Yep, it’s time to get back to tinkering with an Arduino again. This time I’m hopeful that I’ll actually get something decent going with it. We’ll see how it goes.
Category: Tech
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.
Songkick
A friend told me about SongKick the other day and I found that there was a Spotify app for it too. It’s a really useful for finding shows for people in your music library, and the fact that it works inside Spotify makes it much more useful. I’ve already found a bunch of shows that I might go to now.
I suppose from that point of view it isn’t so great as actually it’s ending up costing me!
Impressions of Netflix so far
I’ve been using netflix on a month’s trial for just over a week now. It is useful, it is cheap for unlimited streamed video for £5.99 a month, but the big drawback is the quality and the consistency of the service. Sometimes it is just unwatchable. The picture quality can be terrible at times and then it just cuts out altogether, sometimes for several minutes at a time.
So, whilst it is fine for just catching up on shows on a small screen, like an iPad, I just wouldn’t use it on the big screen as I don’t think it would be watchable. So whilst I think it’s a handy service for catching up on things that I’ve missed, I can’t see it as being more than that until the quality improves radically.
As for the amount of material available, well, it isn’t wonderful to be honest. There are plenty of things I was hoping to find on here that aren’t, which is a shame, but maybe as it gains users in the UK it’ll improve.
Almost at the end of my Spotify trial
So, I’m getting to the end of my trial period and starting to wonder about whether to continue with the premium service or not. I have to admit that it’s very useful to have playlists on my iPhone. I haven’t particularly made use of SPAPPS so far, with the exception of the Last.fm app which is quite handy too.
So, is it worth the money? That’s the big question right.
Monotron cases
My new Monotron cases arrived and they’re lovely. I always like cases for things, especially little cases and it doesn’t get much littler than a monotron really.
The trouble with Netflix
Ok, just a few days into my netflix trial and I’ll tell you the biggest problem with the service. It keeps cutting out! It too me 21 minutes to watch the end of an TV programme that was 10 minutes long. Just because the service kept stopping.
Whilst that’s not the end of the world on a mobile device where I can do something else while I wait, if I was watching on a big screen and that kept happening with a movie, that would be unacceptable. I mean who would watch a 2 hour film if it took 4 hours to view?
No more app revisits
Well, there’ll be no more posts about old apps running on my iPhone 3G as I gave it away to someone who needed it more than I did. So from now on I’ll have to restrict myself to newer apps and see where I go using my iPhone 4 a bit more.
There probably won’t be too much less in the way of mobile music related posting, but not so much on the older iOS app front.
Finding something interesting to do with LiveView
Ok, I’ve been tinkering with the LiveView and to be honest, whilst it is interesting and it does demonstrate that the whole smartwatch thing has moved on since the Fossil Palm OS watch, I don’t have a real use for it in it’s current form.
I guess the main problem with it is that it doesn’t work with my iPhone, but also because the screen isn’t really designed to show very much information and isn’t too useful. My guess is that the next version will be better. From what I’ve seen so far the screen is much nicer and the device is a lot thinner too.
Having said that I’ve already decided to get a Pebble smartwatch and I think that will have moved the technology forward, and also, the Pebble will work with iOS, which is a big plus for me.
LiveView controlling music
So, I got it to do something slightly useful now. It can play music, although it has seemed a little random so far and control isn’t brilliant. It’s a step in the right direction though.
LiveView watch case
So I finally got the case thing going for the liveview. It isn’t too bad either. Certainly compared to the old Fossil Palm watches anyway, which were more like having a small brick on your wrist.
Anyway, this watch is much better as the watch part is just a clip on back for the device so you can take it out and use it however you want. Good idea really.
I am Ashley Elsdon 