren’t able to fix the issue until this morning at 10:00am PST.

Any affected Recipes should pick up right where they left off last night.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We know that many of you have come to depend on IFTTT in your everyday lives and we take great pride in that. A stoppage of work for this duration is unacceptable and we will do whatever it takes to ensure we get in front of these issues much faster in the future.

As always with this kind of thing you know that it’s going to get sorted, but waiting around is just a pain. It makes me realise that we rely on these services for so many things, or rather I do anyway, and increasingly, with the rise of the internet of things, these services extend themselves into the real world too.

Building an Android version of my buzzword generator

IMG_1134

I thought it might be fun to build an Android version of this little fun web app thing. I’ve been using MIT App Inventor as it’s very easy to use, in fact, much easier than I thought it would be to make this app. So, when it’s a little bit nearer to completion I might put a video up. I haven’t decided if I want to put it on the Google Play store, or if I’ll just make it available here.

Anyway, it’ll be coming along soon enough.

Loving messing about with littleBits Korg Synth kit

littleBits Synth with iPhone 3G and GuitarJack
littleBits Synth with iPhone 3G and GuitarJack

To the extent that I’ve been wondering about getting some of the other components to do even more interesting things with it. I’ve also been thinking about how to combine it with some of my other gear to see how it can work together. It really is awesome stuff!

I recorded some sounds from the littleBits kit using my GuitarJack line in and my iPhone 3G running FourTrack, which still works like a dream!

8th Doctor: Dark Eyes – The Great War

Dark Eyes The Great War cover

As I’ve just watched the entire 5 seasons of Primeval (more about that another time) it was interesting to notice that the voice of Molly in this 8th Doctor story was Ruth Bradley, who was in the last few episodes of Primeval. This first part of dark eyes is a great set up for the story, and even though I’ve heard it once before I’m really enjoying it. Paul McGann is such an unsung hero of the Doctor Who world. I personally think that his audio stories are simply excellent, and dark eyes is up there with the best he’s done.

So I’m looking forward even more to dark eyes 2 which is coming in the not too distant future, and also finishing listening to this story soon as well.

Getting back to some Windows Mobile roots …

These apps are so old that when they first came out we weren’t calling them apps. They were applications, or software! But they’re still good, still work, and are usable.

It’s all part of my ‘make the Axim’ useful project. I’ll let you know how it goes.