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.

The trouble with Android

Posted by on in Tech

I keep thinking about getting a decent Android device, but I never quite get around to it. The main reason being the enormous differences in devices and costs. In some ways I think the whole iOS device scene has it easy. There really isn’t much to choose from and you know what will work on what device.

But in Android land it is very different indeed. Not only are there far more screen sizes, but you have to worry about which kind of device will get an update to which next version of the Android OS. It’s confusing, and that’s not good when you’re spending a few hundred pounds on something.

Sometimes I wonder if I should bother. Maybe I should stick to iOS, but I keep coming back to Android on a regular basis, so maybe I should give it another look. It just feels like it’s going to cost money and by a let down though.

Android on my 3G and emulation

Posted by on in Tech

I was thinking about getting Android going on my old 3G and even running StyleTap the palm OS emulator for jailbroken iPhones. Then I realised that I’d done exactly the same thing this time last year and had tried all of the above.

So maybe I shouldn’t bother trying it all over again. But then again maybe I will.

Everything is a platform

Posted by on in Mobile Applications, Tech

I seem to have been having this conversation with loads of people over the week or so. These days it appears that you can’t do anything without it being a platform. Whether it’s music related or IT related no one just wants a system anymore, it has to be a platform!

I do understand the reasoning behind it and the business logic, but it also seems somewhat trend based, which makes me wonder what will come after the platform? What new thing will replace or subsume it.

I don’t have the answer. If I did I’d be a rich guy. That’s for sure!

Starting up some data

Posted by on in Tech

I’ve just posted this little graph which will show my total tweets and when they come in over the space of 1 day. I thought it would be fun, and it’s my first venture into the world of pachube which I hope to use a lot more of soon.

Spotify and the arrival of the SPAPP

Posted by on in Listening, Mobile Applications, Tech

Last Sunday I went along to music hack day and a lot of the hacks used spotify’s new app platform. More of what I think about platforms another time.

I was a spotify user a while back but just ended up not using it anymore over a year ago. So I decided to fire up the service again to see if I was missing out on anything.

Perhaps I just didn’t give it a good enough chance but it did feel like I had no use for it. Maybe I’m not the target audience or maybe I need to upgrade to get the most out of it. Whatever it is I’m not finding it useful so far.

I like the idea of it and I thought some of the SPAPPs were kind of cool, but perhaps it needs a bit of time to mature.

Codify becomes Codea

Posted by on in Mobile Applications, Tech

This is an interesting app and has started up my interest in on-board apps for programming again. Of course iOS apps that are programming apps can’t write actual apps themselves just run their code inside the app. Even so, they are fun to play with and Codea which was called Codify seems particularly interesting.

So I’m going to give it a go again, and see if I can make anything good with it. If I do, I’ll publish the results.

Dashboard, what happened?

Posted by on in Tech

I was having a look for some new dashboard widgets and noticed that of the ‘recently added’ dashboard widgets on the apple site there are only 3 that were added this year! So what happened? I though dashboard widgets were great, really useful, but does no one make them anymore? Seems not.

What a shame, looks like I’ll have to grow my own then!

This would be cool, if …

Posted by on in Robotics, Tech

I could get the server app to work where I want it. At the moment it won’t run on the machine I want to run it on, otherwise everything would be just wonderful!

The trouble with processing

Posted by on in Tech

A simple thing you’d think right? All I wanted to do was to embed and existing sketch into a post. I’ve done it before, but today, no, no way at all. It may be of course that it is because it is using the minimum library for synthesis, but I don’t know for sure.

The sketch I’m trying to embed is here, and the reason for trying is because I only just found the code again and decided I might try and do something more with it. That was foolish wasn’t it!