At times wonderful, and at times totally frustrating too. That’s technology, my experience of it anyway. I do a lot of stuff with technology and I suspect I will continue to do that.
When Pebble was a going concern there were a couple of smart bands that appeared to add functionality to the Pebble watch. I liked the idea of these although I’m not sure that they were particularly successful.
The Apple Watch has had a couple of similar add ons with bands that add video capability and one that adds gestural control. I looked at both and decided that, whilst they were both interesting, they were both bulky and I knew that in the end I wouldn’t use them and they’d end up on eBay.
Now I wonder why these haven’t become more mainstream? It would seem like an obvious place to put more functionality and controls, but no one seems to be doing that. I do wonder if a future Apple Watch will bring that kind of functionality. One thing is for sure though. They’ll have looked at it, or they are looking at it.
Yesterday I got a bus to work, or at least part of the way to work anyway. Normally I would get a train to work, but the rail strike meant that I had to find other means. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge the strikes. Quite the opposite in fact. The rail network in this country has been decimated through privatisation and a constant lack of investment. The workers should be striking for pay and conditions.
Anyway, I don’t often get the bus, although I’m not averse to public transport by any means. But this bus was a bit different. Like many trains it had USB ports for charging your devices on the go. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that on a bus before. I was quite impressed.
As a user of both DayOne and WordPress I have been waiting for quite some time to see the promised integration of the two. Since the purchase of DayOne pretty much nothing has happened, which is kind of annoying. So I thought I would put some thoughts down on what I would like to see this year, although I have to say my expectations are pretty low.
Some real integration between DayOne and WordPress (you might like to know what I mean by that, so here goes)
Where you have both a wordpress account and a DayOne account, a simple way to link them
Assuming the above then an easy way to make sure that a post from a wordpress site is included in a DayOne journal entry automatically
The ability to post a DayOne journal entry directly to a wordpress site and link the two
For DayOne only I would like to see a better implementation of HTML
I really don’t think that I am asking for too much here. There was a promise made just after DayOne was bought out and I think it would be good if that was honored. Of course this is just my opinion.
I’ve had an Orba 1 for a while now, and when the Orba 2 was announced it looked like just the update I wanted. The form factor of the the devices are identical, which is good as the accessories all fit both devices. The original Orba was fun to play with but lacked the ability to use samples, amongst other things. It was still fun, but kind of like a musical fidget toy rather than something that I could finish a piece of music with, (not that I have finished anything in a very long time).
The Orba 2 is a different story. Size wise it is exactly the same as the Orba 1.
In fact they are almost indistinguishable. However, from a functionality perspective they are very different indeed and the Orba 2 is a big step up, as is the app that is used with it.
Thus far I’ve done little more than play around with it and tried out the sound packs that come with the app. I haven’t quite got the hang of getting my own recorded samples into it so far. But I probably will in the new year, or at least that is what I intend to do.
I’m not sure if there is any real benefit to having two of these. You can’t really play them together and I don’t think that there is anything in the technology that brings them together. Perhaps that will come later.
Anyway, for now this is a nice toy, and an improvement on the original. As I get more familiar with it I will post a bit more about my experience with it and maybe even make something to listen to.
All too often I miss interesting sounds. All too often I start recording just after it would be useful. I have often thought that what would be useful was a device that records continuously, but has the ability to capture the last fifteen minutes or so of recording. That would be so amazing.
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.
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.
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.
This device has been with me for seven years now, and so far I have never found a reasonable use for it. Most recently I tried to get it working again with a few ideas of what I might use it for. I bought this, or rather funded it on Kickstarter, and now, sadly, the company that made it has long gone. These things happen of course, all too frequently.
As a device it has a lot of potential, but potential doesn’t always equate to actual usefulness, or at least that is always the case with me. I have a few ideas about using it, or possible uses for it, but right now, as I’ve decided to revive it, I cannot seem to get it to work at all. Which is somehow typical.
I have a sense that this happened the last time I tried to revive it. I will continue to try and get it running again, but it may be that it has simply had its day.
I noticed a Rex device on eBay the other day and was sorely tempted. In the end I resisted though. Which is probably good. But it got me thinking about these kinds of devices. I’ve posted about these before, a number of times and there is a page dedicated to all things PDA as well. I wonder why credit card sized devices never took off.
I know that smartphones have taken over almost every use case of mobile computing, but I do think that the result of that is that everything is a little dull. Sure we have smartwatches and phones, but the lack of a variety of form factors makes everything a little too uniform in many ways.
I am Ashley Elsdon 