ashleyelsdon

Arpeggio might still be a thing

Posted by ashleyelsdonon December 25, 2022December 22, 2022in TechLeave a comment

Back in 2015 I wrote about this device on Kickstarter. It looked like a cool idea and I backed it. Seven years later I have received nothing, and, what’s more, heard nothing for quite some time about it. Then, the other day, quite out of the blue, I got an update from Kickstarter. It appears that it is still progressing. Although the timeline is months away, apparently due to the global chip shortage.

Whilst I could take that as a good sign, I still have my doubts about this ever arriving in my hands. I had pretty much given up on it.

Of course this is always the danger of Kickstarter. There have been a number of things that I have backed that never came about. The most annoying of which was the Blocks Smart watch. That one in particular was annoying as they appeared to have spent a good deal of the money on enjoying themselves rather than creating a product. I got nothing back. It still hurts.

These days I am much more careful about what I back on Kickstarter, and I back a lot fewer projects. It would be nice if this one did come about, but in many ways I have resigned myself to never seeing.

The Wire top 50 albums of 2022

Posted by ashleyelsdonon December 24, 2022December 21, 2022in MusicLeave a comment

Every year I try to listen to The Wire top 50 albums of the year. It is a little ritual that I have been doing for a few years now. This year the last edition of the Wire has been delivered late, but now it is here and I am leafing through it. Normally I try to find all of the albums on Spotify, but there are always a few that aren’t there.

Some years I find one or even two things that I want to follow up on, and even if that doesn’t happen, it is an interesting experience. One that I find valuable even if at times not particularly enjoyable.

As I delve into this years selection I may post about things that I have found interesting. As yet I have no idea.

UFO is back

Posted by ashleyelsdonon December 23, 2022January 27, 2023in Audiobooks, Books and AudiobooksLeave a comment

I have been a fan of UFO for a long time now. In fact I like most of the work of Anderson Entertainment. Now, Big Finish have brought UFO back in a new series, and it is really good. I decided to get it without hearing it first, and it was well worth it.

I won’t go into details about the story as you might just be thinking about getting it yourself, but it is good. Really good. I’m looking forward to the next stories.

An update to thoughts on the HomePod mini

Posted by ashleyelsdonon December 22, 2022December 21, 2022in TechLeave a comment

I posted about this a while back and since then I have found a couple of additional uses that are vaguely helpful. Or at least they are vaguely helpful for me.

Alarms

I use a lot of alarms. A lot of things to remind of what I need to. Being able to have them on multiple devices might be useful. So far I’m not entirely how useful this might be, but I’ll try it out.

Timers

This is also a potentially useful feature, but again I’ll have to spend more time seeing just how useful it might be.

Like so many bits of technology that I have, I struggle to make them actually useful to me. These two features of the HomePod Mini might be useful, or at least it is a possibility, and one that I’ll try. I’d actually like the HomePod to do more, but so far I haven’t found any other uses.

Of course I do make use of it as a speaker, which is of course its primary purpose. In terms of that it works just fine.

Goodbye Mutable Instruments

Posted by ashleyelsdonon December 21, 2022in TechLeave a comment

I read this on CDM the other day and it made me think about when Bhajis Loops came to an end. If you were unaware, Bhajis Loops was an application for the PalmOS that was the nearest thing to a DAW for Palm devices. It lasted for some years, but, like all things, it came to an end. It’s creator went on to start Mutable Instruments, which has been infinitely more successful.

But the closing of Mutable made me wonder what, if anything, might be next. Of course the simplest answer is nothing at all, and that is entirely possible. In fact I’m not suggesting that anything will follow. However, if it does then I think it will be entirely unexpected.

Pebble Again

Posted by ashleyelsdonon December 20, 2022December 17, 2022in TechLeave a comment

If you’ve been here before then you may have heard me mention the Pebble smartwatch and have some idea of what seems to be some kind of obsession with making a pebble device useful again. Well, I’m sad to say that I am still trying. I had previously given up, but I couldn’t resist and picked up another one of these on eBay for a few pounds.

