Over the years, there have been various methods to help astronomers find their way around the skies.
The first is simple – learn the skies.
Tag: gadgets
Another new toy – a Cuisinart Soup Maker.
I eat a lot of soup, working from home, as it makes a quick and (usually) healthy lunch. However, although I have plenty of practice in making soup, lately I seem to be eating more shop-bought soup than homemade. Which generally means more salt, more fat and more additives.
Further to buying my Nexus 10, I still haven’t shopped around for a suitable music mount. But I have been thinking about what I need to use it in the kitchen.
I already have a couple of cookery resources that can be usefully used on a tablet. The original recipe book for my pellet grill, for a start, and recently the 40 page recipe guide for my breadmaker got too sticky to be hygenic, and was replaced with a pdf kindle sent to me by Breville.
When I first got my Kindle 3 (now named the Kindle Keyboard by Amazon), I toyed with comics on the device, downloading some samples. However a combination of monochrome (albeit nice, crisp monochrome) and a small screen, made it unattractive, and I took it no further.
On my new Nexus 10, using the Kindle Android app, I have downloaded samples of a couple of comics – some of DC’s Earth 2 graphic novels, and the best-graphic-novel-in-the-world, Watchmen. In addition, I have actually bought the first of the Sandman series – something I have come across a few times, but never collected.
… cos when I unpacked it, it leapt out at me and pushed my eyeballs into my brain.
But seriously, it was the Nexus 10 and not the Nexus-6 I got, and I’m blown away with it. Screen is wonderful, although I know I will be perpetually polishing prints off of it (which aren’t apparent in use, but boy, when you turn it off…). The case, which I have seen reviewed as “plastic” has a grippy rubbery feel to it, which I love. Sound from the front facing speakers has far more treble than bass, as you would expect from drivers that small, but is crisp and clear.
As I predicted, the UK courts took a dim view of Apple’s mandated statement. Although not held in contempt, they were told to go back and try again.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20165664
When Apple lost their UK court case against Samsung, the judge mandated that they should have to host a statement on their website to “correct the damaging impression” given by Apple that Samsung had copied their tablet.
Apple have now done this – their UK website has, in the smallest of print, a link labelled “Samsung/Apple UK judgement” leading to this page:
The good news: I have a new fridge-freezer, to replace the one that flaked out on me just before my holiday.
The bad news: it has to stand for 3 hours after the delivery, before I can turn it on.
The first Youview device launched a few weeks ago, with a fanfare from the BBC and a lot of talk from Lord Sugar; who contrary to rumour, isn’t actually involved in the production of the device, but is a non-executive chairman of the Youview partnership.
Youview is an IPTV service developed and launched jointly by BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five; together with BT and TalkTalk. Youview have specified what a Youview box should do, to enable it to bear the name, and various set-top box manufacturers will be launching their own boxes, made to that spec. The highlights of the requirement are that it includes dual Freeview tuners, a hard disk recorder, and hosts all 4 channel’s catchup/on demand services. Furthermore, that this functionality should be fully integrated.
I find that spending money tends to make me spend even more money, and this story is no exception.
I have been having fun with my Bloggie 3D camera, but it highlighted something – that I lack a computer capable of doing any kind of useful video editing.
In the (distant) past, I used a desktop I had built for gaming and music, but that has long been superceded by modern requirements. It has actually been sitting under a variety of desks and shelf units for the last 3 years, and I know that it isn’t capable of anything by today’s standards.
Because I work from home, I now tend to use my work computer for most day-to-day stuff. This isn’t as naughty as it sounds, as for some years, my personal requirements have been mostly just for a browser and email (both of which I need for work, anyway). Any gaming I did was now on the Wii, and my Pokerstars account runs from either my smart phone or my Asus Eee.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I thought I would look for a high-end laptop, with a decent built in video card. That way, I could use it downstairs, in front of the TV, as well as in my office. I was looking at a mixture of AV-spec machines, and gaming machines, both of which would do what I wanted.
Then I saw the Toshiba Qosmio F750-12P.
I spent a little more time with the Bloggie 3D today, experimenting with settings.
In my earlier post, I commented that my first test 3D video was a little shaky. I put this down to it being shot in a bit of a hurry, as it had just started raining.
I’ve been playing with Dropbox recently, which is a cloud service that allows you to easily share files between multiple computers and mobile phones.
I know that some people have the opinion that Dropbox is not as secure as it claims, but I’ve read up on the issues, and am really not that concerned, for the uses I am going to put it to. Being mainly a quick and easy way to dump photos/videos off of my smartphone and netbook when I am travelling, so I don’t have to worry about memory.