I am Ashley Elsdon

someone who's doing some things

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.

New toy, new danger

Posted by on in Tech

I’ve always liked the idea of a PDA type watch. So much so that I actually bought one of the old Fossil PDA Palm OS watches years ago. It was something that I almost instantly regretted as wearing it was more like having a small brick on my arm.

So after that somewhat failed experiment I decided that I wouldn’t try wrist based devices anymore. That was until I saw this one, which is very small. I thought I’d take a picture of it to compare against one of the newer iPod Nanos. As you can see it is tiny.

It’s a Sony Ericsson Live View, which is supposed to connect to your Android phone/device and be able to communicate with it to show texts, twitter etc as it happens on the phone without having to constantly check your phone. Interesting idea, and as I was able to get hold of one very cheaply I thought I’d give it a go.

So far I’ve only just got it out of the box, but hopefully I’ll have it up and running soon and I’ll post some results.

3G gave up

Posted by on in Stuff, Tech

I don’t know if you can see it but just overlapping the Apple logo is that spinning thing that tells you that it’s doing something, or in this case, doing something for about 2 days. My jailbroken 3G finally broke and I had to wipe it to get it to do anything serious at all. Will I go back to a jailbroken 3G? Maybe, I’m not sure as yet quite what I want to do with the thing.

The Internet of Things

Posted by on in Tech

Another thing I’ve been meaning to get my head around, and now I have a book to do just that. Problem is, I don’t have a netduino plus and having just bought a Arduino Mega ADK for £60 I’m not inclined to spend the same again so soon. So maybe things will have to wait just a little.

Thoughts about the iPad 3

Posted by on in Stuff, Tech

So I’ve had my iPad 3 for a few days now, and of course it is lovely and all that. So what’s great about it? Well, for me, the best thing about it is that it isn’t broken. My iPad 2 had a smashed screen which meant it was almost completely unusable for the last 2 and a half months. The iPad 3 is lovely from that perspective.

Aside from that it feels very similar. The screen is better, there’s no doubt about that, and whilst that’s great to have it adds little in terms of functionality for any music app, which is one of my main uses of the device. The camera is better so I’m told, but as I never really used the camera it doesn’t make much difference to me either.

So, whilst I’m glad to have a functioning iPad again I can’t say that the 3rd generation unit has overwhelmed me really. I think there was more that Apple could have done to make this an innovative device, but perhaps they’re saving that for another time.

Arduino Mega ADK

Posted by on in Making things, Tech

I sat on the fence about getting one of these for a while, but I eventually decided that I’d love to play with Arduino and Android and Processing all together. So expect some more semi-mobile geekery in due course.

VL-1 Arrived

Posted by on in Music, Tech

I had a VL-1 when they first came out, but I got rid of them. I wish I hadn’t. So I’ve finally got around to getting a new one, or rather a second hand one that is. It’s a little grubby but I think it’ll be quite easy to get cleaned up. Once that’s done, my plan is to MIDIfy it. I’ll let you know how that goes.

New section on hard to find Palm OS music apps added

Posted by on in Stuff, Tech

Of interest to very few people I know, but even so I’ve decided to put it up here in case anyone is desperate for these things. It seems that now I’ve started to look for these things I keep remembering and finding more things that I think would be useful for this section.

So I’ll add more as a little archive of Palm OS music making history.