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.

Day One 2 nearly gets there, but doesn’t

Posted by on in Stuff, TechLeave a comment

So I got slightly excited about the latest update of the Day One 2 app. The updated version which required you to pay for it again. When I first got it the app didn’t have a few pretty critical features that I wanted that were in the original app. However, now that they’ve put back a couple of those I thought I’d check again and see if it was worth moving over. However, it failed again. It couldn’t import all my entries. Why? I don’t know, but once again I’ve gone back to the old or ‘classic’ version.

Spending some more time with the Olegtron

Posted by on in Sounds, TechLeave a comment
Olegtron 4060
Olegtron 4060

I do like my Olegtron. It’s a load of fun, but the results haven’t been too predictable. Normally that’s fine. In fact I like the idea of sounds that surprise, but on the other hand it’s nice to be able to plan what you want to make and how it might work. Well in my most recent session with the Olegtron it’s actually been a little bit more predictable, and I think I’m starting to get the hang of how to get certain types of pattern out of it. Which is real progress for me.

So I expect to have some example videos up soon to show the latest sounds and patterns I’ve got from it.

IFTTT retiring their Etsy channel

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I’m a big fan of IFTTT. It’s a great service, and one that seems to be expanding all the time. However, sometimes they do take stuff away as well, and today I got an email stating just that. I understand that services like IFTTT have to change and sometimes those changes don’t make me so happy.

Today they’re taking the Etsy channel away, amongst many others. This is ok I guess, but I did like the Etsy channel and I do like Etsy too. Never mind.

Chromecast Audio

Posted by on in Music, TechLeave a comment
Chromecast Audio box
Chromecast Audio box

I’ve been meaning to get one of these for ages now, but I’ve never got around to it. However, a friend told me that they were on sale at Curry’s for just £15 so it seemed rude not to.

Chromecast Audio in the box
Chromecast Audio in the box

There’s not much in the box itself, it’s pretty minimal, but then it doesn’t really need much does it?

Chromecast Audio
Chromecast Audio

The device isn’t much bigger than an iPod Shuffle, maybe a tad bigger and seems very straightforward to get going with. One audio in, one power in, that’s it. Doesn’t need much else really.

When I get it all set up, when I have a minute, I’ll let you know what I think of it.

App Inventor getting updated

Posted by on in Making things, Mobile Applications, TechLeave a comment

I haven’t used Android App Inventor in age, so when I got an email from MIT telling me about what they’re doing with it, it came as quite a nice surprise, especially as they’ve got new stuff planned for it, such as …

  • Better support for multiple screen sizes and densities (responsive design).
  • The Backpack provides a way to copy and paste blocks between screens.
  • The App Inventor Gallery lets you exhibit and share your apps for collaboration and remixing.
  • App Inventor Services (coming soon) lets you create apps that can run in the background.
  • App Inventor Extensions (coming soon) let advanced users augment App Inventor’s capabilities without limitation by
  • creating and sharing new components.
  • The Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) component lets you build apps that control BLE devices, and experiment with mobile apps and the Internet of Things

All of which will be quite interesting to have a play with. The other cool thing in their email was Thunkable. Which is a version of App Inventor which is run by a commercial outfit. I think I might have a try of that soon.

Now is probably a good time to get back to trying out App Inventor anyway. I did play with it a long time ago, with a view to seeing if it could be used for audio apps, but really it couldn’t. I wonder if any of the new features coming to it will help with that?