Author: ashleyelsdon

Storyteller - Poet - Explorer

Day One 2 arrives

Posted by on in Mobile ApplicationsLeave a comment

I’ve been waiting for this for some time now, and the new version of Day One (a personal journal app if you didn’t know) does look pretty good actually. Of course, it isn’t a ‘free’ upgrade. No, it’s a new app. I had suspected that it would go that way. I guess that’s ok. I know that it costs money and takes a lot of time to get new apps out, so you should expect it.

But it does look good though, and there’s a lot of new stuff in there too. I won’t go over everything they’ve done, because if you’re interested you can find all of that on their blog.

However, their roadmap is very interesting, because it includes:

  • Audio Recording
  • Places
  • Activity Feed
  • Night Mode
  • People Tags
  • Advanced Search (as a filter)
  • Publish 2.0
  • native embeds
  • attachments
  • and lots more…

That’s a good list. I especially like the audio recording option. However, one thing that I was expecting to see was IFTTT in there, but it isn’t there. Of course that doesn’t mean that it won’t be included. I really hope that it is.

I expect I’ll upgrade to it. Probably in the next day or so as it’ll go up in price soon. When I do I’ll let you know what I think of it.

Listening to the West Norwood Cassette Library

Posted by on in Listening, MusicLeave a comment

With a band name like that I could do nothing else but listen to them. I remember the days of using cassette libraries and borrowing tapes. All too often the tapes would be somewhat damaged and wobbly, but that was in many ways the nature of cassettes themselves.

Of course cassette libraries are all but gone now, but a band name like that makes me remember the old days, so, as I said before, I had to give them a listen, and guess what? Yep, I quite liked their stuff too!

Doctor Who, The Time Warrior, Sarah-Jane Smith’s first adventure

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Doctor Who, the Time Warrior
Doctor Who, the Time Warrior

This is a great story. Sarah-Jane’s first outing with the Doctor, and a great one to start off with too. Sontarans are always good fun right!

I hadn’t seen this in ages, but it really has stood the test of time, and, as ever, Pertwee is brilliant.

So Zapier releases Multi Step Zaps, or real workflows

Posted by on in TechLeave a comment

Now this is a pretty impressive thing from Zapier. In the past you could like one trigger or event to one outcome. Now you can use Zapier to build whole workflows with connected apps, and they have a lot of apps that are connected.

This is something I’ve wanted to see with IFTTT for a while but they’ve concentrated they’re resources elsewhere, and, to be fair, they’re much more of a consumer brand rather than Zapier who are very business focused. Of course, Zapier has to be paid for, and IFTTT is free (at least for now anyway), but even so, this is a big step forward for Zapier and I think it’ll make a lot of business processes a lot easier.

Finished watching Planet of the Apes, the TV series

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Planet of the Apes TV series
Planet of the Apes TV series

I’ve said it before, I’m a big fan of Planet of the Apes, in all its iterations. Of course, my favourites are the original films from 1968 to 1973. Above is the TV series which came out in 1974 and ran for only 14 episodes.

Having watched it again in 2016 I realise that it was very much like a lot of other TV series in the 70’s. Built to run as long as possible, with a handful (in this case 2 humans and an ape) of good guys going from place to place and doing good, righting wrongs etc. There are plenty of examples of this kind of TV show from the period.

The sad thing is that the TV version of Planet of the Apes wasn’t about the story at all. It started off being about the story and then devolved into a weekly story about going from village to village. When it ran out of episodes the series didn’t even end. There was no closure at all. It was a shame really.

So now I’ve only got one more DVD to watch. The animated series, which is apparently not bad. We’ll see, and I’ll let you know what I think.

3rd Doctor … The Mind of Evil

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Doctor Who The Mind of Evil
Doctor Who The Mind of Evil

This is a great old story 3rd Doctor story. An excellent performance from Roger Delgado and of course from Mr Pertwee himself. I really liked this story and it has been restored beautifully as well.

This version comes on 2 discs. The second disc has some really good extras on it and some very interesting revelations about how the production was put together and the issues that it faced.

The restoration job on the series was really good, both picture and audio. I have to say I was very impressed with it.

I’d seen this story on TV in the not too distant past so it wasn’t totally new to me, but it was good to see it nevertheless.

Mick Karn’s Titles, on vinyl

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Mick Karn, Titles
Mick Karn, Titles

I do think about Mick Karn’s music around this time of year. I think it’s good to remember him, and that’s one of the reasons I thought I’d buy his album Titles again, but this time on vinyl.

I do like vinyl. Originally I had Titles on cassette and not vinyl. Of course now I have it digitally, which seems like a bit of a shame.

You have to love something like Serendipity

Posted by on in Music, TechLeave a comment

I can’t think why I really like this, but I do. I think it’s a lovely thing, but I really don’t know why. It doesn’t fit my ideas of utility at all. If you’ve no idea about what I’m talking about, then you should know that Serendipity is an app built on Spotify’s API which shows where two people are playing the same song at the same time anywhere in the world. It is quite amazing to watch, but, as far as I can tell it has no real purpose. Not that it needs it though.