I have some ideas for how I want to use it, but I kind of want to get back to seeing how things are going at Rebble. Especially after their hackathon.

I suppose that this is really about an unswerving love of old, and even obsolete tech. I have a few ideas of what I’ll do with this one, and as things develop, I’ll probably post about how it works out.

A few initial thoughts about the HomePod Mini

Posted by ashleyelsdonon December 19, 2022December 16, 2022in TechLeave a comment

I like technology, although in recent years my relationship with technology has changed in a lot of ways. For a start a rarely buy new technology unless I have a real reason for it and a real use for it. In fact I have sold off a lot of technology. Mainly music technology, but a lot of other stuff too.

However, at times I end up with a piece of technology that I really don’t know what to do with. The HomePod Mini is one such piece of technology. Don’t get me wrong. It is a nice thing in itself. It works well. It does what it’s supposed to do. I Just wish it would do some more.

I’ve had speakers before. I had an amazon echo and really had no use for that at all. The HomePod is better, but aside from using it as a speaker it does very little for me. Perhaps I just need to try harder.

The Eugenics Wars

Posted by ashleyelsdonon December 18, 2022January 27, 2023in Audiobooks, Books and AudiobooksLeave a comment

I am a big Star Trek fan. I have been since I was a child. I have watched every episode and film and read quite a few books too. One of the best films, arguably is ‘The Wrath of Khan”. A great story that came out of the original story from the original TV series. But one question that always remained was, what were the Eugenics Wars?

I knew that there were books about these, but I always wanted read and never got around to it. So recently I decided to get these on audio books.

Overall they were alright. Not amazing, but alright. But I have to say that I was a little disappointed. I won’t go into why just in case you’re going to read or listen to these stories.

It fills a gap in the story line, but overall it is a bit of a disappointment. Not that it will stop me from watching, reading, or listening to more Star Trek. I doubt anything would

Masami Tsuchiya, Life in Mirrors

Posted by ashleyelsdonon December 17, 2022December 16, 2022in MusicLeave a comment

I have been a fan of Masami Tsuchiya for a very long time. In my teenage years I heard the album ‘Rice Music’, and it is still one of my favourites of all time for a whole host of reasons. However, my sampling of his other work has, for the most part, not resulted in a similar experience. Which is a shame, but something that I accept.

This album ‘Life in Mirrors’, was one I had never heard, and one that also featured other musicians who’s work I admire. Namely, Mick Karn and David Sylvian. I had this album on my want list at Discogs for a while, and then, just the other day, one turned up, so I bought it.

As albums go, this is no way as good as ‘Rice Music’. But then it was unlikely to be. I knew that. But, it does have a few good tracks.

Reviving a PDA

Posted by ashleyelsdonon December 8, 2022December 7, 2022in TechLeave a comment

Over the last few years I have sold off almost all of the PDAs I once owned. Probably a good thing overall, I had way too many of them to do anything with, and, for the last few years most of them languished in a drawer or cupboard for most of the time. I like to think that the ones I have sold off have all gone to good homes. Who knows.

What I have left is a handful a what I like to think of as select and somewhat unique devices. More about those another time perhaps.

One of the devices I have kept is a Palm Treo 750. A device running the Windows Mobile Operating System. I originally bought this with the thought that it would replace a Palm Treo 650, which runs the original Palm Operating System. However, not too long after I bought it the iPhone emerged and the smartphone era arrived in earnest. I kept both Treos and I still have them today.

I have often thought about reviving the 750 to see what I could use it for. To see how I could put it to real use, something I actually need it to do.

The first step is to see if it actually boots up. After all, it is old. But sometimes old tech lasts a lot longer than new stuff. It booted up fine. Which was great. However, I remembered one of the issues with the Treo 750 was the casing. For some reason the outer casing had become tacky and sticky. Very unpleasant to handle. For that reason I have this white case for it.

It makes it usable anyway. As you can see, the device is up and running. The next step was to get a SIM in it and establish if it could even send texts. Well, after some messing around with SIM card holders, I got it working and sending texts.

So far this has all worked well. Next comes the more interesting part, but that will require another post.